What’s next for Shopping campaigns and retailers

In February, we made Shopping campaigns available to all Product Listing Ad (PLA) advertisers and, in March, we released AdWords API support to help you manage your campaigns at scale. Shopping campaigns offer the ability to browse your inventory directly in AdWords, report on your performance down to the product-level, and bid competitively with new metrics like benchmark data and impression share. We’ve received great feedback from you so far and are excited to share what’s next:

• Size your opportunity with Bid Simulator - To provide more actionable insight into your PLAs, we’ve been rolling out a Bid Simulator that’s now available in all Shopping campaigns. With a Bid Simulator, you can now estimate how bid changes could impact your impressions, clicks or costs.
• Options to create a Shopping campaign - In the coming days, we’ll be adding some options to help you get started. You would be able to create a Shopping campaign from scratch or, for many of you, use one of your regular PLA campaigns to create similar product targets, negative keywords or promotional text.
• Multiple ad groups for advanced retailers - While many of you will be happy with your Shopping campaign as is, we’ve heard from advanced retailers that they’d like to create multiple ad groups. It’s now possible to do this within a Shopping campaign.

Continued Retailer Success
Since we made Shopping campaigns available to all PLA advertisers, we continue to hear many examples of how it helps you manage PLAs and effectively grow your business. Here are a few:

“The benefits of Shopping campaigns can’t be overstated – the ease of setup, the transparency of data, the ability to group products into logical categories and manage to the product level make it a must. All of these contribute to our clients’ ROI almost tripling, and there’s still room to improve.” -JumpFly

“The new Shopping campaigns allowed us to achieve a much higher-level of profitability, cutting costs by 13% and increasing return on ad spend by about 22% on average. Not only that, the new campaign type trims about 2 hours of setup time.” -Exclusive Concepts 

“We used the product-level data from our Shopping campaign to fine-tune our bidding strategy, focusing on the products that acquired the most traffic & lowered the ones that are less important. This helped us increase visits 25% & ROI by 16%.” -Wiggle 

“Shopping campaigns effectively reduced the time spent setting up product-specific bids and optimizing in half. We can now invest even more time into each client, and the results we’ve seen have been no less than amazing. A client selling home accessories saw a 301% increase in revenue after only one month. As a result, we are now changing our agency standards within PLAs to only use Shopping campaigns.” -White Shark Media

Future of Shopping campaigns and retirement of regular PLA campaign type
Shopping campaigns offer a truly retail-centric and seamless approach to PLAs. We're very excited by the positive feedback we've heard so far and will continue to build tools and features into this new campaign type to help you manage your PLAs. Thus, we'll be retiring the regular PLA campaign type and asking all PLA advertisers to upgrade to Shopping campaigns by late August 2014, at which time all remaining PLA campaigns will be automatically upgraded. Over the next few months, we’ll share more information and release more tools to help you upgrade your campaigns and manage them at scale. We encourage you to start planning your upgrade to Shopping campaigns today to take full advantage of the new features as soon as possible.

For additional help, here are a few resources:

• Tutorial Videos to help you get started
• AdWords Help Center for more detailed information on Shopping campaigns
• Learn With Google Webinar (April 15) for upgrade tips
• Learn With Google Webinar (May 15) for more advanced upgrade best practices
• AdWords Ads Developer page for more AdWords API documentation

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

An important step by the Media Rating Council toward a viewable impression currency

On Monday, the Media Rating Council (MRC) announced that it is lifting its advisory on transacting on viewability for display advertising, originally issued in November 2012. In taking this step, the MRC is signaling that great strides have been made toward the goal of transacting display advertising using viewable impressions, and the industry is ready to begin the process of adopting viewable impressions as a standard metric. We applaud this move and are thrilled to see the industry move closer to the reality of a true viewability currency.

Google has been a longtime supporter of this effort and we’ve partnered with the industry, the Media Rating Council and the IAB, as part of the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative, to help guide the definition and adoption of a viewable impression standard. Last April our viewability measurement solution Active Viewreceived accreditation by the Media Rating Council and, in the coming months, we’ll be making Active View reporting available to all DoubleClick customers across our platform. We believe that giving marketers, agencies and publishers access to a common, integrated viewable impression metric will set the foundation for viewable impressions to become an actionable currency.

But measurement alone will not make viewable impressions a currency. To become a currency we need technology that allows advertisers and publishers to not only measure, but also transact on viewable impressions. In December, we took our first step toward making viewable impressions a true currency by giving advertisers the ability to target and buy only viewable impressions on the Google Display Network. We’ve seen a strong positive response as thousands of advertisers and brands have adopted viewable impression buying on our network, but we’re not stopping there. We’re investing heavily in Active View and working quickly to enable our DoubleClick platform clients to value, buy, sell, serve and optimize to viewable impressions across the web. 

The MRC announcement represents an important milestone in the journey towards a viewable currency. As marketers and agencies adopt the viewable standard we can start to build a new display market that is more transparent and actionable for brand marketers.

Posted by Sanaz Ahari, Senior Product Manager

Originally posted at http://doubleclickadvertisers.blogspot.com/

Upgrade to Search Network With Display Select for Better Performance

Last month we shared some stories about how Search Network with Display Select is driving strong performance for many advertisers including Elmo Learning, Wordstream and ShopPivot. This new, high performing hybrid campaign type helps advertisers, on average, 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.

Upgrade now for better performance
To start tapping into this opportunity, upgrade your “Search and Display Networks” campaigns to “Search Network with Display Select” today. You may be offered an option to create a ‘Display Network only’ campaign during the upgrade process. If you would like to maintain your click volume on Display, accept this option and we will automatically create a ‘Display Network only’ campaign for you. As we continue to invest in Search Network with Display Select and see strong adoption from advertisers, we will begin upgrading all ‘Search and Display Networks’ campaigns to ‘Search Network with Display Select’ campaigns starting on September 16th, 2014. Click here to upgrade.

We’re here to help
We want you to be successful with AdWords, so please visit the Help Center or Contact Us if you'd like assistance with your upgrade.

Posted by Ahmad Anvari, Product Manager, Google Display Network

+Post ads now available to all advertisers and support Hangouts on Air

Last December, we introduced +Post ads to a limited number of advertisers as a new way to amplify content and create conversations across the web. +Post ads let you to take a piece of your public Google+ content, like a photo or video, and turn it into an engagement ad that runs across the Google Display Network.

Starting today, +Post ads are available to all advertisers who meet a minimum threshold of Google+ followers. We’re also piloting two new features - promoted Hangouts on Air and automatic post promotion - to help you create compelling ad experiences and make it easier to extend the reach of your social content.

Partner success
+Post ads are already helping advertisers run creative campaigns that make the entire web their social stream. For example:

For the launch of the 2014 Corolla, Toyota USA sought to drive consideration from a younger audience by promoting their Google+ content with +Post ads. For this campaign, Toyota USA saw a 50% higher engagement rate than the industry average for rich media ads.

Click to see the Toyota case study

To raise awareness with their potential customers, prAna, a yoga and climbing inspired apparel company, incorporated +Post ads into their existing AdWords display campaigns. “We focused on highly targeted audiences that best reflect the interests of our core consumers, such as yoga, climbing, outdoor lifestyle etc. We chose the most hyper relevant Google+ content to promote to each targeted audience, to ensure high engagement rates,” says Karen Hardy Online Marketing Manager.

The European Parliament worked with Ogilvy Brussels to run a campaign in 11 countries encouraging European citizens to cast their votes in the upcoming EU elections. Koen Van Impe, CEO Ogilvy Brussels, found the combination of an easy to create ad, the potential reach and targeting of the Google Display Network, and the powerful ad format promising and saw engagement rates that were 50% to 100% higher, and at a lower cost-per-engagement, than previous campaigns.

Click to enlarge

Promoting Hangouts on Air across the web
You can now promote your Hangout on Air with +Post ads that lets users take specific actions before, during, and after the broadcast. Users can RSVP prior to the Hangout, watch the broadcast live, and view a recording after the event.

ASOS hosted a shoppable Hangout where fans could check out styles and make purchases from a collection created in collaboration with a global activewear brand. The event was promoted live in a +Post ad, driving awareness and live tune-ins of the event on relevant web sites. In total, 71% of live viewers for the Hangout watched from a +Post ad.

Promoted Hangout on Air

Automatically promote your most recent post
At any given moment, there is someone interested in your brand, but it’s challenging to make sure you reach people at every moment that matters. Now you can automatically promote your most recent Google+ post, and pay only when people engage with your content, extending the reach of your social content across the web. 

Lean more about +Post ads and Google+ by visiting the Google+ for brands site.

Posted by Eran Arkin, Product Manager, Social Display Ads

How Search Insights Can Inform Your Event Strategy

Oscar Night. The Olympic Games. Bonnaroo. We think of produced events as finite moments in time. But as we saw with Bob Costas’ eye and “Adele Dazeem”, many of these “finite” moments actually create a much larger window of interest—and opportunity—online. You could say that for every offline action, there is a digital reaction. And it starts with search.

By understanding search data and its role before, during and beyond an event, marketers can prepare to respond to consumers’ needs and desires in new and timely ways. Think with Google looks at how these search insights can help guide a thoughtful event strategy and provides tips for marketers to get the most value from events. Read the full article.

Check out Think with Google’s full collection of Search Insights articles for more examples of how to use search data to inform your marketing.

Posted by Think with Google

New upgrade option for Shopping campaigns

Earlier this month, we shared a few success stories on Shopping campaigns, our new campaign type for Product Listing Ads (PLAs), and that the regular PLA campaign type will retire in late August 2014.

To upgrade to Shopping campaigns, we encourage you to create a Shopping campaign from scratch and thencustomize your product groups and bids from there. That way, you can choose how granular you’d like to get and ensure all your inventory is included in your Shopping campaign.

However, if you would like to base your Shopping campaign on a regular PLA campaign, we’re introducing an option today to help you upgrade.

After setting up your Shopping campaign, you’ll be taken to a new page to create ad groups. Here, you’ll see two options: the ability to start fresh with one ad group or create one or many ad groups based on a regular PLA campaign.

Note that some parts of a regular PLA campaigns aren’t transferable to a Shopping campaign, like product targets that use AdWords labels or groupings. If none of your PLA campaigns are transferrable, you might not see this option.

Keep in mind
With Shopping campaigns, you no longer need to create separate ad groups or product targets to track your impressions, clicks and cost. You can analyze and report on your PLA performance by product attribute or by individual items in the Dimensions tab, regardless of your campaign structure.

As a reminder, all PLA advertisers will need to upgrade to Shopping campaigns by late August 2014, at which time all remaining regular PLA campaigns will be automatically upgraded. Over the next few months, we’ll continue to share more information and tools to help you upgrade your campaigns and manage them at scale.

To learn more about Shopping campaigns and how to upgrade, here are a few resources:

• Upgrade guide
• Learn With Google Webinar on May 15
• AdWords Help Center

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

Step inside the future of AdWords

Welcome to the Inside AdWords livestream! Today, Jerry Dischler, Vice President of Product Management, AdWords, announces the next generation of advertising innovations. Tune in to the livestream on YouTube or watch below. We look forward to engaging in the conversation with you at #StepInsideAdWords.

Sharing the latest AdWords innovations

People are constantly connected, moving seamlessly between screens, sites and apps while on-the-go.  This makes the best ads more than just messages sent to various devices.  Instead, ads are now most effective when they connect people with the information, content and places that matter most to them, at the moments they are looking.

This morning, over 170 search marketing experts attended the AdWords Performance Forum where I shared our latest AdWords updates (you can watch a replay of the livestream here).  We’re excited to see how large and small advertisers around the world will put these new products to work, to grow their businesses and find new customers.  These new features will all roll out over the course of the next few months, and we’ll provide more details for you, right here on the Inside AdWords blog, as they launch.

Shiny, appy AdWords!

People are living their lives online, looking for the content that’s most useful for them -- sometimes this content is on websites, sometimes in mobile apps.  For many years, we’ve offered popular formats through Google search ads and our AdMob network  to help you promote your app.  Since they launched, we've helped businesses drive hundreds of millions of app downloads with these offerings.  Today, I announced the next generation of these features across Google search ads, our Display Network and YouTube. Learn more.

1. Better discovery: For businesses looking to promote app installs on the AdMob network, we’ll enable you to reach people who are your most likely customers, based on the apps they use, the frequency of use and the types of in-app purchases they make.  For example, if you exercise regularly and use an app to measure how far you run, you might see an ad for an app that helps you measure the foods you eat and calories consumed.  On YouTube, we’re enabling app installs as an enhancement to the current TrueView offering.

2. Easier re-engagement: Over 80% of downloaded apps are used only once and then deleted.*  Lots of businesses are able to get their apps onto a device, but might never see their customer again.  Today we announced a new app re-engagement campaign type in AdWords for both search and display so that consumers can be taken directly into already-installed apps.  For example, if someone has the HotelTonight app installed on their phone and searches for “hotels in San Francisco” on Google.com, they can go directly to the specific page in HotelTonight about SF hotels, instead of being taken to the app’s main landing page.

3. Enhanced measurement: In AdWords you’ll soon be able to measure conversions across the entire lifecycle of the app - from install to re-engagement to in-app purchases.  

Better measurement = better campaigns

Last year, we introduced Estimated Total Conversions to help you measure the full value of your campaigns, including phone calls and conversions that occur across devices.  Many businesses are already using this to inform their bidding and budgeting decisions, and to find new customers.

For example, photo publisher Shutterfly measures 60% more conversions when factoring in mobile-to-desktop conversions.  With this insight, they decided to include all their keywords on mobile devices, which has helped them find a lot more customers.

The feedback on Estimated Total Conversions has been great, so we’re continuing to invest in this product. As people search more online for local businesses and then go into the store to make purchases, we're testing ways to measure the effectiveness of search ads at driving in-store sales, using anonymized purchase data from retail partners. RKG and fashion retailer, Express, very early testers, found that overall return on ad spend increases 102% when including offline sales in online advertising results.

We’re excited to invest here because over time it will give people a better experience, as more businesses see the value and invest in local information like directions, inventory information, promotions and offers.

Enterprise-class tools
For businesses looking for new customers, the increase in constant connectivity means that the scale of your campaigns is growing, and you've told us you want help to manage your campaigns more effectively. So, we're bringing enterprise-class workflow, reporting, and optimization tools to AdWords.

1. More bulk actions: With new bulk capabilities for extensions and settings, you'll be able to easily set up campaign settings like location targeting and ad rotation across all your campaigns (even if you have thousands of them!). This should be particularly useful for big seasonal promotions, when you might want to update all of your campaigns at once.

2. Automated bidding: Building off of the momentum that we’ve had with automated bidding, we’re adding the ability for you to maximize the number of conversions or the total value of conversions. For example, if you’re a car maker, you’ll be able to set up your campaign to allocate your budget in a way that maximizes the number of people who visit your site to design a custom vehicle.

3. Advanced reporting: To help you analyze your data better (without the endless downloading and re-formatting of data) we’re providing you with new multi-dimensional data analysis and visualization tools so you can perform most, if not all of your data analysis, right here inside AdWords.  We’re also making it easy for you to turn your data into tables, graphs and charts so that you can download them and share with your teams.

4. Your own lab: One of the great benefits of AdWords is that it offers an incredible platform to test and tweak live campaigns.  So we’ve built a lab inside AdWords for you to prepare ideas for your campaigns, see what they’ll look like, and then run tests with live traffic as an experimental trial.  You can experiment with almost anything in your campaign, including bid changes, new keywords, different campaign settings, special bids for times and locations, different kinds of ad formats, and more. We think you’ll like it!

It’s always inspiring for me to hear how AdWords is delivering useful information to people at the right moment and helping businesses succeed.  Thanks to everyone who attended the AdWords Performance Forum or watched the livestream.  I’m excited to see how you put these new features to use, and we’re looking forward to hearing yourfeedback.

Jerry Dischler, Vice President, Product Management, AdWords

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*Source: Digital Trends, 2013

Boost your mobile ROI through smart mobile site design

Mobile empowers consumers to connect with your business at anytime and from anywhere. But are you ready to be there for them in the moments that matter? To truly meet the needs of your customers, your mobile site experience should allow them to quickly and easily find what they’re looking for without sacrificing richness of content. While there are a lot of expert opinions about how to do this, very few are based on actual data and research. So we partnered with AnswerLab to study more than 100 mobile users as they completed conversion-focused tasks across a diverse group of sites. From this research, we developed 25 principles of mobile site design to help you develop a mobile site that both delights your customers and drives conversions.

Let’s take a closer look at three findings from the research:

Primacy of site search
Study participants with a specific need, especially those visiting retail sites, turned to site search to find what they were looking for. Participants were quick to abandon sites that returned irrelevant search results or a large set of results that they were unable to narrow.

Key takeaway: Ensure site search is visible on the homepage via an open text field, returns relevant results, and is equipped with advanced features, like auto-complete and filters, to get users what they want quickly.

Mobile site misconceptions
If presented a choice, study participants would often tap on the link to visit the “full site” due to a perception that they’d be missing out on something by staying on the mobile site. Choosing the “mobile site” implied to them that they were not getting the “full” experience, when in reality, the mobile site offered most, if not all of the functionality in an easier-to-view format.

Key takeaway: If your mobile site provides the same content and functionality as your desktop site in an easier-to-use format, then there is no need to provide a link to the desktop site. If you do decide to provide users with a link to the desktop site, then use terms like “desktop site” instead of “full site” to be clear that both sites offer a complete experience.

Sites with a mix of mobile optimized and desktop pages provide a poor user experience
Unsurprisingly, it was easier for participants to navigate mobile-optimized sites on their mobile devices than desktop sites on their mobile devices. However, sites that included a mix of desktop and mobile-optimized pages were actually harder for participants to use than sites with all-desktop pages.

Key takeaway: To improve user experience, task completion and conversion rates, go all in and optimize your entire site for mobile. If launching in phases, then make sure users don’t have to traverse between desktop pages and mobile optimized pages to complete their tasks.

To review our complete findings, download the Principles of Mobile Site Design from Think Multi-Screen. Use the principles to review the effectiveness of your existing site, optimize your conversion funnel or to guide the creation of your first mobile-optimized site.

Need help building or optimizing your site for mobile? Find recommended vendors and special AdWords customer offers on Think Multi-Screen.

Posted by Jenny Gove, User Experience Researcher, Google

New Ad review center features help save you time and offer improved controls.

Having the right information on the ads displayed on your site and being able to control them, is a big ask we hear from publishers. Many of you are already using the Ad review center to review and control these ads. From today, enjoy more choice with new updates designed to save you time and give you more control in the review process.

Save time by not having to review the same ad twice. Now you can see which ads you’ve already reviewed by selecting the ‘Show reviewed ads’ checkbox in the top right corner of the Ad review center.

Show reviewed ads feature

 You’ll also have more choice when reviewing ads with our new ad size widget. Using the widget, you can review ads according to their size. If you want to review only the banner ads on your page for example, they’ll be quick and easy to find. We’re still fine-tuning this feature meaning it’s possible that not every single ad of a particular size will be captured right away, but it will capture the majority of them.

New ad size widget

You’ll now also have more control with new enhancements to our related ads feature. Over the next few days, related ads will start to identify ads containing the same logo. It’ll then group together different ads containing that logo and give you the option to allow or block them running on your site. This feature will also cover ads containing the same video.

Finally, we’ve given the Ad review center a new look with a brand new user interface designed for quick and simple navigation. Try out these new features today. We’re continuously looking for new ways to make this a valuable tool for you - please tell us what else you’d like to see over on our AdSense+ page.

Posted by Fiona Herring - AdSense Product Manager
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Drive engagement and loyalty through smart mobile site design

Mobile empowers users to access your site at anytime and from anywhere. Is your site ready for them? Your mobile site should allow users to quickly and easily find what they’re looking for without sacrificing richness of content. While there are a lot of expert opinions about how to do this, very few are based on actual data and research. So we partnered with AnswerLab to study more than 100 mobile users as they completed conversion-focused tasks across a diverse group of sites. From this research, we developed 25 principles of mobile site design to help you develop a mobile site that both delights your users and drives engagement.

Let’s take a closer look at three findings from the research:

Primacy of site search
Study participants with a specific need, especially those visiting retail sites, turned to site search to find what they were looking for. Participants were quick to abandon sites that returned irrelevant search results or a large set of results that they were unable to narrow.

Key takeaway: Ensure site search is visible on the homepage via an open text field, returns relevant results, and is equipped with advanced features, like auto-complete and filters, to get users what they want quickly.

Mobile site misconceptions
If presented a choice, study participants would often tap on the link to visit the “full site” due to a perception that they’d be missing out on something by staying on the mobile site. Choosing the “mobile site” implied to them that they were not getting the “full” experience, when in reality, the mobile site offered most, if not all of the functionality in an easier-to-view format.

Key takeaway: If your mobile site provides the same content and functionality as your desktop site in an easier-to-use format, then there is no need to provide a link to the desktop site. If you do decide to provide users with a link to the desktop site, then use terms like “desktop site” instead of “full site” to be clear that both sites offer a complete experience.

Sites with a mix of mobile optimized and desktop pages provide a poor user experience
Unsurprisingly, it was easier for participants to navigate mobile-optimized sites on their mobile devices than desktop sites on their mobile devices. However, sites that included a mix of desktop and mobile-optimized pages were actually harder for participants to use than sites with all-desktop pages.

Key takeaway: To improve user experience, task completion and conversion rates, go all in and optimize your entire site for mobile. If launching in phases, then make sure users don’t have to traverse between desktop pages and mobile optimized pages to complete their tasks.

To review our complete findings, download the Principles of Mobile Site Design from Think Multi-Screen. Use the principles to review the effectiveness of your existing site or to guide the creation of your first mobile-optimized site.

Posted by Jenny Gove, User Experience Researcher, Google

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20(14) Publisher Stories: Tecamachalco takes local to the international stage

As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every Monday we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to share your own success story with us.

Tecamachalco.net, a news portal and business directory, was founded in 2004 by Jorge Eustaquio. The site covers news, history, sports and culture from Tecamachalco, a city in the south-east of Mexico. Today, the site employs two people in addition to Jorge.

Jorge read about AdSense in a blog and decided to test the monetization solution. "I liked the idea of not only having local advertisers from Tecamachalco, but also from other regions in Mexico as well as internationally," he says. The revenue generated since beginning with AdSense has played a key part in enabling him to invest in similar projects for other towns in Mexico.

Using combined AdSense and Google Analytics reports, Jorge was surprised to learn that almost 40% of his audience currently come from users located in other countries. He plans to continue with AdSense, as his earnings have allowed him “to invest in new projects and take on more staff when necessary."

Read the full story.

Posted by Barbara Sarti - Inside AdSense Team
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20(14) Publisher Stories: Memeburn find the right combination with Google

As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every Monday we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to share your own success story with us.

Cape Town-based site memeburn.com is focused on technology and innovation coming out of emerging markets. The site receives over 350,000 unique visits each month and together with a number of sister-sites (including Gearburn, Ventureburn and Memejobs) employs a team of 28.

As the site’s revenue comes from many different online advertising streams, memeburn began using DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business to manages each source through one accessible tool. They also monetize their non-guaranteed inventory with AdSense, which is integrated with DFP. Owner Matthew Buckland tells us that this integration “provides a constant, reliable revenue stream”, with approximately 93% of the company’s ad impressions being served through DFP at any given time. 

Given memeburn’s readers are broadly dispersed across the world, the dynamic allocation feature in DFP also helps them ensure the ads on their site are relevant to each local market. In addition to using DFP with AdSense for their desktop site, memeburn is partnering with Google in the expansion of their mobile presence, using AdSense exclusively on their mobile site.

Memeburn continues to focus on their existing sites as well as looking to expand their platforms with further sites in the future. They plan to continue partnering with DFP and AdSense to fuel future success. Matthew concludes that “in an era where there is so much digital noise, AdSense provides useful, relevant, quality content. You can’t put a price on that.”

Read the full story.

Posted by Suzy Headon - Inside AdSense Team
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20(14) Publisher Stories: The Maestro de la Computacion family grows with Google AdSense

As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every Monday we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to share your own success story with us.

Four years ago, Roberto Andre Diaz co-founded maestrodelacomputacion.net for the Columbian tech community. Today, the site receives over 150,000 visitors every month and the family business has grown to cover seven other sites. 

The team chose to partner with Google AdSense from the very beginning. In Roberto’s opinion, there was “no other ad network that could compare to AdSense in terms of performance, ad quality, monetization opportunity and dynamic ad formats."

(Don’t forget to enable english captions using the Captions button under the YouTube video)

Right now, AdSense represents 95% of their advertising earnings. According to Roberto, the impact from AdSense goes beyond revenue alone: "AdSense has paid our college fees and moreover has allowed us to travel to lots of fascinating places and meet people from around the world."

Posted by Barbara Sarti - Inside AdSense Team
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20(14) Publisher Stories: The future looks bright for Quehoroscopo.com

As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every Monday we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to share your own success story with us.

Quehoroscopo.com, a leading Spanish horoscope and astrology site, was set up by Hugo Conde in 2007. Hugo is based out of Madrid and works with a team of tarot professionals, editors and designers to provide daily content to their many users.

Soon after launching, Hugo started looking for a simple and easy-to-use solution to generate income from his site that would allow him to continue focusing on creating new content and a positive user experience. Fast forward to today and AdSense represents 90% of total advertising revenue for Quehoroscopo.com.

To make sure Quehoroscopo.com is performing to its full potential, Hugo has tested a number of ad formats to find the best fit for his page. He also uses Google Analytics to understand what content performs best on the site.

Looking ahead, Hugo plans to grow his audience with new platforms including mobile.

Read the full story.

Posted by Suzy Headon - Inside AdSense Team
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20(14) Publisher Stories: Google AdSense helps IoLeggol'Etichetta help consumers

As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every Monday we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to share your own success story with us.

Raffaele Brogna is the creator of Ioleggoletichetta.it. Meaning ‘I read the label’ in english, the site is dedicated to consumer awareness and protection offering advice on how to get the right information from product labels and tips on saving money when shopping. As a social crowdsourcing project, the site has a large community following who regularly contribute and report on their own experiences and findings as consumers.

Alongside his wife, Raffaele looks after the day-to day operations as well as the broader strategy for the site. They decided to use AdSense at the outset to help cover running costs and considered the prompt payments offered by AdSense as a key influencer in their decision. They were quickly pleased with the results, in particular with the relevance of the ads displayed.

They also use Google Analytics to help identify the best placements for their ad units and to check on their overall ad unit performance. Today, revenue from Google AdSense covers the costs of running this project online. Looking ahead, Raffaele will continue partnering with Google AdSense to go even further in his quest to give Italian consumers the information they need to make informed decisions when shopping.

Posted by Suzy Headon - Inside AdSense Team

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