Monday, July 22, 2013

Stepping into the future together

Our two most important goals for AdWords are to make ads more relevant and useful for users, and more effective and simple to manage for advertisers. That's why I was so excited to announce enhanced campaigns this past February. With enhanced campaigns, we're making it easier to reach people in the moments that matter with ads that are more relevant to their intent and context.

We’ve written a lot about enhanced campaigns in the past four months.  In addition to our help center articles and dedicated website, you can see lots of best practices, customer stories, webinar recordings and details about new features in the “enhanced campaigns” label on our blog.

Since we introduced enhanced campaigns, advertisers have upgraded over 6 million legacy campaigns, representing almost 75% of active campaigns. And starting today, we will begin upgrading all remaining campaigns automatically, bringing everyone onto the new AdWords platform. As with many product launches, the rollout will be gradually completed over several weeks.

Results with enhanced campaigns
Many advertisers who've upgraded and optimized their enhanced campaigns have already reported positive results and time savings. Here are a few recent examples:
  • Pizza Hut reported that mobile ROI increased by 20% since upgrading to enhanced campaigns. They've also found that mobile CTR has increased by more than 60% while their cost per order on smartphones has dropped by 17%.
  • Autobytel, a site for car buyers and owners, grew conversions by 10% at the same CPA after upgrading and optimizing their enhanced campaigns. They now manage 30% fewer campaigns, leaving the marketing team with more time to focus on optimizing the user experience. “We are getting the right conversions at the right price, while marketing efforts are more focused on user experience rather than managing the account,” said Billy Ferriolo, Senior Vice President, Consumer Acquisition and Product Development. (download .pdf)
  • Miller's Bakery, a thriving family-run business in New Jersey, generated more custom cake orders using features like location and mobile bid adjustments, upgraded sitelinks, and upgraded call extensions. After upgrading, the bakery’s in-store visits increased by 10-20%, business during peak hours nearly doubled, and web clicks from nearby cities climbed 20-35%. “Our customers interact with our business using multiple screens,” said owner Dwight Miller. "If we didn’t advertise on both desktop and mobile, we’d miss out on a lot of customer touch points.” (download .pdf
Tips for success after upgrading
All AdWords campaigns benefit from good set-up and regular optimization. So whether you upgraded your campaigns yourself or let it happen automatically, we encourage you to review and optimize all newly transitioned enhanced campaigns. Here are a few tips (details are in this Help Center article):
  1. Review your mobile bid adjustments. For most campaign types, the auto-upgrade default is based on bids from similar advertisers. Visit the campaign ‘Settings’ tab to optimize for your business
  2. Identify unwanted keyword duplication in overlapping campaigns. If you previously had similar legacy campaigns for each device type, we suggest identifying matching campaigns and eliminating unwanted duplicate keywords in your enhanced campaigns.
  3. Review Display Network campaigns. Verify that your display ads are reaching users on desired devices and that you're using your desired bidding strategies.
  4. Start taking advantage of the powerful enhanced campaign features. We recommend trying out upgraded sitelinks and upgraded call extensions to start. Then you can further boost results by creating mobile preferred ads and setting bid adjustments for location and time.
You can visit our enhanced campaigns website for more success stories and best practices, including a guide on how to bid like a pro with enhanced campaigns. And please contact us if you have questions or need help.

Stepping into the future together
Consumers will continue to have access to more screens and be able to switch between them as they shop, play and communicate. Enhanced campaigns are an important step towards helping advertisers connect with consumers more simply and smartly in this multi-screen world. We've been inspired by advertisers and partners around the world who are already embracing this new opportunity. Thank you for joining us on the journey and stepping into the future together.

Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President, Ads and Commerce