Let’s Talk Enhanced Campaigns

If you were hoping for some good news, this is not it, but its close. Every informed individual in the PPC world knows that Google’s new enhanced campaign slated to roll out in June is the worst thing that could happen to them. So what are enhanced campaigns? Well, in a nutshell, it is more control and revenue for google, less segmentation and precision for online advertisers.

What is the Fuss About?

A lot. Google has decided to categorize desktop and tablet search as the same things and allow advertisers to modify bids on mobile searches, but not have independent mobile or tablet based campaigns. What this means is that if you are a PPC manager who cares about being granular, you might as well forget it. For example, in the past if you had several campaigns with bids segmented by mobile networks, operating systems and geographic location, say your goodbyes before June because you would not be able to do that anymore. You would still be able to segment bids by mobile networks and operating systems on the display networks, just not individual mobile campaigns. What this does is make it harder to make decisions on which keywords to pull out since some keywords work for desktop but might not provide the same results for mobile and tablet searches.

Managing your spend based on devices is also going to be seriously affected since you might not know exact amounts being spent on different parts of one campaign. Essentially, Google wants to make it easier for you spend more on keywords, making them more money in the process. The mobile bid modifier they are introducing is just not precise enough to help in making key decisions concerning bids and keyword selection. Campaigns segmented by geographic location would also be affected slightly, in this case, smaller accounts that operate in one location might not need to worry.

There Must be one Good Thing About This

Surprisingly, there are some advantages. Sitelink and Call extensions are more granular in the sense that they are now available on the ad group level. This means that google sitelinks can be scheduled to run at certain times and now it is offered to every account irrelevant of how small or big. Call extensions would be more useful for accounts that make use of call tracking for reporting purposes. If you are a fan of CPA bidding, then this part is good news.

Google’s Enhanced campaigns is more bad news than good, however, restructuring campaigns and adding more campaigns with different mobile bid modifiers is a step towards combating this update. Most online marketing companies and PPC managers would agree that lumping desktop and tablets together as one device is a mistake on Google’s part,but if by June the update rolls out, all we can do is live with it.