What Callout Extensions (Now “Callout Assets”) Are in Google Search Ads
Callout extensions—now labeled as callout assets in the Google Ads interface—are short snippets of text that can appear with your Search ads to highlight extra benefits, differentiators, or buying incentives. Think of them as “micro value propositions” that sit alongside your headlines and descriptions, giving people more reasons to choose you before they even click.
Callouts can show on both desktop and mobile. On desktop, they often appear in a single line separated by dots, while on mobile and tablet they can wrap and display more like a compact paragraph. Depending on spacing, device, and other auction-time factors, multiple callouts may show—sometimes up to ten—so the best accounts treat callouts as a system, not a one-off add-on.
Two details matter operationally: callout text has a tight character limit (25 characters in most languages, and 12 in double-width languages), and there’s no separate fee to add callouts—you’re still charged the normal way when someone clicks your ad.
How Callout Extensions Enhance Visibility and Performance
They make your ad bigger, clearer, and more competitive on the results page
The most immediate impact of callouts is simple: more on-screen real estate. When your ad takes up more space and communicates more value at a glance, it tends to attract more attention—especially in crowded auctions where several advertisers have similar offers and similar-looking responsive search ads.
They improve click-through rate by pre-selling the click
Strong callouts reduce ambiguity. Instead of forcing the user to infer your benefits from generic copy, you spell them out in scannable phrases like “Free Returns,” “Same-Day Service,” or “Price Match.” This usually lifts CTR because the ad answers objections and reinforces trust faster.
Just as importantly, callouts can increase the quality of your clicks by setting expectations. If you include “24/7 Support” or “Appointments Required,” you’re helping users self-qualify. That often reduces wasted spend from people who were never a fit—leading to better conversion rates downstream.
They can contribute to stronger Ad Rank outcomes (without being a “Quality Score hack”)
In the ad auction, the platform estimates the expected impact of ad assets and formats. In plain English: if your callouts (and other assets) are predicted to improve performance, that expectation can help your competitiveness in the auction. This is one of the reasons two advertisers with similar bids can see different results.
At the same time, don’t treat callouts as a shortcut to “fix Quality Score.” Quality Score is a diagnostic view and won’t necessarily improve just because you added assets. Treat callouts as what they are: a way to make your ads more informative, more prominent, and more compelling.
How to Write Callouts That Actually Drive Better Results
Start with the job callouts are meant to do
High-performing callouts usually fall into one of three roles: they reduce risk (“Warranty Included”), remove friction (“Online Booking”), or add urgency/value (“Limited-Time Offer”). The mistake I see most often is using callouts as filler (“Best Service,” “Great Prices”), which doesn’t add information and rarely changes a buying decision.
Use the account/campaign/ad group structure to stay relevant at scale
Callouts can be added at the account, campaign, or ad group level. Strategy-wise, I recommend building a “pyramid”:
- Account-level callouts for benefits that apply to nearly everything you sell (for example, “Free Shipping,” “Licensed & Insured,” “Financing Available”).
- Campaign-level callouts for category-specific value (for example, “Commercial Services” or “Next-Day Delivery”).
- Ad group-level callouts for the most specific differentiators (for example, “Bridal Alterations” or “Same-Day iPhone Repair”).
One critical nuance: more granular callouts override higher-level callouts. So if you attach even a single callout at the ad group level, it can block campaign-level callouts from serving for that ad group. Plan your structure intentionally so you don’t accidentally shrink your eligible callout pool.
Keep them short so more can show—and make every character earn its place
Because shorter callouts allow more to fit, compact phrasing is a performance lever. “Free Shipping” will generally outperform “We Have Free Shipping” because it communicates the same benefit and increases the chance that additional callouts can also appear.
Also, specificity wins. “34 MPG” or “2-Year Warranty” is more believable and more decision-useful than “High Quality” or “Great Selection.”
Setup, Scheduling, and Policy-Safe Execution (Including Dynamic Callouts)
Schedule callouts like you schedule promotions in the real world
Callouts can be scheduled with start/end dates and even day/time windows. This is ideal for seasonal offers, holiday shipping cutoffs, weekend-only discounts, or service-hour messaging. Scheduling protects performance because you don’t have to remember to manually remove outdated offers—and outdated offers are one of the fastest ways to damage conversion rate and trust.
Understand how dynamic callouts interact with your manual callouts
In addition to manual callouts, the platform can generate dynamic callouts automatically based on content associated with your site and ads. These can appear alongside your manual callouts or sometimes instead of them, but typically only when they’re expected to improve performance.
As a manager, your job is governance. If an automatically created dynamic callout is off-brand, inaccurate, or just not how you want to position the business, you can pause or remove individual dynamic callouts. In most accounts, I prefer leaving dynamic callouts enabled while actively monitoring them—because they add coverage and testing velocity—unless there’s a compliance or brand-control reason to opt out.
Avoid common disapprovals: punctuation tricks, repetition, and trademark issues
Callouts are subject to standard ad policies, and they have specific editorial requirements. The fastest way to get callouts disapproved is using attention-grabbing punctuation or symbols that don’t add meaning (for example, excessive exclamation points, decorative symbols, or punctuation at the start of the text). Another frequent issue is repetition: callout text shouldn’t repeat within itself or duplicate text already present in other callouts, your ad copy, or sitelinks within the same scope.
Finally, treat trademarks carefully. If you reference brand terms you don’t own (or you use them in a way that triggers complaints), you can create avoidable ad serving issues. When in doubt, keep callouts focused on your own offers and differentiators.
How to Measure Whether Callout Extensions Are Working
Use asset reporting to optimize like a pro (not like a guesser)
To evaluate callouts properly, you want to move beyond “CTR went up” anecdotes and use asset reporting. In the Assets area, you can review performance across your callouts, including identifying which ones are manually created versus automatically created (dynamic). This is especially useful in mature accounts where automation may be contributing meaningfully to your coverage.
Know what the “Learning / Low / Good / Best / Unrated” labels actually mean
When you view campaign-level asset reporting, you’ll often see performance labels such as Learning, Low, Good, Best, or Unrated. These are relative rankings—they compare assets against other assets of the same type in the same context. Use them to guide decisions, but don’t overreact too quickly. New callouts need time to serve, rotate, and gather enough impressions before the signal stabilizes.
A simple optimization loop that consistently improves results
- Add coverage first: Ensure you have a healthy set of unique callouts at the right levels (account/campaign/ad group) so the system has options.
- Let data accumulate: Avoid swapping callouts every few days; give the system time to learn what works by device, query, and auction context.
- Replace “Low” with new angles: Don’t replace weak callouts with slightly reworded versions of the same idea. Introduce a different benefit category (risk reversal, speed, price transparency, support, availability).
- Keep winners and add more like them: If a callout theme repeatedly earns “Good” or “Best,” build additional variants that communicate the same advantage in different wording.
Let AI handle
the Google Ads grunt work
Let AI handle
the Google Ads grunt work
Callout extensions (now called callout assets) enhance Google Search ads by adding short, scannable benefit statements that increase your ad’s on-page footprint, clarify your offer, and often improve CTR by helping users self-qualify before they click; the biggest gains usually come from treating callouts as “micro value props” (specific, fact-based, within character limits), structuring them intentionally across account, campaign, and ad group levels, scheduling them so time-sensitive messages don’t linger, and routinely replacing anything marked “Low” in asset reporting. If you want a more systematic way to keep these assets fresh and compliant, Blobr connects to your Google Ads account and can run specialized agents like its Callout Extension Optimizer, which reviews recent performance and suggests new callouts aligned with what’s working in each ad group, so your extensions stay relevant without becoming another recurring maintenance task.
What Callout Extensions (Now “Callout Assets”) Are in Google Search Ads
Callout extensions—now labeled as callout assets in the Google Ads interface—are short snippets of text that can appear with your Search ads to highlight extra benefits, differentiators, or buying incentives. Think of them as “micro value propositions” that sit alongside your headlines and descriptions, giving people more reasons to choose you before they even click.
Callouts can show on both desktop and mobile. On desktop, they often appear in a single line separated by dots, while on mobile and tablet they can wrap and display more like a compact paragraph. Depending on spacing, device, and other auction-time factors, multiple callouts may show—sometimes up to ten—so the best accounts treat callouts as a system, not a one-off add-on.
Two details matter operationally: callout text has a tight character limit (25 characters in most languages, and 12 in double-width languages), and there’s no separate fee to add callouts—you’re still charged the normal way when someone clicks your ad.
How Callout Extensions Enhance Visibility and Performance
They make your ad bigger, clearer, and more competitive on the results page
The most immediate impact of callouts is simple: more on-screen real estate. When your ad takes up more space and communicates more value at a glance, it tends to attract more attention—especially in crowded auctions where several advertisers have similar offers and similar-looking responsive search ads.
They improve click-through rate by pre-selling the click
Strong callouts reduce ambiguity. Instead of forcing the user to infer your benefits from generic copy, you spell them out in scannable phrases like “Free Returns,” “Same-Day Service,” or “Price Match.” This usually lifts CTR because the ad answers objections and reinforces trust faster.
Just as importantly, callouts can increase the quality of your clicks by setting expectations. If you include “24/7 Support” or “Appointments Required,” you’re helping users self-qualify. That often reduces wasted spend from people who were never a fit—leading to better conversion rates downstream.
They can contribute to stronger Ad Rank outcomes (without being a “Quality Score hack”)
In the ad auction, the platform estimates the expected impact of ad assets and formats. In plain English: if your callouts (and other assets) are predicted to improve performance, that expectation can help your competitiveness in the auction. This is one of the reasons two advertisers with similar bids can see different results.
At the same time, don’t treat callouts as a shortcut to “fix Quality Score.” Quality Score is a diagnostic view and won’t necessarily improve just because you added assets. Treat callouts as what they are: a way to make your ads more informative, more prominent, and more compelling.
How to Write Callouts That Actually Drive Better Results
Start with the job callouts are meant to do
High-performing callouts usually fall into one of three roles: they reduce risk (“Warranty Included”), remove friction (“Online Booking”), or add urgency/value (“Limited-Time Offer”). The mistake I see most often is using callouts as filler (“Best Service,” “Great Prices”), which doesn’t add information and rarely changes a buying decision.
Use the account/campaign/ad group structure to stay relevant at scale
Callouts can be added at the account, campaign, or ad group level. Strategy-wise, I recommend building a “pyramid”:
- Account-level callouts for benefits that apply to nearly everything you sell (for example, “Free Shipping,” “Licensed & Insured,” “Financing Available”).
- Campaign-level callouts for category-specific value (for example, “Commercial Services” or “Next-Day Delivery”).
- Ad group-level callouts for the most specific differentiators (for example, “Bridal Alterations” or “Same-Day iPhone Repair”).
One critical nuance: more granular callouts override higher-level callouts. So if you attach even a single callout at the ad group level, it can block campaign-level callouts from serving for that ad group. Plan your structure intentionally so you don’t accidentally shrink your eligible callout pool.
Keep them short so more can show—and make every character earn its place
Because shorter callouts allow more to fit, compact phrasing is a performance lever. “Free Shipping” will generally outperform “We Have Free Shipping” because it communicates the same benefit and increases the chance that additional callouts can also appear.
Also, specificity wins. “34 MPG” or “2-Year Warranty” is more believable and more decision-useful than “High Quality” or “Great Selection.”
Setup, Scheduling, and Policy-Safe Execution (Including Dynamic Callouts)
Schedule callouts like you schedule promotions in the real world
Callouts can be scheduled with start/end dates and even day/time windows. This is ideal for seasonal offers, holiday shipping cutoffs, weekend-only discounts, or service-hour messaging. Scheduling protects performance because you don’t have to remember to manually remove outdated offers—and outdated offers are one of the fastest ways to damage conversion rate and trust.
Understand how dynamic callouts interact with your manual callouts
In addition to manual callouts, the platform can generate dynamic callouts automatically based on content associated with your site and ads. These can appear alongside your manual callouts or sometimes instead of them, but typically only when they’re expected to improve performance.
As a manager, your job is governance. If an automatically created dynamic callout is off-brand, inaccurate, or just not how you want to position the business, you can pause or remove individual dynamic callouts. In most accounts, I prefer leaving dynamic callouts enabled while actively monitoring them—because they add coverage and testing velocity—unless there’s a compliance or brand-control reason to opt out.
Avoid common disapprovals: punctuation tricks, repetition, and trademark issues
Callouts are subject to standard ad policies, and they have specific editorial requirements. The fastest way to get callouts disapproved is using attention-grabbing punctuation or symbols that don’t add meaning (for example, excessive exclamation points, decorative symbols, or punctuation at the start of the text). Another frequent issue is repetition: callout text shouldn’t repeat within itself or duplicate text already present in other callouts, your ad copy, or sitelinks within the same scope.
Finally, treat trademarks carefully. If you reference brand terms you don’t own (or you use them in a way that triggers complaints), you can create avoidable ad serving issues. When in doubt, keep callouts focused on your own offers and differentiators.
How to Measure Whether Callout Extensions Are Working
Use asset reporting to optimize like a pro (not like a guesser)
To evaluate callouts properly, you want to move beyond “CTR went up” anecdotes and use asset reporting. In the Assets area, you can review performance across your callouts, including identifying which ones are manually created versus automatically created (dynamic). This is especially useful in mature accounts where automation may be contributing meaningfully to your coverage.
Know what the “Learning / Low / Good / Best / Unrated” labels actually mean
When you view campaign-level asset reporting, you’ll often see performance labels such as Learning, Low, Good, Best, or Unrated. These are relative rankings—they compare assets against other assets of the same type in the same context. Use them to guide decisions, but don’t overreact too quickly. New callouts need time to serve, rotate, and gather enough impressions before the signal stabilizes.
A simple optimization loop that consistently improves results
- Add coverage first: Ensure you have a healthy set of unique callouts at the right levels (account/campaign/ad group) so the system has options.
- Let data accumulate: Avoid swapping callouts every few days; give the system time to learn what works by device, query, and auction context.
- Replace “Low” with new angles: Don’t replace weak callouts with slightly reworded versions of the same idea. Introduce a different benefit category (risk reversal, speed, price transparency, support, availability).
- Keep winners and add more like them: If a callout theme repeatedly earns “Good” or “Best,” build additional variants that communicate the same advantage in different wording.
