Google Automatically Adding Ads To Accounts

Google has started rolling out a new "service" to Google Ads users, by automatically opting them in to a new system called "Ads by Google Ads." According to them these will "potentially improve your campaign performance." They also recommend "running these ads indefinitely." You can see what Google has to say about them here: Take Advantage of Ads Added By Google Ads. They'll be extended text ads, and probably the most important factor here, is that as an account manager or Google Ads user, you don't have any control over these ads. Google automates the copy in them, they decide where they go, and what they say. Ad copy is supposed to be based on existing ads in the account, but the ones we've seen seem to be pulling content from the site instead. You can opt out of them, but you have to do it manually for each account. You don't get a choice on whether you want to opt in or not. And you don't get to see the ads before they start running, or approve them. They're just there.

Pro's & Con's

As with so many things, there are probably both advantages and disadvantages of the whole system.  On the one hand, Google has recently ended the old standard text ads, and you're supposed to only be using the extended text ads. Legacy ads are still displaying, but there's a big push at the moment to get rid of them, partly because the new extended text ads look a lot more like normal organic results. On the other hand, what if you have strict rules about the copy your ads can contain? What if your client wants to approve your ad copy before it goes live?  What if you're running split tests? Or landing page tests? Seems to us that the potential negatives far outweigh the positives. Google doesn't know the goals of the business, or the objectives of the campaigns. Instead they're just automating it. And if you've never had problems with their dynamic keyword insertion, then you haven't been managing accounts for very long.

Opting Out

Suffice it to say, we'll be opting out of these for all our clients. Assuming we can see the ads in the account. Google assures us that all of these "Ads by Google Ads" will be labelled. But we've already seen one that didn't appear in the account. We spend a lot of time and effort optimising our client accounts. There's no way we're going to let some rogue Google bot start adding ads into them.