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It’s no secret that AdWords is the greatest revenue generating source for Google thus for businesses and firms involved with PPC advertising have nothing to be worried about as Google will always try to make sure that the AdWords system is efficient, powerful, and constantly improving. Google constantly updates their AdWords system with new updates and features.
Google is the market leader in the ads business and it makes sure they constantly update its systems so that its most revenue generating system works great for its customers. To keep you up to date, we’ve compiled the top AdWords updates and features added by Google in 2012.
A number of modifications have been made to AdWords in recent times. These new AdWords features (announced from time-to-time) are primarily designed to help search engine marketers create successful advertising campaigns. The focus of the feature enhancements are generally on improving ease of campaign management, better ad targeting, creating more advertising options and improving trackability and measurement of SEM campaigns.
Let’s have a look at the most exciting features which AdWords received from Google:
Flexible Targeting Tab
A new interface has been added in AdWords to facilitate display buying. The Display Network latest feature makes display buying easier and efficient by combining marketers’ targeting, bidding, and optimizing at one place. In short, a campaign manager gets greater control over the display ads with this feature.
The new AdWords Editor 9.8.1
Google launched the AdWords Editor version 9.8.1. It lets marketers manage local targeting more conveniently.
Two new ad tabs have been added; dynamic search ads and product listing ads. It lets marketers view their ads and make alterations or additions easily. These two new targeting tabs also lets you manage product targets and dynamic ad targets.
Ad Rotation Changes
The “rotate evenly” ad rotation setting will now function differently than how it had been working as Google will now only rotate ads evenly for a period of 30 days instead the earlier method of rotating ads indefinitely. Once those 30 days are over, the ads will default to the “optimize for clicks” setting.
If you are used to the earlier method used by Google then unfortunately there is no way to opt out with this new feature, so basically it means that this setting will automatically change whether advertisers want it or not agree to it.
Improved Keyword Tool
Now, marketers can get keyword ideas grouped on the basis of themes. The updated keyword tool lets you quickly view the suggested new ad group themes and add those to your account directly. In addition, the traffic estimator integration facilitates easy view of the data for your keywords and equips you to take campaign strategy decisions faster.
Changes in Traffic estimator
The new additions let marketers graph performance estimates, draft ad groups and add them to AdWords account.
Enhanced Ad Sitelinks
Sitelinks are a useful extension available for AdWord accounts that gives your ad more visibility by providing additional link options. With Enhanced Sitelinks, Google combines the other ads in your account with your existing Sitelinks to create a much more attractive ad.
To be eligible to use this feature, you must rank in the top 3 ad positions on Google search and your account must contain active ads that are closely related to the Sitelinks in your campaign.
Automated Rules Now in My Client Center
In keeping with the Automated Rules theme, another great feature added by Google is the ability to create automated rules and functions across multiple accounts.
This feature allows users managing multiple AdWords accounts to set automatic rules that affect some or all accounts simultaneously. While there’s significant risk involved in setting up automatic action across multiple accounts, we can’t deny the potential for saving time that this feature may have for AdWords users.
Match Type Changes
The phrase and exact match keywords will now be triggered according to what the close variants are including misspellings, plural forms, singular forms, different stemmings, accents, and abbreviations. Reportedly, at least 7% of search queries contain a misspelling, and the longer the query, the higher the rate.
Changes in Location Targeting
Location targeting is a huge feature for advertisers and the new update includes three new features to improve the service of local targeting.
- Zip code targeting: With the new update, there is now an ability for advertisers to target more than 30,000 U.S. Zip codes in AdWords. You can now even include up to 1,000 postal codes per every campaign. The new Zip Code feature also provides reporting providing very great insights into performance of your ads.
- Location insertion: This is also a brand new feature which will allow the advertisers to update ad title dynamically, text, display URL or destination URL with city, phone number or Zip code of the local business into the ad text without manually creating these components for geo-targeting ads.
- Advanced location targeting: This feature allows exclusion or you can target locations using a physical location or a location that you find interest in.
Image Ads Easily for Free with the Display Ad Builder
The new Google Display Ad Builder makes designing and creating image ads easy and it’s free. And with 300+ free ad templates to choose from Google AdWords has made it even easier for businesses to get started.
Video Assets to Build Video Ads
Google AdWords is also making it easier for businesses to design and create their own video ads. Businesses can take existing video footage from their computer, website, phone, etc., and cut and clip those videos into advertisements.
Account Labels
Account Labels is another new feature which may small compared to the other features we get but rather it is actually an exciting new feature that can help users to organize AdWords accounts. It enables advertisers to organize their AdWords accounts keywords, ads, ad groups and campaigns into custom groupings for easier filtering and reporting and it will surely be useful to large scale advertisers.
This feature basically brings a smart account structure to the AdWords world. The examples of how to use the labels are:
- Campaigns by brand or non-brand
- Label specific product categories
- Differentiate geographically targeting campaigns
- Label promotional campaigns
Once labels are set, you can filter by the labels and can run reports to check performance of your accounts by label.
Extend Text Ad with Mobile Call Extensions
Most people are familiar with the search engine results pages of Google when searching Google via their PC’s, however, as more and more people are using their mobile devices to access information online, Google has had to rethink and redesign how search results appear via mobile devices.
One of the most exciting new features in AdWords is extending text ads with mobile call extensions, meaning now when a business’s information comes up in search results, their phone number will be displayed as a click-to-call number, allowing potential customers of yours to call you directly from the search engine results page your business/product/service is displayed on.
Well these are the latest updates and features which made it to the AdWords system thanks to Google but we are sure we might have missed a feature or two, in that case if you think you know another feature which we din’t mention then tell us in the comments below. We surely love to hear from you.
