Google introduced an extremely simple version of Adwords called Starter Edition awhile ago. With Adwords Starter Edition, you can:
- Sign up an Adwords account via a one-page form.
- Create up to 50 ads with multiple keywords for your business.
- View a single page of overview of the impressions, clicks and costs of your ads.
- Set geo-targeting on a single city or country.
- Upgrade to the Standard Edition at any time. However, once you have upgraded a Standard Edition account, it is not reversible.
- Set up a hosted business web page from within Adwords, without knowledge of HTML coding, if you don’t already have a business website.
From the last point above, we can see that Google has the intention to extent Starter Edition for the use of many common people who really know nothing about Adwords. Here is the evidence shown on Inside Adwords Blog, in which Google is even promoting the Starter Edition to local business owners without websites.
A hosted business page is an informational webpage that new advertisers can create when they sign up for AdWords Starter Edition. You can use a hosted business page to tell people more about your business when they click on your ad.
Hosted business pages are now available for new US advertisers using AdWords Starter Edition. It’s important to note that a hosted business page is not a full-featured website with its own domain name, but rather a single landing page for your AdWords ads. Hosted business pages are free with a new AdWords account, and can be set up with no knowledge of HTML.
So how do you know if you need to upgrade to the Standard Edition?
- When you want to advertising for more than one product.
- When you need to set geo-targeting to more than one locations.
- When you need to track the performance of your keywords based on advertising spend.
- When you want to try out content targeting or site targeting.
- When you need to set different bid prices between search targeting ads and content targeting ads.
- When you have to use Adwords built-in functions like Position Preference.
Here you can find a comparison chart on Starter Edition and Standard Edition.
Is there any value of using Adwords Starter Edition?
I believe Starter Edition is a basic tool which can be good for business branding. Its functionality is very limited, and obviously anyone who considers using Adwords seriously will not use it. It is rather designed for beginners of the Adwords program who:
- Want to quickly set up a few ads for a single product.
- Want to bring online exposure for their businesses.
- Do not need to track their advertising spend according to the results.