There are some new changes Google AdWords is making designed to make it easier for advertisers to understand the effectiveness of extensions, particularly extensions that automatically display in ads.

Over the coming weeks, we’re rolling out a new report in AdWords that shows you how your ads perform when they appear with automated extensions [http://goo.gl/QpwqtL]. To view the report, select “Automated extensions” from the View drop-down in the Ad extensions tab [http://goo.gl/XpyTUH].

Keep in mind Google already optimizes your ads to show the most relevant ad extensions [http://goo.gl/jJDnvC], generally showing your highest performing and most useful combination of extensions and formats among those eligible. So there’s no need to compare and manually optimize for performance across your automated extensions.

While AdWords states that they automatically optimize extensions that appear in ads, it could be difficult to measure effectiveness with the seemingly randomness that Google would sometimes display the ads.  The new reporting, which is being rolled out over a few weeks, will give advertisers a better idea of their effectiveness as well as the ability to see just how well Google is auto-optimizing these extensions.

Google is also noting that they are sunsetting the term “annotations” as used to describe the automated extensions in AdWords.

To simplify our naming conventions, we’re also retiring the name “annotations” as a way to refer to automated extensions. You’ll see these changes reflected across the AdWords Help Center [http://goo.gl/ieRPn9] and in our future communications.

Both of these changes are great for advertisers who are actively using extensions and want to better understand the effectiveness of the automated extensions as well.

Once the reporting is enabled in your account, you can access if by clicking on the Ad Extensions tab, then selecting Automated Extensions from the View drop down menu.