If you have ever tried to test your new PPC bidding strategy or some other element of your PPC campaigns, it is likely that you are aware of the campaign drafts and experiments feature of Google Ads. And if you used to find it all too annoying, the good news for you is that Google has rolled out a new experiments page to allow users to create, manage, and optimize their experiments without much hassle.

So, what has changed with the new experiments page, and how can you use it to experiment with your PPC ad campaigns? Let’s find out!

How the New Experiments Page Changes the Whole Experience?

Previously, advertisers first needed to make Drafts where they could mirror different settings of their PPC ad campaigns and then experiment with them to see the impact without affecting the performance of the original campaign. With the new experiments page, you don’t need to create drafts to test your intended changes.

You can now sync the experiments with the corresponding ad campaigns to keep them up-to-date. Previously, it required you to copy all the changes from the original campaigns manually, but now everything is automatically updated within the experiments as soon as your original campaign changes.

The new “All Experiments” section allows you to create the following experiment types:

• Custom Experiments
• Video Experiments
• Ad Variations

How To Create Custom Experiments?

If you want to create new custom experiments, login to your Google Ads account and follow the steps below:

1. Click Experiments from the left side panel and then select All Experiments in the dropdown that appears.
2. Click the ‘+’ sign to start setting up an experiment.
3. Select Custom Experiments and your campaign type and then click ‘Continue’.
4. On the next page, you can start setting up experiments.
5. Enter your experiment name, select the campaign you intend to experiment with, Click save and then Continue.

Note: Make sure that your selected campaigns don’t have a shared budget. Besides, you have to manually copy the campaign-level conversion goals over to the sample campaign once scheduled.

1. Once the experiment is created, you can edit it if and when needed. You can apply changes at ad group and campaign levels.
2. Once you have made the necessary changes, you can schedule your ad campaign. Select up to two experiment goals by increasing or decreasing the desired metric after selecting it.
3. The budget can be split according to the traffic and budget of the original campaign. You may also select search-based or cookie-based split. They are advanced settings and do the following:
   
   Search-Based: When this option is selected, as a result of each search, the users randomly get to see either the original campaign or the experiment of the advertiser. It is also likely that one user might see both the campaign versions. Clearly, the experiment split option is meant to count the number of searches.
   
   Cookie-based: This option assigns users to a bucket, and they either get to see the original campaign or the experiment no matter how many times a search is performed. Here, the idea is to count the number of users.
4. Next, you need to specify the duration for which you intend to run the experiment. Split your budget wisely and enable synchronization to sync the trial and base campaigns together.
5. Once created, the experiment is set to run on the dates you have chosen.

Analyzing Data From Your Experiments

It is best to rest for at least a couple of weeks once you have launched an experiment. Data is collected during this period, and you’ll soon get actionable insights to help you decide if you want to persist with the changes or not.

The results are displayed according to the base and trial categories. The base data shows stats from the campaign, and the trial data reflects the numbers from your experiment. In the Difference row, you can see the increase/decrease in the specified metric. Analyzing this data will help you learn how the changes affected your campaign and whether you should apply those changes permanently or not.

The new experiments page has certainly made the entire experience quite simplified. Now that you know how to set up experiments, start playing around with your ad campaigns. The more you experiment, the better you will get at it.