Google has confirmed it is officially testing placing emojis in some search ads. Darcy Burk from Burk Digital Factory spotted a pizza emoji on a search ad for Uber Eats and posted the screenshot on Twitter. Ginny Marvin of Google on the Ads Liaison Twitter account confirmed Google is testing placing emojis in some search ads.
Update, this was an emoji used for a favicon that caused this, more details below:
Here is a screenshot:
Ginny Marvin said "this is part of a series of small experiments to help users more easily identify the brand or advertiser associated with the Search ads they may see for a given query."
Just to give you some history here, this is against Google's ad policies - to have emojis in the ads. But I guess Google thinks it is worth testing out. Google ads had emojis in 2020, 2019, 2017 and 2016 but in all those cases, it was not Google adding them - here Google is adding them to the ads.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: This was an emoji used as a favicon, so favicons are technically okay...
Favicon. See the ad below. Google is using the default globe icon that is used when no favicon is set.
— Darcy (@darcyburk) January 26, 2022
