New Widget In AdWords Makes Countdown Copy Easy

Quickly set up dynamic countdowns in ads without having to type variable strings.Quickly set up dynamic countdowns in ads without having to type variable strings.

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ad customizer widget in adwords for countdowns

Adding a dynamic countdown — to show the days until a deadline like a sale starting or registration period ending, for example — has gone through several iterations. There’s the countdown script, then Google debuted ad customizers with a countdown variable. Now Google is building on the ad customizer functionality with a new widget.

As soon as you type “{=” into a line of ad copy in the AdWords web interface, the widget will appear. Now just plug in the date and time the countdown ends and the days ahead of the countdown end date that you want your ads to start running.

The time zone defaults to the “Ad viewer’s time zone”, or you can change that to the time zone that the account is located in.

I happily stumbled on this update while setting up countdown ads, and it’s a big improvement over having to type the entire sequence in manually.


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About the author

Ginny Marvin
Contributor
Ginny Marvin was Third Door Media’s former Editor-in-Chief (October 2018 to December 2020), running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin wrote about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, MarTech and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

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