Just released on November 10, 2021, Google Ads Editor version 1.8, has gotten a few upgrades. While you can always find a comprehensive list of updates by going to Google’s announcement on their blog, we’re here to share some of our favorite upgrades so far and why we love them.

New Sign-In Feature – Remember the old Google Ads Editor sign in process, where you needed to copy and paste a token from the online Google Ads interface over to Google Ads Editor? Simple, but still a longer process than it needed to be. You no longer need to copy and paste a code. Now, you just log into the Google Ads online version when prompted via Editor and you’ll automatically be able to download your accounts and campaigns into Google Ads Editor. We love simplicity!

Ad Strength for Discovery – Our team is absolutely loving Discovery campaigns now available in Google Ads and have seen some great performance from them across our client set. Now, in Google Ads Editor you can see the Ad Strength indicator for Discovery and Discovery Carousel ads. As a note, all stats will show as “pending” once you download the newer version. So, to see the stats, you must run the “Check Ad Strength” tool in the program. From there, you’ll be able to get ad strength information and stats.

Target CPA Bids Automatically Added for Display, VAC and Discovery – While we don’t always want to start with Google’s recommended tCPA bids, when creating a new Display, Video Action or Discovery campaign, Google will now automatically fill in their suggested tCPA value if they can estimate one based on the account’s performance. You can edit it at any time. This helps ensure that you don’t actually have a super low bid in place, but one that Google believes makes sense.

Auto-apply View for Recommendations – Auto-apply is a new view under Recommendations in Google Ads Editor and allows you to enable or disable Google’s Recommendations, based on Recommendation type. While for almost all campaigns, we chose to keep these off – this is way better than having to log in through a separate dashboard when the program was in beta. Now, you can easily check to see which recommendations are being auto-applied and quickly make changes as needed.

Increased Support for In-engine Recommendation Types – Previously, you couldn’t apply all Recommendations directly from Google Ads Editor – not that you’d want too exactly – but, we are loving that Google Ads Editor now supports applying more Recommendation types through their interface, should you choose to, such as:

• Add responsive display ads
• Use targeting expansion
• Ad groups do not have any keywords
• Create ads in empty ad groups
• Move unused budgets

A Brand-New Overview Section – While often overlooked in the Google Ads online platform, the Overview section from Google Ads is now available in Google Ads Editor, which we are L-O-V-I-N-G. We typically use Google Ads Editor for execution and implementation of tasks, and the online platform more so to understand trends and develop further strategies for the account. Now, with some chart options, plus the ability to toggle metrics straight from Google Ads Editor – it may become an even more useful tool to PPC marketers. It’s like a double-win!

Photo Credit: Google Ads Help Center

Have you downloaded and upgraded to the newest version yet? If so, what are you loving and what could you do without? (Some of the upgrades not listed here, we could definitely do without, but more on that in another blog post!)