So, the other day I was changing some settings and noticed this little guy in one of my accounts:
Yeah, I should have noticed this on the AdWords blog, but I didn’t. Hey, I get busy just like everyone else! So, back to my story: I notice this guy, and I’m all “Whaaat?!” Because I’ve been splitting out Display campaigns like it was my job (oh, wait…) in order to make sure all my settings and budgets were specific to all the different ad types and targeting options I had set up. But now, you’re telling me I can do this at the ad group level? This could be amazing.
We have a larger client that may ask us to do Display advertising for them. I made a proposal for what I’d do for them, and it involved a LOT of campaigns. I basically had text and image ads in their own campaigns in addition to layering each targeting option in every possible way in their own campaign. So, for example, I could have one campaign for product X with interest category Y and topic Z with text ads. I would also have a campaign for Product X with interest category Y, a contextual marketing keyword list, and text ads. I’d do that forever until I had all combinations of all targeting methods and ad types. This, I proposed, would allow me to have all possible scenarios for success on the Display network up and running from the start.
But, with this new feature, I’ll be able to do this at the ad group level. So, I could have a campaign that just says “Display” and have all the ad groups in there, and still be able to specify the targeting correctly for all of them. But, do I want to? No, I really don’t. I don’t for three main reasons: 1. Budgets. I still can’t control budgets at the ad group level, so that’s no bueno. I’ll still want to be able to control budgets differently for everything that performs differently. 2. Organization. Thinking of all the different targeting layers and ad type combinations being in one campaign hurts my head. This might not be as much of an issue if you’re only doing a couple of different options, but for this client, ouch. 3. All the other settings. I didn’t lump budget into this, because I think it’s way more important to me than all of the other settings, but just think of all the other stuff you wouldn’t be able to control at the ad group level: day parting, geo targets, devices, bidding types, rotation settings, etc. If you want to be able to set any of these settings differently between different targeting methods and ad types, you’ll want to keep it all broken out into their own campaigns.
I’m not saying this won’t be useful, ever, but I don’t see any reason to start using it right away or change the way I’m planning on organizing this client’s Display campaigns. What do you think? Have any of you changed your Display strategies because of this new setting feature? Do you see yourself changing strategy because of it in the future?
