Internet Marketing Services

Google’s replacing its Google Advertising Professionals program with a new AdWords Certification Program. The news came around late April. Here’s a direct quote from Google about the new program:

The new AdWords Certification Program has been improved in all areas with updates to training materials, exam requirements, member eligibility and program benefits. To retain certification, you’ll have 6 months to move over to the new program. Here’s a summary of what’s new:

• New, comprehensive curriculum designed to improve strategic and tactical knowledge
• Introduction of annually refreshed advanced level exams illustrating competency in search, display, reporting and analysis
• To match the updated training materials, we’ve increased the exam requirements for individual qualification to two – Advertising Fundamentals and one advanced exam
• We’ve reset individual & company spend criteria – company spend has been reduced to a $10,000 minimum, and we’ve removed a minimum spend requirement for individual qualification
• Starting today, you can change your account profile settings to opt-in to the new Google Partner Search – an online, searchable directory of certified partners

The study materials for the exam can be found here.

The study materials can be broken down into four categories: Fundamental, Search, Display and Reporting. The categories are pretty self-explanatory just by looking at their names. As Google has stated, to become a qualified individual, one must pass the fundamental exam, plus one of the search, display or reporting exam.

Personally, I like the new system, even though that means I’ve to study again for the exams while I still have more than a year left on my previous certification. The new system provides whoever wants to obtain the certification a much specific idea on what to study comparing to the previous exam.

To be honest, even though the previous professional exam was very thorough on all topics, there was just too much trivial stuff to remember. Knowing the concept is one thing, while having to remember every single detail is another. I can hardly think of any reason why anyone needs to remember how the AdWords API works, especially for account managers who mainly just manage the account.

To summarize, here are the things to take note:

• Current certified professionals will have until late October to update their certification
• For individual certification, one must pass the fundamental exam, plus one of the search, display or reporting exam

Pitstop Media offers ROI based internet marketing services. If you need help with PPC management or PPC optimization please contact us for a free, no obligation quote. We’ve helped companies reduce their paid advertising cost by as much as 48% and increase AdWords conversion rates by as much as 410%. See our internet marketing case studies.