It’s that time of year to count our blessings, and boy, is there a lot to be thankful for in the SEM world! Many of the major channels rolled out great new features in 2016, some of which were long-awaited changes (we’re looking at you Adwords device bid adjustments and Bing Ads Editor for Mac). I asked the Clix team for everyone’s list of features they’re most thankful for this year.
Here are mine to kick things off:
Expanded Text Ads
This is a predictable favorite but I do love them! I love having a second headline and extended character counts; I always hated having to abbreviate words in the standard text ads because I thought it made them look spammy (mktg for marketing, mgmt for management, etc, etc).
Device Bid Adjustments
Another predictable favorite but it can’t go unmentioned! I definitely saw extreme performance differences, as many of you did, among devices and was relieved to finally get this capability
AdWords Demographics for Search Ads
I’m all about control in my campaigns, so I am loving having additional insight into Search campaign performance!
Bing Ads Compare Performance
I used the compare date ranges feature regularly in AdWords to compare performance between various time periods; it was extremely useful especially in helping me troubleshoot issues so it was a welcome addition to Bing.
From Bethany:
Bing Ads Editor for Mac
I’ve been a Mac user ever since starting to work in the paid search world 6 years ago. I’ve been holding on to my 10 pound, pink Dell laptop from college for the sole purpose of using Bing Ads Editor on it. Now, I can finally retire that laptop.
AdWords Bid Adjustments for Desktop, Tablets, and Mobile Devices!
Most of my accounts have significantly different performance on all three device types, so I’m very happy to be able to set different bid adjustments for each. Even better, I can now have mobile-only campaigns again. This is huge because as mobile traffic continues to grow, we can have separate campaign budgets solely dedicated to mobile users.
Campaign Drafts and Experiments
This feature has made running tests easier than ever for my clients. Instead of making changes to a campaign and checking performance before and after a certain date, we can tweak a campaign and run it in a controlled environment against the original version.
From Andrea:
Google Device Bid Modifiers
It’s so nice to be able use bid modifiers on any of the 3 devices.
LinkedIn Conversion Tracking
After doing more with LinkedIn this year, finally getting conversion tracking was the icing on the cake.
Everything that Pinterest has done this year (video ads, new retargeting capabilities, etc.) has been interesting to me because Pinterest is my personal favorite social media channel. I think that this channel has so many opportunities and I think that we’re going to see a lot of growth and changes here in 2017.
From Michelle:
LinkedIn Conversion Tracking
It’s been a long time in the making, but LinkedIn is starting to become a can’t miss channel for my B2B clients. Now having conversion tracking inherent in the interface is making performance analysis and optimization so much easier. Now just counting down the days until full on remarketing!
Saved Audiences
These are available in Facebook and LinkedIn, but are a surprisingly huge time saver. I can go in, create a saved audience, then utilize that audience in a number of different places in the account, update targeting as needed, or use it as a default audience in my campaigns. Saves a good amount of time in day to day campaign building.
Bing Ads Editor for Mac
The biggest improvement in my workflow this year came from getting access to the Bing Ads Editor for Mac. Needless to say, this tool has saved me countless hours of work and too many bulk sheets to count.
Also, in case you missed all of the 2016 AdWords features I found this really handy post with the full list!
What 2016 features are you most thankful for? Let us know in the comments!
