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  • Bing Ads Get New Dynamic Sitelinks Feature

    Microsoft announced a new Dynamic Sitelinks feature for Bing Ads, which it says can help improve relevance and click-through rates for SMB advertisers.

    Once again, Bing is following Google’s lead on ads, as the search giant launched a similar feature for AdWords in July.

    “Dynamic Sitelinks are clickable text additions to your ad that help enrich and enhance the information you’ve already supplied through your headline and ad copy,” explains Microsoft’s Matt Bisson. “While you would pay for a click on your ad’s headline, as this is dynamically created for you any clicks that occur on the Dynamic Sitelinks appearing within your ad are at no cost to you whatsoever.”

    “If your display URL domain has deep links information available, then you may be a candidate for Dynamic Sitelinks,” he adds. “Content that’s highly relevant to a user’s search query is pulled from your ads’ landing pages through the Bing algorithm as a means of providing your potential customers with a sneak peek at some of the more specific information that they’ll find, should they click through to your site. This supplementary information can help attract more clicks and increase user confidence in the relevancy of your ads at no cost to you, the advertiser.”

    There’s an FAQ about Bing’s Dynamic Sitelinks feature here.

    Image via Microsoft

  • Instagram Ads Are Jumping Across the Pond Very Soon

    As promised, Instagram is on the verge of taking its ad product global.

    In June, the company said that later in 2014 it would begin to introduce ads in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Now, it appears they’re about to make the jump across the pond:

    No word on when ads will hit Canada and Australia, but it appears that the UK launch is imminent.

    “The results for advertisers have been positive – and in some cases, well above the ad industry’s average for performance. We’re excited to build on this momentum, and in the coming months we will extend the same level of care and consideration as we introduce ads on Instagram to our global community,” said Instagram in June.

    “In the future we’ll also look to introduce ads on Instagram to additional countries across the world.”

    Instagram is getting serious about ads. The company made a big personnel move by appointing Facebook Regional Director James Quarles to the newly-created position of Global Head of Business and Brand Development at Instagram, and just recently debuted a new ad analytics suite for brands.

    Charlotte Williams (Twitter) via The Next Web
    Image via Instagram

  • Google Adds Callout Extension Support To AdWords API

    Google announced new “callout extension” support in the AdWords API. The company introduced callout extensions for its ads earlier this month.

    In a quick note on the Google Ads Developer blog, Ray Tsang from the AdWords API Team says:

    Starting today, all AdWords API versions can now manage callouts using the existing Feed API, similar to other feeds.

    Feeds for callouts are mapped to feed placeholder type 17, with only one string field. See the feed placeholder documentation for more information.

    Callout extensions enable businesses to add text to their ads highlighting specific info about their products and services. They can be used to draw attention to important details about products or highlight what makes the business stand out from its competitors.

    Google said on September 3rd that the feature was beginning its roll out, and that it would be available to all advertisers within the coming weeks. It’s unclear if the roll-out has completely finished yet.

    Image via Google

  • Bing Ads Get Better Location Targeting, Ad Scheduling

    Microsoft announced some updates to Bing Ads aimed at improving location targeting and ad scheduling. Now included are: ad scheduling in fifteen-minute increments, zip code targeting and exclusion, radius targeting improvements, a new geo location report, user experience improvements for location targeting, intent only targeting, and better city level targeting.

    “In addition to these user-facing updates, there are also several improvements in the Bing Ads platform to improve location targeting,” explains program manager Piyush Naik. “Most notably, we have made significant improvements in accurately detecting searcher’s location through various location signals. This will you help reach your target audience with greater precision.”

    “These updates to our targeting feature set are not designed in isolation, but rather in a comprehensive and all-inclusive manner after listening to which improvements matter most to you. We certainly hope these updates will help you to be more productive in Bing Ads and in achieving your business goals,” Naik adds.

    The company discusses each of the features in more detail here.

    Image via Bing

  • NFL Announcers Keep Calling Microsoft’s Product-Placed Surface Tablets ‘iPads’

    NFL Announcers Keep Calling Microsoft’s Product-Placed Surface Tablets ‘iPads’

    Oftentimes, a brand can become so ubiquitous that people stop thinking of it as a brand of a specific product, and instead begin to associate the brand as inherent to said specific product. You probably do it all the time – sometimes without noticing.

    For instance, in the south, it’s common to call any soft drink a “Coke”. Not just Coca-Cola, but anything from a Diet Pepsi to a Dr. Pepper – hey can you grab me a coke?

    How about Kleenex? I’m sure most people simply refer to all tissues as “Kleenex”. The brand has become synonymous with those soft tissues you use to blow your nose. The list of these brand takeovers goes on and on. Hey, can you Xerox this for me? Turn off that damn Nintendo!

    Another brand that’s reached this status? The iPad. To many people, all tablets are iPads, and this is becoming painfully (and hilariously) obvious in the context of the NFL.

    Last May, Microsoft signed a $400 million deal with the National Football League, and part of that deal included making the Microsoft Surface tablet (Microsoft’s iPad) the official tablet of the most popular sport in America. You’ve probably seen the results of this deal – coaches and players looking at tablets on the sidelines instead of old-fashioned playbooks. As part of the deal, NFL teams are now utilizing Microsoft’s Surface in reviewing on-field actions and formulating strategy.

    Good product placement, right?

    Well, in theory.

    That’s an NFL announcer twice referring the the Surface tablet as an “iPad.” Whoops.

    Business Insider reports that this is not a singular screwup – but an alarming trend (if you’re Microsoft).

    From BI:

    In a separate incident, Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints was spotted by Fox commentator John Lynch using a Surface on the sideline. Lynch remarked that Brees was “not watching movies on his iPad.”

    Lynch did seem to realize his mistake when he later noted that players now have “iPad-like tools” at their disposal. However, at no time during the discussion was Microsoft or the Surface mentioned by name.

    It appears that Microsoft needs to have a talk with the NFL and the NFL needs to, in turn, have a talk with its broadcast partners and their announcers. Otherwise, Microsoft spent a pretty penny to give Apple a wonderful product placement deal.

    Image via Vine, screenshot

  • eBay Has New (Kind Of) Mobile Ad Plans

    eBay Has New (Kind Of) Mobile Ad Plans

    eBay has a new webpage up about in-app mobile advertising, where it is courting advertisers to appear in its apps.

    As AdAge notes, the company tested ads in its mobile apps in 2012, but decided not to run with it. With PayPal possibly being spun off next year, it’s apparently had a change of heart.

    “With $20 billion in mobile commerce generated in 2013 and 260 million (and counting) global app downloads, eBay is a leader in m-commerce,” eBay says. “What’s more, eBay mobile users are highly engaged. They spend 3x the amount of time on eBay compared to the nearest competitor. Now, for the first time, we’re giving you the opportunity to connect with eBay users throughout their entire shopping journey. eBay mobile advertising will be a native experience, beautifully integrated into the eBay app.”

    “eBay is one of the world’s largest online marketplaces with more than 149 million active users driving nearly $75 billion in sales volume in 2013,” it says. “As one of the only ad-targeting platforms to naturally possess first-party data, we have enormous insight into user interests and intent based on actual shopping and purchase behavior. In fact, eBay tracks over 290 million hours of shopping activity each month. We harness the power of this data to help our advertising partners reach their ideal audience anytime, anywhere and on any device.”

    It goes on to tell advertisers they’ll have access to over 60 predefined audience segments, powered by “real commerce data”. It also creates custom segments with an Audience Discovery tool.

    It then talks about cross-device targeting and its suite of products, which includes programmatic buying, eBay Audience Platform, and mobile.

    As The Wall Street Journal, which reported on eBay’s offering earlier, points out, the move risks sending potential buyers away from eBay to competitors, but that “advertising is an attractive market because it tends to generate much higher margins than the sale of goods.”

    Amazon is also working on its own AdSense competitor, while Google itself just announced AdSense for Shopping, enabling third-party commerce publishers to run Google product ads.

    eBay is working with Triad Retail Media on its offering.

    Image via eBay

  • Facebook Announces Ad-Related News Feed Updates

    Facebook announced a couple more changes to the News Feed on Thursday, specifically around how it shows ads to people. Both changes deal with the signals Facebook gets from people who choose to hide the ads they see.

    Product manager Max Eulenstein explains, “For years, we have given people the choice to hide an ad so they no longer see it in their News Feed. We’ve also looked at these hides and used them as a signal that other people on Facebook might not want to see that ad. Now, we are going a step further by taking into account the specific reason they didn’t want to see that ad, and use that as a signal to inform whether or not we show the ad to other people. Second, we’re going to pay more attention to feedback from people who don’t often hide ads so that when they do give us feedback we take it as a stronger signal.”

    Regarding the first change, Eulenstein says, “When testing this update, we looked at when people told us that ads were offensive or inappropriate and stopped showing those ads. As a result, we saw a significant decrease in the number of ads people reported as offensive or inappropriate. This means we were able to take signals from a small number of people on a small number of particularly bad ads to improve the ads everyone sees on Facebook.”

    The second change is interesting, and could be pretty effective. Speaking personally as someone who doesn’t go out of my way to hide ads very often, it’s good to know that by doing so it really is sending a meaningful signal to the company.

    Facebook says testing of this signal has already shown an improvement in its ability to serve better ads. It also says neither change will have any effect on most advertisers.

    Image via Facebook

  • Samsung’s Already Making Fun of Apple’s Big Event

    Samsung’s Already Making Fun of Apple’s Big Event

    Never known to miss an opportunity to put out some snarky ads targeting competitors, Samsung has already decided to go full throttle on bashing Apple over the company’s big launch event. The event, which took place on Tuesday in Cupertino, saw Apple unveil the new versions of the iPhone (the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus), as well as the new wearable, the Apple Watch.

    The event also saw Apple totally screw up the livestream, a fact which was not lost on Samsung:

    The rest of Samsung’s six new ads poke fun at Apple for being behind the curve on larger screens, still not offering a pen (?), battery life, and more. Some of the ads are more successful than others.

    The final ad pokes fun at the Apple Watch:

    Image via Samsung Mobile, YouTube screenshot

  • Google Changes Search Ads On Smartphones

    Google announced some tweaks to the way it displays mobile search ads on smartphones. Beginning on October 15th, ad extensions may show instead of the second line of ad text.

    Here’s the before and after:

    Google says the adjustments are aimed at making it easier and faster for consumers to find things while on the go.

    “Description line 2 may or may not show, depending on how well it’s expected to perform,” says product manager Senthil Hariramasamy. “These improvements are designed to show more relevant and useful information to your customers. Many advertisers have already optimized their ad text in a way that’s updated for longer headlines in keeping with our ads best practices, so no action is required in many cases.”

    Hariramasamy adds, “By showing ad extensions in this more prominent location, consumers will have easier access to information about your business, like your location and product offerings. Advertisers will see improved ad performance because you’ll be able to: Highlight featured products and services in a more pronounced way using callouts; provide useful and timely local information with location extensions; [or] take customers to relevant pages on your site, like to the sale or promotion page, with sitelinks.”

    Google notes that after the update, users may see a Google Maps marker that shows the location of a place as well as the URL, ad creative, and online order form, all within one ad.

    Image via Google

  • Twitter Launches Self-Serve Ads In 11 New Countries

    Last week, Twitter announced the expansion of Twitter Ads into twelve new markets including: Austria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine and Portugal.

    On Thursday, the company announced the launch of self-service ads in eleven new countries: Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands.

    “Over the last year, thousands of small- and medium-sized businesses have used Twitter Ads to engage their customers in real-time conversations, drive website traffic, generate leads and close sales,” says Twitter’s VP of Global Online Sales Richard Alfonsi. “Today’s announcement will help even more businesses to achieve their marketing goals with Twitter by expanding our self-service ad offerings to a total of 20 countries.”

    “By targeting potential customers in real time based on their geography, interests, mobile device and keywords, you have a greater opportunity to connect with these users at the precise moment when your business is most relevant to them,” Alfonsi adds.

    As noted, self-service ads include objective-based campaigns and real-time tracking and analytics.

    Image via Twitter

  • Google Launches Callout Extensions For AdWords

    Google announced a new ad extension for AdWords called callout extensions, which allow businesses to add text highlighting specific info about their products and services.

    You can use the extensions to draw attention to important details about products or highlight what makes you stand out from your competitors.

    “Callouts can also be used effectively in combination with other ad formats,” says AdWords product manager Senthil Hariramasamy. “For example, if you’re already using sitelinks for ‘Women’s Clothing’ and ‘Back to School,’ create a callout for ‘20% off entire site’ to encourage people to click through and make a purchase. Or if you’re using call extensions, highlight ’24/7 customer support’ so your customers know they can call your business for help. However you plan to use callouts, make sure to keep them focused and relevant.”

    “You can manage, schedule, and report on your callouts from the Ad extensions tab,” adds Hariramasamy. “Since callouts can be added at the account, campaign, or ad group level, you can provide more general information about your products and services at the account or campaign level, and more detailed information at the ad group level.”

    Callout extensions are rolling out now. Google says they’ll be available to all advertisers within a few weeks.

    Image via Google

  • Google Talks Invalid Clicks In New AdWords Video

    Google regularly uploads videos to the Google Ads YouTube channel, answering questions related to AdWords asked on Twitter, Facebook, and Twitter.

    The company has posted a new one talking about invalid clicks. The specific question being addressed is:

    How can I block competitors that might be clicking on my ads?

    And here’s the answer:

    You can always ask your own questions for potential videos using the hashtag #askadwords.

    Image via YouTube

  • Gisele Bundchen Signs With Under Armour

    What do married power couple Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen have in common besides both being rich, famous, and beautiful? They are now also both endorsing Under Armour. ESPN reported yesterday that the supermodel inked a multi-year deal with the apparel and shoe company that Brady has been with since 2010.

    The specific financial terms of the contract were not disclosed by Under Armour. However, we do know that they are a fast growing company and up 96% over the past year. Additionally, NBA star Kevin Durant reportedly turned down the company’s 10-year endorsement deal worth $275 million.

    The company released a 30 second teaser video on YouTube yesterday featuring Bundchen clad in Under Armour apparel from head to toe. She walks into an empty-looking building, laces up her sneakers, stretches out, and eyes up a big white hanging punching bag. The video then cuts to the slogan for the campaign: “I WILL WHAT I WANT.”

    It looks like we’re going to see more of the Bunden-Under Armour campaign tomorrow.

    Bundchen’s ad is part of Under Armour’s women’s campaign that began last month. The company’s first female to be spotlighted was ballerina Misty Copeland, certainly not a traditional sports figure. However, the unorthodox pairing was successful. Copeland’s ad featured the athletic comeback story that we can’t resist, and the video went viral with over 5 million hits on YouTube.

    Skier Lindsey Vonn, soccer player Kelley O’Hara, and tennis player Sloane Stephens have also signed with Under Armour’s female-driven campaign. It makes sense considering that females make up 30 percent of the company’s annual business.

    Forbes magazine recently revealed that Bundchen was the top model in terms of earning last year for the eighth time in a row. She pulled in an estimated $47 million in 2013. Her Quarterback husband earned about $30 million playing for the Patriots.

    Of course Under Armour isn’t the Brazilian model’s first foray into advertising, and she doesn’t earn almost $50 million a year just from her modeling career. Bundchen has advertising contracts with several companies that include: H&M, Carolina Herrera, Chanel, Isabel Marant, Balenciaga, and Stuart Weitzman.

  • Report: SMB Local Media Spending To Surpass $50B Next Year

    BIA/Kelsey is estimating that spending on local media by SMBs will reach $50.4 billion in 2015 at 35.8% of total local media spending. SMBs, it says, will allocate $37.7 billion of their local media spend to traditional media and $12.4 billion to digital.

    According to the firm, national brands will spend $50.5 billion on local media in 2015, and will make up 35.9% of total local media spending. An additional $39.8 billion in local media spending will come from local brands that aren’t SMBs, it says.

    SMBs, national brands, and non-SMB local businesses will each increase their local media spend by double-digit percentages, the report says.

    BIA/Kelsey intends to present its findings later this month, offering the full edition of its forecast, which will cover twelve media segments, including: newspapers, radio, over-the-air TV, cable TV, out-of-home, direct mail, directories, magazines, online, mobile and social.

    It will issue the forecast on the first day of the Leading in Local: SMB Digital Marketing conference, which starts on September 22nd. The timing for the annual forecast has been moved from the spring to the fall.

    Image via PR Newswire

  • DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite Gets New Reporting Tools

    Google announced the launch of several new tools for DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite: Adaptive Shopping Campaigns, bid optimization for Shopping Campaigns, and Purchase detail reports.

    Adaptive Shopping campaigns let you dynamically create and optimize your Shopping Campaign structure based on product performance. It includes integration with Google Merchant Center to monitor your feed and automatically subdivide existing product groups by product ID based on the conversion rates of the products in each group.

    “We’ve found that 90% of the median advertiser’s cost comes from only 9.5% of its products,” Google says in a blog post. “However, advertisers often lump these high-spend products into bid groups with other, lower-converting products — leading to bid values that are not optimized, based on relative performance. Adaptive Shopping campaigns ensure your most popular SKUs get the right bid by creating product groups for each item earning high traffic.”

    Bid optimization for Shopping campaigns was actually rolled out earlier this month. It lets you extend the algorithms from Google’s Performance Bidding Suite to your Shopping campaigns.

    “We know bid optimization can make or break campaign results. Bidding strategies need to be flexible enough to meet your business objectives, while algorithms need to be fast enough to act quickly in a competitive landscape,” Google says.

    The feature lets you define goals, target more efficiently, and set a mobile bid modifier to reach shoppers on the go.

    Purchase detail reports are in beta. They let you better understand products consumers have purchased and the ads that drove said purchases.

    More on all of the new stuff here.

    Image via Google

  • Hyperlapse Marketing Is Obviously Already Happening

    Whenever a new social media experience catches the media’s attention, marketers are usually among the first to take note and utilize it.

    On Tuesday, Facebook’s Instagram announced the launch of Hyperlapse, a new iOS app designed to let users create high-quality time lapse videos even while in motion.

    Introducing Hyperlapse from Instagram from Instagram on Vimeo.

    On Wednesday, Re/code is pointing us to a bunch of examples of brands that have already taken advantage. Below, find videos from Mountain Dew, Milkbone, Bud Light, Sonic, and Arizona Tea.

    The Tonight Show has also gotten in on the fun.

    Instagram did not say when an Android version might be available. You can learn more about how to use the iOS app here.

    As far as Instagram marketing goes, the company debuted a new ad analytics suite for brands last week.

    Image via Instagram

  • Apple Launches New Ad Formats For iOS

    Apple announced a couple of new ad formats for its iAd platform: pre-roll video and full-screen interstitial banner ads.

    The company said in a developer announcement, “Now you can deliver highly engaging ads from leading brands,” adding that the formats are optimized for your app, and available on iOS.

    There’s a PDF document about how to implement them here.

    In a separate announcement, the company also said it has expanded iAd into Russia and Switzerland.

    “You can now promote your apps in 16 countries or regions on the iAd App Network,” the company said. “With iAd Workbench, you can choose your audience, set your price, and create a campaign that drives downloads.”

    More on Workbench here.

    Earlier this year, Apple made iAd available to small businesses.

    Via Marketing Land

    Image via Apple

  • Report: Facebook To Take On DoubleClick With Atlas

    Facebook is getting ready for an all-out “assault” on Google’s DoubleClick this fall, according to a new report from The Information, which broke the news about Amazon’s acquisition of Twitch on Monday.

    Facebook acquired the Atlas ad platform from Microsoft early last year. We really haven’t heard that much about it in a while.

    At the time, a Facebook spokesperson told WebProNews, “We’re focused on improving marketers’ ability to measure how well their ads perform and believe this acquisition will allow marketers greater ability to measure the ROI of their ads for all their digital media spend. Ultimately, Atlas’s powerful platform, combined with Facebook partners Nielsen and Datalogix, will help advertisers compare their Facebook campaigns to the rest of their ad spend across the web on desktop and mobile.”

    Facebook’s Brian Boland also said at the time:

    Today’s marketing environment is much more complex than it was just a few short years ago. Marketers and agencies struggle to understand how their efforts across different channels complement and strengthen each other. Consequently, they are forced to adopt siloed marketing strategies for each channel, leading to poor and inconsistent end-user experiences.

    This challenge also provides an opportunity. If marketers and agencies can get a holistic view of campaign performance, they will be able to do a much better job of making sure the right messages get in front of the right people at the right time. Atlas has built capabilities that allow for this kind of measurement, and enhancing these systems will give marketers a deeper understanding of effectiveness and lead to better digital advertising experiences for consumers.

    According to The Information, Atlas has been revitalized since Facebook bought it and gave it new leadership. The report says:

    Facebook has been pouring resources into Atlas in advance of a big new push with the product, expected to coincide with the Advertising Week trade show in late September, according to three people familiar with the plans. Among the anticipated new features is a so-called “demand-side platform,” a system that lets advertisers make automated bids for ad inventory.

    It should really come as no surprise that Facebook is using the platform to go after a bigger chunk of the ad pie, and it appears that this is precisely what they’re doing.

    We should learn more about the specific plans soon.

    Image via Atlas

  • Twitter Opens Ads To Twelve More Markets

    Twitter Opens Ads To Twelve More Markets

    Twitter announced that it’s expanding Twitter Ads into twelve new markets in Eastern Europe and Portugal.

    “There has been tremendous growth in this region over the last year, and Twitter Ads will now be available in 35 EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) markets through direct sales support teams and reseller partnerships,” said VP of Direct Sales, Europe, Ali Jafari.

    The new markets are: Austria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine and Portugal.

    “We’ve heard positive feedback from brands around the world about how our recent product developments have helped accomplish goals like driving engagement or direct-response actions like website traffic, video views, leads and sales,” says Jafari.

    As he notes, Twitter has launched Promoted Video, Objective-based campaigns and pricing, the Tweet Activity Dashboard, Mobile App Promotion, and TV Conversation Targeting just since last year.

    Image via Twitter

  • Samsung Just Had to Turn the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge into an Ad

    Samsung Just Had to Turn the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge into an Ad

    Like President Obama and his views on gay marriage or a pokemon, I can evolve. My initial feelings on the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge were cynical, to say the least. Just donate the damn money, you’re only doing this for Facebook likes.

    But then celebrities started doing it. Not only did the likes of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, the Foo Fighters, and every actor you’ve ever heard of dump buckets of ice cold water on their heads, but they also gave sizable donations. The thing has spread at an astounding pace. ALS research has raised thousands of percent more than it did last year. ALS sucks, so this is awesome.

    Awareness has been achieved. It’s given us this incredible thing. Although it’s important to note that whatever funds have been raised for ALS are just drops in the pan of what’s needed for medical research in general, I’m behind it.

    I can’t say that I’m behind this.

    That’s Samsung touting the waterproof nature of its Galaxy S5 by having it take the Ice Bucket Challenge.

    Ok, so Samsung did make a ‘generous’ contribution…

    And it’s surely not made with bad intentions…

    But did Samsung have to turn the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge into an ad?

    Yes. Yes, they did.

    Image via Samsung Mobile UK, YouTube screenshot

  • Google Improves AdWords For Advertisers Accepting More Than One Currency

    Google announced that AdWords advertisers can now add currency information to their conversion values to more easily measure revenue when accepting more than one currency on their site or app.

    If you add currency info to your conversion values, all generated sales will be converted into the same currency used for AdWords billing. Google explains in a Google+ post:

    Let’s say you’re an online retailer based in the UK, promoting your products from an AdWords account billed in pounds (£). You accept payments in three currencies on your site–pounds, euros and dollars. Previously, when a customer paid for something in euros or dollars, you had to convert the payment into pounds in order to reconcile all the currencies into a single revenue amount for your business.

    Now, AdWords will convert the payment currency from euros and dollars to pounds, so you don’t have to. When you have both your costs and sales all in one currency, you can calculate a more meaningful return on investment.

    This page explains how to add currency to your conversions.

    Google notes that if you import goals and transactions from Google Analytics, you can just choose a currency, and AdWords will do the conversion for you.

    Image via Google