Why has Google AdWords Become Google Ads?

Over the last month, Google has phased in a rebrand of its core advertising brand and source of much of it’s income, Google AdWords and introduced a new logo for its newly named successor, Google Ads.

The change was announced back in June, as reported by TechCrunch, Search Engine Land and a much wider press, due to its significance, and is intended to simplify Google’s offering over what was a plethora of different, often seemingly competing brands and offers.

Google Ads will serve as “the front door for advertisers to buy on all Google surfaces,” and incorporates the core search ads that were AdWords initial product as well as Display Ads, YouTube videos, App Ads in Google Play, Location Listings in Google Maps and so on.

The change also reflects the fact that although AdWords started out as a platform where you bid to appear in ads related to keywords, much of Google’s product offering now no longer require, or allow you, to choose keywords, e.g. Google Shopping, Display Ads, Remarketing, Dynamic Search Ads, etc., and this may signify even further changes may take place in the future regarding how Google sells its advertising.

Google is also launching a new product called Smart Campaigns, which will become the new default mode for Small Business Advertisers. This allows advertisers to define the actions it wants, e.g. phone calls, online purchases, Store Visits, etc., and then uses machine learning to take care of everything and optimise the advertising products, e.g. text ads, display ads, targeting, etc., to produce the results required. This, presumably, will be replacing the much-maligned AdWords Express with a smarter version, albeit one in which advertisers have little control, but more on that another day.

The second change is to combine Google’s analytical tools for marketers into the Google Marketing Platform. This comprises mainly of Google Analytics and Double Click Marketing but also includes stuff like the Google Data Studio and Tag Manager.

And the third change is to rebrand all of Google’s monetization tools for publishers, i.e. DoubleClick Ad Exchange, DoubleClick for Publishers. Google AdSense into Google Ad Manager. So that will be goodbye to DoubleClick as well as AdWords.