New Adwords Experience: the Good & the Bad!

Late in 2016, Google announced the introduction of a new AdWords experience, complete with a new AdWords user interface.

Late in 2016, Google announced the introduction of a new AdWords experience, complete with a new AdWords user interface. Up until now this has been optional for all Adwords account managers, however the new interface has now been rolled out completely.

 

The new UI unlocks lots of new features and tools along with a completely new aesthetic, full of data visualisations, expanding three-dot menus and colourful representations of account data. But while it might feel intuitive to the uninitiated, experienced account managers could be at risk of finding themselves lost in search of features they've used a thousand times.

 

We've put together a list of what we like and don't like about the new UI and our advice on how to adopt.

 

The Good

 

New Dashboard

 

We really like the new Overview dashboard. This shows you a quick overview of your account in a really easy to understand (and colourful) way.  It's much easier on the eye than the old interface and is actually quite helpful for pulling graphs together to show to clients, making things easily digestible.

 

Demographic Targeting

 

We love the new demographic targeting features for search. In their new UI, Google doubles down on demographic targeting options, allowing advertisers to target users based on their household income and parental status for Search. Previously you could only target parental status or average household income by location in Display ads. This new feature will allow greater targeting flexibility and will be great for brands selling the likes of children's products or price-sensitive products.

 

Keyboard Shortcuts

 

This is a game changer for Account Managers. The new Adwords interface includes keyboard short cuts, which allow you to jump to different areas of the platform quicker. For example, if you get lost, you can always use the G T shortcut. This is where you quite literally type in the keys G T, where you will be shown a search box to find whatever you're looking for, taking you straight to that page. This is a great cheat if you can't find what you're looking for.

 

Account Placement Exclusions

 

You can now create a 'placement exclusion list' on an account level, meaning that there is no longer a need to copy and paste the same list of placement exclusions into each and every display and video campaign: There is now a simple selection of this list at campaign level.

 

Reporting

 

In the new UI, data can be more easily found at campaign level. The breakdown of clicks, cost, and conversions across desktop, tablet, and mobile are displayed visually making it easier to manage your campaigns and optimize your device bid adjustments. Heatmaps and graphs for performance to better manage ad scheduling are also included, allowing us to filter data by the tabs 'Day & Hour', 'Day' or 'Hour' making the data much more readily available rather than applying different filters or going into reports. Similarly, in the 'locations' tab you can filter the data shown below rather than having to go into reports.

 

Google Feedback

 

Google have a cool feature that lets you provide feedback on any issues you see. This is a great feature to have and shows that feedback is appreciated, which is important as there are always going to be teething issues.

 

It's Prettier!

 

Generally, everything is much easier on the eye, better laid out, and more customisable. These are very small details but we like that we can chose the colour for “labels†and columns can be expanded or reduced with using a mouse, which makes things easier to view.

 

The Bad

 

As it stands currently, we sometimes need to navigate back into the old AdWords UI to manage popular features such as display remarketing audiences and price extensions which are not yet available.

 

Creating Dynamic Remarketing tracking and ads has also been limited as we can't generate the code while ad templates for these ads has been reduced, so we have less say on how they are being displayed.

 

Time spent trying to relearn where everything is also a negative of this new interface rollout, and, as it now stands, we can't revert back to safety to the old interface. However, it goes without saying that advertisers should get acquainted with the new Google AdWords interface sooner rather than later. Our main piece of advice is to give it time: Once you figure out how to use it, it's great!