As Sergey and Larry prepare to throw the switch on Enhanced Campaigns, so the chatter on the wires of the PPC community is hotting up.
Enhanced campaigns offer a lot – all sorts of clever tweaks and adjustments at all kinds of levels, a veritable array of possibilities which it is hard to assimilate, let alone manage.
And yet, as the signaled date approaches and we are beyond the point of no return, I for one, am seeing more and more parallels with Y2K – remember that?
As the Millennium approached, so the fear-mongers warned that computer systems were going to crash, not knowing how to handle the date. Would computers suddenly think the date was Jan 1 1900? Would banks cancel mortgages, or charge a thousand years worth of compound interest on credit card loans? Would traffic control systems collapse with thousands of planes flying blind?
It was scary stuff.
Then the champagne corks popped and the fireworks fizzed and everyone forgot what the fuss was all about.
Are enhanced campaigns going to be nothing more than the latest in a series of anti-climaxes?
The answer is – probably.
So the next question is why?
And, unfortunately, the next answer is – Because most people don’t care.
The majority of Google AdWords advertisers are using a tiny fraction of the platform’s capabilities. We use Word to write letters, we use Photoshop to crop images, and we use AdWords to market our businesses. Sitelinks? No idea. Ad Scheduling? Never heard of it. Geo-targeting? What for? Remarketing, Call Extensions, Location Extensions, Product Listing Ads, the list os a long one…
Most business owners use the top level functionality of AdWords – which is a shame because, as with what Photoshop can do when used by an expert, so AdWords can be used to great effect when harnessed by professionals.
Since so little of what AdWords can do is actually being done, the impact of the switch over to EC will likely be minimal – and – as always – those who allocate the time and resources to leveraging the potential will be the winners.
Do nothing and nothing is likely to happen to your accounts. You will simply continue to waste that proportion of your marketing you are currently wasting. There will just be enhanced ways to waste it.
