Posted by Maria Perilli on February 11, 2013.
Last Wednesday, February 6th, Google introduced Google AdWords enhanced campaigns. The search giant cited a recent study that reported that, of multi-device consumers, 90 percent move sequentially between several screens to accomplish a given task. This is why Google rolled out enhanced campaigns – between PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, mini-tablets, hybrid devices, televisions and more, marketing is becoming increasingly complex and time-consuming.
AdWords enhanced campaigns is designed to "help you more simply and smartly manage your ad campaigns in today's multi-device world," stated the blog post. With this new feature, PPC managers can easily manage multiple campaigns, reports and ad extensions in one single place. You can now target consumers by time of day, location and device capability, enabling you to reach exactly whom you want to reach, when and where you want to reach them, and with the appropriate ad.
Bid Adjustments. Now you can manage bids from a single campaign across devices, locations, time of day and more.
Example: A breakfast cafe wants to reach people nearby searching for "coffee" or "breakfast" on a smartphone. Using bid adjustments, with three simple entries, they can bid 25% higher for people searching a half-mile away, 20% lower for searches after 11am, and 50% higher for searches on smartphones. These bid adjustments can apply to all ads and all keywords in one single campaign.
Easily edit ads for varying user contexts. People who are out and about or near your store may be searching for something different than someone sitting at home on their laptop. Enhanced campaigns allows you to show ads across devices with the appropriate ad text, sitelink, app or extension without editing each campaign for every combination of device, location and time of day.
Example: A national retailer with both physical locations and a website can show ads with click-to-call and location extensions for people searching on their smartphones, while showing an ad for their e-commerce website to people searching on a PC — all within a single campaign.
Improved metrics. You can now easily count calls and app downloads as conversion in AdWords reports, interactions that were previously difficult to track and measure.
Example: You can count phone calls of 60 seconds or longer that result from a click-to-call ad as a conversion in your AdWords reports, and compare them to other conversions like leads, sales and downloads.
As we learn more, we'll report our experience with Google AdWords' new enhanced campaigns. Share your thoughts in the comments below!
UPDATE: As promised, after experimenting with Google AdWords enhanced campaigns, we're discussing our experience and impression with the new feature in a new blog post Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns First Impressions.