Goodbye Google AdWords…Hello Google Ads!
Last month, Google announced a major rebranding effort that is scheduled to roll out today. Moving forward the global online advertising product known as AdWords will sunset and become Google Ads.
Google launched the AdWords platform on October 23, 2000 with just 350 initial advertisers who were interested in seeing if simple text ads appearing alongside Google search results could improve online brand recognition and send traffic to their websites.
It did make an impact and worked so well that Google Ads is widely recognized as the gold standard of PPC marketing. Today, 2.3 MILLION Google searches happen every SECOND and highly targeted ads serve above the organic results for most results. And let’s not forget display ads on a vast network of publisher sites, YouTube Video ads and Gmail ads.
So things have rapidly evolved and just like those darling Y2K babies who are heading off to college next month, AdWords has grown up fast too.
In a press conference announcing the rebranding efforts last month, Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s SVP of ads remarked that the new Google Ads:
“…represents the full range of advertising capabilities Google offers today… to help marketers connect with the billions of people finding answers on Search, watching videos on YouTube, exploring new places on Google Maps, discovering apps on Google Play, browsing content across the web, and more.”
So what does this mean for our builder clients? Not much, since the core purpose and functionality of Google Ads is not changing. However a new Google Ads dashboard is replacing the old version which has gone relatively unchanged for two decades. Much like the rebranding efforts, the new “Google Ads Experience” encourages advertisers to continue adapting their accounts in response to the way people discover, interact and digest information online. Accordingly, Google is encouraging advertisers to:
- Transition away from classic keyword campaigns in favor of audience-centric targeting – like custom intent and life event audiences
- Leverage the flexibility and reach of responsive search & display ads and experiment with YouTube and Gmail advertising
- Shift to machine learning functionality like automated bidding strategies to maximize relevance and account performance
So, goodbye AdWords, we will miss you but look forward to further improving our builders clients’ presence on the Google network and connecting them with eager shoppers ready to build their next home.
