Continuous ad testing is fundamental to improving PPC performance over time. Without a structured approach to testing — comparing different ad copy, landing pages, and bidding strategies — you’re optimising based on instinct rather than evidence. For travel PPC campaigns where ad copy quality directly affects Quality Score and conversion rate, the right testing tools make a real difference. Here are five we use and recommend.
Google Ads Draft and Experiments
Google Ads Drafts and Experiments is the native split testing tool within Google Ads, allowing you to test changes to your Search and Display campaigns against your existing setup. You create a draft of your campaign with the proposed changes, then run it as an experiment with a defined traffic split. For travel campaigns, this is useful for testing bid strategy changes (manual vs. Smart Bidding), landing page variants, and structural changes like ad group reorganisation — all with statistically valid results based on real auction data. In our experience, experiments are particularly valuable for testing bidding strategy changes in travel accounts where seasonal performance patterns make it hard to compare performance across different time periods.
Bing Experiments
Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) has its own experiments functionality, similar to Google’s. For travel brands running campaigns on Microsoft’s search network — which reaches a distinct audience demographic that can be valuable for certain tour types — Bing Experiments allows the same structured A/B testing approach. If you’re managing Microsoft campaigns, running parallel experiments to your Google tests helps you understand whether learnings are consistent across platforms or specific to Google’s auction dynamics.
Ad Variations
Google Ads’ Ad Variations tool lets you make and test specific changes to your ad text across multiple campaigns simultaneously — swapping out a headline, changing a description line, or testing a different CTA across your entire account or a defined subset of campaigns. For tour operators with large campaign structures covering multiple destinations, Ad Variations is much more efficient than manually editing individual ads. What we’ve found is that systematic ad copy testing using Ad Variations, with clear hypotheses about what each variant is testing, accelerates CTR and Quality Score improvement significantly compared to ad hoc copy changes.
Perry Marshall: Ad Split Tester
Perry Marshall’s Ad Split Tester is a free tool that helps you assess statistical significance in your ad tests — telling you whether the performance difference between two ads is meaningful or within the margin of random variation. In travel PPC, where seasonal fluctuations can make it difficult to interpret test results, having a statistical significance framework prevents you from drawing conclusions from insufficient data. We use it as a quick sanity check before declaring a test winner in lower-traffic ad groups where Google Ads’ own significance indicators may not have enough data to be reliable.
CoSchedule: Headline Analyser
CoSchedule’s Headline Analyser scores headlines for emotional impact, word balance, and clarity — qualities that directly affect CTR in both PPC ad copy and organic content. For travel advertisers writing RSA headlines, running candidates through the Headline Analyser provides a quick quality check that complements Google’s own Ad Strength indicator. What we’ve found is that the emotional resonance scores the tool provides are particularly useful for travel copy, where aspiration and specificity are the two variables that most reliably improve headline performance.
Get in touch
If you’d like to discuss ad testing strategy for your travel PPC campaigns, get in touch with the Summon team. We work exclusively with tour operators, ferry companies, airlines and activity providers.