While there has been a lot of buzz about all of the features in the new Adwords UI, did you know that there will be a few columns and segments that will be retiring with the old?

Let’s go over some of them so you know what will be missing from the new UI once the “Return to previous AdWords” option is no longer available. Then, we’ll go over ways you can make up for the lost metrics by creating custom columns that could better fit your needs anyway.

Reporting Metrics NOT Available in the New UI

Segments

Here are the segments that aren’t available in the new UI:

• Network (although Network with search partners is available in the new UI)
• +1 annotations
• View type

Columns

There are some reporting columns that you are retiring with the old UI as well.

Call Details

• Phone call conversions (found in the conversions section)
• Phone cost
• Avg CPP

Attribution:

• Click assisted conv.
• Impr. assisted conv.
• Click assisted conv. value
• Impr. assisted conv. value
• Click-assisted conv./last click conv.
• Impr.assisted conv./last click conv.

You can see the entire list of metrics lost here.

Creating Custom Columns in the New UI

Custom columns allow you to make your own metrics based on what your business or client needs.  If you regularly use some of the reporting features above, you can recreate them using custom columns.  Otherwise, think about what parts of your total metrics you might want to see separately and use custom columns to create them.  A few ideas include:

• Mobile vs Desktop
• One Particular Conversion Action vs All Your Conversions
• One Particular Strategy out of all your Efforts

How to Create Custom Columns

1. Navigate to Campaigns, Ad groups, Ads & Extensions, or Keywords (noting custom columns aren’t available for ad extensions)
2. Click the columns icon, then select Modify columns.
3. Go to the last field on the bottom, “Custom Conversions”
4. You’ll then see the box to create your custom column. There are endless possibilities of the fields you can create using the available segments and available math operations. For one of your metrics, you can start with the following:
   1. Performance: Avg. CPM, Cost, Impression, Clicks, Ave. CPC, Avg. CPC, CTR, Avg. pos., Invalid click rate, Invalid clicks
   2. Conversions: Conversions, Cost/conv., Conv. rate, All conv. rate, All conv. value, All conv. value/click, All conv. value/cost, All conv., Conv. value, Conv. value/click, Conv. value/cost, Cost/all conv., Cross-device conv., Value/all conv., Value/conv., View-through conv.

There are numerous additional options based on which field above you select, which you’ll see in the area to the right.

For this example, I am looking at a client that has newsletter sign-ups as one of their conversion goals.  I want to be able to see just the sign-ups segmented out from the other conversion actions.

So, I clicked “+Metric” then selected “Conversions” from the Conversions drop down.  I clicked “+Metric” again and then selected my other two conversion actions to be subtracted from my conversions to be able to see just the newsletter sign-ups.

If I wanted to see the percentage of newsletter sign-ups out of total conversion actions, I could do this instead:

Notice how I changed the Column format to be a percentage instead of a number.

5. Click “save” and you’ll be taken back to your Modify Columns.  Select your new custom column and click “Apply”.

The best way to get a grip on the endless possibilities is just to get into the interface and play around with the available metrics.  If you still prefer the old UI, you can find the instructions on how to build custom columns in the old UI here.

How have you used custom columns for your reporting needs? Comment below to share.