We’ve known about Enhanced Campaigns now for several months (February 2013 to be exact). The deadline for upgrading was delayed once. New “enhanced” features have rolled out and many of our PPC compatriots have been testing their upgraded campaigns. Clix did. Did you? If not, you have until Monday to upgrade to Enhanced Campaigns. Yes, that’s right. 5 days. It’s the final countdown!
Upgrade Now
Upgrade manually, or choose to use the dreaded “Upgrade Center.” Either way, now is the time to push your mobile, tablet and desktop campaigns into one amorphous blob of an Enhanced Campaign.
What to Expect
General consensus is that mobile CPCs have risen (and will continue to do so) under Enhanced Campaigns. Google, of course, refutes this… but we (Clix) have seen it, and many other advertisers have, too.
Despite the mess and frustration, some of the new features are actually a welcome change. The ability to modify bids based on geography and day parting is an effective update. Just realize that bidding is a much different game now. Here is an Enhanced Campaign bidding-best-practices-whitepaper from Google. Additionally, the new enhanced Site Links and Call Extensions work as expected and give us more flexibility.
Speaking of flexible… the new Flexible Bid Strategies are just kind of “meh” imho. Not bad. Not innovative. Just “meh.” I’m curious to know what other advertisers have seen???
What’s Next?
Well, we all have to learn to live and manage AdWords (and to a certain extent, Bing Ads, too) campaigns in an Enhanced world. There’s that.
Your PPC friends will all be making insufferable jokes.
If you are being obstinate and refusing to upgrade – know that Google will do this for you after July 22nd. Proceed with caution.
Do you run YouTube ads? Those video campaigns are getting the Enhanced treatment in the coming weeks (yay! not). And yes, it has to do with device targeting. Oh, and did I mention there is another Upgrade Center?
