Inside AdWords: Updates

Introducing the Google Analytics 360 Suite

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

An enterprise-class solution for a multi-screen world

Our lives are filled with micro-moments: intent-rich moments when we turn to the nearest device to find a store, buy a product or look for answers to all kinds of wants and needs. In these moments, today's consumers decide what to do, where to go, and what to buy.

If you're in marketing or analytics, you know this consumer behavior brings new opportunities to reach your customer in the right moment with the right message. At the same time, it's harder than ever to get a complete view of the consumer journey and then make sense of it all.
That’s why we’re introducing the Google Analytics 360 Suite, a set of integrated data and marketing analytics products, designed specifically for the needs of enterprise-class marketers. It all starts with understanding consumer behavior in the moment — getting the right insights, and then making your brand useful to consumers.

“The Google Analytics 360 Suite gave us the really big ah-ha moment. When we launched our mobile app, it provided insurance quotes. But after looking at the data, we saw people were attempting to buy insurance. So, we shifted our mobile strategy to offer ecommerce. Google gave us that insight,” said Pawan Divakarla, Analytics Leader at Progressive.

Modern measurement tools that are simple to use
Sophisticated marketers who use analytics platforms are three times more likely to outperform their peers in achieving revenue goals.¹ It’s no wonder enterprise-class marketers have been telling us they need more from their marketing analytics tools. Many toolsets can't cope: They're too hard to use, lack sufficient collaboration capabilities, are poorly integrated, and require hard-to-find expertise.

Several years ago, Google engineers set out to simplify marketing analytics in the same way we simplified web search with Google.com. With infrastructure that allows us to handle billions and billions of daily search queries — generating answers before users even finish typing — we set out to give enterprise marketers the same utility.

As we built the system, enterprise marketers shared what they needed with us:

See the complete customer journey. Marketers require full visibility and context to see what’s really happening across all customer touchpoints, devices, and channels.
Useful insights, not just more data. Marketers need enormous computing power, data science and smart algorithms, all working together to quickly make sense of data for them. In other words, built-in intelligence to do the heavy lifting for marketers and make insights easy to see.
Enable better sharing within your organization. Marketers seek to put insights into everyone’s hands and get the whole company on the same page — resulting in stronger cross-functional goals and smarter decision-making.
Deliver engaging experiences to the right people. Marketers want to make their brand immediately useful to consumers. With integrations across multiple Google technologies, the suite products not only work well together, but also with other products, including AdWords, DoubleClick, and 3rd-party platforms — enabling marketers to take immediate action and drive business impact.

The Google Analytics 360 Suite is built to address these needs. Its powerful set products are unified, providing a consistent user experience and cross product data integrations, plus services. Simply put: it’s a complete measurement platform.

“Using the integrations in the Google Analytics 360 Suite, we are able to manage everything in one seamless platform,” said Khoi Truong, Director of Analytics and Media at L'Oréal Canada.

Loaded with six products, four of which are brand-new, the Google Analytics 360 Suite offers easy-to-use tools that enable sharing of data and insights throughout an organization.

Google Audience Center 360 (beta). This powerful data management platform (DMP) helps marketers understand their customers and find more like them across channels, devices, and campaigns. It offers native integration with Google and DoubleClick, plus it's open to third party data providers, DSPs and more.
Google Optimize 360 (beta). This website testing and personalization product helps marketers deliver better experiences. Marketers can show consumers multiple variations of their site and then choose the version that works best for each audience.
Google Data Studio 360 (beta). A new data analysis and visualization product that integrates data across all suite products and other data sources ― turning it into beautiful, interactive reports and dashboards. Built-in real-time collaboration and sharing is based on Google Docs technology.
Google Tag Manager 360. Built from our industry-leading tag management product, it empowers enterprise marketers to move faster and make decisions with confidence. It offers a simplified way to gather site information (all those tiny bits of code) and powerful APIs to increase data accuracy and streamline workflows.
Google Analytics 360, formerly known as GA Premium, will roll out exciting new capabilities throughout the next couple of months as investments continue to grow. It will serve as the measurement centerpiece by analyzing customer data from all touch-points and integrating with our ad products to drive marketing effectiveness.
Google Attribution 360, formerly known as Adometry, has been rebuilt from the ground up to help advertisers value marketing investments and allocate budgets with confidence. Marketers can analyze performance across all channels, devices, and systems to achieve their most effective marketing mix.

Achieve more with your Google media

The Google Analytics 360 Suite offers integrations with many third party data providers and platforms. It also plugs right into Google AdWords and DoubleClick Digital Marketing, our core ad technology. That means marketers can turn analytics into action by combining their own data from multiple sources ― website data, audience data, and customer data (e.g. CRM) and more ― and using it to make ads more relevant for people.

“The Google Analytics 360 Suite has a native integration with DoubleClick — that’s a game-changer. Now I can personalize my media based on website user behaviors, such as what they purchase,” said Khoi Truong, Director of Media and Data Optimization at L’Oreal Canada.

When will the Google Analytics 360 Suite launch?

The new products -- Audience Center 360, Optimize 360, Data Studio 360, and Tag Manager 360 -- are available today in limited BETA. If you're a Google Analytics Premium or Adometry customer, you will see the products renamed in the coming months, and we'll let you know when you're eligible to join the new betas.

This is just the beginning of our ongoing innovation in enterprise marketing analytics -- we can’t wait to share more. In the meantime, visit our website for more details or hear from directly from our customers below.

Over the coming weeks we’ll dive into the capabilities and benefits of all the new products on the newly refreshed and renamed Google Analytics Solutions blog, and on the Google Analytics Twitter pages. We’d love your feedback.

Posted by Paul Muret, Vice President of Analytics, Display, and Video Products, Google

¹Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Discover How Marketing Analytics Increases Business Results

Use Smart Goals, powered by Google Analytics, to optimize in AdWords

Thursday, December 10, 2015

To advertise smart, you have to measure smart. And a key metric for almost any business is conversions, also known as “that moment when users do the thing that you want them to do.”

Many AdWords advertisers are already measuring their website conversions, using either imported Google Analytics Ecommerce transactions. Measuring actual conversions is ideal, because it allows you to optimize your bids, your ads and your website with a clear goal in mind.

However, hundreds of thousands of small and medium businesses aren't measuring their website conversions today. Some businesses may not have a way for users to convert on their website and others may not have the time or the technical ability to implement conversion tracking.

The Google Analytics team is committed to helping our users use their data to drive better marketing and advertising performance. So, for businesses that don’t measure conversions in AdWords today, we’ve created an easy-to-use solution: Smart Goals. Smart Goals help you identify the highest-quality visits to your website and optimize for those visits in AdWords.

"Smart Goals helped us drive more engaged visits to our website. It gave us something meaningful to optimize for in AdWords, without having to change any tags on our site. We could tell that optimizing to Smart Goals was working, because we had higher sales than usual across our channels during the testing period." - Richard Bissell, President/Owner, Richard Bissell Fine Woodworking, Inc

How Smart Goals Work

To generate Smart Goals, we apply machine learning across thousands of websites that use Google Analytics and have opted in to share anonymized conversion data. From this information, we can distill dozens of key factors that correlate with likelihood to convert: things like session duration, pages per session, location, device and browser. We can then apply these key factors to any website. The easiest way to think about Smart Goals is that they reflect your website visits that our model indicates are most likely to lead to conversions.

Step 1: Activate Smart Goals in Google Analytics

To activate Smart Goals in Google Analytics, simply go to the "Admin" section of your Google Analytics account, click "Goals" (under the View heading) and select "Smart Goals." The highest-quality visits to your website will now be turned into Smart Goals automatically. No additional tagging or customization is required; Smart Goals just work.

To help you see how Smart Goals perform before you activate them, we’ve built a Smart Goals report in the “Conversions” section of Google Analytics. The behavior metrics in this report indicate the engagement level of Smart Goals visits compared to other visits, helping you evaluate Smart Goals before you activate the feature.

Step 2: Import Smart Goals into AdWords

Like any other goal in Google Analytics, Smart Goals can be imported into AdWords to be used as an AdWords conversion. Once you’ve defined a conversion in AdWords, you’re able to optimize for it.

Step 3: Optimizing for Smart Goals in AdWords

One of the benefits of measuring conversions in your Adwords account is the ability to set a target cost per acquisition (CPA) as opposed to just setting a cost per click (CPC). If you aren’t measuring actual conversions today, importing Smart Goals as conversions in Adwords allows you to set a target CPA. In this way, you’re able to optimize your Adwords spend based on the likelihood of conversion as determined by our model.

Smart Goals will be rolling out over the next few weeks. To be eligible for Smart Goals, your Google Analytics property must be linked to your AdWords account(s). Learn how to link your Google Analytics property to your AdWords account(s) in the AdWords Help Center. Note that your Google Analytics view must receive at least 1,000 clicks from AdWords over a 30-day period to ensure the validity of your data.

Posted by Abishek Sethi, Software Engineer, and Joan Arensman, Product Manager

Introducing new interactive ads to drive app installs

Thursday, December 03, 2015

Developers are constantly looking for new ways to bring users to their apps. But because people’s attention on mobile is redesigned one of our in-app ad formats, and are building on our desire to create beautiful app ad experiences. That’s why today we’re introducing two new rich, immersive ad formats to our growing suite of creative app install solutions.

Play a game within an ad with Trial Run Ads
Trial Run Ads are an app ad format that lets a user play a game for up to 60 seconds by streaming content from the app before downloading. The immersive demo increases the likelihood that an install is coming from someone who enjoys playing the game. Users get a taste of the game before going through the download process, and the app developer attracts better qualified users who’ve chosen the game based on their experiences in the app.

Trial Run Ads provide:

Ultra-immersive and delightful ads designed for games
The opportunity for gamers to trial before download
More relevant ad clicks, app downloads, and pre-qualified app users

Cookie Jam's Trial Run Ad

Get ultra-creative with customized mobile ads
We’re also launching a beta for Interactive Interstitial ads, which are HTML5 ads that offer a completely customized user experience tailored to each advertiser's app. They give advertisers creative freedom to use HTML5 instead of standard templates and pull in data dynamically. Diversity potential is high with this format and it's not limited to just gaming apps. Interactive Interstitials offer a truly custom experience that can include your app’s value proposition and the functionalities you want to highlight, all painted in your personal branding strategy. This is particularly valuable for advertisers who are looking for higher user engagement in installers.

Interactive Interstitials provide:

A beautiful and flexible canvas for the advertiser to become truly creative
Unique testing and optimization capabilities
The opportunity to bring a piece of the app experience to the user before download
Unique brand building possibilities

Marketers are already taking advantage of these engaging ads to drive app installs. Zalora built a an ad that allowed users to swipe to discover an exclusive offer.

Zalora's Interactive Interstitial allows users to use a finger to
swipe a screen to discover a special promotion.

Customization can be as big or small as you want — from adjusting standard templates to developing a fully custom creative. Marketers can also use their live app content to create compelling, real time ad formats. With more control over layout and interaction, you can A/B test creatives and try various CTAs to increase conversions. Rather than just telling a user about your app, you can offer them an experience unique to your app that inspires them to want to spend time with your app.

Advertisers can use Interactive Interstitials to showcase their latest product offerings through galleries, highlight elements of their personal branding, and to more powerfully demonstrate the value of their app before someone installs.

Zalora showcases a gallery of products that users can
swipe through in its Interactive Interstitial Ad.

We understand that experiences on mobile need to be made for mobile, and an ad is no different. We’re continually exploring new and better ways to build out interactive formats for the small screen.

Trial Run Ads and Interactive Interstitials are currently in beta and available to a limited set of advertisers. Reach out to your account manager if you are interested in joining the betas.

Posted by Sissie Hsiao, Director of Product, Display and Pasha Nahass, Product Manager, Display

Introducing Google Compare for U.S. mortgages

Monday, November 23, 2015

Buying a home is a major financial decision — so when it comes to getting a mortgage, people want an easy way to understand and compare their options online. That’s why we added a mortgage calculator to announced earlier this year and is now available in California with more states to follow.

Google Compare for mortgages provides a seamless, intuitive experience that connects lenders with borrowers online. Whether you’re a national lender or one local to California, people searching for mortgages on their smartphone or desktop computer can now find you, along with a real-time, apples-to-apples comparison of rate quotes from other lenders — all in as little as a minute. Borrowers can also see ratings and read helpful reviews, and enter relevant information — like loan amount, estimated credit score, or home value — to receive rate quotes that match their needs. They can then visit your website to apply directly online or over the phone through one of your agents or loan officers.

Here’s what some of our partners are saying:

“Zillow Group and Google share the same vision to first and foremost empower consumers with comprehensive access to valuable information that helps them make confident, more informed financial decisions. This partnership allows us the unique opportunity to help borrowers by providing them with the industry’s most accurate, real-time information about home loans and mortgage lenders.” - Erin Lantz, Vice President of Mortgages, Zillow Group.

“We’re thrilled to be a part of Google Compare, further helping to connect prospective borrowers with qualified mortgage providers as the transition to online lending accelerates. The choice and convenience offered to consumers is imperative when loan shopping online, and Google Compare makes the process even easier.” - Doug Lebda, Founder and CEO of LendingTree

Participation in Google Compare is based on a flexible cost-per-lead (CPL) model, however payment isn’t a factor in ranking or eligibility. You can learn more about joining Google Compare by reaching out to your Google account team.

Posted by Nicolas Wk, Director of Product Management, Google Compare

¹Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, January 13, 2015

Google Helps You Shop Between Holiday Cooking and Tree Trimming

Thursday, November 19, 2015

This fall, shopping-related searches on mobile surpassed desktop, signaling a shift from shopping marathons to shopping moments.¹ To help shoppers more easily discover, browse and buy on mobile this holiday season, we’ve redesigned Google Shopping to be incredibly fast, seamless, and intuitive.

Here’s a look at what’s new:

Helping shoppers narrow down options

Shoppers often don’t know the exact product they’re interested in — forty-percent of shopping searches are on broad terms — so they turn to search to discover and explore.² With the new mobile redesign, if a shopper searches for droids, we’ll show the most commonly searched categories to help her narrow down her search. Similarly, if she searches on Google Shopping for tricycles for kids, we’ll show tricycles grouped by attributes that people commonly shop by: features, brand, and price. This gives her the freedom to discover what she might want in a more organized way, while helping drive more qualified traffic to your site.

Browse by Scrolling and Swiping

Once a shopper’s narrowed down her options, she can now easily browse through lots and lots of products without having to load entirely new pages to see more. She can get a feel for a specific product, such as a Lego Starwars Turbo Tank, that she's interested in by tapping on the product, flipping through images, skimming reviews and scanning product info. She can easily swipe to the next product or dig deeper into specs, features, and even videos to learn more about what you offer.

When she knows exactly what she wants, and searches for a chromecast, for example, we’ll surface more information upfront. She can see which merchants carry the product, which stores have it in-stock, and also get a quick glance at reviews and manufacturer details.

Driving shoppers In-store

Lastly, if she’s out and about it’s important for her to know what products are available nearby. One in four people who avoid stores do so because they don’t know if a product is in-stock.³ Now, if she searches for olaf toys near me or applies the available nearby filter, we’ll show a map of stores closest to her with the toy in-stock.

This new mobile experience makes it easier for shoppers to discover and explore products. To make sure they’re browsing and exploring your products, follow the tips in our Holiday Shopping Survival guides.

Happy Holidays!

Posted by Karen Corby, Senior Product Manager, Google Shopping

¹Google Internal Data, shopping-related searches defined by those that trigger a Shopping ad, October 2015.
²Google Data, anonymized, aggregated searches that trigger a Product Listing Ad, US, November, 2015.
³Google, Ipsos MediaCT and Sterling Brands, Digital Impact on In-Store Shopping, Published on Think with Google, May 2014.

The Google Display Network ups its commitment to viewability

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

For years, brand advertisers have been looking for ways to ensure their online ads are seen. This can be difficult — 46% of all video ads aren’t viewable because they’re below the fold, scrolled out of view, or in a background tab. For several years, we’ve been working to help advertisers address this challenge and today we are introducing 3 key improvements: the upgrade of all CPM campaigns to viewable CPM campaigns; new viewable frequency capping; and supplementary reporting metrics built on the viewability standard.

All CPM campaigns are now viewable CPM campaigns
As we the currency of digital advertising by upgrading all CPM campaigns on the GDN to viewable CPM (vCPM) campaigns. We’ve now completed this upgrade, making the Google Display Network (GDN) one of the only media platforms where advertisers don’t pay for an impression unless it’s actually viewable by a user.

Active View technology. This year, tens of billions of impressions were filtered out before ever being charged to AdWords advertisers because they didn’t meet this standard.

Viewable CPM helps brand advertisers buy efficiently and reach their campaign goals:

Devialet, an audio equipment company based in Paris, wanted to make more consumers aware of its speakers and amplifiers. To broaden its reach, Devialet shifted its campaigns from CPC to vCPM. As a result, Devialet increased its viewable impressions per dollar by 49% and increased its average time spent on site by 50%.

New viewable frequency capping will give advertisers better control
Frequency capping helps you control how many times your ads appear to the same person. When unviewable impressions are counted toward a frequency cap, a user may not see your ad as many times as you intended.

Starting in the next few weeks, frequency capping will only count viewable impressions for display and video campaigns in AdWords. This will help advertisers maintain better control over how often their ads are actually viewable to users. To learn more about setting a frequency cap, visit the Help Center.

New reporting metrics give a better picture of campaign performance
To give advertisers a better picture of how their display and video campaigns are performing, we’ve added supplementary metrics built on the viewability standard, such as:

Total impressions that were viewable
Percentage of impressions that were viewable
Percentage of viewable ads that were clicked

These metrics give advertisers more clarity on which placements and creatives are driving campaign performance when they are viewable to users.

We’ve long advocated for the adoption of viewability as a common currency to help marketers and publishers work together transparently, efficiently, and with accountability. This is another important step along that journey.

Posted by Glenn Wilson, Product Manager, AdWords

Capture more holiday traffic with click share for Google Shopping

Monday, November 16, 2015

More shoppers are turning to online shopping with each holiday season, increasing the opportunity for you to attract shoppers to your online store. Today we’re launching click share to better help you identify when you’re missing out on traffic. Click share is a new metric that shows the percentage of total possible clicks received by your Shopping ads.

Click share metric for product groups

Let’s walk through an example of how to use click share to identify product groups with potential for more traffic to ensure your ads show prominently enough to maximize traffic to your site on Black Friday. First, add the click share column on the Product groups tab. In this example, you see “winter coats” with a click share of 30%. This means that you only got 30 out of every 100 possible clicks on your “winter coats” ads. Second, take this opportunity to adjust your bids for “winter coats” to make your ads more prominent. Third, make sure to check back frequently, especially for your most popular products, to closely monitor click share and continue to optimize bids.

There is more you can do to ensure holiday success. In addition to driving traffic, you’ll want to fine-tune your campaigns to reach new shoppers and drive sales. We’ve created two holiday checklists to help you manage your campaigns over the coming weeks and through the new year:

Holiday Readiness Checklist: Get your Shopping campaigns Black Friday-ready to connect with shoppers at the moments that matter and convert them into customers
Holiday Survival Checklist: Follow this checklist to make mid-flight changes to your campaigns and learn how to adjust bids for new trending products

By taking these lists and checking them twice, and tuning your campaigns based on click share insights, you can increase sales this season...and have a happier holiday!

Posted by Dimitris Meretakis, Product Manager, Google Shopping

Drive sales and app downloads with video this holiday season

Monday, November 16, 2015

The holiday shopping season is upon us once again, and advertisers are at the ready to make sure it’s their products that fly off the shelves. And this holiday, video will play a bigger role than ever in how those products fly off the shelves. Across a wide range of brands and categories, we’re seeing the power of TrueView video for driving consumer intent in addition to driving awareness. In a recent analysis of TrueView campaigns, 57% of campaigns saw lift in consideration and 24% saw a lift in favorability. Plus, 35% of campaigns saw a lift in purchase intent.¹

Video can be an incredibly powerful tool in creating demand for your products. So over the past year, we’ve focused on creating tools on YouTube to help you connect the dots between inspiration and purchase. Today, we’re making these tools readily available to advertisers through AdWords. Here is a rundown of the features we’re launching.

New campaign set-up tailored to your marketing objectives
Setting up a video campaign should be as simple as telling us what action you want consumers to take – and today we’re announcing a way to do that right at the start of the campaign creation process. Whether your end goal is to drive sales, app downloads or to generally build your brand, you can now declare these goals right up front. Further, we’ll tailor the rest of your campaign set-up and optimization for your chosen marketing objective.

Shopping campaign option

App promotion campaign option

Drive app downloads at your set price with target cost-per-acquisition bidding
The holiday season is incredibly important for app promotion, as consumers outfit their new devices with apps. To start an app promotion campaign with video, select the new “app promotion” option to access settings specifically tailored for promoting apps. You can now use target cost-per-acquisition (CPA) bidding, which lets you define the amount you're willing to pay for a conversion, and then automatically sets your bids to give you as many conversions as possible at that price.

Clients participating in our beta have seen great results, including Com2us, the maker of the game Summoners War, whose Marketing Manager Eric Cho had this to say:

“At Com2us, we use TrueView for app promotion to acquire new app customers at scale across Europe, the Americas and Southeast Asia. Our campaigns are exceeding expectations around volume while maintaining our ROI goals. Target CPA bidding has allowed us to achieve our goals on Android and we look forward to expanding in the future.”

Target CPA bidding

New shopping formats now available in AdWords
And today, two powerful performance-oriented formats are available to all advertisers – both Shopping ads on YouTube are now available in AdWords.

TrueView for Shopping campaigns create interactive video ads that highlight the value of your products and drive consideration. These TrueView video ads have actionable shopping cards embedded in them which provide an easy bridge to purchase for viewers. They are also a powerful audience solution, enabling you to remarket to viewers who may have visited your site or viewed your other videos.

TrueView for shopping

Shopping ads on YouTube work even lower in the funnel, by enabling shopping cards on creator videos that feature your products. This is a great way to capture demand when viewers are most interested in exploring and researching products. These also allow you to extend the reach of your Shopping campaigns beyond www.google.com.

To extend your Shopping ads to YouTube, make sure your Shopping campaigns in AdWords are opted into search partners.

These new TrueView features are made possible thanks to our recent migration of TrueView video ads into the core AdWords front end, and represents only the first first step towards a simpler, goal-oriented video ad experience. Now get out there and drive some sales and app downloads with video!

Posted by Diya Jolly, Director, Video Ads Product Management

¹TrueView Brand Lift Meta Analysis of US Q3 2015 campaigns
Consideration n=708 studies
Favorability n=118 studies
Purchase intent n=211 studies

Share Google Analytics data and remarketing lists more efficiently using manager accounts (MCC)

Thursday, November 12, 2015

From monitoring account performance at scale to making cross-account campaign changes, manager accounts help many of the most sophisticated AdWords advertisers get more done in less time. To deliver more insightful reporting and scale your remarketing efforts, we’re introducing two new enhancements to manager accounts: Google Analytics account linking, and remarketing tag and list sharing.

Access your data with a single link

You can now link your Google Analytics or Google Analytics Premium account directly to your AdWords manager account using the new setup wizard in AdWords under Account Settings. This streamlined workflow for linking accounts eliminates the need to link each of your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts individually.

Now when you import your goals, website metrics, remarketing lists, or other data from Google Analytics, you'll only need to do it once. And whenever you add a new AdWords account to your manager account, it will automatically be linked with the same Analytics properties.

These enhancements save time so you can focus on optimizing your campaigns. You can learn more about linking your Google Analytics account into your manager account in the AdWords Help Center.

Scale your remarketing strategy

Many advertisers are seeing tremendous success re-engaging customers and finding new ones using Customer Match.

You can also create remarketing lists using a manager-level remarketing tag and use them across your managed accounts. This eliminates the need to retag your website and manage multiple lists in each AdWords account. If any of your managed accounts have their own lists, they can be made available for use in your other managed accounts.

These enhancements make it easier and faster than ever before to get your remarketing strategy up and running. You can learn more about sharing remarketing tags and lists in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Vishal Goenka, Senior Product Manager, AdWords

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.

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}

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

Enhancing the Google Display Network with new innovations

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Consumers have higher expectations than ever because of mobile — they want everything right, and they want everything right away. To connect with consumers in the intent-rich moments when they want to buy, find or do something, marketers are increasingly turning to programmatic advertising — which uses data and technology to reach the right person at the right time. The Google Display Network (GDN) brings this sophisticated technology to all advertisers so you can be there in the moments that matter the most for your brand.

Today we’re introducing several tools that further enhance what the GDN offers for display advertisers.

More transparency: take action with AdWords audience insights
When you understand your customers well — like their age, location, and interests — you can make more informed decisions about your marketing programs. AdWords audience insights give advertisers aggregate information about people on your remarketing lists, including demographics, interests, locations, and device usage.¹ Since these reports are available right in AdWords, you can quickly and easily take action on the insights. For example, if most people who converted on your site are jazz enthusiasts, you may wish to add this Learn more.

Example: AdWords audience insights shows 30% of customers on this remarketing list are 25-34 years old
compared to an average of 19.9% in the US.

BASE, a Belgian telecommunications company, used AdWords audience insights and discovered cycling enthusiasts were twice as likely as the average customer to buy a mobile phone subscription. Based on this insight, BASE engaged with cycling enthusiasts on the GDN and doubled its conversions. BASE now uses AdWords audience insights to inform its campaigns, online and offline.

Sony PlayStation discovered classical music enthusiasts were likely to engage with its brand using AdWords audience insights. Sony then connected with this audience on the GDN and drove a 31% higher view-through rate than with its average affinity audience. This allowed Sony to capture more views for its budget. Now, Sony uses AdWords audience insights to uncover the best audiences for its new campaigns.

More accountability: the GDN is going 100% viewable
Most display ads — viewable CPM (vCPM).

More impact: a fresh approach to dynamic remarketing ads
People use devices of varying shapes and sizes, engaging with content that can be horizontal, vertical, tapped, swiped or pinched. This means ads must be flexible so they can show across varying placements. Today, we introduced enhancements to dynamic remarketing so ads can be automatically re-shaped and re-sized to fit all device types. Ads are also touched up to look great on any mobile or desktop site, or app. For example, if your logo is predominantly blue and yellow, AdWords may use these colors to shade the border and background of your ad. We’ll even try out varying color combinations and use the ones that drive the best performance. As always, you have control to make changes to these selections based on your personal style and preferences.

Meeting consumer expectations requires technology to answer their needs the moment they have them, wherever they are, whatever kind of device or screen they are using. Programmatic advertising ensures that brands are there in those important moments when decisions are made and preferences are shaped. Our hope is that the GDN brings this enterprise-level technology to all advertisers so you can be there at the moments when it matters most for your brand.

Posted by Brad Bender, VP of Product Management, Google Display Network

¹All insights are based on anonymized, aggregated data.

Today at IAB Mixx: a preview of new capabilities coming to YouTube advertising

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Over the past 10 years of YouTube, video viewership has come a long way. In fact, according to new commissioned custom research conducted by Nielsen, the time 18-49 year olds spend on YouTube grew by 44 percent, while the time they spend watching traditional TV fell by nearly 10 percent over that same time period.

YouTube has become the place the world comes to watch, share and engage with video. And we want to keep creating even better experiences for the viewers, advertisers and creators who turn to YouTube every day. So today at IAB Mixx, we announced new products that point toward the future of our video ad platform, specifically around interactivity, mobile, and measurement.

Turn YouTube into your virtual showroom
Over the course of the year, we’ve been working hard to make videos more interactive, shortening the distance between the time a viewer sees an ad and their actual purchase. First we launched TrueView for shopping, which is a bit like “automatic” Cards – simply connect your Google Merchant Center feed to your TrueView campaign to dynamically insert product cards within your in-stream ads, based on the products that are most likely to lead to a conversion.

To help advertisers reach all the other product-focused content on YouTube – from unboxings, hauls, product reviews and how-to videos – today we’re announcing Shopping ads for YouTube. These will let you show a click-to-buy ad within partner videos on YouTube, going beyond your own videos to transform any relevant video into your digital storefront. Similar to Shopping ads on Google, you only pay when a user clicks on your ad.

We’ve kept the format similar to Cards and TrueView for shopping, so users can easily recognize and click on the “i” icon at the top right of a video to view the Shopping ads. Shopping ads on YouTube are built off of your existing product feed in Merchant Center. They will enter an auction similar to Shopping ads on Google search and are selected based on a variety of contextual signals.

Shopping ads on YouTube

Shopping ads on YouTube provide an entirely new revenue stream for creators, providing another way to monetize product-focused videos. They also provide a more interactive experience for viewers, letting them shop directly from videos. Stay tuned as we roll this new capability in the coming months.

Driving long term success for mobile apps with TrueView for app promotion
Mobile viewership on YouTube continues to grow. In fact, the average viewing session on mobile is now more than 40 minutes, up more than 50% year over year. We’re focused on creating ad formats that help you reach viewers across all screens, and today we’re making YouTube an even better place to promote your mobile apps.

Building off the success advertisers are seeing with app promotion in in-stream ads on YouTube, we’re introducing TrueView for app promotion for our in-display format as well. This format reaches potential users when they’re exploring content on YouTube. Early results from brands promoting their apps with in-display point to strong performance both in cost per install and lifetime value.

TrueView in-display for app promotion

We’re also enabling app promotion ads in our dedicated Gaming app, because what better place to promote gaming apps than in YouTube gaming content? And in the coming months, we’ll bring the ability to bid by cost per install. You tell us what you want to pay for a download, and we’ll optimize for that price. In an early beta, Smule used target CPA bidding to increase installs by 85%.

Expanding Brand Interest to YouTube Search
We’re also focused on providing better measurement, helping you understand whether your investments are driving results. Our measure interest by monitoring lift in organic keyword searches related to your brand on Google.com.

Starting today, Brand Lift will look not only at searches on Google.com, but will take YouTube searches into account as well. With this update, you’ll be able to see if your ad is driving searches for organic video content related to your brand on YouTube. Measuring interest is an important part of determining impact, and is a unique benefit of advertising on Google and YouTube.

Reach the right audience on YouTube with Customer Match
Finally, I’d like to call out our new targeting product, called Customer Match. Announced yesterday, Customer Match helps you reach your existing customer base with the right message across three of Google’s largest properties: Google Search, YouTube, and Gmail.

Advertisers looking to grow their brand can also use Similar Audiences with Customer Match to reach prospective customers across YouTube and Gmail based on the interests and characteristics of their existing customer base. With Similar Audiences, you can leverage your customer email lists to discover new audiences that are most like the customers you already have. These new targeting features enable advertisers to connect with – or exclude – customers to drive the best results for their brand.

Here’s to the next 10 years
As we head into our second decade as the place the world comes to engage with video, I’m excited to see us continuing to move fast, to build new things and to help marketers build brands. We can’t wait to see what you’ll do with these new tools.

Posted by Diya Jolly, Director, Video Ads Product Management

Google Hotel Ads makes it easier for more hotels to participate

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Over the past several months we’ve made improvements to hotel search across Google, to help travelers find information more quickly and to enable hotels to generate more qualified leads. As a continuation of these efforts, we’re announcing a few more changes to Hotel Ads on Google: broader availability for the Google Hotel Ads Commission program, an expansion of the Book on Google feature to more partners, and the inclusion of more amenity information within Google search. With these changes, we’ll be retiring the dedicated site for Hotel Finder this week, as users are now able to access the hotel information they need right from Google search.

Making it easier for more hotels to generate qualified leads from Google
Earlier this year we started testing the Google Hotel Ads Commission Program with a small set of independent hotels. With this program, these hotels are charged on the industry-standard commission basis rather than cost-per-click, making it easier for smaller, independent hotels to use Google Hotel Ads. Today, we’re announcing that more hotels can participate in this program now that we’ve partnered with leading hotel technology solutions providers.

Seekda, one of the participating hotel technology solutions providers, helps us offer hotels a risk-free way to reach a massive audience efficiently. “Google Hotel Ads allows hotels to be there when a traveler is ready to book, and pay only when a booking is made or consumed,” says Klaus Niederacher, General Manager and COO at Seekda. “This new commission model gives smaller chains and independent hotels the option to participate in the highly effective Google Hotel Ads, without having to manage CPC bids and budgets.”

So far, the program has proven to be successful at driving bookings for hoteliers. According to Scott Koehler, Senior Vice President, Product & Operations of TravelClick: “Since March, hotels enrolled in TravelClick’s Demand Services program have seen, on average, a 56 percent year-over-year increase in revenue driven by Google Hotel Ads. The evolution from a pay-per-click to commission model has increased hotel revenue.”

We currently work with DerbySoft, Fastbooking, Sabre Hospitality Solutions, Seekda, TravelClick, and Trust International and will be integrating additional hospitality technology providers in the future.

Making bookings easier for hoteliers and consumers
In 2013, we launched Book on Google on mobile devices to make it easier for users to book hotel rooms directly from their phone. Now, we’re expanding the availability of Book on Google, bringing it to desktop and tablet devices and making it easier for more hotels to participate.
With Book on Google, Google facilitates the booking payment transaction. The hotel partner owns the guest relationship, including sending the confirmation email, answering post-booking questions, and handling changes to the reservation or cancellations.

“Given the successes that our hotel clients have experienced with Google Hotel Ads, we look forward to offering additional Hotel Ads features to our hotel clients globally, including Book on Google,” said Scott Koehler, Senior Vice President, Product & Operations of TravelClick.

Book on Google is available to all Hotel Ads partners and works for users in the U.S.

Bringing more hotel information to search

Earlier this year we announced improvements to hotel search across Google so users can find information like availability, prices, and reviews right in the search results and in Google Maps.

This month, we’re adding information about hotel amenities for locations in the U.S. and we’re working to add this information for 24 more countries through next year. This means that users will now see whether a hotel has things like free WiFi, free breakfast, parking availability, a pool, or a business center, right in search.

We’re focused on helping travelers find information and choices about hotels, while making it easier for them to select and book the hotel that’s right for them. We’re also committed to helping partners connect with travelers when they are ready to book, across devices and Google platforms. We hope the changes announced today will make planning that next trip an even easier click away.

Tom Mulders, Senior Program Manager, Travel

Google forwarding numbers arrive in Canada

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

The ability to call a business is often critical in helping potential customers complete a purchase. In fact, 61% of mobile searchers say it's extremely important to be able to call a business during the purchase phase of the shopping process.¹ Measuring these phone calls to your business is essential for understanding the full value of Google search ads and making informed decisions for acquiring new customers. That’s why we’re excited to announce the launch of Google forwarding numbers in Canada.

A "Call" button in a search ad on a mobile device

Canada, say hello to Google forwarding numbers

Google forwarding numbers are an important step toward measuring the phone calls you receive through Google search ads. When you use Google forwarding numbers with your unique phone number to your ad. When a customer calls that number, AdWords will route the call to your business phone number while providing you with useful information about the caller’s area code, call duration, and whether the call was answered.

Many people who search for local businesses prefer to call a phone number with a recognizable area code, which is why Google forwarding numbers will show a local Google forwarding number, where available. For example, if your business is based in Vancouver, your ads are eligible to use a “604” area code with your Google forwarding number.

Canadian advertisers like belairdirect and 1-800-Got-Junk are already using Google forwarding numbers to improve performance on their call ads:

"As marketers, we are always looking for new ways to leverage technology in order to be more efficient and measure the full value of our ad campaigns. Now, with Google forwarding numbers, we're able to gain valuable insights into the consumer behavior behind calls to make our campaigns and call centers more useful for current and future customers. Furthermore, we've identified that calls that last over 10 minutes are more likely to result in someone signing up for an insurance policy. We can now count these as call conversions to optimize for higher-quality calls." Anne Fortin, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Strategic Relationships, belairdirect

“Call extensions and call-only campaigns help customers reach our service representatives more quickly to schedule a junk pick-up. So far, we’ve been able to generate thousands of leads and now with insights from Google forwarding numbers in Canada, we can monitor call details and filter calls by duration. This gives us vital information on which campaigns are driving the right calls and how we can better invest our advertising spend." Keegan Morrison, PPC Account Manager, 1-800-Got-Junk

Clicks that lead to calls from your website

While call extensions and call-only ads are very effective, many customers also call your business after clicking through a Google ad and learning more about the products and services you offer on your website. Website call conversions is a powerful tool that dynamically inserts a Google forwarding number on your website to identify and measure the calls that occur after a Google ad click. When someone clicks on your website’s phone number or dials it directly from their phone, you can attribute the call and call value back to the keyword and ad that drove the customer.

Advertisers like Blinds.com are already using website call conversions to gain a more holistic picture of their AdWords performance:

“It’s a great idea to implement Google’s website call conversions, particularly if you have a call center that handles over 15% of sales or if you’re faced with the challenge of attributing offline calls to online spend. With website call conversions, we’ve attributed 56% more revenue to mobile ads and measured 173% higher average order value. With these insights, we’ve been able to increase and optimize spend towards keywords that are generating the most call conversions. We’re looking forward to rolling this out to Blinds.ca in Canada.” Michael Nicholas, SEM Specialist

Maximize call value

In addition to measuring flexible bid strategy factors in signals like device, location, and time of day to make auction-time bid adjustments that maximize call conversion value, while reaching your business goals.

Learn more

With the launch of Google forwarding numbers, you can now report on call metrics and conversions, measure website call conversions, and optimize your bids to drive more valuable phone calls. You can learn more about each of these products in the best practices for maximizing performance with calls.

Posted by Amit Agarwal, Product Manager, AdWords

¹Think with Google, The Role of Click to Call in the Path to Purchase, September 2013
*In some cases, a local Google forwarding number may not be available. When this happens, your ad will show a toll-free Google forwarding number instead

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Today at IAB Mixx: a preview of new capabilities coming to YouTube advertising

Google Hotel Ads makes it easier for more hotels to participate

Google forwarding numbers arrive in Canada

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