Display Ad Builder is a tool that allows you to create your own display ads quickly and easily from a selection of templates. You can find Display Ad Builder in the "Ads" tab in any ad group page within your account. With the tool, you can customise display ad templates with different background colors, fonts, images, and text and run them across more than one million websites in the Google Display Network.
We recently launched four new expandable templates in Display Ad Builder that allow you and your clients to show off more offers, product information, or whatever you'd like in the expanded space. Here is an example of a design that you can choose from:
For more information and to watch an interactive demo on Display Ad Builder, visit the Google Display Network site.
Every week, our agencies and clients ask us for great creative examples on YouTube. In response, we put together the YouTube Bubble Channel to showcase some of the best advertising on YouTube.
Visit the channel for recent examples such as the Old Spice Channel on YouTube, which features the now-famous Old Spice Man answering user questions from Twitter. You can also find Warner Bros Brand Channel for the new film Inception, which has been popular with users. We've also included a video about how YouTube impacts brand metrics, which is always useful when presenting to clients.
Over the past year, we’ve been focused on investing in display advertising, and we’ve seen great momentum from the increasing number of you running display campaigns with Google. We’ve rolled out new features and targeting options and more precise measurement tools. To provide more places for you to run display ads, we’ve added more publisher sites (through Google AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange) to our ad network of over one million sites. Meanwhile, many of you have continued to run ads on YouTube and our own properties. In an effort to make our display media offerings clearer to advertisers like you and agencies, we’re creating a new umbrella name for all these properties, the Google Display Network.
The Google Display Network will comprise all of the sites (apart from search sites), where you can buy ads through Google, including YouTube, Google properties such as Google Finance, Gmail, Google Maps, Blogger as well as over one million Web, video, gaming, and mobile display partners (our display partners include all of our AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange partner sites that allow text and/or display ads). The Google Display Network offers all ad formats - text, image, rich media, and video ads - enabling you to unleash your creativity and engage potential customers across the Web.
You can run ads on the Google Display Network the same way you always have. Either place bids through AdWords or make reservations on YouTube with the help of a Google account team.
In the upcoming weeks, you’ll see a change in the AdWords interface reflecting this new term, and you’ll see Google Display Network where you might have seen Google Content Network mentioned. We’ve also launched a new website showcasing the sites and benefits available to you on the Google Display Network.
We’re working hard to offer the best display advertising solutions and we look forward to introducing new features on the Google Display Network that help you reach your advertising goals.
Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management This is a cross post from the Inside AdWords Blog
Display Ad Builder is a tool that allows you to create your own display ads quickly and easily from a selection of templates. After selecting the Display Ad Builder option from the "Ads" tab in any ad group page within your account, you'll be able to customise the display ad templates with different background colors, fonts, images, and text and run them across more than one million websites in the Google Display Network.
Just in time to get in on World Cup action, we’ve added 5 new soccer-themed display ad templates to the Display Ad Builder. You can use these templates, which are available on the front page of the seasonal library, to help you add World Cup flair to you campaign. Here are a few of the designs that you can choose from:
Interested in tips and tricks for making the most of the Display Ad Builder? Don’t miss our new tutorial.
We are introducing several new features that integrate DoubleClick Ad Planner data with other Google advertising products such as AdWords. These features help advertisers streamline the process of planning online campaigns and make better informed media planning decisions based on the latest Ad Planner data.
Exporting Google Display Network Placements to AdWords Many Ad Planner users are also AdWords users, and one of their most frequently requested features is a simple and easy way to buy Google Display Network placements through Ad Planner. The newly launched Export to AdWords feature helps advertisers do just that. Advertisers can now export Google Display Network placements from Ad Planner into AdWords. These exported placements will show up as a new campaign or ad group within AdWords.
For advertisers running text ads or display ads on the Google Display Network, this new feature provides an easy way to build media plans and translate the audience research data in Ad Planner into effective AdWords placements.
Creating Lists in Ad Planner To help you create your own list of favorite sites to save and add to your media plans, we also recently launched “Lists” in Ad Planner. With “Lists”, you can store sites and placements in lists to use in future media plans.
Our goal with these recent updates is to deliver advertisers tools to make smarter planning and more informed advertising decisions. Please visit www.google.com/adplanner to check out our new features!
Posted by Kelly Blackford, Agency Training Team This is a partial cross post from the Agency Ad Solutions Blog
Advertisers large and small have had great success targeting their ads to relevant videos on YouTube, which is why we’ve been developing tools that give advertisers even more control over exactly where their ads appear on the site and who sees them. As part of this effort, we introduced Video Targeting, a tool that helps advertisers place their text, image, and video ads on relevant partner videos on YouTube. Today, we’re making that tool available to advertisers in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India and Korea as well as introducing a few new improvements.
Video Targeting is modeled after similar Google planning tools and pretty much does what it says: it gives advertisers more control of their ad campaigns by letting them choose specific YouTube partner content they'd like to target. Advertisers can target videos based on keywords (like politics or fashion), viewer demographics (like age and gender), interest-based categories, or some combination of the three. Or, if an advertiser has a video in mind, they can see if it's available to target specifically. Video Targeting Tool is integrated with Google AdWords and makes it easier than ever for advertisers and agencies to run integrated, targeted, and measurable campaigns across the Web. Here’s how it works:
Video targeting is one way we’re opening up YouTube to new display advertisers. Last March, we added a new template to Display Ad Builder that makes it easier for advertisers to create image ads for YouTube, such as InVideo overlays and companion ads. Display Ad Builder is a self-service tool within AdWords that helps advertisers create and run display campaigns in minutes. Our goal with tools Video Targeting and Display Ad Builder is to make display advertising accessible to and easy for any advertiser. In the long run, this means more useful and relevant ads on YouTube and across the Web.
Posted by Eiji Kasutani, Product Specialist for YouTube
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
Last year, hundreds of young creatives took part in the inaugural YouTube-Cannes Young Lions 48 Hour Ad Contest, with two of them, Guy Dayan and Adeline Chew, winning a trip to Cannes to represent YouTube in the Young Lions Film Contest.
This week we’re launching the 2010 edition of the contest. The format’s pretty much the same: we’ll announce a brief from a well-known nonprofit at midnight on Friday, May 14 (GMT), and you’ll have just 48 hours to write, film, edit and upload your film to the Cannes Lions channel. You then have a week to get as many votes for your entry on the channel as possible, before a panel of senior creative directors will use the votes to inform their choice of two winners. Those two will get a fully-paid trip to the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.
As this is the Cannes Young Lions, entrants need to be 18-28 years of age to take part, and -- of course -- very creative. If that sounds like you, head to the channel now and subscribe to keep informed. And remember to keep the weekend of May 15-16 free to create your ad. Good luck!
Posted by Ernesto Soriano, Product Marketing Manager This is a cross post from the YouTube Blog
Have you got an iPad yet? Like many of you, we’re excited about the release of Apple’s iPad and the promise of tablet computers.
As an advertiser, how can you target your ads on these new gadgets?
In the past year we've launched advertising products that work on a number of devices such as mobile phones with full Internet browsers like the iPhone and those running Android. More than 50% of mobile search queries come from these high-end devices, so they're an important component of any campaign.
To ensure that your ads appear on new mobile devices like the iPad, make sure to select “all mobile devices” in your campaign settings under the “Networks and devices” section in your AdWords account.
If you want to target the iPad specifically, our engineers are busy at work doing the final testing on an option to enable you to do just that. It will appear in the coming days when you choose to “target only selected mobile devices”. Check it out today!
Posted by Kelly Blackford, Agency Training Team This is a partial cross post from the Inside AdWords Blog
The mission of DoubleClick Ad Planner, Google's free research and media planning tool formerly named Google Ad Planner, is to provide the deepest, most accurate insight into online audiences possible. This insight helps advertisers and agencies select the best sites for their media plans and drive results for their campaigns. In recent months, we've been investing significantly in better site data and new features for DoubleClick Ad Planner.
To further our commitment to provide reliable data in DoubleClick Ad Planner, we have submitted it for accreditation by the Media Rating Council (MRC), an advertising industry group that works to accredit audience measurement services that are valid, reliable, and effective. As part of the MRC audit, we're sharing more details about our data sources and methodology. Once complete, the MRC accreditation will provide independent confirmation that Ad Planner's methodologies, and the processes supporting this technology, adhere to industry standards.
As part of the MRC audit, we're sharing more details about our data sources and methodology. For our traffic measurement, Ad Planner uses a hybrid measurement methodology that combines direct-measured site traffic, through Google Analytics data that publishers have chosen to opt in to provide us, and sample aggregated data from Google products and services. We currently have over 10,000 sites that are contributing direct measured opt-in data to Ad Planner. Our sample data comes from a variety of sources including anonymized, aggregated Google Toolbar data from users who have opted in to enhanced features, opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in external consumer panel data, and other third-party market research. All of this data is aggregated over millions of users and is powered by computer algorithms. The breadth and reliability of this aggregated data means that our traffic measurements are among the most accurate in the industry.
To learn more about Ad Planner's data, we invite you to read our recently updated methodology document. To start using Ad Planner, visit us at www.google.com/adplanner
Posted by Kelly Blackford, Agency Training Team This is a partial cross post from the Doubleclick Advertisers Blog
From the new AdWords interface to Ad Sitelinks, our advertising tools have evolved in exciting and innovative ways over the past year. Along the way, you’ve provided insightful feedback and suggestions to help shape these products. You’ve also asked, what’s next? To help answer that question, we recently launched Google Ad Innovations, a website where you can explore Google's latest advertising technologies, watch video demos, and try out select new tools.
The technologies we'll highlight on Google Ad Innovations are at various stages of development, from early tests to fully released features. Here are a few of the new releases you'll find on Ad Innovations right now:
* Remarketing -- a way to show your ads to users who have previously visited your website as they browse sites across the Google Content Network * AdWords Search Funnels -- a set of reports that help you understand the Google.com search ad click and impression behavior leading up to a conversion * Location Extensions with multiple addresses -- an ad format which displays a list of nearby store locations when your customers are performing local searches * Click-to-Call Extensions -- an ad format that let mobile phone users call you directly from your ads * Analytics Intelligence -- a Google Analytics feature that automatically identifies significant changes in your site traffic
If you see a feature that can be improved, or if you think we've hit on a valuable new idea, let us know via the feedback links available for each product. The comments and suggestions you leave while using Google Ad Innovations will go directly to the Google team working on the feature.
So, if you want to stay on the cutting edge of advertising products, visit Google Ad Innovations — we’ll regularly add new tools and features to the site, and we can't wait to hear what you think!
Posted by Kelly Blackford, Agency Training Team This is a cross post from the AdWords Agency Blog
How do I keep up to date with new Google products? Am I using all the latest features and tools to run my campaigns? How can I learn about AdWords quickly?
As part of our ongoing efforts to improve training materials and the Google Advertising Professional program we have updated the certification exam and learning center.
We've replaced it with a new Google Advertising Fundamentals exam which is designed to be more rigorous and strategy-oriented. Our teams have developed the new curriculum and exam to equip search managers with useful, relevant training to manage AdWords campaigns.
We've noted some questions since we introduced the new exam so want to tell you a little bit more:
* We're testing a wider range of knowledge and the passing score is higher than the previous exam - 85% vs 75% on the previous test.
* You can access the new exam through your Google Advertising Professionals account - navigate to the My Exams tab where you can pick up your candidate ID to use on the testing site and follow the links to either the Learning Centre or the Exam Testing Site.
* The new exam is available in English only, but will be available in 20 additional languages in January.
Our goal was to bring the materials and exam up to date and ensure they cover all current products and best practices to help run and manage AdWords campaigns. We will be introducing new advanced exams in 2010, so you may hear about some of them being tested now. But at this time, you only need to hold a valid passing score in the previous exam or if you're new to the program - the new Advertising Fundamentals.
Congratulations to those of you who have taken and passed the new exams and good luck to all test takers.
Posted by Kelly Blackford, Agency Training Team This is a partial cross post from the Inside AdWords Blog
We recently announced the launch of YouTube Promoted Videos in Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Promoted Videos is an advertising program that helps anyone with a video - from an everyday user to a major brand advertiser - reach an audience on YouTube or the Google Display Network interested in their content, products, or services.
Selecting relevant keywords is a key factor to seeing success with your Promoted Videos campaign; the right keywords will help you get your video in front of the right audience. But how do you find keyword ideas for your Promoted Video campaigns? We are excited to announce that the YouTube Keyword Tool is now available in English with results that can be customised for your local market. The Keyword Tool allows you to build extensive, relevant keyword lists from one simple interface. You can generate keyword ideas, review traffic estimations for existing and new keywords, and add keywords to your ad groups with this tool.
Here are some best practices to consider when choosing keywords for your YouTube Promoted Video campaigns. Keep in mind that you may need to test different keywords to reach your specific goals.
* Users are searching for video content, so they're less likely to look for something to buy on a video publisher site than they are on a search engine. Users search for topics related to what entertains them, so choose your keywords accordingly: use names for celebrities, titles for movies and television shows, quotes, actions or verbs, objects in the video, or emotions that reflect the content. * Think about trends in online video overall plus trends on the relevant site, whether it's YouTube or other sites on the Google Display Network. Examples: Hot topics, political awareness, celebrity gossip, popular videos, etc. * Use video comments and tags on your target sites for new ideas. * Group your keywords for a promotion by theme. For example, if you have a travel clip of a location in Fiji and another of a location in Africa, each clip should have its own promotion with keywords that are specific to that promotion. Creating a promotion with a travel clip of Africa with Fiji-themed keywords will be less useful for you and users. * Before creating your promotion, make sure you review the YouTube's advertising policies and the Google AdWords editorial policy for standard text ads for placements on the Google Display Network. Promoted Videos accepts only Family Safe content for promotion, either on YouTube or the Google Display Network. * Use the YouTube Insight Discovery Tab to see which keywords and referrers are driving traffic to your video for more keyword ideas. * Use negative keywords to filter our unwanted searches so users who are more likely to be interested in your content see your promotion.
For additional ideas on how to set up your YouTube Promoted Video campaigns, visit our Optimisation Guide in the AdWords Help Center.
Earlier this year we released a great tool called the Display Ad Builder, which allows AdWords users to create free display ads for their businesses. You can browse through over 40 professionally-designed templates and choose the ones most suited to you and your clients. Then it's a matter of simply changing the text, adding a logo or graphic, and you're ready to run your ads on the Google Display Network, which includes over 1 million sites reaching over 75% of unique internet users (comScore MediaMetrix, March 2009) in more than 20 languages and over 100 countries.
We're pleased to announce a timely addition to the Display Ad Builder template library - seasonal templates, which you can see below. You can check out these four new holiday templates in your AdWords account today - in the "Ad Variations" tab.
Check out this video tutorial on Display Ad Builder, and start making ads! You can find the new templates in the "Seasonal" category of the Display Ad Builder gallery.
Posted by Christine Knight, AdWords Optimisation Team
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
If you advertise to customers in multiple languages or countries, you've probably spent time translating your advertising campaigns. To help make translating faster and easier, today we’ve added AdWords campaign support to Google Translator Toolkit, which includes tools like translation search, bilingual dictionaries, and custom terminology databases.
To translate your keywords and ad text, upload an AdWords Editor Archive (AEA) file into Translator Toolkit, and Translator Toolkit will automatically translate them. You can then share your translations with your multilingual optimisers or professional translators, who can optimise and localise your campaign through Translator Toolkit’s campaign editor.
When you're finished, download your campaign and upload back into AdWords Editor. You can also optimise your keywords and ad text further through AdWords Editor and other tools like AdWords Traffic Estimator.
Of course, reaching foreign-language customers requires more than campaign localisation. To attract international customers, your landing pages should also be translated and, if applicable, your payment and other support systems should be ready for international customers. Check out our help pages for details on how to localise and optimise your campaigns. When you’re ready, give Google Translator Toolkit a try and let us know what you think.
Posted by Jane Beaven, Third Party Training Manager APAC This is a partial cross post from the Inside AdWords Blog
There are now 20 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, which means it's no easy task to find the right audience for your video. How does a new band build a fan base and get buzz for their new single? Or how can a top brand test the effectiveness of new ad creative on YouTube? Not every business or video creator can rely on the word-of-mouth that turned Nike's video of Kobe Bryant jumping over an Aston Martin into a worldwide sensation. Sometimes people need a little help discovering what's new and relevant to them.
Now, video creators of all sizes can tap into the effectiveness of Promoted Videos, an advertising program that helps anyone with a video - from an everyday user to a major brand advertiser - reach an audience interested in their content, products, or services. People discover videos in many ways; they search on YouTube, they watch videos suggested to them by friends, and they click on embedded videos as they browse the Internet. Promoted Videos allows your clients to reach their audience wherever they are by placing their video on relevant YouTube search results pages, video watch pages, and Google's network of publisher sites.
Promoted Video campaigns can be created directly in Google AdWords, which means it's easier than ever to run campaigns and drive traffic to your client's videos. Like AdWords, Promoted Video campaigns are targeted by keyword and priced on a cost-per-click basis. You can place bids, select where you would like your client's videos to appear, and set daily spending budgets all within the AdWords interface. This integration will provide a single destination for your overall Google ad buy, and will give YouTube advertisers access to campaign tools in AdWords.
We know that many of you want your viewers to visit your website after watching your video, so we've built Call-to-Action overlays into Promoted Videos. Advertisers will be able to add a clickable overlay to their Promoted Videos, allowing them to drive viewers to a website off YouTube. This means you can track the performance of your video and whether your viewers are converting into customers.
We hope that Australian partners of all sizes will take full advantage of this opportunity to grow their audience here and around the world. Visit adwords.google.com.au to get started today or sign up for a webinar about Promoted Videos to learn more.
Posted by Jay Akkad & Matthew Liu, YouTube Product Managers This is a partial cross post from the Official Google Australia 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
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
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
