10 Major Updates Coming To Google Ads

May 26th 2016

10 Major Updates Coming To Google Ads

 

Google loves announcing big changes to AdWords and well, Google Ads used to be called AdWords and that changed in the summer of 2018.

Just like every year, 2019 has brought some major changes to Google Ads and we are here to breakdown 10 biggest updates to Google Ads this year.

First, we got multiple iterations of enhanced campaigns, but then they took away the ability to bid on tablet and desktop, leaving advertisers only able control their mobile bid adjustments, but not able to do the same for desktop and tablet. This led to some hacked-together mobile-only campaigns, where you could set your bids extremely low and set high mobile bid modifiers, sacrificing all of your desktop impression shares for the sake of focusing your campaigns solely on mobile. But after the announcement at yesterday’s Google Ads & Analytics Innovations Keynote, tablet, and mobile are back in a big way. The year 2019 has been even better since Google has decided to update the Google Ads Mobile App to keep you responsive to your ads wherever you are.

Without further ado, let us jump into the major Google Ads updates of 2019.

Here are the 10 biggest announcements from Google Marketing Live, and what to expect from each action item.

Bombshell#1 The Retirement of the average position.

The average position which was the basic indicator of auction performance was officially bit farewell at the end of September.

We all know that your bid and the quality score determine your Ad Rank. And your Ad Rank determines your ad’s position. But just because, you win the auction and obtain the first position, doesn’t necessarily mean that your ad is shown at the top of the Search Engine. Therefore, it was evident from this that the average position fails to tell the whole story.

Resultantly, google decided to say goodbye to this metric in favor of more precise ones that were rolled out by the end of 2018 such as top impression rate, etc.

Bombshell#2 Phrase match & broad match modifier evolution.

Good News! Phrase match and broad match modifier keywords are now eligible to show for the same meaning close variants like synonyms and paraphrases.

In case you are confused, let’s give you a quick refresher.

A Phrase Match Keyword matches to queries that include the entirety of the keyword in its specified order. For example, “Updates to Google Ads” is eligible to match to queries to Major updates to google ads.

A Broad Match Modifier Keyword matches to queries that include each term specified in the keyword in any order. For example, +google+ads+updates are eligible to match to queries like 5 major updates to google ads.

Don’t be scared, you just need to keep a close eye on your search report, add negative keywords when necessary, and use your ads to address your audience’s needs and you are good to go.

Bombshell#3 New Audience for your search advertising.

As you all know that when you are looking to get the right audience to view your Google Ads, there are already a couple of tools that can be used.

The good news is that you have two more: affinity audiences and in-market audiences.  

  • Affinity audiences

So, what is the affinity audience?

It is a group of consumers who have shown an interest in a particular topic. Google creates these audiences using the search history and frequently visited sites.

How can it help you?

E.g., if you are going after someone who will search “Mountain Bike”, you can also pair the affinity audience “Travel Enthusiast” or “Bicyclist”. Now you’ll be getting more audience who might be interested in what you are selling. Therefore, this new tool is great for broadening your ad’s horizon. Pretty cool, right?

  • In-market audiences

In-market audiences help you find the bottom of the funnel customers who are more inclined to purchase your product. In short, it can help boost your conversion rate and can limit the search of your ads to the exclusive audience who are actively searching for the product you are selling. 

This is also a great tool for holiday seasons that allows you to reach customers who are actively searching for a product for that special occasion. For.eg, you can use in-market audiences to target Christmas shoppers.

Bombshell#4 Lead Form Ad Extension

Now, this is an interesting update that we haven’t seen from Google before.

As you are aware that lead generation is considered one of the most important goals for the marketers. You know why? Because it gives you more data about your prospective customers. And with more data, you can better communicate with the audiences resulting in a higher conversion rate.

After clicking this call-to-action tab on the Google ad, the user will be taken to a lead form already pre-populated with the information from the Google account and can be quickly submitted.

Bombshell#5 The Arrival of Maximum Conversion Value with Smart Bidding

The star of innovations related to Smart Bidding in the 2019 Google conference was Campaign-Level Conversion.

You let Google algorithms decide to optimize your account goals.

What’s in it for you?

Google will optimize your conversion rate using the budget for your Google ads. You just need to tell Google the conversion goal that you want to track and optimize and the advance google algorithm will find users from unlikely spots to make it happen.

Bombshell#6 User-Generated Images in Shopping Reviews

 

Shopping just got better!

You can now add user-generated images in product reviews on Google Shopping.

It gives the future customers real-life snapshots of products taken by the existing customers.

With the new brand feature <reviewer_images> schema, you’ll be able to post pictures that your customers have taken in product reviews. This allows for a deeper connection between the customer and the product.

Happy Customer, Happy You!

Bombshell#7 Responsive Search Ads 

The Responsive Search Ads lets you create ads with multiple headlines and description options. It gives you more room to convey messages to your audiences along with an opportunity to closely match your potential customers’ search queries, which in turn can improve your ad performance. 

Here are some basic guidelines that you can use when making a Responsive Ad:

  • Add unique but relevant 5-6 headlines.
  • Include a keyword in at least 2 headlines.
  • For your other 3 headlines, you can add secondary benefits of your product or service such as “Over 1000+ Hotel” shown in the above image.
  • Provide at least 2 descriptions that provide information that isn’t available in your headlines.

Bombshell#8 Video Campaigns

Before the update of Videos in Responsive Display Ads, visual assets were referred to as images and Gifs but as of March 2019, YouTube advertisers can expand their reach by including videos in their responsive display ads. This new extension helps capitalize the audience by allowing them to interact with your business without leaving YouTube.

The top three reasons to use this new update is;

  • More clicks
  • More impressions
  • More accessibility

Here’s an example;

(Image Source)

 

Bombshell#9 Effective Google Ads Mobile App

(Image Source)

 Staying connected to your Google Ads is important wherever you are. The recent updates can help you improve your account performance even when you are away from the computer.

In the past, you could only pause and enable responsive search ads. This has changed since the new update as you can now create and edit your responsive search ads with your google ads app. You don’t need to carry your laptop everywhere now.

Another great update that you can find in the Ads mobile app is the managing of negative keywords. Previously, this feature was only compatible with desktop. You can create, review, edit the negative keyword.

Bombshell#10 Accelerated Delivery is long gone.

In August 2019, Google announced that accelerated delivery is no longer available for search and shopping campaigns. However, it is available for display and video campaigns.

Search and shopping advertisers have no option but to choose standard delivery. Google’s defense was that for small and medium-sized businesses with a limited budget, an accelerated budget is not effective.

Some of you might not agree with their logic but you can make up for its absence by using positive bid adjustments at early times of the day.

These new updates here to stay and improve with time so we would suggest you take advantage of these to start bringing in new audiences to reach your goal.

It’s free and easy so what are you all waiting for?

Change is good!

What do you think of some of the announcements Google made at Google Marketing Live 2019? Leave a comment below!

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