Google Data » Katie Wasilenko

Webinar: Bringing the power and control of search to display

Katie Wasilenko — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 21:04:00 +0000

Join us tomorrow, June 19, 2012 for the Learn with Google webinar, "Bringing the Power and Control of Search to Display,” to learn from the experts about Google’s major update to contextual targeting. The webinar starts at 10amPST / 1pmEST.

It’s now possible to target, bid and report on keywords on the Google Display Network, which means that you can fine-tune the performance of your contextual campaigns with the same level of control you’re used to in Search. It’s now easier for you to extend search campaigns to display and more efficient to run the two types of campaigns together.

Key areas that will be covered include:

The benefits of combining display with your search campaigns
Step-by-step campaign set-up guide
Campaign optimization tips and best practices

This webinar will be presented by Charlie Vestner, Global Director of Display Solutions and will include Q&A. The session is suitable for advertisers who are already running campaigns on the Google Display Network, as well as those who have not yet tried it.

Register now!

Posted by Katie Hamilton, Product Marketing Manager, Google Display Network

New In-Ads Notice Label and Icon for the Google Display Network in Europe

Katie Wasilenko — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Last year in the U.S., we launched the AdChoices Icon on the Google Display Network. AdChoices is an industry standard "i" icon that expands to “AdChoices” when users move their cursor over the icon. Giving users clear notice about the ads they see is a high priority for Google and for many in the online advertising industry at large. Users who click this label are taken to a page where they can learn more about online advertising and the ads they see.

We’re now rolling out the AdChoices feature across Europe, supporting industry-wide efforts to provide more information to consumers. We'll soon start to change our “Ads By Google” in-ads notice icon to a new icon that expands to an "AdChoices" label. These notifications were developed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB Europe)-led Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising to proactively give users notice and choice about the ads they see. With the adoption of a common icon users will see on ads across the web, we hope to show our support for the industry-wide initiative and to increase users' understanding about their choices.

Over the next few weeks, we'll start showing the new icon and label on most ad formats across the majority of European-language sites. Over time, we’ll expand the notice to ensure that all European-language publisher sites in the Google Display Network come within the Self-Regulatory Framework. This will be the single largest rollout of the "AdChoices" label to date, and we're encouraged that others in the industry are also adopting the label.

Users who click on the "AdChoices" label will be taken to a page where they can learn more about online advertising and the ads they are shown. This page will also link to the Ads Preferences Manager, where users can control the types of interest-based ads they see on the Google Display Network. We think this rollout will help users better understand the ads they're seeing, and we look forward to seeing widespread adoption of this label throughout the industry.

Posted by Jason Bigler, Product Management Director

Customize account management with AdWords scripts

Katie Wasilenko — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 19:00:00 +0000

We know that you're always looking for more efficient ways to manage your AdWords accounts. We also hear that many of you would love to use your own external data to make decisions in your accounts. Today, we're excited to announce the limited release of scripts in AdWords. With scripts, you can make changes to an AdWords account by writing simple JavaScript programs.

With scripts, you can:

Use external inventory data to either change bids or pause/unpause keywords.
Output account statistics to a spreadsheet from which you can create reports and visualizations.
Use stats trends over several weeks to change keyword or ad group bids.

Scripts run in the Google Apps Script infrastructure, and we're enabling Apps Script integration with three services: you can use Google Spreadsheets and Url Fetcher to integrate with external data, as well as email results of a script execution from the script itself.

To get started with scripts, visit the Campaigns tab, and select “Automation” then “Scripts” from the left toolbar:

To make the most of scripts, we recommend that whoever is writing them has a basic understanding of JavaScript.

In the coming weeks we plan to enable this feature for everyone. In the interim, we are accepting applications for access. Applicants will be whitelisted in batches as we ramp up usage in the system. In order to apply, you will need an AdWords customer ID (not a My Client Center ID). Please refer to our developers site for more instructions and best practices for using scripts.

Posted By: Prashant Baheti, AdWords Product Manager

Take advantage of mobile education opportunities

Katie Wasilenko — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Last week, in partnership with the Learn With Google program, we held our first “Mobile Education Week” webinar series for your agency or business to learn more about the tools and resources to help you succeed on mobile.

Below are video recordings of these webinars - check them out, and share with your colleagues.

Our Mobile Planet: Understanding U.S. Smartphone Consumers
Our first webinar provided an overview of the 2012 Our Mobile Planet smartphone research. Watch this video if you’d like to learn:

How smartphones are transforming core consumer behavior around the world, and the way we connect with others, stay informed, keep ourselves entertained, shop and navigate the world around us.
Implications for advertisers and strategies businesses can use to win the moments that matter with mobile.

Ideal for: global agencies and marketers

GoMo: Mobilize your Site with Quickly and Easily New Tools from Google & DudaMobile
The second webinar was a joint effort between Google’s GoMo initiative and DudaMobile on how it is now even easier for small businesses to create a free mobile-friendly website.

View this video if you’d like to learn:

Why mobile sites matter
Review Google's HowToGoMo.com resource
New: How to create free mobile sites for your small business directly from HowToGoMo.com, using a tool powered by DudaMobile
Examples and best practices for mobilizing your site using the free DudaMobile tool

Ideal for: small businesses and agencies interested in free tools to create a mobile site

Introducing Mobile Apps Inventory in AdWords
The final webinar shared the new opportunity available with the availability of AdMob inventory to AdWords users.

This video is great if you’d like to learn:

How AdWords now makes it easy for you to extend your campaigns to reach users inside mobile apps.
Review mobile-specific targeting, ad units, and reporting than enable you to optimize your ROI.

Ideal for: marketers and agencies looking to promote and target mobile apps

Want to learn more about how to help your business or agency succeed on mobile? Stay tuned to all new Mobile Ads news at the Google Mobile Ads blog and YouTube channel.

Posted by Sonja Lee, Product Marketing, Mobile Ads

Announcement: Custom alerts will sunset on June 30, 2012

Katie Wasilenko — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:06:00 +0000

When we first created custom alerts, we wanted to provide advertisers with a way to be notified when certain behaviors or changes occurred in their AdWords account. Over time, we observed that most advertisers wanted to take action when such triggers occurred within their accounts. Many of these actions can now be done by creating automated rules - a tool within AdWords that enables you to schedule automatic changes to specific parts of your account based on the criteria that you specify.

Based on automated rules adoption, we have decided to sunset custom alerts. Starting June 15, we will disable creation of new alerts and by the end of June, we will stop triggering existing alerts. This means that on June 30, you will not see custom alerts in your AdWords account. If you selected email as your notification method, this means you will no longer receive alert emails.

We are actively working to bring you an email-only option in automated rules so you can be notified when a rule requirements are met without taking any action. In the meantime, check out some of the common ways you can use automated rules to save you time in managing your account.

Posted by Prashant Baheti, AdWords Product Manager

Making campaign planning and build-out faster and more accurate

Katie Wasilenko — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 22:51:00 +0000

We've been listening closely to your suggestions on how to reduce the guesswork involved with building new campaigns. To help improve the campaign building process, we’re rolling out improvements to the Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator.

Improvements to the Keyword Tool
To help improve campaign management, we’ve made improvements to the Keyword Tool including:

See keyword ideas grouped by themes: With the updated Keyword Tool, you can easily view suggestions for new ad group themes and quickly choose to add ad groups directly to your account.
Seamless Traffic Estimator integration: Easily view Traffic Estimator data for the keywords you select in the Keyword Tool to make better campaign strategy decisions.

Click to view larger image

Improvements to Traffic Estimator
We’ve updated the Traffic Estimator to help advertisers build a more effective bidding and budgeting strategy. Changes to the Traffic Estimator include:

Graph your performance estimates:
Structure your keywords into ad groups: You can now create draft ad groups within the Traffic Estimator and easily view traffic and bid estimates for each of your draft ad groups.
Add campaigns to your account: When you’re satisfied with your campaign structure, you can add the draft campaign directly to your account.

Click to view larger image

We’re also improving the quality and accuracy of the traffic estimates by using performance history to better gauge traffic estimates. This means that going forward you’ll have to log in to AdWords to use Traffic Estimator.

You’ll find the updated Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator in the AdWords interface over the next couple of weeks. To learn more about the updates to the Keyword Tool, you can visit this article in our Help Center and this article to learn more about the Traffic Estimator.

Posted by Deepti Bhatnagar, AdWords Product Manager

Increasing transparency in Quality Score

Katie Wasilenko — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:58:00 +0000

Today, we’re introducing more details about your Quality Score in AdWords.

Using the status hover for a keyword in the Keywords tab, you’ll see the traditional 1-10 numeric score and new ratings for each main factor in Quality Score. The new ratings have a relative scale so you’ll understand whether your performance expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience is average, above average, or below average compared to other advertisers.

We’ve heard from advertisers that having more insight on Quality Score can help you better focus efforts to improve performance. Improving ads quality is great for users, too.

One final note: This launch gives you information you can use to improve your Quality Score, but it doesn’t change how Quality Score or ad rank are calculated.

Posted Jen Huang, AdWords Product Manager

Slice and dice your data using AdWords labels

Katie Wasilenko — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:57:00 +0000

We are excited to announce the launch of account labels. Starting this week, you can organize your account’s keywords, ads, ad groups and campaigns into custom groupings so you can quickly and easily filter and report on the data that is of most interest to you. To see the opportunities that labels enable, let’s meet Bob.

Bob is an online retailer who sells apparel and accessories for men and women. He has campaigns for shoes, clothes and bags for each of his three major markets (New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania) and within the campaigns has separate ad groups for generic and brand keywords. This structure (ex: New York - Shoes - Generic and Massachusetts - Shoes - Generic) means that he has the same ads and keywords spread across different parts of his account. Before today, Bob could not easily sort his account or run a report to see how well sneakers are selling across geographies.

Enter labels.

Now Bob can create the label “sneakers” and apply it to all sneaker-related keywords across his account. He can then filter by this label on the Keywords tab to only see sneaker keywords, or he can run a keyword labels report to aggregate performance by label. These reports allow him to then compare --for example-- how sneakers perform against all other shoes, or other labeled groups.

Labels can be used to organize your campaign elements in any way you choose. Report on brand keyword performance versus all other non-branded keyword performance. Measure how ads that mention “free trial” perform versus ads that mention “free demo”. Or simply label your favorite keywords so you can quickly review them every morning.

Labels will begin rolling out this week to all AdWords accounts. For more information, please visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Jon Diorio, Senior Product Manager, AdWords

New matching behavior for phrase and exact match keywords

Katie Wasilenko — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 21:08:00 +0000

Consider these three exact and phrase match keywords in AdWords.
[waterproof sunblock] "bollard cover" [single serving coffee maker]

Now have a look at these two rows of search queries.
1. waterproof sunblock buy bollard cover single serving coffee maker
2. waterpoof sunblock buy bollard covers single serve coffee maker

Today, only the search queries in the upper row (1) are considered a match and allowed to trigger an ad that can appear in the results. The close variants in the bottom row (2) are not considered a match by AdWords, despite the similarity in user intent.

This will change soon. Starting in mid-May, phrase and exact match keywords will match close variants, including misspellings, singular/plural forms, stemmings, accents and abbreviations. Based on our research and testing, we believe these changes will be broadly beneficial for users and advertisers.

Focusing on user intent
People aren’t perfect spellers or typists. At least 7% of search queries contain a misspelling, and the longer the query, the higher the rate.

Even with perfect spelling, two people searching for the same thing often use slightly different variations, such as “kid scooters” and “kid’s scooter” or “bamboo floor” and “bamboo flooring.”

Google’s organic search systems detect and compensate for misspellings and close variants.

We know users are happier when they get search results that reflect their intent and help them achieve their desired action, even if it’s not a precise match for what they’ve typed. So we’re extending this behavior to ads.

Benefits for many advertisers, control for all
Our early experiments looked at the impact on advertisers getting a third or more of their clicks from phrase or exact match. On average, the new matching behavior increased AdWords search clicks by 3%, with comparable CPCs. Keep in mind that results may vary by advertiser.

We’ve been testing this new improvement with advertisers, and participants have seen positive results. “Previously we spent a lot of time making sure to include hundreds of versions of brand misspellings and to include plural forms of all our keywords,” said Dana Freund, Senior SEM Manager at GameDuell. “With the improvements to exact and phrase match we don’t have to worry about these keywords anymore. We get more relevant impressions for a smaller number of keywords, and it’s been a significant time saver for us.”

If you don’t want the potential for more clicks and prefer to maintain the current matching behavior in your campaign, you’ll still have that option. In the coming weeks, we’ll begin rolling out controls which will allow you to adjust your keyword matching options. Once they’re live, log in to AdWords and select the campaign settings tab. Under “Advanced settings” select Keyword matching options:

Again, these controls will begin rolling out in the coming weeks to all AdWords accounts. But, to be clear, the new matching behavior won’t actually start until mid-May.

For more details on keyword matching behavior, reporting changes, and other frequently asked questions, please visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Jen Huang, AdWords Product Manager

Get Local with AdWords

Katie Wasilenko — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:09:00 +0000

Get organized this spring with new location features in AdWords and share your stories

Over the past 30 years, California Closet Company has grown from the brainchild of a college student organizing his dorm room closet to a successful business with more than 77 franchise locations. To reach customers across the U.S. and internationally, the company centered their digital marketing strategy on creating locally relevant campaigns.

It’s no surprise that local campaigns are a focus for many businesses--from finding directions to looking up a phone number, more people are going online to find local information. In fact, more than 20% of searches on Google are related to location, and people often act quickly on local searches. Research shows that using smartphones, 88% of people who search for local information take action within a day.

To help you organize your local ad campaigns this spring, we’re introducing three new features in AdWords to help you create ads that are more relevant to local customers.

Greater accuracy

If you customize your direct mail, outdoor ads, or newspaper ads at a postal code level, you now can easily do the same in AdWords in the US. We are introducing the ability to target more than 30,000 US ZIP Codes with your AdWords campaigns.

You will be able to add up to 1,000 postal codes at a time to your search ad campaigns with AdWords Location Targeting. Plus, you can get feedback on the performance of your local campaigns by viewing campaign performance statistics at the postal code level.

"Location targeting within AdWords helped us double lead volume and cut the cost to acquire new customers in half,” said Lois Erbay, Director of Marketing, California Closet Company. “We plan on building on that success by using ZIP Code targeting to create even more locally relevant campaigns for our customers.”

More locally relevant ads in less time

To help you easily create a custom ad title, text, display URL, and/or destination URL for all of your locations at scale, we’ve developed location insertion for location extensions. You’ll no longer need to create multiple ads for multiple locations--this new feature automatically inserts the city, phone number, or zip code of your local business into your ad text.

For example, if your ad text says: “Find a {lb.city:Local} Store or Shop Online,” a user viewing your ad in Chicago would see: “Find a Chicago Store or Shop Online.” This new feature cuts out all the work to building out ad text featuring local information for all your locations.

Ad with location insertion in the text and display URL

“We’ve had amazing success manually customizing our creative with local information for our top markets, which shows us that customers want locally-relevant results when it comes to a service like storage,” said Chris Laczi, Advertising Director, Uncle Bob's Self Storage. “That’s why we’re very excited about location insertion. It will simplify the task of creating locally customized ads for our 400+ locations, and we expect it will greatly enhance conversion rate of our ads.”

You must have location extensions set up and running in order to enable location insertion. Location insertion will work even if your location extensions don’t show because of other extensions. We detect location based on where your customer is physically located or by the geographic locations she may have shown interest in.

Find out more about location insertion and location extensions.

Better clarity and control

When we launched advanced location targeting in March 2011, we provided you with more control over how you geographically target your ads. Based on advertiser feedback, we’re implementing four additional enhancements that will make location targeting options clearer and more powerful. Read more about these enhancements in the Help Center and in this blog post.

There is significant opportunity for businesses to reach local customers online and win moments that matter by delivering the right ad in the right context. Stay tuned for more information on how ZIP Code targeting can help you grow your business.

We want to hear from you about your success in getting local with AdWords--share your story here and we might reach out to you to participate in our upcoming blog posts.

Posted by Richard Holden, Product Management Director

More clarity and control with location targeting improvements

Katie Wasilenko — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:03:00 +0000

Location targeting is now easier to understand.

First, we’ve reworded the options to help make them clearer. Here is what the options for advanced location targeting used to look like:

Here is what we’re unveiling today:

Show ads to people in a physical location, without exception.

Previously, if you had selected “Target using physical location,” your ad would show to people in your targeted location as long as they were not searching for something related to a different location. Now, when you select “People in my targeted location,” your ad shows to people in your targeted location, without exception.

Let’s say you are an airline using physical location targeting to reach customers in Atlanta, GA looking to fly to Hawaii. You have the keyword “flights to hawaii” in your ad group. Previously, your ad wouldn’t appear for any prospective customers in Atlanta that were searching for “flights to hawaii” because the search term indicated that they were interested in Hawaii. With the new setting “People in my targeted location,” the airline can now reach the customers in Atlanta searching for “flights to hawaii.”

This enhancement has been beneficial in increasing VEGAS.com’s ability to target offers to users based on where they are located at the time of the search. “As a leading destination travel site, our goal is to send the right message to a user as they plan their travel well ahead of time from their home market. Advanced Location Targeting has given us that ability,” said Dan Hippler, Vice-President of Marketing, Vegas.com.

Greater control over location targeting on the Display Network

Previously, the only location targeting signal applicable to ads on the Google Display Network was the likely physical location of the user. Now, both the location extracted from the content of the page and the likely physical location can be used, making advanced location targeting applicable for the Display Network for the first time. The default setting is to show to people “in” or “viewing pages about” your targeted location, but you can edit this option at any time.

Let’s say a customer in Atlanta is planning a trip to Hawaii and she’s looking at websites about fun things to do in Hawaii. A coffee plantation tour service from Hawaii would like to show ads about its offers to such a user. Similarly, an airline would like to advertise flight services to this user. The new targeting enhancements give the tour service and airline such capabilities, as both an ad targeted to Hawaii for a coffee plantation tour and an ad targeted to Atlanta for flights from Atlanta may now both show on the same page.

There are several situations in which we will not use location to target an ad. For example, a user reading about news in Hawaii may not be interested in “Hawaii tours”. For this reason, we currently only consider the location signal on a limited set of pages when we believe it may be useful. You can gain insight into the sites on which your ads are showing on the placement report, and into the locations on the geographic report.

Note that all campaigns targeting the Display Network will automatically be opted into the default option, which is to reach people in, searching for, or viewing pages about your targeted location. If you wish to exclude campaign traffic from people viewing pages about your location, you can choose “People in my targeted location” in advanced location options.

More easily avoid getting impressions for excluded areas

We have also changed the advanced location exclusion methods. Previously, the less restrictive option, “Exclude by physical location only,” was the default. Based on feedback from advertisers, we have re-worded the exclusion options and made the more restrictive option, “People in, searching for, or viewing pages about my excluded location,” the default. This way you avoid getting impressions for excluded areas regardless of whether your customers are located or interested in those areas.

What it looked like before:

What we’re launching today:

For example, now by default excluding Chicago means your ad won’t show for customers in Chicago or those outside Chicago who included “Chicago” in their searches.

This change will only impact newly created campaigns and will not affect existing campaigns.

Remember, advanced location targeting may limit the exposure of your ads, so it isn’t suited for all advertising goals.

To find out more about advanced location targeting or to change your settings, visit our help center. If you use AdWords Editor, details on how these changes will impact you can be found in the AdWords Editor help center.

Posted by Smita Hashim, Group Product Manager Local Ads

Display Campaign Optimizer Available to All

Katie Wasilenko — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 04:24:00 +0000

Recently we announced the most significant enhancement to our contextual engine ever: the the ability to optimize GDN campaigns down to the keyword level using Next-Gen Keyword Contextual Targeting. These new controls will help advertisers fine-tune their campaign performance on a completely new level - like upgrading from a standard engine to a 6-speed manual gear-shift race car. For advertisers that prefer to put their campaigns on cruise-control and let Google technology do the heavy lifting, our suite of automatic optimization tools maximize the performance of your GDN campaigns while saving you valuable time and resources. From adjusting bids with Conversion Optimizer and Enhanced CPC, to automatically finding optimal placements around the network with Display Campaign Optimizer - these features help advertisers achieve their ROI goals, with a fraction of the effort.

The GDN’s Self-Driving Car - Display Campaign Optimizer

The Display Campaign Optimizer was launched in 2010 as a limited beta, and since has become one of our most popular automation tools for large advertisers managing high volume campaigns. In addition to fully automating your targeting and bidding, it uses a variety of signals like context, demographics and interest categories to find additional conversions across our vast AdSense publisher network - all at your desired CPA.

Watch how it works

As we highlighted last fall, advertisers have had great success using Display Campaign Optimizer. Recently it helped Dale Carnegie Training expand their online reach to more than 85 countries in the world without a lot of hands-on effort. After implementing the Display Campaign Optimizer on two campaigns, they increased conversions by 308% and 101% in only six months while maintaining a steady cost-per-lead.

Dale Carnagie Wins Friends and Influences Buyers with Display Campaign Optimizer

Now Open to All

With greater adoption and a significantly improved engine, we’re excited to announce that Display Campaign Optimizer is exiting “beta” and available to all advertisers through AdWords. Previously only large advertisers with very high conversion volumes (150/month) could take advantage of this powerful tool. The new and improved Display Campaign Optimizer now has the same low conversion requirement (15/month) as Conversion Optimizer. This means you can simply opt-into DCO on any campaign running on Conversion Optimizer and take advantage of the added benefit of more conversions!

Get Started!

Starting today you can easily set-up Display Campaign Optimizer campaigns in AdWords. For more information on how to set up your Display Campaign Optimizer campaigns, review our step-by - step guide on our AdWords Help Center.

Posted by David Mitby, Product Manager Display Campaign Optimizer, and Abhinay Sharma Sr Engineering Manager

Building Display Creatives for Your Audience

Katie Wasilenko — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 17:55:00 +0000

If you’re audience targeting (or considering it), customizing your ads for your audience can yield better performance. Here are the top tips for audience targeted creatives learned through the collective experience of hundreds of Google AdWords account teams.

1. Make your ads a helpful step in the user experience

Make audience specific recommendations, differentiate yourself from the competition, and provide new information. For example remarketing ads could show complementary products that an existing customer may need. If you’re targeting new users, feature positive testimonials and reviews to highlight your good reputation.

Make better use of audience targeting by addressing different stages in the buying cycle within your ad.

click to view larger image

2. Be Transparent

This is particularly important if you’re using remarketing. Your audience may wonder how you knew they were on your site or interested in specific products. Be upfront; link to a description of why they’re seeing your ads and how they work from your landing page. Showing a variety of ads helps minimize overly-specific targeting and repetition.

3. Tailor ads to your user

To drive better performance: personalize ads based on the product or service your audience would be interested in. If you’re remarketing to a user who browsed your site, match your ads to content they viewed. For example, if a user viewed a variety of smart phones, you could show ads promoting individual phones, phone plans, or phone accessories.

click to view larger image

4. Landing Page Relevance

Seamlessly link your audience-relevant creative message to a landing page on your website with content pertinent to the product or service the audience is interested in.

To improve your audience campaign performance, ensure that your landing page is optimized for conversions. Tools like Website Optimizer or Google Analytics can make optimizing your landing pages much easier.

Creative and its relevant landing page

5. Call-to-Action

A compelling call-to-action is crucial for any targeting type or advertising goal. Use your knowledge of your audience to match your call-to-action to the user in both content and style.

Phrases like ‘See Offers’ perform double duty by communicating next steps and highlighting a promotion or benefit in clicking.

click to view larger image

6. Use All Ad Formats & Sizes

Not every site will offer every ad size and format – if you’re missing ad sizes you could be missing out on thousands of impressions. Remember, you want to reach your audience wherever they are online. Maximize your opportunity to reach your audience anywhere on a network and increase volume by utilizing all ad formats, text ads, and display ad sizes available.

We’d love your feedback. Let us know if this was helpful or how it can be improved at better-ads@google.com.

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew

Better results, (still) early adoption: Marketing attribution in a complex digital landscape

Katie Wasilenko — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:54:00 +0000

Originally posted on the Google Analytics blog

Today, we’re sharing some research on marketing attribution that we conducted in partnership with Econsultancy, a leading digital market research firm. The insights -- Marketing Attribution: Valuing the Customer Journey -- provide a snapshot of how marketers and agencies are conducting attribution, the impact it has, and the barriers holding them back.

If you’re not familiar with digital attribution, it’s about distributing credit to all of the elements of your digital marketing program, so you can gauge the impact of customer marketing interactions on your sales results and make more accurate investment decisions. Here are a few snippets from the report that we found interesting:

It’s still a new craft, but early results show positive impact
Although digital attribution is still relatively new -- 83% of practitioners we surveyed have been using it for less than 2 years -- it clearly has a positive impact on businesses that employ it. 72% agree that it leads to better budget allocations, 63% gained a better understanding of how digital channels work together, and 58% had clearer insights into their audience:

Attribution leads to improved ROI, better budgeting

Last click attribution dominates; agencies are leading the way in experimentation
Most digital marketers run multiple campaigns, each with different strategies and objectives. For instance, display campaigns that are designed to generate awareness will have a different impact on sales than paid search campaigns designed to bring in buyers. Yet most marketers today still use attribution models that do not account for these differences in strategy. Although only 14% of respondents consider “last click” attribution to be “very effective,” it remains common; most likely because marketers haven't yet found or mastered the right attribution tools. Digital marketing agencies have done more with sophisticated attribution methods and technologies:

Robust attribution leads to confident digital decisions
For organizations that use attribution, it often leads to greater confidence in marketing choices: if you know the impact of your programs, it’s easier to budget for them. As one online retailer commented, “Attribution was the missing piece to our campaign analysis. Now we don’t run a campaign without learning something about how our marketing affects the buying cycle, and then testing to see whether it applies in the long run.”

Performing marketing attribution with Google
Here at Google we spend our time building intuitive tools to make measurement easier, so that you can really use your data to make smarter decisions. That’s why we provide several important tools for marketing attribution, including Search Funnels in AdWords and Multi-Channel Funnels in Google Analytics. And check out our Attribution Modeling tool in Google Analytics Premium, which includes five standard attribution models plus a custom model builder, so you can create and customize attribution models in minutes, and see data instantly. Learn more in our Attribution Playbook.

Join us for an Attribution Hangout
If you’re available this Friday, April 6, at 9:00am PDT, please join Bill Kee, Product Manager for Attribution, and Justin Cutroni, Analytics Advocate, for a Google+ Hangout. Bill will talk about the research and give a demo of the Attribution tool in Google Analytics Premium, as well as discussing Multi-Channel Funnels and AdWords Search Funnels, two complementary features.

To watch the Hangout on Air, tune into Justin’s Google+ Page on Friday. If you have a question that you would like us to discuss, please enter it in this this form -- and we’ll invite five of you to join the Hangout live to ask your questions.

We look forward to seeing you at the Hangout on Friday!

Posted by Sara Jablon Moked, Product Marketing Manager, Conversion and Attribution

Google Ads – now on Google+

Katie Wasilenko — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:34:00 +0000

When we launched Google+ Pages last November, we aimed to provide you with a way to post updates and news about your business, have engaging conversations with customers, and send tailored messages to specific groups of people.

We’re now excited to share that Google Ads will be joining Google+ Pages to provide you, our advertising partners, with the latest Google advertising product news, training, tips and Hangouts that can help make the web work for you. We hope it will become a useful resource for growing your business, reaching customers in the moments that matter, and making smarter decisions.

Click to view page

Here’s a quick peek at what you can expect from the Google Ads page on Google+:

Stay ahead of the curve with the latest launches and updates for Google's advertising solutions, including search, display, mobile, social, YouTube and Google Analytics
Receive how-to information, best practices, and recommendations
Learn about upcoming trainings and events
Attend Hangouts with product experts

Add Google Ads to your circles here. We look forward to connecting with you on Google+.

Posted by: Christina Park and Katie Miller, Ads Product Marketing

Introducing Click-to-Teleport Ad Extensions

Katie Wasilenko — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 04:01:00 +0000

Exactly one year ago we rolled out Teleport Search in select markets, expanding the Google Search results beyond providing links and allowing users to travel through time and space. Today, we’re rolling out this functionality to AdWords and DoubleClick with a new ad extension: Click-To-Teleport (beta)*.

While features like call extensions and location extensions have aimed at solving the "online to store" marketing objective for multichannel advertisers, Click-to-Teleport shortens the offline conversion funnel by allowing a user to teleport directly to your business location by clicking on your search ad.

You’ll additionally be able to tailor Click-to-Teleport extensions to your business goals by choosing to either:

Optimize for closest location: Least disorienting for visitors, and helps you maintain a local feeling.
Optimize for conversions: Teleports visitors to locations where your customers are most likely to convert.
Rotate evenly: Teleports visitor to a random business location and helpful for avoiding overcrowded business locations.

Please be aware that while Click-to-Teleport is in beta, there is no “teleport back home” option for users. You are responsible for providing return transportation or calling a taxi for any teleport customer. At this time, Click-to-Teleport extensions are available in all countries and languages on Earth but are not compatible with our recently launched planetary targeting options.

To learn more, visit the Click-to-Teleport site.

Posted by David Kaufman, Teleportation & Time Travel Marketing Manager

*IMPORTANT: Though we have worked out most of the kinks with Click-to-Teleport, the technology is still in beta. Google will not be held responsible for any teleporting related injuries, unexpected time travel or any other teleporting risks, such as those demonstrated in The Fly.

A fast, accurate, and affordable way to do online market research

Katie Wasilenko — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 18:23:00 +0000

From international brands to local food trucks, every business wants to make important decisions with their customers’ feedback in mind. Which version of your new logo will people like better? How much interest do dog owners have in organic dog food? Is your brand awareness growing over time?

We now have a new option for companies looking to answer these types of questions and more: Google Consumer Surveys. Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or a local bike shop, Consumer Surveys makes market research fast, accurate, and affordable.

You can create an online survey in minutes, have responses within hours and fully analyzed results in days. We do all the heavy lifting for you, finding interesting nuggets of information (or “insights”) and providing you with tools for digging deeper.

Here’s how it works: people browsing the web come across your questions when they try to access high quality content like news articles or videos. Answering the question gives them near instant access to the page they want. All responses are anonymous; they aren’t tied to users’ identity or later used to target ads. This provides an alternative to the traditional paywall model: site visitors don’t have to pull out a wallet or sign in, publishers get paid as their site visitors respond, and you gain insight into what people think -- for just $0.10 per response for the general US population or $0.50 per response for custom audiences.

We’ve already been working with a number of companies researching everything from online shopping behavior (Lucky Brand Jeans) to gluten-free baking mixes (King Arthur Flour), and using Consumer Surveys to track brand awareness (Timbuk2) and inform product development (479 Popcorn). Check out google.com/insights/consumersurveys to learn more.

Posted by Brett Slatkin, Software Engineer

Think with Google comes to ad:tech SF to make the web work for you

Katie Wasilenko — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:19:00 +0000

More users. More screens. More content. Same time. Same customers. Same goals.

As marketers, it’s a challenge to stay up-to-date on the latest digital media innovations while continuing to manage effective, measurable campaigns. We at Google asked ourselves: how can we help you meet these challenges and move your customers from intent to action? How can we make the web work for you?

Next week at ad:tech SF we’ll answer these questions through a 4-part “Think with Google” series.

Tuesday, April 3rd

Come hear from John Nicoletti, Director of Agency Development, on winning the moments that matter, making better decisions and operating more efficiently as you grow.
Dive deep with Bill Kee, Analytics Product Manager, on ways to approach marketing attribution and what Google Analytics is doing to make attribution modeling more accessible.
Learn about free tools available to help you plan for performance with Jordan Rost, Agency Lead.
Close the day with Rikard Steiber, Global Marketing Director, Mobile & Social Advertising, on how to use Google+ Pages to maximize your business’ effectiveness and presence online.

Wednesday, April 4th

Global Google Analytics Lead Rachel Witalec will join the discussion on search tactics for making sure content gets found where and when you want it. If you’re investing time in digital marketing you won’t want to miss this.

The complete conference agenda is here. The sessions are open to ad:tech attendees.

Still haven’t registered? Sign up here with discount code GOOGLESF12TB and save 30% off a full conference pass.

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew

Webinar tomorrow: Advanced audience targeting on the Google Display Network

Katie Wasilenko — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 17:43:00 +0000

This live webinar will outline how advertisers can use advanced audience targeting across the Google Display Network. We will discuss how to overlap and maximize AdWords products in order to reach specific target audience segments by using products such as remarketing, interest categories, topic targeting and more. This live webinar will be presented by a UK-based Google Display Specialist and more specialists will be on hand to answer any questions you may have.

When: Tuesday 27th March at 3pm GMT (10am EST / 7amPST)

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew

A better way to buy display

Katie Wasilenko — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Display advertising has undergone a bit of a fairytale-like transformation over the past several years, from the medium of “Click Here!” banner ads, to one that can be smart and sexy and help bring big ideas (even those from advertising’s past) to life. Now that display has had its “Cinderella moment,” we figured the “carriage” could use an upgrade as well. So today, we’re unveiling some changes designed to simplify the way you buy and run display through AdWords.

Display’s New Home in AdWords

For nine years, AdWords customers have been buying display campaigns through an interface designed for search. This is like trying to run in glass slippers -- it might work, but it’d be a lot more effective with the right running shoes. So we’re giving display its own tab within AdWords. Rolling out over the next few weeks, the new Display Network Tab is an interface built from the ground up to run display campaigns, and will enable you to bid, target and optimize display campaigns all from a single place. Click the image below to see the different Display Network Tab targeting options.

Display Network Tab

click to view larger image

A Revved-Up Contextual Engine

The contextual engine, which matches ads to pages based on keywords, is at the heart of display-buying through AdWords. We’ve been hard at work behind-the-scenes to give this engine its biggest enhancement ever, the ability to combine the reach of display with the precision of search, using Next-Gen Keyword Contextual Targeting. This means that you can fine-tune the performance of your contextual campaigns down to individual keyword level, which will help you take the performance of your marketing campaign to a completely new level. It’s now easier for you to extend search campaigns to display and more efficient to run the two types of campaigns together.

For example, let’s say you’re running display campaigns for a Travel Agency who offers a vacation packages in several Caribbean islands. In the past, you would have created themed ad groups targeting vacations to Turks and Caicos and the Caribbean. Now, with this new keyword level transparency you might realize that the keyword “Turks and Caicos vacations” is 4 times more profitable than the keyword “caribbean vacations”. You can optimize your campaigns to aggressively target these high performing keywords, and be more conservative on “caribbean vacations”.

Giving a Visual Edge

And like the writers of the best fairytales know, sometimes pictures communicate better than words (or numbers). Along with the new Display Network Tab and contextual engine, we’re introducing a way to visualize the reach of your campaigns, and see how that reach is impacted by combining multiple targeting types, such as keywords, placements, topics, interests or remarketing.

These changes are some of our biggest steps to date towards bringing together the science of search advertising with the art of display. We hope they give you some powerful new tools to connect with their customers and deliver engaging and relevant display ads.

Learn More

We’re rolling out the new Display Network Tab to all advertisers in the upcoming coming weeks.

For more information on what’s new on the Display Network Tab visit our help center article.

Please join Google in our upcoming webinar on May 15th to learn more about optimizing your targeting strategies for campaigns using the Next-Gen Keyword Contextual Targeting. Check out our new webinar page to register.

Watch Brad Bender, Director of Product Management for Display talk about the new Display Network Tab and the Next-Gen Keyword Contextual Targeting.

Posted by Alok Goel, Product Manager Next Gen-Keyword Contextual Targeting, Rebecca Illowsky, Product Manager Display Network Tab, and Claire Cui, Principal Engineer

Diagnose ads faster with new status insights icon

Katie Wasilenko — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 17:36:00 +0000

This week we're introducing a status insights icon in the Ads tab that provides visibility into the approval status and potential policy limitations for each individual ad creative. The new icon will be particularly valuable if you’re advertising products or services that are restricted by our advertising policies to show only in specific countries or with certain keywords.

To use the new status icon, simply hover over the speech bubble in the Status column of the Ads tab next to the ad of interest:

We’ll tell you if the individual ad is showing for the default keyword and location displayed in the hover. If you would like to re-diagnose the ad with with a different targeted location or keyword, you can edit the parameters from right within the hover:

This new icon complements the existing ad diagnosis tools, which include the status hover on the Keywords tab, a batch option to diagnose many keywords at once, and the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool.

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew

Hear from Google this week at SES NY

Katie Wasilenko — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 20:55:00 +0000

If you’re at SES New York this week for three action-filled days of education, new ideas, and networking, be sure to include Google in your plans. Avinash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist, will be on hand to kick off the event with a Tuesday morning keynote on “Business Optimization in the Digital Age.” Later that morning, hear how to tie the influence of the social web to the metrics you care about using in Google Analytics, or listen in to the discussion on making the leap from search to display marketing. Here’s a summary of the sessions:

Business Optimization in a Digital Age

Tuesday, March 20 from 9:00-10:00am

We were promised that Marketing one day would become rocket science. Well, we are almost there! Search continues to become more complicated, and more exciting. Then there's Social and Email and Display and Video and... so many more things. It is hard to understand how to do one thing right, much less try to do all of them right. In his exciting keynote Avinash will share his unique perspective on balancing multiple media channels, leveraging super awesome metrics, grounding your digital existence in driving economic value, and leveraging the Clear Line of Sight model to ensure you are optimizing across all four of the most important business drivers (come to the keynote to learn which four!).

Keynote Speaker:

Avinash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist, Google

Social Media as a Performance Channel with Google Analytics

Tuesday, March 20 from 11:00am-12:00pm

Social media has changed the way we shop and interact with brands, but marketers still lack a clear way to measure how their social investments lead to more sales. According to MarketingSherpa, only 20% of CMOs think social media marketing produces measurable ROI, while 62% consider it to be a promising tactic that will eventually yield ROI.

The good news is that better measurement can help marketers make smarter decisions about their investments in social. Vanity counters, such as friend counts and reshares, can be augmented with bottom line metrics like conversions and purchases, allowing marketers to measure true social ROI of each campaign and compare the effectiveness with other channels.

Join Phil Mui, Group Product Manager and Ilya Grigorik, Lead Engineer to learn how to tie the influence of the social web to the metrics you care about using in Google Analytics.

Speakers:

Phil Mui, Group Product Manager, Google Analytics

Ilya Grigorik, Lead Engineer, Google Analytics

Crossing the Digital Divide: The Leap from Search to Display

Tuesday, March 20 from 11:00am-12:00pm

Many advertisers who embrace the highly measurable, highly efficient world of search engine marketing remain on the sidelines in display. Historically, display advertising has lacked the precision in pricing, placement, and ROI of search. The advent of new display optimization technologies and next-generation ad exchanges, however, is offering a radically fresh take on an evolving media model. In this session you will hear:

An Introduction to DSPs and ad exchanges
An overview of the new display optimization technologies
Sage advice for experienced search advertisers who want to take a first foray into exchange-traded display

Google speaker:

Julie MaGill, Head of Agency Business Development, Google

We hope to see you at the event.

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew

Announcing AdWords campaign limits increase

Katie Wasilenko — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:48:00 +0000

Last year we increased the limits for all advertisers to 500 campaigns and 3 million keywords per AdWords account. Today, in response to feedback from many of our advertisers, we are pleased to announce yet another AdWords campaign limit increase.

It is now possible to have 10,000 campaigns (includes active and paused campaigns) per account. With this change, it is now possible to easily manage and monitor more campaigns in a single place.

AdWords Editor, the AdWords API, and all other AdWords services are compatible with the new limits.

A full list of all account limits, including creative and ad extension limits, is available in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew

Opportunities for sitelinks

Katie Wasilenko — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 21:09:00 +0000

A fast, simple way to increase your AdWords performance is adding sitelinks to your campaigns. If your campaign is eligible to show sitelinks but it doesn’t have them them up yet, it’s probably missing a good opportunity. To help out, we're adding sitelinks to the AdWords Opportunities tab

Now, when we detect that your campaign is performing well enough to show ad sitelinks, but does not yet have them set up, we’ll show you that idea in the Opportunities tab. You'll also get a personalized estimate of the impact on clicks and cost if sitelinks were implemented, based on your last week’s campaign stats.

click to view larger image

Here are two tips to keep in mind when you're setting up ad sitelinks:

Our systems automatically determine which sitelinks perform best and show them more frequently. So adding more than the minimum number of suggested sitelinks can boost your performance.
Sitelinks can appear with any of the ads in your campaign. So choose website destinations and sitelink text that make sense across all of your ads.

To learn more about the Opportunities tab, visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Mark Martel, AdWords Product Marketing

AdWords, AdSense and DoubleClick for Publishers statistics temporarily delayed

Katie Wasilenko — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 05:15:00 +0000

As some of you may have noticed, since approximately 2pm PST this Monday, March 5th, there's been a delay for statistics reported in AdWords, AdSense and DoubleClick for Publishers. While the reports are delayed, whether you are an AdWords advertiser or an AdSense or DoubleClick publisher, your ads are serving as usual, with no disruptions.

This is a result of a temporary technical issue with our "statistics pipeline" (this is the system that translates the raw data into meaningful and actionable metrics for you). Our engineers are working hard to resolve the issue, and should have all your stats updated, current and complete by early Tuesday morning (PST).

We appreciate your patience. We'll update this post with any additional information and status reports.

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew

Google Discovery House at SXSW

Katie Wasilenko — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:06:00 +0000

[Originally posted on the Google Agency Blog]

We’re just as excited as you are to roll into Austin this year for South by Southwest Interactive 2012 for another Texas-sized festival packed with BBQ, margaritas, and the most exciting digital chatter of the year. This year, we’ll be packing up some of our favorite things about Google and bringing them with us to the “Google Village” on Rainey St. - just a few steps from the Austin Convention Center.

We hope you’ll join some of the 40-plus Googlers participating in panels and discussions around the SXSW festival! Our participation kicks off on Friday, March 9 at 3:30 PM, in a fireside chat where senior vice president Vic Gundotra will discuss the future of the Google+ project with Guy Kawasaki.

Then, on March 10-11 at the Google Village you’ll find:

Android House with the latest and greatest from Android, complete with live music and a look at cool entertainment for your device
Google Maps House packed with cool ways to make the most of Google Maps and the places you know and love
Developer House with an exciting day of building LEGO race bots and gearing up for the ultimate rumble Sunday evening. Learn more on the Developers Blog
Discovery House where you can learn about our latest creative and advertising products, and see how Google can help you and your clients make the most of the web

As members of the advertising community, we’d love for you to come join us at the Discovery House in particular, where we’ve got a diverse lineup of discussions, teaching sessions, and social events. There’s something for everyone:

Come learn how we're working with our partners to bring together creativity and technology in new ways, and re-imagining what online advertising can be. Be sure to stick around for our re-imagined happy hour, with a new take on classic cocktails.
Participate in engaging seminars about the latest in mobile marketing, the coolest things that Google+ users are creating with Hangouts, and how to make the most of consumer insights.
Want the full schedule? It’s here.

Come swing by and have a drink on us in Austin - we’d love to hear all about everything exciting and innovative that you’re seeing and hearing around town, too.

Posted by Caro McCarthy, Product Marketing Manager, Google+ B2B

Hear from Google at SMX West

Katie Wasilenko — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:04:00 +0000

SMX West kicks off in San Jose, CA on Tuesday, February 28th, and Google will be there. We’ll have presenters covering both paid and organic search topics. Here are some highlights for our AdWords blog readers:

Day one, 2/28/12 - Customized search results and customer-friendly mobile sites

Product Management Director Jack Menzel will speak in a two-part series called "Getting Personal," which will discuss how social, geographical and search signals are used to deliver better search results for users. In addition, Senior Product Marketing Manager Masha Fisch will be part of a session on how to create effective mobile landing pages.

Day two, 2/29/12 - A keynote and a session with DoubleClick Search

Day two kicks off with a keynote from Susan Wojcicki, SVP Advertising. She'll sit down with SMX West co-chairs Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman to discuss the growth of search advertising, integrating search into your overall marketing strategy and a peek at upcoming Google product releases. Later in the day, join DoubleClick Search to hear about magic moments in search and to learn how you can use this product to manage your large search campaigns more efficiently.

Day three, 3/1/12 - Paid search and mobile ads expertise

Hear from Dai Pham on the Mobile Ads team, who will speak in a session on how to play in the exploding mobile ads universe. Later, stop into the "Ask the Paid Search Reps" Q&A Forum and ask Product Manager Tarun Jain your burning Google paid search ads questions.

A complete event agenda is available here. Still need to register? Enter discount code smx10doubleclick (case sensitive) and save 10%.

See you in San Jose!

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew

Webinar tomorrow – Getting Your Business on Google+

Katie Wasilenko — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:02:00 +0000

Are you interested in connecting with your customers in new ways? Join our live webinar on Tuesday, February 28th at 10am EST (3pm GMT) to learn more about how you can bring your business and your customers closer together using Google+.

Key topics that'll be covered in the presentation by Google+ experts include:

Setting up a Google+ Page for your business
Best practices and great example cases for using Google+
Promoting your Google+ Page
Improving the performance of your online marketing with +1

Register now!

For more live AdWords webinars visit the AdWords Online Classroom.

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew

Presenting the brand new AdWords Community

Katie Wasilenko — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:40:00 +0000

For the past three years the AdWords Help Forum has been a place where advertisers from all walks of life could come together and exchange ideas, advice and stories with other AdWords advertisers. It's really awe-inspiring to see people helping people and it's all thanks to your support and enthusiasm. Over the years we've been collecting your comments about the Help Forum and decided it was time for a change. We strive to make our users happy with the best possible products we can provide, from our advertising products, to our search products, to our social products. That's why we're excited to announce today that we're upgrading the AdWords Help Forum to a new platform that we're calling the AdWords Community.

Our new AdWords Community website is live now! Check out our new look and functionality.

New improvements with our website include:

1. Easy Navigation: The main AdWords Community page has an easy navigation bar divided into four main sections:

Discuss: In this section you can engage with other advertisers. Depending on the topic, choose a category board and post your question, or follow up on an existing discussion.
AdWords Wiki: Here you can find helpful AdWords articles written by other users who share their experience on AdWords account management and optimization, sitelinks, account structure, and many more topics.
About Community: Want to know more about this community? Here you can meet the Top Contributors and AdWords Community Team, read our posting guidelines, and learn how to advance in levels.
Resources: Still not sure if you have the right answer? Check out our other Google resources to learn even more about AdWords.

2. Contact Google: The AdWords Community is here for you, as is our Google Support team. Click the Contact Google button in the upper right corner if you want to get in touch with us directly.

3. Online Now: Wondering who else is posting now? On the left hand side you can see all users who are currently online. Check out their profiles, read their posts and give stars to every good answer!

Being part of our community has never been more fun! When visiting the new community for the first time, you need to register with your Google Account and create a username. When creating a username, we advise to use the same one as the one you used in the AdWords Help Forum. There are two restrictions when choosing it. First, the length cannot be longer than 15 characters. Second, the username cannot contain spaces. Once you register as a member, you have the option to create your own profile and start sharing your questions and ideas about AdWords with other users.

The new AdWords Community website will be now available in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian languages.

Posted by AdWords Community Team

New Google research: Reaching your audience effectively with YouTube TrueView Ads

Katie Wasilenko — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:40:00 +0000

With many Americans spending as much time online as watching TV, media-savvy advertisers are turning to creative new formats to attract attention and customers. We recently surveyed more than 1,600 Americans aged 18-45 and got some interesting insights into TrueView Video Ads, the family of YouTube ad formats that give viewers choice and control over which advertisers' messages they want to see and when.

Some of the best findings from our study include:

8 of 10 viewers preferred TrueView to standard in-stream ads
9 of 10 viewers thought TrueView created a better viewing environment
8 of 10 viewers thought the skip button was very clear
Only 1 viewer in 10 always skips ads

Other results give insight into how advertisers can make their TrueView ads even more effective so that viewers watch, not skip, their ads. Based on the research, here are some of the best ways to make your TrueView ads stickier:

Make great ads that people want to watch and that spark their curiosity.

Viewers have the option to skip a TrueView in-stream ad after five seconds, so piquing their interest quickly is important. By far the most popular survey response from people who chose to watch an ad was this one: “I was curious to see what the ad was for.” Attention-grabbing openers and humor also keep people watching.

Include branding in those first seconds.

TrueView advertisers pay only when people actually watch their ads. They’re buying real value, not paying per impression. So, insert your logo or brand name in the first five seconds—which cost you nothing if the viewer doesn’t keep watching. Enjoy those free impressions!

Include new, different information in your TrueView ad if it’s been airing on TV.

In our study, we found that seeing ads on TV affected whether viewers later skipped those same ads on YouTube. To keep them engaged across multiple screens, be sure to provide new product information in the TrueView ad messaging and make it personally relevant to the viewer. Check out this case study from HGTV for great ideas on tweaking and optimizing your TrueView ad.

To read full details of the study and get more tips about creating effective TrueView ads, visit Think Insights.

Posted by Christina Park, Product Marketing Manager, Think with Google

Writing ads that attract customers

Katie Wasilenko — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:11:00 +0000

With the theme of Valentine's Day on our mind, we're sharing tips on how to spice up your AdWords text ads, courtesy of the AdWords Help Center.

Start by taking a moment to consider what you want to do with your ad. Then use the six guidelines below to create an ad that's accurate, to-the-point, and engaging.

Highlight what makes your business, product, or offer unique
Include prices, promotions, and exclusives
Tell your customers what they can do
Include at least one of your keywords in your ad text
Match your ad to your landing page
Experiment

Here are some examples:

Couples Cooking Class
www.example.com/cook
Sauté your way to her heart!
Register as a couple and save 20%

Hot Air Balloon Ride
www.example.com/balloonride
Love is in the air. Save 30% today.
Soar in the world's largest balloon.

Lovers Laser Tag
www.example.com/lasertag
Like Cupid's Bow, only faster
15% off for couples on Feb 14th.

Read the full article and watch a video on Tips for creating successful text ads in the AdWords Help Center to get additional examples on how to improve your ad.

Now that you've optimized your text ads, consider creating a video ad. Follow the steps mentioned in the Tips for creating effective video ads article.

Posted by the AdWords Help Center Team

Inside AdWords 2012-01-30 11:52:00

Katie Wasilenko — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:52:00 +0000

Since introducing Dynamic Search Ads in beta in October, we’ve seen questions from around the web asking about real-world performance and recommendations for implementation. Today we’re grateful to share the perspectives of Matt Mierzewski and Jen Syverud at RKG, an online marketing services firm with B2B and B2C clients ranging from startups to the Fortune 500 (details about RKG below).

Here’s a short video followed by Q&A. RKG has further offered to answer any other questions you might have about their experience with Dynamic Search Ads over on their blog.

Q. What’s your strategy for using Dynamic Search Ads with your clients today?

We think of Dynamic Search Ads as an advertiser-specific broad match type. Here, instead of allowing Google to match searches related to your keywords, you're allowing them to match searches related to your website.

For advertisers without automated pay-per-click inventory-based management solutions, Dynamic Search Ads can help identify products that are new or re-emerging. The system is tremendous in keeping up with changes to inventory in real time. For example, a product line may have been suspended for years, but quietly (without the search marketing team's knowledge) appears back on the website. In this case, keywords for the product line would still be paused until the marketing team is made aware, but Dynamic Search Ads are able to catch the change immediately, create ads, and generate orders. As another example, for advertisers frequently offering clearance products, Dynamic Search Ads are similarly able to offer ads while these limited quantity items are in-stock. In both examples, Dynamic Search Ads act as a safety net for advertisers wishing to advertise on dynamic products and/or inventories.

Q. What were your main concerns with Dynamic Search Ads and how have you addressed them?

One initial concern was that Dynamic Search Ads would cannibalize existing traffic, siphoning it away from active keyword campaigns. What we found was that the vast majority of Dynamic Search Ads traffic was complementary to our campaigns. Another concern was that we would have little to no control over what keywords Google was able to match on. However, Google has provided a great deal of controls within the Dynamic Search Ads product to ensure that the matching queries are relevant to the advertiser.

Q. What does your typical implementation of Dynamic Search Ads look like?

Implementation strategies will vary. In general, however, it is wise to consider pages that the advertiser wishes to exclude, as well as any known keyword negatives within the accounts, and add those from day one. From there, segmenting pages into campaigns or ad groups based on product margin, conversion rates, and so forth will allow for custom max CPC bids and maximum ROI.

Q. What best practices would you suggest for using Dynamic Search Ads?

Through restrictive targeting, exclusions and negatives, tight budgets and close monitoring, Dynamic Search Ads can be made very low risk and the results you see should be encouraging. For conservative advertisers, start by targeting only product level pages in your best converting categories.

A higher-level strategy is to add a site-wide target at a conservative bid with appropriate exclusions, and then layer on additional, more finely targeted ad groups and copy with bids corresponding to their expected performance. This approach is similar to the best practices for running Product Listing Ads and ensures wide coverage, but with a preference towards better quality traffic.

Use the power-tools that Google has made available in both targeting specific pages, while excluding other pages and search queries.

Q. How is Dynamic Search Ads doing with respect to matching relevant queries and landing pages?

With Dynamic Search Ads we can see every search that triggers a dynamic ad, the headline generated, the landing page selected, and, of course, performance stats. The searches that we’ve seen targeted are absolutely relevant to the website content -- it’s the only place Google is able to generate its targeting information from. If the system is matching to any query that the advertiser does not care to be matched on to meet their performance goals, it is very easy to restrict that traffic by URL or Keyword level negatives.

Q. What kind of results are you seeing with Dynamic Search Ads across your clients? Which is it working best for?

We’ve seen Dynamic Search Ads incremental sales impact range from 0.5% to 12%, so it’s important to note that individual account results may vary. The product is compatible with our tracking and reporting systems which makes it easy to measure performance and do head-to-head comparisons with our existing keyword-based campaigns.

Dynamic Search Ads work best for advertisers that have an extensive product offering and well developed web pages for Google to index and match relevant content to.

Q. What do you focus on when optimizing Dynamic Search Ads?

Like other AdWords campaigns, proper campaign management and optimizations are a necessity. Just like broad match, the Dynamic Search Ads product is most successful with carefully selected negative keywords, pages and categories of the website that do not perform optimally, and/or are not goal-oriented. Also similar to broad match, advertisers should monitor queries that produce conversions, and add them back as keywords to other AdWords campaigns.

Q. To what degree do you think Dynamic Search Ads are cannibalizing organic search traffic?

We haven’t seen evidence of cannibalization. But we’ll continue to evaluate performance and, if needed, make adjustments.

Q. Would you recommend Dynamic Search Ads for novice-to-intermediate or intermediate-to-advanced advertisers?

RKG would recommend Dynamic Search Ads for intermediate-to-advanced advertisers. Because it necessitates ongoing management, and is best utilized as a complement to robust keyword campaigns, it’s not likely to be a good fit for novice advertisers. Additionally, as previously mentioned, the richer the site content, number of pages, and breadth of product offering, the more fruitful Dynamic Search Ads will be. Naturally, these characteristics lend themselves to more established and sophisticated campaigns and advertisers.

About RKG

Founded in 2003, RKG is a data-driven digital agency that combines savvy marketers with sophisticated technology to deliver unrivaled results for over 180 clients in paid search marketing, search engine optimization, multichannel attribution management, display advertising and comparison shopping management. Long recognized as the thought leader in search marketing, RKG clients range from start-ups to the Fortune-500, and include both B2C and B2B direct marketers in retail, travel, finance and education. RKG is an independent, privately held agency with offices in Charlottesville, VA, Bend, OR and Boston, MA.

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew

Coming Soon: Ad Group Impression Share Metrics

Katie Wasilenko — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:32:00 +0000

Based on advertiser requests, we will soon offer ad group level impression share metrics for the Search and Display Networks. Once released, you can use ad group impression share data to, for example, better identify high performing ad groups that aren't capturing the majority of available impressions.

In the next few weeks, you will see three new columns that can be added to your ad groups tab:

Impr. Share: the percentage of impressions you received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive.
Lost IS (Rank): the share of impressions lost due to your Ad Rank. Note that Lost IS (rank) will not be shown if you were at or near your budget for part or all of a given day (a.k.a. were “budget constrained”) during the date range being examined.
Exact Match IS: (Search Network only) the percentage of impressions you received for searches that exactly matched your keyword divided by the estimated number of exact match impressions you were eligible to receive.

In addition to providing more detailed metrics, we are also planning to update our algorithms to provide more accurate campaign impression share metrics. As a result, there are some important changes you should be aware of:

Refined campaign-level statistics: Since we are improving our algorithms, we will update all campaign-level impression share metrics back to May 2011. As a result, you will no longer be able to see campaign-level historical impression share metrics before May 2011. If you wish to preserve a record of the pre-May 2011 campaign impression share data, you will need to download a report before January 30, 2012.
Once-a-day updates: In order to calculate your impression share metrics with a greater degree of accuracy, we will update all impression share metrics once per day (approximately noon Pacific Time [GTM-8]). As a result, the impression share data that you see will not reflect impression share for the current day, and may not include the previous day's impression share as well (depending on what time of the day you run your report).

These changes will begin to roll out to all advertisers globally on January 30, 2012, so look out for them in your account soon. Once these changes are live, you’ll be able to find more detailed information in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew

Find what you need fast in the new AdWords Help Center

Katie Wasilenko — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:48:00 +0000

Today we are happy to announce the launch of our new AdWords Help Center for opted in U.S. users. Based on your feedback we redesigned the Help Center to make it much easier for you to find the information for which you're searching.

Here are some of the changes we've made:

1. Simplified navigation: More easily navigate to the right content using the new menu at the top of each page.

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2. Visible contact options: Find options to reach Google with a click on the "Contact us" button in the top right of any page.

3. More screenshots and videos: Use the screenshots and videos in many of the articles to quickly learn how to make the most of Google AdWords.

To opt into the new Help Center, select “Try the new look” from the yellow bar at the top of the page.

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You can also opt out at any time by selecting “Go back to the old look” in the bottom right corner.

We're rolling the changes out gradually, starting with about 60 of the most important topics. Stay tuned for more updates, as well as the global roll out, over the new few quarters.

Do you like the new Help Center? We'd like to hear what you think. Once you've opted-in to the new Help Center, just click the "Send Feedback" link in the lower right corner of any Help Center page.

You can also follow a thread in the Forum if you have something to share with the users in the AdWords Community.

Posted by The AdWords Help Center Team

Upgrade to AdWords Editor 9.7.1 for more efficient campaign management

Katie Wasilenko — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:01:00 +0000

AdWords Editor version 9.7.1 is now available for Windows and Mac. This new version includes performance improvements and several new options for editing and targeting your campaigns. A few highlights:

Faster downloading for large accounts, and faster cut, copy, and paste (including drag-and-drop).
A new tool for changing the capitalization of selected text in one step.
More AdWords settings available within AdWords Editor, including advanced location settings, user interest category targeting, and Wifi traffic targeting.

For a complete list of changes and instructions, visit our release notes.

If you're already using AdWords Editor, you'll be prompted to upgrade automatically. If you're not already using AdWords Editor, you can visit our website and click "Download AdWords Editor." To learn more about AdWords Editor, visit our Help Center.

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew

Think Insights with Google is out of beta and packing a data punch

Katie Wasilenko — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:03:00 +0000

Quick pop quiz:

1. Based on search history, in what month does consumer demand for pretzels peak?

2. Search adds how much (in $) to the world’s GDP?

3. In 2011, what percent of people dreamed and brainstormed about their next vacation?

4. What percent of the daily queries on Google.com have never been seen before?

These are just a few of the questions that can be answered on the new Think Insights with Google, our information and resource hub for marketers. The site is fresh out of beta and sports a playful new look, helpful tools, more studies, the latest trends and exciting videos. We invite you to visit the site, take a look around and see what’s new.

If you only have a few minutes to spare, try playing with our new Real Time Insights Finder tool. With just a few clicks you can spot emerging trends and gain valuable consumer insights, all in real time. For example, the most popular video in common among males 25-34 in Italy and the U.S. is the Official Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 game trailer.

To stay informed on updates to the site, add our Think with Google page on G+ to one of your circles or subscribe to our newsletter.

Use Think Insights as a one-stop shop for consumer trends, marketing insights and industry research that is forward-thinking and rooted in data. We look forward to hearing your feedback and working to make your Think Insights experience as useful as possible.

Posted by Laura McClung, Ads Marketing