google's mobile mandate: how marketers can prepare for adwords enhanced campaigns
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Googles Mobile MandateHow Marketers Can Prepare for AdWords Enhanced Campaigns
February 2013
360i LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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By Jason Hartley, Group Media Director, Search Marketing Practice Lead, and Hank Beaver, Group Media
Director, Search Media Operations at 360i
Executive SummaryGoogle hasannounced an update to its advertising model that will formally usher all of its advertisers into the
mobile era. The new Enhanced Campaigns will bring mobile to the masses in a manner that will help
resource-strapped small businesses, but will pose challenges for larger, more sophisticated search
marketers in their perpetual quest for granularity, transparency and associated ROI.
As a trend, most Google advances (Universal Search, Google+ and others) have rewarded sophisticated
search advertisers by delivering solutions that hold new opportunities for those leveraging superior
technology, targeting and talent. Google has established a reputation for creating innovations that benefit the
upper echelon of advertisers, and for lifting search from the top down rather than focusing on the challenges
faced by smaller advertisers. Enhanced Campaigns, however, take away some of the bidding, device and
structural granularity that has established AdWords as the dominant search advertising platform among
large-scale advertisers.
The good news is that sophisticated marketers have been optimizing their campaigns for mobile devices for
quite some time. Advertisers that have positioned themselves ahead of the pack those having already
established and tested mobile strategies for bidding and optimization will need to identify new approaches
for meeting their goals within a new environment.
Key Takeaways
1. With Enhanced Campaigns, Google is forcing mobile adoption on all advertisers. The recent
update is a clear play to bring less-sophisticated advertisers to the next level. For smaller
advertisers, Enhanced Campaigns will simplify the process of running on mobile devices, which to
date has been complex and technical, and allow them to more easily scale their campaigns beyond
PC-based paid search. For larger advertisers not yet investing in mobile, the announcement serves
as a mandate that mobile is too big of an opportunity to miss. For large advertisers that are ahead of
the curve when it comes to mobile, this announcement may be viewed with disappointment.
Historically, Google has been synonymous with granularity after all, the QS (Quality Score) metric
at the heart of the algorithm is all about rewarding all parties for the best ad match to the right user,
right device and right time. Enhanced Campaigns seems out of step with this mantra.
2. The single-campaign format will lead to a loss of some targeting and control at least in the
short term. Since advertisers will no longer be able to create granular campaign segments for
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PC/Laptop, mobile and tablet, they will need to incorporate and test new methods for optimizing
across devices within the singular Enhanced Campaigns format. For luxury retailers and advertisers
whose research has clearly demonstrated that tablet users have different demographic, consumption
and behavior patterns, this is a net negative in the near term as tablets are no longer broken out as
unique targeting options.
3. The auction will get more heated, with a probable rise in mobile CPCs. There likely will be morenet mobile competition and less net granularity, which theoretically will be a recipe for increased
mobile CPCs. On the consumer side of the coin, it is reasonable to assume that the mobile ad
experience will improve. By taking control of where certain ads are displayed, Google will be able to
use its data to decipher good mobile experiences from bad ones. For example, insight into
bounce rate or other metrics will allow Google to re-assign poorly optimized mobile ads to the
desktop.
When Google announces any change to AdWords, its news. And when the change is a major one as is
the case here as it represents a significant shift in its view of search it is huge news. The following report
outlines the update and implications for sophisticated AdWords advertisers.
Googles Mobile Mindset
To understand what precipitated the introduction of Enhanced Campaigns, some context is necessary. At the
2012 Open Mobile Summit, Google announced that it was moving toward a mobile first philosophy.
Obviously mobile which in this case includes smartphones and tablets has exploded in terms of users,
comprising about25 percent of all searchestoday. But due to the complexity of managing and tracking
mobile campaigns in addition to their PC/Laptop campaigns, marketers have been somewhat slow to adapt
to that change even though the tools to do so have long been in place within AdWords.
Google decided that to help marketers adapt more effectively, it needed to restructure how AdWords users
manage their accounts. Whereas media managers must currently create multiple iterations of essentially the
same campaign one for PC/Laptop, one for tablets, one for smartphones the new system will require just
one campaign that can be targeted to multiple devices and platforms.
Google has also taken away the ability to target tablets, because its data show the gap in performance
between PC/Laptop and tablets has shrunk due to the proliferation of cheaper tablets. (Historically tablets
have converted better and had higher AOVs because tablet owners were more affluent.) Additionally, it will
no longer be possible to run a mobile-only campaign. While this could streamline workflow, there are some
tradeoffs especially in terms of bid and budget management.
Impact on Media Strategy
The following section outlines the key changes that come with Enhanced Campaigns, their implications and
some thoughts about how advertisers should manage their campaigns when the switchover goes into effect.
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Bid Strategy
As stated above, rather than using disparate campaigns to manage across devices, advertisers will now
create a single campaign with bids that are tied to a default PC/Laptop bid. This is important because
marketers will no longer be able to manipulate mobile and desktop campaigns within their respective silos.
Instead, advertisers will need to introduce new tactics, such as using a bid multiplier a percentage of the
default desktop bid to bid for mobile at the campaign level.
For instance, if you see that the ROI for smartphones is lower than it is for PC/laptop, you will set your bid
lower until you reach target ROI. However, just because a keyword is in a campaign with other similar
keywords, there is no guarantee that the mobile multiplier will be the same because performance often varies
from keyword to keyword. Before the change to Enhanced Campaigns, advertisers could bid based on those
variations across all devices. Now, marketers will need to identify an acceptable average across keywords in
a campaign (which involves overpaying for some keywords and underpaying for others), limit campaigns to
just variations of a keyword, or come up with workarounds.
For advertisers, more labor will be required to achieve the same result as in the past. Large advertisers will
have to create more campaign-level granularity, putting in greater effort for a result that seems to be less
certain than before.
Managing Creative
Creative messaging will work a bit differently as well, and advertisers will likely find the difference an
improvement. Since marketers will be running what are essentially blended campaigns simultaneously
targeting mobile, tablets and PC/laptops, their creative will automatically display across all devices.
Marketers with a mobile messaging strategy will still be able to craft ads that are only assigned to
smartphones. There will also likely be some ability to customize creative by location, but like many things at
this early stage, how that will be managed remains unclear. What is clear is that advertisers with creative
strategies tailored to each device will be better positioned within the new environment.
Measurement
Last March,Google updatedits privacy policy and Terms of Service. This update allowed individuals to work
more seamlessly across all Google products and made it easier for Google to tailor the experience to each
individual, as well as increase the ability to share information. This was the first step in Googles effort to
track users across products and devices. That step, coupled with this new approach to AdWords, results in a
greatly improved attribution solution, as Google will be able to track conversions across devices.
Google will also start tracking more types of conversions (e.g. app downloads and time per call) to help
marketers measure searchs worth beyond direct sales, and will do away with the $1/call charge for phone
extensions. There are two things to consider, however: the advertiser must use Google Conversion tags and
the cross-device attribution will work only for users who remain signed in (that official number is not
available, but assume a small percentage of overall users). Brands that are wary of sharing their data with
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Google will have to decide whether the benefits of better attribution outweigh their concerns about keeping
the data.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Enhanced Campaigns is that even though Google is embracing a
mobile first mentality, it appears as though it has, at least for now, prioritized streamlined workflow over
greater control of mobile campaigns. Search marketers have had the tendency to see mobile as an add-on to
traditional search campaigns, and initially Enhanced Campaigns could reinforce that perception by using
PC/Laptop as the foundation for campaigns. In the long term, though, we expect to see improved tools and
targeting specifically designed to make mobile campaigns more advanced.
Conclusion
The introduction of Enhanced Campaigns represents a very mixed story for search marketers. For the
average search marketer, Enhanced Campaigns represents a win as now those who have not had the time,
or perhaps resources, to develop their search programs will be empowered to leverage the mobile
opportunity. For more sophisticated marketers, the change initially represents as many challenges (e.g., lossof bid control and loss of tablet granularity) as opportunities. As usual, the race will now be on to figure out
how best to compete in this new game.
Editors note: This report was updated from its original version.
About 360i360i is an award-winning digital marketing agency that drives results for Fortune 500 marketers through
insights, ideas and technologies. 360i helps its clients think differently about their online presence and evolve
their strategies to take advantage of the new world of marketing communications one where brands andconsumers engage in interactive and multi-directional conversations. Ad Age recently named 360i the #2
Agency in the country in its 2013 A-List issue and also named it one of the Best Places to Work in
Marketing & Media for two years running. Current clients include Oreo, Capital One, Coca-Cola, Bravo and
Diageo, among others. For more information, please visitblog.360i.comor follow us on Twitter@360i.
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