In an effort to make online advertising even more accessible to small businesses, Google has announced the launch of “Google AdWords Express.” This new product is designed to help novice small business owners launch a Google PPC campaign easily.

According to the Insider AdWords blog post found here, the advertiser selects their business industry, writes a text ad, decides whether to link to their website or Google Places page, and add a maximum monthly budget.

The biggest difference here is that advertisers do not select their keywords, Google does that for you. This seems like a great, easy way for SMBs to get started, but for any advertiser with even the slightest sophistication, this option probably doesn’t make sense.

It’s yet to be seen how much control advertisers will have to block irrelevant searches, test ad copy, and control costs (Google’s system does the bidding, similar to the Budget Optimizer setting currently available for regular AdWords accounts).

For help setting up your own AdWords Express account, or a regular Google AdWords account, please contact Magnifi.