Last week Google launched Enhanced Campaigns, a new style of campaign for Adwords to help businesses target their customers more efficiently in the growing mobile space. Today I'm going to walk you through Enhanced Campaigns to show you all the new changes that will happen in the next six months and how to prepare.
What has changed?
As the online world is changing, so is Google to adapt to the many new devices on the market -- PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, TVs, and more. Customer behaviors are changing as devices converge and behaviors across devices are become more and more similar. The most relevant change made today is that Google has become more contextually aware of it's users utilizing multiple devices. Google knows that the average person uses multiple devices to make a decision and is targeting based on those behaviors.
Google knows whether potential customers are at work or at home, on a tablet or mobile device. To make use of this data, they've created Enhanced Campaigns to help you target these different users and changing behaviors. People want search results that are relevant to them and their location, and even customized to the time of day. Adwords now makes it easy to target people in the exact way that you want, time you want and device you want.
An example of this would be: an advertiser that has a business locally in San Francisco can now bid based on context, such as the location of the user on his mobile device. If he's got a local bake shop he can ad a click-to-call on an advertisement to a mobile user in the area and a regular ad to someone in the area searching on their computer. This complex marketing can now be easily achieved in the Adwords interface.
Reporting and analytics are easier than ever using Enhanced Campaigns. Now you can not only track your clicks but also app downloads. In addition, you can track calls to your business and online PDF downloads. This will help local businesses to better know what's going on with their online advertising and if they are spending their money wisely.
Negatives
Using Enhanced Campaigns, you are no longer allowed to have separate mobile campaigns. Any keyword that you want to bid on a mobile device must also be bid on a desktop, you cannot separate a keyword out to use just in mobile campaigns. This is hard for me as a marketer because the results are very different and sometimes it is beneficial to target only mobile customers. You will also no longer be able to bid separately based on different smartphones, such as the iPhone and Android devices. They are all lumped into the mobile category.
In addition Google will be moving away from offering Tablet bidding. Tablets are being bundled together with desktops and laptops. Currently, Google has not released information on how their cross-device attribution is going to work or affect users. Its possible this might end up only working well for users that are logged into Google.
What to do?
All accounts in Adwords will switch to the new Enhanced Campaigns within the next six months. Google has said they will release tools to help you merge your old campaigns to the new campaigns in the coming months. Make sure your bid management is updated to the new system before you switch over your campaigns to the new system. Don't transition until you are ready.
Make sure to review the keywords that you have paused in mobile. When you identify the keywords that weren't working, move them into their own campaign and set the mobile multiplier to 0.
Above everything, take your time and don't rush the transition. The tools Google will be releasing will help you understand and make the transition smoothly. It has not been perfected so don't make the move unless you know what you're doing. Google should come out with tips and tricks in the near future to help you with your move.
Do you find this creepy or brilliant that Google is making this change?