AdWords Is Rolling Out Helpful New Features

Google has been slowly rolling out new features on the AdWords interface, and they’re still coming. On Tuesday, in San Jose at SMX West, AdWords Director of Product Management Anthony Chavez revealed some exciting new features to look for in the near future.

So what new features does AdWords have to offer?

First of all, you’ll soon be able to target people who searched for your products or services on Google, on YouTube.

Being able to create what will be called “custom intent” audiences is a game changer. All you’ll need to do is give AdWords a keyword list for your video campaign and it’ll target those users who are already interested. The video ads will allow you to create a custom call-to-action to help increase searches, as well as maximize ad spend.

They also announced a new Recommendations page to better identify why sudden changes may have happened across campaigns.

Found right in your performance graphs, there will be specific “Notes” to quickly help you identify what went wrong – or what went right. The Opportunities page has been reimagined to help you identify more urgent action items, rather than simply presenting information. In preliminary testing, global fashion retailer Mango saw a 59% increase in conversions, so these changes are very promising.

One last exciting update: Account Performance Score

Adding to the appeal of the new Recommendations page is the Account Performance Score – a visual representation of where your campaigns are at, and where to optimize budget and effort. For the record, this has nothing to do with quality score, ad rank or the auction itself.

“It is designed to be a meaningful indicator of the best ways users can improve their accounts. It’s very actionable and connects directly to the recommendations that get surfaced,” said Chavez.

It’s unclear exactly how these changes will appear on your feed, but regardless, they’re exciting changes for publishers to utilize in the coming weeks.

Further Reading:

Are you ready for the attribution changes coming to Google AdWords? – Search Engine Land

Watch AdWords video tutorials for beginners – Google

With an eye on TV ad budgets, YouTube debuts search-based video ad targeting – Digiday