Google Announces ‘Better, Simpler’ Ad Rotation Settings

In a shock move, Google has announced that its Adwords platform will be shaking up ad rotation optimisation by removing some of the options and replacing them with ‘simpler’ options from late September.

Current Options:

New Options:

But will these new options be ‘better’?

Firstly, instead of the ‘Optimise For Clicks’ or ‘Optimise For Conversions’ options you’ll now have to select ‘Optimise’. Optimise will automatically rotate your ads to maximise clicks by looking for signals like keywords, search terms, device location and more.

In order to use ‘Optimise For Conversions’ you’ll now have to use ‘Smart Bidding’ in conjunction with your ad rotation settings. Smart Bidding is a collection of bidding strategies within the AdWords platform that all have a different goal, these include Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximise Conversions and Enhanced CPC – these bidding strategies will now work collaboratively towards your conversion goal.

Second, the option to rotate evenly for 90 days and then optimise will also be removed leaving you with either ‘Optimise’ or ‘Do Not Optimise’.

It’s important to note here that using the Smart Bidding strategies will automatically select the ‘Optimise’ option for ad rotation to help your Conversion or ROI goal. It’s not clear yet whether you’ll be able to turn this off and optimise using your own data.

The good thing to mention about this latest change is that control of these settings will now move down to Ad Group level – so you’ll actually be able to have different rotation settings across a single campaign giving you a lot more control on that basis.

What do you think about the changes to the Ad Rotation settings?

Let us know your thoughts on these changes, for the better or worse and don’t forget, if you use the ‘Optimise’ setting you should always have 3 or more Ads to get the best result.

We’ll provide further information once this change has rolled out and let you know our results from these new optimisation settings.