Creating a New Google Ads Account (and NOT an AdWords Express Account)

October 2, 2019
Posted in Paid Search
02 Oct 2019
Paid Search
October 2, 2019 Jen Lopez

Creating a New Google Ads Account (and NOT an AdWords Express Account)

You know what really grinds my gears? Things being harder than they should be.

If you’ve tried to create a Google Ads account recently, you’ll notice that the platform on ads.google.com is defaulting to creating an AdWords Express account. You know, the ones managed by Google, where you aren’t able to actually optimize much on your own. Sure, an AdWords Express account can be upgraded to Google Ads, but not without a few extra steps and a login that always takes a bit of time redirecting you around, making for slow load times and making me grab an extra cup of coffee.

This is especially frustrating because here at Eboost, we have our clients create their Google Ads account themselves and give us access under our agency MCC. We do this to ensure the client has their own, easily accessible login to their Google Ads account, always knows how to access it, and understands that they maintain ownership over their account and anything we do in it.

However, the last couple of go’s at it, our clients couldn’t seem to figure out how to create a Google Ads account instead of the dreaded AdWords Express account. So, we found a backdoor that we wanted to share with you in case you’re running into the same problem, as we see SO MANY QUESTIONS in various help centers on the issue.

Here’s what you do:

  1. Go to ads.google.com, and notice how you are redirected to: https://ads.google.com/aw/campaigns/new/express. Throw away the whole computer. Just kidding 😀
  2. Notice how in very small font at the bottom, it says “Experienced with Google Ads?” – click that! Most of our clients wouldn’t think to click this, because after all, they hired us to be the experienced ones.
  • After you click “Experienced with Google Ads?”, check the URL you are redirected to. It should now be: https://ads.google.com/aw/campaigns/new, and not contain the word “express”.
  • If you’re one of our clients, go ahead and click, “Create an Account Without a Campaign”. If you are managing this on your own…you are going to need to create some campaigns, so walk on through the process, knowing you are now working within a Google Ads (and not an AdWords Express) account.

And voila! You now have a full fledged Google Ads account with all the bells and whistles.

Happy advertising! 🙂