Getting to grips with Adwords is sort of like painting the Golden
Gate Bridge – as soon as you’ve mastered it, got your Partners certificate and
are running at full speed – the brains at Google go and make some “enhancements.” The regular changes significantly change our use of the system, forcing the AdWords user to go back and
relearn your job based on the new tools.
This week Google announced a raft of changes to its
existing AdWords platform which they hope will enhance usability (and increase
spend of course).
As anybody working in digital marketing will know, these
changes aren’t always positive. The Keyword Planner tool, unleashed last year,
is a marked disaster - obfuscating an already complex function. But the changes
here are less drastic than previous changes such as ‘enhanced campaigns’ and industry
reaction seems largely positive so far for the forthcoming roll out of the new ‘Enterprise
Class Tools.’
The new tools include even more bulk actions, more
customisable reporting features and most excitingly, the creation of a new ‘lab’
- allowing us to test campaign changes in draft format with live information (a
leap forward from the ‘Experiments’ feature of the existing platform).
Where AdWords goes, other digital advertising platforms soon follow, so we can look out for changes "inspired by" Enterprise Class Tools to start popping up on other PPC platforms and even in the back-end of social ad tools. The changes also make the much-loved
AdWords Editor platform look increasingly redundant.
In other news, Google has announced enhanced tools for
targeting and marketing Apps. New features will allow App Marketers to target
users based on their download history for similar or competing Apps, in app
purchases and frequency of use - all using data from the user’s mobile device.
These tools will only be available for android apps and devices initially but
Google do intend to make the changes available for iOS apps soon.
As always, the new tools look and sound great when delivered
in that soft Californian twang with those brightly coloured icons but as always
with digital marketing - the proof of the pudding will be in the analytics.
