…like trying to wrangle a room full of playful kittens. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t corral the most crucial information and guidance into a concise summary! Dive in to discover the essential need-to-know details about the latest Google Ads updates, covering:

1. Conversion goals
2. Deal features for Shopping
3. New budget report
4. Infinite scroll on mobile
5. New OCI helper tool
6. Enhanced conversions out of beta
7. FLoC testing pushed back
8. Upgraded ad extensions
9. Performance Max campaigns out of beta
10. Engaged-view conversions for video Display ads Continue reading to get answers to your pressing questions.

1. New conversion goals

• Date: November 1
• TLDR: Conversion goals organize conversion actions into groups to facilitate bid optimization at the account or campaign level. On November 1, Google announced the introduction of conversion goals. This new feature allows Google to automatically categorize similar conversion actions into groups based on actions (like “Purchases” or “Submit lead forms”) that hold the most significance for your business. You can then optimize for these conversion goals by specifying which actions within a goal should influence bidding. Three goal types exist:
• Standard goals: Automatically generated by Google from your existing conversion actions, these goals allow you to opt for bid optimization in any campaign.
• Account-default goals: These are standard goals that you designate to be included and optimized for by default in every new campaign.
• Custom goals: These goals comprise primary and secondary conversion actions. Bidding will utilize the primary action. You can access data for conversion goals through Tools > Measurement > Conversions. Your current conversion settings, including optimization and bidding strategies, will remain unchanged. However, terminology updates are being implemented:

Recommended action: We advise conducting a review of your conversion actions and identifying the ones you want your bids to prioritize. Determine which conversion goals should be set as account defaults. Additionally, address any existing issues with your conversion tracking to fully leverage this new feature.

2. New features for deal badges in Shopping

• Date: October 28
• TLDR: Product listings featuring deal badges can now appear in a dedicated Deals feed, accompanied by enhanced reporting for these listings. When running Google Shopping campaigns, merchants have the option to apply badges like “promotion,” “sale,” or “price drop” to their product listings if they meet specific criteria. Google announced in July 2021 increased visibility for these deal-badged listings through a “see deals related to your search” prompt in the Shopping tab. Following this, on October 28, Google announced the implementation of a dedicated deals feed, permanently accessible in the Shopping tab and appearing in regular search results for pertinent queries (such as “black friday deals”).

It’s important to note that the deals feed is also visible on mobile devices. This feed will curate deal recommendations based on factors like user queries, browsing history, offer appeal, and discount value. Furthermore, Google has introduced improvements to the Merchant Center, enabling merchants to see which products are eligible for deal badges and access performance data specifically for deal-badged products.

Individualized reporting for deal-badged products is now accessible. (Image source) Recommended action: Experiment with a price drop, discount, or promotion now to familiarize yourself with the updated features and reporting. This preparation will prove beneficial during peak shopping periods like Black Friday and the holiday season. Consider implementing a priority-based bidding strategy to optimize your return on ad spend (ROAS).

3. New Google Ads budget report

• Date: September 30
• TLDR: Gain deeper insights into how Google allocates your advertising budget on a daily and monthly basis. When you establish a daily average budget for your Google Ads campaign, you’re essentially instructing Google to distribute your budget in a way that achieves that average spend over a month. This means that on certain days, Google can spend up to double your daily average to capitalize on increased clicks and conversions, and then compensate for this by spending less on days with lower traffic or conversions. While this approach effectively maximizes your budget, advertisers have had limited visibility into these daily fluctuations in ad spend. This is where Google’s new budget report, announced on September 30, comes in. This report provides insights into both historical and projected spending data. The cumulative monthly spend section shows your current spending, projected spend, and your monthly budget cap. You also have the option to adjust your budget at the top of the report to see how changes might influence performance.

The daily spend section provides a breakdown of your daily spending limit utilization for each day. Both graphs allow you to hover over data points to view specific figures for individual days.

Recommended action: Navigate to one of your campaigns and access the budget report. Review past months’ data to understand how the report presents spending patterns. For the current month, experiment with adjusting your average daily budget to observe its potential impact and plan accordingly. For further guidance, explore our Google Ads budget guide. Don’t let your Google Ads budget go to waste. Identify and rectify any issues with our Free Google Ads Performance Grader.

4. The mobile SERP now utilizes infinite scroll

• Date: October 14
• TLDR: The infinite scroll feature on mobile devices does NOT affect Ad Rank, DOES alter text ad placement, and COULD influence your metrics. As of October 14, Google announced the mobile search engine results page (SERP) will automatically load the subsequent three pages of results as users scroll, eliminating the need to tap “See more.” Consequently, fewer text ads will be displayed at the bottom of the initial SERP, and text ads can now appear at the top of the second page and beyond. Does this affect Ad Rank? No. Ad Rank calculation methodology remains unchanged and will be recalculated for every SERP. This implies that your ad could appear on multiple SERPs for the same search query. Will this affect ad performance? Possibly. Metrics related to ad prominence, such as top and absolute top impression share, might be influenced. Google suggests that this change could lead to an increase in impressions for your Search, Shopping, and Local campaigns. This, in turn, could lower your click-through rate (CTR), but clicks, conversions, average cost-per-click (CPC), and average cost-per-acquisition (CPA) are not expected to be significantly affected. Note that this update doesn’t affect the appearance of Shopping and Local ads, and it’s currently limited to US-English queries. Google intends to expand this feature to other countries and languages in the coming year. Recommended action: Closely monitor your pay-per-click (PPC) metrics and review these seven more effective strategies for approaching mobile search ads.

5. New offline conversions import (OCI) helper tool

• Date: September 28
• TLDR: This self-guided tool assists in viewing and interpreting your offline conversion data within Google Ads. With the impending disappearance of third-party cookies, it’s widely acknowledged that your first-party data is becoming increasingly crucial. It’s privacy-compliant and represents your most accurate data source. However, not all your first-party data is captured on your website. On September 28, Google introduced the OCI helper tool to empower you to import and examine your offline first-party conversion data (such as phone calls) into Google Ads. This enables you to integrate offline behavior into your comprehensive lead-to-sale customer journey and leverage this data to identify similar high-value leads. The tool functions as a self-service platform, allowing businesses to import offline conversions and implement conversion values. It begins with a questionnaire designed to determine the most suitable implementation steps for your specific business, taking into account factors like your customer relationship management (CRM) system, sales cycle, and more.

Subsequently, you’ll be prompted to assign four roles:

• Project Manager: This role is responsible for delegating the remaining roles and facilitating communication between them.
• Digital Marketing Manager: This role requires standard access to Google Ads.
• Website Developer: Admin access to your website’s source code is necessary for this role.
• CRM Manager: This role necessitates admin access to your CRM system. You can assign up to four individuals per role, and one person can hold multiple roles. Once the OCI tool has this information, it generates a tailored implementation plan, complete with a progress dashboard, and assigns tasks to each role accordingly.

Recommended action: We encourage you to explore the OCI tool. Additionally, learn how to import your cost data into Google Analytics here.

6. Enhanced conversions now available to all

• Date: September 30
• TLDR: All advertisers now have access to this solution, which provides both accurate and privacy-conscious conversion tracking. Announced on September 30, Google announced the general availability of enhanced conversions for all eligible advertisers, a feature initially introduced during the May 2021 Google Marketing Live Stream. Here’s why this matters: Imagine a scenario where a user clicks on your Google ad on their laptop, visits your website, but doesn’t convert. Later, they return to your site through an organic search on their mobile device and complete a conversion. Third-party cookies, which track individual users across websites and devices, enable you to observe this journey from paid ad to organic search to conversion. Without them, the organic visit would be misconstrued as a new user and visit, detached from the initial ad interaction. This would lead the advertiser to mistakenly believe that their ad didn’t contribute to the conversion.

Enhanced conversions address this issue by leveraging the first-party data you collect from users during conversion actions on your website (such as name, address, phone number, email, etc.) and transmitting it back to Google. Google then matches this data with its own first-party information (Google user accounts), effectively connecting a user’s behavior on your website with their interactions with your ads across Google’s platforms, irrespective of the device used. This process achieves the cross-device conversion tracking capabilities of third-party cookies without relying on them. Privacy is maintained because the shared data is hashed, aggregated, and anonymized within your reports. There are three methods for setting up enhanced conversions:

• Manual implementation via Google Tag Manager
• Manual implementation using Google’s sitewide tagging
• Implementation through the API Recommended action: Begin actively gathering your first-party data and delve deeper into the intricacies of this feature at Google’s help page for enhanced conversions.

7. FLoC testing pushed out to Q1 2022

As of January 2022, FLoC is no more! Learn more in our coverage on its replacement, Topics API.

• Date: October 1
• TLDR: The phase-out of third-party cookies might experience another delay. It’s no secret that Google plans to eliminate third-party cookies sometime in 2022. Recognizing the substantial impact this change has on advertisers, Google is actively developing new features (such as the aforementioned enhanced conversions) and technologies to help advertisers maintain accurate reporting and effective ad targeting. These solutions not only benefit advertisers but also align with consumers’ preference for receiving relevant ads. Google FLoC is one such technology. While no immediate action is required from you, this development could potentially extend the lifespan of third-party cookies.

Image source Recommended action: Ensure a thorough understanding of FLoC’s implications for advertisers and confirm that the Google Ads tag is implemented on your website.

8. Upgraded ad extensions

• Date: October 26
• TLDR: These enhanced ad extensions, introducing new features and retiring some old ones, will supersede existing ad extensions by next year. On October 26, Google announced the rollout of upgraded ad extensions. These extensions offer enhanced functionality, such as the ability to pause, but they also omit certain features present in existing extensions. The excluded features include:
• Device preference settings for mobile devices
• Start and end time settings for call extensions
• Ad scheduling capabilities for app extensions
• Start/end time and ad scheduling options for price and structured snippet extensions Over time, these upgraded extensions will replace the current (soon to be legacy) extensions. However, this transition will occur gradually throughout the year. You have the option to start creating upgraded extensions immediately (through the API or Editor), but it’s important to note that reporting might exhibit some inconsistencies. The summary view will only display combined data for both legacy and upgraded extensions.

Eventually, both the summary and table views will present consistent data. However, after August 2022, you’ll lose the ability to view legacy extension data. Recommended action: If you utilize the API or Editor, consider experimenting with creating an upgraded extension now. Alternatively, if you’re new to ad extensions, refer to our Google Ads extensions cheat sheet, which we’ll be updating accordingly.

9. Performance Max campaigns now widely available

• Date: November 2
• TLDR: Performance Max campaigns are now accessible to all advertisers; Smart Shopping and Local campaigns will be upgraded to Performance Max in 2022. On November 2, the widespread availability of Performance Max campaigns to all advertisers globally, following their beta release in October 2020. This automated campaign type simplifies campaign management by allowing you to provide Google with your creative assets (images, videos, logos, headlines). Google then takes over, assembling these assets into ads that can run across various platforms, including Search, Display, Discover, Maps, Gmail, and YouTube.

This campaign type leverages automation to optimize your budget and bids across multiple channels. You can track performance through the Insights page and the Combinations report. Google also revealed its plans to upgrade both Smart Shopping and Local campaigns to Performance Max in 2022. Recommended action: For e-commerce and local businesses, it’s advisable to familiarize yourselves with Performance Max campaigns now. Eventually, both Smart Shopping and Local ads will be integrated into this campaign type.

10. Engaged-view conversions now available for video Display ads

• Date: September 27
• TLDR: It’s simple: Google announced on September 27 the expansion of engaged-view conversions (EVCs) to encompass video Display campaigns. Previously, EVCs were only available for TrueView skippable in-stream ads, Local campaigns, and App campaigns. Introduced in 2020 as a more robust alternative to view-through conversions for measuring non-click engagement, EVCs track conversions that occur on your website within a specific timeframe after a user watches at least 10 seconds of your video ad. Recommended action: Explore these seven video ad ideas and refresh your knowledge of Display ad design principles to boost those engaged views. Stay informed about upcoming updates!