In search, it’s generally best practice to use Title Case for ad copy headlines. Capitalised headlines are thought to deliver higher CTRs, improved readability and enhanced professionalism, leading to higher performance. It’s become the standard for copy. But when something becomes standard, and everyone’s doing it, could questioning the norm and breaking away from standard practice be a differentiator?
We recently tested just this. We tested the impact of wholly lowercase text in ad copy to see if Title Case is truly necessary for performance. The e-com brand in question associated their brand image heavily with lowercase text and they wanted continuity between their brand image and the branded ad copy. So, we thought this would be a good test to undertake, to answer the question:
1. Is title case in ad copy truly necessary? How does it impact performance?
We created two identical ads, one in upper case and one in lower case. The results are in and the numbers speak for themselves: Title case really does make a difference in performance!
Performance Differences Across Lowercase & Title Case Ad Copy
The title case ad saw significantly more traffic, a 10% higher CTR, cheaper CPCs by a 1/3, and nearly 3 times the conversion volume than sentence case. Most importantly: the title case ad delivered a ROAS of 6.08, 30% greater than the lowercase ad.
So, why did title case perform far better than completely lower-case ad copy? Firstly, CPCs are much lower for Title Case suggesting Google assigns higher ad rank to Title Case copy. Another probable reason for performance differences is how our lower-case ad appeared compared to other ads on the SRPs. Capitalised copy is generally considered easier to read and appears more professional, when compared to lower case copy, encouraging higher CTRs and CVRs.
This test confirmed that title case out-performs lowercase ad copy. Whilst it is general best practice to use Title Case, it was a good test to demonstrate the impact Title Case has on performance. If you want the benefit of lower CPCs, higher CTRs, lower CPAs and greater ROAS, Title Case is the way to go over lower case.
But while we were questioning the status quo, we can’t help but ask… what about sentence case? This shall have to be the next test!
