"Step Inside AdWords" - Google's Big Announcement

Last week, Google made a much anticipated announcement about the future of AdWords. The live streaming event titled “Step Inside AdWords” covered new features that will be rolled out of the next several months.

Saying that marketers were a little nervous about the announcement is a bit of an understatement. Marketers may be used to Google’s constant evolution, but that doesn’t mean they like it. Personally, if you don’t appreciate change and novelty and you’re an online marketer, you’re in the wrong field, just my two cents.

Jerry Dischler, Vice President of Product Management at Google, made the announcements via live stream.

The new product features relate to better understanding the consumer’s context & signals, using more intelligent tools to improve ad performance and making campaign decisions based on real world data.

The live stream started out reiterating old sentiments like it’s not about devices, it’s about the consumer and connecting people to the content they want. Yawn. This is nothing new. In fact, this was the main point of last year’s live stream introducing Enhanced Campaigns. Yes, context, signals and content are still important.

That said, there are some exciting changes coming for AdWords.

Understanding Context

Currently, AdWords only looks at consumer behavior when they are online. After the new feature rollouts, AdWords will aim to connect people to the most relevant content whether they’re online, on mobile sites or even in apps.

We live in a constantly connected world. This means that marketers need to present the right message based on context. What is the consumer looking for at that exact time? Is the consumer looking for information about a product or are they ready to buy? Now more than ever, marketers need to examine signals and tell stories that will touch the consumer. Content is still king.

Help for Marketing Apps

If you’re marketing an app, there are a couple of very exciting feature updates. Apps are a big part of today’s landscape. AdWords gives marketers tools to target keywords people are using when they’re looking for apps. AdWords is making the move to deep linking within apps to improve visitor engagement. New AdWords updates also offer better tools to measure the lifecycle of an app.

Intelligent Tools within AdWords

Currently, if you were managing large campaigns, you need 3rd party tools and AdWords Editor to make bulk edits. Yesterday, Google announced the rollout of bulk actions within AdWords. This will be a huge time saver for marketers. I'm delighted to bid Adieu to Editor.

Enhanced Reporting

Paul Feng, AdWords Product Manager, took the stage briefly to announce changes to the reporting interface. I’m most excited for this update. The rollouts will allow marketers to drag and drop and create reports on the fly. Enhanced reporting will make exploration easy. Currently, there’s quite a bit of downloading and formatting that goes on even before data analysis can begin. The new features will allow marketers to create the reports they need to make good decisions faster - time is money!

Your Own Lab

You will also be able to run experiments in your own lab. Marketers will be able to create experiments and save them as drafts. This will be very helpful to marketers, as we’ll be able to run the drafts with a percentage of the traffic - say 10%, without risking your overall traffic. That way, you can make decisions based on real world data.

In typical Google fashion, the new features will rollout over the next several months. Stay tuned for more details and launch dates. Watch the entire announcement here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5eXnF5RdFI