Here's What's New in Google Search Ads 360

Google announced the debut of the new Search Ads 360 (SA360) experience in early February, with big improvements coming to their premier search management platform in 2022.

A revamped user interface, greater search engine support, and advanced enterprise innovation are among the anticipated enhancements.

The new experience has been a long time coming for someone who has spent many hours toggling back and forth between the former SA360 and the Google Ads' UI.

SA360 advertisers will benefit from the upgrades, which include a more efficient workflow and improved cross-engine compatibility, all under a unified search management platform.

Below is an in-depth look at what to expect when SA360 launches in 2022.

“It’s a total game changer that most Google Ads content is now available for management. This not only extends productivity and automation, but unlocks the ability to activate things like Value-Based Bidding in a way that was never before possible.” Brent Ramos - Product Director, Adswerve

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Better Workflow Efficiency

The new SA360 experience has been developed to improve process efficiencies by incorporating improvements that eliminate needless repetitive tasks.

The new and better cross-platform support for the Google Ads Labels feature is one of the upgrades that we’re most enthusiastic about.

Advertisers will no longer need to recreate and reapply the same labels because any labels linked to Google Ads will appear in the new SA360 interface immediately.

This was one of our colleagues' and clients' most desired features, so it's amazing that it's finally here.

The previous requirement of manually duplicating and reapplying labels in SA360, such as bulk edits and excel uploads, will no longer be necessary! With centralization, there are greater opportunities to scale due to improved cross-advertiser management.

Customizing reporting views or campaign management at the "Advertiser" platform level in the prior SA360 always worked independently.

This will be addressed by the new SA360 interface, which will allow you to report and manage campaign activities across numerous Advertisers at the same time.

The ability to create custom columns (previously called formula columns) at the Manager (previously "Agency") level, to make bulk changes to multiple accounts at the same time, and to duplicate entities across engines or the Advertiser level with a new copy and paste function are all notable workflow improvements.

Marketers with several search engine accounts and agencies who want to manage client reporting activities at the same time would benefit from these new SA360 improvements.

A Friendly User Interface with Improved Navigation

Google made the new SA360 interface appear too much like the present Google Ads interface in design.

Users who are already familiar with Google Ads will immediately recognize the benefits and feel at ease with the new SA360.

This seems to be excellent for training and adoption, as any experience with the Google Ads UI navigation and workflow procedures will transfer to the new SA360 (or likewise) for a unified experience and faster adoption.

Microsoft Ads has a very similar interface, which is an added plus!

Support for Search Engines has Improved Significantly

The new SA360 and Google Ads platforms now share a key common technology that powers both platforms' functionality and capabilities, allowing them to manage and analyze more data than ever before while maintaining a quick user experience.

This also means that previously unsupported SA360 capabilities will be available in the next version shortly.

Google has also verified that campaign types such as Performance Max, Discovery Ads, and Local Inventory Ads would be supported.

In addition, enhanced engine features such as extensions, audiences, and creative formats for Google alternatives (i.e. Microsoft RSA, DSA, and Smart Shopping) will be introduced in future releases. Advertisers will be able to execute much more of their day-to-day workflow from within a single search marketing platform thanks to this expanded capability.

Marketers who now use SA360 to manage standard paid Search campaigns and Google Ads to run Performance Max or Discovery campaigns should smile right now, because the new SA360 can now manage and report on all three campaign types!

Users will be able to include a single data source in dashboard reporting (i.e. third-party data or Data Studio), making dashboard reporting easier.

Enterprise Innovations of the Future

Let's talk about capabilities that are only available in the new Search Ads 360. Firstly, the new Search Ads 360 takes enterprise workflows to the next level by allowing us to organize and scale our day-to-day tasks and essential activities — such as campaign management, automated rules, and labelling — and you'll be able to make these changes across several advertisers at once. The capacity to set automatic rules and labels that span various platforms is one example.

If we need to schedule promotional advertising in Google and Microsoft Ads, we can do so in Search Ads 360 instead of using each service separately.

Customers who use Search Ads 360's automated campaign creation services, such as inventory management and ad builder, are able to handle their marketing at scale more efficiently.

These will be combined into a single feature named "Templates" in the new Search Ads 360. It is expected to be available later this year, at which point you'll be able to use business data across client accounts to automatically construct and update ads at scale using your own data feed.

A further wonderful feature in the new Search Ads 360 is "Performance Center", which is a budget management upgrade that will take you beyond just monitoring budgets. We’ll be able to estimate cost and trends across numerous search engines, rather than just managing your budget. This will be a critical tool for generating marketing budget scenarios that take into account the economy's and demand's ever-changing dynamics. Also, later this year, we will be able to use enterprise planning features like enhanced forecasting across search engines to manage our media spending. 

“I found the new simplified user interface easier to navigate and use. The new budget forecasting capabilities, reporting features, and reduced complexity allowed me to streamline workflows and minimize my workload by at least 20% last month.” Elizaveta Markina - Search Specialist, OMD NZ

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Google Analytics Integration and Support for GA4 have been Updated

Google continues to build SA360's native integration with other GMP products, including properties, in the new SA360 experience.

The new SA360-GA4 integration allows GA4's web and in-app event data to be imported into the SA360 reporting UI, allowing for more measurement and optimization of how search operations perform against web or in-app based events.

Web or in-app-based GA4 Goals are also available to use as a conversion source for performance automation and optimization if Google Analytics Goals are your reporting and measuring source of truth.

This is a good replacement for Google Ads conversion tracking and floodlight tracking tags.

Introducing The Connection Between Platforms

One of the most commonly asked questions advertisers made was, "Should we convert our day-to-day workflow from Google Ads to SA360?"

To get the most value out of both platforms, the recommendation to marketers is to combine Google Ads campaign management workflows with SA360 performance optimization workflows (rather than using just one or the other).

There will still be times when you need to switch between the two.

However, with the launch of the new experience, Google witnessed a significant step forward in bridging the gap and enabling teams to use a single interface for most tasks.

This is an exciting new chapter for Search Ads 360, as it sets the way for the next generation of enterprise innovations to help us optimize operations and increase performance.

The updates have been praised by enterprise advertisers as demonstrating the capacity to implement more sophisticated digital marketing strategies.

Sources:

Google

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