Google AdWords changes the game with enhanced campaigns

Within the last hour Google has announced what is being described by many commentators as one of the most fundamental changes to Adwords in years. 
 
The focus of the change is to enable advertisers to target people at the right time, in the right place, with the right advert and call-to-action. Effectively, the structuring of Adwords campaigns is becoming device independent, removing the ability to have specific mobile, tablet or desktop targeted campaigns.

This is a hugely important update - and mindset change - for any advertiser who is investing in PPC.

What Enhanced Campaigns means for advertisers

Here are a few important points to consider/ changes that will affect your campaigns. For instance, it will no longer be possible to have separate Adwords campaigns for mobile. Marketers will have to use one campaign to span all devices.

To allow advertisers to optimise mobile activity separately to desktop activity, there will be a multiple bid adjustments available at keyword level. Regular bids will be used for determining desktop Ad Rank while bid adjustments will be applied to that regular bid to determine mobile Ad Rank.
The bid adjustments will range from -100% (which will turn mobile advertising off) to +300% which will bid four times the amount of the desktop targeting.

So, in situations where an advertiser wants to secure a high position on desktop but the advert is not to appear on mobile, a relatively high bid should be placed, but with a bid adjustment of -100%.
Conversely if mobile is the focus over desktop, a relatively low bid should be set with a high multiplier. A £0.25 bid with a +300% bid adjustment effectively says that the most you’re prepared to pay to appear on desktop search is 25p per click, while on mobile you’re prepared to spend is £1 per click.

In addition to this, other bid adjustments can be implemented based on time of day (as we currently have via ‘day parting’) and proximity. That is, the ability to adjust bids upwards or downwards based on the searcher’s physical location.

All of these multipliers can be ‘stacked’. For example, if a business wanted to target customers who are searching within a certain distance of one of their stores, within business hours, on a mobile phone, bids could be adjusted upwards for mobile, proximity and time ensuring that they have the maximum possibility of getting their advert in front of that potential customer.
Targeting can be enhanced further still through different advert formats. Adverts can still be created and optimised differently for mobile and desktop searches by specifying which adverts you want to use for mobile and which for desktops.

Different adverts can have different features based on the context and circumstance of the searcher. Worth noting is the fact that if only ‘mobile preferred’ adverts exist they will show for desktop searches as well as for mobile searches and vice-versa.