PROS

• Search Query Reporting:  The addition of the Search Terms report directly from an ad group is fantastic.  The ability to choose one keyword or the entire ad group speeds up the process of finding negative keywords or new long tail variations to target – especially with the simple click/save functionality.
• Persistent Graphs: Nearly every tab employs a graph that can be customized for quick reporting.  Slicing and dicing PPC data is so important, and this just takes a bunch of work out of the equation (for us visual thinkers out there).
• Edit Budgets from Overview: The fact that you can now edit campaign budgets without leaving the campaign overview page is fantastic.  Instead of clicking through and finding the campaign settings (as in the old interface), now you can simply click the budget and type in the new dollar amount.

CONS

• Pokey, Pokey, Pokey: Comparitively speaking, I’ve found the new interface to be particularly slow.  The visual elements of each page (including the graphs I mentined as a positive…  yeah, I know – sue me) really drag down the speed at which you can navigate between campaigns, ad groups and tabs.  I’m an impatient cuss, so this really gets me.
• Tab Selection: This is slightly nit-picky, but when going from an ad group to a campaign or from a campaign to the overview – the fact that I remain on the same tab annoys me to no end.  What do I mean?  Ok, so I’m editing an ad text and from there I decide to go back and review other ad groups.  When I do so, I remain on the “Ads” tab.  This is useless to me.  I don’t want to review ad texts from a campaign level or worse yet, the account level.  The old interface defaulted to the account, campaign or ad group overview.  I miss that.
• Keywords Tab – Search vs. Content: In the old interface, at the very top of the list of keywords in an ad group, I was presented with a direct split of Search vs. Content performance for a particular ad group.  This was never a significant point for me until I started using the new interface.  Now when I review keywords, I have to scroll to the bottom of the ‘Keywords’ page to see the Search/Content split or switch to the ‘Networks’ breakdown tab.  This is really minor, but for whatever reason it has really bugged me – and I can’t seem to get over it.

The new AdWords interface is likely a big step forward.  Guess I’m just taking my time in getting used to it.  Nostalgia and muscle memory are winning out over flash and new-car smell.  For now AdWords doesn’t feel right to me.

Have you found that the new AdWords interface has met your expecations or do you, like me, miss the old UI?  Leave me a comment and let me know!

Under certain criteria, you can use trademark terms in your ad text in the U.S. even if you don’t own that trademark or have explicit approval from the trademark owner to use it.

This change comes as “…an effort to improve ad quality and user experience.” How does that work exactly? Well, the whole point of this update is to allow legitimate advertisers selling brand-name products to use trademarks without fear of retribution. In lieu of offering up a generic ad to searchers, these advertisers can just come right out and say what brands are being sold in their ad texts.

The official announcement was made on 05/14 – but Google will not begin displaying these new “trademark friendly” ads until June (06/15).  If you need a refresher on the official criteria for what is and isn’t allowed when using trademarks in ads, head on over to the AdWords help section!