AdWords Gets A Facelift…Finally!
AdWords Gets A Facelift…Finally!

AdWords Gets A Facelift…Finally!

A lot has happened since AdWords last updated it’s interface. The first African American President, Barack Obama, was elected, then re-elected, we had the Beijing & London Olympic Games, Bill Gates retired from Microsoft, pop icon Michael Jackson and Apple CEO Steve Jobs passed away, and the UK voted to leave the European Union.

While the AdWords changes won’t have the same impact on the world at large, it certainly will have a significant impact on the marketing landscape. So why the change after all this time? According to Paul Feng, the Adwords Product Management Director, “AdWords was built when Google was just figuring out what search advertising was…and there is now increased demand on marketers and on AdWords as a platform — advertisers are running ads in search, display, shopping, mobile, video.”

The new design won’t change the features, however it’s going to change the way advertisers can analyse data and performance (hint: it’s going to get much easier!).

How is the new design going to be different?

The designers at Google based the new design on 3 principles:

  • “Data at your fingertips”: making data insights easily accessible and actionable,
  • “Focus on your business”: optimising the account according to your business goals, and
  • “Powerful, yet simple”: simple design and easy to use.

A new visual dashboard

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Credit: Inside Adwords

The new interface will allow users to check the health of their accounts at a glance, with graphs and visuals of top keywords, the campaign overview, and performance by device to name a few. Users will be able to pick the data they want to see on this performance overview page, similar to the dashboard on Analytics.

This page already exists in Adwords, under the “Home” tab of an account, but to be honest, it’s just a list of numbers that is a bit hard to read and it’s only at account level. Adding graphs and colours will definitely help with visualising performance. The overview page will be available at campaign, ad group and ad level.

A new application navigation system

The navigation tabs are currently on the top of the page, and they are going to be moved on the left-hand side – just like on Adwords Editor. I’m not too sure this is an improvement though to be honest. I didn’t like it when the change was made in Adwords Editor, but in Adwords, I feel like it might take up too much space on the screen..

The Dimension tab

So long dimension tab! The current tab that creates reports segmented by the metrics of your choice will disappear in this new version of Adwords. Instead, the reports will be made available directly from the left-hand side menu, at both campaign and ad group level.

The new Adwords campaign creation wizards

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Instead of choosing the type of campaigns, advertisers will be able to choose what they want to achieve with this new campaign. This goal-based method is a good way to remember what type of campaign is best for your objective. Adwords experts who know what campaign they want to create will be able to skip the wizard.

Personally, I’m excited about the visual dashboard. If it’s anything like I imagined, this page will help all of us PPC experts to quickly check what’s working and what’s not in the account. The other changes will also make it easier to understand what’s happening, and ultimately how to fix any issues that arise.

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