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Engage holiday shoppers with Promoted Places in Google Maps

Rob Newton — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 17:00:00 +0000

During the busy holiday season, on-the-go shoppers are using their smartphones to find the perfect stocking stuffers, festive decor and gifts for loved ones. In fact, 70% of smartphone users who bought something in a store first turned to their devices for information relevant to that purchase. One in four of them also used a map through a web browser or an app before making the purchase.¹ This year, a number of brands are testing Promoted Places in Google Maps to showcase special offers and announcements to drive more foot traffic to their stores.

Some users have started seeing a limited test of Promoted Places in the Google Maps for Android app. It integrates seamlessly with the browsing experience, where places of interest are visually marked with icons to help users orient themselves and explore the world around them. With Promoted Places, advertisers can improve awareness for their stores by branding their location icons with their logo. Clicks on a business’s logo will reveal promotions such as in-store sales or new products and services to help consumers decide where to go. They can also view the business’s place page to see store hours, check live updates to Popular Times, get directions, and more.

“We’re looking forward to testing Promoted Places to help us deliver a more branded and customized experience on Google Maps. It will allow us to spotlight our latest products with the goal of driving more shoppers in-store to get the full M·A·C Cosmetics experience.”
- Laura Elkins, SVP of Global Marketing

“Innovation is part of our DNA and we’re continually evaluating meaningful and contextually relevant ways to connect with our customers. Staying top of mind, especially during the competitive holiday season, requires a mix of tried and true, including breakthrough strategies. Promoted Places in Google Maps can help drive incremental store traffic and promote Walgreens as a go-to destination for small gifts. This gives us a new and different way to highlight seasonal offerings through visuals and engaging copy. Combined with the breadth of our store locations in the community, this aligns with our goals of driving loyalty and giving customers more reasons to choose Walgreens for their holiday needs.”
- Andrea Kaduk, Director of SEM & Social

"With Promoted Places, we can enhance our presence on Google Maps and give users a glimpse of our brand and coffeehouses before they even get there. Having our logo on the map helps our locations jump out and promoting our favourite menu items gives people a reason to choose us."
- Jamie McQuary, Senior Marketing Manager

This holiday season, Promoted Places will help businesses stand out to busy shoppers in the moments they’re figuring out where to go. We’re excited to test new experiences that help consumers discover nearby sales and promotions and allow businesses to reach more people through Google Maps.

Posted by: Cynthia Johanson, Product Manager, AdWords

1. Google/Purchased Digital Diary: How Consumers Solve Their Needs in the Moment, May 2016, Smartphone users = 1000. Offline Purchasers = 696

Video campaign management gets easier with AdWords Scripts

Rob Newton — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 20:00:00 +0000

If you were wishing for an easier way to manage your video ad campaigns in AdWords this holiday season, the AdWords product team has the perfect gift picked out. Today we’re announcing AdWords scripts support for TrueView and six-second bumper ads.

This means for the first time ever, you’ll be able to programmatically create and manage video ad groups, targeting and other campaign features alongside your Search, Display and Shopping campaigns. The new script support is available for standard YouTube ad campaign types like TrueView in-stream, TrueView discovery and bumper ads – and we’re hoping to eventually expand functionality to additional campaign types like shopping.

Making this tool available for video means multi-step campaign management tasks will be much easier – like scheduling regular reporting, creating new campaigns en masse and even automating adjustments to campaigns based on real-time factors, like the weather.

To get started, check out the Help Center article to learn how to set up new scripts for your video campaigns.

Posted by
Chris Hong, Product Manager, AdWords video ads
Leo Sei, Product Manager, AdWords

2 Step Verification – The ‘key’ to account security

Rob Newton — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 17:00:00 +0000

Passwords have historically been the gateway to accounts; however we’ve shown that some of the most common passwords and security questions are easy to guess, which leaves accounts potentially vulnerable to hijackers.

Keeping our users and partners secure is a top priority for us and we continue to work hard to help you keep the bad guys out. 2-Step Verification (2SV) is one of the best ways to protect your account from hackers. 2SV combines both ‘something you know’ (like a password) and ‘something you have’ (like your phone or security key). Think of it like withdrawing money from an ATM/cash machine, where you need both your PIN and your bank card.

Millions of businesses use our advertising service, Google AdWords to display their businesses in Search and improve their reach globally. As part of our commitment to our AdWords customers and to demonstrate how easy it is to adopt better security standards, we distributed 2SV security keys to 60 of our largest ad agencies across four countries (UK, Spain, USA, Mexico). The agencies found the keys to be a useful security feature and have implemented 2SV into everyday practices. Here’s the story of two UK ad agencies that piloted this program.

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Jellyfish is a full service digital marketing agency with offices in the UK, US and South Africa, and with over 250 staff, Jellyfish prides itself on its dynamic approach—responding to clients’ needs in an ever-changing digital landscape. Ranked the number one digital agency in the UK by The Drum Digital Elite in 2015, Jellyfish boasts an influential client roster including: Nestle, Motors.co.uk, Gatwick Airport, National Geographic, Zipcar etc.

As an agency with paid search as its heritage, Jellyfish utilises Google AdWords to help clients run efficient campaigns and generate the maximum return on investment through search and display opportunities. With the bulk of its clients utilising AdWords accounts, Jellyfish wanted to establish good security practices. Richard Hartley, PPC Director at Jellyfish notes: “AdWords has been the most effective means of running campaigns for our clients. With so much data and personal information involved, we wanted to make the safety of these campaigns a priority.”

Jellyfish consulted with Google’s Trust & Safety team on the best way to protect their clients. Tariq Mohammed, PPC Manager at Jellyfish notes: “Security is always of utmost importance to ourselves and our clients. Any of our accounts being hacked could have a massively harmful effect on our clients, and hence it is something we take very seriously. Anything at all that we can do to help safeguard the security of our clients’ data and spend will be grasped by Jellyfish with both hands.”

Google provided 2SV via security keys, to all Jellyfish clients who were AdWords account holders. “Account hijackers are highly motivated and equipped. The best added protection for accounts is 2SV as it prevents unwanted, third party access,” says Zeyneb Temnenko, Accounts Analyst within Google’s Trust & Safety team. “Enabling 2SV will undoubtedly give Jellyfish the security needed to run clients’ campaigns safely without any concerns about unauthorised account access.”

The introduction of the security keys has had a real impact on the Jellyfish team. “Having already rolled the 2-step verification across every single one of our AdWords logins, we already knew the great benefits of using features like the Authenticator app. Having a physical key that we could link to multiple AdWords accounts, even in the case of us not having our phones, helps us run the account easier,” says Hartley. “The security key emphasises deeper security culture and because it’s a physical device, our staff members are always conscious of it,” added Mohammed.

Jellyfish has rolled out the security keys to all team members in the UK and South Africa, with plans to roll it out across the US office. “When winning new business, I’ve no doubt the keys show just how seriously we take security and therefore the careful management of their accounts and data – it sets us apart from other agencies in the market,” says Hartley.

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Based in Regent’s Place, the thriving heart of London’s commercial sector, iProspect is a global digital marketing agency, driving digital performance for some of the world’s largest advertisers across over 50 markets. Its heritage lies in paid search, with 100% of its UK clients taking advantage of search and display opportunities through the Adwords platform.

With Google AdWords accounts playing such an important part in the organisation’s business, it was critical to ensure the security of the clients’ data and their campaigns. Scott Abbott, Head of of Global PPC notes: “The activity we run through AdWords—be it in Google Search, through YouTube, Google Display Network or in Gmail—is crucial to our clients’ business. With over 80 clients and over 900 AdWords accounts, it’s imperative that we take our clients’ data and security seriously. A maliciously compromised login has the potential to put our clients’ business and reputation at risk so security is a big priority for us.”

Google’s Trust & Safety team provided iProspect with security keys to enable 2SV to keep clients’ accounts safe. “2-step verification provides an extra layer of security to prevent unwanted third party access to an account. This in turn prevents the phishing of login credentials and access codes through lookalike sites,” says Google’s Zeyneb Temnenko. “By enabling 2SV, iProspect are securing their clients’ accounts and guaranteeing peace of mind with regards to the safety of their data.”

The introduction of 2SV has dramatically mitigated the risk of logins being compromised through malicious attack. Maeve Ayton, PPC Account Director notes: “Adding 2-step verification with the security keys has given us peace of mind that our Google accounts are secure. It has also increased our clients’ confidence that we are continuing to take every opportunity to protect their data. Another benefit is that one key can be used across multiple accounts ensuring all accounts a user requires access to remain as secure as possible.”

“Introduction of the security keys has been a valued initiative. Even though we anticipate a future with more sophisticated phishing attempts and aggressive tactics to compromise accounts, we are confident that together with Google, we are up to the task of ensuring the safety of our clients’ accounts,” says Abbott.

You can find out more about Google’s 2SV process here. And if you are an AdWords user, you can purchase security keys for your account from several manufacturers such as Yubico or buy them on Amazon.

Posted by Elijah Lawal, EMEA User Safety Outreach Manager

Save time by applying audience lists at the campaign level

Rob Newton — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 19:04:00 +0000

Reaching your most valuable and engaged customers at the moment they’re ready to act is critical in moving them along the path to a purchase. Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) and Customer Match can help you do that by customizing your campaigns for people who’ve previously interacted with your business. However, getting started can be time-consuming, especially if you have a lot of ad groups. To make it easier for you to manage your audience lists at scale, you can now apply them at the campaign level.

Campaign-level audience lists also make it easy to measure and change your bid adjustments. Instead of trying to change your bid adjustments for each individual ad group, you can confidently optimize at the campaign level where you’re more likely to have enough data to make an informed decision. Learn more audience bid adjustment best practices here.

Many advertisers are already using campaign-level search audiences to save time and make better optimizations:

	“Campaign-level audiences have proven to be a great way to apply our remarketing lists at scale. Our campaigns often contain so many ad groups - using RLSA in the past required hours spent applying audiences to each one and analyzing the results by ad group. By applying them at the campaign level, we can be confident that no ad group is overlooked, while saving us time that can be better spent on helping our customers find their new home.” – Debra Carroll, Senior SEM Manager at Redfin

	“Being able to apply all of our audiences at the campaign level has drastically simplified the process of adding lists to multiple campaigns, as most of our campaigns have hundreds of ad groups. This allowed us to apply our bid adjustments in bulk, which has resulted in smarter spending and increased ROAS from our search campaigns.” – Nathan Eagan, PPC Specialist at Webstaurant

With campaign-level search audiences, you now have more flexibility than ever in how to engage with your customers. Learn more about using campaign-level audiences in the Help Center, and read our best practices guide to learn how you can reach the right audience with a message that resonates.

Posted by Bhanu Narasimhan, Director of Product Management, AdWords

Keep the lights on to reach more shoppers this January

Charissa Yee — Wed, 07 Dec 2016 17:00:00 +0000

Last week we covered how mobile has changed shopping behavior during Black Friday weekend. But its effects don’t stop there. Mobile is making it easier to find sales and great deals, encouraging shoppers to browse during traditionally lower traffic seasons; in fact, 22% more mobile shoppers visited retailers via Google in the January after the holiday season, than in the October before.1 For certain categories, like Furniture or Home & Garden, January visits increased up to 39% over their October levels.2 Optimize your strategy to keep your Google Shopping lights on for these savvy shoppers and start the year off with a bang.

Categories seeing higher traffic from Google in January 2016 than October 2015 (UK categories available here)

Optimization tips for key traffic-driving categories in January

There are five categories where retailers saw more traffic coming from Google in January of 2016 than in October 2015. If you sell products in these categories, use the following best practices to expand your reach to shoppers.

1. Use click share to drive more engagement. Products in top positions may see better engagement from shoppers, especially on mobile. The following benchmarks highlight the mobile click share by category you’ll need to be competitive in reaching the top positions. To grow your click share, start by increasing your bids and ad relevance for your priority products.

Category	Mobile Click Share Benchmark3
Electronics	19%
Home and Garden	26%
Health and beauty	30%
Vehicles and Parts	15%
Furniture	22%

2. Create a strategic seasonal campaign. Separate strategic products or items on sale with a separate campaign with a higher campaign priority. A separate campaign enables more flexibility in managing bids and budgets for these products without affecting the rest of your campaigns.

3. Use custom labels to create seasonal product groups. If you plan to sell high-value products in a given category, like winter accessories for vehicles and parts, use custom labels to create a segmented product group in your campaign. This way, you can specifically adjust the bids for winter accessories and then monitor the click share to reach top positions in Google Shopping results.

4. Remarket your products to previous shoppers. Increase the visibility of your products to shoppers who visited your site during the holidays but didn’t convert. Create a remarketing list of previous visitors who may have abandoned their carts at checkout. Chances are, these shoppers are still looking for the best deal available. If you’re having a clearance sale, highlight your lower prices to these shoppers as they continue to browse.

Whether it’s to gear up for the winter or take advantage of clearance sales, these shoppers were eager to continue shopping online last January. Continue adjusting budgets, especially in categories that saw increased traffic last year to reach these shoppers in the New Year.

For more best practices on driving a successful holiday season, visit the help center.

Posted By Alex Chen, Product Marketing Manager, Google Shopping

1. Google Internal Data aggregate mobile traffic October 2015 and January 2016, US.
2. Google Internal Data aggregate traffic by category October 2015 and January 2016, US.
3. Google Internal Data October 13 to October 20, 2016 average click share for overall mobile campaign or product groups with a selection of products in top-level Shopping categories, Global.

Connect with your most valuable customers over the holidays with Customer Match

Charissa Yee — Thu, 01 Dec 2016 17:00:00 +0000

Consumer expectations are higher than ever before. And thanks to mobile, your customers are connected, informed and savvy– they’re becoming supershoppers overnight. As they go shopping this holiday season, it’s more important than ever to connect with your most valuable customers at the exact moment they’re looking for a gift.

Customer Match makes this connection easy by helping you to engage these valuable holiday customers as they’re searching on Google, watching videos on YouTube, and checking promotions on Gmail.

Making Customer Match even better

Starting today, we’re rolling out an easier way to manage your customer lists, giving you more flexibility in reaching your customers during the busy holiday season.

Let’s say that you manage marketing for an online clothing store, and you’re interested in connecting with your active newsletter subscribers. To make it easy for you to keep this customer list up to date, you can now add and remove specific email addresses, or even replace your entire list without having to create a new one. Learn more in the Help Center.

Customer Match delivers results

Brands large and small are using Customer Match in different ways to boost performance:

TurboTax created customized ads and landing pages to ease returning customers into the tax-filing process, decreasing its cost per conversion by 31% in the process.
Guitar Center made product-specific customer lists and increased CTR by 60%.
The Children’s Place re-engaged back-to-school shoppers with customized ads, increasing its return on investment (ROI) by 287%.
One Click Ventures cross-sold eyewear across multiple websites and saw a 412% increase in conversion rate.
Wine Enthusiast Companies combined Customer Match and RLSA to sell wine merchandise to its customer base, delivering a 3x higher ROI.

Our partners make it even easier to get started

To save you time before the holidays, we created an upload service to help you get started with Customer Match. We’ve partnered with Merkle, Sailthru, LiveRamp, PMG, Neustar, Epsilon and others to make the upload process turnkey. Some of these partners can even help you expand your customer lists and match rates, too.

We’ve also partnered with Salesforce and Adobe, who have made it easy for you to upload your customer lists directly from within their customer relationship management platforms. If you’d like to learn more about these services, contact your Google account team.

Understanding your customers and being present in the moments that matter to them is critical. Marketers who adjust their plans accordingly with tools like Customer Match will be positioned for a happy holiday season– and a successful 2017.

Posted by Cedric Dupont, Group Product Manager, AdWords

Shoppers Gobble Up In-Store Black Friday Deals On Mobile

Rob Newton — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 11:00:00 +0000

As another Black Friday weekend wraps, we saw supershoppers continue to turn to their devices for ideas and information as well as use them as a “door-to-the-store.” In fact, Black Friday had the highest mobile shopping searches of any day during Thanksgiving week this year. Thanksgiving Day was a close second, with searches peaking at 8:00 p.m.¹

Further, shoppers across the U.S. turned to mobile to not only find the best deals online but also to discover the best deals in-store: Rhode Island and Delaware had the most local shopping searches -- searches that contained “near me,” hours and stores -- of any states in the nation.²

This strong link between the online and physical world lives beyond the holidays too, and store visits reporting in AdWords is helping advertisers understand it year round. In fact, in just under two years, advertisers globally have measured over 3 billion store visits.

What else did we see in stores over the holiday weekend? Store foot traffic jumped 65% on Black Friday, compared to an average weekend day in November, showing that consumers still care about going into stores for holiday shopping. Clothing, toy, and electronic stores were all popular destinations. Clothing stores and toy stores saw more than double the foot traffic on Black Friday compared to an average weekend day in November.³

Electronics stores were particularly popular, with more than double the foot traffic on Thanksgiving Day and more than triple the foot traffic on Black Friday, compared to an average weekend day in November.⁴ That makes sense given electronics, including the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sony PS4 Pro, are topping shoppers’ gift lists this year.⁵

Popular Times feature in Google Maps: Live store foot traffic on Black Friday in Best Buy as indicated by pink bar

Shoppers also spent more time in stores. For example, in electronics stores, they typically spent between 35 minutes and 1.5 hours on Black Friday compared to 25 minutes on an average day in November. Shopping malls showed a similar increase in visit duration compared to the average day in November.⁶

To get deeper insight into store visits performance, visit the AdWords Help Center and learn about two new distance and location reports coming soon that will help you understand where your store visits come from.

Natalie Zmuda, Managing Editor, Think with Google
Elizabeth Fabiani, Product Marketing Manager, Google Shopping

1. Google Search Data, U.S., apparel, home & garden, beauty & personal care, computers & electronics, gifts, toys & games, photo & video; mobile only, Nov 2016
2. Google Search Data, U.S., apparel, home & garden, beauty & personal care, computers & electronics, gifts, toys & games, photo & video, Search interest in "near me", "hours", "stores"; mobile only, Nov 2016.
3. Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized store traffic for Department, Clothing, Electronics and Toy stores, and Shopping Centers from a sample of U.S. users that have turned on Location History, November
4. Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized store traffic for Electronics stores from a sample of U.S. users that have turned on Location History, November 2016.
5. Google Shopping Insights, U.S., all devices, Nov. 1 – Nov. 13, 2016.
6. Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized store traffic for Electronics stores from a sample of U.S. users that have turned on Location History, November 2016.

‘Tis the season, so make sure you have the AdWords app

Charissa Yee — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 20:00:00 +0000

What an exciting time of the year. Supershoppers are out in full force, and your AdWords campaigns are ready for them. Last year, on mobile alone, conversion rates jumped 30% on Black Friday and 50% on Cyber Monday when compared to November 1.¹

With so much at stake, the AdWords app is the perfect way to stay in touch with your campaigns while still enjoying time away from the office.

Tips for this holiday season

Here are some ways to stay in step with your campaign performance and make last-minute changes throughout the holiday season:

Monitor your budget and bids daily to make sure you’re not missing out on key shopping dates
Make changes to your holiday campaigns, such as pausing or enabling a time-sensitive promotional campaign
Receive critical alerts and notifications, so you can be the first to know if your budget has run out or your ads have been disapproved
Take advantage of opportunities by increasing budgets or bids to drive more profitable conversions in your top-performing campaigns
Review daily performance metrics to understand how your campaigns are performing and if you need to make any last-minute adjustments

Get the app

The AdWords app is available for download on Android and iOS.

Posted by Sugeeti Kochar, Product Management, AdWords

1. Google Analytics Shopping category data, Nov 1, 2015–December 14, 2015, United States

Put a bow on your holiday app marketing with new innovations to find high-value users

Charissa Yee — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 18:00:00 +0000

The holiday season is upon us, and millions of people around the world are looking forward to unwrapping their new devices and downloading their favorite apps. People have more choice in apps than ever before, making it critical for brands and developers to deliver useful and delightful experiences.

We introduced the next generation of Universal App Campaigns to help marketers show your apps to the iOS and Android customers that matter most, based on your specific business goals. Today, we’re announcing three new innovations to make your holiday app campaigns more engaging and effective.

Create immersive video ads magically with AutoDirector

People love watching video, and with 1B+ users around the world¹, YouTube is the place they go to watch.

Now, advertisers using Universal App Campaigns can easily show their app in action using sight, sound, and motion with AutoDirector --- a new innovation that automatically creates immersive and engaging video ads.

AutoDirector gathers your app's description and ratings, selects the best images of your app from the App Store or Google Play, and even picks the music to give your app a soundtrack. Our machine learning models work behind-the-scenes to figure out which version of those videos gets more people to install and engage with your app across YouTube and the 1M+ apps in the Google Display Network.

App promotion video created by AutoDirector for OLX, a Brazilian shopping app

Advertisers all over the world are using videos created through AutoDirector to help their dollars go further with Universal App Campaigns. According to Caio Ferreira, Performance Marketing Manager, OLX Brazil: "The new AutoDirector videos helped the OLX performance marketing team deliver 78% more conversions through AdWords ... Amazing!" Learn more.

New ways to showcase your app on Google Play

People discover apps in a variety of ways, and nearly half of users find new apps while browsing on their phone’s app store².

Today, we are announcing a new ad placement in Google Play, exclusively for advertisers running Universal App Campaigns. As people browse apps in the Google Play Store, they may see ads in a carousel alongside other app recommendations. For example, we may suggest a new game like Tap Paradise Cove to users who install the YouTube Gaming app.

Tap Paradise Cove recommendation shown to a user after installing the YouTube Gaming app

We encourage advertisers to monitor their campaigns as there may be some natural changes in performance and delivery as we roll out these new placements.

Using Play data to find users who are likely to make a purchase

There’s no better place to be than front and center on Google Play when users are in the market for related apps. But finding customers who are likely to engage with your app past the install is far more complex.

Now, there’s an easier way to find these customers that matter most. Android developers who use in-app billing can now count in-app purchases as conversions in AdWords without any technical integration. Then you can use Universal App Campaigns to automatically find more of these valuable users who are more likely to make an in-app purchase in the future.

Options for reporting app conversions with Universal App Campaigns in AdWords

And it doesn’t end there. Android and iOS developers can define any in-app actions that matter -- from beating a level of Tap Paradise Cove, to subscribing to HBO Now, to viewing an available hotel room on trivago -- and find new users who are more likely to take those actions. Advertisers can integrate in-app conversion data with AdWords through Firebase Analytics or other third-party measurement providers.

There are 4M+ apps vying for users’ attention this holiday season. With these innovations, we hope Universal App Campaigns will make it easier for you to reach users that will install and engage with your app well into the new year.

Posted by Sissie Hsiao, Product Director, Mobile App Advertising
Please see our Official Guide to Finding Mobile App Users to learn more about getting started before the holidays.

1. https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/en-GB/statistics.html
2. Google/Ipsos, U.S., “How People Discover, Use, and Stay Engaged With Apps,” n=999, based on smartphone users aged 16-64, Sept. 2016.

How Consumers Will Shop—and What They’ll Buy—This Holiday Season

Charissa Yee — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 11:00:00 +0000

Smartphones have become consumers’ trusted shopping companions. Mobile shopping searches surged in 2015, passing desktop for the first time on Thanksgiving and Black Friday.¹ This year, we see supershoppers continuing to turn to their phones for research and purchases.

In fact, for many consumers, smartphones have become a “door-to-the-store.” And that is particularly true during the holidays. Seventy-six percent of people who search for something nearby on their smartphone visit a related business within a day.²

As we head into the one of the busiest shopping weeks of the year, Google data reveals how consumers will shop and what they'll buy.

Women purchase early while men play the waiting game

Women drive the mobile web, searching for and buying products at twice the rate of men throughout the entire holiday season. The week of Christmas, however, men are more likely to complete their mobile purchases.³

Hatchimals and Nintendo top shoppers’ gift lists this year

Consumers are already on the hunt. Top trending product searches for the first two weeks of November include the Nintendo Entertainment System and Hatchimals -- that’s right, stuffed animals that hatch.⁴

Hatchimals

Nintendo Entertainment System

And while many shoppers can zero in on what they want, others search for inspiration and ideas. Last year, mobile searches related to "unique gifts" grew more than 65% compared to the 2014 holiday season, while mobile searches related to "cool gifts" grew more than 80%.⁵

On Black Friday, stores are most crowded in the afternoon

Although Black Friday is often associated with early birds, store foot traffic typically peaks in the afternoon between noon and 4:00 p.m.⁶ But people are shopping all day long. Shopping searches on mobile remain steady throughout the day as shoppers take advantage of Black Friday deals and plan their trips to the store.⁷

New Englanders love a good deal

Though Black Friday weekend is the rare retail event that pulls even reluctant shoppers into stores, some areas of the country are more interested in deals than others.

By 10:00 a.m. on Black Friday, more than one-quarter of New England shoppers are already on the hunt for a good deal, having stepped inside a department store or shopping center. The rest of the country lags behind an hour.⁸ And the same is true on mobile: people living in New Hampshire search for more product-related deals than people in other states.⁹

But even before stores open—and long after they close—consumers continue to shop. Last Thanksgiving, 59% of shopping searches on mobile took place before stores opened. Shopping continued well into the evening, with mobile shopping searches peaking at 8:00 p.m.¹⁰

The way consumers shop and behave during the holiday season is rapidly changing, from the way they create their gift lists to the way they purchase. Shoppers are proving that both with their fingertips and their feet.

For more data about mobile search trends and shopper foot traffic on Black Friday, check out our infographic “What Google Data Reveals About Black Friday Shoppers.”

Natalie Zmuda, Managing Editor, Think with Google
Elizabeth Fabiani, Product Marketing Manager, Google Shopping

1. Google Search Data, Nov. 2014 vs. Nov. 2015, U.S.
2. Google/Purchased Digital Diary: How Consumers Solve Their Needs in the Moment, May 2016, Representative sample of U.S. Smartphone users = 1000, Local searchers = 634, Purchases = 1,140
3. Google Analytics, aggregated, anonymized data from U.S. accounts that are opted into sharing benchmark data; mobile only, shopping vertical, Nov. 15, 2015 - Dec. 31, 2015.
4. Google Shopping Insights, U.S., all devices, Nov. 1 - Nov. 13, 2016.
5. Google Search Data, U.S., apparel, home & garden, beauty & personal care, computers & electronics, gifts, toys & games, photo & video, Nov.–Dec. 2014 vs. Nov.–Dec. 2015.
6. Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized store traffic for clothing, electronics, and toy stores from a sample of U.S. users that have turned on Location History, Nov. 2015.
7. Google Search Data, U.S., apparel, computer & electronics, and games & toys. mobile only. Nov. 2015.
8. Google Data, Aggregated anonymized store traffic for clothing, electronics, and toy stores from a sample of U.S. users that have turned on Location History; Store traffic after midnight attributed to Black Friday, Nov. 2015.
9. Google Search Data, U.S., apparel, home & garden, beauty & personal care, computers & electronics, gifts, toys & games, photo & video; mobile only. Nov. 2015, U.S.
10. Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized store traffic for Clothing, Electronics and Toy stores from a sample of U.S. users that have turned on Location History; Google Search Data, U.S., Apparel, Computer & Electronics and Games & Toys; Stores considered open after 6 P.M. on Thanksgiving, November 2015.

Serve up the perfect message this holiday season

Charissa Yee — Fri, 18 Nov 2016 20:11:00 +0000

Right now supershoppers are online, looking for great holiday gifts to give their family and friends -- from the coolest gadgets to the latest styles. In fact, 4 in 5 smartphone holiday shoppers use their phone during spare moments or while doing other activities.¹ This means it’s important for you to be present wherever and whenever people are browsing their favorite apps and websites. To reach these consumers with a perfectly crafted message this holiday season, check out three of our latest display ad innovations:

Deliver beautiful catalog experiences with Gmail ads

During the holidays, shoppers look to their inboxes to get updates from their favorite brands. Now you can be there with beautiful catalog experiences that wow them. When people click on your Gmail ad, it expands to show up to four rich images or videos, with descriptions. For example, a beauty brand can show customers Black Friday deals on eyeshadow trios and matching eyeliner. These ads automatically adapt to any device, so people can scroll through your beautiful imagery wherever and whenever they’re using Gmail.

A beautiful catalog experience in Gmail ads

Customize your message with responsive ads

It’s easier than ever to keep your ads in tune with the season. We recently introduced responsive ads, which help you reach more people because they adapt to fit millions of websites and apps on the Google Display Network (GDN). Responsive ads also give you the flexibility to customize your message for the holidays -- without doing heavy lifting. Simply provide holiday-themed headlines, a description, an image, and your URL -- and Google automatically designs beautiful responsive ads that can run across the GDN. That means it’s a snap to add holiday promotions and seasonal products to your campaigns. iZettle, a payment technology company, used responsive ads and drove a 2x increase in conversion rate compared to text ads.

Help customers find you with location extensions

When people know where to find you this holiday season, they’re more likely to stop by your business. Location extensions for display lets you highlight your address, Google Maps directions, and photos in your ad so you can turn online clicks into foot traffic to your store. The Home Depot used location extensions for display to reach consumers actively browsing their phones near the brand’s most popular stores, driving an 8X in-store ROI.

It’s the most important time of the year for many businesses. Delivering the right message can mean the difference between customers choosing your business -- or another one. Whether you’re trying to drive sales on your website or bring people into your stores, we hope these innovations will help you tell your story and win more customers this holiday season.

Posted by Brad Bender, Vice President of Display and Video Advertising

1. Google/Ipsos, "Post-Holiday Shopping Intentions Study—Total Shoppers Report," base: used smartphone for holiday shopping, n=410, Jan. 2016.

Introducing the AdWords Marketing Goals Website

Charissa Yee — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 15:00:00 +0000

As marketers, you’re always looking for more effective ways to achieve business goals - from getting customers to discover your brand to encouraging them to buy something from your site, and everything in between. Today, we are introducing a new AdWords website that puts your goals front and center, and shows you which ads work best to accomplish those goals. You can also use this site to find info on our latest ad innovations, success stories from other marketers and best practices guides.

For example, if you’re a multi-channel retailer driving foot traffic into your store, learn about Google solutions like ads with store directions that can help people find your nearest business location.

Or if you just launched a new app and want to make sure the right people discover it, you can find best practices to get more high-value users to engage with your app. You can also draw inspiration from businesses like GrubHub that ran ads to connect with customers the moment they're searching for new apps in the Google Play store.

Check back in on the site regularly as we'll continue to add content. Also, help us ensure that the site is as useful as possible by sharing your feedback. We look forward to hearing your ideas and suggestions.

Posted by Anthony Chavez, Product Management Director, Advertiser Platform, Google

The Year of the Supershopper

Charissa Yee — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 13:00:00 +0000

We all have that friend - the one who somehow knows the latest brands, the season’s must-have products, and where to find the best deals at the snap of a finger. In years past, this friend was an enigma, making us wonder how does he (she?) do it?

Today, we can all be that friend. With the ability to instantly discover, research, and purchase, shoppers around the world are more informed and more efficient than ever before - they’ve transformed into supershoppers seemingly overnight.

But what defines supershoppers? And what does this mean for retailers trying to win them over this holiday season? Let’s find out.

They Keep Their Options Open

Last year, more than 50% of holiday shoppers said they were open to purchasing from new retailers¹. This is especially true online. More than three-quarters of smartphone shoppers who usually go to the same physical stores when they shop for products are very open to new retailers and brands online². Why? Mobile makes it easy to explore all of your options no matter when or where you’re shopping. In fact, after searching on Google, 76% of mobile shoppers have changed their mind about which retailer or brand to purchase³.

Mobile is Their Muse

It used to be that shoppers would thumb through catalogues or stare longingly at the holiday window displays, but mobile is now the super shopper’s go-to source for inspiration. Sixty-four percent of smartphone shoppers turn to mobile search for ideas about what to buy before heading into store⁴. And 1 in 4 mobile video viewers in the U.S. have visited YouTube for help with a purchase decision while they were at a store or visiting a store's website⁵.

But shoppers aren’t only making purchase decisions, they’re discovering new brands and products along the way: more than half of smartphone users have discovered a new company or product when conducting a search on their phones⁶.

They Want the Best - Not the Cheapest

In July we learned that shoppers are on the quest for the best - and this still rings true more than ever today. Last holiday, mobile searches related to “best gift” grew 70% year over year while mobile searches related to cheap or inexpensive gifts grew about 35%⁷. They’re also willing to do the research to the make the best decision: on YouTube, mobile watch time for product review videos has grown 60% year over year⁸.

But supershoppers don’t only want the best - they want personalized, unique, cool gifts. Mobile searches related to “unique gifts” grew more than 65% while mobile searches related to “cool gifts” grew a whopping 80%⁹.

Mobile is Their Door to the Store

Although more and more people are willing to buy on mobile, we know that mobile is still used predominantly as a door to the store. In fact, 76% of people who search for something nearby on their smartphone visit a related business within a day, and 28% of those searches result in a purchase¹⁰.

Once they’re inside your store, they expect the experience to be a seamless one: more than 40% of smartphone shoppers want retailers to automatically surface relevant information such as the location of the item in the store, a special deal or related products¹¹.

They Shop ‘Til they Drop

Supershoppers live up to their name as the holiday season progresses. From November through mid-December we see online conversion rates increase across devices. Last year, on mobile alone, they jumped 30% on Black Friday and 50% on Cyber Monday when compared to November 1¹².

Here Are a Few Tips to Reach Today’s Supershopper

Get your holiday campaigns in shape: Use a combination of search and video ads to reach shoppers across all their digital touchpoints. Ensure your products stand out by reading our list of optimization do’s and don’ts as well as our best practices for TrueView video ads.
Be Present on Mobile: use mobile bid adjustments to ensure your brand is present no matter when people are shopping. For search campaigns, you can send mobile users to the right pages on your site by using mobile URLs in expanded text ads.
Manage Your Bids Efficiently and Effectively: Use Smart Bidding in AdWords or DoubleClick Search to maximize your performance. Improve your bidding for sales and promotions by using Business Events in DoubleClick Search.
Bring your Brand into the Consideration Set: as shoppers are more open to new brands online, help shoppers discover your brand and products through category keywords and audience targeting formats like TrueView for shopping. You can use TrueView video discovery ads to target YouTube search pages relevant for your brand.
Don’t Miss Out on People Who are Willing to Buy Your Products: Monitor your budgets and review your click-share daily to make sure you’re not losing out on shoppers ready to buy. Increase bids and budgets as conversion rates rise, and don’t forget to keep the lights on even after the holiday season ends! Finally, don't forget to use store visits or store sales to make sure offline sales are accounted for.

Julie Krueger, Retail Managing Director, Google

1. Google/ Ipsos, Post Holiday Shopping Intentions Study - Total Shoppers Report, Jan 2016, Base: US Holiday Shoppers, n=1,500
2. Google/Euromonitor International, Micro-Moments Survey, US, July 2016, Smartphone shoppers = 1000, Same store shoppers = 801
3. Google/Euromonitor International, Micro-Moments Survey, US, July 2016, Smartphone shoppers = 1000
4. Google/Euromonitor International, Micro-Moments Survey, US, July 2016, Smartphone shoppers = 1000
5. Google-commissioned Ipsos Brand Building on Mobile Survey, U.S., December 2015 n=1000, 18-54 year olds
6. Google/Ipsos, "Consumers in the Micro-Moment," Wave 3, U.S., n=1291 online smartphone users 18+, August 2015.
7. Source: Google Search Data, Apparel, Home & garden, Beauty & personal care, Computers & electronics, Gifts, Toys & games, Photo & video, Nov-Dec 2014 vs Nov-Dec 2015, United States.
8. YouTube data, U.S., Classification as a “Product Review" video was based on public data such as headlines and tags, and may not account for every such video available on YouTube, Nov - Dec 2014 and Nov - Dec 2015
9. Google Search Data, Apparel, Home & garden, Beauty & personal care, Computers & electronics, Gifts, Toys & games, Photo & video, Nov-Dec 2014 vs Nov-Dec 2015, United States.
10. Google/Purchased Digital Diary: How Consumers Solve Their Needs in the Moment, May 2016, Representative sample of US Smartphone users = 1000. Local searchers = 634, Purchases = 1,140
11. Google/Euromonitor International, Micro-Moments Survey, US, July 2016, Smartphone shoppers = 1000
12. Google Analytics Shopping category data, Nov 1, 2015–December 14, 2015, United States

Click-to-message ads bring a new and easy way to talk to customers

Charissa Yee — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 06:15:00 +0000

If you’re inviting a friend to dinner or asking them about the best hotels in New York City, you’re probably doing it through mobile messaging. Nearly two thirds of smartphone owners use messaging more than five times a day to communicate with others.¹ And people aren’t limiting their use of messaging to social communications - 65% of consumers say they’d consider using messaging to connect with a business to get information about a product or service, or to schedule an in-person appointment.²

In the coming weeks, we’re introducing click-to-message ads to bring the efficiency and effectiveness of messaging to search ads. By setting up a message extension, you’ll give users an easy way to text you to start a conversation and continue it whenever is most convenient for them.

Tapping on the texting option launches a user’s SMS app with a pre-written message tailored to the product or service they’re interested in. For example, if you’re a travel advertiser and someone messages you after searching for New York City hotels, they can send or edit your pre-written message text, “I’m interested in a reservation. Please text me back with more information.”

Many advertisers are already using click-to-message ads to take advantage of a new and faster way to connect with consumers on mobile to increase conversion rates:

"Click-to-message ads have proven to be a great way to help prequalified customers start the hotel reservation process in a way that is convenient and easy for them. They can text an agent to get questions answered, continue the conversation on their own timetable, and trade booking information before completing the final checkout over the phone or on our website. It's a seamless and streamlined process that helps increase brand trust. The conversion rate on message extensions is 41% higher compared to other ad extensions. Paired with customer support software, they’ve also allowed our agents to respond to requests in a more efficient and cost-effective way. ”

- Gabe Thayn, Director of Search Marketing, TravelPASS Group

"Click-to-message is a useful tool that allows consumers to engage with our business in a way that’s comfortable and efficient for them. They could be on their commute or in a rush, so they can text us quickly through click-to-message. It’s also a good medium to get questions answered that aren’t addressed on our website, or to reach us during hours when our office is closed. Our main performance objective is to help customers as much as possible - when we take care of their questions and needs in a helpful, relevant way, that leads to better business results."
- Gavin Chan, Digital Marketing Manager, AnyVan

"The results from click-to-message have been phenomenal and we've seen a 80% higher conversion rate when compared to other similar channels. We can now tap into an important consumer base that prefers to use SMS to learn more about our insurance products. Besides giving users a new way to get in touch with us, we feel this is by far the fastest and most cost-effective way to connect with them."
- Gavin Parker, Paid Search Manager, Auto & General

“We started testing click-to-message as soon as we heard about it. Text messaging is a popular medium of communication among young professionals and the opportunity to engage them through SMS is very exciting. We sell industrial equipment and supplies, which can be very technical. Sometimes customers don’t have time to talk over a web chat or phone conversation, but still need more information. Messaging helps simplify these exchanges and the customer response has been very positive since they can post a question and follow up in their own time."
- Ashar Mairaj, VP of Marketing, Global Industrial

Mobile users have more flexibility than ever to choose how they want to connect with businesses. Through messaging, you can initiate valuable conversations with them by tapping into one of their most preferred modes of communication. Learn more about click-to-message ads by visiting the Help Center. Also read our new best practices to learn how to use click-to-message ads to build a faster consumer experience on mobile and deliver useful information that gets customers closer to purchasing.

Posted by Amit Agarwal, Senior Product Manager, Mobile Search Ads

1. Google Consumer Surveys, US, Canada, UK, Australia, October 2016, Base: Respondents who own a smartphone and use it to access the Internet (n = 1,262 in US, n = 1,222 in UK, n = 567 in Canada, n = 563 in Australia)
2. Google Consumer Surveys, US, Canada, UK, Australia, October 2016, Base: Respondents who own a smartphone and use it to access the Internet (n = 1,036 in US, n = 1,032 in UK, n = 489 in Canada, n = 485 in Australia)

Google Shopping partners with ecommerce platforms to make selling online easier than ever this holiday season

Charissa Yee — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 18:43:00 +0000

When it comes to attracting customers over the busy holiday season, showcasing your products online can help you get in front of more people, and many retailers already use ecommerce platforms to upload and promote their products online. Today, we’re excited to announce partnerships with three major ecommerce platforms -- BigCommerce, PrestaShop, and Magento -- to make it easier than ever before to get started on Google Shopping for the holidays, and beyond. If you’re using any one of these platforms (or if you’re thinking of using one of these platforms), our new partnerships let you easily submit your product information to Google Shopping and quickly reach millions of new customers searching for what you sell.

Get up and running on Google in just a few clicks

With this direct integration, you can save time and extra work by using your existing BigCommerce, Prestashop, or Magento account to easily submit your product data to fuel a new Google Shopping campaign.

With just a few clicks, your product information is populated in your Merchant Center account, helping you reach new shoppers on Google.com and other Google properties. This integration lets you:

Find new customers, right where they’re searching. Connect your products to the customers who matter most -- the ones searching for what you sell.
Easily display your rich product imagery and details. Put your product images, price, and other differentiators front and center, so that searching shoppers can easily find you.
Get up and running quickly, minimizing your holiday workload. Use the product information you’ve already entered in your ecommerce platform without needing to submit this information separately to Google.
Showcase your newest inventory. Roll out new products to Google Shopping, simply by adding products to your ecommerce store.

Early successes

We’ve been testing this technical integration with our ecommerce platform partners, and have already seen impressive results from small businesses, brand new to Google Shopping.

Peter Baseio, founder and CEO of baby product company Organic Munchkin, connected his BigCommerce account to Google Shopping to reach new customers with rich, visual ads. “Google Shopping allows our products to be listed in a visual format, increasing brand awareness for our niche market, as well as revenue,” said Baseio. “It has tripled our revenue stream, bringing in customers we never knew we had access to."

Sam Gong, co-founder of Man Crates, used the integration to help tens of thousands of new customers find their unique assortment of gifts. "Google Shopping is an incredibly cost-effective way for us to reach new customers on long-tail search terms and recapture visitors that have found Man Crates through one of our primary marketing campaigns,” said Gong. “It's well integrated with BigCommerce, incredibly easy to setup, and easy to measure and manage on an ongoing basis. It’s an absolute no-brainer for just about any ecommerce business."

Ready to get started?

If you’re not using an ecommerce platform today, find out how to sign up for one by checking out the BigCommerce, PrestaShop, or Magento website. If you’re already using one of these platforms, visit our Help Center or the BigCommerce, PrestaShop, and Magento help pages to learn more.

Posted by James Summerfield, Senior Software Engineer, Google Shopping

AdWords Editor now supports mobile-first innovations, Gmail ad templates, and more

Charissa Yee — Wed, 05 Oct 2016 17:00:00 +0000

The shift to mobile has happened. And as marketers on the frontline, you need tools that help you build mobile-first experiences at scale. AdWords Editor is here to help -- and just in time for the holidays. The latest version (11.6) includes support for universal app campaigns, Gmail ad templates, and much more.

Universal app campaigns

Developers and marketers know it’s not just about driving app installs, it’s about delivering valuable actions within your apps. AdWords Editor now supports universal app campaigns (UAC), which help you find the customers that matter most to you, based on your defined business goals. With UAC, you can find valuable users for your app across Google Search, Play, YouTube, and within apps and mobile websites on the Display Network. Create and edit universal app campaigns in AdWords Editor today.

Gmail ad templates

With Gmail ads, you can reach the 1B+ Gmail users around the world. Gmail ads provide a relevant way for you to connect with them as they're browsing promotional emails. AdWords Editor now supports Gmail image templates and Gmail single promotion templates so you can easily create, manage, and edit your Gmail ads, in bulk, alongside the rest of your ads.

Expanded text ads

As a reminder, support for expanded text ads is also available in AdWords Editor. Expanded text ads provide more ad space so you can showcase additional details about your brand, products, and services. Check out our best practices guide for tips and tricks on writing compelling ads.

Responsive ads

Responsive ads adapt to the increasingly diverse mix of content types and screen sizes across the Google Display Network. You can now create and edit responsive ads in AdWord Editor.

And more…

The latest version of AdWords Editor also includes:

Device bid adjustments allow you to maintain the efficiency of managing a consolidated campaign that reaches consumers across devices, while giving you more control to set individual bid adjustments for each device type.
Enhancements to advanced search, including an easier way to create filters.
Scheduled downloads to help you stay on top of recent changes and performance statistics

Learn more about these updates in the AdWords Editor Help Center or download AdWords Editor here.

Posted by Blake Reese, Senior Product Manager, AdWords Editor

Search audience ad innovations see strong momentum

Charissa Yee — Wed, 28 Sep 2016 15:00:00 +0000

Consumer expectations for immediacy and relevance are higher than ever, and successful brands are those that connect with consumers in those critical moments — the I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-buy moments. Based on our deep understanding of intent and context, we’ve built products like remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) and Customer Match to help you be there and be relevant in those moments. Today, at SMX East in New York City, I’ll be sharing new insight into these ad innovations.

RLSA gets even better

RLSA makes it easy to connect with customers who are already familiar with your business by allowing you to adjust your search ads, bids, and keywords based on their past activity on your website. Starting today, we’re introducing improvements to RLSA to give you more flexibility and help drive better performance:

Reach your customers across devices. If someone visits your website on their laptop or tablet, you can now reach them with more relevant ads when they search on their phone.
Keep site visitors in your list for 540 days. This longer membership duration makes it easier for businesses with seasonality or high consideration products to reach their customers.
Add your remarketing lists at the campaign level later this year, making it faster and easier to use RLSA. This will work for Customer Match too.

Since RLSA’s initial launch, advertisers like Intel, TransUnion and David Jones have seen tremendous results.

Customer Match delivers results, especially when used with RLSA

Customer Match helps you reach your highest-value customers across Google Search, YouTube, and Gmail. We’ve found that advertisers using Customer Match and RLSA in combination are seeing strong performance.

At SMX East I shared this insight that we learned from many advertisers who are seeing great results. Wine Enthusiast, a retailer for all things wine, combined RLSA with Customer Match and saw a 3x increase in ROI compared to search campaigns that used keyword targeting alone.

Demographics for search ads

Demographics for search ads (DFSA) has started rolling out to all advertisers globally. DFSA lets you adjust bids for ages and genders, and even exclude them, to help you reach specific groups of customers, as well as report on how they impact your campaigns. Learn more.

Let’s say you’re a clothing retailer, and the majority of your customers are millennials — DFSA can help you to reach this audience more effectively. For example, you might increase your bids for users ages 18 to 34 to drive more sales from this valuable group of consumers.
Pairing insights like this with your search strategy can help you be there for your customers with the most relevant ad experience possible. Here are some advertisers who’ve seen success:

"DFSA was clearly a product we wanted to implement on our top campaigns. Since applying bids based on age, we've seen big gains in efficiency and engagement: searchers that DFSA identifies as over the age of 45 have shown a 65% higher CTR and a 15% lower CPA." — Rene Rios, Director of Membership Development at AARP

“With DFSA, we can concentrate our marketing dollars on the audiences most important to us. By employing bid modifiers for women ages 25 to 44, we saw CPA decreases of 25% in our campaigns compared to normal search.” — Ya-Yung Cheng, Sr. Director of Digital Marketing & CRM at Sylvan Learning

Jerry Dischler, Vice President of Product Management, AdWords

New digital innovations to close the loop for advertisers

Charissa Yee — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 03:58:00 +0000

Mobile phones have created new ways for consumers to engage with brands, often blurring the physical and digital worlds. People research products online and go into a store to buy. They see a brand on TV and then go online to learn more. Or they watch mobile videos on their commutes that inspire them to book a trip when they’re back home on their laptops.

However your audience engages, only Google has the scale and the tools to help you reach people in the moments that truly matter and measure impact across devices and channels.

I look forward to sharing several new innovations with you on Monday morning at Advertising Week’s Times Center Stage -- all of which are designed to help you close the loop between television and digital, online and offline, and mobile and desktop.

Close the loop between TV and digital with Brand Lift

For the last several years, we’ve been investing in our Brand Lift product to show marketers how YouTube campaigns impact brand metrics like awareness and purchase intent -- throughout the entire consumer journey.

Today, we’re extending the capabilities of Brand Lift to TV campaigns to show marketers how TV ads increase Google and YouTube searches for your brand compared to YouTube campaigns. From early tests, we've seen that YouTube generates almost 2x searches per impression than TV generates.¹

Brand Lift for TV requires very little set-up – you don’t even need to provide your media schedule. As long as you’re running Brand Lift on both a TV campaign and a YouTube campaign, we’ll be able to report the incremental searches for your brand.

"We are excited to see the work Google is doing to better understand the impact of video. Brand Lift now presents us with a way to specifically, credibly, and scientifically compare the effectiveness of cross media campaigns. This is interesting to Volkswagen as we move closer to measuring TV and digital platforms (like YouTube) on even ground." - Paige Parrent, Digital Media Manager, Volkswagen Marketing

Close the loop between online ads and offline sales

In addition to the interaction between TV, YouTube and online search, there is now a real connection between online ads and offline visits to stores: 30% of smartphone users who visit a website or app on their phones buy something in a store within 24 hours.²

That’s why we’re introducing location extensions and store visits measurement for the Google Display Network -- to help marketers close the loop between online ads and offline sales. As consumers browse their favorite websites or interact with their favorite apps, you can reach them with ads that show your business address, Google Maps directions and photos. It’s a high-impact, immediate way to increase foot traffic to your store.

For The Home Depot, location extensions for display ads reached consumers actively browsing their phones near the brand’s most popular stores, delivering an 8X in-store ROI. “Mobile location extensions for display really proved their worth very quickly,” says Umut Dincer, Director of Online Marketing for The Home Depot. “We're able to reach DIYers who are close to our stores and make a 'just-in-time' connection that brings them the information they really want in their I-want-to-buy-it moments.” [Full story]

So how do marketers measure the impact of these online ads? Store visits for display measures the impact of your Display Network ads on actual visits to your store, hotel, auto dealership or restaurant. With the power of Google Maps technology, we have access to the exact dimensions of over 200 million stores globally to deliver 99% accuracy in reported visits.³ Only Google can deliver this level of precision and scale. [Learn more]

Close the loop across devices

The final loop to close is the one across all the devices people use -- phones, tablets, laptops and everything in between. Today, we’re introducing cross-device remarketing for Google Display Network and DoubleClick Bid Manager to help you reach the same user across devices, apps, and sites. You can now tell a single story to your audience and decide how frequently they see your ad across devices.

Let’s say you’re a retailer and want to build a customized Halloween campaign. With cross-device remarketing, you can reach your customers with an “It’s almost Halloween” ad on their phone during the morning commute. Later in the day, you can follow up with a limited time offer on decorations and recipes when they’re browsing a tablet at home.

All of these innovations will be rolling out over the course of the next few months.

It’s a privilege to build products that help brands close the loop for measurement, reach and engagement. We’re excited to share more details about these innovations with you throughout Advertising Week, and I look forward to your feedback as we continue this journey together.

Join the conversation at #GoogleAW2016.

Posted by Brad Bender, Vice President of Display and Video Advertising

1. Google Internal meta-analysis of 1188 U.S. studies, August 2015 - April 2016.
2. Google/Purchased Digital Diary: How Consumers Solve Their Needs in the Moment, May 2016, Representative sample of US smartphone users = 1000, Visited a Website or App = 721.
3. Store visits are calculated using conservative data thresholds with 99% certainty that reported visits are less than or equal to actual visits.

Google delivers new app and video ad innovations for the mobile-first world

Charissa Yee — Wed, 14 Sep 2016 11:00:00 +0000

When I started at Google 13 years ago, I was an ad tech engineer building products based on the idea that an online ad is only effective if it leads to a click and a purchase. It sounded simple at the time, but it’s revolutionized the way brands connect with consumers.

Today, our industry is adjusting to another revolution, and it’s all thanks to the tiny device we carry with us everywhere we go – our phones. Throughout the day, when we want to go somewhere, watch something, or buy something, we reach for our mobile devices for help, whether it’s to find the best hotel deal or buy the perfect car. And billions of times a day, we find what we want on Google, YouTube, Maps, and Play. This morning at dmexco, a digital conference in Cologne, Germany, I announced two ad innovations that will help you be there in those moments, connecting the right consumers with what they want, when they want it.

Go beyond the install and find your most valuable customers

Apps are ubiquitous with mobile and are an increasingly important touchpoint for consumers. To date, AdWords has delivered more than 3 billion app downloads to developers and advertisers.¹ And I meet with many of you from around the world to learn about the creative ways you’re connecting with your users – it’s the best part of my job. One insight I keep hearing is that users who engage with your app are the users that matter the most to your business. It’s not just about driving installs, it’s about delivering valuable actions within your apps – whether it’s reaching a specific level in a game or completing a purchase. We set out to solve this challenge.

At dmexco this morning, I announced the next generation of Universal App Campaigns, available globally to all advertisers. Across Google Search, Play, YouTube, and the millions of sites and apps in the Google Display Network, Universal App Campaigns can now help you find the customers that matter most to you, based on your defined business goals.

trivago, a popular hotel search app, was one of the first to test this new version of Universal App Campaigns. The brand cares deeply about helping travelers find the perfect hotel room and knows that users who tap on a deal are more likely to take the next step: book a stay.

Example of the user journey from install to viewing a deal on a hotel room

Like trivago, you get to choose the in-app activity you want to optimize for, whether that’s tapping into a deal or reaching level 10, and can use third-party measurement partners or Google’s app measurement solutions like Firebase Analytics to measure those activities. Once your in-app activities are defined within AdWords, you’ve plugged in your analytics solution, and set your cost-per-install, Google will put our machine learning algorithm to work. Universal App Campaigns evaluate countless signals in real time to continuously refine your ads so you can reach your most valuable users at the right price across Google’s largest properties. As people start to engage with your ads, we learn where you’re finding the highest value users. For example, we may learn that the users who tap into the most hotel deals are those who watch travel vlogs on YouTube. So, we'll show more of your ads on those types of YouTube channels.

For trivago, Universal App Campaigns was able to find users who were more likely to click on hotel deals in app to book a room. As a result, the travel brand acquired customers who were 20% more valuable to its business across both Android and iOS.

This is a major shift in how Google can help you grow your app business. We’re listening, and we’re no longer just focusing on the install. Our goal with Universal App Campaigns is to deliver user engagement and value for the apps you worked so hard to build.

Turn consideration into action with TrueView for action

The mobile revolution hasn’t just changed how we search or interact with apps, it's also changed the way we interact with almost every kind of media. Nowhere is this more evident than the way people watch video. We see this every day on YouTube.

In a recent study, we found that 47% of U.S. adults aged 18 to 54 say YouTube helps them at least once a month when making a decision about buying something – that’s an estimated 70 million people going to YouTube every month for help with a purchase.² These intent-rich moments are opportunities for brands to connect with consumers when it matters, so we took on the challenge of making it easier for consumers to move from consideration to purchase.

Over the last few years, we’ve evolved our TrueView format to change the way video delivers value for performance marketers. TrueView for app promotion and TrueView for shopping make it incredibly easy for brands to drive downloads and purchases directly from YouTube. But what about brands with other types of conversions, like requesting a quote, booking a hotel, signing up for a newsletter, or scheduling a test drive?

Today I’m excited to introduce TrueView for action: a new format that encourages users to take any online action that’s meaningful for your business.

TrueView for action example

TrueView for action makes your video ad more actionable by displaying a tailored call-to-action during and after your video. This call-to-action can be adapted to your specific use case, like “Get a quote,” “Book now” or “Sign up.” Since this is an easy add-on to your video, you can drive performance on top of all the benefits of showing your video to an engaged audience. This is especially advantageous for brands that offer products or services with high consideration, like financial services, automotive, or travel. TrueView for action can help you move your customers along the path to purchase by encouraging actions like scheduling an appointment or requesting more information. We’re excited to start testing this new format with advertisers throughout the rest of this year.

As consumers live their lives in a mobile-first world, it’s increasingly important for brands to build transformational mobile experiences. We know it’s not always easy, and Google is here to help. It’s been so inspiring to see so many of you deliver extraordinary experiences for your customers, and I think dmexco embodies this shared passion and innovative spirit for connecting brands with consumers. I look forward to meeting with more of you and continuing along this amazing journey.
Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President, Ads and Commerce

1. Google Internal Data, Global
2. Google / Ipsos Connect, YouTube Sports Viewers Survey, U.S., March 2016 (n=1500, 18-54 year olds)

Expanded text ads: more time to test and iterate

Charissa Yee — Tue, 13 Sep 2016 20:03:00 +0000

Earlier this year, we introduced expanded text ads so advertisers can provide more information about your business right in your search ad. While many have seen great results with the new, longer ad format, some advertisers are still learning how to use it effectively.

To make sure you have ample time to test and iterate your expanded text ads for the holidays, we are giving advertisers more time to upgrade your creatives.

You now have until January 31, 2017, to make the transition to expanded text ads (instead of the original date of October 26, 2016). This means starting on January 31, 2017, you’ll no longer be able to create or edit standard text ads — you’ll only be able to create and edit text ads using the expanded text ads format. Existing standard text ads will continue to serve alongside expanded text ads.

Expanded text ads can deliver great results, particularly for those who have invested in writing and testing new creatives. Please use this additional time to experiment with new expanded text ads of your own.

Focus on quality through testing

Over the last few months, we reviewed a lot of text ads data. It confirmed what we already know to be true: the quality of your ads matters. Extra characters don’t solve any performance problems on their own. It’s very important to be thoughtful and compelling with your additional headline and characters.

To that end, consider these best practices as you move forward with expanded text ad optimization:

Test multiple versions of your expanded text ads. Try different approaches with the new space your ads now have. Shoot for 3-5 new ads per ad group. Advertisers who test multiple creatives see better performance.
Focus your testing on headlines. Headlines are the most important parts of your ads, and you now have an extra line to experiment with.
Replicate what works in standard text ads in your expanded text ads. For example, if you mention pricing or use keyword insertion in a successful standard text ad, carry those over to expanded text ads.
Consider shorter headlines on brand terms. Sometimes “Your Company’s Name - Official Site” might be all you need. You aren’t required to use all of your available characters. Test shorter ad copy, especially on terms where someone might not need a lot of additional info.
Leave your standard text ads running until the new versions are consistently outperforming them. An expanded text ad isn’t guaranteed to be a winner simply because you have more characters. Leave your top performing ads running, regardless of their length.
Review your pre-existing ads for previous success with longer headlines. Consider promoting description line 1 in a standard text ad to you new headline 2, especially if that ad performed well in the past.

Making a smooth transition to expanded text ads

In addition to those tips, here are a couple of things that you should avoid:

Don’t implement the same expanded text ad across many different ad groups. Your ads should be tailored to users’ searches.
Don’t blindly insert a new second headline without changing the rest of the ad. Add content that is relevant to the query and fits well with the rest of the creative.
Don’t write expanded text ads that lose their relevance to a user’s query. Remember that user query in your text.

Example query: articles about college financing

Ad not aligned to user's query (even though it may be better written)	Ad focusing on a user’s query

Don’t leave out specific benefits or attributes of your product that had proven to be enticing in the past. Test all of your benefits to find what works in the new format.

Additional resources

If you’re still getting up to speed with expanded text ads, check out our best practices for creating effective ads. We’re also hosting an upcoming Hangout-on-Air to go over some of the considerations as you make this important transition.

Here’s to a successful holiday season filled with great, user-friendly text ads - be they standard or expanded.

Posted by Senthil Hariramasamy, Senior Product Manager, Ad Formats

Gearing up for the holidays: how big brands plan to reach shoppers this year

Charissa Yee — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 19:00:00 +0000

Mobile has forever changed the way people shop. A shopper's smartphone is there for them anytime, anywhere in countless micro-moments. The question for retailers is: are you prepared to meet these shoppers in the moments that matter most?
Learn how best in class retailers are looking to be there and be useful to shoppers no matter where they’re discovering, researching or purchasing.

Best Buy

For much of Best Buy’s 50-year history, what its customer really cared about was "Do you have the product and is it at the right price?" But today, customers want to know much more than that. They want to understand how products work together to make their lives better. For example, ‘how can I stream photos from my SLR camera onto my television?’
To reach shoppers as they’re researching, Best Buy added all of their product information into mobile buying guides. They also worked with Google to surface their local store inventory within search so that customers know exactly which products are available in-store.
Hear Greg Revelle, Best Buy’s Chief Marketing Officer, discuss how this mobile-first strategy helped Best Buy drive over one million store visits with Google last holiday season.

Williams-Sonoma Inc.

Lifestyle icon Williams-Sonoma Inc. has always been a visual brand. But the brand has had to rethink the way it tells its story. Its catalog used to be the cornerstone of its relationship with consumers, but mobile phones are increasingly the new starting point for kitchen connoisseurs (especially millennials).
In fact, the brand learned that 60% of millennials use their smartphone as a “sous-chef” for help in the kitchen, so Williams-Sonoma Inc. began creating videos to help customers’ in their most important cooking moments, such as ‘how to use a spiralizer.’
Hear how Williams-Sonoma Inc.’s Chief Marketing Officer, Felix Carbullido, has developed customer-first strategies to increase the company’s mobile sales by 70% year over year.

Swarovski

Swarovski has always been a go-to destination for holiday gift giving, but the brand learned through search data that there was a huge opportunity in connecting with consumers in more everyday moments when they're wondering what to wear on a date or how to accessorize an outfit for work.
Since 50% of Swarovski's site traffic comes from mobile, the brand focused on developing mobile content that's visually rich and easy to navigate. The company's fun and interactive Style Finder offers ideas for how to accessorize an outfit for work or that special date night. It also allows the customer to dial-up or dial-down a look, depending on her mood.
Since a large percentage of purchases still happen in-store, Swarovski uses Google’s local inventory ads to drive those inspired customers into their stores where they can try on a necklace or bracelet and complete the sale. In fact, local inventory ads are driving a 75% higher click-through rate than its standard Shopping ads.
Learn how Swarovski’s team is using mobile to inspire and draw customers in-store store.

***

As we head into the biggest shopping season of the year, are you ready to give your shoppers everything they'll be looking for in their mobile micro-moments?

Read our Shopping Micro-Moments Guide, which has more stories of how all types of retailers and brands are reaching consumers with useful information in the moments that matter.
Then, head to our official Holiday Planning Guide for tips on how to get your product data and campaigns in tip-top shape for the holiday season.

Posted by Emily Eberhard Pereira, Head of Shopping B2B Marketing

Fine-tuning the layout of search ads on Google Play

Charissa Yee — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 17:00:00 +0000

Google Play reaches more than a billion people on Android devices in over 190 countries — providing a platform for consumers to find the coolest new apps and enjoy the latest music, movies, and books.

We introduced search ads on Google Play last year to improve app discovery and help developers reach users right when they’re looking for new apps to install. It’s one of several platforms, alongside YouTube, Google.com and the Google Display Network, where developers can introduce your apps to high quality users. Developers all around the world, like GrubHub, have seen tremendous success in terms of reach and install rates with Google’s app promo products. See full story. We’re building on this momentum by fine-tuning the ads experience on Google Play to deliver even more growth for the developer community.

First, for app-specific searches on Google Play, ads in their current form will not be shown at the top of the page. Instead, the organic result for the app will show at the top of the page, followed by additional organic results and possibly ads for other relevant apps. So when a user searches for “Google Express,” she will see the organic result for “Google Express” without an identical “Google Express” ad above it. This change is part of our ongoing commitment to improve user experience and advertiser performance. We encourage developers to monitor your campaigns as there may be some natural changes in performance metrics as we roll out these updates.

Second, a relevant, additional ad will start to show on Google Play for some queries like “music streaming app” and “exercise app.” This new ad spot gives developers an additional opportunity to promote the apps you’ve worked so hard to build.

Innovations like search ads on Google Play have proven to be a useful way to surface new apps for consumers and provide additional value for developers. We look forward to building on this momentum with new tools and best practices to bring even more success to the developer community.
Posted by Sissie Hsiao, Director, Product Management

Track your goals with campaign groups and performance targets

Charissa Yee — Tue, 06 Sep 2016 19:00:00 +0000

AdWords provides powerful tools to help advertisers grow their business. For example, if you’re about to launch a new holiday campaign, you can use TrueView ads on YouTube along with banner ads on the Google Display Network to drive brand awareness and more holiday sales. To make it easier for you to track and forecast the performance of these campaigns against your advertising goals, we’re introducing campaign groups and performance targets.

Create a campaign group

You can now package AdWords campaigns (including Video, Display, Search, and Shopping campaigns) into a single campaign group. For our holiday example, set up your YouTube and Display campaigns, select “campaign groups” from the left menu, and group those two campaigns together to create a campaign group called “Holiday Launch”.

Set a performance target

Performance targets make it easier to monitor and reach your performance goals for each campaign group. Tell us how many clicks or conversions you want to receive, how much you want to spend, and what average CPC or CPA you wish to maintain. We'll then automatically show you a single view of how your campaign group is performing against those goals, and what we think you'll likely achieve by the end of the campaign period.

Here’s an early success story for campaign groups and performance targets:

“Previously I needed to export all my campaigns into a spreadsheet, group them together, and create a pivot table simply to see how they are performing. With campaign groups & performance targets, we can much more easily see how our groups are performing relative to our goals, all from within the AdWords interface."
- Oleg Monakhov, Senior Lead Generation Manager at Wrike

Note that creating performance targets does not change how we serve your ads or optimize your campaigns. Instead, use it to evaluate whether or not your campaigns are working together toward your broader goals.

To learn more about campaign groups and performance targets, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Jon Diorio, Product Manager, AdWords

Shop the Look on Google

Charissa Yee — Tue, 06 Sep 2016 16:00:00 +0000

Ninety percent of smartphone users say they aren’t absolutely sure of the specific brand they want to buy when they begin shopping¹ and nearly half of US readers consult blogs to find new trends and ideas². To help people discover and explore products and brands in these I-need-some ideas moments, we’ve been focused on building ads experiences, such as Showcase Shopping ads and Shopping ads on image search, that drive discovery.

Last week, we launched a unique Fashion Week experiment which enables people to explore the world of fashion and shop products directly from curated, inspirational images on google.com. This week we are rolling out a new apparel and home decor experience for our retail advertisers called shop the look.

How it works:

Let’s say you’re looking for a new outfit to wear to a wedding. If you search for “cocktail attire”, you could see an image of a popular fashion blogger wearing a black cocktail dress, heels and sunglasses. You can shop those exact (or visually similar) products featured in the image by tapping through and exploring the relevant products shown in the form of Shopping ads. As with standard Shopping ads, retailers will be charged on a cost-per-click basis, and all impressions and clicks will be reported within existing Shopping campaigns.

The featured images that power the shop the look experience come from brands, bloggers, retailers and publishers, which are sourced from trusted partners such as LIKEtoKNOW.it., Polyvore and Curalate.

Get started

We're currently testing the shop the look experience in the US on mobile devices. If you’re a retailer and interested in showing your products within the shop the look experience, create a Shopping campaign and ensure you optimize your bids to show on mobile.

Posted by Melissa Hsieh Nikolic, Senior Product Manager, Google Shopping

¹ Consumers in the Micro-Moment, Wave 3, Google/Ipsos, U.S., August 2015, n=1291 online smartphone users 18+
² AdWeek, Why Influencer Marketing is the New Content King, April, 2015

Introducing the new Google Merchant Center

Rob Newton — Tue, 30 Aug 2016 16:00:00 +0000

Retailers have long been using Merchant Center to connect their product data to Google -- letting millions of shoppers find their products on Google.com, YouTube, and partner websites. Today, we’re excited to introduce an updated version of Merchant Center, which offers the same functionality you’re used to, with more streamlined navigation and easier access to additional Shopping programs.

Navigate the new Merchant Center

With updates to Merchant Center, you’ll see a fast, responsive new interface, aligned with the modern look and feel of the rest of Google’s products. We’ve changed Merchant Center navigation by bundling common tasks and actions. For example, you can use the new Home page to view recent announcements and dashboard data for your account, and you can find consolidated product feed and product data quality information under the Products page. For more information on navigating the new UI, visit the Help Center.

Explore and enable Shopping programs in Merchant Center

Merchant Center now lets you discover new ways to apply your data to promote and sell your products. Use Merchant Center to explore additional Google programs for your products, including Local Inventory Ads, Merchant Promotions, Product Ratings and more, while continuing to manage and configure your product data for Shopping ads.

You can access the Merchant Center Programs page under the 3-dot icon. Continue exploring the various programs by selecting the Learn More option in each card, and express your interest in participating in a program by selecting Get Started.

Updates to existing features: Feed Rules, Diagnostics, and Currency Conversions

In addition to the user interface changes, we’ve updated some of our most-used Merchant Center features to improve speed and functionality, helping you get your products online more quickly:

Feed Rules. In response to feedback we’ve heard from you, we’re updating Feed Rules to more closely align with how we see retailers commonly using the tool today.

Change or update specific values. For example, you can update specific values of the color attribute while keeping other existing color values intact.
Create new values by combining static values and/or values from different attributes in your feed. For example, you can add size type values to your product title values.
Extract values from other attribute values. For example, you can populate a color value by searching in the description attribute for pre-selected values (blue, green, red, yellow) that will be suitable for the color attribute.

Diagnostics page. We’ve increased the freshness of data in the diagnostics page. Now, the latest results from your feed uploads and product updates will be displayed in near-real time instead of twice a day -- meaning that you’ll have fresher data to update and optimize your product feeds.
Currency Conversions. Last month, we announced that we were testing currency conversions, which allows you to convert the currency in your product data locally. With the launch of the new Merchant Center, we’re expanding this feature more broadly to let you easily advertise to users in other countries, while allowing you to continue using your existing website and landing pages without change. Learn how Berlin-based myToys is already using currency conversions to increase their sales abroad.

Check out the new Merchant Center and feature updates by logging into your account at merchants.google.com.

Posted by Sven Herschel, Product Manager for Google Shopping

Learn from Experts in the AdWords Community

Rob Newton — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 16:51:00 +0000

The AdWords Community exists to help advertisers like you improve performance and share best practices. If you haven’t visited the AdWords Community in a while, you might be surprised by what you find. Over the last six months, we’ve made a number of exciting changes. From a new design to expanded content areas, the Google Advertiser Community continues to evolve and help you connect with our experts and improve your performance.

Ask an Expert

One of the most valuable resources you’ll find on the Community is the experts who frequent the forum on a daily (or even hourly) basis. These experts, part of Google’s Top Contributor program, have years of professional experience with AdWords and a passion for helping fellow Community members succeed.

Most of our Top Contributors have an area of expertise. If you ask a question on the AdWords Community about account automation, you will probably meet Jon Gritton. Jon hails from the UK and runs his own AdWords agency. He is also one of our most tenured AdWords Top Contributors (he’s been answering questions on the forum since 2006!) and our resident AdWords Scripts expert. He has solved well over 800 questions in his time on the AdWords Community.

An Improved Look and Feel

We also wanted to improve the look and feel of the Community.

Using Material Design, the Community now offers the same modern and intuitive experience that’s at the core of our favorite Google apps like Maps, Search, and Gmail.
Managing your advertising isn’t something you only do at your desk, which is why we’re re-designing AdWords for marketing in a mobile-first world. The redesigned Community is also responsive and mobile-friendly—perfect for browsing and resolving questions on-the-go.

Go Beyond AdWords

Finally, we know that AdWords isn’t the only way to promote your business with Google. You can get information about other important Google products on the Community: Google Analytics, Google My Business, Google Partners and Google Small Business.

Get Involved

Anyone can join the Advertiser Community, post questions and find answers. Visit today to connect with other advertisers.

Julian Chu, Director of Customer Engagement

New cross-device attribution reports and benchmarks

Rob Newton — Thu, 28 Jul 2016 20:00:00 +0000

Consider this: 6 in 10 internet users in the US start shopping on one device but continue or finish on a different one.¹ To help advertisers measure these customer paths that start on one device but convert on another, we rolled out cross-device conversions over three years ago. Using that same technology, we’re introducing three new reports in the Attribution section of AdWords to provide deeper insight into device usage along the full search conversion path.

Devices -- see how much cross-device activity is happening in your AdWords account
Assisting Devices -- inform your device bid adjustments by learning how often different devices assisted conversions on other devices
Device Paths -- examine the top conversion paths for your customers using two or more devices

Advertisers in many industries around the world have already seen the impact of cross-device activity on last-click conversions. Today, we’re excited to share new search benchmarks that show the influence of cross-device activity across the full search conversion path.

Source: Google AdWords Internal Data 2016

There are two main ways to take action on these new cross-device insights:

Select a different attribution model beyond last click. You can select one of six different attribution models for each of your conversion types: last click, first click, linear, time decay, position-based, or data-driven. These attribution models apply to your search ads and take cross-device behavior into account. When you pick a new model, credit will be reassigned across the conversion path and your conversion stats will change moving forward. Check out our recent best practices guide for additional information.
Update your device bid adjustments. The new Assisting Devices report can tell you how many conversions were assisted by clicks or impressions from different devices. The Mobile Assist Ratio shows how many conversions were assisted by mobile devices compared to the number of final conversions on mobile devices. For example, if your Mobile Assist Ratio for a campaign is 3.72, that means that for every conversion on a mobile device, 3.72 conversions on other devices were assisted by mobile devices. With this information, you can update your mobile bid adjustments.

In the coming weeks, you'll find the new reports in Attribution under the Tools tab. We hope these new reports and benchmarks will help you measure the moments that matter on any device.

Posted by: Joan Arensman, Product Manager

1. Google / Ipsos Connect, March 2016, GPS Omnibus, n=2,013 US online respondents 18+

AdWords Editor 11.5 supports expanded text ads, mobile app engagement ads, and more

Rob Newton — Wed, 27 Jul 2016 19:00:00 +0000

We’re introducing several updates to AdWords Editor, available today to all advertisers globally. This version includes support for expanded text ads and mobile app engagement ads, import/export and simultaneous posting for multiple accounts, and much more.

Expanded text ads

AdWords Editor 11.5 provides full support for expanded text ads. Expanded text ads offer nearly 50% more ad text for you to highlight your products and services before people even click into your ad. It’s important to take advantage of expanded text ads as soon as possible because after October 26th, 2016, you’ll no longer be able to create or edit standard text ads. AdWords Editor lets you create and edit expanded text ads at scale so you can easily migrate all of your standard text ads before this date. To help you get started, check out our best practices guide.

Mobile app engagement ads

Mobile app engagement ads are a great choice if you want to help existing app users take action in your app. You can now create and edit mobile app engagement ads in AdWords Editor, making it easier to reach more of the right app users with the right message.

Import, export, and posting for multiple accounts

We’re always looking for new ways to make managing accounts easier and more efficient. With this latest version of AdWords Editor, you can post changes to multiple accounts at the same time, import a CSV file into multiple accounts, and export more than one account into a single CSV file.

Structured snippet extensions

Structured snippets let you highlight features of a specific product or describe the range of products or services your business offers. AdWords Editor now allows you to create and edit structured snippets at scale.

and much more...

AdWords Editor 11.5 also provides support for filtering by type when downloading campaigns, aggressive targeting optimization for mobile app installs campaigns, multi-column sorting, and enhancements to advanced search. You can learn more about these updates in the AdWords Editor Help Center or download AdWords Editor 11.5 here.

Posted by: Blake Reese, Senior Product Manager, AdWords Editor

Available today: three ad innovations for a mobile-first world

Rob Newton — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 15:00:00 +0000

The shift to mobile is no longer happening, or will happen — the shift to mobile has happened. At the Google Performance Summit in May, we announced a completely new ad platform built from the ground up to help consumers and marketers succeed in this mobile-first world: expanded text ads and responsive ads bring to life the canvas you use to connect with consumers, while device bid adjustments provide more control and flexibility so you can optimize with greater precision.

Starting today, these innovations will begin rolling out in AdWords to all advertisers around the world.

Get started with expanded text ads

Earlier this year, we removed right-hand side ads to improve the search experience and make it consistent across mobile, desktop, and tablet. This helped pave the way for the biggest update to our ad creative since we introduced AdWords more than 15 years ago.

Expanded text ads are optimized for the screen sizes of the most popular smartphones and feature two headlines, each with 30 characters, and one long 80-character description line. That’s nearly 50% more ad text for you to highlight your products and services.


Standard text ad	Expanded text ad

Our research shows longer ad headlines are more useful to mobile users because they provide additional information about your business before they click your ad. In fact, here are some early success stories from advertisers who have started using expanded text ads:

	“Working closely with our agency Adlucent, Guitar Center was one of the first to adopt expanded text ads. With the additional ad space, we’re now able to highlight our promotions and sales while preserving our core brand message — like we did for the 4th of July. Our non-brand campaigns alone have seen more than a 2x increase in CTR.” — Robert Spears, Digital Marketing Director at Guitar Center
	"Expanded text ads represent a tremendous opportunity for L'Oréal and our agency iCrossing. We’re now able to showcase the breadth and depth of our beauty products, and build brand love — all from a single ad creative. So far, expanded text ads have helped us deliver a 92% increase in click-through rate for one of our brands, compared to our old text ads.” — Kirsty Woolley, Multi Channel Acquisition Manager at L'Oréal Luxe
	“In such a competitive industry like telecom, it was critical for EE and our agency MEC to implement expanded text ads as quickly as possible. From the start, we utilized the additional ad text to tell a better brand story and provide more information for consumers. By combining our ‘50% faster network’ value proposition with details around EE’s competitive pricing and packages, we’ve been able to increase clickthrough rates by up to 79%.” — Sam Richardson, Digital Media Executive, EE
	“Kueski jumped at the opportunity to use expanded text ads and immediately implemented a strategy across our best performing campaigns. By highlighting the speed of our service, and safety and security of our platform, we were able to take advantage of the additional ad space and deliver amazing results, including an 18% increase in conversion rate for generic keyword campaigns.” — Rodolfo Orozco, User Acquisition Manager at Kueski

It’s important for advertisers to take advantage of expanded text ads as soon as possible, especially with back to school and the holiday season right around the corner. To help you get started, we’ve published a best practices guide that walks through tips and tricks for creating and optimizing expanded text ads. Specifically:

	Create and test multiple expanded text ads for each ad group, and evaluate performance before pausing or deleting your standard text ads
	Remember to include important information about your business and other tried-and-true components from your standard text ads, like price and keyword insertion
	Focus on your headlines: they’re the most prominent part of your text ad

AdWords Editor and the AdWords API also support expanded text ads, which means you can create and edit your ads in bulk to help save time. If you use leading 3rd-party tools to manage your ads, DoubleClick Search, Kenshoo, and Marin Software all support expanded text ads as well.

Starting on October 26th, 2016, you’ll no longer be able to create or edit standard text ads — meaning you’ll only be able to create and edit text ads using the expanded text ads format after this date. Existing standard text ads will continue to serve alongside expanded text ads.

Create responsive ads for display

In a mobile-first world, display ads need to fit seamlessly within the websites and apps people visit, while delivering a consistent experience across devices. We built responsive ads for display to help your ads adapt to the increasingly diverse mix of content types and screen sizes. Provide 25-character and 90-character headlines, a 90-character description, an image, and a URL, and Google designs ads that fit beautifully across more than two million apps and websites on the Google Display Network (GDN). Responsive ads also unlock new native inventory so you can engage consumers with ads that match the look and feel of the website or app they’re using.

JustFab.de, a fashion retailer, wanted to reach more shoppers as they browsed content online. JustFab provided headlines featuring its latest promotions, descriptions highlighting popular products like capri pants and strappy sandals, and images of its top selling items — and Google designed ads that fit anywhere on the GDN. As a result, JustFab drove a 56% higher conversion rate and a 55% decrease in CPA.

Set device bid adjustments

As we re-imagine how ads look in a mobile-first world, it’s also important to have more flexible tools that help you optimize device-level performance. New device bid adjustments allow you to maintain the efficiency of managing a consolidated campaign that reaches consumers across devices while giving you more control to set individual bid adjustments for each device type — mobile devices, computers, and tablets. Our updated best practices guide can help you evaluate your bidding strategy and set accurate performance targets that reflect the full value of mobile. You can also join us for a Hangout on Air at 9am PDT/12pm EDT on August 9th, 2016 for a live Q&A about device bid adjustments with Google product experts. Register here.

While device bid adjustments enable you to optimize with greater precision, you still need to factor in other signals which impact performance, like location, time of day, and audience. To optimize at scale across this wide range of contextual signals, you should take advantage of automated bidding. Smart Bidding utilizes the power of Google’s machine learning to set more informed bids and help you get the most out of your marketing budget. The latest Smart Bidding innovations are available in both AdWords and DoubleClick Search. In the coming weeks, you’ll also be able to set device-specific CPA goals with Target CPA Smart Bidding in AdWords.

The way consumers use technology to connect with the world around them has changed. As a result, we’ve re-designed AdWords, from ad formats to bidding, to help you reach potential customers in more meaningful and relevant ways. We’re excited to undertake this journey with you and look forward to hearing your feedback.

Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President, Ads and Commerce

Get more powerful bid automation with new AdWords Smart Bidding

Rob Newton — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 15:00:00 +0000

Efficient and effective bid management is a foundational component of any successful digital marketing program. Today, we’re excited to announce Smart Bidding, our new name for conversion-based automated bidding across AdWords and DoubleClick Search that reflects the powerful machine learning behind it.

Making bidding smarter for improved performance

Smart Bidding is built on Google’s deep experience using machine learning to power a wide range of products, including the Google assistant, automatic album creation in Google Photos, and AlphaGo, the first computer program to ever beat a professional player at the game of Go. Smart Bidding can factor in millions of signals to determine the optimal bid, and it continually refines models of your conversion performance at different bid levels to help you get more from your marketing budget.

Even when it encounters areas with lower conversion volume, Smart Bidding's learning capabilities quickly maximize the accuracy of your bidding models to improve how you optimize the long-tail. It evaluates patterns in your campaign structure, landing pages, ad text, product information, keyword phrases and many more to identify more relevant similarities across bidding items to effectively borrow learnings between them.

On top of its machine learning capabilities, Smart Bidding is built on three pillars, inspired by feedback we’ve heard from you about what’s important in a bidding solution:

Precise bid optimization tailored to a user’s context
Flexible performance controls that factor in your unique business goals
Transparent reporting that provides clear insight into how your bids are performing

In AdWords, we have several innovations coming soon across these areas. Get a full overview of AdWords Smart Bidding here.

New bidding signals that give you a richer view of user context

AdWords Smart Bidding tailors bids to each and every auction across Google properties - this is what we call “auction-time” bidding. It allows you to register the wide range of signals that make up a user’s context in a particular auction, and includes signals like device and location, which are available as manual bid adjustments, plus additional signals and signal combinations unique to AdWords such as browser and language. We’re continuously exploring new signals to add to our bidding models that are impactful predictors of performance. These include recent additions like location intent and similar product attributes, and others like seasonality and price competitiveness that are coming soon. Learn more.

Set device performance targets with Target CPA bidding

Device is a major dimension in campaign optimization and new Target CPA with device performance targets allows you to set separate CPA goals by device. For example, if you’re a telecom advertiser who drives better lead quality from mobile due to higher conversion rates from calls and store visits, you can now set a higher mobile target CPA compared to other devices to account for this offline data. This will become available to all advertisers over the next few weeks across Search and Display campaigns.

Bidding statuses and alerts brought to the forefront

Transparent reporting available with AdWords Smart Bidding shows you exactly how your bid strategies are performing and immediately flags issues that require your attention. This includes new bidding-specific alerts, which are available now, and rich performance reporting for campaign-level bid strategies that are currently rolling out. In the coming weeks, we are also integrating bidding statuses front and center into your primary campaign and ad group status columns. Learn more about these new reporting features.

Advertisers like AliExpress, SurveyMonkey and Capterra are already using AdWords Smart Bidding to drive better performance.

AliExpress is a subsidiary of the Alibaba Group and a global e-commerce retailer. They’ve used campaigns drafts and experiments to test Target CPA head-to-head with their existing bidding solution. Says Jessy Sheng, Marketing Manager, “We wanted access to more diverse signals for our bidding to make it more dynamic and help raise online sales across multiple markets.” After only one month of testing Target CPA, they saw a 93% increase in conversions and 46% reduction in CPA. “With drafts and experiments, we can easily test new bid strategies quicker than ever before, which is important in our fast-paced business. Smart Bidding with Target CPA produced fantastic, actionable results and we’re excited to expand it to more campaigns.”

SurveyMonkey is an industry leader in web-based surveys. With strong competition on its keywords, leading-edge bid management is a priority for SurveyMonkey to maximize performance from their marketing budget. “We’re open to testing any feature that will get us more conversions and help us reach our CPA target,” says Brittany Bingham, Director of Online Marketing. “After only three weeks of testing AdWords Smart Bidding, we saw a 44% increase in conversions, which is incredible. We’re looking forward to scaling Smart Bidding with Target CPA across more campaigns.”

Capterra offers a smart way to find the right business software by providing buyers with comprehensive user reviews, product ratings and detailed infographics. With a large, complex campaign structure that spans over 1 million keywords, 400 software categories, and targets more than 30 countries, its advertising team was looking to move away from manual bidding so they could focus their time on other growth opportunities. Zachary Rippstein, Director of Advertising at Capterra, says, “We’ve gained so much efficiency by using AdWords Smart Bidding. More importantly, though, we’ve seen great improvement in performance and profit dollar growth. By leveraging Target CPA, we were able to drive 121% higher profit during our test period compared to the control period.”

To learn more about AdWords Smart Bidding, visit the Help Center and check out our best practices to maximize your success with automated bidding. If you are a DoubleClick advertiser or looking for bid and campaign management across multiple search engines, learn about DoubleClick Search Smart Bidding.

Anthony Chavez, Product Management Director, Search Ads, Google

Simplifying conversion measurement: saying goodbye to "Converted clicks"

Rob Newton — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 13:00:00 +0000

Conversion tracking was introduced to AdWords in 2001 to measure what happened after someone clicked on your ad. The ability to know whether or not people completed a desired action on your site meant that you could determine which keywords, ads and campaigns were the most effective. The original conversion measurement metric was very basic - simply reporting whether an ad click led to any type of action on your site. That outdated metric is called “Converted clicks” in AdWords today.

In the 15 years since the introduction of conversion tracking, multiple improvements have been made to measuring and attributing conversions. Notably, the “Conversions” column family now offers the full picture of how many conversions AdWords drives for your business. In order to simplify things, ”Converted clicks” will soon be retired, with “Conversions” becoming the default way to measure valuable actions for your business.

“Conversions” is the ideal way to measure these valuable actions, and most advertisers already use “Conversions” as their primary reporting and bidding metric.
“Conversions” are capable of measuring behavior that spans multiple conversion events or multiple clicks. For example, “Conversions” can take advantage of non-last-click attribution models and different counting options. Additionally, they can measure important, mobile-centric actions like cross-device conversions and store visits. “Converted clicks,” on the other hand, can do none of that. For those reasons and plenty more, “Converted clicks” will not be supported past September 2016.

If you’re already using “Conversions” for reporting and bidding, no action is required. However, if you use Target CPA or Enhanced CPC and your primary bid metric is set to “Converted clicks” at the present time, you should plan to update to “Conversions” by September 21st. We’ve put together a simple migration tool if you’re automating your bidding based on “Converted clicks” which we will be sending via email to affected accounts. Of course, you can always update your settings manually.

The Conversion bid metric setting in AdWords will be retired in September

If you rely on the “Converted clicks” reporting column to make bidding and budgeting decisions then you should also move to “Conversions.” This column can be configured to report similar numbers to your “Converted clicks” column, though you should review your setup to make sure you are counting the actions that matter most to your business. “Conversions” can give you everything “Converted clicks” does, along with much more.

If you’re in need of updating, there are a few considerations as you make the change:

Choose which conversion actions that you measure should be included in the “Conversions” column. Other actions can still be measured in “All conversions”
Determine whether to count multiple instances of a conversion after a click or only one
Customize your conversion windows and values (if necessary)
Review your cross-device conversion numbers, which will be included in the “Conversions” column starting in September
Download any historical “Converted clicks” reporting stats that you want to keep

You can adjust settings for each of your conversion actions in AdWords

Proper conversion counting is important, and it’s something that’s imperative to get right as online behavior evolves. Please read our Help Center for further information about this upcoming change.

Posted by Tal Akabas and Frederik Kemner, Product Managers, AdWords Conversions

Surface your videos when viewers are looking for what to watch with TrueView discovery ads

Rob Newton — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 13:00:00 +0000

Think about the last YouTube video you watched. How did you find that video? Did a friend send it to you? Did you click a link from a blog or social media? Or did you do what millions of YouTube users do every day and head to YouTube to find something to watch?
To win over users who are choosing which video to watch, we built TrueView discovery ads (formerly known as TrueView in-display) – a format tailored specifically to helping users discover your brand content. And today we’re not just changing the name – we’re supercharging TrueView discovery ads with more relevant ads on search results pages and full inventory coverage across the YouTube app. This means that for the first time ever, TrueView discovery ads will appear on mobile search results. And thanks to our changes to search ad relevance, our experiments show an aggregate 11% increase in CTR.

TrueView discovery ads are such a powerful format because they deliver high engagement – when viewers click on your video, that’s a strong signal that they’re interested in your brand. It’s why on average, users view one additional video from your brand within 24 hours of watching your TrueView discovery ad.¹ This format is built for winning over your audience, and guiding them to your content when they’re searching for something great to watch.
Since TrueView discovery ads capture your audience when they’re leaning forward, we see on average TrueView discovery ads drive over 5x more clicks on advertiser-provided calls to action than TrueView in-stream. They’re also great for promoting your longer form content.
Advertisers like Benefit Cosmetics are using TrueView discovery ads to amplify their branded content. In a recent campaign, they used the format to reach viewers as they searched and browsed the latest brow trends. “We wanted to insert ourselves in a way that felt natural and really drove our brand and DNA, but also be incredibly useful to the customer when they’re looking for us,” said Nicole Frusci, Benefit’s vice president of brand and digital marketing. By serving up relevant content on YouTube search results and on related video watch pages, Benefit was able to boost subscriptions to their channel by 20% and drive an additional 663,000 earned views on top of their 1.2M paid views.
But why read all about what makes TrueView discovery ads so great when you can watch a video instead? Take it away Josh:

These changes will roll out in the next few weeks – keep an eye out in Adwords or DoubleClick Bid Manager – so you can start engaging your most qualified audience at key moments of discovery across YouTube.
Posted by Nicky Rettke, Group Product Manager, YouTube Ads

1. Google internal data, global, analysis based on channels with at least 10,000 organic and ad-driven views, Jan-Feb 2015.

Measure the true value of calls with imported call conversions

Rob Newton — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 16:00:00 +0000

Mobile click-to-call has made it easier than ever for consumers to connect with businesses over the phone. And growth in call volume shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, calls to U.S. businesses from smartphones are predicted to reach nearly 162 billion by 2019, a 73% increase from 2015.¹

Even though calls are a major source of conversions for many businesses, it can be challenging to measure a consumer journey that starts online from a search ad and ends with an offline conversation. Today, we’re announcing imported call conversions to help advertisers attribute revenue from phone calls back to their AdWords campaigns more accurately. This will roll out to all advertisers over the next few weeks.

Know which parts of your campaigns drive the most valuable calls

Previously, advertisers have been able to measure call conversions using call length. For example, a travel advertiser may identify that calls resulting in new bookings typically last for at least one minute and set that as the minimum duration required to count a call as a conversion.

Imported call conversions now allows you to go a step beyond call length and measure the true conversion value of paid calls from mobile click-to-call ads or your website. You can also distinguish between various types of customer actions that you may value differently. For example, the travel advertiser might assign revenue amounts to different call types like new bookings, rate requests, service calls, and customer upsells to a larger trip package. With insights gathered from imported call conversions, they can then automatically optimize keyword bids to drive more valuable calls using Target ROAS automated bidding.

Companies like Nationwide and ShoppersChoice.com are already using imported call conversions to better measure and optimize for valuable calls:

“As Nationwide’s agency partners, driving qualified insurance prospects to its call center is a priority to effectively convert new customers. Until now, we haven't been able to maximize Nationwide’s presence in search because we couldn’t tie call revenue back to individual clicks. Imported call conversions takes AdWords measurement to the next level and we can now import actual policy sales driven by calls directly into AdWords. With this data, we can make better decisions about where to spend marketing budget, keyword bids & positioning, and campaign optimization. Even though it's still early, since including imported call conversions into campaign optimization, we’ve been able to increase spend on top-performing, call-driving terms by nearly 3x. This has even helped us identify new keyword expansion opportunities from search queries we wouldn’t have otherwise found without increasing our investment backed by imported calls data.” -- Jordan Jones, Associate Director of Performance Digital, UM

"Many customers have questions about our product selection or want to place an order directly with a sales rep, so we make it easy for them to call us from our ads and website. Imported call conversions brings our AdWords calls measurement a big step closer to fully closing the loop between our offline call center data and our online metrics. We have a better understanding of how calls from AdWords ads are driving revenue, and will be able to use these insights to make more informed decisions when it comes to budget allocation and campaign optimization." -- Jeff Loquist, Search Marketing Manager at ShoppersChoice.com

What you need to successfully import call conversions

You only need to collect three pieces of information to import call conversion data into AdWords:

Caller phone number (Caller ID)
Call start time
Call length

This data will remain secure and privacy-safe for your customers, and serve as the key to match conversions back to the AdWords calls that drove them. Conversions will be attributed down to the keyword-level to help you determine which parts of your campaigns drive the most valuable call conversions and where you should be investing your ad spend.

To learn more about imported call conversions, visit the Help Center and read our best practices for driving phone calls to your business and optimizing the caller experience.

Posted by: Amit Agarwal, Senior Product Manager, Mobile Search Ads

1. BIA/Kelsey, 2015

Automatically counting cross-device conversions for a more accurate and complete view of performance

Rob Newton — Tue, 19 Jul 2016 15:00:00 +0000

While consumers are living mobile-first, they’re also moving seamlessly between multiple devices to find what they need in I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-do and I want-to-buy moments throughout the day. In fact, 61% of internet users and over 80% of online millennials start shopping on one device but continue or finish on a different one.¹ We introduced cross-device conversions three years ago to help marketers fully measure multi-device consumer journeys that start with an ad click on one device or browser and end with a conversion on another. Last year, we also made cross-device conversions more actionable by allowing them to be included in the Conversions column and integrated into your automated bidding and attribution models.

Your cross-device conversions will soon be included in the Conversions column automatically to give you the most complete view of performance possible and help you measure the full value of mobile. This will begin rolling out to advertisers starting September 6, 2016. The setting to manually include cross-device conversions in the Conversions column will no longer be available. After August 16, 2016, new AdWords accounts will include cross-device conversions in the Conversions column as the default.

Advertisers across the world and in different industries have measured up to 16% more conversions on average by using cross-device insights to get a more accurate and comprehensive view of performance. Here are stories from advertisers who have improved performance by accounting for cross-device conversions:

Lighting New York, a residential and commercial lighting retailer, has included cross-device conversions as a critical metric for their campaigns and automated bidding. Says Aaron Covaleski, Director of Search Marketing, “Cross-device conversions allows us to fully value mobile traffic and deliver a more aggressive marketing strategy. Armed with this data, we drove 50% year over year growth during our busiest Black Friday and Cyber Monday periods last year. We also strengthened awareness for our brand, and this was reflected in branded searches doubling across mobile and desktop.”

HomeClick, an online retailer of home improvement products, has measured 7% incremental conversions when including cross-device data. As a result, they’ve increased their mobile presence and included mobile clicks in attribution modeling to optimize against a more holistic view of the consumer journey. They’ve also integrated cross-device conversions into their automated bidding. Together, these changes have helped generate 60-70% growth in revenue. According to Matthew Hardgrove, Director of Marketing, "Cross-device conversions helps us understand the greater impact of mobile on our website performance. It provides us with information that has allowed us to open up new opportunities and gain market share from our competitors on a segment of traffic we previously undervalued."

For Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, its target audience typically converts on desktop, but they also see multiple touch points before then with billboards, radio, TV and most importantly, mobile. “Without cross-device measurement, it’s hard for us to really understand the full customer journey,” says Sam Gomez, VP of digital marketing at Feld Entertainment, Ringling Bros.’ parent company. It used cross-device tracking in AdWords to prove that mobile is a major contributor to driving conversions, and justify doubling down on their mobile strategy. This increased investment has resulted in a 262% uplift in cross-device conversions, 30% rise in ticket sales and a return-on-ad-spend of 1,132%.

U.S. Polo Assn., a clothing and accessories retailer, uses cross-device measurement to help capture the full value of mobile. Working with their agency partners at Elite SEM, it has seen mobile conversions increase over 2x year-over-year alongside a 128% increase in mobile traffic. Says Matt Debnar, VP Ecommerce at U.S. Polo Assn., “Analyzing cross-device conversions produced a major mobile aha-moment. We discovered that mobile was driving 9% more conversions than we initially thought, and improving ROAS by 12%.” U.S. Polo Assn. is now updating their overall marketing strategy to allocate additional budget to mobile. “We know our customers are getting more comfortable shopping on mobile, so these numbers will only continue to rise. Cross-device conversions gives us a more complete picture of search performance and helps us prove the value of our mobile investment.”

Visit the Help Center and read Best Practices to learn more about optimizing for cross-device conversions.

Posted by:
Tal Akabas, Product Manager, AdWords Conversions
Wilfred Yeung, Senior Product Manager, AdWords Bidding

1. Google / Ipsos Connect, March 2016, GPS Omnibus, n=2,013 US online respondents 18+

Showcase your services and range of products with price extensions

Rob Newton — Mon, 18 Jul 2016 18:53:00 +0000

Whether it’s weekend baseball tickets or temporary storage space, people want to know what their options are and how much they cost before deciding what to buy. That’s why we’re introducing price extensions: additional information that can show with your mobile text ads, showcasing your services and range of products, and how much they cost.

Drive qualified clicks

Price extensions show as multiple rows, providing valuable information to your prospective customers before they click on your ad. Each row features a type of product or service, its description and price, and a link to a relevant landing page. This structured way of highlighting information makes it easier for people to compare their options and decide if they’re interested in your products or services — right from the mobile search results page.

“Our mission is to help consumers find the right unit for their self-storage needs, so we were incredibly excited to see the success of price extensions in our campaigns. By including the unit sizes and prices customers can expect before visiting our website, we've seen an 18% lift in CTR when price extensions show with our ads.” — Mike Smith, Sr. Marketing Manager at Extra Space Storage

Price extensions can also co-trigger and be used effectively in combination with other ad formats, except sitelinks. For example, if you’re already using call extensions to help drive customers to your hair salon, you might create a price extension for your most popular services, like “Women's haircut,” “Men’s haircut,” and “Kid’s haircut.” Highlighting the price of each service might convince people to call and make an appointment, without needing to visit your website.

Getting started

You can manage, schedule, and report on price extensions from the Ad extensions tab. Since price extensions can be added at the account, campaign, or ad group level, you can provide more general information about your products and services at the account or campaign level, and more detailed information at the ad group level.

In this salon example, you could add price extensions for “Haircut,” “Hair Coloring,” and “Treatment” to campaigns containing more general keywords like hair salon or hair stylist. Or add price extensions for specific services at the ad group level to support more specific keywords like men’s haircuts or balayage salon.

For time-sensitive offers like promotions and sporting events, you can create multiple price extensions with corresponding start and end dates to ensure your prices remain accurate. However you plan to use price extensions, make sure the information is relevant to your keywords and consistent with the types of products or services you’re advertising. Keep in mind you must include a minimum of three entries for each extension, up to a maximum of eight. We recommend adding as many as are relevant to your business.

Learn more

Price extensions will be rolling out to all AdWords accounts over the coming days. Please note this extension can only be created in English and will only show with mobile text ads in position 1 at this time. You can learn more about price extensions in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Senthil Hariramasamy, Senior Product Manager, AdWords

More prominent reporting helps you monitor the health of your automated bidding

Rob Newton — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 15:00:00 +0000

Automated bidding in AdWords is an invaluable tool that helps marketers save time and improve performance. Powered by Google’s machine learning, it optimizes bids at scale for each and every auction and factors in a wide range of signals to help you tailor bids to a user’s unique context. In 2015, we announced a series of new reporting features in the Shared Library to provide greater transparency into automated bidding performance. We’re now bringing bidding insights front and center to the places you spend the most time in AdWords with three new features:

New alerts that immediately flag bidding issues
Bid strategy statuses that appear directly in your campaign and ad group status columns
Rich performance reporting for standard bid strategies set at the campaign-level

New bidding alerts help you troubleshoot issues

New alerts are now available specific to automated bidding to help you identify and resolve issues as quickly as possible. We’ve started with alerts that flag when your conversion tracking settings are “misconfigured” and will roll out additional alert types in the future. For example, you may see the “Misconfigured” alert if you use a bid strategy like Target CPA that optimizes for conversions, but have your conversion tracking turned off or haven’t added a conversion action to your primary Conversions column.

Bidding statuses get integrated with campaign and ad group statuses

In the coming weeks, we’re also introducing bid strategy statuses to the main campaign and ad group status columns to increase their visibility in your day-to-day workflows. For example, if you have bid limits that are preventing your bids from being fully optimized, you’ll see the “Eligible (Limited)” status right in your main status columns.

These will be the updated status types that can be applied to your automated rules and saved filters and reports:

Status	What’s changing
Eligible	No change
Eligible (Budget limited)	Renaming the current “Limited by budget” status to be more consistent with other status types
Eligible (Learning)	New status type for automated bidding
Eligible (Limited)	New status type for automated bidding
Eligible (Misconfigured)	New status type for automated bidding

Rich performance reporting arrives for standard bid strategies

We’re also expanding reporting capabilities available for portfolio bid strategies to standard bid strategies set at the campaign-level. These reports are rolling out over the next few weeks, and you can access them from the “Bid strategy” dropdown menu in the Campaigns tab to track how changes in your bidding status and targets impact performance over time.

Visit the Help Center and check out our best practices to learn more about automated bidding. For more details on how auction-time bidding technology works in conversion-based bid strategies, read this full guide.

Posted by: Jonathan Wang, Product Manager, AdWords Bidding

Making Travel and Shopping Easier for the Seasons Ahead

Rob Newton — Tue, 12 Jul 2016 16:10:00 +0000

While most of us are busy making the most of the summer sunshine, marketers are already beginning to think about the coldest (and busiest) months of the year--the holidays. October through December are traditionally the biggest months for both travel and shopping, and this year we expect mobile to play its biggest role ever. In fact, mobile travel and shopping searches are already up nearly 30% year-over-year.

To help marketers and on-the-go shoppers alike, we’re introducing a number of new features to make travel planning and mobile shopping easier ahead of the upcoming holiday season.

Finding the Perfect Hotel and Flight for Your Trip

Mobile is a big part of how people plan travel. Visits to mobile travel sites made up 40% of total travel web traffic in the first quarter of this year.¹ At the same time, individual travel web sessions are becoming shorter and travel mobile conversion rates have grown 10% as users are increasingly ready to book on mobile.²

To help with planning and booking travel ahead of the busy holiday season, we're making it easier for people to find the right flight or the right hotel, in their price range, and in turn, help connect our partners with potential customers.

Hotel Smart Filters: We’ll now give people the option to filter Hotel search results based on specific needs. For example, travelers can filter based on rating or price with one tap on their phones. We’ll make it easy to search for exactly what people want, like “Pet-friendly hotels in San Francisco under $200” to find the perfect hotel for them. This feature is available in the US and will roll out globally later this year.

When it comes to booking their trip, 69% of leisure travelers worry that they're not finding the best price or making the best decision. To help users feel more confident about making a booking, we're working on making it easier for people to filter to find the right flight or the right hotel -- at the right price -- using our technology and real-time analysis:

Hotel Deals: Everyone loves a good deal. When searching for a hotel, you may now see a "Deal" label calling out when a hotel’s price is lower than usual compared to historical pricing or when there are discounts to the normal rate for those dates. These deals are automatically identified by our algorithms when we see a significant reduction in price. In our early tests, we've seen that hotels marked as deals receive about twice as many bookings as other hotels.
Hotel Tips: Tips are another way we're using real-time analysis to help users find the best hotels for their needs. Tips provide just the right information at the right moments when users are searching for hotels. We may show Tips to people when they could save money or find better availability by moving their dates slightly. For example, you may see a Tip like, “Save $105 if you stay Wed, Jul 13 - Fri, Jul 15”. We’ll be rolling Hotel Deals and Tips out globally beginning now and over the coming months.
Flights price tracking: To help price-conscious travelers stay on top of changing flight fares, we’re making it easier to track flight prices in Google Flights. Instead of having to continually check prices, people can now opt in to track fare changes for a date and route combination or track specific flights being considered. When prices either increase or decrease significantly, people will be notified by email and Google Now cards. This is rolling out over the course of the next few weeks in all 26 countries where Google Flights is available.

Google Flights: tracked flights on mobile and email notification of price change

Helping Shoppers Discover and Explore

We've always been focused on helping people find the exact product they're searching for when they have a good sense of what they want. But over 40% of shopping related searches on Google are for broad terms like "women's athletic clothing" or "living room furniture." For these less defined searches, what we've often shown are specific product ads -- say, a teal sofa -- and that may not be the most useful experience for the person who isn't sure what they want to buy.

Showcase Shopping ads help people further explore and discover what they want to buy and where they want to buy it. For example, if a shopper searches ‘summer dresses,’ ASOS, a global apparel retailer, can now showcase its collection of dresses in a visually rich experience.

Showcase Shopping ads - premium beta

To start, all merchants running Shopping Campaigns in the US, UK, and Australia will be eligible to have their products automatically appear in Showcase ads in the coming weeks. And for merchants who would like to customize how their brand and products appear, we're experimenting with a premium version that allows merchants to curate the experience.

Making it Easier to Shop on YouTube

People often turn to YouTube to help them research purchases. In fact, almost half of the U.S. population, 47%, says that YouTube helps them when making a decision about something to buy at least once a month.³

Last Spring, we introduced TrueView for shopping to make it easy for viewers to get more information about your products and click to buy while watching video ads. We've seen great results so far. The number of advertisers using the product is up 50% since January and in recent weeks, about 1/3 of them are using it every week.

To help give retailers even more control over branding, we're introducing two new features:

Companion banner: We’re adding a new interactive banner appearing next to the video that lets viewers scroll through products while the video is playing next to it. The banner also shows viewers the most up-to-date product information.
Product picker: Our new feature lets advertisers easily choose and prioritize which of their products are featured as cards in a TrueView for shopping campaign. This optional feature lets advertisers show specific products for specific campaigns, or they can still let the format dynamically feature products from their Merchant Center.

Trueview for shopping - companion banner

We’ll roll out these updates globally beginning now where TrueView for shopping is available. For additional resources on TrueView ads visit our best practices page.

Enabling Shopping Across Borders

These days, shopping is truly global. To make shopping more efficient for shoppers and merchants alike, we’re currently testing a tool to perform currency conversions in Australia, Switzerland, Canada, and the UK. This feature allows you to convert the currency in your product data locally. This conversion makes your ads more understandable to users in other countries, while allowing you to continue using your existing website and landing pages without change. For example, a person shopping in the UK can see products sold by a US retailer, listed in British pounds. We’ll be rolling out currency conversions more broadly over the coming weeks.

Currency conversions

And to get the latest consumer trends, research and advertiser strategies -- from brands like Best Buy, William's Sonoma, Swarovski, La Quinta and Booking.com -- to help you with your year end campaigns, we’re releasing a new Retail Micro-Moments Guide and Travel Micro-Moments Guide.

We wish everyone a summer full of great memories, and we wish marketers success in their planning for the seasons ahead!

Posted by Jonathan Alferness, VP, Product Management

1. Google Analytics aggregated data, April 2016, Travel vertical, mobile devices include smartphones and tablets. US
2. Google Analytics aggregated data, Q1 2016 quarter-on-quarter, Travel vertical, US
3. Google / Ipsos Connect, YouTube Sports Viewers Study, March 2016 (18-54 year olds onliners n=1,500)

Tailor your ads with dynamic remarketing – Google Best Practices

Rob Newton — Thu, 07 Jul 2016 19:10:00 +0000

If you think people make purchase decisions quickly, think again. Today’s consumers visit websites at least 6 times, on average, in the purchase process.¹ And for those who abandon a shopping cart, 75% say they intend on returning to a company’s website to make a purchase.²

We’ve created a new best practices guide, Tailor Your Ads with Dynamic Remarketing, to help advertisers win those crucial “ready-to-buy” moments with dynamic remarketing and relevant ads. As business data feeds are crucial to dynamic remarketing campaigns, this guide focuses on how to create and optimize your feeds. It covers topics such as:

Setting up high-quality business data feeds
Providing complete product data
Keeping your business data feed fresh
Activating dynamic remarketing ads

Check out these dynamic remarketing best practices to drive more relevant ads and improved performance.

Want to stay on top of even more Best Practices? Sign up to receive our monthly newsletter.

Posted by Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing crew

1. Source: Google/Nielsen Study: Mobile Path to Purchase: Five Key Findings, November 2013
2. Source: BI Intelligence Study: Shopping Cart Abandonment Report, March 2015.

Press Play on TrueView Video Ads for Performance – Google Best Practices

Rob Newton — Thu, 30 Jun 2016 13:00:00 +0000

Video consumption has gone from primetime to ‘all-the-time.’ From teens to adults, people spend as much time watching online video as they do watching TV. ¹

There have never been more opportunities for brands to connect with consumers through the power of video and YouTube. We’ve published a new guide, Press Play on TrueView Video Ads, to help you understand how to optimize TrueView ads to support your performance goals. It touches on topics such as:

Understanding TrueView ads and how to measure success
Capturing attention with compelling TrueView ads
Reaching highly-qualified audiences with YouTube
Tracking and optimizing video ads

Check out these TrueView video ads best practices to drive more leads or conversions for your business.

Want to stay on top of even more Best Practices? Sign up to receive our monthly newsletter.

Posted by Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing

Source: Millward Brown Study, Video Creative in a Digital World, 2015.

It’s Now Easier than Ever to Find the Right Google Partner

Rob Newton — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 04:12:00 +0000

Three years ago we launched Google Partners to help businesses connect with online professionals and agencies. Top Partners began earning their Google Partner badge by demonstrating their business was healthy, their clients were happy, and they were up to date with the latest product knowledge.

Since then, we received a number of requests from our Partners asking for a way to further differentiate themselves. Today, we’re excited to share the addition of Google Partner specializations.

The new feature is embedded into the Google Partner badge and designed to help businesses identify the right Partner for their specific business needs.

Partners can earn specializations in 5 areas of expertise:

Search
Mobile
Video
Display
Shopping

To earn a specialization, badged Partners will need at least one certified individual and a history of consistent product performance.

“The changes to the Google Partner program are exciting for potential advertisers and our company,” says Neal Gann, CEO of Showroom Logic. “These new specializations show Google’s commitment to better serve their Partners and help us highlight what makes our technology and team so unique. It should also help prospective clients make a clear choice because it's now easier for them to find top Partners that are aligned with their immediate goals.”

Additionally, we’re introducing a new Premier Google Partner badge.

The new badge is designed to recognize Partners who manage a substantial portfolio of Google advertising campaigns and deliver great results for their customers. Premier Partners will be required to maintain additional certification requirements and will receive increased support from Google.

"Google identifying and recognizing highly experienced agencies is a great step and a distinctive honor. We are thrilled to be a part of the new designation and look forward to displaying this badge," shares Joe Chura, CEO of Launch Digital Marketing.

We hope these updates will help businesses find the right Partner for their needs and allow our Partners to better differentiate themselves. Learn more at the new Google Partners homepage.

Posted by Allan Thygesen, VP Global Sales & Operations

Re-engage your loyal customers with Customer Match for Shopping

Rob Newton — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 22:06:00 +0000

Last year, we launched Shopping remarketing lists to help you reconnect with past visitors to your site. Now, through your existing customer data of offline and online signals, we’re making it easier for you to re-engage your loyal shoppers as they shop on Google. Today we’re announcing Customer Match for Shopping, a new opportunity to focus campaigns on your highest-value audiences - your previous purchasers, rewards members, newsletter subscribers, or local in-store shoppers.

Already available on Search, Gmail, and YouTube, we’re announcing the launch of Customer Match for Shopping ads. Customer Match for Shopping allows you to upload a list of email addresses, which can be matched to signed-in users on Google in a secure and privacy-safe way.

How it works

Customer Match can be used to increase the visibility of your brand and products to your highest value customers as they search. Say you’re a retailer that specializes in sporting goods and you have a rewards program for die-hard baseball fans. Since it’s baseball season you have a segment of customers who are likely thinking to make purchase soon. By using Customer Match, you can increase your bids for this segment. So the next time a fan searches for gear, you can meet him or her with the right product at the right time.

Customer Match for Shopping allows you to adjust bids across various segments of your known high-value customers. To start, upload a list of email addresses into AdWords, which can be securely and privately matched to signed-in users on Google. This offers the ability to create a remarketing list to reach these customers across your campaigns.

Roland Mouret puts loyal customers first

Retailers are already seeing strong results with our current Customer Match solution on Search, Gmail and YouTube. For example, Roland Mouret, a French fashion designer, recently launched their online store and used Customer Match for Search to preview their Autumn and Winter line with loyal customers. Highlighting these fashions to existing customers helped drive an 87% reduction in cost-per-action.

Customer Match for Shopping will be rolling out later this summer. You can sign up here if you’re interested in participating in the current beta.

Posted by Archana Kannan, Product Manager for Google Shopping

6 Online Video Insights from comScore to Inform Your 2017 Media Plan

Rob Newton — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 13:00:00 +0000

As marketers kick off 2017 planning, consumer preference for online video is higher than ever. Today’s study from comScore, commissioned by Google, shows that adults are 30% more likely to prefer online video platforms over TV when given a choice where to watch video content. Does your media plan reflect that kind of preference?

If online video is your audience’s priority, it should be your media plan’s priority, too. We dug into the recent study and came up with six things to keep in mind about this changing audience as you develop your 2017 plan:

1. They Prefer Online Video Platforms to TV

The popularity of online video continues to grow. Today, when given a choice where to watch video, adults prefer online video platforms 30% more than watching on TV. Among millennials, that number jumps to 105%.

2. People Watching Long & Short-Form Video Prefer YouTube

Among viewers that watch both long and short-form content, 81% cite a preference for YouTube, making it the #1 choice. Compare that to the next-highest choice, TV, which earned just 56% of viewer votes.

3. They Choose YouTube Over Other Online Video Providers

YouTube also wins when compared to other online video providers. When asked to pick one online video platform, 48% of adults chose YouTube (vs. 29% for Netflix and 10% for Facebook):

4. Viewers Take Action on Video Ads, Especially on Short-Form Content

Online video has forever changed the media landscape, with more than half of all people regularly watching short-form videos (like branded content or viral videos), and two-thirds of millennials watching short-form weekly.

That’s good news for brands: comScore’s research shows viewers are more likely to take action after watching ads on short-form content compared to traditional content (like movies and tv shows). Taking action could include sharing on social media, looking for more information about the brand advertised, recommending the brand or product, etc.

5. They Prefer YouTube for Branded Content and Videos

Uploaded by Users. We already heard that adults who watch short and long-form content prefer YouTube, but it’s also preferred across multiple content types. For example, 74% of adults prefer YouTube for videos uploaded by users and—critically—69% prefer YouTube for videos uploaded by brands, companies, and institutions.

6. YouTube Super-users May Surprise You

The final part of comScore’s research examined YouTube’s most passionate fans—“die hards”—and they aren’t who you might expect. Many are parents, live in a city, and 49% are women:

Posted by:
Celie O'Neil-Hart, Product Marketing Manager, YouTube B2B
Howard Blumenstein, Product Marketing Manager, Strategy and Insights, YouTube B2B

Introducing YouTube Director: A suite of video ad creation products for businesses

Rob Newton — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 15:00:00 +0000

Whether it’s for entertainment, indulging a passion, or discovering something new, more people are turning to YouTube to watch video. In fact, growth in watch time on YouTube is up at least 50% year-over-year.¹ Now, more than ever, businesses can connect with their customers through video advertising on YouTube.

But we know that creating a video ad can be challenging. To make it easier for every business— from a dog walker to a barber shop owner—to get started with advertising on YouTube, we’re launching the YouTube Director suite of products. Three products that make video ads more accessible to businesses.

Make a video ad right from your phone

With the free YouTube Director for business app (available for iPhone today in the U.S. and Canada) anyone can create a video ad for their business quickly and easily—right from their phone. No editing experience required. People like Woody Lovell Jr., owner of the The Barber Shop Club in Los Angeles, are already seeing positive results with YouTube Director.

Woody shot and edited a video ad by himself, uploaded it to YouTube, and worked with an AdWords expert to run a campaign. As a result, Woody’s business saw a significant increase in potential customers being able to remember and recognize his ad.²

We challenged five business owners—including Woody—to create a video ad in twenty minutes or less. Watch what happened and download the app to give it a try.

Get a professional to make your video ad

In select U.S. cities, we’re also offering YouTube Director onsite, a service that sends a professional filmmaker to shoot and edit a video ad for free whenever a business spends at least $150 to advertise on YouTube. YouTube Director onsite is available in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C.—and coming to more cities soon.

Is your business an app? We can create a video ad for you too

YouTube Director automated video creates a video ad automatically from existing assets like logos and app screenshots in the App Store or Google Play Store, and is available globally. Reach out to a Google expert (1-855-500-2756) for more information.

No matter what kind of business you’re in, getting started with advertising on YouTube just became a whole lot easier. We can’t wait to see what you make. Happy filming.

Posted by Max Goldman, Product Manager, YouTube Director, recently watched "YouTube Director Video Challenge."

This post originally appeared on the YouTube Blog.

¹ Google Internal Data, 2016
² Woody’s YouTube Director video ad for The Barber Shop Club drove a 73% increase in ad recall among target customers on YouTube, and a 56% lift in brand awareness (AdWords Brand Lift Study, June 2016)

To Viewability and Beyond: Active View coming to TrueView

Rob Newton — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 16:00:00 +0000

Ensuring that your ads are able to be seen is an important baseline for driving brand impact. That's why we've been so focused on improving viewability measurement. We’ve spent the last several years investing in our Active View technology, which measures whether or not an ad was able to be seen. Active View makes viewability measurement effortless and free. Over the next few weeks, Active View will become available for all YouTube in-stream inventory, including TrueView, whether bought through Google AdWords or DoubleClick Bid Manager.

Viewability on YouTube

As the place people choose to watch video, YouTube has an industry-leading average viewability of 93% globally¹. To help you measure the viewability of your ads, Active View now provides viewability measurement on a per-campaign-basis, so you can understand how your campaigns are performing.

Catching the WAVE to greater brand impact

Viewability is crucial, which is why we're excited to extend Active View to our full range of in-stream formats on YouTube. But it’s important to keep in mind that with video, viewability is an indicator of whether or not your ad was on screen – not the impact of your ad. In addition to viewability, there are several factors that drive results for brand campaigns, such as: Are your ads heard as well as seen? Is the viewer interested in seeing video and paying attention to your ad? And most importantly, for how long do they watch and listen? We take each of these factors – not viewability alone – into account when we deliver your ads. It’s Watchtime, Audibility, Viewability and Engagement together that drive the greatest impact for your brand, and YouTube alone delivers the whole package:

Watch Time: Looking at hundreds of Brand Lift studies, we saw that the longer a user watches your ad, the higher the lift in awareness and consideration²
Audibility: We tested 280 campaigns and found that among users exposed to ads that were both viewable and audible, ad recall had a lift of 43%. Among users exposed to ads that were viewable alone, ad recall was significantly lower at 31%³
Viewability: YouTube has industry-leading 93% viewability
Engagement: Looking at 89 US brands that ran Brand Lift studies, we found viewers exposed to TrueView ads are 10x more likely to engage with the brand on YouTube, such as visiting or subscribing to the brand channel, watching more from that brand, or sharing the brand video⁴

WAVE is what makes video ads on YouTube different. And we tune our video ad system to optimize for all of these factors, to ensure advertisers get the full benefit of video.

The more we can help you understand what drives impact and reach those viewers who want to hear from you, the more you can drive towards your ultimate goal of greater impact per dollar spent.

Posted by Zach Lupei, Product Manager, Video Ads and Alec Berntson, Product Manager, Measurement

1. Source: Google and DoubleClick advertising platforms data, April 2016
2. Source: Google August 2015 Meta Analysis: Understanding How Viewability Relates to Brand Metrics for Video Ads
3. Source: Google Brand Lift Data, 280 US campaigns, May 2015
4. Source: Google August 2015 Meta Analysis: Measuring TrueView Impact on Brand Channel Engagement

Introducing AdWords Conversion Import for Salesforce

Rob Newton — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 17:28:00 +0000

For many marketers, dealing with the technology and scale necessary to tie offline conversions back to the keywords and ads that drive them can be a difficult task. Often, they have to make important decisions based on aggregated data from different sources or no data at all, making it difficult to understand the true value of their AdWords campaigns.

That’s why we’re introducing AdWords Conversion Import for Salesforce. AdWords Conversion Import for Salesforce measures the value of your offline conversions that result from online AdWords clicks, without the need to reconcile your AdWords and customer relationship management (CRM) data manually.

How it works

After linking your AdWords and Salesforce accounts, you can pick which important milestones, like 'lead qualification' or 'deal won', you want to track as conversions. When someone clicks your ad and visits your website, your website captures a unique Google click ID that tells your website which ad the visitor clicked on. If that visitor submits a lead form on your website, your website passes along the click ID to Salesforce, where it’s stored with the corresponding lead and any future sales opportunities.

AdWords will regularly check your Salesforce account to see if you’ve recorded any new important milestones in your sales funnel that resulted from ad clicks. If so, AdWords will count those milestones as AdWords conversions.

Peninsula, the UK’s largest team of HR, Employment Law and Health Safety experts says, “With AdWords Conversion Import for Salesforce, we now have the ability to easily see the keywords that drive qualified leads. This has allowed us to concentrate efforts in the right areas and make better use of our budget. Since we started using this feature, we’ve seen an 11% decrease in cost per lead as a result of reallocating budgets and decreasing bids on poorly performing keywords that were sitting in top positions.”

Focus on the clicks that matter

With AdWords Conversion Import for Salesforce, you’re provided with a more comprehensive view of your sales activities, and the ability to adjust your bids and budgets to be more effective. For example, you can increase your bids on keywords that drive highly qualified leads, or pause ads that result in clicks but no opportunities. This allows you to not only utilize your existing budgets more wisely, but also optimize your ad strategy for better performance.

Learn more

You can learn more about AdWords Conversion Import for Salesforce by visiting the AdWords Help Center. This solution is only available by invitation for the next few months, and will become available to all advertisers later this year. If you'd like to request an invitation before it becomes available to all advertisers, please contact your Google Sales rep or submit your information here.

Posted by Jon Diorio, Product Manager, AdWords

A new guide to attribution with AdWords – Google Best Practices

Rob Newton — Thu, 02 Jun 2016 19:00:00 +0000

The customer journey can be complex. Being able to identify which ads actually influenced someone’s decision can be challenging, but it’s crucial to get right.

In May, we launched the ability to update your attribution model in AdWords. It’s an update that can help you go beyond last-click measurement, the default in AdWords, and understand your customer’s journey on a much deeper level. As of today, this change has been rolled out to all AdWords accounts.

We’ve published a new guide to help you understand attribution and make the right decisions for your account. This resource offers best practices about what you need to do to go beyond last-click, covering topics such as:

Determining if going beyond the last-click is something that you need to do
Choosing a model that fits with your needs
Acting on attribution
Evolving your approach to attribution as measurement gets better

By going beyond last-click attribution for your Search ads in AdWords, you can understand your customer journey and make changes to improve your campaigns. Users take a while to make decisions; by changing your approach to attribution you can identify how your advertising affects people across all of their crucial, decision-making moments.

Want to stay on top of even more Best Practices? Sign up to receive our monthly newsletter.

Posted by Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing

2016 update to Google Shopping Products Feed Specification

Rob Newton — Wed, 25 May 2016 17:00:00 +0000

Today, we’re announcing updates to the Google Shopping Products Feed Specification. The specification is your resource for understanding what information Google needs about your products to run Shopping ads. Each year, we make updates with the goal of creating better experiences for users searching for your products online.

Some of the updates require changes to your current product data that need to be implemented by September 1st, 2016 and February 14th, 2017, respectively.

Here's an overview of this year’s updates:

‘Unit Pricing’ will be made available for all markets and applicable categories to ensure consistency in the way prices are displayed. This means, going forward, if you want to display Unit Prices, use the unit_pricing related attributes and not the price attribute. Learn more.
‘Color’ and ‘size’ values submission will be enforced more strictly for apparel products in Germany, France, Japan, and the UK. Complete and consistent data for variant attributes provide a better shopping experience for users. This means, going forward, not providing ‘color’ and ‘size’ values for apparel products in Germany, France, Japan, and the UK, will result in item disapprovals. Learn more about 'color'. Learn more about 'size'.
‘Gtin’ and ‘google product category’ requirements will be expanded to Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, India, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Turkey to improve product matching and overall ad performances. This means, going forward, Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) are required for all products with a GTIN assigned by the manufacturer. GPC is required for all products falling within the 'Apparel & Accessories', 'Media', and 'Software' categories. Not providing values for the ‘gtin’ or ‘gpc’ attributes will result in item disapprovals. Learn more about Google product categories. Learn more about GTINs.
The minimum image size requirements for non-apparel products will be increased from 32 x 32 to 100 x 100 pixels to be able to support new ad formats better. The minimum image size for apparel images will remain 250 x 250 pixels. Ads with large, high-quality images (we recommend 800 x 800 pixels or larger) have proven to be more effective and lead to better performance. This means, going forward, non-apparel images below 100 x 100 pixels and apparel images smaller than 250 x 250 pixels will result in item disapproval. Learn more.
The maximum feed file size will increase from 1 GB to 4 GB (Gigabyte). As before, files can either be submitted in compressed or uncompressed format. Learn more.

Below are the timelines when certain product requirements will lead to item disapprovals:

Beginning September 1st, 2016, all of the updates, except the GTIN requirement updates, will go into full effect and any product data that doesn't meet the requirements in the Products Feed Specification will be disapproved.
Since providing accurate GTIN information can take more time, the GTIN requirement updates will go into full effect later on, starting February 14th, 2017.

As you begin making updates to your product data, we also recommend that you update the corresponding microdata on your product landing pages, which helps to ensure a strong match of information between your ads and your website. Additionally, this allows you to take advantage of advanced features such as automatic item updates, which ensure that your ads have the most accurate price and availability information.

Posted by Angelika Rohrer and Patrik Reali, Google Shopping Team

Ads and analytics innovations for a mobile-first world

Rob Newton — Tue, 24 May 2016 16:43:00 +0000

The shift to mobile is no longer a change on the horizon. It’s here.

Every year, there are trillions of searches on Google and over half of those searches happen on mobile. And across the millions of websites using Google Analytics today, we're seeing more than half of all web traffic now coming from smartphones and tablets.

When we asked people to describe the role smartphones play in their lives, they used phrases like "attached to my hip", "butler" and "lifeline." Smartphones have become the companion that people turn to in I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-do and I want-to-buy moments throughout the day.

To help marketers succeed in this mobile-first world, we have redesigned AdWords -- from the ground-up -- and re-thought everything from creatives and bidding, to workflow and measurement.

We’re also making it easier for marketers to bridge the digital and physical worlds. With location-related mobile searches growing 50% faster than all mobile searches, it’s clear that consumers are moving seamlessly between online and offline experiences. So it’s important to help marketers think this way too.

It was incredibly exciting to share new innovations with advertisers this morning at the Google Performance Summit. Below are highlights from today’s announcements. You can watch a replay of the full program here.

AdWords re-imagined for the mobile-first world

Over the last several years, we’ve discovered that accounting for mobile and designing for mobile-first are two very different things. That’s why we’ve completely transformed how we think about and build AdWords.

In order to enable advertisers and developers to drive more downloads of mobile apps -- across Google properties -- we built Universal App Campaigns. To date, Universal App Campaigns has delivered more than 2 billion downloads for advertisers, across Google Search, Google Play, YouTube, and the Google Display Network. And last week at Google I/O, we announced this campaign type is now available on iOS.

Today, we are announcing even broader changes to advertising with Google, from how text and display ads work, to the way advertisers optimize campaigns.

What do text ads look like in the mobile-first world? Mobile has revolutionized the canvas where ads live. Earlier this year, we removed right-hand side ads on desktop to improve the search experience and make it more consistent across devices. This paved the way for us to introduce the biggest changes to our text ads since AdWords launched fifteen years ago.

Optimized for screen sizes of the most popular smartphones, new expanded text ads in AdWords provide more ad space so you can showcase more information about your products and services before the click. Here are the key changes:

These upgrades help your ads work harder across screens, especially for the on-the-go mobile consumer that wants to know exactly what you offer before tapping into your website.

Based on early testing, some advertisers have reported increases in clickthrough rates of up to 20% compared to current text ads. We encourage you to start planning for this upgrade before it rolls out later this year.
How do display ads look in a mobile-first world? From sites to apps to videos, mobile has unlocked a universe of new spaces to reach consumers. Responsive ads for display adapt to the diverse content across the more than two million publisher sites and apps on the Google Display Network (GDN). They also unlock new native inventory so you can engage consumers with ads that match the look and feel of the content they’re browsing. Simply provide headlines, a description, an image, and a URL -- and Google will automatically design these beautiful responsive ads.

Responsive ads for display adapt to fit any app or site on the GDN.

We’re also extending the reach of GDN remarketing campaigns by giving you access to cross-exchange inventory, which includes more websites and apps around the world. With this inventory, European airline SAS drove about 20% more conversions at a similar CPA for its remarketing campaigns. Learn more

What does bidding look like in a mobile-first world? Marketers need more control and flexibility to optimize bids on specific devices. In the next few months, you’ll be able to set individual bid adjustments for each device type -- mobile, desktop and tablet. This lets you anchor your base keyword bid to the device most valuable to your business and then set bid adjustments for each of the other devices. You will also have a wider range to adjust bids, up to +900%. With more controls, you can now optimize with greater precision while keeping things simple with a single campaign that reaches consumers across devices.

Mobile is local, bridging digital and physical worlds for marketers

Nearly one third of all mobile searches are related to location. People’s online and offline worlds are colliding — whether you’re researching restaurant ideas for dinner on Friday night or looking for a store that sells rain boots in your size.

To help advertisers reach consumers searching for physical business locations, we’re introducing new local search ads across Google.com and Google Maps. Advertisers using location extensions will be able to prominently showcase their business locations when consumers search for things like “shoe store” or “car repair near me.” Learn more

We’re also investing in more branded, customized experiences for businesses on Google Maps -- geared towards helping you increase store visits. First, we’re experimenting with a variety of ad formats on Maps that make it easier for users to find businesses as they navigate the world around them. For example, Maps users may start to see promoted pins for nearby coffee shops, gas stations or lunch spots along their driving route. Local business pages are also getting a brand new look -- to encourage consumers to explore your store before they even arrive, we’re adding new features like special offers and the ability to browse product inventory.

Ads in Maps : promoted pin and business page

With online ads bringing more people to your storefronts, how do you measure the impact?

AdWords is the largest online-to-offline ad measurement solution in the world. In fact, since AdWords store visits were introduced two years ago, advertisers have measured over 1 billion store visits globally.

Businesses across a variety of industries around the world are using insights from AdWords store visits to measure the impact of online ads on offline activity. Nissan UK discovered that 6% of mobile ad clicks result in a trip to a dealership, delivering an estimated 25x return on investment. See the full story here.

Succeeding in a mobile-first world

As consumers live their lives online and blur the lines between online and offline, it’s more important than ever to build your business for mobile. Google’s building for this mobile-first world as well and we’re excited to go on this journey with you.

To see the full range of ads and analytics innovations announced this morning, watch the Google Performance Summit keynote here. Also check out the new AdWords Marketing Goals site to learn how to use ads solutions to meet your business objectives.

Posted by: Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President, Ads and Commerce

Google Ads & Analytics Innovations Keynote

Rob Newton — Tue, 24 May 2016 13:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the Google Performance Summit livestream! Tune in at 9AM PT/12PM ET to hear Google’s latest mobile-first innovations, the moment they’re announced. Join the conversation at #GoogleSummit.

Driving Mobile App Downloads and Engagement – Google Best Practices

Rob Newton — Mon, 23 May 2016 16:00:00 +0000

In today’s crowded market for mobile apps, it’s more important than ever to be able to attract the right users to your app, gain their loyalty, and drive long term value.

By now, you’ve probably had the chance to hear about some new ads & analytics announcements at Google I/O designed to make it easier for developers and marketers to find more of the right users for their apps across all of Google. Things like:

Improvements to our Universal App Campaigns: expanding beyond Android into iOS and optimizing beyond CPI for user value and in app conversions, and
A new analytics platform called Firebase Analytics that can help you to understand and optimize for lifetime value.

To help prepare for these updates, we’ve updated two of our best practices guides that will help you use AdWords for driving more app downloads and increasing user engagement.

You can also check them out at g.co/PromoteYourApp. Only 364 days left to the next I/O!

Want to stay on top of even more Best Practices? Sign up to receive our monthly newsletter.

Posted by: Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing

At Google I/O, new features to find the right users for your app

Rob Newton — Wed, 18 May 2016 18:39:00 +0000

Last year at Google I/O, we shared our mission to make app growth easier with the launch of Universal App Campaigns - one simple campaign that surfaces apps to billions of consumers who use Google Play, Search, YouTube, and more. It’s working, and more people are discovering apps on Google than ever before. Over the past year -- and thanks to Universal App Campaigns -- we've more than doubled the volume of app installs driven by ads, and to date we’ve delivered more than 2 billion downloads to developers.

Today at Google I/O, we’re announcing multiple improvements to Universal App Campaigns to make it an even more powerful tool for app developers to find the right users for their app.

Making app growth simple for iOS developers

First, Universal App Campaigns are expanding beyond Android to help developers grow their iOS apps. Now, all app developers can tap into the simplicity and power of Universal App Campaigns to reach billions of Android and iOS users on YouTube, the Google Search App, and the Google Display Network. Universal App Campaigns for iOS are available in beta today and will roll out to all developers in the near future.

Finding more valuable users with less effort

Second, we’re helping developers more easily grow an active user base by finding the right user from the start. Instead of reaching any user to install their app, developers can now also find customers who are likely to be valuable users of their app. A recent study¹ showed that 17% of users drive 85% of app revenue, which is why successful apps are shifting their focus from volume to finding more of the right customers.

Universal App Campaigns will automate targeting, bidding, and creative generation to find your most valuable users based on your in app conversions. Just tell us the in app events that matter to you, whether it’s reaching level ten in your game, subscribing to your service, or making a purchase in your app, and we’ll do the rest. Our models evaluate countless signals and constantly learn and adjust, meaning every ad is based on the freshest, most relevant data. The best thing is that we do all the hard work in the background, predicting which users will be valuable and acquiring them at the right price. These innovations are in testing and will roll out in the coming months.

Pocket Gems has already been leaning on the automation of Universal App Campaigns to find quality users at scale, as David Rose, Director of Performance Marketing said:

"Universal App Campaigns have helped us acquire users with a higher LTV compared to other acquisition channels. We're particularly excited about how the next generation of Universal App Campaigns will enable us to iterate quickly and optimize for the actions that matter most to our business. This is an app marketer's dream."

Screenshots of mobile users discovering the Pocket Gems War Dragons app on Google Play and Google.com, powered by Universal App Campaigns

More ways to reach the right customers at the right moments

That’s not all. We’re creating more chances for developers to show ads where users go to watch, discover, and communicate. Universal App Campaigns will soon reach more users on YouTube, as well as introduce a new opportunity to reach users on top of tabs in Gmail.

New Gmail placement launching in 2016

Insights made for apps
Finally, we know app developers need the best user insights to build better apps and power their marketing campaigns, so we’re particularly excited about Firebase Analytics, our new analytics platform designed for apps from the ground-up that was announced at Google I/O earlier today. It provides prebuilt engagement and in-app actions that will help manage your conversions and lifetime value for AdWords campaigns and over 20 third-party ad networks. If you’re an AdWords user you can funnel these conversions into AdWords so it’s even easier to optimize campaigns to the things you care about.

SparkPeople, one of our early testers in the health and fitness sector, is already gaining more insights and taking a longer term view of app audience growth by linking AdWords accounts to Firebase:

“AdWords is a crucial part of my customer acquisition strategy. Linking my AdWords account to Firebase was incredibly easy, and now I can see total lifetime value for all users I've brought in from AdWords, broken down by campaign. The ability to sync my AdWords data to Firebase Analytics has simplified my daily management and optimization from hours to minutes, so I can spend more time building an app my users will love." - Joe Robb, Digital Marketing Director, SparkPeople

The Firebase Analytics dashboard

We look forward to helping many more developers build and grow successful businesses. At Google I/O, we’ll be sharing essential insights and best practices on how to drive growth with Google tools. You can take part too by viewing the live streamed and recorded sessions here. Happy I/O!

Posted by: Sissie Hsiao, Product Management Director, Mobile App Ads

1. State of Mobile Acquisition, RadiumOne

New ways to be there and be useful for mobile shoppers

Rob Newton — Mon, 16 May 2016 16:00:00 +0000

It comes as little surprise to many of us, but mobile’s share of online retail purchases continues to grow. In 2016, 34% of online retail purchases in the US happen on mobile.¹ And it’s not just the purchases themselves. It’s the explosion of ‘I-need-some-ideas,’ ‘which-one’s-best?’ and ‘I-want-to-buy-it’ micro-moments happening on Google that lead to those purchases. In fact, mobile shopping searches on Google have increased by 30% in the last year.²

Retailers have asked us to help make it easier for them to be there and be useful during these mobile moments. Here’s what we’ve been working on:

Introducing shopping ads on image search

Whether they’re looking for a new sofa or the perfect pair of earrings, people who search and shop on their smartphones at least once a week say that product images are the shopping feature they turn to most.³ And it turns out, the top questions Google Images users ask us are 'What's the price of this?’ and ‘Where can I buy it?’

That’s why we are introducing Shopping ads on image search. Now your ads for related products will appear as shoppers browse Google Images, so they can easily click through to buy from you.

Brands like Swarovski are excited about this new visual format.

According to Yelena Aschberger, Vice President of Digital Communication, PR & Events at Swarovski CGB, “Swarovski is an emotional brand and we are always looking for new ways to bring our products into a visually inspiring context. We’re thrilled to be able to leverage Google’s newest formats, particularly Shopping ads on image search which will allow us to engage shoppers and inspire them to desire our brand as they’re browsing and discovering products in our categories.”

Your ads are automatically eligible to show on image search as part of the Google Search Network.

Shopping ads on image search

Making local inventory ads more useful and accessible

Searches with local intent - those that include a place name or zip code, or words like “near me” - have doubled in the past year.⁴ We introduced local inventory ads to help make the inventory in your local stores accessible to people shopping online. This format has been incredibly effective for shoppers and retailers, and we’ve shown them four times more to people looking for local products in the last year.

Starting today you can show people that you offer buy online pickup in store by adding a store pickup link to the Google-hosted local product page. This is the page that appears after a user clicks your local inventory ad.

Kohl’s, a participant in our Store Pick-up pilot program, saw a 40 to 50% increase in clicks from their Google local storefront to the Kohl’s site with this feature.

For advertisers who use local inventory ads, we’re also making your inventory searchable on Google.com in the local Knowledge Panel, a place where shoppers already look for store hours and directions. Together these updates will assure shoppers that what they’re looking for is in stock, bringing more of them into your stores.


Store Pick-up link	Searchable inventory in the local Knowledge Panel

Bringing Google Express to more shoppers and retailers

Google Express continues to drive value for retailers by helping them sell their inventory online and particularly on mobile – with our mobile app accounting for over 50% of orders.

Over 50% of customers brought to retailers by Google Express are new.⁵ And sales from retailers’ existing customers have grown by 18%.⁵ On the back of this success, we continue to roll out our overnight delivery service. In June, we’ll launch to over 23M people in Texas and parts of surrounding states, increasing Google Express coverage to over 120M people.

More Purchases on Google

Last July we launched Purchases on Google. This feature of Shopping ads allows people to easily buy products on mobile through retailer-branded product pages hosted by Google.

Ralph Lauren, UGG, Staples and more of our top advertisers have been testing this feature and seeing strong results. That's not only good for retailers, but also for shoppers who are more easily able to purchase on the go.

According to John Kalinich, Senior Vice President, Global Digital Commerce at Deckers Brands, "It's early days, but we're seeing a nearly 50% increase in conversion rate on our mobile Shopping ads with Purchases on Google and a 25% decrease in our cost per conversion for UGG."

Staples has seen similar results. “We've added 95% of our products to the Purchases on Google program and within less than a year, we've already seen an improvement in ROAS, compared to mobile shopping ads” says Faisal Masud, EVP of Global E-Commerce at Staples.

Purchases on Google

As mobile’s role in shopping continues to grow, being there and being useful to people in their “I need some ideas,” “which one’s best?” and “I want to buy it” micro-moments will drive more online and store sales. Please talk to your Google account team if you’re interested in trying any of these features.

Posted by: Jonathan Alferness, Vice President, Product Management, Google Shopping

1. Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized data from Google Analytics for US retailers, U.S., April 2016.
2. Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized mobile searches that are eligible for a Product Listing Ad, Global, May 10, 2015 - May 9, 2016.
3. Google/Purchased Digital Diary: How Consumers Solve Their Needs in the Moment, May 2016, Smartphone users = 1000. Search and purchase on smartphones weekly = 736. Shopping features include the following: Engage with advertisements or messages from a business (click, watch, etc.) Check product availability online or instore, Read reviews from other shoppers and experts, Watch online videos about the product or service, Look at product images for the product or service, Use discounts or offers for a product or service, Contact a store about a product or service, View store locations on a map.
4. Google Trends, U.S., 2015 vs 2014.
5. MasterCard/Google Express incrementality study, 2016

Move beyond last click attribution in AdWords

Rob Newton — Tue, 10 May 2016 23:40:00 +0000

People often see many ads across different devices before making a purchase, booking a flight, or signing up for an account. Because of this, advertisers know that last click attribution may not always tell the full story. In 2014, we released the Attribution Modeling Tool in AdWords to share insights about how users interact with your ads. Later this month, you’ll be able to integrate the attribution model of your choice with your conversion data and bidding.

For each conversion type, use a simple drop-down menu in Conversion settings to select one of six different attribution models -- last click, first click, linear, time decay, position-based, or data driven. When you pick a new model, credit will be reassigned across the conversion path for all search or shopping ad clicks on Google.com, and your conversion stats will change moving forward. You can adjust bids based on your new way of counting conversions, and if you’re using automated bidding for search ads, your bids will be optimized automatically to reflect your new model. To learn more, visit our Help Center.

For the first time, AdWords advertisers with sufficient data will also be able to select the new data driven attribution model as a public beta, which is also available in Analytics 360, Attribution 360, and DoubleClick. Unlike rules-based models, data driven attribution uses machine learning to evaluate all the converting and non-converting paths across your account and identifies the proper credit for each interaction. The model considers the number of ad interactions, order of exposure, ad creative, and many other factors to determine which keywords and clicks are the most effective at driving results.

To help advertisers succeed with attribution, we’ve created a new best practices guide: “Beyond Last-Click Attribution.” The guide will show you how to:

Determine how important moving beyond last-click attribution is to your business
Choose a model that best fits your needs
Value early influencer keywords appropriately
Act on attribution
Evolve your approach to attribution as measurement gets better

We hope the new functionality and guide will help you optimize your marketing campaigns and drive stronger results, and our goal is to expand beyond search soon.

Posted by:
Joan Arensman, Product Manager
Wilfred Yeung, Product Manager

Preventing accidental clicks for a better mobile ads experience

Rob Newton — Fri, 06 May 2016 15:00:00 +0000

We’ve all been there. You’re trying to send an article from your phone to a friend, or you’re playing a mobile game while waiting in line for a movie, when you accidentally touch an ad on your screen. You weren’t interested in the ad -- heck, you didn’t even have time to see what it was for -- but now you’re hitting the back button to get back to what you were doing. Not only do accidental clicks like these annoy users, but left unaddressed, they can drive down the value of ads.

Over the last four years, we’ve introduced a series of protections across mobile web and mobile apps to prevent accidental clicks like these on ads. Today we are continuing this commitment to protecting users and advertisers by extending accidental click protections to native ad formats. Native ads were developed to help publishers and developers implement ads that complement the look and feel of their content.

Since our teams started instituting various click protections, we’ve learned quite a bit along the way. Here are two insights among many that guide our ongoing work.

Fast clicks are not real clicks

A professional baseball player has about 680ms¹ to react and swing at a baseball thrown at 90mph. That’s fast, even for a professional who’s paying close attention to hitting the ball. We think it’s virtually impossible for someone to read, understand, and take action on an ad in that amount of time.

Figure 1: A click is ignored when a user accidentally fast clicks on an interstitial ad

Not surprisingly, we found super-fast clicks on ads to provide little to no value to advertisers. That’s why we ignore fast clicks that we detect to be accidental immediately upon ad load. Rather than our ads causing surprise low quality clicks, users can continue on uninterrupted.

Edge clicks lack value

If you’ve used a mobile device, you know fat-fingers are a reality of touchscreens: the average fingerpad is roughly 50px large when pressing down.² When we’re swiping, pinching, and poking our screens, it’s easy to accidentally touch the edge of an ad that appears unexpectedly or is placed too close to tappable controls on your screen.

Figure 2: A click is ignored when a user misses adjacent content and accidentally hits the ad

When we compared the performance of clicks from the edge of ads to those coming from the interior region, we found dramatically higher conversion rates and user intentionality on clicks toward the middle of ad units. A few years ago, we started to expand these protections across mobile placements resulting in ad clicks that are more intentional.

The overall benefits of click protections

Fast clicks and edge clicks are just two of the user interaction issues we prevent in order to deliver value to advertisers. By expanding protections like these to native ad formats on mobile, we observe conversion rates increase over 10% on average with minimal impact to long term publisher revenue. This combined with our previous efforts has greatly improved the experience with mobile ads for users and advertisers.

The protections we’ve put in place across mobile web and mobile apps prevent tens of millions of accidental clicks per day, saving users tens of thousands of hours. When we look at the effect for advertisers in mobile apps, we observe double the value per click. We work hard to ensure that the clicks advertisers are charged for are more meaningful, and we hope sharing insight on these protections helps raise awareness and guide the wider advertising ecosystem. Plus, we really love playing games on our phones too, and want to make sure that we’re only taken to an advertiser’s page when we mean to go there.

Posted by Alex Jacobson, Product Manager, Ad Traffic Quality

90ft/132 ft per second = 681ms, 132 ft per second = 90mph
http://touchlab.mit.edu/publications/2003_009.pdf

New Merchant Center Feed Rules helps you submit your product data into Google Shopping feed format

Rob Newton — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 17:00:00 +0000

Finding the right customers on Google Shopping starts with your Merchant Center product feed: it contains all the information about the products you sell to help online shoppers find just what they’re looking for. But we know that creating and maintaining a complete and compliant data feed can be challenging. To make feed management easier, we’re excited to introduce Feed Rules, a self-service tool to help you transform your existing data from your inventory management systems into the format accepted by Google Shopping. Feed Rules helps you streamline your data feed uploads, whether you’re already running Shopping campaigns or you’re just getting started.

Use Feed Rules to set up and maintain your feed in Google Shopping format
Feed Rules allows you to perform basic transformations of your existing product data -- making it easier than ever to get your data feed up and running. You can export and submit your product data in your own format, and use different rules to transform it into product attributes and values that follow the Google Shopping feed specification, directly in Merchant Center:

Map your column headers to the attribute names supported by Google Shopping. For example, if you have an existing feed with the unsupported column header “main title”, you can set up a rule in Merchant Center to have it recognized as the supported attribute name, “title”.
Transform the values in your feed to values supported by Google Shopping. For example, to submit gender specifications for your products, you can transform the unsupported value “for women” in your existing feed to the supported value “female”.
Populate missing attribute values with a fixed value, or with different values based on conditional criteria. For example, if the “condition” attribute is missing and you’re only selling new products, you can set up a rule to have this attribute automatically set to “new”.

Once you specify new rules for a feed, all future uploads of this feed will be processed according to those rules.

Feed rules in action: these rules transform unrecognized values for gender into values accepted for Google Shopping

Use Feed Rules to organize your data for campaign optimization You can also use conditional rules to better organize your data:

Implement rules for custom labels to structure your campaigns in new ways. For example, you can group products by price ranges or margins, then later bid differently on these groups.
Tag your products with a shipping label. For example, you can derive “heavy” from the category, label those products, and define a particular shipping cost for those items.

As we introduce the first version of Feed Rules, we’re eager to learn about even more use cases from you. Feedback and suggestions for this feature can be entered directly from your Merchant Center account by clicking the gear icon in the top-right corner of the page and selecting “Send Feedback” to let us know what you think.

For more information about Feed Rules, check out our Help Center article, and stay tuned to the blog to learn more about feature updates and enhancements.

Posted by Sven Herschel, Product Manager for Google Shopping

Built for mobile: Bumper ads drive incremental reach and frequency, particularly on smartphones

Rob Newton — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 13:00:00 +0000

Recent research has shown that half of 18-49 year olds turn to their mobile device first to watch video. Even in the living room, many people prefer to watch on their smartphone – for the control, personalization and ease it offers. And as viewing habits change, we are working to introduce new formats adapted to these habits.

That’s why today we’re announcing Bumper ads – a new six-second video format, sold through the AdWords auction on a CPM basis. Bumper ads are ideal for driving incremental reach and frequency, especially on mobile, where “snackable videos” perform well.

Given the succinct nature of the format, we’ve seen Bumper ads work best when combined with a TrueView or Google Preferred campaign. In early tests, Bumpers drove strong lift in upper funnel metrics like recall, awareness and consideration. We also see that Bumpers work well to drive incremental reach and frequency when paired with a TrueView campaign.

Atlantic Records was an early tester of this new format, using Bumpers to launch English band Rudimental’s second album. As Fiona Byers, Senior Marketing Manager of Atlantic Records/Warner Music Group said, “TrueView and Bumpers were a really important part of the recent Rudimental campaign to tell the story of the band’s second album. Through cost-efficient bumpers we could really showcase the plethora of legendary guests featured on the record. They each gave a short sharp insight into a featured artist and individual track on the album, with TrueView providing the fuller story around the album and the band. When used in conjunction, TrueView plus Bumpers really work more effectively than either format on its own.”

As a quick and fun format, Bumpers lend themselves well to serialized content. Audi Germany cut up their longer TrueView ad to introduce their Q-series SUVs with evocative German “q” words like querpass (cross kick) and quantensprung (quantum leap). Their early adoption of the format mirrors Audi Germany’s tagline “Vorsprung durch Technik” (“advantage through technology”).

We like to think of Bumper ads as little haikus of video ads – and we’re excited to see what the creative community will do with them. You can use Bumpers beginning in May by talking to your Google sales representative, and stay tuned as we continue to roll out new ad formats that are uniquely adapted to the way people watch video now, and in the future.

Posted by Zach Lupei, Product Manager, Video Ads

Join us as we announce the latest Ads and Analytics innovations on May 24th

Rob Newton — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 15:00:00 +0000

Tune in live to the Google Performance Summit Keynote on Tuesday, May 24 at 9am PT / 12pm ET to hear the latest Ads and Analytics innovations.

We live in exciting times when technology seems to upend everything as we know, every few years. And nothing has changed consumer behavior and business innovation as much as the mobile phone. People are attached to their phones, tapping and swiping their way through places to go, stuff to buy, and things to do. This presents a tremendous opportunity for marketers to connect with customers in more meaningful, relevant ways. And Google is a key partner for advertisers, providing the media and tools to help you make those connections and measure the results.

To ensure we are building the right products for consumers and businesses all around the world, my team and I make it a priority to regularly visit our ads and analytics customers. Last year, we met with advertisers in India, Japan, China, the UK and Germany, and gained new insights from every country.

For example, in Europe, we learned that universal app campaigns are effective at growing installs across a broad range of app users. Now, advertisers want the ability to reach very specific audiences. In Asia, home to three of the five top smartphone markets, advertisers asked for more control and flexibility on mobile devices for both creatives and bidding. And in every country we visited, we saw customers working hard to integrate data from across their organizations and transform it into actionable insights. Marketers want better data to understand the customer journey across devices, contexts and channels.

We were all grateful for these insights and have been using them to build a whole new generation of Ads and Analytics products. We look forward to sharing many new innovations with you at the Google Performance Summit on Tuesday, May 24, 2016 at 9am PT / 12pm ET.

Register for the livestream here.

Until then, follow us on our +GoogleAds page for sneak previews of what’s to come.

Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy Senior Vice President, Ads and Commerce

Showing how YouTube ads drive sales for CPG brands with Oracle Data Cloud

Rob Newton — Tue, 19 Apr 2016 13:00:00 +0000

Measuring the impact of online video is something of a passion for us at Google. It’s been three years since we unveiled Brand Lift for YouTube and brands have seen great success. But the last piece of the puzzle has been how does online video drive offline sales? This is particularly true for consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, for which the vast majority of sales – over 90% – happen offline. Thanks to our new integration with Oracle Data Cloud – a leader in the emerging Data as a Service (DaaS) industry that measures the sales impact of digital media – we now have a solution to answer that question. Today we’re announcing the availability of sales lift studies in the US, for CPG advertisers using TrueView video ads.

The value of video

We’ve been testing this capability for a while, and have seen promising early results: 78% of TrueView campaigns we studied on YouTube showed an increase in offline sales, with 61% driving a statistically significant lift in sales of the advertised brand.¹

To build this solution we worked with Oracle Data Cloud to develop the first in-depth application of their DLX ROI product on video formats, and we studied a range of CPG video campaigns running TrueView ads across food, health and beauty, beverage and homecare. We built this with privacy at the center, and no personal data is exchanged between the companies.

Early client successes

One campaign we measured, Gatorade’s “We Love Sweat,” earned $13.50 sales in return for every dollar spent on TrueView (return on ad spend, or ROAS). This stunning success was due in part to persistent branding and strong creative geared specifically for driving sales. Gatorade’s campaign was also interesting because it delivered a remarkable 16% lift in sales among new buyers that had seen the video vs. new buyers that had not – according to Oracle Data Cloud a typical lift in this metric hovers around 2.5%.

Similar to Gatorade, parent company PepsiCo also saw sales lift success with their campaign for Doritos. Not only did our DLX ROI solution show that their 30-second creative drove higher lift in sales among exposed households than a 15-second version, but they saw particular targeting techniques – namely topic targeting and remarketing – drove greater sales lift compared to a demographic target.

Mars also participated in our DLX ROI test for their Pedigree pet food brand, and the sales lift studies helped them make key creative decisions. They tested a video that opened with strong branding against one that saved their branding for the end, and learned that the video with strong upfront branding drove nearly 7x greater sales lift. As Laurent Larguinat, Global Director of Mars Consumer and Market Insights said, “With this new offering, YouTube is rounding out a full funnel measurement solution for video. We're excited to continue to see these results for all of our campaigns."

This new sales lift offering drops the last piece into place for full funnel measurement of CPG campaigns on YouTube, and we’re excited to bring you new creative and media strategy insights that drive incremental sales as we scale these studies.

Posted by Mark Thomas, Brand Measurement Product Manager

1. Google/Oracle Data Cloud Sales Lift Meta Analysis, US (TrueView CPG campaigns tested between April 2015 and March 2016)

Google Manufacturer Center helps brands find and convert new customers

Rob Newton — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 17:10:00 +0000

Google provides consumers around the world with the answers they need to find, review, and buy the products they’re looking for. Last year, we announced Google Manufacturer Center, a free tool to help brand manufacturers accurately represent their products to shoppers on Google.com and other Google services. By uploading complete and accurate product data into Manufacturer Center, brands increase their chances of standing out in a crowded marketplace -- and ultimately get more of their products in the hands of consumers. Today, we’ll shine a light on three manufacturers who have boosted results with Manufacturer Center, and highlight new partners that can help manufacturers maximize the tool.

We’ve seen that manufacturers who upload their authoritative product data -- including product descriptions, high-resolution images, GTINs, and product variants -- have helped improve the online shopping experience and increase conversions in key ways:

Detailed product data enables more relevant search results. Product descriptions submitted by manufacturers contain key product attributes, which allow Google to surface Shopping ads (created by retailers) for those products when users search for those attributes. GTIN identifiers enable Google to match manufacturer content to ads and information cards for the same products.
High quality data helps users decide what to buy. By uploading better images and detailed product information, manufacturers can improve the accuracy and completeness of how their products are represented. This helps consumers decide which product to buy.

Manufacturers can choose to either upload their product data directly to Manufacturer Center or work with an approved Google Shopping Partner that integrates with Manufacturer Center. In addition to our existing partners, we're announcing 4 new partners: WebCollage, Channel Advisor, Informatica, and GFK Etilize. These partners are industry leaders in organizing and distributing product data.

Below, learn how three manufacturers -- Bosch, JanSport, and Speakman -- are using Manufacturer Center to help their shoppers make more informed buying decisions.

Bosch drills into richer product data, sees 4% conversion uplift
Bosch, a leading power tool and accessories brand, has been an early adopter of Manufacturer Center, using the tool to upload rich product data for use in Shopping ads. Before Bosch added product data via Manufacturer Center, a user that searched for “lightweight drill” was unlikely to find the Bosch PS31BN Brushless Drill. The product description provided by Bosch, however, highlighted that the PS31BN is compact and lightweight. Even Shopping ads that don’t display product descriptions can benefit from this additional information, helping Google show the most useful ads to users. Now, when users search for “lightweight drill”, they are much more likely to find the PS31BN. As a result of uploading this more accurate, descriptive data, Bosch saw a 4% uplift in conversions across their updated products on the sites of retailers advertising Bosch products on Google.

JanSport packs in an extra 13% in conversions for back-to-school
During the 2015 back-to-school season, JanSport, the world’s leading and largest backpack maker, used Manufacturer Center to overhaul their product images, descriptions, and details to improve how their products appear on Google. For example, JanSport updated their Big Student model backpack by including richer descriptions that highlight the product’s two large compartments, water bottle pocket, and extra large capacity. This information helped create more effective listings on Google Shopping and other Google services like Google Express, letting shoppers better understand what they’re buying. Jansport saw a 13% increase in conversions originating from Google for their backpacks with updated product data, compared to benchmark products without updates.

Speakman cleans up with an 8% increase in conversions
Speakman, manufacturer of premium shower and bath products, was an early adopter of Manufacturer Center. They worked with Salsify, a Product Information Management partner, to send their rich product information to Manufacturer Center for use in Shopping ads. With the addition of richer and more complete data, including multiple product images and even videos of their products in action, Google was able to increase relevancy for users searching for Speakman products like their Speakman Reaction and Icon shower heads. After updating product data, Speakman saw an 8% uplift in conversions originating from Google, compared to benchmark products that were not updated.

Simply put, Manufacturer Center allows manufacturers to elevate their brands and ultimately attract more shoppers online. If you’re a brand manufacturer and are interested in getting started with Manufacturer Center, complete our interest form and we will reach out with next steps. If you already use a PIM, ask how you can get your data sent to Manufacturer Center for use across Google.

Posted by Christian Santiago, Strategic Partner Development Lead

More defenses roll out to thwart Clickjacking

Rob Newton — Wed, 13 Apr 2016 13:00:00 +0000

At Google we defend our ad systems from fraud using technology in a variety of ways. Often our investment in these defenses goes beyond protecting against only known threats. Our engineering and operations teams are continually working to identify new and emerging threats. Once a new ad fraud threat is found, we move quickly to defend our systems against it using a combination of technology, operations, and policy.

Recently we identified “Clickjacking” (aka UI Redress) as an emerging threat to cost-per-click display ads, and we’ve rolled out new defenses to protect advertisers against this threat. Clickjacking is a type of web attack where the appearance of a website is changed so that a victim does not realize they are taking an important action, in this case clicking on one or more ads. For example, a user may intend to click on a video play button or menu item, but instead clicks an invisible ad unit.

Figure 1: An example of a clickable ad hidden behind a video playback button.

Moving quickly to thwart Clickjacking attempts
Earlier this year when our operations team identified Clickjacking activity on our display network, they moved swiftly to terminate accounts, removing entities involved in or attempting to use this technique to trick users. Our engineering team worked in parallel to quickly release a filter to automatically exclude this type of invalid traffic across display ads.

This approach delivered a one-two punch to publishers who violated our policies: our operations team, which forms an early line of defense against invalid traffic, cleaned out publishers from our ad systems, while engineers built a new filter as a durable defense to protect against Clickjacking traffic.

Figure 2: An example of mouse-tracking, which leads to a page with lots of ads being opened regardless of where a user clicks.

Even as there are ongoing attempts to perpetrate this type of attack, our ongoing and proactive hunt for emerging types of invalid traffic has enabled us to move early and quickly to address Clickjacking threats on several occasions.

A combination of defenses
Our Clickjacking defenses operate at considerable scale, analyzing display ad placements across mobile and desktop platforms, evaluating a variety of characteristics. When our system detects a Clickjacking attempt, we zero-in on the traffic attributed to that placement, and remove it from upcoming payment reports to ensure that advertisers are not charged for those clicks.

This latest effort also is a great example of how our work against invalid traffic is at the intersection of technology, operations, and policy. Each piece plays a key role in keeping our ad systems clean and defended against ad fraud.

We’re proud of our work to protect our ad systems against emerging threats like Clickjacking, and we’ll continue to be vigilant as we fight the good fight against ad fraud.

Posted by: Andres Ferrate, Chief Advocate, Ad Traffic Quality