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Tag: google adwords

  • Google Adwords Introduces ‘Chat Rate’ Metric for Click-to-Message Ads

    Google Adwords Introduces ‘Chat Rate’ Metric for Click-to-Message Ads

    To get the most out of marketing campaigns, it is sometimes necessary to do some tweaking and fine tuning before your ads connect with their targeted audience. For this reason, marketers must gauge the performance of their ad placements which can be gleaned from the reports provided by the ad platform showing data and statistics on specific ad metrics.

    Google Adwords is giving advertisers more ways to determine the performance of their click-to-message campaigns by introducing new ad metrics for the product. In a recent blog post, the company announced the addition of three new performance insights which will be available via Adwords’ message reporting service.

    The report will now contain the click-to-message ad’s Chat rate. With this data, marketers will be able to measure how often people will actually start a conversation with your company after seeing your message extension.

    example of a click-to-message ad

    Adwords also introduced a new performance insight called Chat start time which is basically a timestamp marking the time at which user initiates contact. Businesses might find the new ad metric very useful especially when it comes to scheduling their message extensions to maximize the performance of ad campaigns. For example, a company might learn from this metric that chat volume peaks at noon and, therefore, know that it should allocate more manpower during that time to answer customer queries.

    Lastly, there is also an insight on the number of messages exchanged between a business and a user during a single chat session. This could be helpful in determining which type of campaigns are able to generate longer and, hopefully, more in-depth conversations.

    The new performance insights will be available to Adwords clients in the next few weeks. However, they will initially roll out only to some areas such as the US, Australia, Canada, Brazil, France, and the United Kingdom.

    Introduced in 2016, click-to-message ads are considered to be the text message version of the older click-to-call ad formats. They will allow users to get in touch with an actual representative of a business instead of a mere chat bot resulting in a more natural interaction.

    [Featured image via Google Adwords]

  • Google Adwords Upgrades Consumer Targeting Functionality With Phone Numbers and Addresses

    Google Adwords Upgrades Consumer Targeting Functionality With Phone Numbers and Addresses

    Google’s AdWords platform has been tweaked recently to allow for the integration of a bundle of new features. The added features will permit marketers to utilize postal addresses and phone numbers to reach particular groups of consumers and for Customer Match retargeting.

    The company launched Customer Match in 2015. The feature allowed marketers to upload their lists of customers and other proprietary lists (ex. newsletter subscribers) into the AdWords platform to target or exclude search and display advertisements to particular users. However, Customer Match only worked with uploaded email lists.

    Allowing the use of phone numbers and postal addresses is a significant change from the company’s previous customer targeting model. Since the old system only allowed email data that had been rendered anonymous, marketers could only use blanket interests and demographics to target potential clients. This led to marketers who wanted a more targeted approach feeling dissatisfied.

    AdWords’ new strategy will enable hashed contact numbers and email addresses to be matched with Google’s own hashed strings. This approach is predicted to be twice as efficient at reaching the target demographic. After all, postal addresses and phone numbers are usually more reliable and accurate than email addresses.

    The illustration below breaks down how Customer Match works:

    Graphic via Google

    Marketers agree that Google’s new AdWords approach would boost Customer Match rate, especially for brands who either do not have all their customer’s email addresses, or the consumers’ addresses are different from what Google has. A postal address also does away with confusion and ambiguity and results in higher match rates, particularly when used in tandem with other data.

    Kevin Lee, co-founder of digital agency Didit, believes that Google’s new targeting tools will result in higher match rates since adding these new data will also offer more flexibility in a business marketing campaign.

    Augmenting the AdWords platform could also result in companies earmarking larger marketing budgets on Google since its believed the new tools will deliver positive results.

    Making use of consumer addresses and phone numbers is already common in marketing, but Google was slow to incorporate it into its system. However, the delay is mostly due to the company being under the intense scrutiny of regulators.

    Of course, this improvement to the AdWords system could potentially cause problems. Google’s previous terms and conditions allow marketers to only use their own data, and not utilize third-party data. But by permitting phone numbers and postal addresses to be used, there’s a danger that direct-response marketers might try to secure information through any means to stay ahead of the game.

    [Featured Image via Google]

  • 5 Google Adwords Mistakes Every Online Marketer Should Avoid Making

    5 Google Adwords Mistakes Every Online Marketer Should Avoid Making

    There’s no doubt that Google Adwords can be very beneficial to a business. It’s one of the best ways to drive traffic to your site, generate leads and close sales. But like most good things, it also takes time, careful planning and execution, and a bit of an investment.

    Google Adwords campaigns have to be set up carefully for it to succeed. This means that you should be keenly attuned to Adwords and know how to avoid critical and costly mistakes. If you want to make the most of your Google AdWords campaign, check that you’re not making these 5 mistakes:

    1. Not Spending Enough Time to Research Keywords

    One of the key parts of an AdWords campaign is choosing theImage result for keyword research right keywords. After all, if you are not using keywords that are most relevant to your brand or what your customers are searching for then your campaign would suffer. This is why it’s vital that you spend time researching the proper and relevant keywords for your company.

    To help narrow down the best keywords to use, make use of tools like WordStream or Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Take a critical look at your brand and come up with a list of possible keywords. Use available keyword tools to see the different variations of how people use your proposed keywords in their search.

    2. Forgetting Phrase and Exact Matches

    There are different types of keyword matches – broad match, phrase match, and exact match. Broad match keywords mean that your ads will appear when people search for your keywords, regardless of the other terms in the search string while phrase match keywords will only appear in searches with that exact word order. This is the same principle for exact match keywords.

    Most ad groups only use broad match keywords, as it’s the default match type used by AdWords. The good news is that broad matches appear in more searches, but it also means that the odds are high that these are less relevant searches. This could lead to less generated sales and lower click rates if the searcher finds your ads irrelevant. It could potentially cost more money due to a misplaced click.

    Research has shown that exact match keywords have better conversion odds, so it’s better to start by using exact matches before expanding it to include phrase and broad matches.

    3. Not Utilizing Negative Keywords

    Another common AdWords mistake internet marketers make is disregarding negative keywords. This keyword acts in the opposite way of a targeted keyword, meaning it precludes keywords that do not match your product or service. For instance, if you are targeting backpacks designed for hiking or camping then you don’t want your ads to show up in searches for “school backpacks.” You can put “school” as a negative keyword and your ads won’t be displayed in searches with the term “school.”

    To ensure that you exclude the right words, check out Google Analytics. Click on “Acquisition,” followed by “AdWords” and “Matched Search Queries.” Click on “Query Match Type” next and choose either “broad match” or “phrase match” to see the keyword phrases that are generating leads and those that are not converting. This can help you choose the words that can be added as a negative keyword so that your campaign will perform better.

    4. Not Embracing Mobile

    There’s no stopping the mobile trend so it’s best ifImage result for Mobile-Specific Ads you embrace it, especially as how customers use mobile devices to search and engage in is vastly different from how they use laptops or desktops. And since more people opt for mobile devices these days, you should make sure your campaign is mobile-friendly.

    There are several ways to make your ad campaigns better suited for mobile devices. You can use Click to Call Extensions, Mobile Bid Modifiers, Mobile-Specific Ads, and Short Tail Keywords.

    5. Directing Visitors to the Wrong Pages

    This is a mistake that owners of eCommerce stores should take pains to avoid. Some e-stores have erred in directing the traffic from their ad to their home page instead of the page for a specific product.

    Make sure that when a visitor clicks on your ad, they’re directed to the item they’re looking for. Otherwise, they might just leave your page and that’s a lost sale. So double check your ads and ensure prospective clients are led to the right page.

    There’s no question that Google AdWords can be a key component to increasing traffic and generating sales. However, this will only happen with the right AdWords strategy and implementation.

     

    [Featured image via Google AdWords]

  • How Google Measures Cross-Device Ad Conversions

    How Google Measures Cross-Device Ad Conversions

    Google recently conducted a live video hangout discussing cross-device measurement, which is extremely important to advertisers to properly attribute which ads are leading to sales. “With the proliferation of mobile devices we all know that user behavior has changed quite significantly over the past few years,” said Meghan Lee, Agency Development Manager for Google AdWords. “It’s very natural for marketers to start to think of new methods and new ways to measure mobile more accurately. The challenge is that measuring mobile really isn’t easy with consumers constant connectivity via mobile creating many new touch points.”

    “When we look at how people traditionally measured advertising, if you go back and kind of look at other mediums like the billboard, print, TV, radio, it was always difficult to measure the exact return on ad spend,” commented Matt, who didn’t provide his last name, but who is a Product Specialist at Google that works with Meghan Lee. “People invested a lot of money on these platforms but they had to have good faith that it actually led to bottom line conversions.”

    Screen Shot 2016-07-10 at 6.46.56 PM

    “I used to work in the TV space and although we have these measurement tools such as Neilsen ratings, it really is very difficult to pinpoint which ad led to a sale,” Lee said.

    Screen Shot 2016-07-10 at 7.02.41 PM

    “In 2000 Adwords was born, and the whole point is that digital marketing completely revolutionized the way we think about measurement,” Matt said. “We have this kind of spectrum of accuracy and it was the first time that we could accurately measure the return on investment right from a click to an actual conversion and part of the reason for it being so revolutionary at the time was because it was a one device world. Because cookies lined up across desktop we were able to easily match the research and discovery with that final purchase.”

    Screen Shot 2016-07-10 at 6.58.17 PM

    “Over 90% of people use multiple devices sequentially to accomplish a task,” says Lee. “Adwords advertisers are used to a very simple and clear way of measurement and they have that same expectation on mobile.”

    “Mobile has been fracturing the consumer journey and it has made things more difficult to measure, but the hard part is the growing pains of having to rethink how we measure things more accurately,” said Matt. “Part of the reason it is difficult is because if we do the same comparison to what we looked at before cookies don’t line up right across mobile and desktop and so it has become more difficult to match the research and discovery with that final purchase. Although it has made things more complicated and it’s important to admit that, we do offer a solution that when pieced together can give you a holistic view of your mobile performance.”

    The two solutions that Matt is referring to are “cross-device conversions” and “attribution modeling with cross-device.”

    Screen Shot 2016-07-10 at 7.16.42 PM

    Here’s how a Google White Paper (Download PDF) describes calculating cross-device conversions:

    The consumer journey has become more complex, spanning multiple devices, channels, and media types. Because 90% of people start an activity on one device and finish it on another, it’s especially important to capture how marketing influences actions across phones, tablets, and desktops.

    Cross-device conversions start as a click on an ad from one device and end as a conversion on another device (or in a different web browser on the same device). In order to measure cross-device conversion statistics, we use aggregated and anonymous data from users who have previously signed into Google services.

    We start by looking at a marketer’s ad clicks that led to cross-device conversions from users who have previously signed into Google services. Next, we expand the model to show how many cross-device conversions a marketer would report if all of their AdWords clicks and conversions came from previously signed-in users. We can do this by customizing our cross-device calculation model based on several factors unique to each marketer to optimize the accuracy of the model for each campaign and ad group. Finally, we only surface the reporting if we are 95% confindent that it reflects the real cross-device user behavior.

    Watch the full Google Hangout video on cross-device conversions below:

  • Google Ad Partner Specializations Launched So Agencies Can Stand Out

    Google Ad Partner Specializations Launched So Agencies Can Stand Out

    Partner Specializations are now being awarded to Google Partner’s that can demonstrate expertise in particular areas in order for these firms to better market themselves to businesses that advertise on Google. The Google Partner program was launched 3 years ago as a way for small businesses to work with ad agencies, marketers, online professionals and specialists that are knowledgable about Adwords and work with the Google ad team on a regular basis. All Partner’s are trained and certified by Google.

    The program helps small businesses place ads with more sophistication and compete for keywords with their bigger rivals.

    Google Partners can earn specializations in 5 areas of expertise:

    • Search
    • Mobile
    • Video
    • Display
    • Shopping

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

    Screen Shot 2016-06-28 at 8.51.06 AM

    Google says that to gain a Specialization designation the Partner must have at “least one certified individual and a history of consistent product performance.”

    How companies can earn specializations

    Specializations are given based on the following criteria:

    • Your company has at least one certified affiliated user in an AdWords product area
    • Your company is demonstrating product expertise in the specialization area
    • Your company has at least US$10,000 (or local currency equivalent) 90-day AdWords spend in that area

    We look at a number of things to determine your company’s level of product expertise, including how you’re implementing the AdWords product for your clients, if you’re growing your usage in the product area, if you’re retaining your clients in that product area, and other related factors.

    Premier Google Partner badge

    Google also announced the Premier Google Partner badge “designed to recognize Partner’s who manage a substantial portfolio of Google advertising campaigns and deliver great results for their customers.”

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

    Screen Shot 2016-06-28 at 8.51.53 AM

    Premier Partners must maintain a higher level of certification requirements but will receive significantly more support from the Google advertising team, according to Allan Thygesen, VP Global Sales & Operations at Google.

  • Nissan UK: 6% Adwords Conversion Rate Of Showroom Visits From Mobile Clicks

    Nissan UK: 6% Adwords Conversion Rate Of Showroom Visits From Mobile Clicks

    Marc Palmer, Marketing Communications Manager of Nissan UK, recently spoke in an Adwords promotional video for Google on the effectiveness of using Google Adwords for Nissan. “When you get your first car, suddenly, there’s that little bubble that you live in, where you can do whatever you like,” Palmer said. “I got this little old car: the top half was brown and the bottom half was gold! But what it meant was you could then start to just do things on your own. So there’s a sense of freedom.”

    “Buying a new car is one of the more important decisions,” Palmer stated. “There’s this whole piece of discovery. At the start of their car-buying journey, they go to search. People turn up to the dealership pretty much in mind the car they want to buy.”

    Puneet Vaghela, Search Account Director of Manning Gottlieb OMD, commented, “What AdWords is enabling us to do is fight the fight in the right place. We’re able to map buyer journeys.” “And that’s when the dealer has the ability to really make it brilliant,” said Palmer. “Now we’re able to find out that somebody searched for us and then they went and bought a car. That’s kind of getting close to the Holy Grail.”

    “We know that people have a lot more confidence now in online research, but the main reason they still are going to dealers is for that personal aspect,” commented Vaghela. “It’s all about finding people and reaching them in their moments of intent.”

    Vaghela added, “On mobile, we’ve seen 6.04% conversion rate store visits from search clicks and an estimated ROI of 25 pounds. When we actually go into AdWords, we can go all the way down to keyword level, which kind of keywords are actually driving people into dealerships from our search activity.”

    “Customers do so much before they come to the dealership,” according to Rachael Gregory, Retail Marketing Manager of Nissan UK. “It’s really important that once they get here, we give them exactly what they need.”

    “For the first time, really, this has given us a tangible connection between online and offline,” stated Vaghela.

    Check out the Nissan UK video promo they did for Google Adwords below:

  • How ‘3 Day Blinds’ Drives Phone Calls With Google Adwords

    How ‘3 Day Blinds’ Drives Phone Calls With Google Adwords

    Adele Nasr, Director of Marketing at 3 Day Blinds recently did a promotional video with the Google Adwords team to illustrate how they effectively drove phone leads using Adwords.

    What’s interesting is that the company is driving phone calls rather than clicks which are in turn driving in-home appointments which deliver huge sales.

    “In the past we were never able to be in front of the consumer when they were actively searching for us,” Nasr said. “With Adwords we now have access to more products that funnel people to the phone.”

    Screen Shot 2016-06-07 at 10.15.48 AM

    “Callers from paid search go into a priority 1 queue because they have higher intent and they’re a little more informed,” Nasr said. “The call center is really able to accommodate each of the calls to match the product the consumer is interested in.

    Dan Williams, Chief Revenue Officer of 3 Day Blinds commented on why they use Google Adwords, “Google allowed us to use online solutions to build an offline relationship. Using mobile search to generate phone calls is specifically very important. More often than not the customer has questions that need to be answered and it just can’t be done online.”

    Paid search phone calls accounted for 50% of 3 Day Blinds appointment volume according to Nasr. “Our call center is going to continue to grow and allow us to expand into markets that we have never been in, Nasr stated. “I don’t believe any company can do marketing without Google as part of the business.”

    Check out the full video talk below:

  • Google Ads Earning Over $100 Million Per Day [INFOGRAPHIC]

    According to a new analysis by WordStream, Google’s flagship product is pulling in over $100 million in search advertising dollars every day. In addition, Google search ads had 5.5 billion impressions per day while the average CPC on Google Search declined to $0.53. This analysis comes just one week after Google’s third quarter 2012 earnings missed high Wall Street expectations.

    “In the end, huge increases in ad impression volumes and clicks more than made up for declines in cost per click and click-through rates,” said Larry Kim, founder and chief technology officer at WordStream. “This research reveals that the Google economy is evolving. An individual click is not as expensive as it used to be, but many more impressions and clicks resulted in yet another record quarter for Google ad revenues. I believe this is advantageous for both Google and advertisers – it’s a win-win. Advertisers can now get more customers for lower costs, which increases the ROI of this marketing channel.”

    Earlier this week a Google business development executive spoke to small businesses in the Lexington, KY area about the importance of search advertising. Though not everyone in the audience seemed to grasp the basics of internet marketing, the presentation highlighted how Google is marketing AdWords to small businesses, now that major enterprises are beginning to diversify their ad dollars to social media and other search engines.

    The infographic below, prepared by WordStream, shows exactly where Google is getting most of its ad revenues. Unsurprisingly, the finance industry spent the most on Google ads in the third quarter of 2012 and has the highest CPC of any industry in the top 10 with $3.09. Following in second and third place are the travel and shopping industries, which have the highest conversion and click thru rates, respectively.

    Google Stats: How Google Makes $100 Million Every Day With Search Advertising

    © WordStream, provider of a AdWords Audit Tool for Paid Search.

  • Googler Offers Search Marketing Tips for Small, Local Businesses

    When it comes to online advertising, Google is king. When it comes to search marketing in particular, Google has no peer. While nearly every major company in the U.S. has now invested advertising dollars into internet marketing, smaller businesses can easily run into roadblock if they don’t have the expertise or personel to implement a successful strategy in this brand new world of marketing.

    Having trouble implementing a successful digital marketing strategy? Let us know in the comments.

    This Wednesday, Bright Park, strategic partner development manager at Google, spoke to a crowd of small business owners at a sales conference in Lexington, KY. The conference was sponsored by local NBC TV station affiliate LEX 18, a Google strategic partner that offers digital marketing services to local businesses. WebProNews attended the event, and was able to speak with conference attendees about how they are incorporating digital marketing into their sales strategies.

    The presentation comes just after Google CPC was shown to have fallen in the third quarter of 2013. In fact, current online advertisers may be diversifying their ad spending to social media or other search engines, such as Yahoo Bing. This makes the potential customers Park was addressing all the more important.

    Park, whose work focuses on business development for Google’s Channel Sales Team, highlighted the growing importance of online marketing for small businesses, gave some tips on how to improve small business search marketing, and provided some insight into the opportunities and challenges Google faces with bringing small businesses online.

    Park began by providing some statistics on just how quickly the online world is growing, such as the fact that 5 billion people are predicted to be online by 2020. “From the dawn of civilization to the year 2003, mankind had created a total of five exabytes of data,” said Park. “Now, in the year 2012, it’s estimated that five exabytes of data are created every two days.”

    Pointing out that mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, are now becoming ubiquitous, Park showed how search traffic often spikes when live events happen on television. “In short, if you’re advertising on television, you have to be discoverable online,” said Park.

    He stated that this paradigm – the connection between TV and internet searches – is what Google calls the “zero moment of truth.”

    Park pointed out that while past “zero moments” might be found in a storefront or television ad, people are now heavily researching their purchases online. “Four out of five consumers go online and research products before they go buy them,” said Park. In the course of such research, potential customers are going to use search, and Park encouraged small businesses to make sure they find the right message.

    What Park didn’t mention is that the rising cost of pay-per-click advertising may be driving current online advertisers to seek out alternative methods. A New York Times article published last week shows that as more businesses take their advertising online, the price of keywords has risen significantly. The report shows that while small businesses with niche markets can still succeed with relatively low costs, new businesses unprepared for the competitiveness of the search advertising game could end up draining their ad budget for little return.

    Park did, though, give a few tips for small business on how they can “win” that zero moment. The first tip was to put someone in charge of search marketing. Preferably, this is someone who knows the internet well, but Park admits that new world of digital advertising can be overwhelming. “Quite frankly, it can be complicated and time consuming to figure out a search engine marketing campaign,” said Park.

    Though Park didn’t state it directly, this is undoubtedly where Google resell partners such as LEX 18 come in, offering simplified online marketing packages for small business owners.

    Has Google successfully simplified search marketing? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

    Park’s next tip was for businesses to find their own zero moments. Park stated that a business can start this process by simply typing its name into Google’s search and observing what auto-complete suggestions pop up. These auto-complete results are based on data Google has about what people are searching for, and, Park stated, they can help businesses determine what potential customers are searching for.

    Park’s third tip was for businesses to answer the questions people are asking about it online by tailoring its online content, based on the auto-complete suggestions and other research performed in the previous tip.

    After his presentation, Park opened the floor for a question and answer session. A few of the questions dealt with Google AdWords, such as how businesses using Google’s main product can increase their AdWords quality score, become Google AdWords certified, or prevent click fraud. It quickly became apparent, however, that some conference attendees were only just beginning to understand search marketing. Many of the questions were about specific problems businesses are having with their organic search results or online reviews – not search advertising, which is Park’s speciality. Other questions, such as if Google has any services for word-of-mouth marketing seemed to completely miss the point of Park’s presentation.

    Not all attendees were at the outset of their forays into internet marketing, though. WebProNews spoke with Ashley Smith, a 26-year-old volunteer promotions leader with Quest Community Church in Lexington, about what she thought of the conference. “We’re really excited to start using Google AdWords in a new way to really maximize the potential of reaching as many people as possible,” Smith said.

    Smith stated that Quest already has a web presence, with online worship services, event schedules, and blogs, as well as a presence on Facebook and Twitter. It would appear that Smith and her colleagues already have a firm grasp of internet marketing. A quick search for “Lexington Church” shows that Quest is at the top of Google’s Places results for that search, with a number of positive reviews and an AdWords ad at the bottom of the results.

    As major enterprise begins to standardize its search marketing strategies and move on to social media marketing, Google’s push to educate small businesses about the necessity of online advertising will certainly be a factor in the continued growth of AdWords revenue. Judging by today’s conference, the internet giant certainly has an abundance of potential customers, but will have to work hard to educate small businesses that haven’t embraced the internet.

    Are Park’s tips helpful for small businesses? Let us know in the comments.

  • Google AdWords Location Targets to be Phased Out

    Google AdWords is making some critical changes and updates. Location criteria, first introduced in v201109 in particular, is being revised for the v201206 release.

    The location criteria object has a new field, targetingStatus, which can be one of active, obsolete or phasing out.

    Here’s what Google had to say on their Ads Development Blog:

    * ACTIVE Locations can be targeted as normal.
    * OBSOLETE Location targets have been retired and cannot be targeted.
    * PHASING_OUT Locations will shortly become obsolete and should not be targeted.

    Locations can be phased out for a number of reasons: the location may be re-structured into smaller (or larger areas), geo-political changes, etc. The AdWords UI reflects these changes and now the AdWords API will make these changes visible to developers. We will publish a blog post 4 weeks in advance of a location moving to PHASING_OUT.

    As of the launch of v201206, Location criteria that are PHASING_OUT will still be accepted. Starting 4 weeks later (week of 7/23), adding these targets will cause a CriterionError.Reason.CANNOT_TARGET_CRITERION error message. Please make sure before adding a Location target that it is ACTIVE. Choose a different target if it is labeled OBSOLETE or PHASING_OUT.

    Google provides a number of resources to help you through the changes and to tell you which specific location will be gone after July 23rd. They will also be adding a couple of new targets including one for Serbia and one for Montenegro, happening in the next few weeks. It may take some time to get used to the changes, but it should make performance better in the end.

  • Google Brings AdChoices Features to Europe

    Giving users clear notice about the ads they are viewing is a top priority for Google and it has become increasingly popular with the advertising industry overall as well.

    Google introduced the AdChoices icon in the United States last year. By clicking on this icon you can learn more about online advertising you are viewing.

    Now Google is introducing AdChoices icon for the Display Network in Europe. The changes will gradually be seen in various parts of Europe throughout the next couple of weeks.

    Here’s what Google had to say on their Inside AdWords Blog:

    We’re now rolling out the AdChoices feature across Europe, supporting industry-wide efforts to provide more information to consumers. We’ll soon start to change our “Ads By Google” in-ads notice icon to a new icon that expands to an “AdChoices” label. These notifications were developed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB Europe)-led Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising to proactively give users notice and choice about the ads they see. With the adoption of a common icon users will see on ads across the web, we hope to show our support for the industry-wide initiative and to increase users’ understanding about their choices.

    Over the next few weeks, we’ll start showing the new icon and label on most ad formats across the majority of European-language sites. Over time, we’ll expand the notice to ensure that all European-language publisher sites in the Google Display Network come within the Self-Regulatory Framework. This will be the single largest rollout of the “AdChoices” label to date, and we’re encouraged that others in the industry are also adopting the label.

    Users who click on the “AdChoices” label will be taken to a page where they can learn more about online advertising and the ads they are shown. This page will also link to the Ads Preferences Manager, where users can control the types of interest-based ads they see on the Google Display Network. We think this rollout will help users better understand the ads they’re seeing, and we look forward to seeing widespread adoption of this label throughout the industry.

  • Google Offers An Opt-Out Of Its New Ad Rotation Changes

    We reported last month that Google was making some changes to ad rotation in AdWords. The change essentially made it so that ads wouldn’t rotate indefinitely, but that it would pick out the best performing ads after a 30 day period. Users apparently had a problem with that and Google is adding some changes to appease those users.

    Google first wants to explain their position first, however, in hopes that you see their side of the argument. They felt that their new ad rotation method would make it so that they could “provide you with more valuable traffic in an automated, efficient manner.” Ads were found to perform better under the new rotation system and Google has the data to back it up.

    The data showed two ads with one having a CTR of three percent while the other had a CTR of one percent. When moving to the old rotation settings, the CTR settled at an average of two percent. Under the new rotation settings, it brought the average to around three percent which they found was a 50 percent increase.

    Regardless of what they think, the user will have a choice. Starting June 11, the rotation period will be extended from 30 days to 90 days. This will give advertisers even more time to test new ads to see which ones perform well. If you still don’t like Google’s new ad rotation method, you can opt-out of the program entirely. All you have to do is fill out this simple form.

    Interestingly enough, Google will add the opt-out option directly into the AdWords interface if there is enough demand for it. It seems odd that they would offer an opt-out option directly in AdWords after the fact when the company is only giving people a few weeks to opt-out of Google Drive in favor of the old Google Docs. They are very different services where one can impact a business while the other is just annoying to users. Regardless, the option should be there for all of Google’s services.

  • Google AdWords Launches Tools for Smarter Marketing

    Once again Google is adding some features to their AdWords site to help users get more milage from their campaigns. This time they’re offering an Auction insights report that will allow you to compare what others are doing and extract what might work for you.

    The Impression share columns Google currently uses allow you to see how many impressions you actually received versus how many you were eligible for. The new tool will allow you to make valuable comparisons with other advertiser’s efforts and discover where you have more opportunities or where you are wasting your time and money.

    Here’s what Google said about the enhancements on their AdWords blog site:

    With the Auction insights report, you can compare your performance with other advertisers who compete in the same set of auctions as you do. You can see how often your ads rank higher than other advertisers’ ads on the search results page, and how often your ads appear compared to theirs based on your estimated possible impressions. This information can help you make strategic decisions about bids, budgets, and keyword choices by showing you where you are succeeding and where you may be missing opportunities for improved performance.

    The report from Auction gives you five different statistics from your work including impression share, average position, overlap rate, position above rate, and top of page percent. The reports are generated from one keyword at a time. So if you spend a lot of time analyzing your performance using AdWords, these new tools could really benefit you.

  • Nielsen and Google AdWords Study Younger TV Viewers

    Google and Nielsen have partnered up to do some research into people’s television watching habits. What they found was that there’s a significant portion of the population who doesn’t spend that much time watching TV. About 31% of people age 18 to 49 spend only an average of 39 minutes per day watching TV. This is significantly less time than the general population and that really doesn’t give advertisers too much of an opportunity to market to those folks.

    Across a series of six cross-media studies, the duo found that a combination of both television and online advertising efforts are the best way to reach consumers in the light viewer category. Television alone failed to reach 63% of people from this group. Combing the online component allowed them to achieve a 27% increase in brand impression rate. I’ve summarized the results here, but it really much more involved.

    Take a look at the video from Google’s AdWords Blog:

    Here are the highlights Google listed from the study adding YouTube to your ad campaign:

    * Reach a valuable, complementary, younger audience

    * Add much-needed frequency to light TV viewers

    * Deliver media more evenly across light and heavy TV viewers, reducing waste

    * Do all of this both efficiently and affordably

    So if you’re thinking about adding an online component to your television marketing campaign, take a look at these studies further. There’s more to it than just adding a YouTube video or paying for some space on Google. The overarching message is that with just television alone, you are missing a valuable portion of the consumer market. Follow the links above to learn more about what Nielsen and Google discovered about online advertising.

  • Google AdWords and the Advertising Display Network

    Last week Google hosted a Hangout where they answered user’s questions about how to use their Display Network and what qualifies to be on it. During the Hangout Top Contributors from the AdWords community, and several of Google’s staff shared tips and tricks for using the network.

    If you missed it, I’ve included a collection of their questions so our readers can learn a little more about what Google is offering to advertisers with the network. I have also included the almost hour long video of the Hangout. If you’re interested, take a few minutes and look at this stuff. Google is really providing some great tools, and you would be a fool not to take advantage.

    Here’s the Google Hangouts video on the Display Network:

    Google+Small+Business%29″>Here are some questions that were asked and answered during the Hangout:

    * Where is the Display Network available?
    The Display Network is available in all countries that AdWords serves.

    * Which clicks are more likely to become conversions search or display?
    Search and display perform very differently, depending on your overall campaign goals.

    * What’s more effective: automatic placements or manual?
    If you’re trying to reach a specific audience or target users who demonstrate a particular interest and you have an idea of some Display Network websites where you want your ads to appear, managed placements are probably the best bet for you. If you’re just starting out with Display, we would suggest opting into automatic placements at first and then reviewing the domains you show on to further refine and optimize.

    * If in your industry search approximate cpc is = to display approximate cpc why would you do display?(Besides the obvious increase in potential traffic.)
    The Display Network is a great way to find customers that may not be actively searching for your product. Other than potentially increasing traffic to your website, you can potentially grow your customer base and get more conversions.

    * Tips on how to get JPEG ads approved quickly?
    Our ad review turn around time is usually 1-3 busi    ness days. If your ads are under review for more than 3 business days, please get in touch with us or submit your ads directly to our review team.

    * For remarketing, how do I set the ad up to show people the products they viewed but not purchased?
    You can create different audience lists so that you create an audience for users who visited your product pages and users who completed a purchase. You can then create a “custom combination” list to subtract those who purchased from those who visited your pages and did not purchase.

    * What is the difference between topics and interest categories? How are these compiled?
    Topic targeting allows you to place ads on pages directly related to the topic you’ve selected, whereas interest categories allow you to reach users across the Display Network who have shown specific interests, regardless of the page they’re currently on.

    * For remarketing, would you suggest using just one method per ad group, i.e., contextual, topic, interest, managed placements, or is it OK to mix them?
    Remarketing operates by showing your ads to users on your audience list, so within your ad group, the audience list should be the only targeting you have set up.

    * If you could only choose between search and display and the approximate cpc was the same. Which would you chose and why?
    This question really depends on your business and your advertising goals. In general, we tend to see advertisers looking for more direct response focus on the Search Network, while those who are interested in branding and remarketing might want to focus on the Display Network.

    * Any suggestions on frequency capping numbers?
    When you turn on frequency capping for a campaign, you can set a limit for the number of impressions you allow an individual user to have per day, per week, or per month, and you can choose whether this is applicable to each ad, ad group, or campaign. So ultimately, the frequency capping number you select depends on your goals and the size of your advertising endeavor. Kim and Theresa suggested numbers around 5-15 impressions per day for an individual user.

    * I know there is a placement tool in AdWords – however it doesn’t seem to show “all” of the websites available in the network. I have found sites displaying relevant ads, but I did not find it in tool. Is there another way to identify these potential sites?
    Yes! In addition to our Placement Tool, you can check the DoubleClick Ad Planner for other sites that are in the Display Network.

    Hope this helps you advertisers, especially if you were wondering about the Advertising Network. There’s a lot of information there, so you may want to save this page and come back to it. Good luck.

  • Google AdWords Now Available on Your Mobile

    Great news if you’re a fan of AdWords. Google is now giving you full access to the AdWords community right through your mobile device. That’s right, it’s optimized for mobile now. So if you have any spur of the moment inspiration or you need to get in touch with another advertiser, you can do it on the spot.

    Here’s what Google promises with the new mobile-optimized AdWords access:

    * Ask your AdWords questions as soon as they come to mind.
    * Post answers/articles and help other members.
    * Instantly browse any thread you want to re-visit.

    Many people are finding navigation on the mobile version to be similar if not better than what they experienced on their desktops. They kept the interface simple and buttons to all the community features are easy to find and just as easy to employ. All you do is go to the AdWords Community like you would on your desktop and all the mobile-optimized features will appear.

  • Google Changes Ad Rotation In AdWords

    If you are a user of Google’s AdWords service, then you are probably familiar with the Ad Rotation feature. The Ad Rotation feature currently offers three settings – “optimize for clicks,” “optimize for conversion,” and “rotate evenly.” Google figures that they can fix up these settings so that the most relevant ads are always delivered to the user.

    To that end, Google announced some changes coming to Ad Rotation next week. The company hopes that the change will “provide users with the most relevant ad experience” and “help advertisers improve the performance of their AdWords accounts.”

    So what does this new update entail? The “rotate” setting is going to change. Normally, creatives rotate for an indefinite period of time. With the new update, this setting will only rotate for a period of 30 days. After this period of rotation, the setting will then pick the ads that are expected to generate the most clicks. It’s also worth pointing out that whenever a creative is enabled or edited, the ads in that particular group will “rotate more evenly for a new period of 30 days.”

    While you already know that this change will be coming next week, it’s important to note how it will affect current ad groups. If you have created an ad group with creatives that haven’t been added or modified in the past 30 days, the new ad rotation will be applied automatically. If you have altered the ad group, the change will come about 30 after the last activation or change.

    Like with any new change, it may confuse some users. If you have any questions, consult Google’s documentation on the changes. It provides all the answers you need in regards to the changes coming to Ad Rotation.

  • Google to Add Breadcrumb URLs to AdWords

    Google will soon begin to implement “breadcrumb trails” into their text AdWords ads. Breadcrumb trails refer to a set of links that show the path to various categories within a website. In the Google-provided example, a shoe site ad could have breadcrumb links to the subcategories of “women’s shoes” and “sandals”:

    The example image below is from a Google support page for AdWords describing the feature as a component of a text ad. The feature has not been officially announced by Google and the only information on it is the AdWords support page and a support page for webmasters. The webmaster support page describes the rich snippet code that can be inserted into a website to enable use of the breadcrumbs feature. The breadcrumbs will taken from annotations on the landing page for ads, putting webmasters in control of what breadcrumb links are created, if any.

    Google's new breadcrumb links

    The existence of these mentions on support pages means Google is prepared to launch the feature soon, as the company has a history of publishing support pages ahead of product launches.

    The AdWords support document makes it clear that clicks on breadcrumb links count the same as clicks on normal cost-per-click (CPC) ads. This means customers will be charged the same amount whether a click occurs on a breadcrumb link or headline. That shouldn’t deter any advertisers, though, whose goal is to get customers onto their site in any way possible. More links in an ad means more ways to get to their site.

    What do you think? Will the new breadcrumb trails increase clicks for AdWords text ads? Are you planning to implement them for your site? Let us know in the comments section below.

    (via Search Engine Land)

  • AdWords for Video Makes YouTube Even Better

    Google wants to help you grow your business with AdWords for Video. They want you to have all the tools you need in one place to mange your video advertising efforts. With the new tools you’ll be able to see how well your ads are performing, track down the right audience, get your message out to larger audiences, and provoke your audience to take action and try your product/services. Sounds pretty exciting right.

    It is, but it still costs money. The good news is you can pay per view. That means you only have to pay for the ads someone watches. There is no minimum you have to spend to begin advertising on the platform and it’s quick and easy.

    Watch the AdWords for video promotion:

    YouTube is really taking off with viewers and it has become a hot advertising space. I reported earlier today on how Google is recruiting current YouTube advertisers to serve as mentors and ambassadors to new YouTube marketeers and guide them through the steps that have led to success for them on the platform.

    Take a look at this AdWords video from the YouTube ambassadors and Google describing the extreme ease and utility of advertising with AdWords:

    YouTube is the new window shopping and it’s allowing both consumers and marketeers an opportunity to get more in-depth with what is available out there. We can’t always physically travel to meet the people and see the products we have an interest in, but we can reach them through YouTube. It’s a platform that brings consumers and sellers together like never before.