The switch is on: Google AdWords moves to Enhanced Campaigns

Today mar­keters will see one of the most fun­da­men­tal changes to paid search adver­tis­ing since the intro­duc­tion of AdSense. Google AdWords moves over to the Enhanced Cam­paigns for­mat, com­plete­ly over­haul­ing how adver­tis­ers tar­get searchers based on their device, loca­tion and time.

Before, you could have sep­a­rate cam­paigns to tar­get searchers on mobile, tablet or desk­top devices, with dif­fer­ent bids, ad copy and land­ing pages.

How­ev­er, the new for­mat means one cam­paign tar­gets all device types by default. Traf­fic from desk­tops and tablets are now treat­ed the same: bids, ad copy and land­ing pages. Adobe’s Dig­i­tal Index has con­sis­tent­ly seen tablets surge as a pro­por­tion of traf­fic and book­ings to ecom­merce sites, but there are still chal­lenges find­ing the same val­ue of trans­ac­tions from non-desk­top devices.

Mar­keters still have some con­trol over mobile traf­fic though. Mobile bid mod­i­fiers allow you to alter your mobile bids to a mul­ti­ple of your desk­top bid: between ‑100% (i.e. set mobile bids to zero) and +300%. Bid mod­i­fiers can be set at cam­paign and ad group lev­el. Although Google makes rec­om­men­da­tions for these mod­i­fiers based on sim­i­lar adver­tis­ers, you’ll want to care­ful­ly eval­u­ate them based on your own con­ver­sion lev­els on mobile.

You can also set pre­ferred alter­na­tives for mobile opti­mised ad copy and sitelink exten­sions, though Google doesn’t guar­an­tee they will always be used.

Bid mod­i­fiers are also used for loca­tions and time. Per­haps you’ll want to increase your bids if a searcher is in a part of the coun­try where your brand is stronger. Or reduce your bids after a cut off time for next day delivery.

Enhanced Cam­paigns are yet anoth­er sign that we’re liv­ing in a mul­ti-screen world. Cam­paigns now need to work across mul­ti­ple plat­forms and these changes will help mar­keters get the most out of their ad bud­gets. A user look­ing for shoes on a tablet while at home like­ly wants to order online, not find a store near­by. Users on the go want to find local and rel­e­vant busi­ness­es for their needs and are like­ly not look­ing for online shops.

Adobe Media Opti­miz­er was first to mar­ket with Enhanced Cam­paigns so mar­keters don’t have to wor­ry about wait­ing to use the lat­est features.

We’ve got a free guide to the migra­tion process and opti­mi­sa­tion best prac­tice for Google Enhanced Cam­paigns; you can get it here: Adobe Migra­tion Guide for Google Enhanced Cam­paigns.

For more on the changes, check out this video from Google explain­ing the ben­e­fits of the new Enhanced Campaigns: