Over the last few weeks, Google has introduced without a lot of fanfare several important features into the AdWords platform. And they're not just cosmetic changes, so it's worthwhile for advertisers to become familiar with them.  Here's a recap of what's new.

Content Network Placement Report

One of the reasons that many advertisers have been hesitant to use the Content Network is the limited information about where their ads appear. The Placement Performance Report for the Content Network opens the curtain for a very revealing look at that data. Among the stats you can see for each page your ads are shown on are the URL, impressions and clicks, CPC, and conversion data.

Anyone that is already using the Content Network has to take a close look at this sort of information. If your reports look anything like mine do, you'll start excluding irrelevant sites from your campaigns (or reporting them for using hidden text to target keywords not at all related to the site) and start site-targeted campaigns for those that are providing a good ROI. This is a terrific improvement that was sorely needed for the Content Network.

Search Query Report

Another new reporting feature that looks promising is the Search Query Report, which lists the search queries that triggered your ads. If you're using broad match and phrase match within your ad groups, then all you have seen previously in the AdWords reports is the aggregated data for the associated keywords. The new Search Query Report breaks down that data into specific keyword variations for which your ads appeared.

Like the Placement Report, this is another attempt at transparency from Google; unfortunately, it's not nearly as useful. In the reports that I've run, I've seen a significant number of impressions listed as "All other queries" rather than the actual query text. According to Google, this is done for "queries that don't meet [their] privacy and volume requirements." But I see plenty of queries with just 1 or 2 impressions that have the actual search query listed in the report. And in my server log files, the referrer info shows the keywords used for many of those that Google lumps into "All other queries." Google's reason for aggregating the data doesn't quite make sense to me.

In any case, because the information currently provided by the Search Query Report isn't quite as thorough as it could be, it's still important to mine your server log files to extract the keywords yourself.  But Google's report can help you supplement that effort, especially with the conversion data.

IP Address Exclusion

Have you ever had an annoying competitor that kept clicking on your ads regularly? Or maybe you like to use the Search Network but you don't particularly like getting traffic from AOL. Well, now you can use the IP Exclusion Tool to prevent up to 20 IP address ranges per campaign from seeing your ads. I think this feature may get limited use, but those that do use it will find it extremely useful.

Ads Customized to Your Search History

You may be surprised to learn this, but Google is now customizing ads based on your search history.  If you search your own keywords frequently to check up on your ads, you may have noticed that the ads often do not appear in the position where you expect them. The reason for this is that the AdWords engine is taking into account your search history and the ads you clicked, and then trying to show you ads that it thinks will interest you most while giving less weight to ads you don't really want.  For example, if you've been served a few dozen ads for eBay for a variety of different search queries and you haven't clicked on a single one of them, then you will probably see the position of eBay ads dropping as you continue to perform more searches.  This customization sounds a lot like personalization of organic results, doesn't it? I believe there are some difference between the two, but there are certainly some similarities also.

The easiest way to get around the customization feature is to use the Ad Preview Tool, which will show you the ads unchanged. Another way is to remove the 'PREF' cookie for google.com from your browser. Interestingly, whether or not you're logged in to your Google account is irrelevant to the way ads are customized. That behavior seems to indicate that ad customization is tied to your cookie rather than to the web history of your account.

I do have to include a disclaimer: most of what I've discovered about ad customization is from my own testing, because there has been virtually no communication from Google about this recent change.  So if any of what I have written is incorrect, I would appreciate it if someone 'in the know' (like a Googler who knows what's going on) could correct it and hopefully provide more details. This is potentially a very important change for the AdWords platform.

There you have it -- a few small but significant changes in the functionality of the AdWords platform. I've started to use them to further optimize my campaigns, and I think it's worthwhile for most other advertisers to try them out as well.

Have any of these new features made a difference in the campaigns you manage for yourself or for your clients?

Update from Rand: Since we're getting into the PPC game ourselves, and since ghoti has done such a marvelous job with coverage, I figured that this is a must-have post for the weekend.