When you touch the Google Ads buttons, you naturally want to get the most out of your campaigns. In this article I discuss three powerful tools and functionalities that you have at your disposal to improve the performance of your advertisements or work more efficiently.
Google Ads Editor
We are fans of the Google Ads Editor and use this tool a lot. The Editor is a free desktop application that allows you to make large-scale changes to your Google Ads account without having to manually adjust each individual item. With this tool you can quickly and efficiently manage campaigns in a clear manner.
While this was previously quite limited and only useful for bulk adjustments, you can now use it for daily work. Very useful when Google Ads is slow again… What can you do with it?
- Bulk operations: Work faster by editing multiple campaigns, ad groups and keywords at once. So you work at account level in all campaigns and ad groups at the same time (if you want). In combination with Excel, the Editor is also an effective tool for creating campaigns. You create campaigns in Excel after which you can upload them via the Import function of the Editor.
- Edit offline: make changes at your convenience and publish later (when you’re connected again).
- Analyse: Collect performance data to do your analyzes offline and in the Editor, on which you can then take immediate (bulk) action. This is also possible in the Google Ads interface, but it can sometimes be quite slow.
Custom Columns
With custom columns you can analyze the Google Ads data for slightly different and (more) specific performance indicators. The content of these columns can be anything you want, depending of course on the preconditions that Ads creates. The custom columns help you understand the performance of your ads in the way that’s most valuable to you.
It takes some practice, depending on what you want to include as columns and metrics, but it is worth it. What can you do with it?
- Measure what is important to you: add custom columns that specifically target the KPIs that are important to your company that are not included by default in Google’s column set.
- Segmentation: Break data down to specific segments, such as devices, locations, or times, to gain deeper insight into what works and what doesn’t.
- Periods: create columns that provide insight into certain metrics over, for example, the past 7, 14 and 30 days. Very useful to turn off certain optimizations!
Some of our own created columns are:
- More budget options à shows what your budget options are based on CPC, impressions and lost percentage for Search.
- Recent ROAS development à indicates the short-term development of the ROAS.
- Increased competition – it is even possible to create rule-driven columns like this one. When certain data points meet a condition, issue a warning in the form of a piece of text. In this case it indicates whether competition has increased.
Google Ads Scripts
Google Ads Scripts are scripts used to perform advanced automations and optimizations on Google Ads campaigns. With the right scripts you can carry out time-saving and profitable actions. What can you do with it?
- Gain insight: One of the best uses of Google Ads Scripts is to gain additional insight that you normally do not (easily) obtain by analyzing data within the interface. You can think of, for example, Performance Max, which provides little insight into the interface. Fortunately, this is getting better and better. But also consider bringing together Merchant Center and Google Ads information or N-Gram analytics or much more. Just search Google Ads Scripts, there are hundreds of them. Some of them won’t work, because they have to be actively maintained. Sometimes it takes a while to find the one who works.
- Reporting: use scripts to create certain reports that provide you with more information. You can of course also do this within the interface, but manually and again whenever you want.
- Check and warnings: Have scripts proactively check for issues in your account and receive notifications when action is needed. Think of no costs, no impressions, or all kinds of other errors that you can take action on.
By using the Google Ads Editor, custom columns, and Google Ads Scripts effectively, you can optimize your ad campaigns, save time, and get better results.
Bonus
There is one development that we should not forget, the bonus tool, namely AI. Within the Google Ads interface, and that of Merchant Center, Google already offers AI here and there in the form of the Product Studio and the adjustment/creation of images within Performance Max and Display.
There are also all kinds of third-party AI tools that help you with Google Ads, such as campaign creation, ad creation, and what we are fans of: Google Ads data analysis. There are many AI tools available, both specifically for Google Ads and more generic ones that you can use for SEA. Test them, not everything is likely to be interesting or have a good output for you.
Do you use Google Ads tools? If so, which one? Let us know in the comments.
Source: www.frankwatching.com
