If you think that Google will hold still while Facebook ads are only increasing, you are very wrong. The tech giant is beginning to implement many improvements to the company’s advertising platform, AdWords, to make it easier on advertisers to track and target their campaigns.

Yesterday, Google presented new ad groups metrics that will assist advertisers measure ad performances and couple of hours later also introduced new mobile targeting functions for higher performances in mobile campaigns. Let’s review the new additions:

New Ad Groups Metrics

Google announced that over the few coming weeks, advertisers will find 3 new metrics they could add to the “Ad groups” section in their account (called “Competitive metrics”), which only operated previously under the “Campaigns” section:

• Impression share- The actual number of impressions the ad gets divided by the approximate number it potentially was eligible to get. Meaning, the closer it is to 100%, the more it realizes its potential.
• Lost IS (Rank)- How many impressions the ad is losing because of its Ad Rank (in percentages). The closer it gets to 0%, the better is the Ad Rank (which isn’t limiting it).
• Exact Match IS- The actual number of impressions the ad gets divided by the approximate number it potentially was eligible to get for the exact matched keywords defined of the search query. the closer it is to 100%, the better.

To implement these new metrics, Google is improving their AdWords algorithms and updating campaigns back to May 2011 (information before that won’t be available). Additionally, the new metrics will be updated once a day (estimated at noon Pacific Time every day).

New Mobile Targeting Functions

Last year, Google provided the option to initiate dedicated campaigns for desktop or mobile devices exclusively. Afterwards, it enabled to target only tablets and also to target specific mobile phone carriers of the advertiser’s country. Now, Google is presenting new mobile targeting functions:

WiFi
If the advertiser landing page requires a strong internet connection (video, HD photos, etc.), it is now possible to target the campaign only for WiFi connection. I do not suggest to use it if the landing page content has nothing too exceptional.

Deeper Operation System Version
The possibility to target users by their mobile OS was already available before, but now the choice can go much deeper, like choosing Android version 2.2, 2.3 or choosing 3.0 and above.