, Google has worked with advertisers and their agencies to increase brand and product awareness -- and to drive sales -- by helping advertisers reach the right person, in the right place, at the right time, through the effective use of search advertising. The success of this tactic has generally been measured by connecting search advertising campaigns to revenue within the e-commerce domain.
As consumers have become accustomed to a multi-channel world, however, it has become important to look outside the "e-commerce box" to measure search campaign success. The goal in doing so is to find the correlation between search advertising and overall company sales, both online and offline, as customers are present in both places.
In recent times, a growing number of our customers have asked us and their agencies how they should approach the concept of quantifying online's impact on in-store sales. We recently thought through the concept with Razorfish and came up with a joint POV; you can find that on the Razorfish site, here.
Originally posted to the Google Retail Advertising Blog.
Since the launch of AdWords in 2000, Google has worked with advertisers and their agencies to increase brand and product awareness -- and to drive sales -- by helping advertisers reach the right person, in the right place, at the right time, through the effective use of search advertising. The success of this tactic has generally been measured by connecting search advertising campaigns to revenue within the e-commerce domain.
This is part of our summer series of new Search Stories. Look for the label Search Stories and subscribe to the series.
Recently, a group of Google product managers challenged one another to run 100 miles over 30 days in the interest of encouraging summer fitness. I grew up in Huntsville, AL, where I always loved exercising and experiencing the great outdoors, so I took to the challenge immediately. One hundred and thirty-three miles and a few pairs of new running shoes later, it was an incredible opportunity to push myself further than I’d ever imagined. But, I must admit—it wasn’t easy!
For the complete interview, including commentary on DoubleClick Ad Exchange enhancements and the safety of inventory on the Google Display Network and DoubleClick Ad Exchange, visit AdExchanger.com.
Google Mobile Ads Blog featured a story on how a Fortune 500 Financial Services client, in partnership with the digital agency Rosetta, drove traffic and conversions with mobile ad campaigns.
In particular, the client saw mobile click-through rates almost eight times higher than desktop CTRs, and a lift in incremental web traffic from mobile. Most importantly, users were signing up for the client’s services via their phones.
Want to read more? Visit the Mobile Ads Blog for the full post.
Last week, our friends at the recently launched Google Mobile Ads Blog featured a story on how a Fortune 500 Financial Services client, in partnership with the digital agency Rosetta, drove traffic and conversions with mobile ad campaigns.
helps you research and identify the web sites most likely to attract your client's audience. With Ad Planner, you can select sites, add them to a client's media plan and easily export them directly into an AdWords account as a new campaign, or add them to an existing campaign or ad group.
Many of you requested this feature because you wanted an easy way to plan and buy Google Display Network (GDN) campaigns for clients using Ad Planner.
DoubleClick Ad Planner helps you research and identify the web sites most likely to attract your client's audience. With Ad Planner, you can select sites, add them to a client's media plan and easily export them directly into an AdWords account as a new campaign, or add them to an existing campaign or ad group.
, a new bid management feature for Max CPC campaigns that aims to increase conversions while maintaining or lowering your cost per conversion. As an agency, the bidding strategy that you use for your clients undoubtedly takes into account a wealth of information that's unique to each of their businesses. Enhanced CPC is designed to supplement your existing bidding strategy with insight that Google has into the types of auctions that convert well for your clients.
Each time an ad is eligible to appear, Enhanced CPC predicts the likelihood that the ad will convert and automatically raises or lowers the ad's current Max CPC bid. Whether you manually manage Max CPC bids on your clients' behalf or use an in-house or third party bid management solution, Enhanced CPC can help you increase your client's conversions while decreasing or maintaining their overall cost-per-conversion.
By analyzing the auctions that have converted well for your clients in the past, the AdWords system identifies correlations between these conversions and specific auction characteristics: the user's geographic location, browser, operating system; the time of day that the user was searching; specific content present on a Display Network site; and many additional factors. When Enhanced CPC is enabled, the system calculates a predicted conversion rate based on this historical conversion data and then raises or lowers your Max CPC accordingly. Note that Enhanced CPC may bid up to 30% above your set Max CPC bid if a conversion is likely.
ClearSearch Media, an online media company with a focus on search engine marketing, recently saw success after testing Enhanced CPC with their client BidCactus. As Jon Simmons, founder of ClearSearch Media, explained, "The results of using Enhanced CPC to automatically adjust bids for BidCactus were impressive. We saw a 27% lift in conversions, with a 7.6% decrease in cost per conversion. Conversion rates increased by 16% overall." Paul Langtry, managing director for clearsearchmedia.com, adds, “Enhanced CPC gives us peace of mind. We can rest assured that if there’s an opportunity, we’ll capture it."
Enhanced CPC is easy to enable via a checkbox in the 'Bidding and Budget' section of the Settings tab within your campaign. While you'll need to log into an AdWords account to enable Enhanced CPC, you'll still be able to manage Max CPC bids on behalf of your clients using the API or the AdWords user interface.
Testing the feature is low-risk due to performance checks built into the product. Enhanced CPC initially modifies bids on 50% of traffic, reserving the other 50% of traffic as a control group. Only when results are strong will the product begin modifying bids on a larger percentage of traffic.
To learn more about Enhanced CPC, visit Google Ad Innovations.
Yesterday we announced Enhanced CPC, a new bid management feature for Max CPC campaigns that aims to increase conversions while maintaining or lowering your cost per conversion. As an agency, the bidding strategy that you use for your clients undoubtedly takes into account a wealth of information that's unique to each of their businesses. Enhanced CPC is designed to supplement your existing bidding strategy with insight that Google has into the types of auctions that convert well for your clients.
Submitting all required and suggested attributes, including "unique product identifiers." These unique identifiers will soon be necessary to be included in Google Product Search listings.
Sign up for product-based ad formats, like Google Product Extensions. These ad formats are powered by the merchant's product data feed, and they provide users with more information than standard text ads.
Urge your clients to submit product reviews when they have them. Merchants who submit product reviews to Google will have their logos displayed on product pages when their reviews appear, adding another source of free traffic.
Help your clients sign up for Google Places, which will help online shoppers find their store locations and hours and complete the cross-channel shopping experience.
For more information, visit google.com/products/submit.
We're pleased to kick off the 2010 holiday blog post series, "Getting Ready for the Holidays." As we did in 2009 with the Holiday Campaign Countdown series, we'll once again be regularly posting seasonally-focused resources and strategies through the next few months, starting off with best practices from the Google Product Search team.
your display advertising campaigns, develop compelling ads, and target your ads to reach precisely the right audience across millions of both popular and niche sites in the Google Display Network (GDN). In today’s final post, we’ll dive into measuring and optimizing your online display campaigns with powerful, free tools that bring accountability to your display advertising investment.
On the GDN, you have real-time reporting for every site and URL where your ads ran. You can view basic metrics like impressions, clicks, clickthrough rate (CTR) and cost, or, by implementing our free AdWords Conversion Tracking, you can measure conversion metrics to determine your campaign’s return on investment (ROI). We also recently introduced view-through conversion reporting to provide a more complete picture of your display campaign performance.
With rich site- and URL-level data like this, you can see exactly what’s working and respond on the fly, increasing bids for sites generating lots of sales, or decreasing bids for, or excluding, poorer-performing sites.
Your campaign’s performance is heavily influenced by the experience visitors have on your site. Google Analytics is a free tool that helps you measure user behavior on your site, providing metrics such as time spent on your site, page views, traffic sources, bounce rate, etc. Using this information, you can identify areas on your site you need to improve to increase conversion rates and ultimately, your ROI. Although Google Analytics works independently of Conversion Tracking, it’s possible to automatically import your Analytics data into Conversion Tracking, enabling you to consolidate reporting and optimization across these measurement tools.
Finally, research shows the impact of display ads extends beyond immediate clicks and conversions. After seeing display ads, many users search for the advertised product or brand, or visit the advertiser’s web site days or weeks after having seen a display ad, even if they didn’t click. Recently, we launched Campaign Insights to help you measure the impact of your display campaigns beyond immediate clicks and conversions. Campaign Insights calculates the incremental lift in both online search activity and website visits that result from a display ad campaign. By comparing a large group of users (many thousands, minimum) who saw a particular display ad, with an equivalent, large group that did not see the ad, we can determine the incremental change directly attributable to the display campaign. With this insight, you can establish how well your display campaign is working beyond just clicks.
In the last three weeks, we showed you tools to effectively plan your display advertising campaigns, develop compelling ads, and target your ads to reach precisely the right audience across millions of both popular and niche sites in the Google Display Network (GDN). In today’s final post, we’ll dive into measuring and optimizing your online display campaigns with powerful, free tools that bring accountability to your display advertising investment.
Let's go to SES San Francisco!
and Search Insights, speakers on remarketing and search marketing tools, a workshop on SEO, and a Theater Presentation on Opportunities Tab (free to all SES San Francisco attendees). Visit the event site for a complete agenda.
Still need to purchase a pass? Enter 20GOOG for a 20% discount.
In another week we'll be heading up the road to San Francisco for Search Engine Strategies, being held from August 16-20, 2010 at the Moscone Center.
Come visit our booth (number 301!) to speak with specialists from AdWords, Analytics, YouTube, DoubleClick and AdSense. In addition, we'll have sponsored sessions on Ad Innovations and Search Insights, speakers on remarketing and search marketing tools, a workshop on SEO, and a Theater Presentation on Opportunities Tab (free to all SES San Francisco attendees). Visit the event site for a complete agenda.
on the Google Display Network (GDN). Today, we’ll look at the robust targeting options available to help you reach your audience with your display campaigns.
Reaching just the right audience is at the crux of every successful campaign. We continue to invest in powerful targeting technologies that enable this. Let’s look at what you can do today to reach your audience on the GDN.
Contextual targeting. What consumers read, right now at this very moment, says a lot about what they’re thinking about, making it a great opportunity to connect them with your message. Our sophisticated contextual targeting algorithm continually scans the millions of web pages in our network, understanding what they’re about, in real-time. Using this information, we automatically show your ads to the right users at the right time. It’s similar to our search technology that does a good job of finding relevant web pages for searches, increasing advertising engagement and reducing the clutter of irrelevant advertising. Contextual targeting works well for advertisers looking to generate conversions (like sales) through always-on direct response campaigns. However, you can also use contextual targeting for branding. For example, an advertiser who wants to associate their brand with environmental consciousness can contextually target their ads to appropriate pages with keywords like “green energy” or “green living”.
Placement targeting. What if you already know your audience is concentrated on specific websites? Placement targeting allows you to specify individual placements where you’d like to show your ads. Unlike contextual targeting, keywords aren't required; you simply choose the placements you’d like to target. A placement can be a website, or a subset of a site. For instance, if you're selling tennis gear and you’d like your ad to appear on a particular tennis website, or only on sports pages of a newspaper, you can specify that. Ad Planner or the Placement Tool can help you identify placements for your campaign.
If you’re already driving traffic to your site through other means, like contextual targeting or your search ads, remarketing is a great complement to those efforts to increase your return-on-investment (ROI).
Interest category marketing. Currently in beta, interest category marketing allows you to reach people based on their interests. Leveraging the technology behind our contextual targeting engine, user interests are determined based on the type of web content they previously viewed. You can select from a list of interest categories (such as sports enthusiast or travel enthusiast) and we’ll show ads to people whose interests we think map to those categories. You can use interest categories in conjunction with contextual, placement and remarketing campaigns. Additionally, the Ads Preferences Manager gives users transparency and choice, enabling them to see the interest categories we think they fall into, add and remove categories, or opt out altogether.
Fine-tune targeting by adding geography and language, time, and demographic bids, or focus your brand presence with above-the-fold targeting. Further, you can apply a robust set of exclusions at the site, category or keyword level based on your goals and performance.
Whichever targeting options you choose, with the Google Display Network, precision doesn't have to come at the cost of scale. There is an Internet of opportunity, across mass-media, brand-name sites, all the way down to blogs, social networks, and local news. For every site you can name about a particular topic, there are dozens more you've never heard of that attract tens of thousands of monthly visitors.
We’ll see you next week, when we’ll talk about measuring and optimizing your display campaigns.
This is our third post in a series on the Google Display Network (GDN). Today, we’ll look at the robust targeting options available to help you reach your audience with your display campaigns.