1 Get creative with custom columns
Custom columns have long been a valuable, underused feature of Google Ads, and with each upgrade, they’re becoming cumulatively more powerful.
The relatively recent ability to filter a metric by date range to create a new column is a good example.
When monitoring an account, one of the most common reasons for switching to the ‘Yesterday’ date range is to check the latest instance of daily campaign spend vs budget.
To do that more efficiently, I’ve recently started adding a ‘Yesterday Cost’ custom column (and sliding it over to the left) – giving an at-a-glance cost/budget comparison without switching date range.
The metric date filter also allows combinations like 30-day ROAS, or 7-day ROAS…
Adding both of those gives you a quick view of recent performance – and whether or not it is improving over the short term – again without changing the date range.
More functionality is being added to custom columns all the time. The biggest leap forward came at the end of 2021, when we gained the ability to create columns referencing new metrics, other custom columns, and a huge range of spreadsheet functions of which most of us have still barely scratched the surface.
And new metrics are still appearing quite frequently.
Only this week a new set of columns appeared in the interface (partial rollout at time of writing):
Not all metrics are available for custom columns – but new ones are added to it intermittently (usually without any announcement).
So keep your hand in, and your ear to the ground.
2 AdPulse
I don’t recommend third-party Google Ads tools often – but when I find a good one, I let you know (whether or not I’m doing so with a ‘special link’ such as this one which grants you a bonus $100 account credit when you sign up through it…)
AdPulse is a powerful tool for account management, and spend/budget management in particular.
Alongside its multi-account spend vs budget dashboard, it also has a robust set of budget pacing options that can automatically update daily budgets to keep you on track (with optional hard stops as a safety net)…
Targets, both spend and performance, can be flexibly set for accounts as a whole or for subsets within them (e.g. just your non-brand campaigns, PMax, or whatever segment you choose).
It also offers various sensible recommendations and insights, breaking down performance and suggesting changes in ways that chime nicely with the kind of optimisation I advocate.
Start a free trial and check it out.
3 Get on the ChatGPT Plus wait list
(if you’re not already on it… or already in)
2024 will surely see no slow down in Google Ads developments, and AI is (obviously) set to play a large part in that.
But while Google is banging the AI drum with gusto, none of its offerings so far have been anywhere near as impressive as the types of AI developments we’ve seen elsewhere.
So I predict that more game-changing AI applications for PPC in the next year will be coming from outside of Google than within it.
ChatGPT ushered us into this exciting new era… and while other, more specialist AI services are proliferating like popcorn at this point, ChatGPT is still the gold standard for accessible, flexible AI assistance.
A new GPT use case for Google Ads campaign building or analysis seems to crop up in almost every one of our membership live sessions recently.
and OpenAI’s GPT store launched yesterday…
We’re still at the dawn of this thing. Get in early.
