Making it easier to discover new features in AdWords

You're busy, and we know it's not always easy to stay on top of every innovation and change in AdWords. To keep you informed about the latest and greatest, we wanted to share how we are making it easier to stay updated on important AdWords improvements and changes with the new look and feel on the Inside AdWords blog.

Product update shortcuts
At the top of this page on the right you will see “Product Updates” written below the search bar. This is your access point for our product and feature announcements going forward.

The first link, Major updates on our blog, is where you will find both in-depth posts on specific releases, as well as posts summarizing all the recent happenings in AdWords on a regular basis. Blog posts related to updates will be tagged with “Updates” to help you find them quickly and easily.

For those of you who want AdWords news in real time, we have added a second link to All updates on Google+, featuring our product and feature changes on the Google Ads Google+ page. Each post will be tagged with #adwords #updates to make them easily identifiable. We encourage you to "follow" this page so updates hit your G+ stream in a timely way.

Blog reader feedback survey
Finally, we would love to get your feedback on our blog to learn more about what you like and expect from it, and what you would like to see us improve. Please complete our short survey to help us provide you with a better experience here on the blog.

Thanks for reading the Inside AdWords blog, and stay tuned for more updates and insights into AdWords.

Posted by Rob Newton, Inside AdWords Crew

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Get more insight into the full customer journey with Cross-account Conversion Tracking and Search Funnels

The path to a purchase for today's online shoppers is rarely straightforward. People interact with a variety of ads along the way.  For example, they may search for your product in the morning at home, then do a more specific search when they get to the office later in the day.

For advertisers, this can make measuring conversions complex. It’s important to see a full picture of your customer’s path to purchase to determine which keywords and ads drive the most conversions.

Over the next few months, we'll be rolling out many new features to give you a clearer picture of your conversions, your customer's path to purchase and your return-on-ad spend (ROAS). Up first on our list of new features are Cross-account Conversion Tracking and Cross-account Search Funnels.

Cross-account Conversion Tracking

If you manage multiple AdWords accounts for your business, you know the work that goes into implementing multiple tags, one for each AdWords account, and merging conversion reports from other tools into AdWords. With Cross-account Conversion Tracking, you can now measure conversions across all your accounts with a single tag and a simple setup.

Cross-account Conversion Tracking helps you:

• Tag your site quickly and easily. Create one snippet of code to use across all of your accounts. This makes it easier and faster to tag your site and may also improve site load time. 
• Get more accurate conversion reporting. A single tag ensures that a conversion is only counted once across your accounts. With the cross-account tag, you’ll see assist conversions for all AdWords clicks leading up to a conversion, not just the clicks within one account. This can provide a holistic view of your advertising, and a better understanding of how keywords work together across accounts to drive conversions. 
• Track new accounts with ease. When you add a new AdWords account to your My Client Center account (MCC), you can enable Conversion Tracking with the check of a box. In addition, you no longer have to re-define all of your conversions when you create a new account. 

To learn how to implement cross-account conversion tracking, read this article from our Help Center. For easier set-up, especially if you’re using tags for other efforts such as remarketing, Google Tag Manager can help you manage all of your tags on your website.

Cross-account Search Funnels

With Cross-account Conversion Tracking, you can use Cross-account Search Funnels reports in your MCC account  to understand your customers’ path to conversion across all of the keywords in all of your accounts.

These reports include:

• Overview report: Learn how consumers interact with all of your ads across all accounts before making decisions.
• Top Conversion Paths report: Know which combinations of keywords across your accounts drive the most conversions.
• Assisted Conversions report: See upper funnel keywords across your accounts that might not be receiving enough value in your attribution measurement.

To learn more about your customer’s interaction with ads across your accounts, read this Help Center article on Search Funnels.

We're excited to offer you these new features, and hope they help make tracking your conversions and optimizing your campaigns easier. The better you understand your customers journey, the better you can serve them. And that's good for business.

Stay tuned for more conversion features coming soon!

Posted by Vishal Goenka, Product Manager, Conversions in AdWords

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Analyze and optimize your search footprint with the new paid & organic report

One of our goals is to provide tools to help you better understand how people searching on Google are connecting with your business. That’s why we provide reports like the Search overview in Google Analytics, Search queries in Webmaster Tools, the AdWords Search terms report and impression share reports.

Today, we’re announcing the addition of the paid & organic report in AdWords, a new report to help you analyze and optimize your search footprint on Google. Previously, most search reports showed paid and organic performance separately, without any insights on user behavior when they overlap. The new paid & organic report is the first to let you see and compare your performance for a query when you have either an ad, an organic listing, or both appearing on the search results page.

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Here are some ways you can use the paid & organic report to measure and optimize your search performance:

• Discover additional keywords. Use the report to discover potential keywords to add to your AdWords accounts by looking for queries where you only appear in organic search with no associated ads.
• Optimize presence on high value queries. Use the report to improve your presence in paid results and monitor your high value queries for organic results.  
• Measure changes holistically. As you test website improvements or AdWords changes to bids, budgets, or keywords, you can more easily report the impact across paid, organic, and combined traffic.

IMPAQT, a digital marketing agency that specializes in helping clients with their paid and organic search marketing, shared their observations after beta testing the report.

The paid & organic report has been incredibly useful in understanding the interaction between paid and organic search, and the overall synergy when they are working together. For one of our client’s key branded queries, we saw an 18% increase in CTR when paid and organic work together, as opposed to only having the organic listing.

Getting started
To get started, you’ll need to link your AdWords account to a Webmaster Tools account. Linking requires you to be a verified owner of your site in Webmaster Tools or to be granted access by a verified owner -- it's easy to make the request from within AdWords. Even if you're not buying ads, you can still take advantage of the query-level organic reporting features available in this report. Detailed instructions on how to set up the link and access the report can be found in our help center.

We hope the new paid & organic report saves you time and helps you improve your performance as you're managing both types of search traffic for your business.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Product Manager, AdWords

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Capturing the mobile opportunity - being present and bidding well

This year, for the first time, the majority of people in the US own a smartphone.¹  This means that more people than ever are constantly connected, using their phones throughout the day to search for information, shop, or stay entertained.  As a result, we are seeing growth in mobile searches across many verticals.  For example, year on year, we have seen mobile searches grow by 117% for entertainment, 91% for auto and 90% for finance. And for seasonal terms like “back to school,” we saw a 96% year on year increase.

As mobile continues to grow, it's more important than ever for every business to understand how to engage their customers on mobile. For advertisers who are just getting started, make sure you are showing up when potential customers are searching for keywords related to your business.  Opt into mobile and set a mobile bid adjustment that meets your business goals.  By using mobile bid adjustments, you can influence your ad position, clicks and cost on mobile devices.  For a bit of perspective, here are a few of examples of how advertisers have set their mobile bids as a percentage of desktop within the last several months (actual CPCs may vary):

• On average, advertisers in the Japan finance sector set mobile bids to 117% of desktop.
• On average, advertisers in the US dining and entertainment sector set mobile bids to 90% of desktop.
• On average, advertisers in the Canadian auto sector set mobile bids to 87% of desktop.

An example of a marketer who has recognized the importance of mobile and created a clear strategy is My M&M’s.  In this video, the My M&M’s team notes that mobile is often the entry point for their customers.  Even though the final conversion may happen in the store or on another device, it’s been important for My M&Ms to make sure they are on mobile to capture these leads.  After optimizing their search and display campaigns, MyM&M’s reported a 15% increase in overall ROI.

For best practices on how to set your mobile bid adjustment, we encourage you to review our bidding best practices whitepaper which includes a chapter dedicated to mobile bids.  You can also use the full value of mobile calculator to estimate the overall value that mobile drives for your business.  People are using mobile for many kinds of activities across all business types.  Mobile is where your customers are, whether you are a restaurant owner, retailer or financial institution.  Therefore, it’s more important than ever before to make sure that your message is where people are looking.

Posted by Andy Miller, Head of Global Mobile Search Solutions

¹ PEW Research Center, May 2013.  http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Smartphone-Ownership-2013/Findings.aspx

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Reminder on enforcement of Google Shopping unique product identifier requirements

A few weeks ago, we announced that we’ll soon be enforcing the new unique product identifier requirements to continue improving data quality on Google Shopping. These new specifications help us serve better results to users while creating more opportunities for merchants. We highly recommend making the necessary changes to comply with data quality requirements, as better data quality is a key lever to improve the performance of your Product Listing Ads campaigns.

Beginning on September 16th, all previously exempt accounts in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom as well as all accounts in Australia, Brazil, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, Japan, and the Netherlands will begin to be subject to these new requirements. By November, all violating offers will be rejected and will not be served through Product Listing Ads. These new feed specifications are already being enforced for all accounts in the United States and non-exempt accounts in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

In September, we’ll also begin enforcing correct use of the ‘identifier exists’ attribute. To avoid disruption to your traffic, please ensure that you’re only submitting ‘identifier exists’ with a value of FALSE in categories where unique product identifiers are required but no such identifier exists for an item (for example, custom goods). Please review the latest product feed specification to learn more.

To help merchants with this transition, we’ll be broadcasting Google Shopping Office Hours via a Hangout on Air on Tuesday, August 27, 2013 at 9:30 am Pacific Time. We encourage you to join us to get advice about data feeds and unique product identifiers. If you already know what you’d like to ask, feel free to post it in the comments now. You’ll be able to submit questions during the Hangout on Air as well.

 Posted by Angelika Rohrer, Program Manager, Google Shopping

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Preventing and resolving AdWords policy violations

We invest a lot of time and resources to ensure that ads deliver a safe and positive experience for users. Our advertising policies play a big role in this effort.

Being familiar with our ads policies can help you avoid violating them. When we detect ads or sites that violate our policies, we block them. And in the case of repeated violations, we may permanently suspend a violator from advertising with us. That's why we strongly encourage advertisers to work proactively to fix problems and learn from their mistakes.

Preventing violations
Here are some tips for keeping your account clean and clear of policy violations in the first place, so your ads can run smoothly:

1. Learn the key principles behind our ad policies, like "Advertising shouldn't violate users' trust or privacy." Following these principles alone can help you avoid violations. You can also dig into the specific underlying policies to learn details (full list of policies). 
2. If you receive a warning during ad creation, review the relevant policy to understand if you're compliant before uploading the ad. 
3. Ensure your contact information is up to date to receive policy notifications, and be sure to read any emails we send you about AdWords policies. We also post all policy updates online ahead of time. 

Identifying and resolving violations 
If one of your ads has been disapproved, you'll want to understand the reason so you can resolve it and prevent the same violation in the future. This is how to get the details:

1. Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com. 
2. Click Campaigns near the top of your account. 
3. Click the Ads tab. 
4. Look through the Status column to see which ads are disapproved. If you have many ads, you might prefer to use a filter (learn how). 
5. Hover over the white speech bubble next to "Disapproved."
6. Click the disapproval reason to learn more.

You can find more information on how to locate and fix disapproved ads or fix a site-level violation in the AdWords Help Center.

We appreciate your help ensuring that Google ads provide a trustworthy and positive experience for users.

Posted by Sudhir Jha, Google Product Manager

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Manage upgraded sitelinks in the new version of AdWords Editor

Starting today, you can download the latest version of AdWords Editor, which now supports upgraded sitelinks for enhanced campaigns. With version 10.2, you can:

• View and manage sitelinks and settings, including device preference, using the new "Sitelinks (upgraded)" tab.
• Add, edit, or remove sitelinks at the campaign or ad group level.
• Copy and paste upgraded sitelinks between campaigns or ad groups.
• Include upgraded sitelinks in imports and exports.

To learn more about managing upgraded sitelinks in AdWords Editor, and to read more about the new version, see the version 10.2 release notes.

Note: All AdWords campaigns are now upgraded to enhanced campaigns. As such, AdWords Editor 10.2 only supports enhanced campaigns.

The next time you launch AdWords Editor, you'll see a prompt to upgrade to the new version. To learn more about upgrading, including how to keep unposted changes and comments when you upgrade, please review these instructions. You can also download the new version from the AdWords Editor Help Center.

Support for previous versions of AdWords Editor will continue for four months to allow you time to upgrade. To ensure uninterrupted use of AdWords Editor, you will need to upgrade by December 13, 2013.

Posted by Rob Newton, Inside AdWords Crew

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Upgraded extensions to help you reach the constantly connected consumer

People are now constantly connected, searching and browsing the web across several devices throughout the day. As part of AdWords enhanced campaigns, we improved sitelink, call, and app extensions to help you reach people more effectively in this multi-screen world. Advertisers will have access to a lot of benefits after upgrading their extensions, so we encourage you to upgrade early to start using these new features:

• Show mobile-specific messaging and phone numbers directly in your ad 
• Use ad group-level extensions to more precisely control which extensions show for each ad
• Schedule extensions to run on certain days or during specific times so you can align your ads to your business hours
• Review detailed reports, such as performance for each individual sitelink to help you optimize for ROI

It’s easy to upgrade your extensions. Visit this Help Center article to learn how. We’ll begin automatically upgrading legacy (existing) extensions on September 23, 2013. Below are some details about the upgrade process.

What happens during the auto-upgrade
During the auto-upgrade, we’ll upgrade extensions from campaigns that only have legacy extensions. For campaigns with both legacy and upgraded extensions, we’ll assume you’ve already gone through the upgrade process, and will mark your legacy extensions as deleted. Learn more

You’ll be able to view statistics for all of your extensions, including legacy and deleted ones, in AdWords reports.  Extension performance statistics will be reset they they’re upgraded, but your historical reports will still be available. Upgrading early means you start accruing stats on the new extensions now.  Learn more

To ensure your sitelink extensions continue to show when the auto-upgrade begins on September 23, please make sure that your sitelinks follow these two policies:

• 25-character limit policy Shorter sitelinks perform better because they provide a clear, succinct message to users searching on Google.  Starting on September 23, sitelinks are required to have no more than 25 characters.  
• Unique sitelinks policy Customers have a better experience when they land on a unique page that matches the content from the ad they clicked on.  Each new sitelink in a campaign or ad group must link to a unique landing page with original content. 

Many advertisers are already taking advantage of these upgraded features
Miller’s Bakery, for example, uses mobile-optimized call extensions to display a “call button” with its ads.  They also use the scheduling feature to make sure this button only appears between 4 a.m. and 9 p.m., when their staff can respond to customer calls. After hours, the call button is removed and the ad directs searchers to a website contact form. These two features work together to help the bakery show potential customers the right ad at the right time, tailored to the right device.

We hope you find these new features useful and encourage you to upgrade your extensions before September 23, 2013 to ensure that all of your extensions continue to show.

Posted by Karen Yao, Senior Product Manager

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Attract new customers with local ads on the Google Maps app

Over one billion people use Google Maps services every month. On the Google Maps app, these users are often searching for local businesses - from restaurants, to car dealerships, to dentists, and more. Recently, we launched a new version of the Google Maps app for Android, iPhone, and iPad where we introduced several new features. Today we’re introducing an updated ad experience we think is more attractive for users and more effective for advertisers.

Relevant ads on the Google Maps app can now appear at the bottom of the screen after a user performs a search. They include a title, ad text, and a link to get directions. Users can tap or swipe upward to see more information — this is a new click type known as “Get location details” and results in a standard CPC charge.

Search ads in the Google Maps app (click to enlarge)

When users click on an ad to get location details, they’ll see additional information such as the business’s address, phone number, photos, reviews and more. From here, there are a number of paid and free click actions they can take. Free actions include saving business information for later, sharing a business with a friend, or starting navigation. Aggregated reporting for these free clicks is available in your account.

Ads expand to show location details in the Google Maps app (click to enlarge)

Paid clicks include the initial 'get location details' click, get directions, click-to-call and clicks on the ad headline. AdWords will only charge for up to two paid clicks per ad impression. Reporting for these paid clicks can be found by segmenting reports in your account by ‘click type.’

Getting started with ads on the Google Maps app
To show ads on the Google Maps app, advertisers need to add location extensions to their search campaigns or create an ad with AdWords Express. If your campaign is not showing ads on mobile devices or on Google search partners, you'll also need to change those settings.

You can find more information about ad pricing, free clicks, and ad eligibility in the AdWords Help Center. The new Google Maps app is available free on Google Play and in the  App Store.

Posted by Salahuddin Choudhary, Product Manager, Google Maps

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Reach a global audience with video in 3 simple steps

At Google, we believe that video is such a powerful way to build your brand that everyone should use it. That’s why we’re excited to announce a simplified way to set up your first campaign in AdWords for video.

Our new campaign creation flow eliminates the clutter by focusing on the key pieces of your first video ad campaign: your video, your thumbnail copy, your budget and your target audience.

Here’s a tour through the new campaign creation experience:

Step 1: Everything starts with your video
The first and most important step is selecting your video. Here you can choose any video that you’ve uploaded to YouTube.

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Step 2: Add some text to appear alongside your video
Next you can include a few words to describe why viewers should watch your ad. This is a great way to catch your audience’s attention, so make it snappy!

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Step 3: Decide how much to spend
We recommend a daily budget for your campaign, or you can choose your own. Remember, you may spend less than what you’ve budgeted in a given day, but you’ll never spend more.

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Optional Step 4: Choose your target
Who would you like your video to reach? This step is optional, and remember: since you only pay when viewers choose to watch your video, TrueView ads have natural self-selection targeting built in. Take comfort in the peace of mind that you only show your ad to people who want to watch it.

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And boom, you’ve now set up your first video ad campaign using AdWords for video! Now all you’ll need to do is sign-in with a Google account or set up a new one, and your ads will be running shortly. Head over to AdWords for video to try it out today.

Posted by James Habig, Product Marketing Manager, YouTube

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Easily compare your ad performance over time

Which campaigns are down this week? How is my performance this month compared to last month? If you’re like most advertisers, you ask yourself these questions on a regular basis. Over the next few days, we’re rolling out a feature that makes it much easier compare metrics across different time periods by putting the data right in your AdWords tables.

Once “compare dates” is enabled in your date selector, you’ll see a new + button at the top of many columns. Click the + above Clicks, for example, and the Clicks column expands to show you this week’s Clicks, last week’s Clicks, the absolute change and the percent change.

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This new functionality has been added to many reports across AdWords, on most metrics. All of the additional columns are also sortable and filterable, which makes it easy to answer questions like:

Which campaigns saw the largest increase in clicks?
Which ad groups saw conversions drop by more than 20%
Which keywords saw an increase of at least 100 clicks?

You can also use filters on these columns. This makes it easy, for example, to create a saved filter which finds all campaigns that saw a decrease in clicks of 20% or more:

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For more details on how to view, sort, and filter on time comparison data, visit our AdWords Help Center.

Posted by David Rodriguez, Product Manager, AdWords

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All your display planning and targeting needs, all in one place

For some time now we've been working to unify all our helpful AdWords display tools in one easy and streamlined location. Today we're taking another big step in that direction by integrating three of our classic tools — The Contextual Targeting Tool, the Placement Tool and the Google Ad Planner — into the new Google Display Planner. As we mentioned in an earlier blog post, Display Planner is our new unified research and planning tool, bringing you targeting ideas and estimates that can help you build better display campaigns.

All the functionality you're used to is now part of Display Planner — and with all the tools in one place, everything's easier. Display Planner is built into AdWords, so with one click you can add all the keywords, placements, or other targeting ideas you choose directly into your campaigns. Display Planner also makes them easy to download and share with your team members.

The Contextual Targeting Tool and the Placement Tool will be sunsetted in the next few days, and Google Ad Planner will be deprecated in early September. If you use Google Ad Planner and have existing media plans and site lists, you should export and save them in the next few weeks.

Learn More
For more information on transitioning to Display Planner please check out the Guide to Display Planner for AdPlanner users and make sure to sign up here for our Display Planner Webinar on September 18th, 2013 1pm EST!

Ready to start using Display Planner now? You'll find it in the Tools and Analysis menu in your AdWords account.

Posted by Max Cohen, Product Manager Google Display Network

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