If you’re a bit of a number geek, like myself, you’ll be pleased to see a couple of new features from Google Ads; manager account dashboards and some new ways to build custom columns.
Create Dashboards across multiple accounts
Before now Google Ads dashboards were only available for individual accounts. Now, however, they can be built using data across multiple accounts in your MCC.
If you have multiple accounts that are linked in someway ie. for the same client or for different websites you own etc. you can now easily consolidate the data into one dashboard to highlight any issues and/or to compare performance.
Simply select Dashboards, under Reports when on the homepage of your MCC and you’ll be given the option to create a new dashboard or see a list of your Dashboards, if you have created any in the past:
When in the dashboard creation / edit mode you can add Notes, Reports or Scorecards after clicking one of the plus signs in the dark grey boxes:
These are as follows:
- Note – this is a box that you can write your own text in
- Report – this can be a ‘New report’, ‘Saved report’ (from your reports section) or a ‘Predefined report’ (please note that saved and predefined reports can be edited within the dashboard if they don’t include the exact metrics etc that you were looking for)
- Scorecard – this is one or more measures that you’d like to see in your dashboard as a figure that can be filtered and customised as you wish
There are also some filters that can be applied to the entire dashboard, such as Accounts and Date range. You can select which account(s) you wish to report on and also which date range you want to see the data for. Also if you wish to compare that date range with another, or not.
Create custom columns to compare data
Custom columns have been around for a while but Google has now added some new features, which include:
- Spreadsheet functions
- The option to calculate and compare metrics across date ranges
- The ability to use other custom columns in formulas
- Non-metric columns being compatible with your formulas, including columns like Campaign name, Budget and more
- Column formats like ‘Text’, ‘True/False’ and ‘Date’
- Being able to apply multiple filters to one formula
- The option to filter by custom variables for conversions
Custom columns can be a great way to get the data you need into one table so you don’t have to keep jumping about between tabs within Google Ads. For example if you want to see how your campaign / ad group / keyword etc performs on mobile vs. desktop you can create custom columns. Simply select clicks / conversions / CTR for example, for mobile and desktop and add those two columns to the appropriate table and voila, the data is right there.
Please note that custom columns will soon be compatible with Google Ads Editor and Dashboards, so you’ll be able to pull your custom columns into these Google products to view the data in those too.
