Every year Google undergoes a thorough spring cleaning sessions. Perhaps their attempt to flush out excess baggage from its AdWords platform. Their #1 money maker. This year follows the same trend and a spring cleaning session is the verge of commencement. If you’re an active user of the Google AdWords platform for a client or agency then it’s worthwhile to notate the upcoming changes.
Unused ads occupy excess space. Something Google is not particularly fond of as it takes up areas that can better and more efficiently utilized. Therefore, starting the week of March 23, 2015 Google will be flushing ads that have never accumulated any impressions or have been paused for more than 100 days. I don’t see a reason why you would keep an add with zero impressions intact within a specific campaign but maybe that is just me thinking out loud. Most advertisers including myself do have the tendency of pausing ads rather than deleting them for the sake of A/B testing initiatives. Perhaps something to reflect upon as account performance gains traction or even a reflection of past tactics.
How does this change impact your account or individual campaigns you ask?
For example, let’s establish a hypothetical scenario to paint a clear visual of the outcome from this transition. Say that you have created new ads to attract customers to your website like you would normally do so. After a week or two goes by you’ve come to the realization that this particular ad seems to be poorly performing. Therefore, using AdWords best practices you have determined that it is necessary to pause it and create a new one instead as part of A/B testing initiatives. So, you have an ad that becomes an orphan in a sense and deserted from the real world but intact within account history.
As part of this new transition, if an ad remains paused for more than 100 days, Google AdWords system will delete it permanently. This is an attempt to declutter accounts allowing for more breathing room and improved performance.
AdWords Account History, Removed Campaigns, & AdGroups
Google is never really done with one single thing. They are notorious for changing multiple things simultaneously under the same environment. In addition to trimming down on unused ads, you will no longer be able to reactivate removed campaigns or adgroups within an account. In other words, once you’ve removed these it will be impossible to restore them.
Well, how come? Why would this apply in any of my specific scenarios I’m currently dealing with on individual campaigns?
Ok, let’s explore a hypothetical scenario here to create a visualization of how the above may coincide with any of your existing campaigns or adgroups. Let’s assume that months ago you added two new adgroups to a specific campaign within your AdWords account. After some time has passed you’ve arrived at the conclusion that these adgroups are poor performers and happen to remove them from that particular campaign. The keyword here is “remove” rather than pause which is what Google always recommends from a best practices angle.
You can find more information on the logistics of campaign status, adgroup status, and ad status guidelines to assist with the above mentioned endeavors.