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Nowadays, advertising is all about engaging people in the most exciting ways possible. Back in 2012, Google Ads released a new ad format called Google Lightbox, which effectively laid the foundations for a new era of interactive advertising.
With this new format, pay-per-click (PPC) managers were able to create more engaging ads that helped them catch the eye of prospects. Early tests indicated that these rich media ads could potentially generate 6-8 times as much user engagement compared to standard click-to-expand ads.
Read on to discover more about the power of Google Lightbox, and see how you can use rich media ads to get better results in PPC advertising.
Rich Media Ads are advertisements that include advanced features like audio, image, and video. In doing so, these ads offer an enhanced experience for users, which is more likely to elicit a response. When compared to simple text ads, rich media ads are a more fun and attractive type of ad that users may engage.
As they provide more ways for user interaction, rich media ads have a more extensive range of metrics that PPC advertisers can monitor to gauge their impact. For instance, you can track the following aggregated metrics on your audience’s behavior:
These metrics give you granular data, allowing you to analyze your campaign performance, and determine the efficacy of your rich media ads.
Marketers use these ads for several reasons, most notably because they can potentially offer the following benefits:
While you can customize these ads in a myriad of ways, there are essentially just two main types of rich media ads:
Let’s look at each in more detail to see how you can use them.
In-stream video ads are ads that adapt television commercials into an online stream. In a mobile-mad age, advertisers are looking for ways to reach wider audiences. Therefore, in-stream video ads are seen as a potent channel as you can create attractive video ads for popular platforms like Facebook and YouTube that people will want to engage. These ads are growing in popularity and can also be found on many news sites and blogs.
An In-Page rich media ad is one that appears in a rectangle within a webpage. Here are two common examples:
You can create simple banner video ads with just a few clicks. Once you create your banner, you can embed the video and save it in HTML5. This will give you a short presentation of your product displayed on that banner. The advantage here is that users can view the presentation on the page without having to navigate to another website.
This type of banner ad expands whenever the user’s mouse cursor hovers over the ad. When it expands, the ad will cover a larger area of the screen, presenting a visual story of a brand, or its product, service, or promotion.
These ads permit multiple slides and special animation effects, making it possible for advertisers to create a more appealing ad that encourages user interaction.
The other main type is an out-of-page rich media ad. Within this category, there are three common types of ads — pop-ups, floating ads, and lightbox ads.
Marketers have been using pop-up ads for decades. For a long time, the consensus among internet users was that pop-up ads were annoying and unwelcome distractions from their browsing experience. Many people still see them as a nuisance or even a potential virus threat.
However, with the rise of personalized marketing, advertisers are finding ways to make pop-up ads more engaging and relevant. By doing this, brands can catch the user’s attention and potentially drive traffic and conversions.
Floating ads exist independently from a webpage, as they float on the screen, only moving down whenever the user scrolls down. Some can maintain a locked position on the screen. Floating banners are usually mobile -responsive, which allows them to adapt to different screen sizes and device types.
Lightbox ads are advanced interactive ads, which offer advertisers a lot more leeway for creativity. This makes them perfect for building engagement with complex actions. These ads expand to cover the available screen space, displaying videos, maps, games, and more to capture the user’s attention.
That’s it in a nutshell, but now it’s time to dig deep!
Google Lightbox is an interactive ad format, which appears like a standard ad until users hover the mouse cursor for two full seconds. After this, the ad will expand into a super-size canvas takeover.
These rich media ads can contain various elements, such as:
With the two-second wait, these ads help minimize accidental expansions, giving PPC advertisers an accurate reflection of audience engagement. Better yet, you only pay when the ad is expanded, rather than for clicks.
So, are Google Lightbox ads for you?
These ads are best if you want to offer a great user experience through your ads. Users can interact with Google Lightbox ads in several ways, including clicks, taps on mobile, or by hovering the cursor on the ads. As such, these ads are inherently more captivating than standard ads.
Furthermore, these rich media ads automatically adapt to whatever device the user is on, ensuring a good user experience on desktop, tablets, and mobile across the Google Display network.
Sometime back, when Google Ads was known as Google AdWords, there were two bidding options for Google Lightbox ad users:
Now, Google Ads operates with a cost-per-engagement (CPE) bidding strategy, where advertisers pay whenever users engage with the ads.
Pre-expanded ads like interstitials consider user engagement to be any action the user takes after the ad displays. By comparison, expandable ad formats like a Google Lightbox ad determine user engagement by the actions the user undertakes to make the ad expand. (i.e., a hover, click, or tap).
This format offers another boon for advertisers, as Lightbox ads are budget-friendly. You only pay for expansions instead of clicks, so you’ll incur less wasted spend. The two-second wait is a good filter that makes it more likely you will only attract genuine users who are interested in what your ad is offering.
When the ad expands, it takes over the whole screen, making for a more engaging presentation that commands the user’s attention. In turn, this is quite effective at driving prospects further along your marketing funnel. It’s a good idea to use a strong call-to-action in the ad expansion to encourage people to visit your website and learn more about your products and services.
Google Lightbox ads are specifically for the “Product and brand consideration” marketing goal. Once you have your basic account set up in Google Ads, you’ll find Lightbox ads there.
Now that you understand the basics of these rich media ads, it’s time to learn how to set up a Google Lightbox ad in Google Ads.
Here’s how it’s done:
5. Next, select Save:
6. Add your captions, call to action (CTA), and links for your images or feature photos for your videos by expanding your cards in the panel given on the left. You can view your changes by selecting.
7. Add additional cards by clicking the Blue Plus
Button card, and then selecting add an Image gallery, Video card, Feed card or Map card as before.
8. Add details about your business, such as a company logo and up to 10 messages or CTAs to encourage users to take action. For example, you could include CTA text like
“Buy now”
or
“Visit our website”.
Now, your Google Light box ad is ready for review. After final approval, you can start running your ad in your PPC campaign.
With your ad up and running, let’s see how you can maximize rich media ads for the best possible return on investment (ROI).
As you know by now, these ads are all about user interaction. By focusing on the ways your prospects interact with rich media ads, you can reap greater rewards, making sure your PPC budget goes further.
Here are three smart optimization tips to do more with a Google Lightbox ad:
Learn More: 14 Must-Have Hacks For Stellar Ad Copy
While there is a lot to like about this ad format, it is not without its limitations. The most obvious issue is that a Google Lightbox ad will usually generate less traffic than standard ad formats. People are less likely to deliberately interact with an ad by hovering on it for two seconds.
As such, a Google Lightbox ad may not be the best choice for very defined targeting. Instead, you should only use them for broader brand awareness campaigns where you can get a lot of impressions, thus increasing the chance of expansions.
Google Ads is always evolving, like much of the digital marketing landscape. People want to engage brands, and they are more open to embracing exciting content like videos and games.
With that being the case, rich media ads are fast becoming an essential part of the modern PPC manager’s toolkit. Relying on text ads alone is leaving a lot of opportunity on the table.
By experimenting with rich media ads, you can discover more about what works for your audience. The significant advantages of using a Google Lightbox ad can truly be felt when you want to increase brand awareness of your company, or a specific product or service.
The nature of its design means you have a cost-effective, highly-engaging channel that can drive more potential leads into your sales funnel. So, how will you get started?
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