Your AdWords Enhanced Campaigns Questions Answered

Your AdWords Enhanced Campaigns Questions Answered:
This post answers all of your AdWords Enhanced Campaigns questions so that you can confidently know what to expect when you upgrade to them. The questions in this post are based on the most common questions I hear from clients and those who will be working on Enhanced Campaigns, so there should be something useful in this post for anyone who will soon be making the switch. All AdWords campaigns will automatically  be switched to Enhanced Campaigns from July 22^nd 2013 so make sure you learn about the new system before then!
Do I have to switch to Enhanced Campaigns?
Yes. On the 22nd of July 2013 all AdWords campaigns will be upgraded to Enhanced Campaigns.
This switch will happen automatically and if you haven’t already merged your campaigns, they will all automatically target all devices (mobile, tablet and desktop), regardless of how you originally set them up.
To avoid this, and make sure you’re getting the most out of Enhanced campaigns, I would highly recommend merging and switching to them now. You can find out about merging all your campaigns in the Google guide.
Do I have to target mobile devices with AdWords Enhanced campaigns?
No. You can still choose not to target mobile devices within AdWords Enhanced Campaigns by going to each of your campaigns, and bidding -100% in the device preferences settings:

Can I set a specific daily budget for Mobile devices with Enhanced Campaigns?
Unfortunately there is no way of allocating a specific daily spend to mobile devices. This is frustrating for anyone who had previous separate mobile and tablet campaigns, as it means there’s no way to put a cap on how much of your budget is used on those devices.
Do Enhanced Campaigns cost more?
It doesn’t cost anything to switch to enhanced campaigns, and you can find a step-by-step guide on how to switch to enhanced campaigns here.
Because enhanced campaigns will mean that more advertisers are forced to have their ads served on tablet devices (Google combines tablets and desktop into one device with Enhanced Campaigns), you may find that if you previously bid on tablet devices your Cost per Click for them may increase.
You may also find that you need to increase your bids slightly in order to get a better Click through Rate, because tablet devices usually only have the top two positions available for ads, and so if your ads are in position three or lower their Click through Rate will be lower.
Unfortunately there is no way to set separate bids for tablet devices so you may just have to increase your standard desktop bids (which include tablet) in order to achieve a better average position.
Will Enhanced Campaigns affect my Quality Score?
Enhanced Campaigns do not affect how Quality Score is calculated, and switching to Enhanced Campaigns will not directly affect your Quality Score. Having said this, the affect of having tablets and desktops targeted together means that your CTR (Click through Rate) may suffer if you are not within the top two positions the majority of the time (tablets often only have two positions for ads at the centre of a search page). CTR is a factor which affects Quality Score and so this may result in a lower Quality Score.
In order to avoid this drop, ensure your bids are sufficient enough to get your ads within the top two positions most of the time.
If you have to add any keywords, ads or ad groups to your original campaigns which were previously only in mobile or tablet campaigns, the Quality Score for mobile devices will not be affected (according to Google).
How will AdWords Enhanced campaigns affect Display Advertising?
If you have separate mobile or tablet campaigns for your display network advertising, you will need to undergo a merging process for placements and audiences when you move to enhanced campaigns.
I would recommend fully backing up your account before you start this process by exporting a CSV of the whole account from AdWords editor.
You should go to the Display Networks tab for each campaign, and then the Placements tab. You will need to make sure all placements which are within your mobile or tablet campaign, are also within your standard desktop campaigns (which will become your main enhanced campaign).

I found the easiest way to do this is by having your AdWords account open in two browser tabs (or windows if you’ve got two screens). One browser tab or window should show your placements in your original desktop campaign, and the other should show your mobile / tablet campaign. You should then be able to cross reference the campaigns easily and ensure all placements within your mobile / tablet campaigns are also within your original desktop campaign. If you have used placement exclusions, you will need to do the same process outlined above for these.
You should then go to the Interests & Remarketing tab, where you’ll see the current audiences for the campaign:

You then need to do the same thing as you did with the placements, and ensure all audiences are set up in your original desktop campaign. You won’t need to set up remarketing lists again, just apply the lists to the right ad groups in your original desktop campaign.
You should also merge your ads by copying any ads which are in your mobile / tablet campaigns into your desktop campaign, if they are not already within the desktop campaign. I would recommend doing this in AdWords Editor for ease. You should also select ‘mobile’ within the device preferences drop-down-menu in AdWords editor for any mobile-specific ads:

As with merging search campaigns, you’ll also need to merge your budgets and settings such as scheduling.
Once you’ve completed this process, make sure you pause your old tablet / mobile campaigns are paused.
You also need to set your bid adjustments in the device settings tab illustrated in the referencing area:

How will Enhanced Campaigns affect Product Listing Campaigns? (PLAs)
If you have separate PLA campaigns for mobile and tablet devices, you’ll need to merge these campaigns too, by ensuring that all product targets are included within the original desktop campaign, and then turning off the mobile / tablet campaigns and moving their daily spend over to the main desktop PLA campaign.
Do I need to do anything to my website for Enhanced Campaigns?
You don’t need to make any changes to your website when you move to enhanced campaigns.
Having said this, you should ensure your website functions correctly on tablet devices (and mobile if you choose to bid on mobile devices). As there is no way to opt out of serving ads on tablets, your site must function on them in order to have any chance of converting.
If you are thinking of making changes to your site so it functions on tablet devices, you should consider ‘future proofing’ it by using responsive design.  This is Google’s recommendation over mobile sites and it means that your website will adapt to whatever device it is shown on.
How will Enhanced Campaigns affect Conversion Optimiser?
If you use AdWords Conversion Optimiser Tool, you will need to set your mobile bid adjustment to -100% as Conversion Optimiser isn’t currently compatible with any other bid adjustments. This is because Conversion Optimizer automatically accounts for differences in conversion rates across devices, days, times, and locations and bid adjustments are already built into it.
How will Enhanced Campaigns affect AdWords Scheduling?
Your current scheduling will remain the same on your main campaign which you upgrade to an Enhanced Campaign, however be sure to check that your scheduling in that campaign covers all the times of day that your previous mobile / tablet campaign used.
Do I lose any data when I upgrade to Enhanced Campaigns?
For existing keywords in your enhanced campaign, data will remain the same. If you have added new ad groups , ads or keywords which were previously only in mobile campaigns, you won’t see their historic data unfortunately.
If you upgrade to some additional Enhanced Campaign features such as Enhanced Call Extensions or Sitelinks, the data which was available for your original call extensions will be removed. There is no way to avoid this but you could take a full export of your account data within AdWords before you make the switch, so that you have it to hand if you need to refer to it.
What if my site converts differently on Tablet Campaigns?
Unfortunately there is nothing you can do to separate tablet targeting with enhanced campaigns, but if you apply all the practices that you used to use on your tablet campaigns to the new Enhanced Campaign, it will be more likely to perform in a similar way. For example as mentioned earlier in this post, you should ensure your bids are always high enough to be in the top two positions on a tablet device.
How will Enhanced Campaigns affect my bids?
Enhanced campaigns provide lots of useful bid adjustment features which allow you to adjust bids based on location, device and schedule. It is important to note that all bid adjustments are cumulative, so if you put a 5% increase for a certain location, and a 5% increase on a certain time of day, al of those increases will be added on top of the last increase. So if a user is in Brighton and you have chosen to increase bids by 5% for anyone in Brighton, and they are searching at 2pm, when you happen to have scheduled your bids to be a further 6% higher, the second bid adjustment will take place based on the already adjusted bid. This means you may end up with some much higher bids if you don’t consider all your bid adjustments in conjunction with each other.
How can I make sure mobile traffic goes to my mobile site if I can’t control it in different campaigns?
If your site automatically displays as a mobile site by detecting the users device, then you do not need to make any adjustments to ensure your traffic gets to your mobile site. This is also true of sites which use responsive design.
If you have a mobile site where your URLs are different, for example http://www.yourwebsite.com and http://www.yourwebsite.com/mobile/ you can use ValueTrack parameters to manage your keyword level URLs for mobile devices. This is relatively easy to implement and you can learn about it here.

Hopefully this post has answered some of your questions about switching to AdWords Enhanced Campaigns, but if I’ve missed anything or there is anything else you’d like to have answered please leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you.
Image source:

Scribble question marks from Bigstock.
The post Your AdWords Enhanced Campaigns Questions Answered appeared first on Koozai.com

DIGITAL JUICE