Engagement Ads for Everyone

Which newbie already has 1,000 daily campaigns running from 44 of the top AdAge 100 brands including Kate Spade, Audi, and Under Amour? Engagement Ads on the Google Display Network let advertisers connect with consumers across the web with visually rich, immersive experiences – and advertisers only pay when someone chooses to engage with their ad. And for some early stocking stuffers we’re bringing you these creative new formats across all screens, in a shoppable format, and with a simplified set up.

Engagement Ads go Multi-Screen
“We want consumers to have the same experience with our brand, whether they're connecting with us from their laptop at work or their tablet from home,” says Kim Kyaw at Jaguar Land Rover North America. “Being able to run a consistent campaign across devices is essential, and we've found the cost-per-engagement pricing to be very effective.”

Land Rover's Driven Campaign

Mobile Device

Lisa Brewer, Director of Audience Development, PEOPLE Digital, agrees. “We were able to strategically showcase our content in a format designed for cross-platform engagement, ensuring we delivered content wherever our users wanted to consume it, helping us have our most streamed Sexiest Man Alive reveal to date.”

PEOPLE's 2013 Sexiest Man Alive 

Tablet

Engagement Ads go Shoppable
Tis the season for shopping, and the “collection lightbox” format lets marketers showcase a number of items that shoppers can click and purchase, right from within the ad unit.

Engagement Ads go Easy 
We’ve also made it easier than ever to set up and run a new Engagement Ads campaign, with a simple workflow and user interface. The new self-service feature gives you the chance to take more control of your ad campaign, so you can get started telling your brand’s story right away.

Set yourself up for a jolly 2014 by learning more about Engagement Ads.

Posted by James Beser, Group Product Manager

Read More

Redefining "Advertising": How 2013 Transformed Digital Marketing

It was a great year for digital advertising. New technologies took off, helping brands, agencies and publishers reach today’s constantly connected consumers more easily and effectively than ever before. With budgets no longer being siloed, 20% of organizations incorporated digital into each marketing function, per a study by Adobe.

We compiled a few of the bigger changes in marketing and digital advertising in 2013, to see how far the industry has come along. View the full infographic here or see a brief summary below.

Redefining “creative”
New creative formats took center stage in 2013. Marketers invested more in social media and TrueView skippable video ad formats continued to grow on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

Redefining “integrated”
The new 360 media plan cannot overlook digital and the sheer number of screens people interact with. In 2012, Google released some research indicating that people use 3 screen combinations a day. In 2013, this manifested itself in the form of increased investments in multi-screen campaigns.

Redefining “buying”
New(Up)fronts. Programmatic. 2013 changed the way digital media spend is committed.18 digital media companies presented at the Digital Content NewFronts. And programmatic buying gained significant traction with an expected ~74% growth, according to eMarketer. As brands took to programmatic and with the growth of programmatic video, CPMs on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange increased, and Preferred Deal impressions grew 250%. DoubleClick Bid Manager powered social media ads, joined FBX.

Redefining “success”
Earlier this year, AdAge released some research indicating that 50% of display ads are not viewed, making advertising viewability a hot industry topic. Google’s viewability measurement solution, ActiveView, got MRC-accredited. Last week, Google announced that it would enable viewability-based buys on the Google Display Network. Engagement Rate was another hot metric in 2013, with Cost per Engagement pay models enabled for ad formats like Engagement Ads on the Google Display Network.

View the full infographic here.

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

Read More

Just in time for the holidays — viewability across the Google Display Network

Even the jingliest, jolliest ad of the season can’t work its magic unless it gets seen. That has been the driving force behind a number of investments we’ve been making over the past year to make viewability (or whether an ad is actually visible on a page) a core part of our products. Offering improved insights, transparency and actionability, viewability is key for brand advertisers to get the most out of the web.

Today, we’re taking an important step towards this goal by making it possible to buy based on viewability — in real time — across the more than two million sites in the Google Display Network. Viewability was already available for reservations buys on the Google Display Network, now this solution is available in the auction on a CPM basis globally as well, across desktop, mobile and tablet.  In other words, you can now choose to pay for ONLY those impressions where your ad has a chance to be seen.

This new buying option is based on Active View, our MRC-accredited viewability measurement solution. Through an algorithmic review of publisher sites, our systems will show ads only in ad slots most likely to be viewable, and you only pay for the ones measured as viewable according to the IAB/3MS standard: 50% of the ad visible on the page for one second or longer. You will also see a report of how many viewable impressions you received for any given campaign, which can help make future campaigns even more effective.

As we’ve said before, making viewability a basis for buying, selling and measuring media can help transform the digital marketplace. With access to more meaningful metrics, brand advertisers can unleash their most creative campaigns, knowing they’ll have a chance to shine. And publishers will be able to more fairly value all of their inventory, not just those spots considered “above-the-fold.” We’ll continue to work with our partners in the months to come to make this a reality, and to ensure that every ad has a chance for its holiday wish to come true.

For more information, check out the help center to get started.

Posted by James Beser, Group Product Manager

Read More

Understanding Impact with Earned Actions in AdWords for video

For many video advertisers, the benefit of TrueView only begins with the first view. Just as an Honest Trailers link pinged to a friend can lead to several other video views, we see this viewership pattern with paid ad views as well – the initial view can catalyze a long chain of engagement with a brand.

Since these earned views are a major benefit of advertising on YouTube and the Google Display Network, we’re bringing new capabilities to AdWords for video to help you better measure viewer actions following your video ads. Formerly known as Follow-on Actions, these new reporting columns will show your Earned views, Earned view rate, Earned subscribers, Earned playlist additions, Earned likes and Earned shares, with additional columns rolling out over the next few weeks. So if you're an advertiser, you can see how many people stayed on your channel to watch more videos, subscribed to your channel, added your video to a playlist, or shared your video with a friend after watching a TrueView ad.

From looking at the last six months, we’ve seen over 6,000 campaigns generate at least one earned view as a result of every two paid views. And we know the YouTube audience isn’t shy about sharing brand content: 3 in 4 YouTube users agree “If there is a brand I love, I tend to tell everyone about it.” (Source: YouTube Insights Oct 2013)

Check out this video to see how Earned Action reporting helps you better understand the impact of your video advertising:

We have also simplified the Account Linking flow to make it easier to join an AdWords for video account with a YouTube channel and see the effect of TrueView advertising on growing your audience, through Earned subscribers and Earned shares.

So link your AdWords for video account with your YouTube channel, and take advantage of these new reporting columns today.

Posted by Luke Segars, Product Manager, YouTube Ad Effectiveness

Read More

3 Ways to Measure More Conversions Using Estimated Total Conversions

In October, we announced Estimated Total Conversions as a first step to providing you with a more holistic view of the conversions driven by AdWords. It is available to all advertisers who use AdWords conversion tracking. Estimated Total Conversions includes conversions you see today, such as online sales, as well as new conversion types like cross-device conversions and calls. Learn more

These insights are particularly important to understand because consumers are now constantly connected, using multiple devices throughout the day. In the next few weeks, this will be even more pronounced as people shop for holiday gifts. A recent holiday study shows that 84% of consumers who are likely to use a mobile or tablet device while shopping this holiday season, will start shopping on one device and finish on another.

We’re making it easier for advertisers to understand these consumer behaviors with new insights that are part of Estimated Total Conversions, a new column in AdWords.

Estimated Total Conversions includes cross-device conversions, which are also shown in a separate column to highlight their importance.

3 ways to use Estimated Total Conversions to improve business results

1. Take another look at your desktop/tablet bid. Once you see more conversions that can be attributed to AdWords, your total ROI from AdWords will change. Re-calculate your desktop/tablet cost-per-acquisition (CPA) based on these cross-device conversions. If your CPA has improved using this measure, you might want to look for opportunities where you may be able to increase position and volume by increasing your bids.

2. Capture the full value of mobile.  Many experienced search marketers are already using this data to make business decisions, by starting a test on campaigns that previously did not show on mobile.  Within a few weeks of showing ads on mobile devices, these advertisers started to see conversions they could not before -- those that started on a mobile phone and ended on another device. These insights led to important business decisions like adjusting mobile bids or shifting budget to reflect the new ROI of their keywords.

Amber Yeray, Digital Marketing Manager at EXPRESS, a national fashion retailer, has been working with her agency partner, RKG, to understand the new insights offered by Estimated Total Conversions.

“Cross-device conversions have shown that total estimated conversions are up 7%, with a 17% lift from mobile-initiated conversions. EXPRESS and search marketing agency partner, RKG, are now able to increase mobile bids for areas of the account that show the most impact from mobile -- driving more volume while remaining efficient.”

3. Spend only the most profitable dollar. The total value of your AdWords investment might change once you’re able to see more conversions. Whether it’s AdWords, other digital channels or offline media, think about investing your dollar into the most profitable channel possible.

Estimated Total Conversions provides new insights that may help you optimize bids and budgets to improve performance. Amit Shah, Vice President of Online, Mobile & Social at 1-800-Flowers, used the new insights that he gained to make more informed budget allocation decisions.

“After measuring cross-device conversions that began on a mobile device, we saw a 4% increase in total conversions measured in AdWords. With the full view offered by Estimated Total Conversions, we can correctly understand attribution across channels and make better decisions on achieving marginal spend optimization.”

These are just a few of the tips that we will continue to share as we hear feedback from you. Check out these best practices along with a walkthrough of Estimated Total Conversions in a recent webinar we hosted.

Posted by Jason Spero, Director of Global Performance Solutions

Read More

Boost Your CTR for the Holidays by Picking Your Best Creative

Testing is a great thing, but it’s also important to know when and how to pick a winner and reap the benefits of your hard work.

Choose strategic moments to remove your worse performing ads and apply the lessons that you’ve learned.  There are times, such as the holiday shopping season when user search interest reaches its peak, when it’s in your best interest to run with your best performing creative.

Testing sacrifices some short term efficiency to ultimately improve your account in the long run.  For that reason, there is an opportunity cost to leaving your tests running longer than they need to.  Take a look at this example:

Ad A and Ad B have minor differences in performance, but Ad A still generates two more leads at a cheaper rate.  Here’s what the account would look like running Ad A all by itself:
Even with the small differences in the example, there is a tangible benefit to reallocating your impressions to the absolute best creative.  Imagine what could happen if all of those impressions in your account (where the differences in CPC, CTR and conversion rate might be much bigger than this example) are going to the best possible creative.

There are a number of different processes that you can follow (depending on your rotation settings) to get your best ads to show for those valuable holiday impressions.

If your campaign is using auto-optimization, we’ll automatically bias impressions toward the ads that are statistically likely to perform better.  While poorly performing ads are already being shown infrequently, it might also be time to cut out the fat.

Starting with your highest volume ad groups, identify the worst performing ads and delete them.  You’ll be able to spot them quickly based on relatively poor performance and low impressions compared to the top performers in their ad group.

If your ads are set to rotate evenly (or indefinitely), start with high volume ad groups where ads have had enough impressions with which you can confidently make a decision.

When manually optimizing, you’ll have to decide which metric is most important to you.  Consider creating your own metrics, such as conversions/thousand impressions or revenue/thousand impressions.

As your tests are concluded, don’t restart them during your heavy season.  Let your top ads shine throughout your peak season, but keep track of ad groups that are no longer testing (via labels) so that you can easily restart your tests once things settle down.

Two things to remember for either of these processes:

1. Make sure to look at your mobile-preferred ads separately from your desktop ads, as these will likely perform differently than their desktop counterparts. 
2. It's possible that certain keywords within an ad group perform best with ads other than the top performer. This might happen in an ad group comprised of disparately themed keywords (check your new-and-improved opportunities tab for places this may be happening in your account). You can see the performance of each ad against each keyword by segmenting your ad report by keyword. One solution might be to separate such keywords into their own ad group, so they can serve against the ad with which they perform the best.

What if your ad tests don’t have enough data?

This happens all the time, particularly with smaller ad groups and campaigns.  You’ll have three options to end these tests:

Directional: Pick the ad that is in the lead at this moment.  It couldn’t pass through any peer-reviewed scientific journals, but you’re still basing your decision on recent performance.

Referential: Look for trends in messaging within your high volume ad groups.  If it’s the same basic test across both ad groups (i.e. one main benefit against another), you can reasonably infer that the ads will perform similarly.  Ensure that whatever significant tests you refer to are similar enough to make sense.  You wouldn’t want your successful messaging about shoes to decide how you’ll sell vacation plans.  Boots, however, could potentially apply the lessons from shoe ads.

Indeterminate: Continue to wait until your tests get more information, possibly enabling auto-optimization for your ads.  Not acting is a defensible decision, but it won’t improve your performance immediately.  Low volume ad groups are almost always going to continue being low volume, so the sooner you get comfortable making decisions with limited information on those ad groups, the sooner you could start to see performance improve.

Whichever route you decide to take, you should still end up with two ads in each of your ad groups - one for desktop and one for mobile-preferred.

If you’re merely pausing your ads (since you don’t have enough traffic yet), make sure that you’re labelling them intelligently and clearly so that tests can be resumed once the time is right.

Ending tests doesn’t mean you’re against testing.  Testing is a great thing that leads to a healthy account and a well-informed, data-driven advertiser.  Ending a test is a little like pushing your car into the red - you do it when you need to, but if you do it all the time you’re going to eventually stall out.

This holiday season, treat your account right by cleaning out your low performing ad copy.  Then, when things slow down and you have a nice, clean account to work with, you can restart your testing with something new from our Creatives That Clicks whitepaper.

Posted by Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing

Read More

Google Partners Goes Global: Empowering agencies with new leads, new tools, new opportunities

Google is committed to making the web work for you. That’s why we’re proud to announce the worldwide launch of Google Partners – a platform for the digital marketing community that helps businesses and agencies grow and thrive together.

Google Partners replaces Agency Edge, Google Certification Program, and Engage for Agencies by taking the best they had to offer and adding a new suite of powerful resources – all in a cleaner, simpler interface. And it allows you to build a closer relationship with your clients.

With Google Partners, you can:

• Earn leads: Connect with potential clients through Google Partner Search
• Get certified: Take certification exams – for free – on an improved, more intuitive platform
• Learn and develop: Gain insights tailored to your agency and its needs
• Use offers: Receive offers that you can use to introduce clients to AdWords
• Demonstrate credibility: Distinguish yourself in the marketplace by earning the Google Partner badge

Google Partners isn’t simply a new platform – it’s a better platform.

And it’s one that rewards your hard work by helping your business grow. By demonstrating that you’ve mastered best practices, you can earn the Google Partner badge – proof that we trust you and your clients should, too. We’ll provide you with customized tips every step of the way, so your company can get the badge and both you and your clients can shine. Because that’s how true partnership works.

To join Google Partners, please visit www.google.com/partners 

Posted by the Google Partners Team

Read More

Making a List, Checking It Twice: The Essential Paid Search Holiday Checklist

The holiday season is about giving.  And, of course, buying.  You know this, and your holiday paid search plan is almost definitely in place by now - but is there anything that could have slipped through the cracks?  We want to help you get every drop of retail goodness out of the busy weeks ahead, so we put together this checklist to ensure that your plan accounts for everything it should.

Download the Essential Paid Search Holiday Checklist

Does your plan account for all of those little things that may get overlooked?

• Efficient communication with your team
• Driving performance with the right strategies and messaging
• Contingency plans if things don’t go as you imagined they would

Regardless of what your account and account team looks like, it’s never a bad idea to double check that the pieces to your master plan are all in place.

With every day during the holiday season being critically important, decisions can get magnified.  So make the right decisions and amplify your success.  Download the Essential Paid Search Holiday Checklist today.  Your team (and your account) can thank you once things settle down after the Last Day to Ship Before Christmas has come and gone.

Posted by Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing

Read More

Google Trusted Stores expands and connects with AdWords

The holiday season is a time of the year when many of us spend hours finding the perfect gifts. It’s also a time when knowing that an online retailer is trustworthy is more important than ever. That’s where Google Trusted Stores comes in - we’re spreading holiday cheer by helping people find the best online stores and shop with confidence.

Google Trusted Stores is a free certification program to highlight retailers that offer a consistently great shopping experience. Qualifying merchants display a badge on their website, and Google stands behind these stores by offering $1,000 of free purchase protection. Since we introduced the program last year, we’ve been working hard to expand it, including launching a new integration with seller ratings on AdWords, updating the badge with more helpful information for shoppers, and broadening store participation around the world.

Shopper feedback powering seller ratings

Google Trusted Stores now helps to power seller ratings, which show on AdWords text ads as well as Product Listing Ads on Google Shopping. This integration provides shoppers with valuable information, while giving participating retailers a free and easy way to earn the ratings they deserve. Advertisers who display seller ratings on their ads typically see a boost in AdWords click-through rates, with higher ratings generally resulting in higher click-through rates.

Providing helpful information at shoppers’ fingertips

In the US, Google Trusted Stores now provides shoppers with an upgraded store performance summary that appears when they hover over the badge on a merchant’s website. The summary includes helpful returns, delivery, and customer support responsiveness metrics provided by StellaService, a company that objectively measures the customer service experience by shopping anonymously at online stores.

More confident shoppers fueling global expansion
Millions of people now see the Google Trusted Stores badge on retailer sites and in Google ads every day. In fact, we’ve more than tripled US store participation in the last year. Because shoppers value the badge, many of these stores are seeing sales growth. For instance, OnlineShoes measured a 4.2% sales increase from the Google Trusted Stores badge, and AutoAnything saw an increase of 5.2%.

Given the great shopper and retailer response in the US, we’ve started to expand Google Trusted Stores around the world. We recently introduced pilot programs in the UK, France, Germany, and Australia, each with a collection of excellent merchants such as Schuh (UK), Spartoo.com (France), PEARL (Germany), and Kogan (Australia). (Note - only shoppers located in a particular country will see the badge for that country.)

Learn more 
To learn more about the program, please visit our website. If you’re a US retailer, you can apply to become a Google Trusted Store. If you are a retailer outside the US, please let us know you’re interested here: UK, France, Germany, Australia.

Happy Holidays and Happy Shopping!

Posted by Brian Marquardt, Group Product Manager, Google Shopping 

Read More

Better browsing, shortlists and 360° images on Google Shopping

With 89% of consumers planning to use the internet to help with holiday shopping this year, our elves have been hard at work improving Google Shopping to help them discover your products and connect with your store.

A new shopping experience on desktop, tablet and mobile
It’s easier than ever for users to browse and hone in on items they want to buy like cameras, ski jackets, and ice cream makers. They can quickly preview details like sizes, colors, description, and even if it’s available at a nearby local store. “Visually similar” results give shoppers suggestions if they’ve found something that’s almost perfect but not quite. Make sure your products shine by following our holiday tips.

Get on people’s shortlists
Shortlists help people keep track of products that catch their eye, compare them at a glance, and share ideas with friends and family. Shortlists now also stay at the top of the page while someone is browsing Google Shopping, so she can cross off items on her shopping list as she goes. When people add products to their shortlists, photos, price and detailed information are automatically saved, too -- so make sure your product feed is up-to-date and has all the necessary information that makes it easy for them to choose your store when they’re ready to buy.

360° views for more products
Sometimes it’s hard to imagine what an item actually looks like from the online picture. Now, for many items on Google Shopping, users can see a 360° view of the products. These interactive images bring users the in-store feeling of holding and touching a product. If you’re manufacturer or brand interested in displaying these rich images of your products on Google Shopping, please fill out this form.

We will continue to improve Google Shopping to help retailers of all sizes reach more customers not just during the holiday season, but all year long.

Posted by Karen Corby, Senior Product Manager, Google Shopping

Read More

The increasing importance of a mobile-optimized experience

We're squarely in a multi-screen world and people are using smartphones to search, shop and get things done more often than ever. That means delivering a great experience on mobile devices is increasingly important, since it affects organic visibility, Quality Score, ad position and cost, sales, and customer loyalty.

The mobile experience matters
Recent research conducted with Nielsen shows that 48% of mobile consumers start their purchase journey with paid and organic search results. With mobile ads, the quality of your mobile landing page experience directly affects how your ad ranks (including whether it's seen at all) and what you'll pay per click. Mobile site experience factors can also directly affect your organic search rankings.

Getting more mobile traffic and lower CPCs is great. But after the click, your mobile landing page experience is even more important for converting visits into sales and building customer loyalty. According to 2012 research on what users want most from mobile sites, 67% of consumers say that a mobile friendly site makes them more likely to buy, and 74% say they're more likely to return to that site in the future.

The experience of ProFlowers, a major US-based fresh flower retailer, confirms the benefits of offering a great experience on smaller screens. After launching its mobile-optimized site, Proflowers saw its conversion rate increase by 20-30%. It has also seen mobile contributing more to conversions that occur on other devices.

“Many users check us out on mobile, and then convert on our [traditional desktop] site... Regardless of where the final sale comes from, staying ahead in mobile is an invaluable part of our successful marketing and customer relationship strategies.”

- Leif Heikkila, senior director of online marketing, ProFlowers

Resources for making your site more mobile-friendly 
We think every business can succeed at providing a great mobile experience. Here are some resources to help:

• Visit our new multi-screen home for resources and partners to help optimize your site for multiple screens. It's rich with web developer resources like the PageSpeed tool that analyzes your web site to provide code-level feedback on how to improve load times for a better mobile experience. 
• You'll find more information on how to make sure your website is well indexed and mobile-friendly in our Google Developers site for webmasters.
• For best practices and inspiring examples of winning mobile marketing strategies, please check out our recently updated Mobile Playbook. 

Posted by Adam Juda, Director of Ads Quality

Read More

Smart Strategies for Multi-Screen Sites

Consumers today are ready to connect with you all day long on screens of all types. But is your website ready to serve those customers on small screens as well as on tablets and desktops?

Mobile screens are where it often gets tricky for business owners: How do I design for smartphones? What's the right technology? What are the big mistakes to avoid?

That's why we've created a new Multi-Screen Resources page. This site is loaded with help for anyone who wants to reach their customers on all kinds of devices. Resources include:

• Any Place, Any Time, Any Device: Building Websites for the Multi-Screen Consumer. Download this new guide for a close look at the pros and cons of common mobile website configurations. You'll find tips and best practices for improving the layout, content and speed of your mobile site. This white paper will help you build a great experience for all your users. 

• Approved vendors. Find a list of website vendors who can help you design a site, build a site, tweak strategies and go multi-screen fast.

• Success stories from others. Read how the Huffington Post boosted mobile visits by 37%, or how Beyond the Rack created a mobile site that now accounts for 44% of their sales.

• Tools that work. Try the PageSpeed Insights tool — it can help boost your site performance.

Get ready to delight your mobile and multi-screen users: visit the Multi-Screen Resources site today.

Also, don't miss Building Multi-Screen Websites — our upcoming webinar on Tuesday, November 19th, at 1:00 EST.

Posted by Nabil Haschemie, Product Marketing Manager

Read More

Text Ads and PLAs: A Winning Combination

Can shoppers find you in today’s crowded “digital shelf”? This question is particularly vital now, as four out of five shoppers consider the internet the single most useful resource for their holiday shopping. We conducted a recent study with Millward Brown Digital that suggests that consumers engage more with (and buy more from) brands and retailers who display both a Product Listing Ad (PLA) and a text ad than those who only show text ads. PLAs show photos of your products, along with prices and product names, right on the search results page when people search for items like yours on Google.

From this study, we learned that PLAs can:

• Increase brand recognition: People who see a brand’s PLAs and text ads are 75% more likely to search for that brand within 30 days than those who only saw text ads.
• Drive more engagement with your store: People who see both text ads and PLAs are 90% more likely to visit the retailer’s website. They are also more likely to visit product pages, add items to their cart, and click on store locator buttons.
• Drive more conversions: People who see both text ads and PLAs are 83% more likely to make a purchase than those who only saw text ads. 

Learn more on the infographic below:

Our research focused mainly on technology shoppers, but the positive results of PLAs and text ads apply to other shoppers as well. For major apparel retailers who sell their own brands, for example, our study suggests that shoppers are 70% more likely to click on the store locator and 42% more likely to visit a product page when exposed to PLAs and text ads.

Using PLA and Text ads helped Nine West gain visibility
Nine West is a great example of a retailer that combined PLAs and text ads to win the digital shelf. They worked with marketing agency RKG to develop a strategic approach to expanding their PLAs across devices alongside their text ads. Nine West’s conversion rate rose 8% and revenue rose 14% with the addition of the PLA campaign, which suggests that the PLAs drove plenty of incremental conversions. Likewise, the mobile conversion rate rose 3% when text and PLAs were combined, and mobile revenue rose 5%. Read the full case study.

Posted by Erica Sievert, Product Marketing Manager, Google Shopping

Read More

Introducing the new Opportunities tab: find more ways to improve your AdWords performance

We launched the Opportunities tab in 2009 as your personal AdWords assistant, surfacing insights to help you improve your performance in AdWords. Today we’re announcing the new Opportunities tab. We've added several new opportunity types and made each easier to understand. Now the Opportunities tab is even better at answering the question, “What else can I do to improve my performance in AdWords?”

The new Opportunities tab

New high-impact opportunities

We've added several new opportunity types for more ways to improve your performance.

• Convert more customers in your best locations: If your conversion rate differs across locations, you might see opportunities to increase your location bid adjustment where your conversion rate is high, or decrease your location bid adjustments where your conversion rate is low. 
• Get more out of your existing budget: If you’re maxing out your budget, you might see opportunities to lower your bids to capture more clicks.
• Be there more often than competitors: If your ads are being seen less frequently than other advertisers competing for the same traffic, you might see opportunities to be seen more frequently with bids to show more often than advertisers like you.
• Show ads that are more relevant: If we spot an ad group with keywords related to lots of different themes, it's harder for you to show a highly relevant ad, so you might see opportunities to create new ad groups from existing keywords.
• Reach more customers on closely related searches: If you're missing clicks on searches that are very similar to your existing keywords, you might see opportunities to broaden your keyword match types.
• Be seen on the first page: If your ads are showing below the first page when users search on high-quality keywords, you might see opportunities to raise your bids to show ads on the first page. 

Pick your best opportunities

A totally new design makes it easier to decide which opportunities to implement. For each opportunity, you'll see a short summary under "What you can do” and the possible impact under “What you might get each week.” The opportunities you’ll see are tailored to your account and selected based on their possible impact to your performance.

More opportunities are just around the corner

Check the Opportunities tab often. Whether you optimize your campaign once a day or once a month, it's constantly working in the background to spot opportunities for you to improve. And we’ll be adding even more opportunity types over time.

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

Posted by Deepti Bhatnagar, Product Manager, AdWords

Read More

Say Hello to Calls as Conversions in AdWords

Recent research shows that 70% of mobile searchers have called a business directly from search results and that over 40 million calls from Google ads are made each month to advertisers around the world. It’s clear that calls are important to businesses -- and we want to help you measure them in AdWords.

We announced on October 1st that phone calls would soon be added as an important conversion type as part of AdWords. Starting today, phone calls from mobile click-to-call ads will be added to the regular Conversion columns, which enable them to be used with automated bidding solutions like Conversion Optimizer. These mobile call conversions are available in countries where Google forwarding numbers are available.¹  In addition, calls made by customers from your mobile and desktop ads will be counted in your “Estimated Total Conversions,” a new column you can use to measure the full value you're getting from AdWords.

Calls as conversions are counted based on the aggregate number of calls generated by your ads and the duration of the phone calls. This is the same type of reporting that we have been providing on calls for several years.

Success with calls as conversions in AdWords

Businesses using AdWords have found that adding  phone numbers to their ads is an important way to connect with customers and drive incremental sales. Learn more.

Room & Board, a home furnishings retailer, uses call extensions and call conversions to track interest in their brand:

”Since we have implemented call extensions, we have seen nearly 30% of our total conversions come from phone calls. We want our customers to connect with us in the way they prefer. Call extensions and call conversions give us that ability and allow us to measure results at the same time."

Improve your performance with automated bidding

Previously, calls were counted in their own column called “Phone Call Conversions.” Now, call conversions from mobile ads are counted in the regular Conversion columns, so you can use free automated bidding tools like Target CPA to improve performance and save time.

Understand the full value of your advertising

Online ads can help drive conversions beyond a purchase made directly on your website. Adding calls to the Estimated Total Conversions column gives you a more holistic view of how your keywords drive those conversions, so you can set bids and budgets that more fully reflect the value you're getting from AdWords.

For a more in-depth product walkthrough of Estimated Total Conversions, calls as conversions, and a review of best practices, join us for a webinar tomorrow, November 13th at 10am PT. You can sign up here.

Posted by Anurag Agrawal, Product Manager, Calls

---

¹ US, UK, Germany, France. Previously, these mobile conversions were in the “Phone Call Conversions” column

Read More

Important Changes to AdWords Terms & Conditions In Europe, the Middle East, and Africa

The following changes apply to customers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa

If you’re using AdWords, you’ve agreed to our Terms and Conditions. These are important so we have a common understanding in basic areas like policy, cancellation, payment, dispute resolution and liability.

With the advancements in our ad platforms and global growth, we need to make a few changes to keep up. So today we’re rolling out a new set of Terms and Conditions to many AdWords customers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

What’s New
One of the main changes you’ll notice in the updated terms is that they accommodate new advertising products and services. For example, we now offer third-party ad serving in some situations, so you’ll see provisions about how we resolve ad serving disputes. Other changes include updated links to our policies and better consistency among our advertising terms globally.

Important Action Needed
You’ll have 45 days to review and accept the new AdWords Terms and Conditions. If you don’t accept them within 45 days, your ad serving may be paused until you’ve reviewed and agreed to them.

To review and accept the new AdWords Terms and Conditions, just sign in to your account at https://adwords.google.com. You’ll automatically be taken to a page with the updated terms and conditions. Then click to indicate your acceptance.

Not seeing the new terms when you sign into your account?
Don’t worry! If you’re not seeing the new terms when you sign into your account, there’s nothing more for you to do right now. Because we’re updating the new terms on a rolling basis, you may be scheduled for a later time. Or your terms may already have been accepted by someone you’ve authorized to act on your behalf (for example, an advertising agency, or someone you’ve authorized to be financially responsible for your accounts).

More Information
We encourage you to read through the updated terms carefully.  For more information about this change to our Terms and Conditions, including a complete list of countries and territories where these changes apply, please visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Mark Martel, the Google Ads Team

Read More

Creative That Clicks: Download Our Guide to Getting Your Ads in Shape

We like to think of advertisements as a conversation between you and your customers.  Whether they’re customers you currently have or customers you’re soon to get, the interaction you have with them on the Google search engine results page is brief but important.

In those crucial moments, successful marketers need to deliver the right message.  Better creatives stand out to users, convey important information about your business and drive more qualified clicks. To that end, we’re excited about sharing our first SEM best practices guide, “Creative That Clicks.”  This new guide, which also features data from Google’s internal research, will help you make your message resonate with potential customers.  Here are some questions it will help you answer:

• Is there really a benefit to including a keyword in your headline?
• Just how big of a lift in CTR can you expect from using ad extensions?
• Are you wasting a big opportunity with your display URLs?
• Does capitalization have an impact on clickthrough rate?
• How can you better identify those places in dire need of a new set of ads?

Download now to find out.

We think that ad copy optimization is important, so this will be the first in a series of content about how you can have a better conversation with your potential customers.  It’ll include even deeper dives into improving your ads, starting with advanced reporting tactics like finding keywords that need new ad groups and determining how many ads to include in your testing.  Extensions are becoming invaluable to your ads, and you should also know how to test and optimize them.  We’re even hosting a webinar on Wednesday, December 11th to touch on the points in this guide and address any questions you may have.

This is the first part of an entirely new track of content that we’ll be putting out on the AdWords blog.  Over the coming months we’ll dive into topics across all of the major SEM levers - account structure, ad optimization, keywords, bids, budgets, conversions and reporting.  We’ll also share timely pieces such as additional advice on holiday planning and how to optimize newly released product features.  All of this content will be focused on helping you and your AdWords accounts reach their full potential.

Posted by Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing

Read More

Google Shopping now available in 8 new countries

Every day, users come to Google to search for products and connect with merchants to make their purchase. We continue to work hard to improve the shopping experience and starting today, users in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Turkey will begin to see Product Listing Ads more frequently on their shopping-related queries. Product Listing Ads are highly relevant ads that include rich product information directly in the ad itself - which may include a product image, price, and merchant name.



Where you’ll see Product Listing Ads in these countries
Product Listing Ads will appear in a single unit on Google search results when we identify that a search query has commercial intent, and when we have enough relevant products to match that user's query. This unit will be labeled as ‘Sponsored’ and will initially occupy space on the right-hand side of the search results page, above text ads.

We look forward to continuing to build delightful shopping experiences for consumers and working closely with merchants around the world.

Posted by Santiago Andrigo, Product Manager, Google Shopping

Read More

Consumers’ Mobile Path to Purchase: 5 key findings

In this constantly connected world, people use their smartphones throughout the day to find information, shop, and stay connected. We commissioned Nielsen to conduct a study of smartphone users who recently made a purchase to better understand the role of mobile in the research and shopping process. Through a combination of surveys and metered data of actual mobile consumer behavior, we uncovered five key findings:

1. Consumers spend time researching on mobile: Consumers spend 15+ hours per week researching on mobile sites and apps. They visit websites 6 times on average in the purchase process.
2. Mobile research begins with search: 48% of consumers start mobile shopping-related research using search engines, more than they start on branded apps or websites.
3. Location proximity matters: 69% of consumers expect a business to be within 5 miles of where they’re located.
4. Purchase immediacy is key: 55% of consumers want to purchase within an hour, 83% within a day.
5. Mobile influences purchases across channels: Of those who made a purchase and researched on their phones, 82% purchased in-store, 45% bought online (desktop/tablet) and 17% purchased on mobile.

With smartphone penetration in the US nearly doubling year-over-year from 31% to 56%¹, it’s clear that the mobile savvy shopper is here to stay.

Key Implications
Below are ways that advertisers can use these insights to better reach the mobile consumer and drive more business:

Ensure you have a mobile-optimized site
Consumers expect a business to have a mobile-friendly website. To create a mobile-optimized experience, you’ll want to start by analyzing how your consumers currently interact with your website, what they’re looking for, where they’re visiting from, etc. These insights will provide hints for creating a mobile website that meets your consumers’ needs. For more information on building sites that are optimized for mobile and other devices, check out these resources.

Tailor your search ads for the mobile shopper
As search is the most common starting point for mobile shopping research, it's important to have mobile ads running so you'll be there when consumers are looking for you. You can help consumers get the information they need by designing your search ads with mobile-preferred creatives, such as “Call now” or “Visit our mobile site.”

Use location extensions so consumers can find you
Location extensions allow you to attach your business address to your ads, which lets consumers know how close they are to your business and provides directions for consumers to get to your store.

Facilitate faster checkouts
Showing local in-stock inventory with local PLAs, enabling click to call and building fast, seamless mobile checkout experiences with tools like Google Wallet Instant Buy are several ways advertisers can help consumers complete their purchases quickly.

Measure conversions across channels with cross-device conversion tracking
Consumers purchase across channels, often times starting their research on mobile, then buying in-store or on their computers. Advertisers can better understand how mobile ads drive purchases by using estimated cross-device conversion to measure conversions that start from mobile research.

To explore more of the findings from the Mobile Path to Purchase research, view the full presentation at the Think with Google site.

Posted by Bao Lam, Performance Ads Product Marketing Manager

---

1 Google & Ipsos Our Mobile Planet, 2011-2013↩

Read More

Select a new, better performing campaign type for acquiring customers on Search and Display

People are always looking to connect with useful information in the moments that matter - whether searching on keywords related to a product or reading highly relevant content on websites beyond search. Starting today we’re offering a new way for advertisers to reach people as they visit Google and sites across the web: Search Network with Display Select.

Search Network with Display Select extends the reach of your search campaigns to the Google Display Network (GDN). The GDN reaches 90% of the global online audience (Comscore September 2013) and includes 2 million publisher sites, like weather.com. Upgrading existing search campaigns to Search Network with Display Select is easy. In a few steps and without extra work, you could gain 15% more customers* by showing your ads at the right moments across search and the web.

How is this different from the old campaign type? 

In addition to extending the reach of search campaigns, this new campaign type offers better results on the display network than the old Search & Display Networks campaign type.

Search Network with Display Select uses improved signals and methods of predicting when and where your ads are likely to perform best, and sets a higher bar for when to show them. That means your ads are more likely to be shown to a smaller number of prospective customers, who are more likely to be interested in your offerings. Compared to the old campaign type, initial tests show that advertisers, on average, could see a 35% higher click-through-rate, and a 35% lower cost-per-customer purchase on the display portion of their Search Network with Display Select campaigns.*

When to use the new Search Network with Display Select campaign type:

1. If you’re running Search Network only campaigns, consider trying this new campaign type for additional high quality traffic with no extra management required. When you enable Search Networks with Display Select, your search ads will be eligible to appear on both Google and pages with relevant keywords across the web. The majority of your campaign will still run on search, with a boost of high-performing placements in display. 
2. If you’re running a Search & Display Networks campaign, consider switching to Search Networks with Display Select for better ROI.*

If you currently run Search and Display campaigns separately, we recommend you keep them separate for greater bidding, budgeting and targeting flexibility.

Upgrading to Search Network with Display Select

Search Network with Display Select is now the best option for advertisers running ads across search and display within a single campaign. So starting today and over the next few weeks, we'll be removing the current Search & Display Networks campaign type in the AdWords interface, and we're encouraging advertisers to switch existing campaigns to Search Network with Display Select. We've created a quick workflow in the AdWords interface that makes switching easy. Step-by-step instructions are also available in the AdWords Help Center. Please visit here to learn more.

Posted by Ahmad Anvari, Product Manager

*Based on initial test results, the average customer could see a 35% higher click-thru-rate and 35% lower CPA on the display portion of their new Search Networks with Display Select campaigns compared to existing Search & Display Networks campaigns.  Based on initial test results, the average customer could also see 10-15% incremental conversions compared with Search Network only campaigns. Individual campaign performance may vary.

Read More

5 Tips for Successful Holiday PLAs on Google Shopping

In a couple of days, it will be November and the holiday rush will be in full swing. With six fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas compared to last year, retailers must make the condensed holiday shopping period count. Here are our top tips for using Product Listing Ads (PLAs) to your advantage this holiday.

Sway undecided shoppers with timely promotions. Gift givers are often in the market for things they don’t normally buy, and according to our recent research, price is the main reason they decide to shop somewhere new. We saw this in action last year, as one in four holiday shoppers purchased from a retailer they had never shopped with before. Including promotional text like free shipping, price discounts, coupons, and purchase incentives in your PLA campaign can help close the deal with shoppers still trying to make up their minds. In fact, one in five say free shipping will be the deciding factor on purchases this year, so make sure your shipping settings in Merchant Center accurately reflect free shipping if you offer it.

Fill in the gaps in your data feed. Great product data powers the most effective PLAs. It helps you win the trust and confidence of active shoppers by letting them know you have exactly what they’re looking for. One of the most worthwhile things you can do is to take a close look at your data feeds and make sure you’re including all the key information that would draw the attention of a potential customer.

Here’s an example of filling in the gaps in your data feed:

Attribute	Before	After
Title	Short Sleeve Solid Dress	NY Collection Short Sleeve Solid Green Dress
Description	Short sleeve solid dress…	The NY Collection short sleeve knee length dress…
Google Product Category	Clothing > Sales	Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Dresses > Cocktail Dresses
Color	Lime	Green
Brand		NY Collection
Gender		Female
Size		6

Keep your data feeds fresh. The holidays are a time for high inventory turnover and price changes, so don’t disappoint potential customers with stale and inaccurate information. Keep your data feed content up-to-date and upload your feed as frequently as needed (up to 4 times per day) to ensure your products have accurate stock statuses, prices, and promotional information. Remember to account a few hours for data feed processing and approvals. 

Build a campaign structure you can maintain through the holiday hustle. Create product targets and bid more aggressively on products with good performance and high demand during the holiday season, such as seasonal items, best sellers, or products with high margins. You should also ensure there is only one All products target with the lowest bid of all your product targets to capture consumer interest in your low priority products.

Maximize your exposure to constantly-connected consumers. People will shop at all hours, across devices this holiday. For example, 84% of shoppers with smartphones actively browse the web while in a store, looking for comparable deals online. At minimum, aim to maximize your visibility on product search results by running both text ads and PLAs. Then focus on incremental gains: ensure your PLAs are showing on mobile devices and increase bids when a consumer is in or near your store, or even while they’re browsing nearby competitors’ offerings. Capitalize on recent improvements in mobile PLAs to increase mobile traffic, and point people to your physical stores with local availability for Product Listing Ads. 

For more tips, watch our videos on Preparing Your Data Feeds for the Holidays, PLA Optimization Essentials and Advanced PLA Optimization Tactics.

Posted by Erica Sievert, Product Marketing Manager, Google Shopping

Read More

Improving Ad Rank to show more relevant ad extensions and formats

When people use Google to research and buy things, they're interested in the most relevant and useful results. Ad extensions help by providing more information to potential customers and additional ways for them to respond. For example, they can call your business number, see your business location on a map, or choose an even more relevant landing page that you're promoting with sitelinks. Ad extensions typically improve clickthrough rate and overall campaign performance because they make ads more useful.

Today, we're announcing improvements in the AdWords auction that let us more consistently show more relevant ad extensions and formats.

Ad Rank improvements

Our system for ordering ads on search results pages uses a calculation called Ad Rank. Previously, Ad Rank was calculated using your max CPC bid and your Quality Score. With this update, Ad Rank will also take into account a third component: the expected impact from your ad extensions and formats. In addition, we've increased the importance of Ad Rank in determining whether your ad is eligible to be displayed with extensions and formats.

Here are some more details and implications of these changes:

• Ad extensions and formats can now influence the position of your ad on the search results page. If two competing ads have the same bid and quality, then the ad with the more positive expected impact from extensions will generally appear in a higher position than the other.
• When estimating the expected impact of extensions and ad formats, we consider such factors as the relevance, clickthrough rates, and the prominence of the extensions or formats on the search results page.
• Because Ad Rank is now more important in determining whether your ad is shown with extensions and formats, you might need to increase your Quality Score, bid, or both for extensions and formats to appear. 
• In each auction, we'll generally show your highest performing and most useful combination of extensions and formats among those eligible. So there's no need to try to guess which extensions will help improve your clickthrough rate the most. 
• You may see lower or higher average CPCs in your account. You may see lower CPCs if your extensions and formats are highly relevant, and we expect a large positive performance impact relative to other competitors in the auction. In other cases, you may see higher CPCs because of an improvement in ad position or increased competition from other ads with a high expected impact from formats.
• For now, this update only affects search ads appearing on Google Search.

We've updated our Help Center articles on topics including ad extensions and how we rank ads to reflect these important changes.

Recommendations for using extensions

Extensions make your ads more useful and can improve your campaign performance. So you should add extensions that make sense for your business type and campaign goals. With these improvements to AdRank, our systems will do even more to automatically serve extensions in the contexts when they're most beneficial.

For example, consider someone downtown searching on a mobile phone for "auto repair." In this example, the user might be most likely to respond to your ad when they can click to call a phone number or tap a link to get directions to visit in person. So we may show a combination of call and location extensions with your mobile search ad.

Now imagine if someone were searching for "auto repair" on a laptop computer in the suburbs. Say your ad earned the 3rd ad position above the organic results in this auction. We might show your seller rating and sitelinks because that's the highest performing and most useful combination of extensions that could be shown with your ad in this particular auction and ad position.

We're always looking for ways to make ads more relevant to a user's intent and context. After months of testing, we're confident that these AdRank changes help achieve that goal by more consistently showing people the most useful combination of extensions and formats.

Posted by Chris Roat, Staff Software Engineer

Read More