Every year for the past few years, Google has made a concerted effort to focus on mobile every year and release a new mobile-centric update to search. This year is no different. According to sources, Google will soon be releasing some new updates to Google AdWords that marketers should note.

1. Local Ads on Google Maps

Google says it will be releasing its “next generation” of local ads. These ads will display within Google Maps (on both mobile and desktop) as well as Google.com. In the new ads, brand logos will be displayed on Maps with a clickable link for users to access more information. For example, if a user searched for Target, they would see the retailer’s logo on their map. When the user clicks on the map, they can be taken a special offer.

>> Uh, Why Google Maps?

Google found that there are more than a billion users and people visit 1.5 billion destinations a day. Local searches account for nearly a third of all searches and local searches have grown 50% faster than any other search in the past year.

2. Expanded Text Ads

Google advertisers will soon have a chance to say more. The company removed its right side ads from desktop SERP results in February. With a new (and much more integrated) approach, Google is expanding headlines. They will allow advertisers to have two 30-character headlines, up from a single headline of only 25 characters. Google found that the the CTR dramatically increased after this change. In addition, Google is expanding the number of characters in the description line, a five-character increase from before.

3. In-Store Conversion Measurement

A big challenge for most local businesses is the ability to connect the digital world from the tangible world. It looks like AdWords will soon bridge the gap a better way to measure in-store conversions. In store conversions will soon be available to more types of businesses, which is critical since most purchases happen more in-store than online.

4. Responsive Display Ads

Get ready to create beautiful responsive display ads by simply entering in a URL, headline, description, and image. Google will create the ad for you with the information you provide, and your ads will automatically adapt to the content of the websites it’s displayed on. The new and improved ads will “unlock new native inventory” in apps and mobile sites in the GDN.

This is really great for marketers who, at this point, had to create different graphics for different ad positions (skyscraper, leaderboard, square, rectangle, etc).

5. Changes to the Bidding Process

Right now, advertisers on Google have the ability to set a base bid on desktop, and use that base bid to make mobile bids off of that base bid. Going forward, that process will be separated. Advertisers will soon have to make separate bids for desktop, mobile, and tablet, all independent of one another. This will provide advertisers with more flexibility.