Announcing an improved ad preview tool

This post has been cross posted from the Inside AdWords Blog:

The Ad Preview Tool is a handy way to check how your ads appear on Google without accumulating additional impressions or clicks. By setting a specific location for your preview, you can see how your ads will look to a user in New York even if you’re located in San Francisco.

We’ve recently given the Preview Tool a face-lift and introduced some helpful new features. If you’re signed into your account while previewing your ads, you’ll now see integrated keyword diagnosis results. In this example below, we’ve entered our keyword red roses to see if it’s triggering ads in New York:

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In addition to displaying the ads for that search, the Preview Tool now specifically confirms whether your ad is showing and links to the relevant campaign and ad group. If your ad isn’t showing, the Preview Tool will tell you why, helping you understand if you need to adjust your bids, location targeting, daily budget, or optimize your account.

Using the new Device setting, you can also view and diagnose your ads for high-end mobile devices. You can even choose the specific device and carrier you’re interested in, so you can check ad visibility on multiple devices without borrowing all of your friends’ phones!

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This feature is especially relevant if you're using location extensions to target your mobile ad campaign to an area other than your physical location. By entering latitude and longitude information in the Ad Preview Tool, you can quickly confirm that your ads are correctly displaying your business address to mobile users within a specific location. You can also determine whether a hyperlocal distance marker, which lets users know exactly how far away they are from your business, is visible for your ads. 

You can explore these new features by finding the Ad Preview Tool under the Reporting and Tools tab in your AdWords account or by navigating directly to www.google.com/adpreview.

Posted by Kaan Baloglu, Google Mobile Ads Software Engineer