As of the time of this writing, it’s been just over 3 weeks since the release of enhanced campaigns, the biggest upgrade to AdWords in the last 5 years. Initially, search marketers reacted with panic and concern – an online petition appeared, asking for Google to bring back more granular targeting options in AdWords! Are Search Engine Marketers Warming up to AdWords Enhanced Campaigns? Let’s find out!
Enhanced Campaigns Disliked by People Who Hadn’t Tried It Yet
At my company, WordStream, we conducted an informal poll of approximately 200 advertisers who attended one of our webinars, on Friday February 15 – just over a week after the initial launch of enhanced campaigns.
We asked advertisers if they had a chance to use the new enhanced campaigns in AdWords, to which just 14% of advertisers said yes, as illustrated in the webinar screen capture below:
Now, even though only 14% of respondents had a chance to try out the new enhanced campaigns, when asked a follow up question: “What do you think of the new AdWords enhanced campaigns?”, excluding those who were indifferent/no-opinion, detractors outnumbered fans by whopping 24:1 margin, as shown here:
Also, nearly half of the advertisers who said they were upset about enhanced campaigns hadn’t tried it out yet.
17% of Advertisers Have Already Upgraded to Enhanced Campaigns
Now fast forward another week and a half to Tuesday, February 26, which is roughly 3 weeks from the time of the enhanced campaigns announcement.
Again, approximately 200 advertisers attending a WordStream webinar event were asked if they had upgraded to enhanced campaigns yet – 17% of advertisers said they had upgraded – which seems like a high number considering that Google had just finished rolling out enhanced campaigns to accounts in February!
Online Petition Losing Steam?
While 17% of AdWords advertisers were busy upgrading to enhanced campaigns, it’s also worth noting that the online petition seems to have lost some momentum and has been stuck at around 900 signatures for the past week. The petition is now adding roughly 5-10 signatures per day, which isn’t a huge number considering Google has several million advertisers.
Disclaimer: Not a Scientific Study
I run WordStream webinars every week or so and promote them via Twitter, Facebook, Google+, my blog, email, Google Display Network, etc. – and this generally produces a random sampling of attendees. However, approximately 10% of my webinar attendees were existing WordStream customers, which probably biases the survey results.
Also, I stupidly didn’t ask the identical questions at the two events. Therefore I freely admit that the data here isn’t a true scientific survey – it is what it is. However it seems to me based on my admittedly imperfect observations here, that the more people use enhanced campaigns, the more they find stuff they like.
Have you upgraded to the new Enhanced Campaigns yet? What do you think about them? Are you warming up to Adwords Enhanced Campaigns? Let me know in the comments below!
