Aiming to ease the process of managing both mobile and desktop campaigns, Google has combined its Ad Words offerings into a single product called enhanced campaigns, which launches globally Feb. 6.
Marshall Self, head of media solutions for Google Canada, said the tweak to the service will make managing campaigns on Ad Words less time consuming. “Instead of having to cobble together a bunch of different campaigns and compare separate reports and doing ad extensions, now advertisers can easily manage that process in one place,” he said.
Self said the change is a response to a shift in consumer behaviour. As consumers move from device to device, he said advertisers should deliver ads that fit the situation they’re in. A pizza restaurant, for example, might want to offer a discount offer to mobile users near a store, but offer links to desktop users. Enhanced campaigns is designed to offer a simplified way of doing so.
“It makes it easier to have control because it’s all happening within a single campaign, opposed to saying ‘What am I doing with my mobile campaign? What am I doing with my desktop campaign?’ Self said.
Sylvain Pastor, Mediative‘s performance group manager, said while the changes may be beneficial to smaller advertisers with limited resources, larger advertisers and agencies won’t get any new targeting capability out of the update.
He sees the changes as a way for Google to drive mobile ad dollars – which are sure to be a future driver of growth – rather than a boon for advertisers.
“The flipside of this update is that it might not be as easy in the future to target smartphones and tablets separately, and we can expect to lose some control and visibility over the performance of campaigns by device in general,” he said, noting, for example, that Google has confirmed it will no longer allow advertisers to target consumers by specific operating systems, such as Android or iOS.
