AdWords Campaign Experiments full US rollout and new tracking tag

We’re excited to announce that AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE) is rolling out to all U.S. advertisers. ACE is a free tool that makes it easier to test and precisely measure the impact of changes to your keywords, bids, ad groups and placements. Over the last two months, advertisers in our beta have reported that ACE has helped them feel more confident in the impact of their campaign changes, making it easier and less risky to try different strategies and optimize more frequently.

Without ACE, you might evaluate optimizations by comparing key metrics before and 2-4 weeks after making campaign changes. Differences in those key metrics are assumed to be the result of the changes. But fluctuations in demand, shifts in competitor tactics, and even changes in the weather can complicate things.

With ACE, experimental campaigns run side-by-side with the original campaign in a simultaneous split test. This approach lets you run shorter tests that start and stop whenever you like, with less concern about your results being affected by seasonality or other factors. You get more precise impact estimates and more chances throughout the year to test and improve performance.

Over the next few weeks, most U.S. advertisers will automatically see ACE under Campaign Settings when they sign in to AdWords. If you’re in the U.S., you can also choose to sign up for priority access. If you’re outside the U.S., please stay tuned. We look forward to announcing availability in more countries and languages soon.

To learn more about using ACE, check out these videos and the Help Center FAQ.

To make tracking your experiments easier, we've added the ValueTrack parameter {aceid} that enables your tracking system to identify if a click came from the control split or the experiment split of a campaign. You can then segment and compare to understand the impact of an experiment on metrics available in your analytics system.

If your website is www.example.com, you can assign the following destination URL tag for AdWords keywords or creatives: www.example.com?type={aceid}

The new tag will be active later this week. For more details on using ValueTrack tags and ACE, please visit our Help Center.

PostPosted by Helen Schindler, Inside AdWords crew