Top 10 New AdWords Features From 2015
Here at ThoughtShift we like to keep on top of trends and make sure we are familiar with what AdWords offers so that we can be ahead of the curve when it comes to delivering paid search campaigns for our clients. Not all updates and new AdWords features are relevant for all clients but these latest features give a good indication of the way paid search is developing and offer some exciting new opportunities: 1. AdWords Report Pivot - http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/view-and-analyze-your-data-instantly.html As a man who loves Excel I have mixed feelings about this update, however, it is a clear time saver. The AdWords reporting section is now a huge pivot table making tool, slicing and dicing your data to get valuable insights even easier than before:
2. Universal App Campaign - http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/new-media-partnerships-and-ad-solutions.html
With AdWords Express being pushed heavily in the last 24 months (essentially a un-optimized Google “managed” version of AdWords for small businesses), it was always only going to be a matter of time before a one-size-fits-all mobile app promotion campaign became available.
The Universal App Campaign offers you an incredibly simple way to promote your app across all of Google networks, you just need to fill out the below:
3. All Google Platforms now in the main interface - http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/trueview-campaigns-now-in-adwords.html
TrueView has long been the forgotten child of AdWords advertising as it has always sat in a separate “videos campaigns” section. Google has now moved this into the main interface to allow for easier access and campaign creation.
4. ...Resulting in Clicks becoming Interactions in AdWords interface - http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/new-reporting-columns-for-multi-channel.html
Following Google’s above move they have changed the well-loved “click” column to “interaction” to accommodate TrueView being measured by views not clicks.
5. Customer Match - http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/Google-brings-you-closer-to-your-customers.html
This new feature allows you to upload your own email database into AdWords and target (or exclude) this data as an audience. It’s possibly the most exciting new feature as it is Google’s first foray into allowing advertisers to upload their own data to use in AdWords and may spark off further ad innovations.
6. Google Shopping Ads Enhancement - http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/winning-shopping-micro-moments.html
Google Shopping has been a great way of providing cheap traffic at a great ROI in recent times so it should come as no surprise that this also means this platform is making Google lots of money. When this happens Google inevitably makes the ads bigger to get more money, and so here is the latest round of Google Shopping ad enhancements. This will of course make Google Shopping an even more important platform for advertisers, however, I suspect this will impact the investment on Search Ads in the coming years.
7. AdWords Audience Insights - http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/Enhancing-the-google-display-network.html
A long overdue enhancement from the Google Display Network, where your audience is key to it working. You can now easily see campaign data split by a variety of Google Display Network Targeting criteria:
8. Gmail Ads go 100% native - http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/native-gmail-ads-arrive-in-adwords.html
It took Google quite a while to come up with the Gmail Sponsored Promotion platform that allows native ads to be displayed in Gmail inboxes, and it's no surprise to hear that it is now the only advertising available in Gmail - the good old text ads have now gone.
This update is particularly interesting when you combine it with the customer match targeting, and it now allows you to show Gmail's ads exclusively to users who do not get emails from you already, which increases the likelihood of this platform working for you.
9. Structured Snippets - http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/highlight-specific-aspect-of-your.html
Ever since AdWords announced that ad extensions are part of the Ad Rank calculation they have continued to roll out ad extensions which allows Google to automatically make the ad more relevant to the user. This year the officially release the structure snippets, a way of highlighting specific parts of the products you sell:
10. Advertise with 360 degree videos - http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/see-future-of-video-by-looking-behind.html
Lastly and probably most innovatively, you can now use 360 degree ads in TrueView, this can only be shown by watching a video (you can scroll in the video) watch an example of this technology here.