Learn how to remarket your AdWords ads to previous website visitors in a live webinar

This Wednesday, 4th May, we'll be hosting a live, online course on Remarketing as part of the AdWords Online Classroom (UK). This free, interactive presentation will be delivered by an Online Media Specialist and will take place at 3 pm BST (GMT +1), lasting for approximately one hour and including time for Q&A.

Remarketing is a simple way to connect with your website visitors. After driving traffic to your site with search ads, you can then remarket to those people who reach your site by showing them tailored ads as they browse sites on the Google Display Network.

This live course will take you through a step-by-step guide to remarketing campaigns. It'll cover how remarketing works, the best strategies to choose, and also campaign setup and optimization. This course is suitable for advertisers who are already running campaigns on the Google Display Network, as well as advertisers who have not yet used the GDN.

97% of new visitors do not convert the first time they arrive at your site. Can you afford not to have a remarketing strategy?

If you're interested, be sure to sign up now!

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

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Smartphone User Study Shows Mobile Movement Under Way

Cross posted from the Google Mobile Ads Blog:

71% of smartphone users search because of an ad they’ve seen either online or offline; 82% of smartphone users notice mobile ads, 74% of smartphone shoppers make a purchase as a result of using their smartphones to help with shopping, and 88% of those who look for local information on their smartphones take action within a day.

These are some of the key findings from “The Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Users,” a study from Google and conducted by Ipsos OTX, an independent market research firm, among 5,013 US adult smartphone Internet users at the end of 2010. Join us in tomorrow’s webinar where we’ll present the full research findings. In the meantime, enjoy this research highlights video and read on for a summary of our main section findings:

General Smartphone Usage: Smartphones have become an integral part of users’ daily lives. Consumers use smartphones as an extension of their desktop computers and use it as they multi-task and consume other media.

• 81% browse the Internet, 77% search, 68% use an app, and 48% watch videos on their smartphone
• 72% use their smartphones while consuming other media, with a third while watching TV
• 93% of smartphone owners use their smartphones while at home

Action-Oriented Searchers: Mobile search is heavily used to find a wide variety of information and to navigate the mobile Internet.

• Search engine websites are the most visited websites with 77% of smartphone users citing this, followed by social networking, retail and video sharing websites
• Nine out of ten smartphone searches results in an action (purchasing, visiting a business, etc.)
• 24% recommended a brand or product to others as a result of a smartphone search

Local Information Seekers: Looking for local information is done by virtually all smartphone users and consumers are ready to act on the information they find.

• 95% of smartphone users have looked for local information
• 88% of these users take action within a day, indicating these are immediate information needs
• 77% have contacted a business, with 61% calling and 59% visiting the local business

Purchase-driven Shoppers: Smartphones have become an indispensable shopping tool and are used across channels and throughout the research and decision-making process.

• 79% of smartphone consumers use their phones to help with shopping, from comparing prices, finding more product info to locating a retailer
• 74% of smartphone shoppers make a purchase, whether online, in-store, or on their phones
• 70% use their smartphones while in the store, reflecting varied purchase paths that often begin online or on their phones and brings consumers to the store

Reaching Mobile Consumers: Cross-media exposure influences smartphone user behavior and a majority notice mobile ads which leads to taking action on it.

• 71% search on their phones because of an ad exposure, whether from traditional media (68%) to online ads (18%) to mobile ads (27%)
• 82% notice mobile ads, especially mobile display ads and a third notice mobile search ads
• Half of those who see a mobile ad take action, with 35% visiting a website and 49% making a purchase

Implications

The findings of the study have strong implications for businesses and mobile advertisers. Make sure you can be found via mobile search as consumers regularly use their phones to find and act on information. Incorporate location based products and services and make it easy for mobile customers to reach you because local information seeking is common among smartphone users. Develop a comprehensive cross-channel strategy as mobile shoppers use their phones in-store, online and via mobile website and apps to research and make purchase decisions. Last, implement an integrated marketing strategy with mobile advertising that takes advantage of the knowledge that people are using their smartphones while consuming other media and are influenced by it.

Learn More

To learn more about the study, please join us in a webinar tomorrow where we will present and discuss the research findings in-depth. Register for “The Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Users” webinar on Wednesday, April 27th at 11am PST/ 2pm EST. To receive the research report, please visit the Google Mobile Ads blog after April 27th to download a complimentary copy of the study.

Posted by Dai Pham, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team

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Instant Previews for Ads

In November of last year we took Instant to a new level on Google.com with Instant Previews. Instant Previews provides a graphic overview of a search result and highlights the most relevant sections, making finding the right page as quick and easy as flipping through a magazine.

Now, we’re bringing the same benefit to ads with Instant Previews for Ads. Starting today, the Instant Previews icon will appear next to ads on Google.com allowing users to preview the ad’s landing page. With Instant Previews, your customers are able to quickly preview a page to see if its content matches what they’re searching for.

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By allowing potential customers to preview your site before they arrive, Instant Previews helps you get even more highly-qualified traffic to your site. Even better, Instant Preview clicks are free of charge -- you’re only charged if a user clicks through to your actual landing page.

Instant Previews for Ads is rolling out to US users today and will be rolling out internationally over the coming weeks. To learn more, you can visit our help center.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

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Live webinar: ‘Measuring Your Success with AdWords Conversion Tracking’

On Wednesday, April 27th, we’ll be holding a live and interactive webinar to help you learn about Conversion Tracking in your AdWords account. As you may already know, Converison Tracking is a tool in AdWords that helps you measure how effective your ads and keywords are for driving sales. It does this by showing you what happens after a user clicks on your ad, allowing you to see which keywords are helping you meet your specific goals

First decide what's valuable on your site, such as a purchase or sign-up. Then track which of your keywords lead users to these important actions, known as conversions. In this live webinar, we’ll take you through the basic setup and help you analyse your reports so you can identify which keywords and ads are resulting in the most leads or conversions on your website. We’ll also look at some more advanced features like Conversion Optimizer and Search Funnels that will help you to get the most from your AdWords account.

Our webinar will be presented by AdWords Specialists as part of the AdWords Online Classroom (UK) and will take place on Wednesday, April 27th from 3pm to 4pm (BST/GMT+1), so if you want to make your website work for you, make sure to sign up now!

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

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5 Simple Ways to Improve Your AdWords Performance

With the recent international launches of the Ad Innovations site, we want to take a minute to call out a few simple things you can do to quickly improve the performance of your AdWords ads. Give the tips below a try and see how our Ad Innovations can improve your performance.

1. Enable Ad Sitelinks

Ad Sitelinks allow you to extend the value of your existing AdWords ads by providing additional links to specific, relevant content deeper within your site. Rather than sending all users to the same landing page, Ad Sitelinks will display up to four additional destination URLs for users to choose from. On average, advertisers see a 30% increase in clickthrough rate (CTR) for the same ads with Ad Sitelinks.
2. Optimize your ad text for longer headlines

We recently made a change to top ads that allows you to display more information where it’s most likely to be noticed--in the headline. By taking information from the first description line and moving it to the headline, we found that we’re able to create a better user experience and improve advertiser performance. In fact, ads with longer headlines receive a 6% average increase in CTR compared to the same ads with a standard headline and description. To increase the chances that your ad will appear with the longer headline, make sure that description line 1 is a complete phrase or sentence and ends in punctuation (e.g., a period or question mark).
Before: After:
3. Link a Google Places account to a campaign to show location extensions

Location extensions allow you to extend your AdWords campaigns by dynamically attaching your business address to your ads. In addition to the description lines and URL that appear in your ad text, your ad can also display your business name, address, and phone number. This helps promote your business brand, products, and services and associates your business with a specific location of interest to the user.

By linking a Google Places account to your AdWords ads, you can quickly and easily make sure all your location information is available when it’s most relevant.
4. Get reviewed to show Seller Rating Extensions

Seller rating extensions make it easier for potential customers to identify highly-rated merchants when they're searching on Google.com by attaching your merchant star rating from Google Product Search to your AdWords ads. These star ratings, aggregated from review sites all around the web, allow people to find merchants that are highly recommended by online shoppers like them. On average, ads with Seller Ratings get a 17% higher CTR than the same ads without ratings.

If your online store is rated in Google Product Search, you have four or more stars, and you have at least thirty reviews, you'll automatically get seller ratings with your ads. If you have high customer satisfaction, then make sure we know about it:
• Regularly ask your users for reviews (e.g., in confirmation emails after purchases)
• Make it easy for users to review you--include links to your site's page on the third-party review sites used by Seller Rating Extensions.

5. Link a Merchant Center account to a campaign to show product extensions

Product extensions are a way for you to enrich your existing AdWords ads with more relevant and specific information about your retail merchandise. Product extensions allow you to use your existing Google Merchant Center account to highlight your products directly in your search ads.

With product extensions, you're charged the same cost-per-click (CPC) whether a user clicks on your main text ad or any of the offers within the product extensions plusbox.

Of course, you can always learn about the many additional AdWords innovations by visiting the Ad Innovations website and subscribing for the latest updates.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

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Join other AdWords users as they share their tips on the Help Forum

Are you a part of the Google AdWords Help Forum community yet? If not, you’re missing out! It’s a great place to get help and advice from AdWords experts, Top Contributors, and Google employees.

Recently, we held a "Share Your Best Practices Week" from March 28, 2011, to April 1, 2011, to encourage users to exchange AdWords tips and learnings that have worked well for them. Over five days, we chose five different topics on which we gathered expert knowledge from our users:

• Tips and best practices on optimizing AdWords ad text
• Tips on how to build an effective keyword list
• How to deal with keywords that are "rarely shown due to low quality score"
• Display ad optimization tips
• Best practices for choosing managed placements

We were excited to see the level of enthusiasm from around the world. A good number of AdWords experts provided great contributions, and some spent a considerable amount of time sharing their tips via detailed posts!

We’ve selected the best of the best practices, and we're proud to share the results with all of you.

So hearty congratulations to Calin, Dave, Katie, Kim, and Shweta for their excellent contributions and knowledge of AdWords! Here are some excerpts from what they shared:

• “If the keyword is really important, a special landing page gets built. Importance = potential for good ROI, and a high search volume.” (Calin)
• “Use AdWords and keyword data in Google Analytics to 'weighted sort' your keywords to find the top performing keywords.” (Dave)
• “I always find I get the highest CTR when the ad text is highly focused on the keywords in question.” (Katie)
• “If you identify a site that has major potential, evaluate the site of interest and you may find yourself creating image ads specific to certain placements.” (Kim)
• "Set up Conversion Tracking before you set the campaign live.” (Shweta)

Does this make you compelled to learn more about ad text optimization, keyword lists, keyword statuses, the Display Network, and managed placements? If the answer is yes, your time would be well spent on the AdWords Help Forum!

By the way, we're planning another event for May 2011, so if you want a chance to showcase your AdWords expertise, stay tuned!

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

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Make your website work! Learn how to improve online conversions in a live webinar

On Wednesday, April 20th, we’ll be holding a live and interactive webinar to discuss the top tips for improving your website's ability to convert visitors into sales. We'll highlight common areas for you to examine in order to improve website performance. We’ll also identify some free tools that can help you diagnose what causes visitors to leave your site and test changes that will drive better results.

This webinar will be presented by AdWords Specialists as part of the AdWords Online Classroom (UK) and will take place on Wednesday, April 20th from 3 pm to 4 pm (BST/GMT+1), so if you want to make your website work for you, make sure to sign up now!

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

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More clarity in AdWords for advertisers affected by landing page policy

It’s easier to fix a problem when you know what it is. Today, we’re making it easier to know when you’re affected by a landing page or site policy problem, rather than a landing page quality problem. Before we look at the changes we’ve made in AdWords to make this more clear, let’s review the differences between policy and quality for landing pages.

What’s the difference between policy and quality for landing pages? The primary purpose of landing page policy is to make sure that the sites to which users are taken after clicking on ads are safe, trustworthy, and legal. Automated systems and trained specialists make policy enforcement decisions. When landing pages are suspected of violating AdWords policies, ads and keywords linked to them are disabled and not allowed to enter the AdWords auction.

Landing page quality, on the other hand, is important for ensuring that users have a positive experience on your site. It can affect your ad position and performance in the AdWords auction. And as with all factors in Quality Score, landing page quality is determined by automated systems.

What’s changing in the AdWords interface? Previously, if a destination URL wasn’t compliant with our landing page and site policy guidelines, the associated keywords would show a Quality Score of 1/10, a notice that ads were rarely showing, and an indication of poor landing page quality.

However, you wouldn't see anything explicitly mentioning a landing page policy violation. Now, if your keywords are affected by a landing page policy issue, here’s what you’ll see on the Keywords tab in the AdWords interface.

(click for full-size image)

Affected keywords will show "Site suspended" in the status column. And since affected keywords aren’t able to trigger ads, a Quality Score is no longer calculated or shown. If you switch to the Ads tab, any ads that aren’t serving as a result of the policy violation will show a status of “Suspended.”

These changes are visible for most landing page policy violations. For serious offenses, however, remember that we may immediately suspend an account.

We hope this makes it easier to see when you're affected by landing page policy issues and take corrective action.

Please visit the Help Center for more information about AdWords policies or landing page quality. You can also contact us about a specific AdWords policy issue affecting your account.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

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Ad Innovations launches in six new countries

Ad Innovations is a site where you can explore new AdWords marketing technologies. You can watch demos, try the latest tools, and share your feedback with our teams. We’re posting today to announce that Ad Innovations is now live in six new countries: the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and Brazil.

And for those of you in the US, you’ll notice that Ad Innovations has a new look! We’ll be rolling out this updated design to all Ad Innovations sites in the next few months.

(click for full-size image)

Whether you’re most interested in search, display, mobile, or performance measurement, we hope you’ll be able to find a number of AdWords features to help you stay on top of the newest advertising developments. Head to your local site and see which innovations are available in your market.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

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Free online webinar: Finding Your Audience - Targeting Ads By Topic

On Wednesday, April 13th, we’ll be holding a live and interactive webinar to teach you how to target your audience using Topic Targeting in AdWords.

Topic Targeting works by contextually targeting all pages about a specific category on the Google Display Network, so you can reach your target audience while they surf relevant pages.

During this live webinar, we’ll give an overview of the new Topic Targeting tab, explain how Topic Targeting works and show you how to set up your campaign.

This webinar will be presented by AdWords Specialists as part of the AdWords Online Classroom (UK) and will take place on Wednesday, April 13th from 3 pm to 4 pm (BST/GMT+1)*, so make sure to sign up now!

* Due to Daylight Savings (clocks changing) in UK, please check your local time zone for correct equivalent time.


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

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Think with Google: Search Ads Affect Offline Sales Too

Do online search campaigns lead to in-store sales? Controlled studies we call ‘Online-to-Store’ experiments prove time and again that they do! Check out this video for results from large advertisers that tested the effects of using keywords targeted to products and categories, generic keywords and online coupons. Highlights include in-store sales lift, return on ad spend (15:1 in some cases) and halo effects on overall sales. Understanding the effect of search ads on offline sales is a large part of accurately defining the full value of search campaigns, beyond direct conversion.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

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AdWords Position Preference feature is being retired

In early May, we’ll be retiring the position preference bidding feature in AdWords. If you’re using position preference, we recommend that you disable the feature in your campaigns prior to that date to ensure a smooth transition for your bids. For instructions on how to disable position preference, please see our Help Center.

More specifically, you can expect to see the following changes in your account:

• As of today, April 5th, position preference can no longer be enabled for campaigns through either the AdWords web interface or the API. Campaigns already using position preference will still have it enabled, but if you turn position preference off in one of your campaigns, you won't be able to turn it back on.
• Starting in early May, we'll begin disabling position preference for any campaigns still using it.
• After you disable position preference (either manually or when the feature is retired starting in early May), the manual maximum CPC bids for those campaigns will be the bids position preference used most recently. Position preference tries to raise or lower your bids to target the positions you specify. So using the most recent position preference bid as your manual maximum CPC should minimize disruption to your traffic.

Before you disable position preference, we recommend that you export your manual bids by downloading a keyword report to back up any bids you set before you turned on position preference. This report will include keyword-level maximum CPC bids.

What are my alternatives to position preference?

If you’d like to target specific ad positions, we recommend that you first read this blog post from our Chief Economist, Hal Varian, on some of the pitfalls around targeting average position.

After reading the blog post, if you’d still like to target specific ad positions, we recommend that you try using automated rules. Using this feature, you can set an automated rule for your campaign that will change your bid if your average position differs from your target. For more information on how to use this feature, please see this article.

We appreciate your understanding and your continued support of AdWords.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

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Introducing free phone support for AdWords advertisers

We’ve worked hard to keep in touch with our AdWords customers and we’re always looking for new ways to support you. Currently we offer email and online support, and today we’re launching free phone support for all of our U.S. and Canada-based AdWords customers. When you have a question about your account or advertising campaigns, you can now call an AdWords specialist if you prefer.

We’re adding phone support for a simple reason: you asked for it! You told us that while you appreciate online resources like our AdWords Help Center, you also want the option to get live, expert support when you need it. We heard you, and got to work assembling a team of AdWords experts to answer your calls.

The new phone option is one of many tools that can help you succeed with AdWords—and (most importantly!) find even more customers. You can also email us, or learn from other advertisers in the AdWords Help Forum. Our AdWords Online Classroom offers free online courses on a wide variety of AdWords topics, from the basics to great tips to take your account to the next level.

To speak to one of our specialists, give us a call at 1-866-2-Google between Monday-Friday, 9am-8pm Eastern Time. This number is for current AdWords advertisers only, so please make sure you have your customer ID ready. We look forward to speaking to you and learning more about your business.

We will roll phone support out to international advertisers in the coming months.


Posted by Francoise Brougher, VP, Global Advertising and Product Operations

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Understanding the Average Position metric

For today's Inside AdWords post, we have a note from our Chief Economist at Google, Hal Varian. Hal and his team spend most of their time studying the AdWords auction and finding ways to make it more efficient. Today he'd like to share some insights on the average position metric:

Many advertisers are concerned about the average position of their ads. Though this metric can be useful, it's easy to misinterpret. This blog post is intended to help advertisers better understand the average position metric, its uses, and its limitations.

To begin with, it's important to understand that there are two interpretations of the phrase “ad position.” The “page position” refers to the location on the page, such as “top ad 2” or “right-hand side ad 1.” The “auction position” is the rank of the ad in the auction that determines the order of the ads on the page. The critical point is that the reported average position metric is based on auction position, not page position.

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Example showing page with top and right-hand side ads

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Example showing page with only right-hand side ads

This means that an ad in auction position 1 will always be the first ad shown on the page, but it can occur in two possible page positions: as the first ad above the search results or as the first ad on the right-hand side when there are no ads above the search results. This distinction is important, since, on average, ads that appear above the search results tend to get substantially more clicks than ads that appear on the right-hand side. The difference between page and auction position can lead to some seemingly paradoxical outcomes.

An ad with a larger average position may perform better than an ad with a smaller average position

If you bid on a keyword that many other advertisers are bidding on, you may end up in a relatively low position on the page due to the competition from other bidders. However, the very fact that many people are bidding on that keyword suggests that it will perform well, even when your ad is placed lower on the page. On the other hand, if you bid on a keyword that no one else is bidding on, you may end up in position 1 by default but end up with few clicks. What matters is how the keyword performs in terms of clicks and cost, not where it ends up on the page.

Increasing a bid may improve page position but not auction position

Suppose your ad always appears in position 1 on the right-hand side, and there are no “top ads” above the search results. You now increase your bid. If your ad quality is high enough, the bid increase can move it to a page position above the search results. This improved page position will typically produce more clicks, but there will be no change in the average position metric, since the ad’s auction position hasn’t changed: it's 1 in each case.

A bid increase may move your average position lower on the page

When you increase your bid, your ad will generally show up on the first page in more auctions, particularly when using broad match. Since you weren’t bidding enough to appear in those auctions originally, your ad will tend to come in at the bottom of the first page in those new auctions.

For example, think of a situation where you're bidding on vegan dog food (broad match), and your ad consistently appears at auction position 1 when the user enters vegan dog food, but your bid is too low for the ad to show (on the first page) when the user enters dog food. Now you increase your bid and start showing up in auction position 7 for dog food queries. If there are the same number of queries for dog food and vegan dog food, your average position will be (1+7)/2 = 4. So by increasing your bid, you've moved your average position metric from 1 to 4—even though your ad never appeared in position 4!

An average is not always the best way to summarize a distribution of positions

The seemingly paradoxical effect described in the last example can even appear with exact match, since differences in bids and budgets among advertisers lead to considerable variation in auction participation. You should think about “position” as being a distribution of outcomes—sometimes you're in one position, sometimes another. The “average position” is one way to summarize this distribution, but it isn’t necessarily the best way.

It's important to keep in mind that average position measures your position in the auction, not your position on the page.

Examining bids, clicks, and costs

One very helpful tool for examining the relationship among these metrics is Bid Simulator. The Bid Simulator shows you an estimate of the "click-cost curve"—a simulation based on historical data of how much you would have had to bid, and how much it could have cost, to acquire some target number of clicks in the previous week. If you combine the click-cost curve with your value of clicks, you can find a bid that maximizes your overall profit. It also shows you an estimate of the number of top and RHS impressions an ad could have received, a metric that tends to be more meaningful for measuring ad exposure than average position.

Some advertisers have asked how clicks from different positions tend to convert. In general, we've found that conversion rates don’t vary much with the position of the ad on the page. An ad in a more prominent position on the page will tend to get both more clicks and more conversions than an ad in a lower position, but the conversion rate (conversions/clicks) will tend to be about the same for the two positions.

In summary, average position is a popular metric, but don’t rely on it alone as a measure of performance. The metrics that really matter are clicks, costs, and conversions.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

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Take your ads to new heights with Blimp Ads

For more than ten years, AdWords has been at the forefront of the advertising world. From text ads to video ads, we’ve been constantly innovating and redefining the advertising ecosystem. Starting today, you can be one of the first to experience the next generation of advertising: Google Blimp Ads.

Imagine this: a baseball stadium, packed with thousands of fans. A home run flies through the air, and as the crowd looks up, they see your ad, bigger than ever, hand-painted on the side of a majestic blimp. Blimp Ads can make this a reality.

click for full size image

With your text ads on our brand new fleet of gBlimps, you can reach an even wider audience and capitalize on many new targeting options, including blimp height and location. You can even target special events like football games, outdoor concerts, meteor showers, and more. The possibilities are endless!

Over the past few months, we’ve privately tested Blimp Ads and found that they performed even better than expected. Now you have the opportunity to boost your ad performance by participating in our free public beta testing program.

Check out our product site to learn more and sign up now. Join us as we continue to push the boundaries of advertising.


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

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