AdWords: Should You Create a New Campaign? Or Ad Group

One of the many learning curves involved with AdWords has to do with account structure. As you build out your account, you will no doubt encounter the occasional dilemma of whether to create a new campaign for an advertising objective, or create a new ad group instead.

So, how do you make that decision? Well, it typically depends on what you want to change and why.

When to create a new campaign

Most of the time, if you don’t have to create a new campaign, don’t. It’s easier to manage an account that has fewer campaigns. However, there are some situations where it is either highly advisable or mandatory to create a new campaign. Here are some of those situations:

Different location targeting

Location targeting is at the campaign level, so it is necessary to create a new campaign if you want to have different location targeting.

Different language targeting

If you want to have different language targeting, that is also at the campaign level and requires creating a new campaign.

Different budget

This is a very common reason for creating a new campaign. Perhaps you want to experiment with a new strategy, and want to give it a lower budget as it gets going. That’s a good reason for having a separate campaign.

When to create a new ad group (instead of a new campaign)

As I mentioned earlier, it’s easier to manage an account that has fewer campaigns. So if you don’t need to separate location targeting, budget, or another campaign level setting, it’s generally best to create a new ad group. Some of the most common reasons to create a new ad group are:

To advertise another a particular product or service.

To isolate your best performing keywords in order to watch them carefully, and optimize as much as possible.

To control quality score elements. For example, if one keyword is has a much lower quality score than others in the ad group, it’s best to separate it from that ad group. The overall average quality score of the ad group is a factor in determining individual keyword quality score, so you don’t want one keyword pulling down the average.

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