Even though the school year is officially over for most, we know that business never stops, along with updates and changes from Google. Google AdWords first introduced “enhanced campaigns” back in February and while it hasn’t affected everyone yet, due to Google’s soft roll-out of the new features, it certainly will by the end of this month. Here is the cliff notes version of what you need to know and the effects they will have on your AdWords campaign performance.

Simply put, enhanced campaigns bring a higher level of flexibility and options for advertisers to utilize when targeting potential customers across various devices and locations. As Google SVP of Advertising, Susan Wojcicki explains, “We want to provide the best search results for users regardless of where they are and what device they are using.” With the exponential trend of increasing tablet and smartphone usage, it is important to note the different ways people interact with these devices and what their end goal is. For instance, a consumer searching from their mobile phone might want results catered to their current location rather than the national results they might see on their home computer. Enhanced campaigns bring this new level of intuitiveness to searching that wasn’t there before.

Prior to enhanced campaigns, this kind of fine-tuned advertising was achievable, but it required manual set up of campaigns and constant monitoring. With an enhanced campaign, these details can all be included under one over-arching campaign, greatly improving the ease of setup and monitoring. Now, from within one campaign, advertisers can cater their ads based on important factors such as: device type, location and time of day.

For example, you are a business whose main goal is to get customers into your store during business hours. With an enhanced campaign, you can increase your bids for users searching from smartphones within 10 miles of your location. Similarly, once your store closes for the day, you can create a setting to reduce your bids so you’re not wasting money while your store is closed. This allows you to show the best possible ads to prospective customers, in the immediate area, while increasing your relevance to those customers based on their needs at that exact moment.

As mentioned above, the Google migration date for this change is July 22, if your campaigns are not upgraded by that time they will be upgraded for you and set to the Google default settings. It’s better to invest some time now and set the parameters you want instead of re-configuring your campaign after the fact.

With enhanced campaigns advertisers can better target customers through the new advanced options enhanced campaigns allow, and make better use of their money at the same time. An ultimate win-win for both advertisers and customers.