3 New AdWords Automations You Can’t Afford To Miss

Last month, I covered a checklist for SEM success and made the point that great AdWords management requires a lot of hard work. Luckily, there are ways you can automate some of the 26 steps in my checklist.
While I’ve covered many of the techniques for automation in my previous posts about AdWords Scripts, there are a few new features in AdWords that are worth checking out if you’re looking for ways to make managing the day-to-day just a little bit easier.

Custom Columns + Automated Rules = Easy Automation

Custom columns were quietly launched in December 2014 to little fanfare, even though I think this is one of the more useful new additions to the AdWords interface in a long time.
While it’s not as significant as a product like Shopping Campaigns, it is exciting because it makes managing accounts a whole lot easier. Let me explain…
Say you’re tracking multiple types of conversions in your account, like orders and newsletter signups. Before Custom Columns, the only way to see which campaigns drove which type of conversion was by using the “Segments” button. While this showed the data, it also cluttered up the screen with lots of old conversion types I don’t use anymore.
Because segments add additional data in new rows, and because the sorting is done on the total number of all conversions, it offers no quick way to see which campaign has driven the most newsletter signups.
When looking at segmented data, it’s also not possible to filter the view –for example, to see just campaigns that have at least 10 newsletter signups and an average CPA below my target.

In a segmented view of AdWords, you can see details about different conversions, but it also clutters up your screen with more data than you may want to see.

The custom columns feature changes all that by making it possible to create new columns in the interface that contain just the one piece of data you want to see.
In my example below, I use it to show a new column for newsletter signups and another one for just orders. I no longer have to look at all my defunct conversions just to see the two I really care about.

Create custom columns in AdWords to see a segmented metric by itself, for example, all the conversions with a specific name.

Now, instead of cluttering up my screen with rows of data for segments, the data I want to see are shown in columns — that means less filtering and sorting work, letting me further refine my view into the data I need to make decisions.

Custom columns show the same data that’s available in segments, but in a much cleaner way, and one that can be sorted and filtered.

So, how is this relevant to automation? The trick is that columns can be used in AdWords’ Automated Rules.
You may already be familiar with creating automated rules that pause or enable ads, or change bids based on metrics like clicks, impressions and CPAs; but now, you can make these rules work with new metrics that are based on your own custom columns.

The metrics from a custom column can be used to trigger an Automated Rule in AdWords giving you the ability to create automations that were impossible in the past.

The example I’ve shown also works at the ad group and keyword levels, so you could set up an automated rule that decreases a bid or notifies you via email if a keyword’s cost exceeds some limit without driving any orders.
Even if the keyword has a lot of newsletter signups which are added to the total conversions column, now I can set my automations to use just the right segment of data that makes the most sense.