Since then, hard alcohol advertisers have been able to promote websites that offer information about their brand, their products, or drinks that can be made with their products. Now, they can also promote websites that sell hard alcohol online, direct users to retailers where their products are sold, or feature sales promotions.
To comply with the policy, the ad and website must abide by certain advertising restrictions, including (but not limited to) not targeting minors, not implying that drinking alcohol provides certain advantages, and not showing inappropriate content. They are also subject to any further restrictions in the countries that they target. For full details on the policy, please see the alcohol content guidelines.
We’re constantly evaluating our advertising policies to ensure that they continue to be effective, and we made the decision to change our policy on alcohol to help more advertisers use AdWords for the promotion of their products.
As we announced on the Inside AdWords blog, we’re celebrating AdWords’ 10th birthday this month by asking our advertisers to submit stories of how online advertising has played a role in their businesses -- and then sharing their submissions with the world via a global map of the stories.
Think you can create something special by telling some of your best client stories? Let your clients know that you can help them capture the story of how you’ve partnered to reach their goals with AdWords (of course, you can also submit the story of your own agency business). When you’ve produced the videos, you can submit them on our birthday website.
We can’t wait to see your work -- and share it with the world!
Posted by Kelly Blackford, Agency Training Team This is a cross post from the Agency Ad Solutions Blog
Advertisers can now build media plans to reach audiences with interests relevant to their campaigns using DoubleClick Ad Planner. Audience interests represent the aggregate interests of visitors to any given website. Previously, to plan an ad campaign for a pet product, advertisers would look for sites with content about pets for their media plan. While this may be an appropriate proxy, it also may overlook some great sites, since when people are interested in a topic, they don’t only visit sites about that topic. Audience interests in Ad Planner helps advertisers find a wider range of sites for their media plan without compromising their ability to reach the right audience. With this release, the top ten audience interests for each site are now listed on the profile page for each of the millions of sites profiled in Ad Planner.
With the “Search by audience” tab in Ad Planner, selecting the “Pets” interest will reveal a list of sites that have a high affinity with audiences interested in pets. While some of the sites will be about pets, many additional sites will be about other topics. Take the screenshot below, which is from the Ad Planner profile for a site about politics. Although the site is not about pets, it scores a high (36.9x) affinity with audiences who are interested in pets, which means visitors to this site are 36.9 times more likely to be interested in pets than the average Internet population. A category filter on pets would never locate this site, but an interests search on pets would.
Audience interests gives advertisers a new tool for selecting the best sites for their media plans. To learn more about how we generate the data for audience interests, please refer to our methodology document. To try out the new audience interests features, visit www.google.com/adplanner.
Posted by Kelly Blackford, Agency Training Team This is a partial cross post from the Agency Ad Solutions Blog
Today there are more mobile devices than personal computers and televisions combined: at last count there were 4 billion mobile subscribers worldwide compared to 1 billion personal computer users (ITU, 2009) . With audiences increasingly going mobile, reaching consumers on their mobile phones is a growing and important media channel for many marketers. This unique platform offers many opportunities for your clients to engage with their audience because mobile devices are nearly always within their reach.
AdWords helps you go mobile with ease by extending your clients' search and display campaigns to mobile platforms. Whether you're new to mobile or have been using it since day one, we want to share with you a new resource from the US that will help you incorporate mobile into your marketing campaigns: Go Mobile!
Designed to help you and your clients reach audiences on-the-go, the Go Mobile! site has tips that help you think about incorporating mobile into your clients' marketing campaigns - from ensuring that their site is mobile-friendly to using location-based technologies to interact with their customers. We hope you'll find it useful in helping to connect your clients to their ever-growing base of mobile consumers.
Posted by Kelly Blackford, Agency Training Team\ This is a partial cross post from the Agency Ad Solutions Blog
Google's Analytics Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik, recently hosted a webinar on "Using Data to Better Connect with Your Customers". Attracting the right customers to your website will help you finish off 2009 strong and charge ahead in 2010. By using Google tools such as Trends for Websites, Insights for Search and the Ad Planner, you can access powerful information about how to best target your audience in your online marketing campaigns - for free! Below is a brief recap of the presentation. You can visit our Google Business Channel on YouTube to see the recorded version.
1. Mine Website Trends: Utilise Trends for Websites and other tools to index clients' performances, identify competitors' strengths, and find untapped opportunities.
2. Analyse the "Database of Intentions": Use Insights for Search to segment your clients' share of voice, obtain competitive gains, understand how to most effectively target their campaigns, and find out where they should focus their search efforts.
3. Monetise the Long Tail: Leverage the powerful Search-based Keyword Tool to identify your clients' long tail keywords based on their sites' content, and to find additional cost-effective targeted keywords.
4. Identify Relevant Audiences: Utilise Ad Planner to understand the demographic profile and search behavior of site visitors, and that of competitors, to effectively target clients' messages on the Google Content Network to the most relevant audiences.
Most importantly, Avinash's #1 Rule: Make sure that your clients' websites don't stink. What does he mean? Use data to identify fixes (e.g. pay attention to bounce rates) so that customers don't say, in Avinash's own words, "I came, I puked, I left." To learn more about how to improve your clients' web pages, check out this post by Avinash: Six Tips For Improving High Bounce / Low Conversion Web Pages.
Posted by Kelly Blackford, Agency Training Team This is a partial cross post from the Agency Ad Solutions Blog
Christmas is 25 December every year, right? Yes. And, in an online sense, no.
Actually, the online users searching for Christmas items on Google start doing so in September. The chart below uses Google's free Insights for Search tool to compare searches for "Christmas" to searches for "gifts". Without fail, "Christmas" starts its meteoric search rise every September. In a year when retailers will be looking for growth, the Christmas starting in September 2009 is a bright star on the horizon.
Christmas 2008 was massive online. The annual growth in queries in key retail categories was enormous: "Gifts" queries were up 38% for December 2008 compared to December 2007, "Mass Merchants & Department Stores" queries increased by 42%, "Apparel & Footwear" queries were up 52%, and "Home Appliances" queries increased 57% year on year. There is ample opportunity to capture this growth and retailers need to be online now to take advantage of early-bird Christmas shoppers.
Christmas 2009 is shaping up to be even bigger online. Based on internal Google data in Australia, retail categories are currently growing 18-40% year on year -- depending on the specific retail categories -- and we project that there will be hundreds of millions of searches looking for solutions for their Christmas gift-giving needs.
Now is the time to prepare your clients advertising campaigns for the biggest retail season of the year. Did you run campaigns last year? If you did, revisit them and look at what did and didn't work. Use these learnings to set up new campaigns specifically for the Christmas period. Next, look through their product offerings and find items that would be in demand as gifts for Christmas. Refresh messaging for these products, geared towards people buying them as a Christmas gift.
Start holiday advertising early and set different messaging for the different shopping periods leading up to Christmas. Tailoring your messaging to the different types of shoppers (ie the early shopping, the peak season shopper and the last-minute shopper) will ensure that your clients' ads stay fresh and relevant. This also gives you means to test Christmas creative, and adjust it quickly according to interest they receive.
Remember that lots of people leave shopping until the last few days. Can your clients offer express post or courier delivery to these last-minute shoppers? It's a stressful time for shoppers, so any added extras they can throw in (such as gift-wrapping) will leave their customers remembering the great buying experience, making them both more likely to return themselves, and to recommend the site to their friends.
Some extra things to consider when running your Christmas campaigns: * Keep an eye on your keyword positioning. Ensure your CPCs are competitive to keep you in the auction. * Get your clients' conversion reports to make sure their money is being spent in the right areas.
Posted by Christine Knight, AdWords Optimisation Team
To help you better measure the value of your display advertising campaigns, we're announcing a new feature called View-through conversion reporting on the Google Display Network.
Display ads are influential in increasing brand awareness and driving purchase consideration, and with View-through conversion reporting, you can better measure the impact of your display ad campaign for those instances where your ad is seen, but not immediately clicked on. More specifically, View-through conversion reporting measures the number of conversions that occurred within 30 days of your display ad appearing for which there was no ad click generated.
By using View-through conversion reporting, you can more easily compare the performance of your Google Display Network campaign with the performance of your other display advertising campaigns. This feature can also help you determine the best ways and places to advertise, how best to optimise your display ad campaigns, and, ultimately, how to spend your advertising dollars more effectively.
Here is an example of how View-through conversion reporting works: Let's say you're selling pet food online and you're measuring conversions on your site's email newsletter sign-up and your shopping cart "Thank You" pages. If a user sees your display ad, does not click on it but then visits your site within the next 30 days to sign-up to receive your email newsletter and to purchase a couple dozen cans of organic cat food, you'll see two View-through conversions reported on your Campaigns tab in AdWords.
Starting today, you can also visit the Campaigns tab in AdWords and activate the optional View-through conversion reporting column. You'll need to have AdWords Conversion Tracking installed for View-through conversion reporting to work for your campaigns.
To learn more about View-through conversion reporting on the Google Content Network, you can visit the Help Center. We hope this feature will provide you with better information about your campaigns and help you get the most out of your display advertising campaigns.
Posted by Jeremy Wood, Product Specialist Team This is a partial cross post from the Inside AdWords Blog
Feeding off the momentum of improvements we've made over the past year in AdWords, we recently released beta versions of the updated Keyword and Placement Tools.
We've maintained the core functionality of these tools, but have added some new features that we hope will make them more useful for you. If you use English as your AdWords interface language you may have noticed that you already have access to these tools, and availability to all English advertisers as well as other languages will be rolling out over the next few weeks.
The updated Keyword Tool (beta) This new version of the Keyword Tool combines the functionality of the Keyword Tool and the Search-based Keyword Tool. This means you'll get keyword ideas based on keywords you enter, your website content, and user searches - all in one place. Also new is the ability to search by any combination of a keyword, website/URL, or category - instead of having to perform each of these searches separately. Additionally, you'll be able to see all match types for a keyword at the same time to help you compare statistics for each match type. When you've got your final keyword list together, you can download a selected keyword, all keyword results in the table, or all keywords (for certain queries).
The updated Placement Tool (beta) As with the updated Keyword Tool, you can now search for placements by any combination of keyword, website/URL, or category. For example, you can search for placements that are only on youtube.com that are also video placements and that are also in the automotive category. Under Advanced Options, you can also further filter placements by Country or Language, Impressions Per Day, Included Ad Sizes (those sizes offered by the content publisher for their offered placements), and demographic options.
The updated Keyword Tool is available via a link in the current Keyword Tool and the updated Placement Tool is available via a link on the Tools page.
If you see these links in your account, we encourage you to test out the new versions of these tools.
Posted by Jeremy Wood, Product Specialist Team This is a partial cross post from the Inside AdWords Blog
How do I get better results from my campaigns? It's a simple question that can often be surprisingly difficult to answer. Where should I focus my efforts? On ad text? Budget? Keywords or bids? Which campaign has the greatest potential for improvement? And what results could I see from the changes I'm considering?
To help answer these questions, we're excited to launch the Opportunities tab which is a beta feature in the new AdWords interface. Using the tab, you can identify new keywords and budget ideas across campaigns, then compare their potential impact to better prioritise the changes you make to your account. By using AdWords and Google search data to generate customized optimization ideas, the Opportunities tab helps you find untapped opportunities and get more out of your campaigns. The Opportunities tab is currently available to all English-language accounts.
When should I use the Opportunities tab? You can think of the Opportunities tab as your homepage for account optimisation. You can use the tab to get a quick overview of Google's customised keyword and budget ideas for your campaigns and ad groups. You can also compare the impact of different ideas before making changes. So, if you're looking to increase your keyword coverage for a specific product, or have your ads appear more often for your existing keywords, the Opportunities tab is a great place to start.
Where did my AdWords Tools go? We're not retiring any of the existing AdWords tools with the Opportunities tab beta test, but we've changed where they're found. You can access AdWords tools by clicking on the Opportunities tab and scrolling down the menu on the side of the page. You can also see lists of ideas by campaign by clicking on any of your campaigns listed in the menu on the left side.
What optimization tools will I see in the future? This beta test of the Opportunities tab is just a starting point for a broader set of optimisation tools we hope to provide in the future. Over the coming months you can expect to see additional changes to the tab focused on giving you more insight into the broader search marketing landscape and more data to help you better estimate the effectiveness of new ideas.
Ultimately we want the Opportunities section of your account to evolve into a single destination you can visit whenever you want to get new ideas for increasing your ad coverage on relevant search terms, capturing additional clicks in your most profitable campaigns, or simply improving your overall ROI.
We plan to expand the Opportunities tab beta to all global advertisers over the coming weeks, and we'll continue working on improvements to the tab on an ongoing basis. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions for improving account optimisation, please let us know by submitting feedback in your account.
Posted by Jeremy Wood, Product Specialist Team This is a partial cross post from the Inside AdWords Blog
For today's post we have a note from our Chief Economist at Google, Hal Varian. Hal and his team spend most of their time studying the AdWords auction and finding ways to make it more efficient. We wanted to make sure you had a chance to view this video from the Inside AdWords blog on bidding strategies. While you likely have your own strategies well-practiced, this video provides a general overview to cover the basics.
Last month we launched a new feature of AdWords called Bid Simulator. Bid Simulator takes some of the guess work out of cost per click (CPC) bidding by estimating the number of clicks or impressions you could have received if you had used a different maximum CPC bid. Today, I thought I would take the opportunity to help you make the most of this new feature by explaining how to use the data from Bid Simulator to maximize the profit from your marketing investment.
In general, when you increase your maximum CPC bid for keywords on search you are able to generate more clicks to your site. This may be because your new bid qualifies you to appear higher up in the Sponsored Links on the search results page, or because your higher bid qualifies your ad to appear in new, more expensive, auctions. The goal for you as an advertiser is to decide whether or not these additional clicks come at a cost that is still profitable for you.
To make this decision, you need to compare your expected value per click to your incremental cost per click. Your value per click is how much a click for a particular keyword is worth to you, on average. Your incremental cost per click is how much extra you are paying, on average, for the extra clicks you are getting from your higher bid. When your value per click is higher than your incremental cost per click it makes sense to increase your bid. On the other hand, if your value per click is lower than your incremental cost per click, you probably want to decrease your bid.
In the following video, I'll show you how to calculate these values, how to interpret them, and how to use the data to maximize the profit from your marketing investment. We hope you find it useful.
Vroom, Vroom, Vroom! Did you know that more than 90% of car buyers turn to the internet to help guide them through the purchase process? Join us on September 16th to get the inside track on the latest automotive online research, trends and how online plays a vital role in the car buying journey. We will be hosting 2 sessions to share insights and research for both Australia and New Zealand.
New AU Automotive Industry Research September 16th - 11am Sydney Standard Time (1pm AKL, 9am SG) You can sign up for this webinar here.
New NZ Automotive Industry Research September 16th - 2pm Sydney Standard Time (4pm AKL, 12pm SG) You can sign up for this webinar here.
You're about to run to a meeting but you urgently need to update the tracking URLs in your largest client account. Do you make the changes or get to the meeting on time? The answer is both! AdWords Editor is a free tool that allows you to download your AdWords account to your computer, make your changes (ad text, keyword, CPC etc), then upload your revised campaigns. Join us on September 17th to learn 10 time saving tips to try when using AdWords Editor to manage your client's accounts.
AdWords Editor: 10 Time Saving Tips September 17th - 2pm Sydney Standard Time (4pm AKL, 12pm SG) You can sign up for this webinar here.
You can also check out all upcoming webinars, register for new topics and view recorded sessions on our Agency webinar calendar page at: www.google.com.au/adwords/webinars/agency.
Since launching Google Insights for Search, we've been providing daily insight into what the world is searching for. Whether you're an advertiser looking to expand keyword lists, an economist analyzing economic trends or just looking to settle a popularity contest, Google Insights for Search can help provide the answers.
Insights allows you to tap into the collective pulse around the world, compare search volume trends across multiple search terms, categories (commonly referred to as verticals), geographic regions, and specific time ranges. Looking at search trends helps you understand when, where and how the world's interests have changed. Simply type in search terms to see how search query volume has evolved over time, in which geographic regions search interest is greatest and other related searches. For marketers, Insights can help you determine seasonal variations in your business (When do users search the most for weight loss products?). It can also help you find a new market (Where in the world are searches for "shiraz" and "chardonnay" most popular?) or determine new ways to market your business (As an exterminator, what words should be used for marketing?)
We are proud to announce that Insights for Search is now available in 39 languages around the world (including Australia - English, and several languages in SE Asia). We're also introducing a forecasting feature for some queries based on an extrapolation of the historical trends and search patterns. And to help you visualise these changes and trends, we've also added an animated map so you can watch how search interest changes over time in different locations.
You can check out some of these cool features in our video below.
Visit Google Insights for Search and see what the world is searching for. You can also keep on top of the latest trends by adding a customizable gadget to your iGoogle page or embedding a gadget directly on your website.
Posted by Jeremy Wood, Product Specialist Team This is a partial cross post from the Official Google Blog and the Google Australia Blog
Please join us this Thursday August 13th for a new webinar, relevant to search specialists and agencies who would like to learn more about the Google Display Network and using the Wonder Wheel tool to build and optimise campaigns.
Google Display Network: Best Practices & Using the Wonder Wheel August 13th – 2pm Sydney Standard Time (4pm AKL, 12pm SG) Uncover display network best practices, recommended structure and tips. We will also show you the Wonder Wheel, which is a new tool that can assist in building contextually targeted campaigns. You can register for this webinar here.
We would be pleased to have you join any of the webinars in our new agency series. To view and register for any of our upcoming topics, please visit our webinar calendar page at: www.google.com.au/adwords/webinars/agency.
Australian consumers are increasingly going online to research and purchase financial products and services. In recognition of this trend, award-winning insurance company, Allianz, has used an innovative TV and search marketing campaign to attract consumers to its online offering.
The insurance company's most recent TV commercial continues its creative campaign of using genuine customer testimonials. It features Saskia, who found Allianz by searching on Google, and who likes the fact that buying insurance online fits her lifestyle. Allianz offer 10% discount for customers who buy online.
Allianz compliments the TV commercial with a search marketing campaign to capture customers at point of relevance. Used in conjunction with an offline campaign, AdWords can provide real-time measurability of how that campaign is performing.
Posted by Mel Silva, Head of Finance Industry Sales, Google Australia and NZ Editor's Note: This is a partial cross post from the Google Australia Blog
Quality Score and the AdWords auction is one of the more complicated aspects of our system. Quality Score measures how relevant your keywords are to users' search queries and influences CPCs and first page bids in your account. To help you wrap your head around this very important part of AdWords, we wanted to share with you some key insights about Quality Score.
A higher bid will not improve your Quality Score. Your Quality Score is determined by a number of factors, clickthrough rate (CTR) foremost amongst them, and is normalised to compensate for the higher CTR that ads in higher positions accrue. By simply increasing your bid for a keyword, you will likely increase the position of your ad on the page, but you won't be impacting the Quality Score for that keyword.
Quality Score does not suffer when your ads are paused or showing infrequently. One of the factors that determines Quality Score is the performance of a keyword in combination with its associated ads. Pausing ads or showing them infrequently doesn't affect Quality Score since they aren't accruing any performance data while they're not active. So there's no need to worry if you run seasonal or low-exposure campaigns for your clients, your Quality Score won't drop while the ads aren't showing.
Restructuring your account does not cause you to lose your historical Quality Score information. The historical performance of your keywords, ads, and landing pages is preserved when you restructure your account. Therefore, we encourage you to restructure or optimise your client's account structure as needed.
Ads may not be shown on all search results, even for queries that advertisers are bidding on. Some keywords have such low Quality Scores that ads are unlikely to show on them. Therefore, there may be keywords in your client's account that don't show any ads at all. You may want to try optimising the ad creatives associated with those keywords to make them more specific and relevant, thereby increasing the likelihood they'll be shown. You can also find out why your client's ad may not be showing for a given query by using the Ads Diagnostic Tool.
Low competition for a keyword does not mean that it will be inexpensive. Competition is only one of the variables that determines your actual CPC. The price you pay for a click is also determined by your keyword's Quality Score for that query. If your keyword has a low Quality Score relative to the other ads on that page, you may find that your actual CPC is close to your maximum CPC, even though there is low competition for that keyword. Keep in mind that you will never be charged more than your maximum CPC for a click, no matter how low your Quality Score.
If you have any questions or have ideas on other topics we can provide more facts or insight to, please let us know at apac-agency-blog-feedback@googlegroups.com
Posted by Kelly Blackford, Agency Training Team Editor's note: This is a partial cross post from the Agency Ad Solutions Blog
AdWords webinars are free online tutorials delivered by Google AdWords Specialists. You can watch presentations on a variety of topics to help you understand and manage your client's accounts more effectively. Whether you're a new agency employee or a seasoned veteran our AdWords webinars can help you meet your goals. All you need to get started is an internet connection and a computer with speakers or headphones!
Please join us for two upcoming webinars, relevant to search specialists and agencies who would like to stay on top of the latest AdWords products and also learn tips on how to write effective ad copy.
AdWords Product Update for Agencies
July 30th – 2pm Sydney Standard Time (4pm AKL, 12pm SG)
Stay up to date on the latest Google and AdWords Product updates including the new Ad Planner Interface. We will also cover recent updates the Search Based Query Tool as well as a look at new features of the New AdWords Interface. You can register for this webinar here.
Writing Effective Ad Copy
August 6th – 11am Sydney Standard Time (1pm AKL, 9am SG)
Uncover tips on how to write effective ad copy that aligns with different parts of the purchase funnel. Learn how to use various reports and tests to drive optimal results. You can register for this webinar here.
We would be pleased to have you join any of the webinars in our new agency series. To view and register for any of our upcoming topics, please visit our webinar calendar page at: www.google.com.au/adwords/webinars/agency.
