Text Ads
[private].[/private]Text ads are the easiest of all affiliate tools to create since they just take a few moments to setup. Another great benefit to creating text ads for you affiliates is that they generally do not require any advanced coding skills or knowledge.
There are only a few parameters you will want to keep in mind when making up text ads for your affiliates. The main considerations are the number of characters you include on each line within the text ad.
Before getting into specific restrictions for creating your text ad, let’s back it up one step and summarize what a text ad really is.
Generally speaking, a text ad is a brief headline, two short lines of text, and a destination URL. The most common application you will find for these sort of text ads are the short adverts you see alongside search results on popular search engines such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo.
Do you want to see several real life examples of some text ads? Go to Google and do a search for absolutely anything that comes to mind. If nothing comes to mind, then why not do another search for our favorite example, “cat grooming.”
So once you get to Google.com and have entered “cat grooming” as your search term, pay extra close attention to the ads that appear down the far right hand side of the page. These are all text ads and are basically the type of tool you will be providing your affiliates in this step.
The aim of the text ad is to meet the most general requirements of all the major search engines so that it may be used by affiliates in pay-per-click advertising campaigns with little to no editing or changes (although good affiliates will slightly alter the text ad to be slightly different than everyone else).
Here’s a few examples of text ads (AdWords ads) that were returned after I Googled our favorite example we’ve been sticking with throughout this training – “Cat Grooming”:
Some Basic Text Ad Considerations
Headline: The headline should be no more than 25 characters and not use any unnecessary capitalizations or any strange combinations of special characters.
Description Line 1: The first line of the description can be a maximum of 35 characters.
Description Line 2: The second line of the description can be a maximum of 35 characters.
Display URL: The display URL can be a maximum of 35 characters. Keep in mind that the display URL should be where end users land after clicking on the text ad, but does not necessarily have to be the exact link that end users will be redirected through in order to arrive at that landing page. This means that the text ad could be an affiliate link, a unique URL that redirects through an affiliate link, or even a long goofy looking tracking URL with all kinds of unique tracking ID’s added to the end of the link, just so long as the final landing page URL is similar or the same as the information you have entered here as the “display URL.”
Destination URL: The destination URL may be up to 1024 characters in length and this is the actual URL that end users will be taken to when clicking on your text ad. This display URL will be the “means” to get your visitors to the destination URL, which could be considered the “end.”
Here are a few examples of some text ads that are available to ProFromGo affiliates. They will give you a good idea of what the finished product should look like when creating text ads for your affiliates to use in their promotions:
