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Tag: search ads

  • Google Experiment Is Adding Favicons to Ads

    Google Experiment Is Adding Favicons to Ads

    Online ads may be on the verge changing significantly, with Google testing favicons within ads.

    Favicons are those little icons that show up in browser tabs when visiting certain websites. They’re a way for websites to add a little more branding, but many users find them annoying and distracting. What’s more, browser favicons have been exposed as a privacy risk, allowing bad actors to track users’ activity.

    Evidently, Google still believes favicons may have a place in advertising, and is testing their inclusion, according to a tweet by Google’s AdsLiason account.

    This is part of a series of small experiments to help users more easily identify the brand or advertiser associated with the Search ads they may see for a given query.

    AdsLiason (@adsliason), January 24, 2022

    There’s no indication when Google will make a final decision.

  • Amazon and Google are Starting to Look More and More Alike

    Amazon and Google are Starting to Look More and More Alike

    The eCommerce landscape is in constant flux, with Amazon becoming more like a search-ads platform aside from being an eCommerce venture while Google seems to be doing the opposite. That’s one of the key takeaways from Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends report.

    Meeker recently presented her report at Recode’s Code Conference. Among the highlights of the talk was her observation that Amazon and Google are starting to evolve and converge. 

    While this convergence might seem strange to some, it’s inevitable that companies evolve as eCommerce continues to grow steadily every year.

    Amazon the Search Engine

    There’s no question that Amazon is lording it over in online sales. The company had a 28% share in gross merchandise volume (GMV) in 2017, a big jump from its 20% share in 2013.

    The past few years has also seen Amazon becoming the start-off point for more product searches than Google. A reported 49% of shoppers begin their product search on Amazon while 36% opt for other search engines. What’s more, Amazon shoppers are a loyal group. A PricewaterhouseCooper’s survey revealed that 14% of shoppers use this site exclusively. The company is also perfectly suited to take advantage of these searches with key features like one-click purchasing, which allows customers to purchase from Amazon once they find the results they want.

    [Graphic via MediaPost]

    Amazon is also aggressively growing its advertising side. More marketers are investing in the company’s paid search products, with 82% of Amazon Marketing Services users purchasing sponsored products while 65% buy headline search and product display ads.

    Google as an eCommerce Platform

    Google and Facebook continue to dominate ad revenues; Amazon is currently in fifth place. But with Jeff Bezos nipping at their heels, the Alphabet group is not resting on its laurels and has started to develop ways to ensure shoppers remain onsite. The company’s new AdWords feature – Shopping Actions – will ensure that happens.

    Shopping Actions essentially turns Google Assistant and Google Search into marketplaces that retailers can tap into while also allowing users to make direct purchases. Shoppers can add what they find in their search to a common shopping cart and easily check out using payment data already filed with Google. What’s more, the program works across various devices. This can provide Google a major advantage, given the increasing popularity of voice search.

    Home Depot, Target, Ulta, and Walmart are just some of Google’s retail partners. However, these partner retailers would have to sacrifice some of their sales and control of their customer’s online shopping experience to Google, it’s a small price to pay for being able to utilize the company’s vast resources, technology, and millions of potential customers.

  • Google Launches App Promotion Ads For Search, YouTube

    Google announced the launch of app promotion ads for search and YouTube, following a similar offering launched earlier this summer for the Display Network.

    The search ads enable users to get advertisers’ apps, and offer advertisers a three-step campaign set-up flow to promote them. These ads will only be shown to people who don’t already have the app.

    Google is also letting advertisers deep link users directly from Google Search to specific pages of apps they’ve already installed. This is in beta, but you can sign up to use it here. Google explains in a blog post:

    Customers like LINE, Zoopla and Booking.com are already testing deep-linking with their apps. Here’s how it works: let’s say someone has the Booking.com app installed on their phone and searches for “San Francisco Hotels” on Google.com; now they can go directly to the specific page in the Booking.com app that shows listings for hotels in San Francisco.

    Apps can also be shown to YouTube users as they’re watching videos. This comes courtesy of a new ehancement to TrueView ads. Google notes:

    With TrueView, advertisers can reach potential customers based on their interests, previously-watched videos and demographics.

    To promote an app on YouTube, you can link your app’s ID to your TrueView campaign. This page tells you how to do that.

    Google also touts three new search ad features: measuring app download conversions, integrating analytics data, and automating bid.

    Image via Google

  • Google Launches AdWords Format With Consumer Ratings, Says CTR Can Improve By 10%

    Google announced that it is rolling out a new consumer ratings annotations format for search ads, which gives users “detailed” consumer opinion data. Don’t worry. They highlight the good ratings.

    Specifically, Google says the ads will highlight one or more strongly rated aspects of your business as part of the ad. Here’s what they look like:

    The data comes from Google Consumer Surveys, which Google launched two years ago.

    Apparently there are hundreds of thousands of these things for Google to draw from. The new ad format could offer businesses greater incentive to take advantage of them.

    “Google Consumer Surveys provides a controlled platform for sampling consumer opinion, helping to avoid some of the potential biases and risks with other types of open-to-everyone review platforms,” says product manager Shreyas Doshi. “Each rating is based on at least hundreds of completed surveys, with the average above 1000. We plan to regularly refresh the survey data to keep the ratings current.”

    “Whether users are searching for clothes, car insurance, or a holiday, they have never had so much choice,” Doshi says. “And as users increasingly rely on the opinions and experiences of others to help them choose, a brand’s reputation matters more than ever before. That’s why we’ve developed ways to show ratings, reviews and social endorsements for your business as part of your search ads on Google. This kind of information makes your ads more useful to potential customers and can improve ad performance.”

    Last fall, Google updated its terms and services to enable the “social endorsements,” which put users’ names and faces in ads, so other users can see when their friends have recommended services.

    Google also launched survey ads for display and video campaigns last year. These are powered by the Consumer Surveys product as well.

    According to the company, based on tests with beta advertisers, the new search ad format can increase click-through rates by 10% on average.

    Image via Google

  • Twitter Launches Promoted Accounts In Search

    Twitter announced the addition of a new format to its ad platform – Promoted Accounts in Search. Twitter will show these to users in search results along with recommendations of people to follow.

    Twitter says it automatically selects relevant search queries for presenting Promoted Accounts based on an advertiser’s targeting choices. Advertisers need not take any additional action to appear here.

    Twitter Promoted Accounts in Search

    “Twitter is a platform built around live public conversations that happen as events unfold in the world,” says Twitter product manager Nipoon Malhotra. “One of the best ways for users to discover what’s happening on Twitter is through search, giving users the ability to instantly connect to conversations and topics of interest.”

    “Search also presents a great opportunity for marketers to connect with users, just when they desire information relevant to their search query,” Malhotra adds. “Building on the expansion of Promoted Accounts in timeline, we’re pleased to further connect businesses to users at the right moment, now through Promoted Accounts in search.”

    The company points to a recent study from Market Probe International finding that people are 72% more likely to make a purchase from a brand they follow or engage with on Twitter. Promoted Accounts are a way to get more of these types of people doing so.

    One important point worth considering is that Twitter Search is a very unique place on the Internet for a brand to appear. Where else are people searching for real time info?

    Image via Twitter

  • Paid Search Ads May Not be Worth Anything, Shows Study

    Paid Search Ads May Not be Worth Anything, Shows Study

    As advertisers have begun adapting to the internet, paid search ads have become a common way for businesses to advertise to potential customers. Specifically, Google has pioneered the paid search ad category for search engines, giving advertisers an easy way to show up in search results without gaining the popularity that would rank them higher in natural search results.

    As common as paid search ads are, a new study has now shown that they may not be as effective as advertisers assume they are. The study, conducted by economists at the University of California – Berkeley, found that paid search ads may not affect sales at all.

    The study’s authors worked with eBay to test the effectiveness of paid search ads. In 68 “direct marketing areas of the U.S.,” eBay paid search was completely turned off. After 60 days the researchers compared the sales of groups that had no paid search ads placed and those that did have paid search ads. The researcher later also tested eBay’s paid keyword searches, turning them off and then comparing sales data. They found no measurable impact on sales from paid search advertising.

    “We found that when you turn off the paid advertising, almost all of the traffic that came through the paid search is just substituted by the other free channels,” said Steven Tadelis, associate professor at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley. “If advertising is indeed a strong driver of sales, we should have seen sales plummet. But the impact on sales was indistinguishable and not significantly different than zero.”

  • Google’s ‘Proof’ That Search Ads Boost Offline Sales

    Google is showing what it says is “proof that online search ads can boost offline store sales” on its Think Insights site.

    This proof comes in the form of an article written by Kirthi Kalyanam, Ph.D., Professor of Marketing and Director, Retail Management Institute at Santa Clara University.

    Kalyanam looked at research from Applied Predictive Technologies from between 2008 and 2011 collected from experiments with 13 major Google advertisers across various categories. The retailers participated in 15 experiments to measure how online desktop search ads impacted in-store sales.

    Looking at the research Kalyanam pulls stats like: Investing in search ads increased incremental offline store sales by an average of 1.46%; sales return on search ad spend was between 2x and 14x; test categories saw an average sales lift of 5.8%; those who “heavied up” on spending on key category terms saw sales lift per category between 1.5% and 16.9%.

    “Unlike pure-play competitors, multi-channel retailers can connect with consumers in both the physical and digital worlds,” says Kalyanam. “Create a seamless cross-channel experience that puts online search advertising to work driving in-store and online purchases. It’s also important to note that the experiments I looked at were only testing online desktop search. We can expect the impact of search ads on offline sales to likely increase substantially if we account for constantly connected consumers, and the mobile search opportunities they bring with them when they shop.”

    “We already knew that investing in search ads is a proven way to boost digital purchases,” he adds. “But if the effectiveness of digital ads is only being tracked through online sales, multi-channel retailers are likely missing a piece of their ROAS.

    Google is working on getting advertisers more data about how their search ads have impacted in-store sales. The company talked a little about this in its announcement for Estimated Total Conversions, but even since then, reports have come out about Google beta-testing a program that uses smartphone location data to determine when consumers visit stores.

    Last week, Google introduced yet another Google product that users will be using in stores – the Google Wallet Card. It’s hard to imagine that data won’t be gained and used from these as well.

    Images: Google

  • Google Launches New Local AdWords Targeting Options In 11 Countries

    Google has made some updates to local targeting for AdWords in 11 countries. Here in the United States, Google notes that it has recently changed its metro targeting areas to Nielsen DMA (Designated Market Areas) regions.

    “Now your online campaigns and reporting will more precisely match TV-based audience data and campaigns. If you’ve been using metros, you’ll notice that the new geographic shapes look different on a map,” says product manager Derek Coatney, on the Inside AdWords blog. “While you might see some increases or decreases in traffic with the new regions, we estimate the impact will be small for most advertisers.”

    Metro Targeting

    In Canada, Google is expanding its launch of ZIP code targeting, which was already available in the U.S. Canadian postal code FSAs can now be targeted. Advertisers can now reach over 1,500 of them.

    “Now you’ll be able to plan, buy and get reporting with AdWords the same way you do with direct mail,” says Coatney. “Plus, with the “Bulk locations” tab in the AdWords location targeting tool, you’ll be able to easily enter up to 1,000 locations per country at a time.”

    ZIP targeting in Canada

    Google is adding city and region targeting options to the following new countries: Belgium (city), Bulgaria (region & city), Denmark (city), India (city), Ireland (city), Romania (region & city), Sweden (region & city), Taiwan (city), and Vietnam (city). In Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, India, Sweden, and Taiwan, Google has added location extensions, which show the closest business address and phone numbers with search ads.