• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, May 25, 2016

Google on Tuesday announced some changes to AdWords at its Google Performance Summit that it hopes will help it meet the demand for mobile inventory. It's also expanding the reach of Google Display Network (GDN) remarketing campaigns to include cross-exchange inventory. The AdWord changes mean that over the next few months, advertisers will be able to set bid adjustments for each device (mobile, desktop, tablet). Previously, Google combined tablet and desktop.

The search giant also made updates to AdWords and local ad formats to make it easier for marketers to implement mobile campaigns. For example, advertisers will be able to connect more easily with Google Maps. 

They can also offer consumers more information in their text ads: instead of one 25-character headline, there'll be two 30-character headlines, and a longer (80-character) description line. Google said it’s seeing 20% higher click rates with the expanded text ad format in early testing.

The move signals the importance of mobile not only to advertisers’ revenues but Google’s, since more than half of mobile searches are now mobile and over half of Web traffic is now coming from mobile (tablet and smartphone).

Google’s also offering advertisers more flexibility over how they bid in AdWords. For example, advertisers will be able to anchor a base keyword to a particular device and adjust bids for other devices up or down by up to 900%.

Another change is that Google will offer responsive ad formats for display. Those formats will adapt to diverse content across more than 2 million publisher sites and apps on the GDN. In addition, the ads are intended to open up new sources of native ad inventory. To participate, advertisers offer headlines, a description, an image, and a URL, and Google will design the responsive ads.

Google said it’s also expanding the reach of GDN remarketing campaigns to cross-exchange inventory (other ad exchanges). Google noted that SAS, a European Airline, drove about 20% more conversions at a similar cost per acquisition using the cross-exchange inventory.