The New AdWords Interface: A Quick Navigation Guide, Part 2 of 3

The first post in this three-part series about the new AdWords interface provided a quick navigational guide describing the various tabs that appear in AdWords accounts. In this post, we'll talk in more detail about one specific tab: Campaigns.

When you sign into your account, you'll see the 'Campaigns' tab, which lists all your online campaigns. It displays basic information such as daily budget, campaign status, clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), average cost per click (CPC), cost, average position and conversion metrics (when conversion tracking is enabled). In Google Grants accounts, the maximum CPC cannot be above US$1.00; although Grants users do not pay for ad clicks, the CPC helps us rank your ads on Google.

Click on any of the column headings to sort the data by that attribute (in ascending or descending order). You can set a date range for the statistics to display using the drop-down menu in the top right-hand corner; also at top right, the 'View Change History' link shows what changes you have made to your account, campaigns or ad groups in the past.

Notice that the 'Campaigns' tab now also gives you a graphical representation of performance within the selected date range. Above the graph, you will see a link that allows you to set graph options to show the specific data you wish to see, such as clicks or impressions.

All active campaigns in your account have the status 'Eligible.' At the far left-hand side of the page, you will see a tree view that lists your campaigns; you can also drill down to see your ad groups and click into any campaign and ad group to see details for that campaign or ad group.

Next to 'Campaigns' are more tabs: 'Ad Groups,' 'Settings,' 'Ads,' 'Keywords' and 'Networks.' Clicking on the 'Ad Groups' tab will show you all ad groups across all your campaigns. Similarly, 'Settings' shows campaign settings for all your online campaigns, 'Ads' shows ad variations across all your campaigns and 'Keywords' shows all the keywords in your campaigns. The 'Networks' tab provides a breakdown of search and content performance data. Google Grants advertisers need not worry about this tab because ads delivered through the Grants program run only on Google.com and not on our Search and Content Networks.

If you have clicked into a particular campaign from the 'Campaigns' tab or the tree view, then the various tabs will display ad groups, settings, ads, keywords and networks specific to that campaign.

On the 'Settings' tab for each campaign, you will find your campaign's name, location and language targeting, demographic targeting settings, networks and devices targeting, bidding and budget, position preference, ad delivery method and advanced settings for ad scheduling.

Location targeting allows you to target specific geographies—from countries, territories, metropolitan areas or cities to customized areas within a certain radius of your targeted region. Language targeting helps you target specific languages spoken within your targeted geographies. For example, you can target Spanish-speaking users living in the United States. Grantees can ignore the network and demographic targeting options because they are not applicable to you as a Google Grants advertiser. The 'Devices' settings allow you to target your ads to users browsing from mobile phones, from phones that use WAP browsers to full HTML functionality phones, such as the iPhone.

'Bidding and budget' are not relevant for Grants users; they allow paying users to state what their daily budget will be and decide on a bidding model (cost-per-click and/or cost-per-thousand impressions). Grantees' budgets are pre-set to US$329/day on the cost-per-click model.

'Position preference' lets advertisers specify what position they prefer for their ads on Google. Because your bids are already set to the maximum limit of $1 per click and no more, the only way to appear on higher positions is to have a great Quality Score compared to competing non-profits or paying advertisers. 'Ad delivery' settings allow you to decide whether you want to show your ads throughout the day (standard delivery) or as often as possible until the daily budget is exhausted (accelerated delivery). For Grants advertisers, the AdWords program will show your ads as often as possible within the $329 account daily budget cap (or $1,315 per day for Additional Services Grants accounts). Under 'Schedule,' you can choose a start and end date for your campaigns. This is good for advertisers preparing for a launch or specific seasonal promotion. Grants advertisers do not have access to decide on times of day or days of week to show ads.

In the next and final post of this series, we will look into the 'Reporting and Opportunities' tab in more detail.

Posted by Reema Prasanna, AdWords Team in Hyderabad, India