Google has confirmed that Google Ads will get a brand new look – and all advertisers will be given access to the new dashboard and layout. The changes are the first significant redesign to impact the Google Ads system since the switch from Google AdWords to Google Ads took place way back in 2018, pre-pandemic.
The move to a new look shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, as trials have been ongoing to finalise the new look and feel for the last several months. A key aim of the project was to make the Google Ads dashboard more intuitive and more user-friendly.
It’s expected that the change will be live across all advertiser accounts by the end of the current year.
What changes in the new design?
The redesign won’t have a huge impact on functionality, so you don’t need to worry that there will be lots of new tools to get to grips with. The new look interface is more cosmetic than technical, so it will be a case of having to relearn where information and tools are located. With Google saying the redesign is driven by a need to make the platform more user-friendly and easier to navigate for new and existing advertisers alike, this hopefully won’t be too much of a challenge.
We know that the new dashboard will have five main tabs or categories, with information organised as follows:
- Campaigns
- Goals
- Tools
- Billing
- Admin
You’ll likely spend more of your time in the top three categories. In Campaigns, you’ll carry out your set-up, day-to-day housekeeping and optimisation tasks.
Goals will be conversion related so you’ll want to check in here regularly to see how your campaigns are moving you closer to your targets.
Tools is where you’ll find support with campaign planning, managing your budget and so on.
Billing and admin are then for more housekeeping related tasks, such as access control for team members and payments to Google Ads for your campaign spend.
Additional changes to come
Google says that it still has some changes to make in order to perfect the new experience. One example it gives is of menu size being too big for some users and taking up too much space. While recognizing that a certain size is needed for accessibility purposes, alternatives are being explored, such as increasing responsiveness to put users in control of how much screen size the menu occupies.
Some of the workflows in Google Ads also aren’t quite right as yet. The search team is working to better connect workflows across different pages, and make them easier to find.
This roll out will also have a longer transition period, with users able to switch back to the old design if they wish to do so until some point next year.
