Inside AdWords: October 2015

Happy 15th Birthday, AdWords!

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

AdWords arrived in October 2000 to connect businesses, large and small, with consumers who were rapidly turning their attention online: Google Launches Self-Service Advertising Program.

In the last 15 years, we’ve witnessed tremendous shifts in consumer behavior and advances in technology. Along the way, Google has innovated to bring consumers more immediate, relevant answers in the moments that matter. AdWords started out as an advertising tool for the desktop world that’s transformed through the years with new formats and capabilities. It’s improved to enable businesses to thrive in a world where the smartphone has become consumers’ constant companion — to provide directions, suggestions for new apps to install, and more.

Come take a walk with us down memory lane.

Make every conversion count: cross-device data now included in the Conversions column and integrated with automated bidding

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

People turn to multiple devices throughout the day to shop, communicate and stay entertained. From a laptop at work to a tablet in the living room, we move sequentially and seamlessly between many device types to get stuff done. In fact, nearly 40% of online shoppers start their research on a smartphone and make their final purchase on a computer or tablet.¹ That’s why for up to 16% more conversions.

Starting today, cross-device conversions will begin rolling out at the keyword-level and can be included in the main Conversions column that already includes website sales, phone calls and app downloads. By showing all conversions in one place, advertisers can get deeper insight into all the ways customers are engaging with their businesses. It’s also easier than ever to take action on these insights: with all of your conversions in the same column, you can quickly enable automated bidding to optimize for the conversions that matter.

To activate cross-device conversions in automated bidding, complete two easy steps in your AdWords account under Tools>Conversions:

Under Settings, make sure the Conversion bid metric is set to “Conversions” instead of “Converted clicks.” As a reminder, cross-device conversions and other controls are not offered for “Converted clicks”.
Click “Include advanced conversions” and check the box to include cross-device and other advanced conversions in your “Conversions” reporting column and automated bidding.

We are committed to helping you gain insight into the new conversion types that are part of a constantly connected, multi-screen world so that you can make the best advertising decisions possible. Visit our Help Center to learn how to guide that explains the unique, auction-time technology that sets AdWords automated bidding apart.

Posted by Wilfred Yeung, Senior Product Manager, AdWords Bidding

¹The Role of Mobile Search on Store Purchases, Google/Ipsos Media CT, August 2015. Purchases were made within the past 3 months.

Google Shopping best practice videos to help you reach more shoppers for the holidays

Monday, October 26, 2015

As the holiday season approaches, your to-do list can seem never-ending. On top of the festivities of the season, you’re managing your bids, adding new popular products to your inventory, and trying to balance your budget — all in hopes of reaching holiday shoppers at the moment they’re looking to buy. Here at Google Shopping, we want to help you succeed during one of the busiest times of the year by connecting shoppers with your products at the drop of a (Santa) hat.

Earlier this year, we shared Google for Retail, our online hub for businesses of all sizes to get up and running with Google Shopping ads. Today, we’re introducing a few new Google Shopping best practice videos to highlight three tactics that help you turn clicks into customers this holiday season.

Manage your Shopping campaign
After you’ve set up your Shopping campaign, you’ll want to make sure you have your goals, bids, and budgets set for the best results. In the video below, we’ll eliminate the guesswork and walk you through setting up realistic budgets and targets to maximize your reach on Google.

Get more of your products online
When setting up your first data feeds, you may run into issues that prevent your products from appearing on Google. Learn more about how to get your data feed into tip-top shape to show even more of your products online, making it easier for shoppers to find you.

Optimize your Shopping campaigns
Once your Shopping campaign is up and running, you’re ready to think about how to optimize your ads to get the best return-on-investment (ROI). While there are many ways to do this, the key is knowing what to do first. Learn optimization fundamentals including how to drive traffic to your site and optimize that traffic to maximize your profits and ROI.

By managing your Shopping campaigns, fixing your data feed disapprovals, and optimizing your ads, searching shoppers can find all the products you’re selling -- helping you efficiently and effectively get more sales for the holidays, and beyond.

For more information on Google Shopping YouTube channel.

Want to stay on top of more AdWords Best Practices? Sign up to receive our monthly newsletter.

Posted by Kim Doan, Product Marketing Manager, Google Shopping

Seize holiday shopping moments with new tools and insights

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

This holiday season, shoppers are acting more quickly and more purposefully than ever before, with 7% less time spent in each mobile shopping session.¹ Yet those same shoppers are making 64% more mobile purchases than last year in the retail category, according to Google Analytics data.² Intent-filled shopping micro-moments will replace shopping marathons this season, and we’re rolling out three new features to help retailers act on these critical moments.

Optimize your shopping bids with remarketing lists

We’re excited to extend remarketing capabilities to both shopping ads (PLAs) and local inventory ads (LIAs) with shopping remarketing lists. Now you can optimize your shopping bids to re-engage high-value customers the next time they shop on Google.com. For example, when those who’ve abandoned their carts on your sites or your loyal customers shop again on Google on desktop or mobile, you can use remarketing lists to tailor your shopping bids and reconnect with them at a more cost-efficient ROI.

Early adopters are seeing great success with shopping remarketing lists:

"Shopping remarketing lists have proven incredibly successful for Magazines.com. We're able to strategically target consumers who did not convert in previous visits, driving 285% higher mobile and desktop conversion rates with 68% lower CPAs, making it one of the most effective features we’ve ever tested."
- Yuly Gonzalez, Sr. SEM Specialist, Rakuten Search

"With Shopping remarketing lists, our client Cruiser Customizing increased their conversion rate by 78% and their ROAS by 66%. We don’t want to have a single Shopping campaign now without shopping remarketing lists attached."
- Jeremy Brown, Chief Marketing Officer, Metric Theory

Get better insights into the products in high demand online and near your stores

To help you make better decisions about which products to merchandise and promote in your stores, online, and via your Google shopping data feed, we recently rolled out two new tools:

First, with the new Shopping Insights tool, you can identify the products people are actively looking for online and around your stores.* Based on aggregated and indexed data from April to September of 2015, the tool lets you explore the most popular shopping product terms on Google, measure their significance over time, filter for cities, and compare how consumers search for products differently on mobile or desktop.

The Sphero BB-8 App-Enabled Droid from Star Wars, one of the hottest toys right now on Google. This report also provides benchmark selling prices for each of those missing products to help you with sourcing and pricing decisions.

Posted by Archana Kannan, Product Manager, Google Shopping

¹Google Analytics internal data, September 2015
²Google Analytics internal data, September 2015
^{* Available in the US, across all devices}

What are people shopping for near your stores — and across America?

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Today we're launching the beta of our new Shopping Insights tool, another step towards helping retailers connect with consumers in moments that matter, by making data about shopping habits and preferences more accessible.

Shopping Insights shows the products people are searching for across cities, time and devices. While 87% of shopping research happens online, 92% of goods are still sold in retail stores. By better understanding user’s shopping intent online, retailers can make more informed local merchandising and marketing decisions for their stores.

The Shopping Insights tool estimates popularity and trends for a given product by aggregating keyword data from the millions of searches consumers are doing to shop for that product. Further, you can see data for every city available for targeting in AdWords, and compare mobile to desktop patterns to better serve customers near your stores. Here’s a demo of how it works:

Observe and meet local demand

Shopping Insights lets retailers analyze product interest by city and time to understand local demand. As an example, let’s take a look at search interest in Halloween costumes. While Elsa and Olaf from Minions and Star Wars. Minions were initially more popular, with search interest for Minion costumes over 2.5X higher than Star Wars costumes in July. Following the release of new footage for the next Star Wars movie in late August, search interest for Star Wars costumes briefly overtook Minions, closing the gap to a 10% difference in September.

However, when looking at the city level, we can see significant variance in regional preferences. Let’s compare two popular college towns, Berkeley, CA and Madison, WI. In Berkeley, for example, Star Wars costumes are nearly 3x more popular than Minion costumes, but in Madison, WI Minion costumes are 3x more popular than Star Wars.

In another example of regional trends, interest in emoji joggers first appeared near Atlanta, then moved to New York City over the next several months, peaking during the holiday season last year. Consumers on the west coast haven’t caught on to the trend yet. This type of insight can help you understand how to meet demand for regionally popular products, while carrying less inventory in regions with less interest.

See interest by mobile, desktop, or both

Shopping Insights also gives you a clearer look at the devices people are using during their “I-want-to-know, go, do, and buy” moments, so you can plan your campaigns for the right screens. For instance, searches for Disney Vans shoes have grown a whopping 10X since the launch of the “Young at Heart” line in May. And fans of Disney Vans clearly prefer to shop on mobile, using smartphones 3X more often than desktop to search for the popular shoes.

The Californian roots of both Disney and Vans are also visible in the data; interest was 2X higher in Los Angeles than New York, even though New York has twice the population. In fact, 38% of all searches came from California.

Understand nationwide, regional, and local outliers with featured stories

We will also release featured stories highlighting interesting trends across the nation, based on data mined by our teams. Check out the Birkenstock sandals. We hope these stories inspire your own creative uses of Shopping Insights.

Getting started with Shopping Insights

Shopping Insights Beta is now available in the U.S., covering the 5,000+ most popular products on Google Shopping between April 01, 2014 to September 30, 2015. In the coming months, we'll have fresh updates with new data, insights and stories. It's all part of our long-term commitment to help retailers succeed with deeper insights about users’ intent and context.

To get started visit: shopping.thinkwithgoogle.com.

Posted by Jonathan Alferness, Vice President, Product Management, Google Shopping

2015 Holiday Trends - Shopping Moments Are Replacing Shopping Marathons

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

If the idea of shopping on your phone while waiting for your morning coffee sounds familiar, you’re not alone. This holiday season, shopping moments will replace shopping marathons. Rather than rely on day-long mall marathons Black Friday weekend, shoppers are now turning to their mobile phones at hundreds of micro-moments throughout the day, all season long. In fact, more than half (54%) of holiday shoppers say that they plan to shop on their smartphones in spare moments throughout the day like walking or commuting.¹

As we head into this year’s holiday shopping season, we looked at how the rise of these shopping moments will impact retail trends. After analyzing Google data and working with Ipsos MediaCT to survey consumers on their holiday shopping intentions, today we’re sharing our predictions for the digital trends impacting this year’s biggest shopping season.

Big shopping days are becoming smaller
It used to be that people would plan their shopping marathons for days like Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Now, shopping happens in the moments between everything else in our lives. Last year, for example, we saw steady consumer shopping interest in “gifts and presents” all season long.²

Source: Google Data, Q4 2014, US

This type of shopping has led to shorter, more purposeful mobile shopping sessions. In fact, while shoppers now spend 7% less time in each mobile session, smartphones’ share of online shopping purchases have gone up 64% over the last year, and 30% of all online shopping purchases now happen on mobile phones.³

The time to start reaching these holiday shoppers is now. We found that 61% of shoppers will have already started researching their purchases before Thanksgiving weekend, up 17% from last year.⁴ While research starts early, the majority of purchasing will take place later into the holiday season.⁵ Why? There is no longer a sense of urgency since everyday is a shopping day.

Mobile will influence more purchases than ever before
Consumers are using their smartphones in all parts of the shopping process - from inspiration to research to purchasing. In fact, shopping-related searches on mobile have grown more than 120% year over year and are fast approaching those on desktop.⁶

In addition to a rise in mobile commerce, we’re also seeing a rise in mobile’s influence on local commerce. People are increasingly using their phones to research and buy products in stores. More than half (52%) of shoppers plan to use a smartphone for holiday shopping this year before they visit a store, and a whopping 82% of smartphone users will consult their phone while in a store.⁷ People are searching 37% more inside department stores than they were last year.⁸

And more people have the opportunity to tap and pay with their phones in stores this season, with new mobile payments platforms available. In fact, in a Google Consumer Survey we found that 40% of people say they are likely to use their smartphones to pay in stores this holiday season.⁹

While big sale days are becoming smaller, one day still stands out in shopping popularity for mobile. Sunday is consistently the most popular day for shopping on smartphones - on average, mobile shopping searches are 18% higher on Sundays than the rest of the week.¹⁰

Source: Google Data, Q3 2015, Global Shopping searches on mobile
as defined by clicks on Shopping Ads

The YouTube Gift Guide
People are also increasingly turning to YouTube to help them shop, looking for advice, inspiration, or product reviews. One in four shoppers (26%) say online videos are their go-to source for gift ideas, and 32% of shoppers say they plan to use online video more this year for holiday purchases.¹¹ Additionally, people in the U.S. are spending nearly twice as much time watching fashion and apparel shopping videos this year over last.¹²

Unboxing videos have become a growing phenomenon, as people turn to YouTube to inform their purchase decisions. In 2015 alone, people in the U.S. have watched 60M hours of unboxing videos on YouTube, totalling 1.1B views.¹³ Our research shows YouTube has become an important part of the purchase process for consumer electronics - 57% of Consumer Electronics shoppers watch Consumer Electronics-related videos online prior to purchase.¹⁴

To help shoppers discover more of the latest and greatest products, we’ve partnered with popular YouTube creators to bring you Awesome Stuff Week: a series of week-long celebrations highlighting shoppable videos on YouTube. Tune in on Monday to watch our next set of shoppable videos focusing on “gadgets.”

As shopping decisions are being made quicker and consumers’ expectations are higher, marketers today need to think carefully about where customers are discovering, researching and ultimately purchasing their products. By understanding these patterns and by focusing on moments of intent - on both mobile and video - marketers will win customers this holiday season.

Posted by Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing

¹Google / Ipsos MediaCT, Consumer Holiday Intentions Study 2015; Shoppers defined as people who intend to shop this holiday season with smartphones. n=778
²Google Data, October 2014–January 2015, United States.
³Google Analytics data, United States. Sept 2014 v. Sept 2015
⁴Google / Ipsos MediaCT, Consumer Holiday Intentions Study 2015 Base: Holiday shoppers n=2004
⁵Google / Ipsos MediaCT, Consumer Holiday Intentions Study 2015. Base: Holiday shoppers n=2004
⁶Google Global search data Nov 2014-Oct 2015, as defined by searches that trigger Shopping ads
⁷Consumers in the Micro-Moment, Google/Ipsos, US, March 2015, n=5,398, based on internet users
⁸Aggregated anonymized internal Google data from a sample of US users that have turned on Location History. Queries were considered as being "from" a location if they occurred within one hour of a user visit to the department store. September 2015 vs. September 2014.
⁹Google Consumer Survey, October 2015, n=500
¹⁰Google search data, Global, Q3 2015, mobile shopping searches as defined by clicks on Shopping ads
¹¹Google / Ipsos MediaCT, Consumer Holiday Intentions Study 2015
¹²YouTube data, Sep 2014 vs. Sep 2015, United States. Classification as a shopping video was based on public data such as headlines, titles, tags, etc and may not represent all apparel shopping videos on YouTube.
¹³YouTube data, January–October 2015, U.S. Classification as a "haul" video was based on public data such as headlines, tags, etc., and may not account for every "haul” video available on YouTube.
¹⁴Google Millward Brown CE Study, n=1,529 CE shoppers, January 2015. Correction, October 29, 2015: An earlier version of this post claimed 64% of CE shoppers watch videos on YouTube. We have updated the claim to 57% of CE shoppers watch CE-related videos online prior to purchase.

Reaching users across Search, Play, YouTube and the Google Display Network with Universal App Campaigns — an easy way to promote your Android app

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

A couple of weeks ago we share that starting today, it’s even easier for developers to grow their user base at scale by creating universal app campaigns directly from the Google Play Developer Console.

Universal app campaigns are the one-stop-shop campaign type that scales your reach and maximizes Android app installs across Google’s entire suite of ad platforms. You also save valuable time because we’ve automated campaign set-up, optimization and ongoing account management to help you achieve the app install goals that you have set, such as volume and cost per install (CPI).

With universal app campaigns, your app is promoted on YouTube to build your brand and drive installs on the platform with over a billion users. Your ads can also reach audiences across 650K apps that use the AdMob platform and 2M+ web sites in the Google Display Network. And importantly, universal app campaigns tap into intent-rich searches like “fitness tracker” and “productivity tips” that are happening throughout the day on Google Search and “adventure games” and “puzzle games” on Google Play so your app can be seen when a user is most likely to be looking for a new app to download.

You can get started in Google Play Developer Console with a few simple inputs:

A few lines of ad text to describe your app and a YouTube URL (if you have a video)
The locations and language that you wish to reach
Your daily budget and target cost-per-install (CPI)

We’ll pull in app images, videos and app descriptions from your Google Play store listing to generate ad formats that look great wherever they are placed.

From there, our systems will automatically optimize your campaigns and use dynamic learning to maximize app install volume at your target cost-per-install. How does our dynamic learning system work? We test different versions of your ad text and app images in each of the eligible Google properties and networks to determine the best-performing variations. Throughout each day, we also actively adjust bids to get you more installs and optimize your targeting to the right audiences. Because our systems methodically update and search for new targeting segments, creating a universal app campaign is a low-maintenance, automated way to continuously get new users.

Universal app campaigns intro video

Developers are already taking advantage of the simplicity and install volume you can drive with universal app campaigns.

José Maria Pertusa, CMO of Linio shared that, "Universal app campaigns are an easy way to promote our app across Google Search, Google Play, the Google Display Network and YouTube. We were looking for a way to take advantage of the reach and scale of Google's networks and expand into new markets without having to manage multiple campaigns. With universal app campaigns, we only had to set up one campaign that drove more than 10,000 new installs in one month and install volume is continuing to trend up over time. We're also seeing a 20% lower CPI compared to other channels."

"We wanted to accelerate growth in new markets, and Universal app campaigns helped achieve that goal in a simple and scalable way. With just one campaign, we were able to reach athletes across Google Search, Google Play, the Google Display Network, YouTube and AdMob. It was quick and easy to set up, and within the first month, we doubled paid install volume in key countries while maintaining our target CPI goals. Universal app campaigns will continue to be a core part of our global user acquisition strategy.” - Andrew Touchstone, Director of Marketing at Strava

This is an exciting time for developers as apps continue to help people find information and complete everyday tasks. At Google, we’re more committed than ever to partnering with developers on this journey and providing you with all the app promotion tools and best practices that you need to drive growth for your businesses.

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Director, Product Management, Mobile Search Ads

Shopping Assortment Report in Merchant Center gives retailers insight into demand for popular products they don’t stock

Monday, October 05, 2015

We know that retailers are always interested in new opportunities to meet online customer demand -- especially during the busy holiday season. Today, we’re excited to introduce the Shopping Assortment Report in Google Merchant Center to help you plan your product assortment and reach even more shoppers online.

With the Shopping Assortment Report, you can quickly discover the top 100 products that you don’t already offer in your Merchant Center product feed for each Google Product Category. You can also see benchmark selling prices for these products. This information can be helpful in identifying new brands and products to add to your assortment, and reach even more customers with in-demand products. The data is based on the popularity of these products on Google Shopping, offering a near real-time view into online consumer demand for shoppable products.

Already, retailers are seeing success with the new Shopping Assortment Report. Daniel Dutton, Strategy leader at Target, says “Google's new Assortment Report has already become a useful tool for us to identify white space opportunities, from newly emerging products we didn't already carry, to out-of-stock products to prioritize for restocking.”

With this fresh and detailed information from the Shopping Assortment Report, you can:

Identify key products that are missing from your feed. Identify popular products you do sell, but may have forgotten to include in your data feed, or may have the incorrect GTIN associated with the product.
Expand your product offerings. Identify popular products you currently do not sell, but may wish to source from suppliers and add to your product feed.

Whether you’re looking to add more products to your inventory or research pricing, the Shopping Assortment Report can help you reach even more shoppers online this holiday season, and beyond. For information on how to get started, check out our Help Center article.

Posted by Matt Henderson, Product Manager for Google Shopping

Inside AdWords

We've moved!

Happy 15th Birthday, AdWords!

Make every conversion count: cross-device data now included in the Conversions column and integrated with automated bidding

Google Shopping best practice videos to help you reach more shoppers for the holidays

Seize holiday shopping moments with new tools and insights

What are people shopping for near your stores — and across America?

2015 Holiday Trends - Shopping Moments Are Replacing Shopping Marathons

Reaching users across Search, Play, YouTube and the Google Display Network with Universal App Campaigns — an easy way to promote your Android app

Shopping Assortment Report in Merchant Center gives retailers insight into demand for popular products they don’t stock

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