Live AdWords webinars every Tuesday and Wednesday at 3pm BST

Calling all AdWords Advertisers!

Starting today and running throughout the next 3 months, the AdWords team will be holding live webinars every Tuesday and Wednesday at 3pm BST (7am PDT).

These live webinars are delivered by Google Search, Display, YouTube and Mobile Specialists and are a fantastic way for you to learn more about AdWords and greatly improve the performance of your campaigns. Specialists are on hand to answer all your questions during these webinars.

A full listing of all upcoming webinars can be found here, and you can download a Calendar listing all upcoming webinars here.

We look forward to seeing you at our live webinars over the coming weeks!

Posted by Eoin, AdWords Online Classroom & Learn With Google Team

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Making local online advertising easy with Google AdWords Express

(Cross posted on the Official Google Blog, Small Business Blog, and Lat Long Blog)

Today, we're officially introducing AdWords Express, a faster and simpler way to start advertising online in under five minutes. We first launched this product as Google Boost last October for a small number of local businesses. Since then, we've continued to improve the product and enabled all U.S. businesses new to online advertising to reach customers with ease. AdWords Express is designed to help local businesses that aren't already AdWords advertisers create effective campaigns—watch the video below to see how you can create and run an online campaign from start to finish in just a few clicks:

AdWords Express helps potential customers find your website or Place page, and gives you a quick and straightforward way to connect with them and grow your business. You simply provide some basic business information, create your ad, and your campaign is ready to go.

After you sign up, the campaign will be automatically managed for you. AdWords Express will figure out which searches should trigger your ad to appear and displays it when these searches happen. Your ad will be shown in the Ads section of search results pages—on the top or right hand side—and in Google Maps with a distinctive blue pin. Customers can see your ad whether they’re searching on laptops or mobile phones.

As with all our ad products, you pay only when a customer clicks on your ad. To make things even easier, AdWords Express optimizes your ads to get the most out of your advertising campaign and budget.

Many businesses are already finding success through AdWords, but we know many of you are looking for an easier way to begin advertising online. Visit www.google.com/awexpress to sign up or learn more about how it works.

Posted by Kiley McEvoy, Product Manager, AdWords Express

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Upcoming Webinar: Display targeting strategies for direct response

Contextual. Audience. Remarketing. Demographic. Marketers have many options when it comes to targeting their display campaigns. The emergence of these technologies has transformed display into a powerful direct response medium, delivering measurable performance at scale for marketers. But with the plethora of options to choose from, where do advertisers and agencies begin?

Please join Google for an upcoming webinar to learn more about how to approach targeting strategies for your campaigns on the Google Display Network. Specifically we’ll cover:

• The "targeting toolbox" for direct response campaigns
• Strategies for prioritizing and applying the available targeting options to maximize campaign performance and efficiency
• Tools, tips and best practices for maximizing ROI for your campaigns

Register here for the webinar to be held on August 4, 2011 at 11:00am PST / 1:00pm CST / 2:00pm EST.

Posted by Lauren Barbato, Inside AdWords crew

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Now all US and Canada advertisers can get more phone calls and detailed call reporting

Call Metrics, a simple way to get more phone calls and detailed call reports with AdWords, is now available to all advertisers in the US and Canada. Availability was limited since the introduction in November 2010, so thanks for holding.

Call Metrics works by assigning and placing a toll-free forwarding number next to your ad text on Google search pages. When a user sees your ad and calls the number, AdWords registers the call and forwards it to your business. So far, we’ve connected over 5 million calls for thousands of businesses. And calls generated from ads using Call Metrics last six minutes, on average.

(click for full-size image)

Vijay Malavia, Associate Search Director at interactive agency Razorfish, manages search campaign strategy and results on behalf of his client ADT, the largest US electronic security service provider. With its broad mix of services and customer profiles, ADT considers both the web and phone to be important customer acquisition channels. Vijay describes the benefits of Call Metrics he’s seen for ADT:

"Since we’ve started using Call Metrics, we've seen average daily call volume in the ADT call center increase. Quality of inbound calls has been solid -- duration and conversion metrics are consistent with other sources. In addition to providing convenience and getting more calls, having integrated reporting has made it much easier to project the total value ADT is getting from both calls and clicks from AdWords. And that's helped us make better optimization and budget decisions."

We’re also announcing a few other changes with this launch:

1. More detailed reporting. In March we enhanced Call Metrics reporting to show the time, duration, and caller area code for each call. Based on advertiser feedback, we’re now making reporting available at the ad group and campaign level for manually-dialed calls (subject to minimum volume). And you’ll still be able to segment reports to compare how many calls were received from mobile clicks-to-call and how many were manually dialed after the ad was shown on a desktop, notebook, or tablet computer.

2. New pricing for certain calls. A $1 USD (or equivalent in CAD) charge applies to manually dialed calls completed to your Google forwarding numbers. These calls occur when a potential customer on a desktop, notebook or tablet computer sees your ad and dials the number shown.

Pricing for mobile clicks-to-call remains unchanged, whether you use Call Metrics or not. They continue to be charged as regular mobile search ad clicks.

3. Call Extensions replace Phone Extensions. To reduce possible ambiguity, we’ve renamed Phone Extensions to Call Extensions.

In a future release, we plan to incorporate calls into Ad Rank calculations, which determine an ad’s position and cost per click. At that time, you’ll be able to influence your ad position by specifying a bid per call greater than $1.00 USD. This will parallel the way that clickthrough rate (CTR) and max CPC bids can influence Ad Rank today.

To get started with Call Metrics, sign into AdWords and click on the Ad Extensions tab. Select Call Extensions in the shaded View drop down box. Select your country, then enter the business phone number where you’d like to receive calls for this campaign. Finally, select the check box for Call metrics.

(click for full-size image)

You’ll find many more details and answers to frequently asked questions in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, AdWords Product Manager

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Non-ASCII characters now supported in display and destination URLs

If you write your ads in any language other than English, you may have wished that you could make your display URL consistent with the rest of your ad by showing your internationalized domain name. Today, we’re announcing that we now support non-ASCII characters, including non-Latin characters and Latin characters with accents and diacritics, in display and destination URLs.

When you create an ad in AdWords, you can now enter Unicode characters in the display and destination URL fields. To ensure that users will be able to reach your site, we’ll verify that the URL works properly in both Unicode and Punycode.

We also want to make sure that users are not shown URLs in any language other than their own, so we’ll render the display URL in Unicode characters only if its language matches the user’s Google interface language. In all other cases, it’ll be shown in Punycode.

Remember that all of our AdWords policies regarding display and destination URLs still apply. In particular, the domain of the display and destination URLs must match, so if you use non-ASCII characters in the display URL, make sure to do the same in the destination URL.

Additionally, if you include multi-byte characters, please note that the character limits may vary. For more information, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

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Introducing phone support for AdWords advertisers in Europe

Back in April we announced that we were introducing telephone support for all of US and Canadian AdWords customers. We said then that we would roll out this support to advertisers in other countries. Today, I am happy to announce that we have added Europe to our list.



Our European-based AdWords customers will now be able to speak to a local-language AdWords specialist on one of the following numbers. Please note that local telephone charges may apply unless otherwise stated:

• UK - 0845 358 0038
• Ireland - 1890 907 106
• Austria - 0810 1025 1509
• Poland - (00)8004411830 (toll free)
• Germany - 0180 111 1134
• Spain - 901 010 016
• Italy - 840 320 106
• France - 0811 650 221
• Switzerland - 0848 560 155
• Netherlands - 0900 0400 898
• Belgium - 0703 59 959

These numbers are 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.



Posted by John Herlihy, Vice President - Advertising Operations



*Update: UK and Ireland numbers updated 8/17

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‘Top vs. Side’ Ad Performance Segmentation

A few months ago, our Chief Economist, Hal Varian, wrote a post about understanding the average position metric. As Hal explained, there is a big difference between when your ad appears in position #1 above the search results and when your ad appears in position #1 on the side. Quoting Hal, “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.”

Given this “important distinction,” we are excited to announce the new “Top vs. side” AdWords report segment.

Starting this week, you can use the “Top vs. side” report segment to see how your ads perform above and to the side of Google search results. Armed with this new information, you can better optimize your search campaigns by more deeply examining the relationship between your ads’ locations and their clicks and conversions. And brand advertisers can now get better visibility into when and where their critical brand terms are triggering ads above search results.

(click for full-size image)

How to view your “Top vs. side” data

To segment your performance data by where your ads appeared on Google and Search Partner search results pages, you simply need to add the “Top vs. Side” segment to your data table. Here’s how:

1. Select the Campaign, Ad groups, Ads or Keywords tab of your AdWords account.
2. Click the Segment button in the toolbar above your data table.
3. Select Top vs. side from the drop-down. Results will appear in rows beneath each of your ads.

Visit the AdWords Help Center to learn more about top ad position reporting and increasing your top ad impressions.

Posted by Andrew Truong, Inside AdWords crew

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Google Display Network: Announcing changes to campaign settings

This week we're making a minor change to the way Google Display Network campaign settings work. This change will affect campaigns that meet these criteria:

• Are opted in to the Google Display Network
• Are targeting only keywords in at least one ad group
• Have the campaign setting "Relevant pages only on placements, audiences, and topics I manage"

Background

When you set up a Google Display Network campaign, you have two options to choose from:

• (1) Relevant pages across the entire network
• (2) Relevant pages only on placements, audiences, and topics I manage

With option (1), Google automatically places your ad on relevant webpages based on the keywords in your campaign. With option (2), you have greater control over where your ad appears: your ads show on relevant webpages only within specified placements, audiences, or topics.

Currently, if you choose option (2) and only add keywords, your ads aren't eligible to appear. As a result, you receive zero impressions in those ad groups on the Google Display Network.

For example, say that you're selling tennis shoes and using the keywords "sports shoes," "tennis shoes," and "sneakers”. If you're only opted into the Display Network and you've selected "Relevant pages only on placements, audiences, and topics I manage" as your setting, your ads will only appear on specified placements, audiences, or topics. Because you aren’t using any topics, placements, or audiences, your ads won't appear on the Google Display Network.

What's changing?

With the upcoming change, ads with this type of setting conflict will start appearing on relevant pages across the entire Google Network based on your keywords. In the previous example, ads would show on pages about "sports shoes," "tennis shoes," and "sneakers" on the Google Display Network.

If you add a placement, audience, or topic, your ad will continue to appear only on relevant pages within that placement, audience, or topic.

Important: No changes are needed to existing ad groups, as those that meet these criteria will be prevented from appearing on relevant pages across the entire network.

To make these campaign settings clearer, we are also renaming the settings.

We're changing these two options to:

• (1) Show ads on pages that match the broadest targeting method
• (2) Show ads only on pages that match all selected targeting methods

Before	After
“Relevant pages across the entire network”	“Show ads on pages that match the broadest targeting method”
“Relevant pages only on placements, audiences, and topics I manage”	“Show ads only on pages that match all selected targeting methods”

For more information on how to use our campaign settings and targeting methods to control where your ads appear, visit the help center.

Posted by Andrew Truong, Inside AdWords crew

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New: Tablet targeting options now available

In May, we let you know that tablet targeting options would be coming soon. We're excited to announce that tablet targeting is now available to all advertisers. Tablet targeting is a new AdWords campaign targeting option that gives you more precise control to effectively reach the growing number of tablet users.

You can find the new Tablets with full browsers targeting option under the Networks and devices section of the Settings tab within your AdWords account. While in the past you were able to specifically target Apple iPad devices under Mobile devices, the new tablet targeting option elevates the tablet to its own device category and enables you to target your ads to all tablet devices. In addition, the new tablet targeting option allows you to select specific tablet operating systems to target. For example, to display your ads on only the Apple iPad, you would choose Tablets with full browsers as your device targeting setting and iOS as your operating system setting.

(click for full-size image)

With this launch, your ads will automatically start running on tablet devices, and no further action will be necessary on your part. If your campaigns were specifically targeting Apple iPad devices, you may notice an increase in impressions and costs as we include more tablets in our ad serving options. If you don’t want your ads to appear on tablets, you can change your tablet targeting settings by following these step-by-step instructions.

With more than 165 million tablets expected to ship over the next two years, we believe that the strong growth of tablet usage will provide significant opportunity for marketers to connect with consumers in more powerful and relevant ways. We hope this new tablet targeting option helps you better capture this opportunity.

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Product Manager, Mobile Ads

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The Zero Moment of Truth: A New Marketing Strategy

Once upon a time, marketers believed that shoppers made up their mind about a product in about the time it takes to read this sentence.

The three to seven seconds a shopper considered a product on a store shelf was believed to be a critical moment—what P&G termed the “First Moment of Truth” or FMOT ("eff-mot"). This was the moment when all the advertising a consumer had seen for a brand would either pay off with a purchase or not.

Since then, FMOT has become one of those terms, like “tipping point” and “purple cow,” that changes the way marketers think. FMOT is one of three widely accepted “moments of truth” for a product—the other two being when the consumer sees an ad for the product (the stimulus) and when she uses it for the first time (the experience).

These concepts still hold true today and may be even more relevant given the continued emergence of strong store brands. But thanks to the web, we’re seeing the rise of an additional class of critical brand interactions: the Zero Moment of Truth or ZMOT ("zee-mot"), which occurs after the consumer sees an ad for a product, but before a purchase is made in store. More precisely, it's the moment when a shopper goes online to research a product and decides whether to make a purchase.

We're seeing growth in everything from queries for reviews and coupon redemption to mobile usage, strongly indicating that this phenomenon is real. But what we wondered is, what does this phenomenon mean for marketers? To find out, we spent a lot of time talking to industry experts and leading marketers and conducting primary market research to learn as much as we could about ZMOT.

Now, we’re excited to drive industry discussions and pass our findings on to marketers in a new free ebook, Winning the Zero Moment of Truth.

In it, we explore:

- Typical ZMOT moments that happen every day

- Why marketers should consider ZMOT as important as “the ad” and “the shelf”

- Seven steps to winning at ZMOT, including exercises to identify relevant moments for your brand

If you’re interested in learning more about the consumer behavior that’s changing the way marketers think about branding and online commerce, I invite you to download Google’s free marketing strategy ebook Winning the Zero Moment of Truth. And I encourage you to join the conversation (and check out the enhanced video version of the book) at www.zeromomentoftruth.com (#zmot). I hope that you enjoy our work and that it helps you navigate your own moments of truth.

Posted by Jim Lecinski, Author and Chief ZMOT Evangelist, Google

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