Google AdWords Has New Enhanced Campaigns

GOOGLE PPC FOR LAWYERS

Google announced an upgrade to AdWords called Enhanced Campaigns that will allow advertisers to target consumers more efficiently with ads based on context like location, device type, and time of the day, in a single campaign.

Enhanced Campaigns have three main features:

• Campaign and budget management: An advertiser with a local presence could increase bids based on context, such as the location of the user or to adjust for device (e.g., “if this query is from mobile device, increase bid by 10%”). Bid adjustments will be found in the campaigns settings tab.
• Ads Based on Context: Advertisers will be able to differentiate mobile preferred creative where an ad would appear if the query is from a mobile device. This would take into consideration the capabilities of the device – such as whether the device can download apps or make phone calls. Mobile preferred creative will be a type of ad selection in AdWords.
• New conversion types: This will integrate phone calls from click-to-call and app downloads in AdWords reports. It will be easier to see the full value of campaigns across actions and from new platforms. Phone calls and app downloads will be additional columns as a conversion in reporting.

Why enhanced campaigns? (From Google Blog)
People are constantly connected and moving from one device to another to communicate, shop and stay entertained. In fact, a recent study of multi-device consumers found that 90% move sequentially between several screens to accomplish a task. There’s also a proliferation of new devices — PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, hybrid devices, mini-tablets, televisions, and more. And there are many more digital screens and devices to come, with the lines between them continuing to blur. For example, as devices converge, consumer behaviors on tablets and desktops are becoming very similar.

This creates great opportunities for businesses, but can also make marketing more complex and time-consuming. For example, a pizza restaurant probably wants to show one ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 1pm on their PC at work (perhaps a link to an online order form or menu), and a different ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 8pm on a smartphone a half-mile from the restaurant (perhaps a click-to-call phone number and restaurant locator). Signals like location, time of day, and the capabilities of the device people are using have become increasingly important in showing them the right ad.

With enhanced campaigns, instead of having to cobble together and compare several separate campaigns, reports and ad extensions to do this, the pizza restaurant can easily manage all of this in one single place. Enhanced campaigns help you reach people with the right ads, based on their context like location, time of day and device type, across all devices without having to set up and manage several separate campaigns.

This all sounds good but it does seem like you can’t control certain things as well. Also this is a big thing for MOBILE because the ads will be shown to people on mobile devices by default. Also there are new ad extensions you can use that seem pretty exciting, like offers you can put with your ads and many other things.  This means for one you better have a mobile version of your site setup!