INTRODUCTION
At the beginning of 2022, Google launched the much-anticipated New Search Ads 360. Designed to resemble the Google Ads UI, this new experience brings a familiar look and feel with updated SA360 classics and new features ready to help you face the ever-changing world of search while streamlining your team’s day-to-day workflows.
With the sunsetting of the legacy UI approaching, we want to ensure you and your advertisers are prepared for this change. To help you know when and where to get started, we created this comprehensive guide to ease you into the new experience.
Upcoming Deadlines:
- Last day to schedule your bid migration in 2023 is Wednesday, Nov 8th, 2023.
- Last day to voluntarily schedule your bidding upgrade in 2024 is January 8th, 2024.
- February 2024 — Service preserving upgrades (Google auto-migrates you without service disruption).
- Between February and April 2024 — Access to the previous Search Ads 360 is expected to go away for all users.
Where to Get Started
Select a Sub-Manager (Advertiser)
When selecting a sub-manager to begin the migration process, it is important to be strategic. In many ways, this sub-manager will serve as a testing environment for migration. Once your initial sub-manager is migrated, formulate a game plan for any additional sub-managers. To help you get started, we have created a Migration Checklist that can be copied and customized for each of your sub-managers. With this tool, you can keep track of important feature statuses and ensure that your team stays on top of all upcoming and ongoing migrations.
Schedule a Bid Migration Date
Once in the advertiser you wish to migrate, navigate to the Experience Hub located on the left-hand rail in the new experience.
Within this tab, you can select a migration date. Migration date selections are on Wednesdays only, as this ensures Google has a fully staffed engineering team assisting with the batched migrations. Please keep in mind that the last day to schedule your bid migration in 2023 is Wednesday, Nov 8th, 2023.
Note: During migration, the legacy and new experience's bidding and budget management will be locked until the migration is complete. Furthermore, these features will become read-only in the legacy UI, and the data will cease to update post-migration.
Onboarding Checklist
In order to assist you and your team in understanding the necessary steps for migration, the new UI features an onboarding checklist located within the experience hub.
This checklist includes a to-do list of features that require review or contain errors. Due to the inter-dependencies between SA features, such as rules, templates, custom columns, and custom dimensions, it is recommended to review and resolve any errors listed in the onboarding checklist. Failure to resolve these errors may prevent automated migrations of these features.
What’s New
Additional Campaign and Ad Support
The new experience brings additional management abilities to historical native Google Ads and Microsoft Ads campaigns, ads, and extensions, including:
Although most of these newly available campaigns do not have floodlight support as of yet, clients can still benefit from SA's powerful bidding capabilities with the help of Google Ads conversion trackers or imported GA4 conversions.
New Search Ads Reporting API
Along with the new experience comes the new Search Ads 360 reporting API. Now released as an open beta, the new API is a recommended upgrade for all Search Ads 360 API users. Designed to better align with Google's latest development standards, this new API provides further flexibility and enhanced performance for managing your SA360 reporting data at scale. For more information on migrations, please see Google's migration guide.
Main Toolbar
Similar to the Google Ads UI, the new experience's toolbar lives in the top-right corner of SA360. Here you can view saved reports, refresh data, adjust tools and settings, review notifications, get assistance via the help center, and switch to a different platform within the GMP stack.
Additionally, the new Tools and Settings button encapsulates many important features of the new experience such as a shared library, bulk actions, measurement, and setup. In this tab, you can review and enable default conversion actions, grant or update access, create bid strategies, schedule automated rules, and more.
Conversion Actions and Goals
One of the largest changes of the new experience is how to bid strategy targets are defined. Biddable targets in the new UI are now referred to as conversion actions and conversion goals. Unlike in the previous UI where conversion targets were configured under bid strategy settings, conversion actions and goals are now set at the individual campaign level. This gives you and your team greater flexibility in determining what drives performance.
Note: If you are still seeing Conversion Action Sets instead of Conversion Goals, Conversion Goal Migration is happening automatically, and migration has yet to occur for your sub-manager.
Custom Columns & Dimensions
Please note that custom columns are now used solely for reporting purposes and will not affect bidding. Most custom columns have been migrated automatically, but we suggest checking any that are highlighted in the onboarding checklist and addressing any problems that may prevent their migration or syncing. Errors that state, "Couldn't sync changes to this custom column into the previous Search Ads 360 experience," can be ignored.
Business data has been replaced with custom dimensions in the new experience. While most business data will automatically translate into custom dimensions in the new UI, one feature change may prevent a complete migration. In the new experience, one custom dimension table cannot reference another. This may require rethinking and restructuring of how your custom dimension values are uploaded.
New Hierarchy/User Access
Another significant change to the new search ads experience is its revamped account structure. This new hierarchy allows more flexibility to grant access, create entities, and share rules, columns, and labels across various levels of your account’s organization.
For instance, users with the same permissions can view those entities when you create entities at your access level and your desired hierarchy level (Manager, Sub-manager, Client account). However, access to entities becomes more restrictive the further down the hierarchy you create the entity. For example, a column built at the manager level can be shared with all sub-manager accounts in the hierarchy, but a column built at the sub-manager level is only shared with its subordinate client accounts (engines).
Additional Training
Learn With GMP
Google's Learn with GMP virtual trainings offer a variety of helpful content. Check out these popular new SA360 videos on:
Meet With Our Migration Team
As the sunsetting of the legacy experience moves closer, we are here to partner with you and your team to ensure a smooth transition. If you have any questions about migration or getting started, please contact us!
For any specific questions about migration or getting started, please get in touch with our support team via Adswerve Connect or at support@adswerve.com