The world of digital marketing is evolving rapidly with emerging and innovative technology. Nearly a decade ago, Google introduced Search Ads 360 to help businesses manage complex advertising campaigns, measure performance, and grow their business. Today, the way people search and the expectations for the ads they see have evolved significantly.
To stay ahead of the curve, Google has introduced a major update for Search Ads 360, revamping the interface and adding new essential features.
The new Search Ads 360 platform is highly intuitive and easy to use, with a new and improved user interface and added support for seamless integration of search engine features. Based on advertisers' feedback, the platform now offers more search engine features and campaign types to make building campaigns across external advertising platforms quick and convenient.
Most importantly, Google has put a lot of emphasis on their support in the new update. For instance, the new Search Ads 360 offers immediate support for new Google Ads features. There’s also improved support for other search engines, such as Yahoo and Microsoft Advertising. Lastly, the new enterprise features allow users to centralise and scale their daily activities across multiple accounts and search engines.
“We’re really excited about this change, on many levels. It's great to see that feedback from campaign managers was taken on board with this revamp since they are the ones in the tools, setting up and managing client campaigns." Says Richard Conway, member of the MA's Digital Special Interest Group and founder/CEO of Pure SEO, one of New Zealand's most recognised digital marketing agencies and a 2022 Google Premier Partner.
The new Search Ads 360 allows users to get more work done from a single platform, saving them time and yielding better results. Let’s look at some of these changes in more detail and how they can help your business evolve its advertisement campaigns.
As mentioned, the new Search Ads 360 platform can manage and process more data than ever before while regulating strict latency guidelines to deliver the best user experience. This allows all businesses to unlock opportunities and innovation normally accessible to enterprise, as well as centralising and scaling their campaigns. The immediate support is available for Discovery campaigns and Performance Max, a feature many businesses will welcome.
The new and refreshed look and feel of Search Ads 360 offers a user experience that closely resembles search engine tools like Microsoft Advertising and Google Ads. As the majority of Search Ads 360 users are familiar with these platforms, the new navigation design is faster and easier to understand for enterprise marketers.
According to user feedback, the new user interface is not only easier to use and navigate but also provides great value to your business. The new budget forecast and reporting feature, along with reduced complexity, makes it easier to streamline workflows and minimise workload by almost 20% as before.
With improved infrastructure, the new Search Ads 360 offers better support across multiple search engines and advertising channels, along with third-party partners. This will allow advertisers to access features from other search engines as well. For example, the new Search Ads 360 offers support for multiple new Yahoo features, such as SiteLink extension scheduling and Dynamic Ads for Search. It also introduced support for more than ten additional Microsoft Advertising features, such as local inventory ads, call extensions, responsive search ads, and additional Microsoft audience types.
“The extended search engine support puts campaign managers' needs at the centre as it allows them to do more in less time, with no added effort. This will allow us to continue to deliver success for our clients in an area that's rapidly changing. It's a win for all." Says Conway.
This will enable less task switching between advertising platforms allowing users to get the majority of their work done in a single place. User feedback indicates that the new UI helps businesses identify optimisation opportunities on a more streamlined basis allowing them to save nearly 2-3 hours per week. It’s great to see Google is actively taking feedback from advertisers and promises to add more features and channel support in the new Search Ads 360 in the coming days.
Google is known for introducing out of the box features, and the new Search Ads 360 is no different. For instance, new enterprise workflows are next level, providing new ways to scale and centralise your daily activities and key tasks, such as campaign management, automated labels, and rules. And all this is enabled from a central platform, allowing users to save time and effort while delivering better results.
It sounds like Search Ads 360 is going to be in a great place to start 2022. However, there’s more to come as the new update promises new features later this year. These include:
The existing Search Ads 360 customers use automated campaign building features, such as ad builder and inventory management, to efficiently manage their marketing at scale. The new Search Ads 360 will unify these two features into a single feature called “Templates”. This is expected to become available later this year. It will allow advertisers to enable business data across client accounts to build and update their ads at scale using their own data feed.
In the coming days, Google will replace the budget management feature in the Search Ads 360 with a new and improved feature called “Performance Centre”, which will help simplify budget management. Google has hinted that this will be available later this year, at which point users will be able to incorporate enterprise planning abilities, such as improved forecasting across multiple search engines. Using this, you can explore several hypothetical scenarios to plan and manage your media budgets.
"We look forward to seeing more features roll out later this year. As we grow and develop alongside our clients, having a system that allows us to reach scale and efficiency without the added complexity is going to be a real game changer." says Richard.
With the new update of Google Search Ads 360, 2022 is going to be an exciting year for digital advertising. It will pave the way for the next generation of enterprise innovation to streamline workflows and maximise performance. Over the next couple of months, the existing Search Ads 360 users can expect to gain access to the new release. To get a deeper insight, you can take part in the new Skillshop learning path.
Richard Conway: CEO www.pureseo.com, Co-Founder www.digitalpopcorn.co.nz, Author How to get to the Top of Google Search, Member of the Marketing Association's Digital Special Interest Group.