What features are missing from the New Adwords Experience?

If you use Adwords to promote your business, you’ll soon run into invitations from Google to try their new redesign known as the New Adwords Experience.

Before you jump into beta testing it — and especially if you have active campaigns that you currently manage via the classic interface — you should be aware of what’s currently missing from the new design.

Here’s a handy list, accurate as of September 2017, so you can see at a glance if any of the missing features will impact your business and marketing activities.

What features are missing from the New Adwords Experience?

Features Missing from Advertiser Accounts

If you don’t know what type of Adwords account you have, you probably have a standard advertiser account for a single business. Here’s what’s currently missing compared to the current Adwords interface:

• Ad extension creation, management and reporting for price extensions; the automated extensions report
• Advanced editing, for example: automated rules and bulk uploads
• AdWords Labs
• Business data feeds
• Download functionality in some pages
• Customised columns
• Drafts and experiments
• Geographic reports
• Compatibility: full compatibility with right-to-left languages; Edge browser support
• The shopping sub-type for video campaigns
• The Gmail ads sub-type for Display Network campaigns
• Custom remarketing / affinities

No customised columns, geographic reports, or automated rules makes this a bit underwhelming. Of these, the lack of geographic report is probably the most concerning. Location targeting is a key part of successful PPC campaigns, so this will force businesses to jump between the classic and new Adwords interfaces. Most business owners and marketing managers will choose to use the familiar classic interface, rather than beta test Google’s New Adwords Experience.

Features Missing from Manager Accounts (MMCs)

Some deal breakers, to be honest. It’s fair to say that serious advertisers won’t want to use the New Adwords Experience in ernest until Google adds the following features:

• View your accounts’ notifications
• Edit your accounts’ budgets on the ‘Budgets’ page
• Use automated rules and scripts
• Manage audiences
• Download reports

Seriously Google, we can’t download reports yet? Given that many client managers and agencies use spreadsheets to make PPC decisions, this should be a priority feature to re-add.

All that said, I do like the New Adwords Experience. It will eventually roll out to replace the current design, so even if you don’t intend to join the early adopters, your marketing team should still be aware of it and plan accordingly.