Positives and Negatives of AdWords Enhanced Campaigns

An AdWords enhanced campaign enables you to make different bids for mobile devices as well as different locations and different times, all within one campaign, ending the need to create separate campaigns for each device.

 

The bid adjustments are made at the campaign level. You still bid as you would normally at the ad group or keyword level, but at the campaign level, you can now set a percentage increase or decrease on the bids you have made according to the device. If the mobile user is important to you, you may want to increase the percentage you are bidding on mobiles which will increase your maximum bid on all the keywords in that campaign when targeted at mobile devices.  

Here is a quick look at the negatives and positives of enhanced campaigns.

Tablet and computer users can no longer be targeted separately. You can no longer make separate bids, ads, and sitelinks for tablet and computer users. All campaigns target both these devices as if they are the same. Tablet and computer stats are still reported separately. However, these reports are not actionable! You are unable to optimise for just a tablet or computer, regardless of whether reports show differences in performance. This is a shame as we often see very different (usually higher) conversion rates on tablets, making tablet clicks more valuable.

Whilst you can choose not to show your ads on mobile devices, you have no choice whether or not to show your ads on tablets and computers. You can decrease the chance of your ads showing on computers and tablets by weighting your mobile ads and increasing your mobile bids up to a maximum of 300%. This will enable you to bid low on computers and tablets, and three times more on mobile. However, 300% is not necessarily enough of an increase to allow your original bids to be low enough to ensure your ads do not show on computers and tablets. Creating only mobile device preference ads is not enough to ensure that you only show on mobiles - according to Google “If your ad group contains mobile-optimised text ads only, those ads may appear on desktops and laptop computers and tablets”. 

Mobile bid adjustment is at the campaign level. All the keywords or ad group bids within the same campaign will increase or decrease by the same percentage. Also, when bidding at 300%, you lose resolution - an increase of one penny in the standard bid results in an increase of three pence in the mobile bid – you can’t increase your mobile bid by a penny.

Your AdWords account is now more manageable with fewer campaigns. If you have a small budget you don’t need to split it between two or three nearly identical campaigns.

Previously if you wanted to show call extensions on tablets and computers you needed to use a Google forwarding phone number, which cost £1 for every call. Now the forwarding number is free and you can show your own phone number if you wish. You can now set a start and end date as well as schedule your call extensions meaning that if you only want to use call extensions during opening hours, you can do so.

Sitelinks can now be added at the ad group level, which means you can make the sitelinks more specific to individual ad groups. Sitelinks are much easier and quicker to use. Previously you had to add sitelinks as a block; now you add them individually and can add or remove them from campaigns and ad groups without deleting them. You can also set start and end dates. This is great if you have offers or prices mentioned in sitelinks as you can set the sitelinks to end when the offer ends. If you have a weekend offer and only want sitelinks that reference the offer to show at weekend you can now control this. 

With an AdWords enhanced campaign you can bid differently on different locations you are targeting within the same campaign. For example, suppose you run a cupcake delivery business in Clapham, London. You may be targeting the whole of London, but clicks from Clapham will result have a higher ROI, therefore it would be worth increasing the bid for Clapham. You are now able to do so without having to set up another campaign.

 

Although you don’t have to switch to AdWords enhanced campaigns right away, it is best to start thinking about it now. Chances are you are going to have to fold some mobile and computer-targeted campaigns together. When you finally take the plunge and update your campaigns bear in mind the negatives and ensure you make the most of the positives.