I received an email yesterday pointing out the existence of a local address in an AdWords add, suggesting either a new policy at Google or a failure to catch a clever advertiser. It’s probably the former however.
Google has allowed local advertisers to put a fourth line of text (location) under the URL at the bottom of the ad. That has been limited to city name or region historically. The inclusion of a physical address is pretty interesting and makes the ad standout somewhat as even more local. (It’s the fifth ad in the right column. Also interesting to notice is the plus box in the ad at the top of the page that expands to offer a map.)
Here’s the query for “massage san francisco“:
And here’s the specific ad:
Update: Mike Blumenthal got confirmation that this was a Google-originated experiment.
Screenwerk 
January 8, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Wow. This is a hugely important move, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. As someone in local media, I have a love-hate relationship with Google ads for local walk-in businesses. See, for most of those folks, the correct metric to measure an ad is not a click. (Drink special at Joe’s bar tonight doesn’t need a click if I know where Joe’s is.) Which means that a.) Google has to be getting a lower ecpm on these and b.) that the advertiser is being trained to expect advertising for free.
We run adsense on our site, and use it as a prospecting tool too. But we “ban” any adwords advertiser who runs enough info in the ad that a click is not needed.
Seems adding an address would increase that volume and potentially further reduce clicks. Does that hurt clickthrough revenue? Does it entice more local advertisers into adwords?
Would love to know the strategy here…
January 8, 2008 at 3:44 pm
[…] a post today, Google Letting Addresses into AdWords? Greg Sterling pointed out that Google appears to be allowing street address as a 4th line in the […]
January 8, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Maybe these ads are only offered on a CPM basis? Clicks would be irrelevant to the amount of revenue Google generates if they charged based on how many times the ad is shown rather than how many times it is clicked on.
January 8, 2008 at 8:25 pm
[…] Sterling this morning mentioned that Google is apparently experimenting with allowing full street addresses to appear below the […]
January 9, 2008 at 12:44 am
I don’t do a ton of stuff on the PPC side, but here’s my best guess:
The 4th line only shows up when you have geotargeting turned on for your ad. Previously, you could only geotarget at the city/DMA level. And so that 4th line would only show city/DMA names.
I believe you can now geotarget much more specifically — I believe you target just a zip code, and even draw on a map to show where your ad should appear. (But someone should check me on that.)
If so, my guess is that with the increased ability to geotarget the ad comes the more specific location that shows on the 4th line.
January 10, 2008 at 5:50 pm
It’s part of Google’s Local Business Ads (https://adwords.google.com/select/LocalAdsHomepage) – they are still CPC – they have this option in the ad serving and Google will serve up whichever ad has the best quality score (bid, CTR, keyword relevance, etc…) – at least that’s how I understand it – but yes it is cool and it does make them much more relevant for local
January 10, 2008 at 8:43 pm
These are called Google Local Business Ads. You can create them in your AdWords UI. They have been around for a little while now. They are CPC based just like a nationally or DMA targeted ad.
January 11, 2008 at 12:34 am
These are not necessarily local ads. Matt Mcgee is right, these are just geo-targeted ads. I have been testing this and have found that the address information helps improve the CTR and conversion rate significantly.
January 11, 2008 at 10:26 pm
[…] to an inquiry about the reported inclusion of the local address in Adword ads (reported here and here and here) and acknowledged a limited […]
January 12, 2008 at 12:43 pm
[…] AdWords is testing the inclusion of local addresses in their pay per click ads. So far, Screenwerk, SERoundtable, Vertical Leap, and Blumenthals have all reported on […]
January 12, 2008 at 10:38 pm
[…] Source: Google has allowed local advertisers to put a fourth line of text (location) under the URL at the bottom of the ad. That has been limited to city name or region historically. The inclusion of a physical address is pretty interesting and makes the ad standout somewhat as even more local. […]
March 31, 2008 at 8:21 pm
[…] on Blumenthal, SEORoundTable, Screenwork and Vertical […]
March 5, 2012 at 2:32 am
If it was a mistake. Google will catch them soon enough.