Introducing the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite: A smarter, faster, product-centric layer to search management

Tuesday, February 4, 2014 | 11:13 AM

Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Advertisers blog Here at DoubleClick Search, we’ve been focused on developing tailored solutions for retail advertisers  -- delivering the scale, performance, and speed our customers need to maximize revenue for their businesses. Today, we’re excited to introduce the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite, a robust toolset offering a smarter, faster, product-centric layer to search management. The suite is comprised of solutions that help you automatically create and update text ad and PLA campaigns based on your product catalog, leverage real-time data to optimize against your product or category-level business goals, and measure it all with flexible, product-based reports.

Putting “product” at the core of commerce investments

We designed the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite with products at the core, letting you efficiently build, manage, and optimize campaigns by seamlessly integrating with your existing product investments. As the only platform directly integrated with Google Merchant Center, we make your product inventory visible and accessible within DoubleClick Search -- meaning there’s no need to navigate a separate interface, manage a manual upload, or wait for a separate team to deliver product feed data. Instead, anyone on your marketing team can act on live updates, as they happen.

For example, inventory-aware campaigns uses this live product information to automatically create and update text ads, keywords, and bids based on real-time changes to your Google Merchant Center feed -- inclusive of updates to pricing, availability, product descriptions, and more -- with no extra work, and at no extra cost to set up.

For ATG Stores, an ecommerce company for home goods, the ability to directly interact with Google Merchant Center data in DoubleClick Search was crucial in allowing the team to quickly iterate across their four million SKUs. “Inventory-aware campaigns have been a game changer,” says Tom Heffernan, Search Marketing Manager for ATG Stores. “It’s impressive to see that what would previously have taken a full week to do is now being updated in the system in less than an hour.” In addition to time savings, this smart automation also helped the team take advantage of broader long-tail keyword coverage to widen reach and uncover incremental revenue. As a result, ATG Stores tripled their return on ad spend (ROAS) for their inventory-managed campaigns.

Today, we’re extending the power of this product-centric automation with two new capabilities for Product Listing Ads (PLAs):

• Dynamic Product Listing Ads creation, an extension of inventory-aware campaigns, lets you automatically generate and update PLA campaigns in real time, based on your Google Merchant Center feed.
• Product Listing Ads optimization with intra-day bidding based on the freshest data lets you react quickly to changes in the market -- executing bids to meet your ROI goals on both high-volume products, as well as the long tail.

Dynamic Product Listing Ads creation

In addition to your text ads, you can now dynamically manage your PLA campaigns using the same, seamless workflow you use for the rest of your campaigns  -- ensuring you’re always up to date, maximizing coverage, and driving better ROAS and volume.

Already, advertisers are seeing the benefits. “The ability to auto-generate PLA campaigns from existing product inventory drastically simplifies our setup process,” said Carissa McStay, Associate Manager at global marketing firm The Search Agency. “I was able to generate new PLA campaigns with over 1000 ad groups by product type in a matter of minutes -- not only saving us hours of time, but ensuring that our new customers see the most compelling ads that are relevant to them.”

Product Listing Ads optimization (beta)

Our Performance Bidding Suite offers the flexibility to optimize from a variety of signals and conversion sources including formula columns, external data (like calls), and Google Analytics goals; now, these same powerful bidding algorithms extend to your PLA campaigns. With more product-level information available, DoubleClick Search bid strategies can fine-tune bids on high-volume products to drive the most revenue, as well as handle the long-tail products that may receive less traffic.

And like with the rest of DoubleClick Search bid strategies, PLA bid strategies benefit from access to the same real-time data, with bids based on up-to-the-minute conversions to capture every new opportunity. This allows advertisers to respond to market changes at the drop of a hat -- even during the busiest holiday shopping days like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or Valentine’s Day.

As the global leader in performance marketing, iProspect understands that speed is often the difference between seized and missed opportunities for retail clients. "Real-time is the future of retail, and DoubleClick is leading the way with the ability to optimize from real-time conversion information,” says Jeremy Hull, Director of Bought Media at iProspect. “With fast, accurate data, DoubleClick Search offers clients the tools they need to optimize throughout the day as traffic shifts occur.”

Just the beginning

This product-centric focus will continue to guide our feature development, helping us quickly innovate additional tools that will drive revenue for the ecommerce business. To learn more about upcoming DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite developments in easy workflows, insightful reporting, and new technology integrations and partnerships, stay tuned to the DoubleClick Search blog, or follow us on Google+.

“Making mobile work” for the advertising industry

Monday, February 10, 2014 | 7:30 AM

Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Advertisers blog

Today, almost 50% of the US population has a smartphone* and one in five webpage views now occur on mobile devices.** Even though consumers have quickly incorporated these devices into their daily routines, advertisers haven’t necessarily followed suit. While a few of the savviest advertisers are taking advantage of the multiscreen opportunity, it’s time that the entire industry think critically about how to make mobile a first class citizen in their campaigns.

One key aspect of “making mobile work” is using mobile-compatible ad creative; HTML5 creative works on smartphones, tablets and desktops, allowing advertisers to build a single ad unit that can run across all screens. By using HTML5, advertisers open the door to cross-screen branding opportunities, as well as enable publishers to monetize their highly-trafficked mobile properties.

To call out this need, the IAB today published an open letter, signed by Google, 16 US publishers and six UK publishers, asking marketers to use HTML5 for their ad creative so that their campaigns can show up properly across screens.

This plea to marketers is the first step in a larger “Make Mobile Work” Initiative, in which the IAB, supported by Google and the other publishers, will provide additional resources to marketers to educate them on how to implement successful mobile campaigns.

By fostering the conversation and educating marketers, we hope the “Make Mobile Work” Initiative will invigorate the production of mobile-compatible campaigns, enable marketers to take advantage of the mobile opportunity, and provide publishers with the inventory they need to monetize their mobile properties.

Posted by Bonita Stewart, VP Americas Partner Business Solutions, Google

*source: eMarketer “US Mobile Phone Internet Users and Penetration, 2012-2017.”
**source: http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-ww-monthly-201012-201312

Shopping campaigns now available to all advertisers around the world

Tuesday, February 18, 2014 | 10:27 AM

Last year, we introduced Shopping campaigns to a limited number of advertisers as a new, retail-centric way to manage and promote your products on Google. It allows you to browse your inventory directly in AdWords, streamlining how you organize, bid and report on your Product Listing Ads.

We received great feedback from advertisers so far, who say that Shopping campaigns help them save time organizing their inventory and discovering new opportunities to optimize and grow their traffic online. Here are just a few things we’re hearing from retailers.

• "We're very excited about the opportunities that come with Shopping campaigns. It makes life easier for retailers who want to get more granular with their targeting, solving many problems that exist today. Its features help clients manage, exclude and prioritize their products and can help clients continue to see increased ROI on PLAs in the future." - Todd Bowman, Product Manager, RKG


• "Thanks to Shopping campaigns, our 8000+ product catalog is manageable now. The advanced competitive metrics, such as impression share and benchmark max. CPC, really help us manage bids efficiently." - Nick Carter, Director of Marketing & Sales, ValuePetSupplies


• "The transition was very easy. We quickly created product groups for the top 25 brands and a ‘top sellers’ strategy and saw a 6% reduction in CPC and a 13% increase in conversion rate. The combined benefit of these two improvements alone has meant our CPA has reduced by 20% since we launched Shopping campaigns." - Rich Brown, Head of PPC, Farfetch


• “Transitioning our customer AllesRahmen.de to the new Shopping campaigns was the best decision. They not only saved us time, but the additional information on benchmark CTRs and max CPCs also helped us to optimize the campaign efficiently, lowering our CPA by 88%.” - Melanie Lang, Head of SEA, Beyond Media


• "Shopping campaigns definitely gave us more control over our bidding, helping us quadruple our click-through rate, reduce our cost-per-order by two-thirds, and increase our conversion rate by 88% year on year." - Shira Reineking, Head of Campaign Management Online Business, real, - 

Starting today, Shopping campaigns are now available to all advertisers around the world.

Based on feedback from early adopters, Shopping campaigns also now allow you to bulk edit your product groups at scale. API support and a bid simulator are coming soon. We’ll continue to build out support for Shopping campaigns, working closely with external agencies and search management platforms as well.

Learn how to get started with the help of a few resources:

• View our Shopping campaigns tutorial video series
• Join a Shopping campaigns Learn With Google Webinar in English on March 6
• Meet us in person at SMX West or ClickZ NY
• Engage with the AdWords Community for questions and advice

Need additional assistance? We’re happy to help. Feel free to visit our Help Center or contact us.

Posted by Eric Tholomé, Director of Product Management, Google Shopping

Investing in a cleaner, more accountable web with spider.io

Friday, February 21, 2014 | 4:00 AM

Advertising helps fund the digital world we love today -- inspiring videos, informative websites, entertaining apps and services that connect us with friends around the world. But this vibrant ecosystem only flourishes if marketers can buy media online with the confidence that their ads are reaching real people, that results they see are based on actual interest. To grow the pie for everyone, we need to take head on the issue of online fraud.

This is a fight we’ve taken seriously from the beginning. Over the years, we’ve invested significantly in the technology and talent to prevent fraud and create greater accountability online. For example, we put extensive resources towards keeping bad actors out of our ad systems -- last year alone, we turned down millions of applications from sites looking to join our network because of suspected fraudulent activity. We also introduced new measurement tools, like MRC-accredited Active View, which lets advertisers buy only those ads that are viewable on a page. Active View offers greater peace of mind to all media buyers, but is especially important for brand marketers who want to know, first and foremost, that their ad has a chance to be seen.

Today we’re announcing our latest investment: we’ve completed an acquisition of spider.io, a company that has spent the past 3 years building a world-class ad fraud fighting operation.

Our immediate priority is to include their fraud detection technology in our video and display ads products, where they will complement our existing efforts. Over the long term, our goal is to improve the metrics that advertisers and publishers use to determine the value of digital media and give all parties a clearer, cleaner picture of what campaigns and media are truly delivering strong results. Also, by including spider.io’s fraud fighting expertise in our products, we can scale our efforts to weed out bad actors and improve the entire digital ecosystem.

Of course, this is not an issue we’re fighting alone. We applaud industry efforts like the IAB’s Traffic of Good Intent (TOGI) task force, which also play a critical role, as well as major commitments from others in the space. As an industry, we can address this issue and block those who seek to game the system. We can make digital the platform of choice for all marketers -- including brands -- to invest.  And we can offer accountable media for all; we’re excited to take this big next step.

-- Neal Mohan, VP, Display Advertising

Holiday results: VivaKi Search Hub increases conversions by 360 percent and decreases costs by 27 percent with real-time bid optimization

Tuesday, March 4, 2014 | 9:03 AM

Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Advertisers blog

During the 2013 holidays, we shared some tips and tricks on how to adjust your bid strategies to take advantage of seasonal opportunities. Today, we wanted to take a look back and highlight one of our holiday success stories with the DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite for real-time bid optimization. The following story comes from the VivaKi Search Hub -- VivaKi’s marketing support service that uses a deep knowledge of DoubleClick Search to drive results for their advertisers’ search programs.  

One of the VivaKi Search Hub’s advertisers, a large retail brand, looked to the team to overhaul their current strategies for maximizing results over the 2013 Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping days. To prepare for this peak time, the team turned to the DoubleClick Search Performance Bidding Suite to automate bids based on real-time conversion data, and respond immediately to market changes. 

Timothy Lackhouse, Team Lead for Bid Strategy at the VivaKi Search Hub, was in charge of managing the advertiser’s bid strategies. “The bid strategies in DoubleClick Search are incredibly clear to set up and modify,” said Lackhouse. “With near real-time and granular reporting, we don’t need to spend countless hours or days waiting for the data. We’re able to get a deep level of insight into our performance right away -- assessing what’s working, what’s not, and making tweaks as necessary.” 

Within days of launching the new bid strategies, the positive results were irrefutable. During Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the VivaKi Search Hub was able to increase its advertiser’s conversions by 360 percent while lowering CPO by 27 percent -- all while saving 90 minutes a day. 

To get the full scoop on the VivaKi Search Hub’s success with the Performance Bidding Suite, read the full customer story here. Stay tuned to the DoubleClick Search blog and Google+ page for even more customer success stories.

Luxury Automakers, Ads from Big Game Hit It Big on YouTube Ads Leaderboard

Monday, March 10, 2014 | 10:57 AM

The YouTube Ads Leaderboard showcases the most creative ads that people choose to watch each month.

Last month’s Leaderboard revealed the ads that were getting the most buzz leading up to the big game. This month we look at those that are continuing to capture consumers’ attention long after the final whistle, including Chrysler and Bob Dylan’s “America’s Import,” Coca-Cola’s “America Is Beautiful” and Microsoft’s “Empowering.” We also welcome some new players to the Leaderboard; luxury automakers grabbed the interest of consumers with the U.S. launch of Maserati’s Ghibli and Hennessey’s demonstration of the world’s fastest legal street car.

See who else made the list and watch the videos on Think with Google.

Ads are determined for the YouTube Ads Leaderboard by an algorithm that factors in paid views, organic views and audience retention (how much of a video people watched). For additional coverage of the YouTube Ads Leaderboard, go to Adweek.com.

Does ad tech stack up? How it's working at VivaKi

Tuesday, March 11, 2014 | 8:12 AM

Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Advertisers blog

Marketers and agencies have countless opportunities to engage audiences with rich formats across channels and devices. But today, organizations are using an average of 4.7 ad tech platforms to execute what should be a seamless experience across search, display, video, mobile, and more.

Many forward-thinking organizations know the real opportunity lies in creating unified, cross-channel experiences that span multiple touchpoints. In a new Think Insights article, Marco Bertozzi, Executive Managing Director at VivaKi, explains the benefits of adopting a unified solution to unlock the full potential of digital marketing. Check out the article on the Think Insights page here.

YouTube and TED present Ads Worth Spreading 2014 Honorees

Friday, March 14, 2014 | 7:59 AM

What makes an ad worth spreading?

For the fourth year, TED’s Ads Worth Spreading and YouTube are partnering to celebrate advertising that goes beyond a simple commercial message. Each year, TED speakers and stars from the advertising industry select 10 ads that tell a story and forge a connection with their audiences, prompting them to share that story with friends and family around the world.
This year, we’ve added a new component that focuses on identifying the ad submissions that are “spreading” on YouTube. We passed the nominees through our YouTube Ads Leaderboard algorithm to determine which of these ads have already caught on with the YouTube community.

See the Special Edition TED Ads Worth Spreading YouTube Ads Leaderboard here and the winning TED Ads Worth Spreading honorees here.

TED’s Ads Worth Spreading is a call to action for all of us who are in the profession of communicating ideas to elevate our game from creating messages that are memorable to those that are shareable.

Merge the art and science of brand advertising by learning to build Engagement Ads

Tuesday, March 18, 2014 | 9:41 AM

Studio Certified developers, do you want to tell the world that you can create innovative ads designed for users to connect with brands? With DoubleClick Studio's Engagement Ads Certification, you can get certified in building ads that marry the art of brand building with the science of performance display.

Engagement Ads are tuned to user engagement – not clicks, letting brands connect with users through multiple creative formats. Ads are available on a cost-per-engagement (CPE) basis, allowing advertisers to bid and pay only for user engagement.

Watch this video:

Engagement Ads fit in standard display units, allowing them to scale across the web and then expand to a larger format after an innovative two-second hover delay. This delay eliminates nearly all accidental expansions, providing a better user experience and more accurate reporting to advertisers.

With this flexibility, the richness of a campaign using Engagement Ads depends on the story the brand wants to tell and the type of content they want to promote. Creatives can range from rich, interactive videos built in DoubleClick Studio to immersive brand experiences using HTML5, CSS3, and WebGL – all without leaving the ad format on the publisher's website.

Check out an Engagement Ad format in action.

Engagement Ads badge certification gives you:

• A badge that identifies you as a Studio Certified user able to create Engagement format ads
• Promotion as a via DoubleClick Rich Media properties and associated sites

You also receive the benefits of the Studio Certification Program, including exclusive access to betas and product features, DoubleClick hosted events and workshops, and a badge you can use for self-promotion.

Pass the exam and get the badge to demonstrate your expertise in creating rich ads to boost user engagement. Take the Engagement Ads exam and get certified.

Note: You must be Studio Certified in Core Flash or HTML5 to take the Engagement Ads certification exam.

Not Studio Certified? No worries! Get Certified today. We have these Studio Certification badges available:

1. Core Studio Certification exam for Flash and HTML5 developers
2. Integrated QA Certification
3. Advanced Badge Certification for Dynamic creatives, VPAID creatives, and YouTube Mastheads

Learn more about Studio Certification in the Rich Media Gallery.

Posted by Paige Birnbaum, Program Manager, DoubleClick Studio Certification

The Gift That Keeps on Giving: Post-Holiday Learnings

Now that you’ve taken a breather from the last holiday season, it’s time to start preparing for the next one.  For some of you, so much depends on the holidays that you’ll be spending most of this year preparing for them.  We want to help you make the most of last season’s recap so that next season’s performance will be your best.  That’s why we’ve put together this checklist to ensure that you cover everything in your post-holiday analysis.

Are you doing all you can to get ready for the next holiday season?

• Analyze this past season’s performance
• Gather and share feedback with your team and partners
• Start planning and preparing for the next season

It’s never too early to start preparing for this year’s critical holiday season.  Building a plan from past performance and updating it as you find new opportunities sets you up for even greater success this year.  Give the gift that keeps on giving to your account.  Download the Post-Holiday Analysis Checklist today.

Posted by Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing

Investing in Better Measurement for Brands

The world’s major brands are now building their marketing campaigns for the digital world, from Dove's Real Beauty Sketches, to Toyota's Car Collaborator, to Kate Spade’s holiday ads.

Brands and their agencies want to better measure their digital campaigns, but they don’t want one-off science experiments or fuzzy numbers; they want metrics that are as meaningful and actionable as the click has become for performance advertising:

As we invest to improve brand measurement for the entire industry in all these areas, we are keeping a few things in mind. First, measurement should be actionable - real time insights to improve campaigns as they run, not after-the-fact reports that can only improve future ad buys. Second, we know our clients want measurement that is open and transparent so we’re partnering with the industry to create metrics that serve as a true currency between buyers and sellers, and offer flexibility and choice to marketers.

Today at the IAB Leadership Summit, I gave an update on a few of our brand measurement products:

Active View

Last year, comScore estimated that 54% of ads running on the web aren’t seen by the user.  Maybe the reader scrolled past your ad; maybe she never got to it.

We’re supporting industry initiatives, like the IAB’s Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) to establish new standards.  And late last year, we made it possible to buy based on viewability on the Google Display Network. This capability is based on our MRC-accredited Active View technology, a transparent and actionable viewability metric that we’re gradually rolling out to both marketers and publishers. It’s early days, but we’ve already seen more than 1,500 brands buying impressions based on viewability, across more than 100,000 sites on our network.

comScore vCE

In TV, marketers use the concept of a Gross Rating Point (GRP), by which they measure the reach and frequency of their campaigns among different demographics. For digital campaigns, there are a number of options for marketers wanting a digital GRP across screens. For example, last year, we started testing comScore vCE (validated Campaign Essentials) and Nielsen OCR (Online Campaign Ratings) for campaigns on YouTube and across our network.

While we’re excited by the efforts in the industry to introduce GRPs to the digital market, we believe we haven’t yet reached the full potential of this metric.  And so today, we’re excited to announce that we’re taking another step forward by partnering with comScore to turn vCE into a digitally actionable metric.

By working closely with comScore and the industry, we believe we can make a GRP metric that will be completely actionable: both advertisers and publishers will be able to see if a campaign is reaching the right audience in real time and make adjustments if it isn’t.  No more waiting days or weeks for reports, no more wasted media, no more missed opportunities. This objective, third-party vCE metric is being built directly into our DoubleClick ad serving products, where it can serve as a transparent currency for both marketers and publishers to buy, sell and measure ad space across sites, formats and screens.

Brand Lift

At the top of the pyramid, brands want to measure the impact of advertising on core brand metrics like awareness, favorability, purchase consideration and, ultimately, sales. We're developing a suite of Brand Lift products to help here.  Last year, we began a small test of surveys to measure the impact of a brand's campaign.

Measuring ad effectiveness by conducting surveys is not new.  But generally they’re slow to provide results, and get very low response rates.

In our early tests, we’re seeing 20-30% user response rates (significantly higher than traditional surveys), coming through in near real time.  This enables brands to turn the results into immediate action: brands that are using Survey Lift have seen an 82% lift in ad recall, along with a 64% lift in brand awareness. For example MasterCard was able to double brand recall for one of their holiday campaigns based on insights gleaned from surveys.  Based on this early promising feedback, we’ll be rolling these surveys out more broadly, for more types of campaigns, in coming months.

Going forward

There’s lots more to come, and we're working on ways to help brands at all stages of the measurement pyramid. More actionable, open and transparent measurement will help bring more great campaigns and brands online, which in turn helps to fund web services and content. We’re looking forward to working with the industry and partners to help make this a reality.

Posted by Neal Mohan, VP, Display Advertising

Labels: Brand, Google Display Network

Shopping campaigns now available to all advertisers around the world

Last year, we introduced Shopping campaigns to a limited number of advertisers as a new, retail-centric way to manage and promote your products on Google. It allows you to browse your inventory directly in AdWords, streamlining how you organize, bid and report on your Product Listing Ads.

We received great feedback from advertisers so far, who say that Shopping campaigns help them save time organizing their inventory and discovering new opportunities to optimize and grow their traffic online. Here are just a few things we’re hearing from retailers.

• "We're very excited about the opportunities that come with Shopping campaigns. It makes life easier for retailers who want to get more granular with their targeting, solving many problems that exist today. Its features help clients manage, exclude and prioritize their products and can help clients continue to see increased ROI on PLAs in the future." - Todd Bowman, Product Manager, RKG


• "Thanks to Shopping campaigns, our 8000+ product catalog is manageable now. The advanced competitive metrics, such as impression share and benchmark max. CPC, really help us manage bids efficiently." - Nick Carter, Director of Marketing & Sales, ValuePetSupplies


• "The transition was very easy. We quickly created product groups for the top 25 brands and a ‘top sellers’ strategy and saw a 6% reduction in CPC and a 13% increase in conversion rate. The combined benefit of these two improvements alone has meant our CPA has reduced by 20% since we launched Shopping campaigns." - Rich Brown, Head of PPC, Farfetch


• “Transitioning our customer AllesRahmen.de to the new Shopping campaigns was the best decision. They not only saved us time, but the additional information on benchmark CTRs and max CPCs also helped us to optimize the campaign efficiently, lowering our CPA by 88%.” - Melanie Lang, Head of SEA, Beyond Media


• "Shopping campaigns definitely gave us more control over our bidding, helping us quadruple our click-through rate, reduce our cost-per-order by two-thirds, and increase our conversion rate by 88% year on year." - Shira Reineking, Head of Campaign Management Online Business, real, - 

Starting today, Shopping campaigns are now available to all advertisers around the world.*

Based on feedback from early adopters, Shopping campaigns also now allow you to bulk edit your product groups at scale. API support and a bid simulator are coming soon. We’ll continue to build out support for Shopping campaigns, working closely with external agencies and search management platforms as well.

Learn how to get started with the help of a few resources:

• View our Shopping campaigns tutorial video series
• Join a Shopping campaigns Learn With Google Webinar in English on March 6
• Meet us in person at SMX West or ClickZ NY
• Engage with the AdWords Community for questions and advice

Need additional assistance? We’re happy to help. Feel free to visit our Help Center or contact us.

Posted by Eric Tholomé, Director of Product Management, Google Shopping

---

*For a full list of countries targetable with Product Listing Ads, visit the help center.

Labels: Google Shopping, Product Listing Ads, Reporting and Analytics, Updates

A New way to count conversions in AdWords

We’ve been working hard on building products and features that help you better understand the value you’re getting from AdWords. With estimated cross-device conversions and cross-account conversion tracking, you’re able to more accurately measure conversions in AdWords and better understand the complex path to purchase.

Today, we’re excited to launch flexible conversion counting.

Flexible conversion counting  is an improved way for you to count conversions that really matter to you. Now you can better measure the value of each click that turns into business results.

Want to know more? Check out this video to see how flexible conversion counting makes it easier to count all of your conversions.

Flexible Conversion counting replaces today’s conversions (one-per-click) and conversions (many-per-click) columns with Converted clicks and Conversion columns--helping you understand the relative value of each click that results in a conversion. A company like Berkeley Tees can now count all instances of t-shirt purchases while only counting unique instances of catalog downloads. Take a look:

Click to Enlarge

Read more information about flexible conversion counting in this Help Center article.

Posted by Vishal Goenka, Product Manager, AdWords Conversions

Labels: Conversion Tracking, Updates

Reach more customers across Search and Display with Search Network with Display Select

Our customers are accessing information across multiple devices, and might look at 10 different sources - online reviews, news articles, recommendations from friends and more - before making a purchase. Display advertising captures these signals, enabling advertisers to connect with customers across millions of sites, videos and apps.  But for some advertisers, managing separate search and display campaigns can be complex and time consuming.

Last fall we launched a new high-performing way for advertisers to grow their businesses across both search and the very best of display opportunities in a single campaign: Search Network with Display Select.

Now we're excited to share the early results: Search Network with Display Select campaigns are helping advertisers gain up to 15% more customers than search campaigns alone.  In fact, the average advertiser can see a 35% higher click-through-rate, and a 35% lower cost-per-customer purchase on the display portion of their Search Network with Display Select campaigns.

WordStream, an agency specializing in pay-per-click advertising turned to Search Network with Display Select to broaden its clients’ reach and convert new audiences across the web. “As an agency we understand the long-term benefits of display, but when money is coming out of a client’s pocket, they want to see a direct return,” says Rich Griffin.

Search Network with Display Select has helped WordStream's clients increase conversions beyond search:

• Safeguard Tubs makes walk-in bathtubs for seniors. They saw a 25% increase in their overall conversions at a cost-per-acquisition on par with their previous campaign by reaching new customers on sites like AARP.com. 
• Blindster, an online seller of blinds and shades, drove 22% more conversions by showing their ads on DIY sites and home design blogs. 

Another company that has found success using Search Network with Display Select is ELMO Talent Management Software, a SaaS HR systems company who found themselves maxing out traffic for super-competitive keywords like ‘LMS’ and ‘Performance Management System.' They turned to Search Network with Display Select, and in 3 months saw 20% of customer acquisitions coming from display ads, at a cost-per-lead 40% cheaper than their previous campaign.

Search Network with Display Select helps ELMO compete with the major international players in their space. "We're a player in the Asia-Pacific region, not on a global scale — yet," says CEO Danny Lessem. Display ads promote the ELMO brand and give it the visibility and stature the company had been missing.  "When we ask our prospects how they found out about us, what closed the deal was seeing our brand on the Google Display Network.”

It's not just for online businesses, either. Porter's Patch, a Wisconsin family farm, saw a 20% increase in website visitors from display with 60% lower cost per click.

Getting started

The best way to find out how this campaign type performs for your account is to log in and try it out! We've made upgrading to Search Network with Display Select easy in the AdWords interface, with step-by-step instructions available in the AdWords Help Center here.

We'll also be doing a Hangout with Rich Griffin and his WordStream team on on Wednesday March 31st, 10am PT / 1pm ET. Sign up here and then tune in on March 31st. Or, send us your questions and comments at #SNDS -- we'll be ready to answer.

And to learn more about new Search Network with Display Select, visit our help center.

Posted by Woojin Kim, Product Management Director 

Labels: Google Display Network

On your phone, tablet or laptop: Your results front and center with AdWords Express

When you log in to AdWords Express today, you’ll notice that it’s now easier to find the information that’s important to you, whether you’re on your phone, tablet or laptop. After gathering feedback from AdWords Express users, we’ve redesigned the dashboard with ad performance stats front and center.

See how many views, clicks and calls your ad has received from customers on different devices

Check your ad’s performance on the go
It’s easy to manage your advertising, even when you’re away from the office. For example, to check how many customers have seen your ad from their tablet (while using your own phone) just look under the “Views” graph.

Check your ad's performance on the go

Go beyond the click with Google Analytics
Now you can see more details about how users interact with your website after clicking your ad by linking your Google Analytics and AdWords Express accounts. Once you connect your accounts, you’ll see a new card on the AdWords Express dashboard (as well as in your Analytics account).

Google Analytics information in AdWords Express

To learn how to link Analytics and AdWords Express, visit the help center.

If you have additional feedback on this new design, please let us know. And if you haven’t yet started using AdWords Express, you can sign up today.

Posted by Francisco Uribe, Product Manager

Labels: AdWords Express

AdWords API now available for Shopping campaigns

As part of our efforts to help you connect with consumers and promote your products online, we introduced Shopping campaigns to all Product Listing Ad (PLA) advertisers in February. Shopping campaigns offer a streamlined, retail-centric advertising experience with robust reporting and insightful competitive metrics like benchmark data and impression share.

Today, we’re excited to announce that you can now create and manage your Shopping campaigns at scale with the AdWords API. We are working with external agencies and search management platforms to add support for Shopping campaigns.

For more information on Shopping campaigns, here are a few resources to help you get started:

• Shopping campaigns tutorial video series
• Shopping campaigns Learn With Google Webinar in English on March 6
• AdWords API forum and Ads Developer Plus page

Posted by Eric Tholomé, Director of Product Management, Google Shopping

Labels: Google Shopping, Product Listing Ads, Reporting and Analytics, Updates

Enforcement of Google Shopping unique product identifier requirements

Last year we announced that we began enforcing the unique product identifier requirements to improve data quality on Google Shopping. The new specifications help us serve better Google Shopping results to users while creating more opportunities for merchants. Specifically, unique product identifiers help us create one listing for a product with its various sellers, allowing users to discover a wider range of products on Shopping and easily navigate to a retailer of their choice to purchase the product.

In order to meet the unique product identifier requirements, you must provide comprehensive and accurate data. We highly recommend making the necessary changes to comply with data quality requirements as better data quality is a key lever to improve your Product Listing Ads performance.

Last year we began enforcement by (1) disapproving products that did not have data in the feed for the unique product identifier attributes - GTIN, MPN and/or brand (2) demoting products that incorrectly used the identifier_exists attribute and (3) disapproving products that provided invalid GTINs that didn’t conform to standard GTIN specifications.

Additional unique product identifier enforcement

Soon we will start to (1) disapprove products with incorrect GTIN, MPN and brand and (2) globally demote products that incorrectly use the identifier_exists attribute. We will continue to ramp up enforcements to find and disapprove products with incorrect GTIN, MPN and brand data in the coming months.

We recommend reviewing product warnings and disapprovals in the Data Quality and Data Feeds tabs in Merchant Center. For pending product disapproval launches, the violations may show up as warnings and eventually show as errors in the UI after the enforcement launch date. For products demoted due to incorrect use of ‘identifier_exists’ attribute, please review your products where it is set ‘false’ to make sure you marked so only for custom goods.

For more information, please review the unique product identifier requirements and the latest product feed specifications to make the appropriate changes to your data. You can also review our previous office hour session to help merchants with these new requirements.

Posted by Angelika Rohrer, Program Manager, Google Shopping

Put Your Best Foot Forward with Consumer Ratings Annotations

Whether users are searching for clothes, car insurance, or a holiday, they have never had so much choice. 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.

Introducing Consumer Ratings Annotations
Over the next few days, we'll be rolling out consumer ratings annotations, a new format for search ads that provides detailed consumer opinion data. Consumer ratings annotations highlight one or more strongly rated aspects of your business as part of your ad. For example, if you're an insurance company, this annotation may be focused on claims handling. If you're an airline, it may highlight your rewards program.

Example search ad showing consumer ratings annotations

Testing with our beta advertisers has shown that consumer ratings annotations can increase click-through rates (CTR) by 10% on average. Many advertisers have already seen the positive impact of this format. Brian Borkowski, Director of Digital Marketing at Farmers Insurance Group, says, "Consumer ratings annotations help us stand out from competitors and attract new customers. When we looked at our ads that displayed these ratings, we saw an increase in CTR, which speaks to the awareness, trust and impact from this format."

Consumer Ratings Annotations: Powered by Google Consumer Surveys
Data for this annotation comes from hundreds of thousands of surveys we've run using the Google Consumer Surveys platform. 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. 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.

Learn more
For the last few years, we’ve been working on bringing trust and transparency to your search ads with formats like seller ratings and review extensions. Consumer ratings annotations will soon start showing with several hundred advertisers' search ads in the US, UK and Canada. We hope to expand availability to more advertisers in the future, so drop us a line if you’re interested in showing consumer ratings annotations with your ads.

To learn more about consumer ratings annotations, check out the AdWords Help Center.

Authored by Shreyas Doshi, Group Product Manager, AdWords

Labels: Extensions, New Ad Formats, Updates

Introducing a simpler, more capable TrueView in AdWords for video

Since its debut in 2010, the TrueView format has enabled advertisers to break free of time constraints, grow view count with opted-in views and only pay when people choose to watch their video ads. Thanks to these benefits, TrueView advertising connects users with relevant ads, and empowers creators to monetize their content. In our ongoing quest to help advertisers unlock the power of online video, today we’re announcing a forthcoming improvement to make TrueView both simpler and more capable.

On April 15, we will go from three TrueView formats to two: TrueView in-stream and TrueView in-display. This will effectively combine the in-search and in-display formats into one format called TrueView in-display.

In addition to simplifying campaign creation and management, this change offers the following:

• Organizes TrueView around how a user interacts with the ad (either by viewing as a pre-roll video or clicking on a thumbnail) rather than where the ad appears.
• Tell us where you want your ads to appear at the campaign level – YouTube videos, YouTube search and the Google Display Network – and all ads within that campaign will run on your selected networks.
• Deliver more relevant ads on the YouTube search page. Just as you can use in-stream ads to reach different demographics or audiences, now you can tailor in-display ads running on YouTube search pages to these same parameters, in addition to keywords.

What do you need to do?
Starting April 15, all new video campaigns will use new campaign settings and simplified ad formats. At the same time, you'll have access to an upgrade center where you can upgrade any or all of your existing campaigns to the new functionality. Starting May 15, all campaigns will be automatically upgraded.

We believe this change will make TrueView an even more effective tool to help you build your brand with videos. For further reading, please visit our Help Center article.

Posted by Ryo Akasaka, Product Manager, AdWords for Video

Labels: TrueView, Updates, YouTube