Google has uploaded a new webinar about Enhanced Campaigns to YouTube. Advertisers with a half hour to spare would probably do well to check it out. This one specifically deals with Google Shopping and Enhanced Campaigns.
Earlier this week, Google announced new ValueTrack parameters for Enhanced Campaigns.
Last month, Facebook began testing a new targeting feature for marketers called lookalike audiences. Today, the company announced the global launch.
The feature enables marketers to target audience segments with similar common attributes (interests, demographics) to the customers a marketer has already identified as a target audience, through the custom audiences feature.
“With lookalike audiences, advertisers (both e-commerce companies and direct response marketers) can expand their reach to specific geographic areas or audiences who are not already fans of the company’s page while still maintaining the desired demographic profile of their existing audience,” a spokesperson for Facebook tells WebProNews. “Companies using custom and lookalike audiences only know the size of their targeting groups; Facebook does not share any personal information from those audiences with advertisers.”
“We’ve seen this new type of targeting drive a wide range of success metrics for direct response companies like Fab, including lower cost per checkout, lower cost per acquisition, larger purchase size, and faster and increased return on investment,” the company says in a blog post.
The Lookalike Audiences tool will be available to all advertisers, in any country, from the power editor, this week.
Google announced a new feature for the AdSense ad review center, which lets you check landing pages for ads from within your account. This builds on a recent announcement, which let you search for ads by images.
“If you’re looking for more insight into your users’ experience with the ads on your site, the landing page view offers you a quick and easy view of what users see when clicking on an ad,” explains AdSense software engineer Pedro Diaz. “This in turn will help you make a more informed decision about whether or not an ad is suitable for your audience.”
You can find the feature when you log in to your AdSense account, and go to the “Allow and block ads” tab. Hover over ads, and you’ll see a small magnifying glass in the corner, which will show you the landing page preview.
The feature is only available in accounts with English set as the language preference, though it will roll out to other languages in time.
Twitter has just announced some big improvements to its invitation-only self-service ad platform that make it easier for businesses to target the right kinds of users with their paid ads.
Now, when deciding who to promote their accounts and tweets to, businesses who use Twitter’s self-service ads have a few new options to narrow it down. First, advertisers can select to target users who follow specific accounts that are similar to the field in which the advertiser is advertising.
For example, if a craft brewery wanted to target their promoted tweets toward people with an interest in beer, they could target users with the same interests as those who follow accounts like @DrinkCraftBeer, @BeerAdvocate, or specific craft breweries like Dogfish Head or Southern Tier.
Advertisers can also choose to target users inside 350 different “interest categories” – beer, golf, birdwatching, and so on.
Additionally, new targeting options include users’ devices and operating systems. This is a particularly useful options, as an Android game developers could target their tweets to Android users, or the makers of an iOS app could target just iOS users.
Twitter has also added gender targeting for self-service advertisers.
According to Twitter, these were some of the the most demanded features from those advertisers inside the self-service ad network.
Twitter has also opened up its advanced interface to all U.S. advertisers.
“Self-service advertisers who are more experienced with online advertising can now choose to use our advanced interface’s deeper campaign controls, detailed reporting and analytics, and multi-campaign optimization, which help them run more complex campaigns and optimize in real time. The pricing remains the same, and you can start and stop campaigns at any time in both interfaces,” says Twitter.
If you’re an advertiser that wants to switch over to the advanced interface, just log in and select the “switch to advanced” link at the top of your dashboard.
As of now, the self-service ad platform is still invitation only for U.S. businesses. Twitter says that they will start expanding internationally later this year.
Google announced today that it will be launching new ValueTrack features for advertisers using keyword level URLs, in the coming weeks. The company says these will help advertisers achieve specific conversion and ROI goals, and help ease the transition to Enhanced Campaigns.
They will do so, Google says, by directing users to device-specific landing pages at the keyword level and enabling measurement of the effectiveness of campaigns by device.
Specifically, Google has added the {ifnotmobile:[value]} parameter, which lets you replace [value] with the text that will show up in your URL when the user clicks the ad from a computer or tablet. They’re changing the parameter {ifmobile:[value]}, which will now insert the specified value into the URL only when the user clicks from a mobile device.
Google shares some examples for using these parameters in a blog post here.
“Advertisers are upgrading to enhanced campaigns and seeing strong results,” says AdWords senior product manager Karen Yao. “VivaStreet in France, the 4th largest free classified website in the world, upgraded all of their campaigns within the two weeks after launch. When they upgraded, they increased their mobile bid adjustment to 125% and saw overall conversions increase by 34%. After seeing the positive results, VivaStreet went on to increase their mobile bid adjustment to 140%. By using ValueTrack parameters, you can also direct users to device-specific content and measure the effect it has on conversions.”
Google posted an Enhanced Campaigns webinar today, discussing extensions and sitelinks:
Another webinar in this series is scheduled for March 21.
The mobile landscape is set to change in a big way in 2013, and though some of the coming changes can be predicted, others will provide big (and perhaps unwelcome) surprises for both consumers and advertisers.
As seen at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and Mobile World Congress, tech companies are focusing more than ever on smartphone and tablet devices. Companies such as Sony, LG, Asus, and even HP unveiled new devices that will enter a market already largely controlled by the likes of Apple, Samsung, and Amazon.
What mobile devices do you intend to acquire this year? Let us know in the comments.
What is somewhat surprising is that many of these companies might actually have a chance, considering how quickly the mobile industry is growing. On March 4, ABI research estimated that mobile users will download 14 billion tablet apps during 2013. Almost three-quarters of those apps will be running on a iPad device, but Android devices are now set to lead in the number of smartphone app downloads, which ABI predicts will reach 56 billion in 2013.
For consumers the proliferation of more devices with a wider variety of features could mean confusion and burnout. It also means that consumers have never had more choice, and more power, than they do now. The choices they make this year about the devices they purchase and the technologies they adopt will shape the technology landscape for years to come.
Apple stock has had a rough winter, in no small part to the Apple Maps debacle and the fact that the iPhone 5 failed to iterate significantly on the device’s past models. While Android devices are introducing larger smartphones, NFC technology, wireless charging, and features such as water resistance, Apple’s credibility as a innovator in the market segment it created is shrinking.
As Apple now begins to follow industry trends with the iPad mini and a less expensive version of the iPhone, Samsung is poised to become a market leader. The Korean company will unveil its latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S IV at an Apple-like announcement in New York on March 14. Samsung’s hefty manufacturing capabilities and willingness to mimic Apple have propelled it to the forefront of Android smartphones, but the company’s new marketing (another thing it has taken directly from Apple’s playbook) is also beginning to become part of the cultural zeitgeist.
The mobile market right now might be considered tablets and smartphones, but later this year Google will introduce a completely new type of mobile product with Google Glass. Though the device’s success is far from certain, it could introduce an entirely new mobile category, propelling the industry forward with even more constant connectivity. Glass’ ability to record on the fly also brings privacy concerns, meaning laws and social norms will be further tested by advancing technology.
With all of these changes coming to the mobile space, it’s worth considering how advertisers will adapt. While having consumers constantly connected and consuming content may seem preferable for advertisers, the abundance of that content can make it difficult for ad campaigns to target their audience. At the same time, the abundance of content and metrics can put consumers in control of much of the advertising they see.
As Susan Wojcicki, senior VP of advertising at Google, recently put it in a Google Plus post, “We are living in uncharted territory.”
Wojcicki argues that as always-connected devices continue to proliferate, advertising will quickly move into a “choice-based economy” where users will be able to control the content and ads that they see. She writes that “ads views will effectively become voluntary.”
It’s not hard to imagine how advertisers will have to adapt in that type of ad economy. Choice-based ad models will have to cater to consumers at an individual level with adaptability and engage customers in nearly the same way that content itself does. Wojcicki suggests that future technologies will provide more “interactive and beautiful” ads, but that’s only the beginning of how mobile advertising will change in the coming years.
Accepting that consumers are no longer a captive audience for ads may be a terrifying prospect for both advertisers and content creators, but consumer choice is only continuing to increase. This could make solid advertising opportunities more expensive, but also means that brands will have to adapt their ad techniques to grow a fan base or to provide upfront value to consumers.
How do you think advertising should adapt to consumer choice? Tell us your ideas in the comments.
As the nature of mobile advertising changes, how advertisers measure the impact of their campaigns will have to change as well. Wojcicki puts it bluntly by stating advertisers will have to develop “standards beyond the click.” However, it’s hard to predict just how those measurements will be made in the future, particularly in light of the growing backlash from privacy advocates.
Wojcicki stated that Google is beginning to to roll out surveys to provide advertisers with a way to measure the performance of their display and video campaigns. Google’s skippable “TrueView” ads are also now integrated into mobile AdMob apps, allowing consumers to decide for themselves what ads they will view.
As the future of the mobile industry finally begins to take shape this year, consumers have never had more choices with regards to hardware, software, and services. However, the plethora of choices thrown at consumers can also create confusion, and will inevitably lead to a few trusted brands leading the way. While advertisers attempt to pare down consumers’ choices for them, future technologies, such as Google Glass, will continue to continue to change the way people interact with technology and their environment.
Google has a new mobile app download ad format aimed at making it easier for people to download advertisers’ apps. It works with iTunes or the Google Play Store.
The format is only available for those who have upgraded to enhanced campaign settings.
“With enhanced campaigns, click-to-download ads will no longer trigger the app icon, so once you upgrade to enhanced campaign settings we recommend also creating new app promotion ads to replace your click-to-download ads,” Google notes.
To create the ads, open the campaign in AdWords, select the Ads tab, click “new ad,” and pick “App / digital content ad” as your template. Then, select the “App promotion ad.”
From there, you can choose your platform (Android/iOS), and enter the app package name or app ID.
Google says that new apps might take up to 24 hours to appear in its search results, and that the app promotion ads will only show on the devices upon which the apps can be installed.
Larry Kim, CTO of Worstream, who was an early partner on Google’s Enhanced Capaigns, tells WebProNews of the new format, “It’s a huge improvement in terms of ease of use and ad intelligence over the previous way of doing this.”
“The app Market is huge,” he says. “A $30 billion market in 2012 that didn’t even exist 5 years ago.” He notes that there are over 700,000 apps in both iTunes/Google Play stores, 40 Billion app Downloads on iTunes, etc.
“This new ad format is smart,” says Kim. “It just works. If your app works only on iOS tablets, then it will only show up to users that are using iOS tablets. The advertiser doesn’t have to fiddle around with dumb settings or anything. As a result, the ROI is better. Driving downloads and reviews to your mobile app is the key to getting good rankings in the app marketplace, and this is a very easy/cost effective way to do that.”
Kim shares more of his thoughts about the offering in his own post.
We’ve known for quite some time, at least based on rumor, that Facebook would acquire the Atlas ad platform from Microsoft. The rumors heated up this week, and today, the company has finally made the official announcement.
“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,” a spokesperson tells WebProNews. “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.”
“Today’s marketing environment is much more complex than it was just a few short years ago,” says Brian Boland, Facebook’s Director of Product Marketing. “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,” he adds. “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.”
As Boland points out, a lot of marketers that advertise on Facebook are already using Atlas, so it’s familiar territory. It’s been an approved partner for measurement since June.
Atlas clients won’t see any change in service, according to Facebook, who say it will continue to invest in the platform. The company says it does intend to scale its back-end measurement systems and enhance its current suite of tools on desktop and mobile, and plans to make improvements to the user interface and functionality.
Microsoft senior director of communications, Microsoft Advertising, Tom Phillips, says, “Our reasons for wanting to sell Atlas are really pretty simple: the time was right; the agreement allows us to focus more aggressively on the evolving vision we have our digital advertising business; it was mutually beneficial to both parties; and we feel that Facebook will afford the Atlas business and employees the greatest opportunity for continued growth. Moreover, in no way does this announcement change or diminish our commitment to online advertising, in either display or search.”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Federated Media Publishing announced today that Deanna Brown is stepping down as CEO. Founder John Battelle ,who has been in an Executive Chairman role since handing over the CEO reins to Brown in early 2011, is reprising his role as chief executive.
Battelle wrote about the decision on his blog. Following is just a snippet:
So when Deanna told me earlier this year that she wanted – in a thoughtful and appropriate manner – to move on and do something smaller and more directly related to content creation, I immediately understood. As I said above – it’s alright to step away when the time feels right. We spent a month or more thinking about who might be best to replace her. FMP is a unique company – straddling the two fastest-growing sectors of the digital marketing world: Native content marketing, and programmatic platforms. There aren’t many executives who are fluent in both, and who also might be a cultural fit for a company as storied as this one.
And then it hit me – quite literally in mid-sentence while on a Board call. Why the hell don’t I simply step back in? I love this company, I am passionate about the Independent Web, and to be honest, I see a huge opportunity in front of us. What am I, nuts? Why didn’t I think of it the moment Deanna told me of her decision?
Under Brown, Federated Media grew its network to outrank Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft in audience reach, the company says, citing comScore data.
Battelle founded Federated Media in 2005.
Last fall, Facebook released its custom audiences tool for marketers. Now, they’ve expanded it to allow businesses to use Datalogix, Epsilon, Acxiom, and BlueKai.
Businesses that already work with these third parties can use the same info they have used elsewhere to create campaigns on Facebook. Facebook will work with these third parties to create pre-defined targeting categories on Facebook, so businesses will be able to target categories like “soda drinkers” or “auto-intenders”.
“We know that many businesses also work with third party partners to enhance their online and offline marketing in order to show more relevant ads, and so today we’re announcing that we’re expanding custom audiences to allow businesses to work with these third parties,” Facebook says. “For example, an auto dealer may want to customize an offer to people who are likely to be in the market for a new car. To do this many businesses work with third party companies to better understand who might be in the market for a new car.”
“As with the existing custom audiences tool, these select partners use a privacy and data-protective matching process,” the company says. “The process is specifically designed so that no personal information is exchanged between Facebook, marketers or third party partners. People will still have the same controls over what ads they see on Facebook.”
The enhancements will be rolling out in the coming weeks to marketers in the U.S.
Earlier this week, AOL announced that its Advertising.com customers can now access Facebook’s inventory.
According to a report from Ad Age, Facebook is set to announce the acquisition of Microsoft’s Atlas ad platform as soon as today, following rumors that it would do so in recent months.
Google announced some updates to its AdWords Terms & Conditions in North America, the Caribbean, and Latin America (except Mexico, Argentina and Brazil). You can see the full country list here.
The main change Googee points out is that the terms now accomodate new advertising products and services.
“For example, we offer third-party ad serving in some situations, so you’ll see provisions about how we resolve ad serving disputes,” explains Mark Martel of the Google Ads Team. “Other changes include updated links to our policies and better consistency among our advertising terms globally.”
Google is giving users 45 days to review and accept the new terms. If you don’t accept them, Google may pause your ad serving until you do. So you might want to do that.
When you sign in to your account, you should be automatically taken to a page with the updates.
Google announced two new ad offerings today: surveys and TrueView in AdMob and games. The announcements came as part of a speech from Google SVP, Advertising, Susan Wojcicki, at an IAB conference.
Of the surveys, she says:
It’s still too hard for brands to measure the impact of their display and video campaigns, beyond simple metrics like clicks and impressions. We’ve made a lot of headway in this area and we’re now starting to roll out surveys, to deliver a more effective way for marketers to easily measure the “brand lift” from their campaigns.
Advertisers will be able to run surveys to measure their display and video campaigns in AdWords, to better understand the impact of their ads in real-time. They can measure things like changes in the awareness of an upcoming movie, the recall of a new product name, intent to purchase a new cereal or the favorability of a particular brand. Businesses will be able to present consumers with an anonymous survey, to be shown days after they see an ad. Responses will be aggregated (and compared to a control group). With these results, brands can calibrate and optimize their online ad campaigns quickly and seamlessly. The rollout has started for marketers running video campaigns on YouTube and will be broadened to include display ad campaigns.
The surveys are powered by Google Consumer Surveys, which Google launched nearly a year ago.
Google is also bringing the skippable TruveView ad format to mobile apps in AdMob and to online games that utilize the Google Display Network. According to Wojcicki, the format has been very successful for YouTube.
Both the survey ads and the TrueView ads have already begun rolling out.
You can read more about the new formats and Wojcicki’s vision for where online advertising is headed in this Google+ post.
YP (formerly AT&T Interactive) announced today that its annual ad revenue attributed to mobile surpassed $350 million, which it says makes it the number two company in the industry for that, based on data from IDC.
Overall digital ad revenue in 2012 reached about $1 billion, and mobile searches across YPmobile apps and YPcom exceeded 40% of total local searches across YP properties in 2012.
“YP has firmly established itself as the number two company in the U.S. mobile advertising industry in 2012. And that puts YP in a great position going forward,” said Karsten Weide, Program VP, Digital Media and Entertainment at IDC.
“Facebook probably would dispute the claim, with over $300 million in mobile revenue in Q4 alone, according to the company,” writes Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling, who notes that Google is the clear market leader. “Regardless, YP is the largest ad network dedicated to location-based advertising.”
“For one, mobile advertising continues to grow rapidly,” says Weide. “Last year the segment grew by more than 70 percent, and we think it will grow by another 60 percent this year. And also, with consumers checking for nearby information on the road, and with YP providing this data, they will see their business grow rapidly, too.”
“Since launching in May of last year, we’ve aggressively leveraged our core business assets to accelerate our position as the digital leader in local search, media and advertising,” said YP CEO David Krantz. “In 2013, we expect mobile to continue to fuel our growth as we expand relationships with 50+ million consumers using YP digital products on a monthly basis and extend mobile reach across our Local Ad Network of over 300+ digital publishers.”
As YP notes, YP.com was consistently ranked among the top 40 mobile web domains in the U.S. by comScore in 2012.
Google has released video from a recent webinar about brand building in a multiscreen world. The video is about a half hour long, and discusses ways to build brand awareness and influence consideration for your brand using YouTube, the Google Display Network, and the Google Mobile Network.
Google has released a new Offers format for AdWords ads. Larry Kim, CTO of Wordstream, who was an early Google partner on Enhanced Campaigns shared this screen cap with us:
Kim calls it “Google’s plan to kill Groupon,” and says these ads matter because:
1) Way better deal than Groupon who requires 50-90% discounted pricing, then takes 50% of that for themselves.
2) Advertisers can track this. Local businesses can connect the dots between online marketing and in-store purchases. Not possible before!
3) I think they’ll be rolling this out on Google Maps. Local Deals + Google Maps = perfect match!
Kim Discusses the ads more in his own blog post.
As previously reported, Twitter has officially launched its Ads API. Initial partners include: Adobe, HootSuite, Salesforce, SHIFT and TBG Digital.
Adobe shared some early results, as its Media Optimizer tool (which manages over $2 billion in annual ad spend) utilizes the API. The company worked with a few of its customers, including Levi Strauss and Threadless as well as its own Adobe account, and shared these results:
“Our customers have been asking us to include Twitter in the Media Optimizer solution,” says David Karnstedt, Senior Vice President, Media and Ad Solutions at Adobe. “Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts are important assets in creating a holistic digital marketing campaign. The performance gains Media Optimizer produced during our beta period, such as lowering cost-per-follow by 60%, are indicative of the value we offer our customers for their Twitter campaigns.”
The company discusses its early campaign results more here.
HootSuite is offering a new integration for Twitter, providing customers with amplification of owned into paid media, agency collaboration, real-time social campaigning, and layered social media reporting.
“HootSuite provides our clients with the ability to amplify their owned content, keeping them at the forefront of social advertising opportunities. This process is now a simple and efficient one,” says Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite. “The new integration allows stakeholders in social businesses to instantly buy Promoted Tweets and Accounts from their HootSuite dashboard using our secure, role-based team workflow.”
More on HootSuite’s new integration here.
Twitter has announced the official launch of the Twitter Ads API after testing it with partners since January. The first five partners include: Adobe, HootSuite, Salesforce, SHIFT and TBG Digital.
“Since we launched Promoted Tweets in April 2010, marketers have come to Twitter to reach new audiences and engage with more than 200 million active Twitter users on the web, on mobile devices, and on tablets,” says Twitter revenue product manager April Underwood. “As interest in Twitter has grown, our focus has been on delivering better ads for users, not more ads. We believe our system is working well because users like the ads experience on Twitter. Our system rewards marketers for being good, not for being loud. And this approach encourages ads that are engaging, relevant and useful.”
“Towards this goal, we’re always working on ways to make it easier to manage campaigns and get more value out of advertising with us,” she adds. “One important step is to enable a diverse group of companies that can integrate seamlessly with our ads platform.”
Twitter says marketers will be able to work with Twitter’s set of partners to manage Twitter Ad campaigns and integrate them into cross-channel advertising strategies.
“Equally important, users will continue to see the most relevant Promoted Tweets from advertisers,” notes Underwood. “With the Ads API, marketers now have more tools in their arsenal to help them deliver the right message, to the right audience, on the desktop and on mobile devices — all at scale.”
You can apply to join the partner program here.
Twitter says that in the coming months it will also start certifying ads products that integrate with the API, and that this is just the start of its efforts in this realm.
People really seem to be enjoying this new ad from Chevy, uploaded to YouTube a few days ago. YouTube has it in the “Trending Topics” right alongside things like the ever-popular Harlem Shake and Asteroid 2012 Da14. Given how much these other things are being talked about, that’s a pretty good start for an advertising campaign.
It should probably be noted that the ad is currently featured on the front page of YouTube, as an actual ad. Still the comments on the video are overwhelmingly positive.