Adwords – Enhanced Campaigns

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?

 

Dan Petrovic, the managing director of DEJAN, is Australia’s best-known name in the field of search engine optimisation. Dan is a web author, innovator and a highly regarded search industry event speaker.
ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6886-3211

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8 thoughts on “Adwords – Enhanced Campaigns”

  1. Thanks for the info, Aaron!

  2. Davorin Černoga says:

    You can increase bids up to 900%
    In case of mobile – only to 300%
    Also, there is option to bid on targeting methods in Display campaigns…

  3. Thanks for this tidbit :). One disadvantage possible for a client of mine is that most of her site visitors are older and make their purchases from a PC, not a mobile device. So we’d like to target that group mainly. Also her current site is on LemonStand (a true lemon) and until we finish building her new site on a responsive WP theme, she does NOT have a properly functioning mobile site! So we want to stay away from mobile, ironically, for now. Or at least have the ability to reduce the percentage of mobile ads. Good to know you can “reduce” the bids on mobile by 100%.

  4. netikseo says:

    The ability to separate by device type being taken away is a BIG pain! Especially when I can’t reduce the bid on tablets. For example, traffic on tablets from some sites doesn’t convert for me. With legacy campaign I can target the same sites with much lower CPC and everyone is happy – I get my conversions from computers and some from tablets, and google gets its share of profit. With enhanced campaigns I will be forced to stop advertising on the sites that have bad conversion with tablets, because I can’t adjust the bids. I don’t get conversions, google doesn’t get revenue…
    I’m calling all PPC managers to stop not converting campaigns after July 22 and reduce spending accordingly, maybe it will force google to add bid adjustment option to tablets as well…

  5. Aaron Whitlock says:

    No problem Matthew.

  6. Aaron Whitlock says:

    An option to change bid adjustments on tablets would be a very good idea. I wonder if its been implemented – or not implemented should I say – that way due to technical issues or a way to force advertiser to spend more money?

  7. Aaron Whitlock says:

    Thanks for the info Daworin. I was not aware of this option as yet as I actually haven’t played around with bid adjustments too much. This is mainly because I make my campaigns very granular (1 keyword per ad group or campaign) and adjust at the keyword or ad group level. And, even when I do use bid adjustments I rarely go over +50% .

  8. netikseo says:

    I reckon the second option. If you can add an option for mobile you should easily add the option to adjust bids for tablets as well. In my case, I bid around $2 for computers and around $0.20 for tablets – quite a big difference, hey? 🙂