Old AdWords Interface Will Be Retired on July 10th

Ever since the announcement of the new AdWords interface at Google Summit in 2016, there has been an uneasiness among experienced advertisers. The old interface has become so familiar and so comfortable. I know where everything is to the point where it’s muscle memory to know how far to move my mouse to exactly hit that tiny link to the change history.

But when you know that a familiar friend will soon be leaving, you begin to dread the future. That future was distant for so long. Even when the new AdWords “experience” became available as an option I could always click the “Return to previous AdWords” link and find my happy place again.

This has been my security blanket.

Starting July 10th Advertisers Will Only Have The New Interface

In just a couple weeks AdWords will turn off the lights of the old interface, 2.5 years after announcing it. That’s a long time to maintain two parallel interfaces and I’m sure it will be a big relief for Google. For newer advertisers that never got into the old interface, this won’t be a big deal. They’ve only really known the new experience so they’ll keep motoring along and won’t notice the loss of their “Return to previous AdWords” link.

However, for long-time advertisers this may be the final kick in the pants they need to get into the new interface and start getting comfy. Personally, I’ve been using the new interface almost exclusively for several months. I made that decision since I knew the end was coming and it was mentally a little easier when I always had the old interface to run back to when I needed it. So what are my thoughts?

My Thoughts On The New Interface

Overall I’ve found the transition to be very smooth. A few positives:

• Very clean design
• Far fewer errors (red bar of death)
• New features like the Audience Manager and Promotion Extension

But with any transition, there are always pain points. A few that have stood out to me:

• Columns are a mess – Each view (campaign, ad group, keyword, search terms, etc.) defaults to a basic set that’s virtually worthless and your first time or two in the new interface requires so much time setting up and saving your new columns. On a positive, you can now resize columns in the table, which is very handy.
• Lots of things “hide” in the tools area (the little wrench icon in the picture above) so if you can’t find something that’s where to go
• Some things still seem broken – for example I just set up an automated rule and wanted it to email me, but my email isn’t the email on the AdWords account. From what I can tell there isn’t a way to do this, which seems like a pretty big fail (that WAS available in the old interface)

If you run into questions in the new interface, feel free to drop a comment here and we’ll get back to you.