The Big Changes in Google Ads in 2018 – Part I

Google is much more than a simple search engine. The so-called ‘front door of the internet’ is an incredible marketing machine that provides businesses and advertisers with vast opportunities for growth, just as it offers all users access to quick solutions and information.

Back in July, Google rebranded their advertising platform, changing from AdWords to Google Ads. This new look came with a brand new logo. While the scripting remained the same, there have been a lot of big changes in Google Ads over the past year that you should know about.

In this two-part series, we’ll explore a whole host of new features and announcements in Google Ads that have been made over the past year.

Let’s dive in!

Google Is Getting More Powerful

Long gone are the days when marketers could simply throw anything online and see it rise to the top of the search rankings. Google is much smarter these days.

Now, the sophisticated search engine is constantly evolving to offer the best possible experience for users, whether they are advertising or searching.

1.  Unknown Categories Continue to Shrink

As Google becomes a more omnipotent juggernaut of machine-learning supremacy, there isn’t a lot left online that it doesn’t know about. This means that you can benefit from greater reach and relevance when using ad targeting, as the data mines are deeper and more accurate than ever before. So, you can be sure that segmenting your audience by demographics like age or gender will truly hone in on people that are in that group.

2.  Sales Promotion Extensions

This option enables marketers to include another info tab in their ads, which is useful to showcase your products. For example, you could use the extension to promote various product lines for major shopping events such as Christmas or Black Friday. The addition of a price tag or promo code makes your ad stand out from others in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

3.  Customer Match

Customer-centric marketing is on the rise, and now Google is making it easier for advertisers to use this strategy. With customer match, you can harness the data you have collected on your customers, both online and offline. This allows you to reach customers across all Google-owned platforms, including Shopping, Gmail, and YouTube, and offer customized experiences based on the user’s position in the buyer’s journey.

4.  Google Ads Ad Suggestions

It’s not easy to write great ads. Furthermore, it takes a lot of time to create and test multiple ads. Google is now offering advertisers a helping hand with Ad Suggestions. These automated ads are designed by Google Ads to help you gain more success on the advertising platform, and can potentially save you hours that you would otherwise spend creating ads.

5.  Smart Campaigns

The rebranding of Google has simplicity at its heart, and smart campaigns are now the default type for new accounts. With automated campaigns, Google-hosted landing pages that are already optimized, and high-level reporting, smart campaigns make it easy for small businesses to get started with Google Ads, even if you don’t have a website yet.

6.  Google Ad Manager

This new platform combines DoubleClick Ad Exchange and DoubleClick for Publishers. This full ad platform aims to help people grow their revenue in multiple ways, such as:

• Maximizing your yields at auction bids.
• Optimizing marketplace revenue on all platforms including TVs, live streams, gaming, Apple News, apps and more.
• Protecting you against unscrupulous practices like fraud, malware, and bot traffic.

7.  Google Ads Strength

The responsive search ads in Google are a great method of testing out various permutations. The machine learning-based tool claims to deliver a 15% boost on clicks for paid search network ads. It achieves this by automatically responding to search queries with better-optimized headlines and ad descriptions.

However, some marketers were frustrated by the lack of any feedback before. In August, Google released the new ad strength indicator. This measures the relevance, diversity, and quantity of the ad copy in your responsive search ads, and also provides suggestions on how to improve your ads.

Keep an Eye on These Metrics

Google Ads already had an abundance of metrics, but there is even more now. Here are some to get familiar with.

8.  Mobile Speed Score

This displays how fast your page loads after a user clicks on a mobile ad. The score ranges from 1 to a maximum of 10. When you consider that most web traffic now happens on mobile, it’s safe to say you should take this metric seriously. Google recommends Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to provide a faster, smoother user experience.

9.  Exact Match Matching Logic Has Been Changed

Exact match is no longer an exact match. The ‘exact match’ type has evolved over a few years, and now it may be displayed when users enter close variants such as plurals and misspellings. The key thing to realize is that Google is focused on user intent. Therefore, if someone uses a slightly different keyword, but their intent is aligned with your exact match keyword, then your ad may be displayed.

10. New Search Ad Position Metrics

The average position metric has long confused many marketers, so this year Google has released four new metrics to clarify things. These metrics are:

• (Absolute Top) %
• (Top) %
• Search (Absolut Top) IS
• Search (Top) IS

 
No longer do you need to be confused by average position – these new metrics offer much more value as they are more specific, and more reliable indicators of your page’s location in SERPs.

11. Enhanced CPC is Gaining Favor

There is more talk about eCPC, which seems to be taking precedence over the target CPA bid strategy. This metric is inherently designed to help marketers get more conversions, which it achieves by automatically adjusting bids to generate clicks that are more likely to results in a sale. On the flipside, you should know this can lead to Google Ads increasing your max CPC bid. It’s up to you to decide if that’s a risk worth taking.

There is Always More to Learn about Google Ads

That’s it for the first part of our Google Ads updates series. In the second part, we’ll delve into some new ad types, as well as the big changes to the user interface and analysis aspects of the platform.

It may all sound a little daunting, but even startups can benefit from Google Ads. Come back for the second part of the series to make sure you stay up-to-speed.