This week, Google announced one more mobile ad extension, message extensions. What are AdWords message extensions?

Message extensions, like all other ad extensions, are eligible to show alongside an advertiser’s ads on the SERP, generally making them larger and more feature-rich while increasing CTR.

Here’s what’s new: message extensions give users the opportunity to click to text a business directly from the SERP!

When I was growing up and deciding what I wanted to study when I went to college, my mother always told me to study math. I remember her telling me that no matter what industry I went into, I’d always be able to find a job because everyone hates math and would hire someone else to do it for them.

It was hard for me to believe at age 16 – in high school, being good at math certainly didn’t make me popular. But just one decade later, I have to admit she was right. Math is the universal language and even in a field like marketing, where my peers spend their days thinking of creative ad copy and keywords, math skills are becoming increasingly valuable to data-driven marketers.

Over the past week, Google’s been making a lot of announcements for its plans to enhance their display network at AdWeek and SMX East in New York City. Some of the more heralded news is that Google announced advertisers will soon have the ability to remarket to users across different devices and measure store visits as a result of their display ads.

Google knew they were making news when they announced Expanded Text Ads at their annual performance summit in May. The standard ad format of 25/35/35 characters had been the norm since AdWords was introduced in 2000. The change to the SERP with ETAs is a BIG one (quite literally – ETAs are 50% larger than the traditional ad format) and may be the largest change to AdWords in 16 years!

As SEMs spend so much time doing keyword research, building keyword lists, and reviewing their keyword performance it’s easy to forget that their customers aren’t keywords – they’re people. A 19-year-old and a 70-year-old searching Google for the term “hair extensions” are likely looking for very different products. And a man and a woman searching for “leather boots” online aren’t likely to be searching for the exact same pair.

“User intent” begins with the user and with this in mind, most online advertising platforms like Facebook and Bing have offered demographic targeting for their campaigns. Well, starting today, AdWords has enabled advertisers to target age and gender demographics within their search campaigns.