The presence of automation in AdWords is hardly new and, furthermore, Google has expanded everything with a pilot adds new text to advertiser’s accounts. The new program, called Ads Added by AdWords, was launched on January 26.

Paid search managers were taken aback about the news and are worried about Google taking over control of the vaunted testing and creation process. The following has been revealed so far about the test:

Advertisers were told of the pilot on January 12. Those who opted to participate found out ads were added to their ad groups within two weeks. On January 26, a second wave of advertisers were told about the pilot. Right now, 2,000 accounts have been picked to take part in the test. Interestingly, there is a two-week window to opt out. Those who haven’t received an email notification, well, they were selected for the pilot.

What specific types of accounts were considered for the actual program? Google chose to check out ad campaigns with ad rotation settings noted “Optimize for clicks” or “Optimize for conversions” that maintain ad groups by do not possess many ads.

Anyone who has opted out of the automated extension (or is pharma-style in a privacy sensitivities such as pharma) your account was pocked for the program.

What is the way ads are generated? Supposedly, for the test, the ads were created by people -- and not in an auto-generated manner -- derived from the existing ads in the landing page and the account. The ads were reviewed by members of quality assurance and a skilled product team. The sales team was even brought in to perform a creative review and engage in the pilot’s account selection.

On the Help Center page associated with the pilot program, we have ascertained any ads generated will be noted as “Added by AdWords”. The following terrible example -- and all the current ads are pretty terrible now -- Google added two more test ads in ad groups that only had one ad. Please be aware the headlines, paths, and descriptions are all found in the test phase.

Google states on that Help Center page, “We believe that adding more ads to the affected ad groups can improve these ad groups’ performance upwards of 5 to 15%.” The new ads are designed to run indefinitely. Google suggests pilot participants do not pause the ads. If conversions or click-through rates are low, the ads are going to be shown far less. Per Google’s advice, please review the ads when participating in the test.

The program is sure to raise questions and concerns about the limitation of advertiser control and the boosting of machine learning in ad creation. How would the current ad creation and vetting process exist without automation? This is the question likely being asked the most as people watch the Ads Added by AdWords pilot being rolled out.

Category Search Engine Marketing