Over the past few weeks Google has been rolling out new communication ad extensions to select advertisers. Soon this extension will be available to the masses, so understanding how you can utilize and benefit them can help you get a leg up on your competition.

What Are Communication Ad Extensions?

The AdWords Communication Ad Extensions are a new ad extension that allows AdWords advertisers to display communication means as part of a text ad, thus allowing users to submit their information to be contacted.

What Do Communication Ad Extensions Look Like on SERPs?

The ad extension is a small area that appears as an extra line after your second line of your text ad.

How Can This Ad Extension Help?

With communication ad extensions enabled, you can easily acquire leads right from the search engine results page. You can gather their information before they even get to your website. We all know you can waste a lot of money on bad clicks, this allows you to acquire the information you want, quickly without worrying about someone not liking the landing page you send your traffic too.

One of the other great factors of this program is it is currently free! Yes, for those select advertisers invited into the program, Google is offering the extension for free. Needless to say, when it is rolled out to the masses, Google will ad d some sort of cost onto the extension.

How Do You Receive The Data?

At this time, Google holds the data after the email or phone number is submitted through the extension. You can be sent the data in real time or in a mass excel sheet. This can be set up through your account management team.

How Could It Better?

While this is a great addition to the extensions available in Adwords, there are some improvements that could make it even better. For some lead generation campaigns, location is or zip code is the starting point of the conversion process. Being able to customize the field and what is entered into the ad extension would make this tool more powerful. For example, if I am selling home owners insurance the first thing  I need to provide a quote is the zip code. Getting that on the SERP and then providing a landing page that is pre-filled and custom to the zip code can help push the visitor through the conversion process.