The pay-per-click (PPC) world is buzzing over Google’s latest update: a new AdWords user interface. And whether you love or hate the new design, there’s one update that you need to pay attention to: the Recommendations tab.
Formerly dubbed the “Opportunities” tab in the old interface, the Recommendations option is, from our perspective, now one of the most important and powerful new features.
Why? The recommendations tab uses artificial intelligence (AI) to surface suggestions to improve campaign performance. This means that Google will provide you recommendations such as adding keywords to your account, changing bidding strategies, or even new ad copy suggestions.
The Really Good News
Testing ad copy and frequently updating copy is a necessary best practice to optimize campaign performance — something we use as part of the foundation of any digital advertising campaign we touch. For the average marketer or PPC professional, this frequent testing and optimization can be incredibly time consuming. However, this new feature has the potential streamline that optimization.
Essentially, ad copy suggestions will be made based on a combination of information including existing ad content as well as relevant information found on your landing page.
The Word of Caution
Artificial intelligence-backed ad recommendations? Sign me up, right? There’s just one thing to note: These ad suggestions, once they’re surfaced, will be automatically implemented into your account after 14 days.
Of course, this can be pretty risky if you work in regulated industries such as healthcare or financial, or work with a client or internal stakeholder who likes to approve every change made to ad copy.
However, more good news: You can opt out of this automatic implementation. All you need to do is go to your account settings and check the box shown below.
The Bottom Line
Google’s AI push breeds big opportunities to quickly and efficiently optimize your ad campaign. But since the new and improved feature was at one time easily forgotten by PPC professionals and marketers, it’s paramount to make the Recommendations tab part of your strategy to optimize performance. In addition, you also need to make the right automatic implementation choice for your business.