Google AdWords Latest Updates – Say Hello to Google Ads (and more) – Info Advertisement

When Google AdWords rolls out updates, you want to know about them.

Utilizing the latest feature can save you time and help you profit the most from your advertising efforts.

This year, Google has already unleashed some helpful updates. But nothing compares to what happened on June 27, when Google announced a complete rebrand of its advertising products.

It’s official: starting July 24 Google AdWords is becoming Google Ads, DoubleClick and Google Analytics 360 will be merged into the brand-new Google Marketing Platform and the Google Ad Manager will be launched.

If you want to learn more about these changes, you’ve come to the right place.

Let’s discover what’s new on Google AdWords.

Here’s a quick list of the latest AdWords updates we’re going to cover:

And now let’s dive in!

OVERHAUL: Google AdWords to Become “Google Ads”

If you’ve been logging into your Google AdWords account recently, you might have noticed this message:

Google AdWords will soon be Google Ads. The Help Center and new AdWords experience will reflect our new brand starting July 24, 2018.”

So, what the heck does that mean? Why are they doing this, and what’s changing?

What we know is: on July 24th, Google AdWords will no longer be Google AdWords. Instead, Google AdWords is shifting into a new branded platform called Google Ads.

Google Ads will still pack the same features and network of Google AdWords:

• Search network
• Display network
• Video

So, what is changing?

According to Google, on July 24, Google Ads users will start seeing the new brand name and logo reflected on the platform, website, billing and help center.

Instead of logging into AdWords from adwords.google.com, you will log into Google Ads from ads.google.com.

Thankfully, Google made one big thing clear with the release of the new update:

Changes to the Google Ads branding will not impact your campaign performance, navigation, or reporting.”

The new Google Ads experience is going to be heavily focused on the ease of multi-channel advertising, connecting everything from search to display to video for a more seamless experience.

These new brands will help advertisers and publishers of all sizes choose the right solutions for their businesses, making it even easier for them to deliver valuable, trustworthy ads and the right experiences for consumers across devices and channels.”

So, basically, Google Ads is a platform where businesses will find all they loved about AdWords and even more tools to make the process of reaching customers easier.

According to Google, the new Google Ads interface also packs some serious promises for small business advertisers:

New campaign types that “make it easier than ever to get started with online advertising.”

In addition to that, Google is bringing in more machine learning than ever before:

To provide more help to small businesses and generate better results “without any heavy lifting.”

Just recently, AdWords added new and improved ad suggestions as an automated way to save time and create ads that drive results.

From this announcement, it’s clear that Google is putting more time, money and effort into improving the ease with which advertisers can successfully reach their audiences.

Let’s dig deeper.

Smart Ads: The new default experience for Google Ads

It’s no secret to anyone that searchers are everywhere.
Whether it’s the search network looking for products and services or a Google partner site or Google Maps, people search on dozens of different sites, networks and platforms.

And Google is trying to help make this experience seamless. A fully-integrated, multi-channel experience where each network works together.

Say hello to Smart Ads — the new default experience for Google Ads.

Smart Ads and Smart Campaigns can be “created in minutes” on the new platform, driving anything from website visits to phone calls and brick-and-mortar store visits.

According to Google, 90% of small business owners state that their online advertising goals are to get phone calls, store visits, or purchases online.

When creating a new campaign with Smart Ads, you begin by selecting the goals that are most appropriate for your business.

You can select multiple, allowing Google to craft a plan for you to reach users on multiple platforms that aid your goals and KPIs.

With the new Smart Ads platform that’s in beta testing, one advertiser was able to double their sales in the first 60 days alone.

With new ad types, you can quickly add images to your ads that will show up on partner websites:

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This new “Image Picker” feature allows you to A/B test images automatically. Google will select the best performers to keep running.

New features like this are going to be game changers for small businesses with less time to manage their accounts.

Google wants Google Ads to do the work rather than making AdWords feel like a chore. Which (let’s be honest) it does.

Google will slowly roll out the new smart campaigns to all advertisers over the course of the next few weeks and months.

Three new “brands” to work with

With this new update, we can expect Google to release three different “brands.”

• Google Ads: Formerly known as Google AdWords, it will now be called Google Ads.
  This platform will contain everything that AdWords had and more. That means that the search network, display network and video ads. In addition to the existing setup, new features like automation and machine learning will be bigger functions.
• Google Ad Manager: The Google Ad Manager is the new platform that combines two tools that are commonly used: DoubleClick Ad Exchange and DoubleClick for Publishers.
  In the coming months, existing DoubleClick interfaces will reflect the Ad Manager. This platform will help advertisers reach people on platforms like TVs, Apple News, live streams, AMP, gaming, apps and more.
• Google Marketing Platform: Google Marketing Platform will now absorb both the DoubleClick advertiser network and Google Analytics 360 to become one entity.
  This move is geared towards enterprise marketing teams who enjoy using both analytics and ads together for better reporting, understanding, and results. On the platform, you can “plan, buy, measure and optimize digital media and customer experiences in one place.”
  The Google Marketing Platform now contains new features like Display and Video 360.

In the new Integration Center, you can connect all of the Google products that you know and love:

On top of just Google products, you will also be able to use hundreds of third-party services for better marketing and reporting.

More updates will follow on the new Google Ads experience after the July 10 Google Keynote and the official release on July 24th.

Stay tuned!

Google Sheets Integration: How to Create Detailed Reports with This New Add-On Feature

Creating and analyzing reports in AdWords is the name of the game. It’s critical to produce reports that focus on your top metrics like ROI, conversions and lifetime value.

But using the AdWords reporting interface can get tedious, time-consuming and dull. And it’s no different when it comes to integrating Google Analytics. Reporting is still too complex for most users.

Thankfully, you don’t have to rely on it anymore.

With new integrations to Google Docs and Google Sheets, you can create custom reports in just a few minutes.

In this section, we’ll cover all of the new updates and integrations that you can use to build great reports with less hassle.

How To Use The Google Sheets plugin

If you aren’t currently using Google Chrome as your browser, you will need it to run the Google Sheets plugin. Though this mode is currently still in Beta, anyone can download it and use it today!

To find it, follow this link: Google Sheets Beta AdWords Integration. Simply install this free plugin to your Google Sheets account, and you can fire up reports in no time.

With the integration, you can:

• Create custom reports that pull information directly from your AdWords account(s).
• Custom create columns based on the metrics you care about most.
• Use the same filters you find on AdWords to get specific data.
• Generate a report overview.
• Refresh your custom reports to import the latest data. Meaning you don’t have to create new reports every time. You simply refresh them to update the data.
• Allow others to edit and collaborate on your reports.

Once you install the Sheets plugin, you should see it located in the “Add-ons” section of your toolbar.

From here, select “Google AdWords,” and you have the option to create new reports.

When you create a new report, you can select the report type, columns, and filters that you want to apply:

Each time you log back into your reporting dashboard on Google Sheets using the plugin, you will see key data like:

• When your report was last refreshed
• What accounts this report is pulling data from
• All of your custom report data that you generated last time
  

So, why use this overgeneralized reporting within AdWords itself?

Two major reasons:

1. You don’t have to recreate the reports every time.
   You don’t have to continually apply filters each time. For example, do you create reports to show how mobile is doing? How about custom filters to see how conversions change by device type and location? You can now create all of these reports in Google Sheets once, keeping them forever. You can then label each report so you know exactly what they show. When you want new data, simply refresh the report, and it populates with your latest data! That saves tons of time!
2. You can collaborate.
   Collaboration is a wonderful feature with Google Docs in general, so why not mesh that with Google AdWords? Allow employees to help you and pull data whenever without giving them direct access to sensitive account information.

Try out the new plugin to start creating better reporting measures for your business today. Don’t waste time every week adding filters and custom reporting measures over and over. Do it once and refresh it with the click of a button.

AdWords Notes: How to Add Notes to Key Account Changes

Just recently, Adwords announced the introduction of “Notes” in Google AdWords.

Notes allow you to add written text to give context to changes in your account performance.

For example, did traffic spike on Tuesday? You can add a note to that section explaining that you increased bids or your budget. This gives other users (and yourself) context to understand what happened and so you don’t forget what actions you’ve taken.

This is a wonderful tool if you have multiple people or outside parties managing AdWords.

If you manage AdWords accounts for clients, this is a great way to help them understand changes and the meaning behind them.
With Notes, you can edit and add them at the account, campaign and ad group levels.

To get started with them, click any data point on your graphs in the reporting section and click “Add Note.”

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From here, you can customize the date, type your note and determine who can see it:

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Use notes to mark key account changes and give context to data fluctuations on your accounts.

AdWords Editor Version 12.3: Search Terms, Filters, and Extensions.

If you aren’t familiar with the Google AdWords editor, it’s essentially a free application that helps you manage AdWords accounts.

You can download the application right to your computer, allowing you to make account changes without opening a browser.

To get started, download the free tool and import your accounts by logging in on the tool itself.

Once you do that, you open the door for some amazing features:

• Offline editing:
  Making changes offline that will reflect once you connect back to the internet. This means that you can edit campaigns on the go, on an airplane, or wherever you lack internet access!
• Bulk editing tools:
  Do you manage multiple accounts? Maybe even dozens for a client? Make big bulk changes to all accounts and campaigns, like adding specific negative keywords or replacing ad copy.

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• Draft mode:
  Make changes in “draft” mode and allow others to review them before pushing them live. You can then easily import and export files from the editor or AdWords to set them live.

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In Version 12.3, Google packed some amazing new features that you can take advantage of:

1. Search terms reporting:

In the tool, you can now view, download and edit the search terms report.

That means adding new keywords from the report for campaigns or adding them to negative keyword lists.

To take advantage of the new search terms reporting features in the editor update, select which account and campaigns to work with.

Next, click “Keywords and targeting” and then “Keywords.”

From here, select the search terms button:

Next, select which campaigns and ad groups you want to download search terms for:

You can then select the metrics you want to download in the report as well:

Lastly, select the date range for Google to pull search terms from:

Now you should have an entire report generated for search terms!

2. Filters:

With new filter functions, you can filter even more reporting data based on queries and more.

Among these bigger updates to the tool, you can also now manage:

• Account-level extension associations
• In-market audiences for search network campaigns
• Custom intent audiences
• TrueView campaigns
• Google Shopping inventory
• Responsive search ads
  

Pretty cool uh?

And this is it for today! You can’t say it was not enough, can you? Well, there’s an extra tho…

And That’s all folks! What do you think of the big huge Google Ads rebranding? Did you start using AdWords Campaign Creation in AdEspresso yet? What do you think? Leave us a comment and let us know! 

Since the new AdWords UI was launched at the end of 2017, Google has introduced a few improvements to make your advertising more fruitful. That now includes ways to save you time and increase your reach. In fact, two of the latest updates focus on growing your reach with Outstream Video Ads and Affiliate Location Extension for YouTube.

There’s more, though. Let’s discover what’s new on Google AdWords.

Here’s a quick list of the AdWords updates we’re going to cover:

1. Google AdWords Ad Suggestions: how to use the new feature to write fewer ads
2. What new GDPR regulations mean for AdWords Advertisers (and how to comply)
3. Google AdWords’ new Outstream Video Ads: all you need to know to get started
   
4. New message reporting features for Click-To-Message Ads
5. Affiliate Location Extensions For YouTube to sell more products 

And now let’s dive in!

AdWords Ad Suggestions: How To Use The New Feature To Write Fewer Ads

Writing ads on AdWords is one of the most time-consuming tasks there is. Fitting your entire value proposition, keywords and calls to action into an 80 character limit takes skill.

And if writing more than a few don’t drive you crazy, I don’t know what will.

But writing high-quality ads is the backbone of AdWords. Of actually getting people to click on your site over your competitor.

Writing better ads should be a top priority in any given campaign. After all, if you can’t drive the clicks, you can’t compel them to sign up.

Thankfully, AdWords has now added a feature to the new AdWords experience: ad suggestions:

So, what exactly are they and why did AdWords add them?

Essentially, ad suggestions are automated ads written by AdWords for your ad groups. AdWords does this to help advertisers find better success on their platform, keeping them around for longer.

According to Google,

Research has shown that ad groups with 3 or more high-quality ads can get up to 5% to 15% more clicks or conversions than ad groups with only 1 ad, provided ad rotation has been optimized. The more ads you provide, the more options you’ll have to show the ideal message for each user search.”

Ad suggestions are meant to help users save time with excellent automated ads. When you don’t have multiple ads in each ad group, AdWords will automatically generate more for you!

And writing more ads leads to big increases in CTR and conversions.

Simply view and accept recommendations and AdWords will add them directly to the given ad group.

Latest data shows that automated ad suggestions actually are producing 10% higher click-through rates than manually written ads.

Take advantage of ad suggestions today to save time and increase your campaign performance.

What New GDPR Regulations Mean For AdWords Advertisers (And How To Comply)

In April 2016, the European Parliament adopted the new GDPR regulations, requiring the protection of private personal data on citizens during transactions.

 GDPR, otherwise known as General Data Protection Regulation, basically requires businesses that engage with data on European citizens to comply with stricter rules and privacy measures. Meaning if you are targeting any segment of potential customers in Europe, new, stricter regulations could have big impacts on the way you use and collect data.

One report found that 66% of companies in the United States will be impacted by it. Anyway, if you only target users in the United States or Canada, you don’t have to worry.

So, what data are we talking about here?

Customer data on everything from name, identity, health data, race, politics, sexual orientation, geolocation, IPs and even cookies.

Taking full effect on May 25, 2018, marketers targeting the EU are spinning into a frenzy. Especially when it comes to advertising and data usage for audiences.

If you currently (or want to) target this segment, here are a few key things to keep in mind to ensure that you comply with GDPR:

According to AdWords, you must always get consent to use data. Here’s what they ask you to do:

Maintain an updated privacy policy on your website that is clearly accessible in the footer.

According to eConsultancy, your policy should address the following questions:

• What information are you collecting? Who is collecting it, why and how?
• How will data be used and shared?
• Can the user opt-out and revoke consent easily?

At the moment, as a general rule, there are three more key factors that you have to check to make sure to comply with the new rules:

• On your website, users should always have the ability to withdraw consent to use data.
• Ask users if they want to opt-out of cookie tracking.
• Link back to GDPR and state a clear commitment to GDPR practices

Google is currently working on updates that will be pushed out directly in AdWords to help advertisers comply with ease. Stay tuned for more news and, in the meantime, start updating your privacy policy.

Outstream Video Ads: All You Need To Know To Get Started

Just recently AdWords announced the addition of Google TrueView. But they didn’t stop there:

On April 17th of 2018, they announced a new feature for video advertising: Outstream Video Ads.

This new format allows advertisers to extend the reach of their video ads beyond just YouTube.

Outstream is built exclusively for mobile targeting, allowing advertisers to reach users anywhere that video can be displayed. For instance, on mobile applications.

Google said:

Outstream ads drive incremental, cost-efficient and viewable reach beyond YouTube.”

Ads will be displayed on Google partner sites or applications.

And these ads work uniquely in comparison to TrueView ads on YouTube:

When ads first come live on a users screen, they begin with no sound. A user can tap the video screen to enable sound and listen to the ad or even start from the beginning.

Thankfully, you only pay for viewable CPM, meaning your video has to be on screen and directly viewable in the window to be charged.

The Hong Kong Tourism Board has already used Outstream video ads to generate a 30% incremental reach with an 85% lower CPM than traditional video ad options.

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To get started with an Outstream campaign, head to your AdWords dashboard and create a new campaign with “Video” as the campaign type:

From here, select the “Brand awareness and reach” goal from the list:

Lastly, choose “Outstream” as your campaign subtype:

And the rest is up to you!

Now you can create and optimize your video, bidding, and audience targeting to start reaching users in different mediums than just YouTube.

New Message Reporting Features for Click-To-Message Ads

In 2016, Google introduced a new format of ads: click-to-message.

 These ads allowed businesses to engage directly with users via text messaging instead of online forms:

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For example, to schedule an appointment, a searcher could simply text the given business number.

And according to Google, they work: 

65% of consumers say they’d consider using messaging to connect with a business to complete tasks like getting information about a product or service or scheduling an in-person appointment.”

With click-to-message ads being around for a few years now, Google has finally updated their reporting to give advertisers better metrics on this somewhat complicated ad format.

In your dashboard, you will now see the following three metrics added:

1. Chat rate: essentially a soft-conversion rate/click-through rate. How often a searcher starts a chat after seeing a message ad.
2. Chat start time: timestamps for when a user starts the conversation. This could be helpful in specific industries to find popular engagement times as well as internal audits of how well sales staff are responding.
3. Messages: the total amount of messages sent in any given chat.

With more metrics to begin analyzing, click-to-message ads are becoming more popular.

Affiliate Location Extensions For YouTube

Affiliate location extensions have been around for a while now.

If you’ve ever searched on Google for a product that can be purchased in a local area, for example, a television, you have no doubt come across these extensions:

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As of March 21st, 2018, advertisers on YouTube now have direct access to these affiliate location extensions, making it easier than ever before to drive tangible sales on YouTube.

These extensions can now be enabled for video advertisers on YouTube for your campaigns by clicking on the extensions tab and selecting “Affiliate location extension:”

You can select retail locations in a given location radius to pinpoint exact stores where your merchandise is sold:

Google recently found that 30% of mobile searches are location based.

(Image Source)

Their study also found that 76% of users who engage with searches or local products on their phones will visit that store within a single business day and 28% of them will make a purchase.

Now is the time to take advantage of affiliate location extensions in your video ads.

But that’s not all that AdWords has done in 2018.

In the next two sections, we’ll detail more critical updates to the AdWords experience as well as three key tips for finding better results on AdWords in 2018. 

Keep on reading then, and don’t forget that now AdEspresso supports AdWords too! To discover the details just click here!

What do you think? Are there any new AdWords features we did not mention? Is there something you want us to cover in next issue? Just let us know in the comments! 

Two of the biggest AdWords updates in 2018 focus on the expansion of Landing Pages Report and the increased accuracy of Customer Match Options. And there’s more. Let’s discover what’s new on Google AdWords.

Here’s a quick list of the AdWords updates we are going to cover:

1.  Google introduces more specific custom columns
2. AdWords has expanded Landing Pages Report
3. Make sales easy with Promotion Extension
4. A/B Test Faster with Ad Variations
5. Customer Match Options gets more accurate
6. Maximize your results with custom Intent Audiences

Ready to dive in?

Custom Columns For Ads and Keywords

Since 2014, advertisers on Google AdWords have been able to develop and measure custom metrics at the campaign and ad group level.

But just recently in 2018, Google announced an update allowing users to do this at the keyword and ad level for better specificity.

To get started with custom columns, head to your ads or keyword section and click on the column modification button:

From here, click on the “Custom columns” tab:

This will bring up the new-and-improved custom column creator right inside your keywords and ads tabs:

You can customize metrics based on any type of performance or conversion elements:

This new addition will prove very useful to further analyze how specific keywords are doing and select ads, rather than overall ad group or campaign level performance.

For example, you can directly analyze how ads perform with mobile users by adding a mobile CTR metric to your columns or gauge keyword success based on mobile conversions.

The options are now virtually limitless and almost infinitely customizable to your goals as deep as the keyword and ad levels.

Expanded Landing Pages Report

On top of new customization options and custom columns, the landing pages report got a fresh overhaul.

Originally released in early 2017, the page has been updated and modified to reflect new diverse metrics such as clicks, cost, conversion rates and any metric labeled under conversions, performance, and viewability.

With the new report, all landing pages that you use for ads will show up, giving you actionable data like mobile-friendly clicks, AMP clicks, conversions and more:

Gauging the performance of your landing page is critical to better quality scores. And now, it’s never been easier.

You can easily access this report from the sidebar on your dashboard:

Customize your metrics and columns based on your KPIs, and you can start to analyze what landing pages are performing best (or worst).

Promotion Extensions For Easy Sales

Writing new ads on AdWords sucks.

You have tons of information that you need to communicate to potential buyers, yet Google only gives you 30 characters for the headline and 80 for the description.

Meaning you can’t share everything you need to share to convince cold traffic to buy from you.

And more often than not, it leaves you with boring, promotional headlines that people ignore.

Headlines that focus too much on their discounts and not a compelling value proposition.

Thankfully, in the latest updates, AdWords has added promotion extensions:

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Promotion extensions allow you to add another tab of information to your ads, showcasing specific products (or product groups) on sale.

These are meant to take advantage of holiday seasons like Black Friday or Christmas.

As with all extensions, you can control when they are shown and on what devices, meaning you can customize offers based on device, too.

For instance, want to run a mobile holiday sale? Set the extensions to mobile only.

According to Google, companies using them are seeing 20-30% conversion rate lifts.

With these new extensions, you don’t have to worry about wasting copy in your headlines or descriptions. You can keep existing value propositions and CTAs but add promotions on products for any time of the year.

A/B Test Faster with Ad Variations

A/B testing ads, copy and creative are key to success on AdWords.

But before the recent updates in 2017 and 2018, A/B testing wasn’t that easy.

It usually involved creating multiple campaigns or ad groups and launching new tests.

But with the new AdWords experience and Ad Variations, you can quickly AZ/B test search network ads at scale.

For instance, if you want to test specific copy, you can apply it to thousands of ads with the click of a button, scaling your test faster than any method available prior to the update.

And the best part?

AdWords only shows you results if they are statistically significant. That’s a huge plus considering the fact that most aren’t.

From here, create a new ad variation. You can begin to quickly adjust ad text at scale using AdWords’ new find and replace tool:

Doing so will create secondary variations of any ads you select to modify, keeping your existing ones untouched.

No more creating new campaigns, ad groups and ads over and over and over to test.

Thanks, Google!

Expanded Customer Match Options

Google released customer matching options to the public in March of 2015.

Customer matching allowed AdWords advertisers to upload files of customer data to match their existing customers to a targeted audience, making remarketing easier than ever before.

And it’s safe to say that they exploded. People absolutely loved them, and for a good reason:

They convert well.

So, what’s new?

As of late 2017, you can now upload files on existing customers with phone numbers and mailing addresses to better match to real users.

According to WordStream, Google’s customer matching process is already outperforming the likes of Facebook and Twitter:

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In the audience manager, you can now create new custom audiences for existing customers based on these two new parameters for more accurate matching.

Ready to run some remarketing campaigns? Now is the time.

Custom Intent Audiences For Better Sales and Higher Conversion Rates

When AdWords made the UX and UI overhaul, they brought brand new features like better audience management and demographic targeting.

But with the latest updates, they’ve beefed up targeting options specifically for display network ads.

And these new features are game-changing.

Just recently, AdWords announced the addition of Custom Intent audiences, designed to help you create better custom audiences beyond affinity and demographic targeting.

While these features are currently only for the Display Network, I wouldn’t rule out the potential of a Search Network carryover in the future.

So, how exactly do they work?

You can either (1) input data like keywords, topics and URLs to tell Google what intent related searches or pages showcase buying behavior or (2) let AdWords auto-create an intent audience for you based on machine learning.

Custom intent audiences can help you break through the vague groupings you find on platforms like AdWords and Facebook and focus on specific information pertaining to customers who are actually showing intent to buy similar products.

You can find these customization options under the Audiences section when editing a Display Network campaign:

Editing your audiences for a selected display campaign will pull up intent options, helping you to create custom or auto-created audiences:

If you are struggling to find great results even with deep and diverse interest and affinity targeting, these audience factors won’t disappoint.

And that’s all for now!

But if you want to make sure you’re really using AdWords Experience at its full potential, just keep on reading.

In our previous post, that you’ll find

While the new Google AdWords Experience may sound great, it also presents a major problem: the platform is going to take some getting used to.

Finding the standard elements that you used to use isn’t as easy. Features aren’t in the same location. And even some of the metrics are different, and you can quickly get lost in the shuffle trying to keep up with this new update.

But there’s also an upside.

Actually, there are multiple, major upsides with newly-added features. These features are game-changing for delivering your ads to the right audience.

Just keep on reading and you’ll see!

How To Navigate Google AdWords Latest Update (Or Change It Back)

The new Google AdWords Experience is here, and it’s available for anyone using the platform. Here’s how Experience currently looks like when you navigate to your account dashboard:

Source Google Partners

Pretty snazzy, huh? (Do people still say that?)

Compared to the old account dashboard, this is a big functionality and usability change.

Source Google Partners

Updates like this are often a mixed bag when it comes to reception from the public.

Some love it and have been dying for a refresh. But that also means many die-hard users are going to have to spend extra time getting used to it. Uncovering the same features will take some getting used to.

If you don’t want a change, you can always revert back to the old AdWords for now.

To do so, click the three-dot drop-down menu in the top right corner of your AdWords dashboard and then select “Return to previous AdWords”:

Source Google Partners

This will instantly take you back to the old platform, allowing you to reminisce about the glory days.

But if you want to get accustomed to the new platform, which is probably a good idea, I’ll walk you through the basics and show you how to find the most important sections that you use daily.

To get started, if you run multiple accounts, you can see them all on the left-hand side of your dashboard:

This is now called the manager account dashboard:

Source Google

Meaning you can see all of the data for all of the accounts that you manage. You can even get a detailed analysis of performance right from the dashboard.

To pair with this, Google AdWords instituted the dynamic insights tab into the dashboard section, giving you detailed insights on campaign performance that would normally require a bit of analysis on your own:

Source Google

Now, instead of the annoying notifications that you used to get about “opportunities,” AdWords has an entire, detailed section dedicated to it:

Source Google

These suggestions are much more actionable and give you exact steps for implementing them too.

Once you’ve selected a specific account, things start to look pretty similar. They just have a different structure.

For example, you can navigate to all of your most-clicked buttons on the left-hand sidebar now instead of above your data:

Similarly, you can manage and create all of your ad extensions  in the same space with a consolidated view:

Source Google Partners

Another new addition is the three-button drop-down menu:

You can access all of the most-used tools here, like the keyword planner, negative keyword lists, conversion tracking, and more.

It’s similarly structured to Facebook’s platform now where everything is grouped under specific sections like “Shared Library” and “Bulk Actions.”

Now, your reporting data can be accessed from the top menu bar as well:

From here you can click the blue “+” button to create and generate diverse reports.

You can even create custom dashboards to get access to your most important data, just like you can do in Google Analytics:

Source Google Partners

This will be a big, time-saving feature that allows you to see the data you want to focus on first.

The new platform can seem strange at first, as it’s a pretty large overhaul in design and structure.

Getting used to it will take some time, but in the end, it’s worth it.

Why? For the new features that are going to take AdWords to the next level.

Here they are.

Three New, Game-Changing Features

Google was smart enough to not just give us a new UI experience.

They knew that simply overhauling the system to make it pretty wasn’t going to turn any heads or convert any skeptics.

With the new interface update, we’ve also received some critical updates in the form of game-changing features.

Here are the top new features and how to use them ASAP.

1. The audience management section

Just when you thought that Facebook was the only place to dominate custom audiences, Google stepped in and proved us all wrong.

Now there is an entire section in AdWords dedicated to audience management.

Here you can target different custom audiences and create new bids based on audiences as well.

To navigate to it, click your three-button menu drop-down and click on the audience manager tab:

Source Google

You can manage all of your audiences in this one place, as well as generate audience insights:

When you click the blue “+” button you can choose between a few different custom remarketing options:

Creating audiences on AdWords has never been this easy, and now it’s all located in one dashboard, making it even easier to manage.

2. Promotion ad extensions

AdWords just recently rolled out a new addition in their latest update to the ad extensions list.

Unless you’ve got select beta access to this feature in the old version of Google AdWords, you’ll need to perform the update to use it.

Meaning these features are exclusive.

Promotion extensions are new, ad-based extensions that allow you to show, advertise, and link to specific promotional-based offers in your search network ads.

Image Source

For example, you could use them to highlight a specific sale during the holidays.

Or maybe you’ve got an eBook for sale for a limited time.

The options are limitless.

Now you don’t have to waste all of your tiny ad copy section talking about it. You have another chance to promote more products with a single ad.

You can even use it to do the opposite and double down on the promotion.

Some users are seeing average CTRs near 10% using these new extensions and, in general, they are driving the highest click-through rate out of any extension available.

Getting started with these new promotion extensions is easy, too.

Head to your campaign dashboard, click on the ads and extensions tab, and select the promotion extension:

Next, you can customize everything about your promotion extension, including the occasion, discount type, and date ranges:

For the occasion section, you can choose between tons of different holidays to target. If it’s not for any specific occasion, you can always leave it blank, and it will show up as a non-holiday promotion.

When you select one from the list, you’ll see that in bold on your new ads to help users know exactly what they are getting when they click:

Source Google

Customize your final URL landing page, and you’ll be driving promotional sales traffic in no time.

That’s it!

All you’ve gotta do is add some new extensions to your ads, and you can start to promote tons of new deals for any occasion.

3. Incredible demographic targeting options

Facebook and Twitter were and (somewhat) still are the kings of audience targeting.

Each platform has incredible features that allow you to create super remarketing lists where you can target income, job seniority, and more.

Even LinkedIn jumped aboard. They’re starting to add these in-depth features.

Thankfully, Google has finally added some new, diverse targeting options in the form of demographic data.

The first set of demographics that they’ve added is household income targeting in the search network.

This was a feature on the old interface, but it only applied to highly specific, local-based ads.

But now, it’s for all ads within the search network.

To access the data, simply select the demographics tab and click the household income option:

Source Google Partners

Now, you can get a clear picture of the household income data from your search network ads.

This has big implications for the way that PPC marketers use the search network to advertise.

For example, you can target ads to different audiences with different price points.

Meaning you no longer have to worry about attracting traffic that won’t be able to purchase or downselling to traffic that wants a high-end product.

On top of this addition, now the parental status targeting options are available for the search network rather than just the display network.

To access these, select the new parental status tab on your dashboard:

Source Google Partners

Parental status targeting for the search network is a big deal.

This can have a huge impact on success for brands that sell products catered to parents, like toys and games.

This new search network feature could play an important role in campaigns dedicated to the holidays and major shopping events.

Although we don’t have data on most of them yet, these new search network features are going to be a big hit with advertisers looking for more customization.

Google AdWords Has More Updates On The Way

Those are three of the most game-changing features that AdWords has installed on the new platform.

They have vastly improved the search network with new targeting options, extensions, and audience management.

But that’s not all. Google still has a few critical updates in the works according to Search Engine Land.

We can expect the following features soon:

• Landing page performance grading: This new feature will give advertisers insight into how their landing page performs in relation to their ad.
  Instead of just the quality score to go off of, advertisers will be able to get insight on optimization and improvements to lower costs and drive more conversions.
• Customizable in-market audiences: These new audiences are coming to the search network soon. They will allow a given advertiser to tailor audiences based on performance, website, and business goals.
• Attribution: Google’s new attribution will no longer just be for search funnels. This attribution tool will help PPC advertisers see upper and mid-funnel conversion credit rather than just last-touch.
  On top of that, it’s designed to give informed decisions for bidding optimization.
• Store sales management: Lastly, this new stores measurement and management feature will allow retailers to import important store transactions into AdWords via third-party services.

AdWords is already making some big changes in the coming months.

Conclusion

The new AdWords experience is vastly superior.

The UI experience and features have both received massive upgrades.

We can now target users with the same specificity and detail that we can on Facebook.

Custom audiences aren’t the only form of detailed targeting that works anymore.

The new experience is open and ready for any advertiser to take advantage of on Google.

If you don’t like it, or if you’re a scrooge and love the ‘good old days,’ you can always switch back.

The new experience might take some time to get used to, but the new features are here to stay and will only increase and improve with time.

Try taking advantage of these demographics and extensions to start bringing in new visitors and closing more sales.

These features are currently exclusive to the new experience, so if you want to get started with them, you need to update.

Thankfully, it’s free and easy to do for anyone using the platform today.

What do you think? Are there any new AdWords features we did not mention? Is there something you want us to cover in next issue? Just let us know in the comments!