Its official, I’m calling 2014 the year of the PPC Wars.

The history of the internet has seen Netscape vs Internet Explorer. Windows vs Mac. iOS vs Android.

Now its well and truly Adwords vs Facebook Ads.

Adwords Innovations for 2014

The PPC wars continue to heat up, with Adwords innovating at a pace I haven’t seen in the 7 years I’ve been involved in the industry.

In an unusual step, Adwords’ VP of Product Management, Jerry Dischler, personally presented a half-hour Apple-esque ‘product launch’ to show off upcoming Adwords innovations.

A lot of ad innovations for App Developers, but the announcements that caught my attention came later …

Offline Conversion Attribution

At the 14 minute mark of the Livestream, Jerry announced the results of a pilot that Google have been running with RKG that fully attributed in store, offline conversions back to Adwords. The result? A 102% increase on Return on Ad Spend – over and above the ROAS that RKG had already, previously had attributed to Adwords.

So what does this mean for the advertiser?

Now that RKG knows they can profitably sustain a higher CPA – in an open bidding war, they can effectively become the last advertiser standing. Competitors who aren’t armed with this information will most likely cap their CPA too low – effectively throttling volume of qualified (& profitable) customers.

Enhanced Reporting

At the 19 minute mark, Director of Product Management Paul Feng, introduces a new Enhanced Reporting tool – enabling drag-and-drop pivot tables and bar/line charting of *live* data. Incredible!

I never thought I’d be excited about reporting, but this new tool simply means less time formatting data and more time finding and communicating business insights.

At the end of the day, this means even better advertising for you, our clients.

Let the PPC Wars continue!