“Behind every successful AdWords campaign are well planned out keywords and ad groups,” says AdWords product manager Deepti Bhatnagar. “In the past, you may have relied on tools like the Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator to identify new keywords and ad groups, get traffic estimates, and choose competitive bids and budgets. Over time however, we’ve heard from you that having two tools for search campaign building was cumbersome.”

“We’re constantly working to simplify the process of building campaigns, and today we’re happy to announce the launch of a new tool, Keyword Planner, which combines the functionality of the Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator into a smooth, integrated workflow,” says Bhatnagar. “You can use Keyword Planner to find new keyword and ad group ideas, get performance estimates for them to find the bid and budget that are right for you, and then add them to your campaigns.”

The tool also comes with some new features, including the ability to find new keyword and ad group ideas by “multiplying” keywords (combining two or more lists to generate new keywords. It will now let you target individual cities and regions within a country.

It also lets you add keyword and group ideas to a “plan,” which Google describes as a shopping cart of ideas that you can add to a current or new campaign.

For more on plans and on the tool in general, read this.

The Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator will be sunsetting in about sixty days.

These particular webinars deal with Google+ and Enhanced Campaigns and campaign management and strategies for upgrading. They combine for about 90 minutes of information.

Earlier this week, Google revealed that about two million AdWords campaigns have been set to enhanced, up from 1.5 last month, when Google held its Q1 earnings call.

If you haven’t made the transition yet, you might want to check out this tutorial on the Enhanced Campaigns Upgrade Center.

All campaigns will be upgraded automatically on July 22nd.

Today, Google released a tutorial for how to use the Upgrade Center ahead of the transition date.

“In order to take advantage of the powerful bidding tools, smarter ads, and advanced reporting that come with enhanced campaigns, you need to start by upgrading your campaigns,” Google says.

The video discusses how to use the tool to upgrade and merge legacy campaigns.

Google has uploaded a new webinar specifically on optimizing mobile strategy:

This week, Google launched the Enhanced Campaigns upgrade center, which provides a tool to help you transition to the new campaigns ahead of the date (July 22) when all campaigns will be upgraded automatically.

Google also added social annotations and availability for mobile app advertisers.

In a blog post, Google explains how to use the tool:

There are two basic ways to use the upgrade center.

1. Bulk upgrade

If you have search-only or search+display campaigns that have similar keywords and location targets, the upgrade center automatically identifies them as candidates to merge. You’ll then be able to preview and adjust the proposed campaign settings, ad groups, and extensions for the merged campaign. By default, ad groups and budgets will be combined. Other campaign level settings and extensions in the Primary campaign will override those in the Secondary campaign.

The upgrade center will be rolling out over the coming weeks. It can be found in the left-hand navigation bar on the Campaigns tab.

All campaigns will be upgraded to Enhanced Campaigns on July 22.

Google announced enhanced campaigns earlier this year as the next evolutionary phase of AdWords. The move, which was designed to provide advertisers with the ability to manage bids across devices from a single campaign, has been a controversial one with some advertisers embracing it and others decrying it. Bing has even tried to capitalize on the controversy, telling advertisers it won’t implement the same strategy.

According to Google, over 1.5 million campaigns have already been upgraded to enhanced campaigns.

The new social annotations tie into Google+. “Starting today, enhanced campaigns will include social annotations when they can improve ad performance, without additional edits to campaign settings,” explains Christian Oestlien, Director of Product Management for the Google Display Network. All you need is a Google+ page with a significant number of followers and a linked website that matches the URL in your search ads.”

Discussing enhanced campaigns for mobile app advertisers, Oestlien says, “Apps have become a significant part of people’s everyday mobile experiences. In fact, US consumers spend an average of 127 minutes per day using mobile apps. Advertisers can now reach app users, with ads in apps, based on people’s context like location, time of day and device, with enhanced campaigns. For example, if a certain mobile app has the most usage on Saturday evenings, you can increase your bid adjustments for mobile and this time of day to reach these users. You can also adjust bids across the key display signals like demographics, interests, topics and remarketing at the ad group level. All of these powerful bidding tools will enable you to reach the right people with the right ads.”

Google has regularly been hosting webinars discussing how to get the most out of enhanced campaigns. Another one will take place on Tuesday.

So if you haven’t gotten your feet wet yet, you may want to pay attention to the webinars on Enhanced Campaigns that Google has been providing. We recently shared one that focused on Google Shopping and Enhanced Campaigns. A new one that Google has provided deals with Enhanced Campaigns on the Google Display Network:

This week, Google announced ad group mobile bid adjustments for Enhanced Campaigns.

“We think this may be useful if you’ve been operating large scale campaigns and found that your optimal bids for some keywords would require significantly different mobile bid adjustments within an enhanced campaign,” says Group Product Manager Bhanu Narasimhan.

“Example: A nationwide retail chain currently uses mobile-only campaigns to optimize bids for several hundred thousand keywords,” Narasimhan continues. “They’ve found that 95% of their keywords in mobile-only campaigns have bids that are 10% lower than in the equivalent desktop campaigns. The remaining 5% of their keywords have very different bid ratios (ranging from 40% lower to 100% higher) based on differences in performance and competition on mobile and desktop. By using the new ad group bid adjustments for mobile, this retailer can better maintain their desired bids and ROI on different devices as they upgrade to enhanced campaigns.”

Google says most advertisers will see the most value in using the existing campaign level bid adjustments.

API access for the new feature will be available first, in early May.

Enhanced campaign upgrades will start happening automatically on July 22.

TheDrum.com reports (via Search Engine Land) that Google has pulled all Moneysupermarket ads as part of the crackdown, which is the result of increasing government pressure on Google.

The publication shares a statement from a Google spokeswoman, who said, “We have a set of policies which govern what ads we do and do not allow on Google. We have strict policies for those advertising short term loans, and make it very clear that advertisers need to comply with local regulations and be transparent about their fees, implications of non-payment and collection practices. If we discover sites that are breaking this policy we will take appropriate action.”

Here’s what Google says about short-term loans in its AdWords policies:

Short-term loans are defined as secured or non-secured loans with a duration of 60 days or less. Google doesn’t allow websites for short-term loans that don’t include all of the information below (includes lenders, lead generators, and aggregators of short-term loans):

• Legitimate contact information or physical address (P.O. box addresses are not acceptable)
• Compliance with other state or local regulations related to short-term loans
• Prominent disclosure of the following on the landing page, meaning that it’s shown in the same font type, size, and color as the base text on the landing page and presented in a way that is clear and conspicuous to users:
  • APR
  • Implications of non-payment, including the following:
    • Financial implications (whether fees are charged and/or interest rates are raised)
    • Collection practices
    • Potential impact to users’ credit score
    • Renewal policy information, including if the renewal is automatic and if there are fees associated with the renewal

    Aggregators/lead generators may provide sample implications from their network to satisfy the above requirements. Implications of non-payment should be grouped together in one location on the landing page.

Google has different policies for Japan, Singapore, the UK and the US. These can all be found here.

Advertisers who have had their accounts suspended are advised to review the guidelines, remove all unacceptable content from ad text and their websites, provide users with accurate info about business, products and services, ensure that their sites contain all info required by state and local lawas, and be transparent about the products or services being promoted.

Microsoft, Google’s competitor in the space and a frequent critic of numerous Google practices, has now laid out its policy aimed at attracting advertisers who don’t like Google’s new model.

Which model do you prefer: Google’s or Bing’s? Let us know in the comments.

If you’re still unfamiliar with Enhanced Campaigns, here’s a look:

David Pann, GM of Microsoft’s Search Network, spoke to advertisers at a San Francisco Forum to address concerns Microsoft Advertising has heard around whether Bing Ads will go down a similar path as Google with Enhanced Campaigns. This is a legitimate concern, considering how Microsoft has been openly adapting other models that Google has embraced.

Microsoft is not going down the Enhanced Campaigns path ,however.

“While Enhanced Campaigns may seem to provide greater management efficiencies and improve mobile traffic, our customers have expressed worry that this change may in fact bring inefficiencies for more sophisticated advertisers or those with specific targeting needs,” a spokesperson for Microsoft tells WebProNews, echoing sentiments shared in a blog post from Pann.

During the forum, Pann expressed a commitment to “making it simple for small business advertisers to participate across devices while at the same time, enabling more sophisticated advertisers to have the fine grain targeting controls they require.”

Pann expands in the blog post:

At Bing Ads, we believe very strongly in giving advertisers the tools and flexibility to control their spending, target the most relevant audiences, and ensure they can get the best return on investment. We do not believe bundling mobile, desktop and tablet advertising together in an opaque manner is in the best interests of our customers.

Our own customers have been concerned whether we would sacrifice control for convenience, and our answer is no.

We are committed to reducing friction by providing advertisers with the transparency and controls needed to maximize campaign effectiveness. We strive to make it simple for small business advertisers to participate across devices and more sophisticated advertisers to have the fine grain targeting controls they require. Our stated goal of providing advertisers the ability to do in 15 minutes what it takes them 45 minutes to do on Google, should not – and does not – come with any caveats or loss of control.

Bing Ads believes in building long-term trust through consistency, expectancy and transparency.We know budgets and resources are limited – we want to enable our customers, not hinder them.

Bing Ads Platform Manager Dare Obasanjo discusses Microsoft’s policy in a separate post.

“With enhanced campaigns, fine-grained targeting by operating system, device model and carrier is no longer available,” writes Obasanjo. “More importantly, tablets and desktop PCs are now treated as a single entity. It is no longer possible to target an iPad or Kindle Fire user differently from a user of on Dell or HP desktop PC.”

“Another elimination of flexibility also occurs when it comes to targeting users on mobile devices. All search marketing campaigns in AdWords are now desktop/tablet targeted campaigns. The ability to target mobile devices is only available by augmenting certain aspects of a desktop/tablet campaign.”

Microsoft says it will be updating its product to ensure AdWords advertisers can “seamlessly” transition between both products, despite Bing’s absence of Enhanced Campaigns-like functionality.

At least there’s not a “Scroogled” campaign this time.

As mentioned, some advertisers see the value of what Google’s doing, and certainly Google thinks there is plenty of good reason to operate this way.

Will you be switching from Google to Bing? Do you think Enhanced Campaigns are good or bad for advertisers? Let us know in the comments.