Google quietly announced on Google+ that they are going to disable the ability to share ads across multiple ad groups or campaigns using the Shared library starting on February 11, 2015.
Google said they are dropping this ability "based on recent enhancements that help scale account management, there are now more effective ways to create and optimize ads at scale."
What will happen with the shared ads already in the system? Google will simply just copy them across, so there will be duplicates. Google explained:
There are no actions required as a result of this change. Ads within your Shared library will be copied to all the ad groups they were originally shared with and will retain their performance history. If you use AdWords Editor or the AdWords API, we recommend re-syncing your accounts after February 11th, 2015, to ensure the most up-to-date lists of ads.
One advertiser commented on the Google+ thread saying he likes the idea of having a cleaner Shared Library.
Forum discussion at Google+.
