Adwords – Enhanced Campaigns

Google released Enhanced campaigns way back in February (by the way, February is way back in internet years) as a way to: simplify AdWords, improve usability and add a few new features. Most importantly however, this introduction was primarily due to the quadrupling of mobile web traffic over the last couple of years in addition to the “blurring of lines” between: tablets, desktops and mobile devices.

Why the change?

Many of the new “additions” to enhanced campaigns were actually already available, so why did Google really feel the need to introduce this new system? Both reasons below answer this question, however I feel that answer a) is the major influence in Google’s decision to implement the change:

a)      Google has realised that mobile Ad spend is going to be a major driver for company revenue over the next few years as the smartphone/tablet market matures. Currently, AdWords users have the option to turn off targeting for both tablet and mobile devices – not ideal for Google if they want to increase revenue at maximum capacity. Solution? Remove the option from the user, forcing them to “opt-in” to targeting these devices.

Yes, you could argue that you can reduce mobile bid multiplier by 100%, but many smaller companies won’t. You could also argue that bidding on mobile terms is beneficial –  I would actually agree with you on this one. My point is simple, beneficial to the user or not, Google has introduced enhanced campaigns mainly due to the affect it will have on its bottom line.

b)      With tablets and smartphones came a plethora of duplicated campaigns. In a simple account this was not a big deal, anyone can manage 2 campaign variations duplicated across 3 devices (6 campaigns by the way). But for companies that need many more campaigns this can start to become a major issue. In my experience, I find it is not the building of campaigns that is the major issue, but rather the ongoing optimisation and reporting that becomes challenging. This is where enhanced campaigns can help. It provides the opportunity for the user to manage multiple: devises, locations, and day parting options within the one location. This can make it easier for everyday optimisation and affords the ability for the less experienced to the advance users to get more out of AdWords in a shorter amount of time.

What are the key features?

As stated earlier, many of the options in enhanced campaigns are not new to AdWords, they have merely been moved about. How these options are visually displayed has also changed. Below are the main two features I can see myself using the most:

Bid multiplier:

The bid multiplier option gives users the ability to increase bids by 300% or reduce by 100%. This options is available for: locations, time of day and device. This whitepaper explains this in detail

Enhanced Sitelinks:

From memory, enhanced sitelinks came out in beta before enhanced campaigns, however I never got to try them. These sitelinks are now fully available to enhanced campaign users, giving you the ability to choose if the sitelink is mobile specific and add an additional couple of lines below each link. You can read more about these here.

You can find more resources here to help get you started in enhanced campaigns and fully explain all the new features and benefits.

Is there any real benefit?

Yes and no, but mainly yes.

The ability to separate by device type being taken away is a bit of a pain. However, myself, like most others are most likely more resistant to the idea of change rather than the change in idea. I think over the coming months most users will forget that legacy campaigns ever existed and will find ways to make this new system even more profitable than its predecessor – or so I hope… What are your thoughts?