Dude, Where’s My Campaign?
An old standby, Google, is slowly transitioning Adwords users toward a new interface. The new Adwords interface has a lot of great features. Yet, as I am resistant to change, I’ve been reluctantly going back and forth since April to try and wean myself off the old interface. I finally got used to the new interface. In fact, I’m actually starting to like it better.
But that’s not the point of this post. Besides being sleeker and easier to use- I’m 100% converted to the new interface because *gasp* I found an error in the old one. After a couple of months of use, I discovered a few campaign issues that were only visible in the new interface. Google slipped up- let me tell you the story.
The Case of the Missing Campaign
While in the old interface I decide to create an image ad campaign. I set the settings, added my image ad, keywords and activated my campaign as usual. Once I completed all the normal steps Adwords took me back to the main Campaign Summary screen. Except something was different this time around, the campaign I had just created wasn’t there. First I checked the show section. OK, yes I’m showing all. Am I going crazy? I went to the Tools page, then my Change History page. It’s there, I created it. I click the campaign in My Change History; A big, red Incomplete in the status section. I go back to the Campaign Summary screen…not there.
I call Google. The first person I speak to thinks I’m crazy until I tell them to check My Change History. Their advice: create the campaign again. I hang-up, decide to go against their advice and call back. The next person had no idea what I was talking about, claiming not only could they see my campaign, but it was active and had impressions. WHAT is going on here?! After arguing back and forth the nice Google representative calmly said “are you in the new interface or previous interface?”
Case closed: the image ad campaign was active in the new interface. But what caused the campaign to go missing? Will the campaign ever turn up in the previous interface? These questions are left unanswered.
Status is Everything
In a campaign I recently created in the old interface, I realized after a day that my campaign was not getting impressions. I checked the keyword statuses. Showing ads right now? Yes. Ad status: active. Everything looked normal to me.
What do I do? I call Google.
This time the Google representative was in the new interface and knew exactly what the issue was. In the new interface the ad status was still pending review. Again: no rhyme or reason as to why this happened.
The Moral of the Story
Even if you hate change like me, in online marketing, campaigns are everything. Don’t let any slip ups in the old interface affect your earnings. Switch to the new interface today.
Tags: adwords new interface, google adwords, google adwords interface, google adwords new interface
August 25th, 2009 at 3:32 am
I had the same problem yesterday: i change geotargeting for my most importan campaign around 9.00 CET.
My colleague worked on the account later on, but on different campaigns and from AdWords editor. Than, around 16.45 CET, campaign was missing. I submitted a ticket to AdWords team, still no reply, still no campaign.
Did google team responded? did they turn back your campaign? I am just afraid to loose all historical data, and campaign is fine-tuned and totally optimised.
let me know
August 28th, 2009 at 10:44 am
I’ve never experienced a problem with using Adwords editor and if it was two totally different campaigns I don’t see how they would affect one another, but I do know if you were to make changes to an ad it will erase all past history on that ad. Always pause your ad and create a new one to prevent losing stats.
I recommend using Adwords live chat specialist. If you go to the contact us page usually there’s a “Chat now with a live specialist” link, but beware sometimes the link is not available.
September 26th, 2009 at 7:10 am
I am not sure the online video still a personal experience,eg. YouTube rank in the top