It’s always pleasing waking up to good news on a Friday morning, and for me, learning that AdWords is making improvements to their reporting functionality is great news! Yes, I’m aware this sounds a tad nerdy, but it will make every PPC manager’s lives somewhat less painful. HALLELUJAH! I’ve never been a numbers person so reporting isn’t my strong-suit, therefore I’ll take any means of simplifying the process as a win.
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Alright, alright, I’ll stop ranting about my excitement and tell you what’s actually going on with AdWords.
Google announced that they’ll be rolling out three new features to simplify the process of managing multiple campaigns. Have you ever spent an entire afternoon scraping through campaigns to view and report on important metrics for your clients? Well, these new features will hopefully turn that headache-filled afternoon into a quick hour of painless reporting. Without further ado, let’s dive into the soon-to-be-released new features.
#1: The ability to filter your account by campaign type
Yup, finally! We’ve been waiting for this, because tracking search campaigns versus display versus shopping is typically done by the campaign type. Now instead of manually scraping through each campaign on your list, you can use this filter to easily view just shopping or just search campaigns without wanting to chuck your computer out the window.
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#2: Customized columns will now save by campaign type
To me, this is music to my ears. Customizing my columns to view important metrics is so time-consuming and frustrating to do. Every time I switch between search and display campaign types for example I have to add or filter out certain metrics. This will no longer be an issue as your last viewed columns (like keywords, ad groups, campaigns, impressions, conversions, etc.) will now be stored by both tab and campaign type.
Confused? Well, think about if you’re in the ad groups tab reviewing one of your search campaigns; you might prefer to look at specific metrics like CPC and average position. Then when you switch to a display ad group, you may be more concerned with impressions and total cost. Now, when switching to another campaign type, like search vs. display, columns will be saved based on that campaign type and tab so you don’t have to re-customize each time you switch between campaign types.
#3: Easily apply pre-defined column sets based on individual goals
It’s pretty common for different campaigns to have different goals. For example, let’s say you sell real estate, you might have one campaign simply to gain brand awareness and attract people that aren’t necessarily ready to move or purchase, but will think of your company in the future if they’re exposed to it enough. Then another one of your campaigns might be targeting the bottom-of-the-funnel, "I’m ready to buy right now" type audience, with the main goal being conversions (which could be a phone call, or form fill-out to connect with an agent). Makes sense, right? These new pre-defined column sets allow you to easily switch your reporting view to the see the relevant columns to each of your advertising goals. It’s also easy to get back to your last column set by choosing “Custom” in the drop-down menu. Take a look at the image below, you can see how that account set up different column sets for branding and conversion goals.
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These changes might not be truly GROUND-BREAKING, but they will indeed make your PPC life a bit easier. Don’t get flustered if you’re not seeing these updates immediately; they’ll be rolled out in the coming weeks, but Google didn’t provide a specific date.
About the Author:
Margot is a Content Marketing Specialist at WordStream with a background in PPC, SEM, content and digital marketing. She enjoys running and eating ice cream during her free time (not simultaneous although that would be impressive). Follow her on:
Twitter: @ChappyMargot
Google+: +Margot da Cunha
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/margotdacunha
