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Showing posts with label Optimization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Optimization. Show all posts

Learn about Quality Score in a live, online tutorial (UK only)

As so many attendees reported finding our last Quality Score tutorial useful, we’ve decided to re-run the live course in the AdWords Online Classroom (UK) on Wednesday 2nd March for anyone who wasn't able to attend. The key to a successful AdWords account is the relevancy of your ads, keywords, and website. Having a better understanding of Quality Score can help you improve your AdWords performance.

This course will clarify what Quality Score is and provide useful tips on improving your Quality Scores so that you can further optimise your account.

The hour-long interactive course will be delivered by two AdWords Specialists as part of the Adwords Online Classroom (UK) and will include time for Q&A. It will take place on Wednesday 2nd March from 3 pm to 4 pm GMT (7 am to 8 am PST).

If you’re interested, make sure to sign up now!

To learn more about Quality Score, you can also visit our Help Center.


Webinar Alert - Contextual targeting: performance at scale

We'd like to remind you about an upcoming webinar on how to drive results with contextual targeting. The event is on Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 11:00am PST / 1:00pm CST / 2:00pm EST.

In this webinar, learn more about how contextual targeting can drive results for your clients - e.g.:
  • Contextual targeting strategies for specific marketing objectives
  • The Contextual Targeting Tool, build and optimize better-performing campaigns in minutes
  • Tips for boosting performance of contextually-targeted campaigns
For more details on the content being covered, visit last month's blog post. To register for the webinar, click here.

Advertisers save time and uncover new keyword ideas with the Opportunities tab

If you’re a small business, time can often feel like your most valuable and most constrained resource. While you’re doing everything you need to do to keep your business up and running, important tasks like AdWords account optimization can fall to the bottom of your to-do list.

Knowing that time is a key factor for all AdWords advertisers, we created the Opportunities tab to provide you with automated and customized keyword, bid, and budget ideas. Here are two stories of advertisers who used the Opportunities tab to find new keywords quickly and easily.

Fitness Singles
Chris Mattioli founded Fitness Singles, a fitness-focused online dating website in 2003. With Chris’s dedication and some help from AdWords, he has grown his business to over one million global members today.



Like many small business owners, Chris wanted to improve his AdWords performance, but didn’t have a lot of time to work on his account. When Chris discovered the Opportunities tab, he knew it was a good fit for Fitness Singles, since it allowed him to uncover new keywords quickly and easily.

Chris scans the keyword ideas in the Opportunities tab regularly to find terms related to fitness, online dating, and singles. He’s found many ideas that are similar to the keyword combinations and variations that are in his account, but that he may have accidentally overlooked. He’s also found completely new relevant keywords to include in his campaigns. In one instance, Chris saw terms such as promotion code and coupon among his keyword ideas. From there, he decided to add a number of discount-based keywords to his campaigns. Chris says, “The Opportunities tab can often find new keywords that are relevant our ads and that don't currently exist in our account. It also helps you identify new keyword areas--even when you thought you had it covered.”

resortsandlodges.com
Ryan Bailey, President and Co-Founder of resortsandlodges.com, describes his company as a full-service agency rather than a travel directory. "We have a rapidly growing client base of two thousand-plus and a business model that gives our clients turnkey marketing and advertising support.” While part of a large company, VEMGlobal.com, resortsandlodges.com runs as a small business and keeps its operations small and scrappy.


On the site, you can 'book your spot' to save your travel information, plan your next trip, and more
click for full size image

Like Fitness Singles, resortsandlodges.com uses the Opportunities tab to find new keyword ideas and save time. Ryan says, “The Opportunities tab provides high-quality keywords--and a lot of ideas we wouldn’t have thought of otherwise, which is the whole point! It’s great that you can easily scan through the ideas and find hidden jewels and then apply those insights for both keyword selection and site optimization.”

Mollie Moore, the company’s interactive marketing manager, also used the Opportunities tab to help with a website redesign project in March 2010. The previous version of resortsandlodges.com had dozens of links at the bottom of the page, and Moore was tasked with de-cluttering and limiting these links to the most important content. Looking at the number of keyword ideas associated with a particular theme as well as the traffic estimates for each keyword idea, the team learned that “the most effective content sections were top destinations, popular resort types, popular trips, and so forth,” says Moore. “We also used ideas from the Opportunities tab to build out our meta titles, descriptions and keywords embedded in the back-end of every page on the site. Using the Opportunities tab, we can reduce guesswork in determining the most effective content."

To learn more about Fitness Singles and resortsandlodges.com and how they use the Opportunities tab, read their full case studies in the AdWords Help Center. You can learn more about the Opportunities tab in the AdWords Help Center or our YouTube video series.


Upcoming webinars - Remarketing strategies and reaching Hispanics

Remarketing on the Google Display Network: Optimizing & Maximizing your Current Strategies
Tuesday, February 15th at 11amPST / 1pmCST / 2pmEST
The Google Remarketing Team invites you to our next optimization webinar: Optimizing & Maximizing your Current Strategies. Building on the strategies discussed during our Remarketing Optimization and Advanced Strategies webinar, this session will expand into 'maximization'--how to ensure you're reaching as many people as possible and taking full advantage of your web traffic.

Features of the webinar will include:
  • Maximization: Ensure you're reaching all of the users on your lists.
  • Optimization: Learn how to ensure you are getting the most effective ROI from your campaigns.
  • Case Studies/List Strategies: Hear how others in your industry are achieving great results from remarketing.
Click here to register. As a refresher or if you missed the Advanced Strategies webinar, you can view it here.

Connecting with US Hispanics Online
Wednesday, February 16th at 10am PST / 12pmCST / 1pmEST
Google is pleased to present "Connecting with US Hispanics Online," which will explore how marketers can reach US Hispanics online in culturally relevant ways. You'll gain insights to help you plan search, social, video and mobile marketing programs to directly connect with this vibrant demographic. The webinar will include:
  • Highlights from Google's new primary research report: The 4 Truths about US Hispanics & Digital
  • Specific strategies you can implement immediate to target the US Hispanic audience online
Click here to register.

Upcoming webinar - Contextual targeting: Strategies for performance at scale

Every day, Google’s contextual engine scans billions of web pages to show users relevant ads, in real time, about the things they care about. Contextual targeting remains one of the most powerful ways agencies and advertisers can reach their audiences - precisely in the moment of relevance. It continues to deliver great campaign performance, but it’s also seeing renewed interest as a powerful complement to audience targeting.

Please join Google for an upcoming webinar to learn more about how contextual targeting can drive results for your clients. Specifically, we’ll cover:
  • Contextual targeting strategies for specific marketing objectives
  • The Contextual Targeting Tool, which helps you build and optimize better-performing campaigns in minutes, not hours
  • Best practices and tips for boosting performance of contextually-targeted campaigns
Register here for the webinar to be held on February 23, 2011 at 11:00am PST / 1:00pm CST / 2:00pm EST.

Contextual targeting just got easier for your display campaigns

Last week, we launched the Contextual Targeting Tool to help your clients more easily reach customers as they spend time on millions of sites in the Google Display Network.

As you already know, with contextual targeting you can reach potential customers as they read web pages related to your clients’ products or services. Now, with this tool, you can create contextually-targeted campaigns more easily and quickly, while generating more clicks and conversions for your clients’ campaigns.

What does the Contextual Targeting Tool do?
This tool automatically builds keyword lists that can be used to show your clients' ads on relevant web pages in the Google Display Network. Tightly-themed keyword lists are the basis of effective contextual targeting, and with the Contextual Targeting Tool, you no longer have to build them manually. In minutes, you can build dozens, even hundreds, of keyword lists, scaling client's campaign performance while ensuring accurate targeting for their ads. This means they can get more clicks and conversions for campaigns and you can create these campaigns more quickly. Many of you have previously been using the Wonder Wheel tool to do this. The Contextual Targeting Tool now automates this process, and it does it right within clients' AdWords accounts.

How do I use it?
Let’s say your client sells soccer equipment and gear. Normally, you'd have to manually build out separate ad groups for each of your product lines, like soccer gear, soccer balls, soccer cleats, etc. With the Contextual Targeting Tool, simply type each product category into the search box, and the tool will automatically generate tightly-themed keyword lists for you. For example, when you enter soccer gear into the tool, you get more specific ad groups, such as youth soccer gear, discount soccer gear, soccer uniforms, soccer bags, etc.



Along with the new ad groups, the tool provides suggested bids and predicted placements to give you an idea of the types of sites in the Display Network where the ads can appear.

The Contextual Targeting Tool has been available to agencies and advertisers using AdWords Editor. This week, you will be also able to access it from the Opportunities tab in AdWords accounts, although for now you'll still need AdWords Editor to implement the ad groups in clients' accounts (download AdWords Editor). However, this requirement will be lifted and you’ll be able to implement new ad groups directly from AdWords accounts in the coming months.

You can learn more about using the Contextual Targeting Tool by watching this video. We hope this tool will help you more easily and efficiently reach your clients’ goals with their Display Network campaigns.

Make the most of Click-to-call functionality with these best practices

A year ago this month we launched a Click-to-call functionality for mobile ads that enables advertisers to directly connect with potential customers over the phone. In less than a year, Click-to-call (CTC) ads have come a long way and hundreds of thousands of advertisers are using the ad format today.

To help agencies and advertisers make the most of this functionality, our friends at the Google Mobile Ads Blog came up with five easy-to-implement optimization tips:
  • Drive calls to a centralized number with Phone Extensions
  • Focus on phone calls with Call-only Creative
  • Measure performance with Call Metrics
  • Use vanity phone numbers to make numbers memorable
  • Reach local customers with Location Extensions
To learn more about these tips, visit the Google Mobile Ads Blog.

The Keyword Tool - when you talk, we listen

We're pleased to share another tips and tools update from our friends at the Inside AdWords Blog. We hope you find it useful for optimizing clients' keywords.

- The Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

We want to thank you for all the feedback you’ve given us on the Keyword Tool. The first thing you told us is that you want more keywords that are better targeted to your account and searches, and we’ve made improvements in this area. We’ve also added features such as better filters, the ability to star keywords, and copy them as text. And we’re not done yet! You can help us understand what’s important to you by continuing to provide us with feedback. Below is a more detailed look at some of our new features.

There are three new ways to filter and refine your keyword list. With our new updates, you can:

  1. Choose specific terms to include or exclude from your keyword list.
  2. Use the ‘More like these’ button to search for terms that are similar to the specific keyword ideas you've selected from the table.
  3. Get only results that include the exact words or phrases (and their close synonyms) you’ve typed in the search box.


Adding stars to keywords
Add stars to keywords that you'd like to save while you're still searching for new keyword ideas. You can review your starred keywords in the "Stars" panel on the left side of the tool.

‘View as text’ button
View your selected keywords in text form, so that you can easily edit them and paste them in a spreadsheet or AdWords Editor.


Your continued feedback is important, so please keep sending us your comments and we'll post about more improvements here.

AdWords rules, and so can you!

[Note: this is cross-posted from the Inside AdWords Blog]

Do you stay awake at night wondering where your bids are? Do you plan your vacations around fluctuations in click volume? Have you taken AdWords for Mobile as your +1 to a family wedding?

Managing an AdWords account to its full potential takes time - time that you could spend managing other important parts of your business. That’s why we’ve developed automated rules, a new feature available to US advertisers that lets you get the benefit of 24-hour account management while leaving you free to focus on other important things.

With automated rules, you’re able to create rules to automate bid, budget, and status changes on a specific part of your account (selected keywords, ad groups, campaigns, and ads) that are triggered at a particular time. For example, automated rules could be created to perform the following tasks:
  • Enable ads promoting a special offer late on a Sunday night when the offer goes live
  • Automatically raise your bid to the first page CPC for all keywords in a campaign that contain the word ‘sale’
  • Generate more traffic on your peak shopping days by automatically increasing your daily budget on Mondays and decreasing it on Wednesdays


Let’s walk through an example of creating a rule within a campaign to increase keyword bids for all keywords with a position worse than 4 so far today. First, we’ll navigate to the Keyword tab of the campaign, click the ‘Automate’ dropdown, and choose “Change Max. CPC bids when...”

In the window that appears, we’ll create our rule to raise bids for all but deleted keywords in the campaign by 10%. We’ll set specific parameters to make sure the rule is only applied when certain criteria are met. In this case, we’ll add a requirement that the average position must be worse than 4 so far today for any bid changes to be made.

Then, we’ll specify that the rule should be performed every day at 12pm using data from the same day. We’ll name our rule and choose to keep track of changes by receiving an email each time the rule runs.

As an important last step, we’ll click ‘Preview results,’ to see a list of changes that would be made if the rule were to run at that moment. When we’re satisfied that everything is in order, we’ll click ‘Save.’

To manage the rules you’ve created and keep track of changes automatically made to the account each day, visit the ‘Control panel and library’ section of your account and click ‘Rules.’

Automated rules will be gradually launched to US advertisers over the coming weeks. If you regularly perform manual tasks in your account, we encourage you to give automated rules a try. Once you’ve done so, we’d love to hear your feedback for how we can make automated rules even better. So let us know how it goes!

For more information on AdWords automated rules, visit Google Ad Innovations.

Getting ready for the holidays: Black Friday tips

Hi Agency Blog readers! I am back for year 2 of my Black Friday tips. Enjoy!
~ Ben

It may be hard to believe (and a little scary), but Thanksgiving is next week and Black Friday is only 8 days away! (Momentary pause while the shock settles in) With this daunting thought in mind, there are two things to consider that should make the holiday shopping weekend go as smoothly (and hopefully as profitably for clients) as possible -- holiday promotion ads and a Black Friday placement pack.
  1. When it comes to the holiday season, one of the clearest trends we have picked up on is that ads with promotions perform better than ads that don’t (seems that consumers like deals. Strange, I know). If clients have any upcoming promotions (free shipping, a percent off, sales, etc.), all ads should be promoting these. This is especially true if they have Black Friday specific sales. If this is the case, make a point of saying “Black Friday Sale” or indicate that this is a limited time only (“Fri – Sun”, “This Weekend Only”, etc.).

    If you plan on creating and implementing ads specifically for Black Friday and the shopping weekend after Thanksgiving, be sure to implement them in the account by the end of day Tuesday (11/23) to give them enough time to make it through the ad approval process.

  2. Some of your clients may want to do a bit more than just create new ads for next week. If you have a client that would like to target users actively looking for Black Friday deals, then you may want to create a display campaign targeting sites that aggregate such deals. Using the Placement Tool in your AdWords account, search for words such as ‘black friday’ and ‘black friday sales’ to identify sites that would be good to target. With this list, there are two possible ways to use it:
  • Create a campaign to target only managed placements and have a single ad group that contains all of these placements.
  • Create a campaign with the same settings, but have multiple ad groups with keyword themes and set them to target these placements, creating an Enhanced Online Campaign. For example, if you have a cosmetics client, you might want to have a few ad groups with themes like “makeup”, “hair products”, “ cosmetics”, etc. Then, targeting these Black Friday placements, you will be in a better position to place ads in front of consumers looking for deals around products your client sells.
For either of these, set it to run starting this Friday (11/19) through EOD Sunday (11/28). If clients have deals carrying through cyber Monday, then extend it another day.

As always, with all of your clients, make sure that your budgets and bids are adjusted for this busy weekend. With the increase in traffic, budgets can get depleted more quickly (resulting in campaigns stopping ads from being shown) and competitors bid more aggressively. Make sure that budgets are set to keep campaigns running throughout the day and increase bids to maintain positions.

These can be stressful times in the online advertising world, but if you plan ahead by implementing things early and position your clients in front of customers looking for deals around their products, you can help to make this a great season!

The Bid Simulator reaches a new level

A few weeks ago, we announced the launch of Estimated Top Impressions in the bid simulator. Today we’re announcing another improvement: the ability to view bid simulations across keywords in an ad group at once. With this launch, we hope to give you a faster and more scalable way of making bidding decisions across keywords in aggregate.

The ad group level bid simulator provides
simulations for two types of changes:
  1. Applying a single bid to all the keywords in the ad group.
  2. Updating the ad group default bid (this only impacts those keywords that do not have their own keyword-level CPC bid and use the ad group default bid).
If you’re like many advertisers and manage your bids at the keyword-level, it may be worth taking a look at ad group level bid simulations: You could be surprised to find out that, in some cases, you could have achieved similar or better results had you managed your bids by using a single ad group default Max CPC bid.

Let’s take a closer look at an ad group where this is the case:


The highlighted row shows that, for the past seven days, the ad group received 339 clicks, costing a total of $182.37. Beneath this row, you can see simulations for the potential clicks, cost, and impressions that the ad group could have received had the keywords all used a single Max CPC bid.


In this case, if all keywords in the ad group had used a Max. CPC bid of $0.53, the ad group could have received an additional 49 clicks (for a total of 398) for about the same cost ($182). Thus, if clicks from all keywords in the ad group are equally valuable to the advertiser, it would make sense to set a single bid of $0.53 to all the keywords.

Note: For this type of bid simulation, look to see if the yellow dot is above the green line in the chart to the right of the table. If it is, this indicates that you may be able to get more clicks for the same cost.


If a few keywords in an ad group are especially profitable to your business (i.e. they convert at higher conversion rates or at higher values) you may choose to manage them separately by assigning keyword-level Max CPC bids. If this is the case, the bid simulator will display simulations for the remaining keywords in the ad group that use the ad group default bid. If you select a new ad group default bid, this bid will apply to all keywords in the ad group for which you haven’t specified a keyword-level Max CPC.




Here are two tips to help you get the most out of the bid simulator:

  1. Check out ad group level simulations to find out if using a single bid for all the keywords in the ad group could save you time and money.
  2. If you view a bid simulation for a specific keyword and do not see click cost estimates, this is likely because the keyword doesn’t receive enough traffic. Consider managing low traffic keywords in aggregate by using the ad group default bid for them by deleting their keyword level bids.

To see ad group level bid simulations, go to the “Ad groups” tab and look at the “Default Max. CPC” column in our chart icon.

Post

Performance at Scale on the Google Display Network

Editor's Note: This is being cross-posted from the Inside AdWords Blog

One of our key goals is to help you drive better performance with your display advertising campaigns.

As users increasingly spend time across a growing number of sites, however, display advertising is becoming more challenging. Last year alone there were 47 million new web sites created*. Contextual targeting can help by automatically showing your ad to users on web pages related to your products on the millions of sites in the Google Display Network (GDN). But building and managing your campaigns can still be time-consuming. So how do you reach your target audience easily and efficiently while meeting your business goals?

Today, we’re launching two tools -- the Display Campaign Optimizer and the Contextual Targeting Tool -- to help you maximize your performance on the GDN, while saving you valuable time and resources.

Display Campaign Optimizer. This new tool automatically manages targeting and bidding for your Display Network campaigns with the goal of increasing your conversions while meeting your advertising objectives. You simply provide us with your target cost-per-acquisition (CPA), creatives and budget, and the Display Campaign Optimizer goes to work, showing your ads in all the right places, automatically. It monitors your campaign performance and, in real time, adjusts your campaign accordingly. Your campaigns stay optimized, as it “learns” and does more of what’s working and less of what isn’t. For example, Seventh Generation, a company that sells eco-friendly household cleaning, baby care and personal care products, was looking to connect with more “green” consumers across the web and get them to download coupons from their site for use in-store. After implementing the Display Campaign Optimizer, the tool delivered 60% of the coupons downloaded from their site, with a CPA 20% below their target. Further, analysis of our beta testers showed that on average, campaign using Display Campaign Optimizer were likely responsible for almost one-third of the accounts’ total conversion volume with CPAs within 6% of their peer group CPA.**

The Display Campaign Optimizer is now available globally for larger campaigns running on the Google Display Network.




Contextual Targeting Tool. While the Display Campaign Optimizer is an automated solution that does all the heavy lifting on your behalf, the Contextual Targeting Tool helps you more efficiently build your own display campaigns. This tool is ideal for those of you who prefer transparency and control over your campaigns’ targeting and bidding. The Contextual Targeting Tool builds tightly themed keyword lists for your display campaigns, which are used to contextually target your ads. Tightly themed keyword lists are the basis of effective contextual targeting. With this tool, you can build dozens, even hundreds, of ad groups in minutes, quickly scaling your campaign performance while ensuring accurate targeting and control over your campaign.

For example, if you sell yoga gear, normally, you might take the time to build out separate ad groups around each of your product lines, such as yoga mats, yoga clothing, yoga gear, etc. Inputting each product category into the Contextual Targeting Tool will generate even more tightly themed keyword lists. For example, inputting ‘yoga mats’ into the tool generates more specific ad groups, such as designer yoga mats, thick yoga mats, yoga mats with designs, etc. These are all separate ad groups that can help you generate additional traffic and sales, that you wouldn’t necessarily think of creating when manually building out your campaigns.

This week, we’re beginning a phased launch of the Contextual Targeting Tool, and it will become available to more advertisers over the coming weeks and months.

Whether you’re looking for easier ways of building out your display campaigns or looking for a more robust, automated solution that continually optimizes bids and targeting, we think these tools will help you easily and efficiently achieve performance at scale with your display campaigns.

Posted by Woojin Kim, Product Manager and Shaun Seo, Product Manager

* Source: Netcraft Web Server Survey, Dec. 2009
** Source: Internal analysis of active beta testers, in comparison with peer group advertisers. Oct. 2010

Enhanced CPC: Additional insight to boost your bidding strategy and increase client ROI

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.

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.

Increase ROI & Conversions with Enhanced CPC

We're excited to announce the launch of Enhanced CPC, a new automated bidding feature that can help you improve your ROI on your campaigns with manual bidding. Enhanced CPC uses your campaign's historical conversion tracking data to automatically adjust your Max CPC bid based on the likelihood that your ad will convert. As a result, you should receive more conversions while maintaining or reducing your overall CPA and hopefully spend less time managing your Max CPC bids.

How does it work?

Let's walk through an example. Jeff sells model airplane kits and has enabled Enhanced CPC for a campaign that contains the following keywords, each with a Max CPC bid set to $0.30: model airplane, model airplane kits, and build model airplanes. When a user searches for 'model airplane kits,' the AdWords system recognizes that this term has converted well for Jeff in the past, and therefore increases the Max CPC bid to $0.32 for this specific auction. If the likelihood of a conversion is very high, Enhanced CPC can bid up to 30% above the Max CPC. This means that the most that Jeff will be charged for a click is $0.39.

On the other hand, when a user searches on a term that has not converted well in the past, e.g. 'model airplane,' the AdWords system will lower the Max CPC bid for this specific auction to $0.20. By adjusting bids based on Jeff's conversion data, the AdWords system ultimately helps him increase sales while maintaining or decreasing his average cost per conversion.


Enhanced CPC has the unique ability to consider a number of factors when predicting the likelihood of a conversion. A few examples of what Enhanced CPC is able to do include:
  • Adjust your bid depending on how well a particular search or display network partner site in the Google network has converted for you in the past
  • Recognize when specific words within a keyword (e.g. 'kits') convert well and adjust your bid when users search on variations of these terms (e.g. 'model airplane kits for children')
  • Detect attributes such as the user's location, language settings, browser, and operating system and analyze how these attributes may impact the likelihood of your ad converting
How to get started

To use Enhanced CPC, you'll need to first enable Conversion Tracking for your campaigns. Conversion Tracking not only allows you to take advantage of ROI-boosting features like Enhanced CPC but also provides you with valuable insight into how frequently your ads convert into sales and how much you're paying for these conversions.

If you're already using Conversion Tracking, getting started is easy. Simply navigate to the 'Bidding and Budgeting' section of the settings tab for your campaign, and select the checkbox under 'Enhanced CPC.'


If you're choosing between Enhanced CPC and Conversion Optimizer as your method for boosting ROI, please read this FAQ for more information on how these tools differ.

Visit the Google Ad Innovations site to learn more about Enhanced CPC.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Updated Keyword Tool - Coming out of Beta

(cross-posted from the Inside AdWords Blog)

Late last year, we announced a beta version of the updated Keyword Tool, which brought you increased functionality and a streamlined way to identify new keywords for your account. Since then, we’ve been working hard to meet our long-term goal to combine all the features you love from both the Keyword Tool and the Search-based Keyword Tool into one comprehensive tool.

We think it’s the right time to begin this final transition since you can now find many of your favorite features from tools in the updated Keyword Tool.

Both of these tools will be available in their current forms through the end of August, after which time their addresses will redirect to the updated Keyword Tool. We’ll post again when the transition is complete and the updated Keyword Tool exits beta (and drops the “updated” from its name).

The updated Keyword Tool has a number of benefits over the older tools:
  • Flexible search options: Search by any combination of keyword, website/URL, and category (where available) and receive a single set of results
  • Easy keyword refinement: Filter results by word or keyword match type
  • Advanced options: View statistics for mobile search and use data filters based on local searches, search and ad share, and more
We also listened to your feedback and added some completely new features:
  • Removing Duplicate Keywords: When you access the Keyword Tool from within an ad group, keywords that are already in that ad group will appear with an “Already in ad group” message next to them
  • Adding Negative keywords: Now, you can easily add keyword ideas as negatives right from your keyword idea list. Just click on a keyword and use the drop down menu to select and save your negative keyword

We’ll continue to improve upon the updated Keyword Tool to make it more useful for you. Give it a try if you haven’t yet to take advantage of its new look and features. If you need to, you can always access the tool without signing in to AdWords. However, for the best results, you should access the tool from within your account. Just click the “Keyword Tool” link from the Opportunities tab. For a full set of directions on accessing and using the tool, visit the AdWords Help Center.

Conversion Champion Challenge: Get those entries in!

In early June, we announced the Conversion Champion Challenge, a contest challenging you to use free AdWords conversion products to increase your ROI, then submit a mini-case study telling us about your experience. The grand prize winner will receive an AdWords voucher as well as an all-expenses paid trip to Google Mountain View or Google Zurich, where the Google Conversions team will meet with you to review your account and provide customized recommendations.

For those of you who took us up on the challenge, final entries are due tomorrow, July 31 and can be submitted here. So get those entries in soon!

Improved keyword diagnosis -- no appointments necessary

"Are my ads showing? If they aren't, why not?"

Whether you have ten keywords or ten thousand, making sure your ads are showing is a top priority. Now you can get detailed diagnostic information for multiple keywords at once by using a new keyword diagnosis option on the Keywords tab.

To get started, open the "More actions" menu on your Keywords tab (at the account, campaign, or ad group level) and select "Diagnose keywords."


On the keyword diagnosis menu, you have all the options available in the standalone Ads Diagnostic Tool. For example, if you're interested in seeing whether or not your ad is showing in a particular location, you can use the Location drop-down to narrow the scope of your diagnosis.


After clicking "Run test," you'll see the real-time results appear in the Status column next to each keyword. If all is well, you see "Ad showing." If not, you'll see a brief summary of the problem (for example, "Low bid or quality score"):



To get more details on a keyword's status, hover over any speech bubble icon. In the above example, viewing details for the keyword "meeting icebreakers" displays more information on the Quality Score issues that are preventing the ad from showing. To focus on one issue at a time, try creating filters for Keyword Status.

The next time your keywords need a check-up, try using keyword diagnosis -- it even makes house calls!

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

AdWords brings you insight about the competitive landscape

As agencies managing AdWords accounts, you know your clients are not alone in the auction -- any number of advertisers may be using AdWords to offer some of the same goods and services as them. You can monitor their performance and use optimization tools to improve ROI, but you still might not know how they're performing as compared to similar advertisers. We’re aiming to bring more transparency to AdWords with the launch of Analyze competition in the Opportunities tab. For now, this feature is only available to a small number of advertisers using the English language AdWords interface, but we'll expand this to more advertisers in the near future.

‘Analyze competition’ examines an account’s activity over the past two weeks and lists categories that represent the products or services a client is advertising. Categories are based on actual Google.com search terms and are matched up against a client's keywords, ad text, and landing page text. For each category associated with a client's account, you’ll see a bar graph, which shows individual performance compared to the average performance of other advertisers in the same category.

When you hover over the data in the 'Competitive Range' column, you'll be able to see more details such as the exact size of the competitive range, the mean and median performance levels for this range, as well as data on the absolute top and bottom performers.

In the case below, you’ll see that we’ve chosen to evaluate our performance based on how our CTR compares with that of other advertisers. In addition to CTR, you’ll also be able to look at competitive data for impressions, clicks, and average position, and you can segment data by advertiser location.




As with other areas of the Opportunities tab, you’ll be able to export information from ‘Analyze competition’ to a .csv file.

It’s important to remember that data in ‘Analyze competition’ is anonymous, and as part of our commitment to protect your clients' privacy, we don't reveal information about any advertiser's identity.

Now that you know what ‘Analyze competition’ does, here are some tips on how to make the most of this data:
  • Take action. Click the ‘Explore ideas’ button to see customized keyword, bid, and budget ideas for your clients' accounts.
  • Consider clients' advertising goals and focus on the most relevant metrics. It’s not always a bad thing to perform below competitors on a metric that’s not important to clients.
  • If you see that one campaign is performing poorly in comparison to the competition, you can get insight into changes you can make to improve that campaign.
Just like the other areas of the Opportunities tab, we hope that ‘Analyze competition’ will help you uncover new opportunities to improve your clients' AdWords performance. To learn more about this feature, visit the Help Center, or watch this short video.

To read more about and submit feedback on 'Analyze competition,' as well as discover other new developments in AdWords, visit the Ad Innovations page.

Give your conversion rate a workout by taking the AdWords Conversion Champion Challenge!

Now that summer is here, people are thinking about how to get in shape as quickly as they can. Well, your conversion rate wants a beach bod too, and with a little work and some tools in your AdWords account, you can whip it into top form. It’s critical that your marketing efforts and website are in peak condition to attract valuable visitors and convert them into customers. Getting started is the hardest part, so to give you a push in the right direction, we’re launching the Conversion Champion Challenge.

The contest is simple:

1. Track conversions on your site using one of Google’s free measurement products:

2. Analyze and try to boost your performance using AdWords Search Funnels and/or Conversion Optimizer.
3. Show us the results and tell us your story here!

We’ll select the advertiser with the most interesting, innovative and unique case study for:
  • An inclusive trip (including flights, hotel & dinner for 2 people) to Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA, just outside San Francisco.
  • A meeting with the Google Conversion Team who will audit your Google Analytics implementation and give you a usability assessment of your website along with recommendations to further improve your conversion rate.
  • $500 in AdWords credit.
  • A post on the Inside AdWords Blog featuring your website and a big smiley photo of you with the Google team!
So what are you waiting for? Take the Conversion Champion Challenge today!

Entries are due by 31 July, 2010. If you’d like to learn a little more about Conversion Tracking, Conversion Optimizer and Search Funnels, attend the free webinar happening this week on Thursday, June 10. Register now or read more details here.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

Coffee break with clients - AAA and Razorfish improve user experience with Ad Sitelinks

For part 3 of our "Coffee break" series, we caught up with Ryan Van Horn, Account Coordinator at the digital agency Razorfish, who shared with us how his team used Ad Sitelinks to improve the user experience on branded search queries for the travel services and insurance company AAA. Here's what Ryan had to say:

What was the primary campaign/product you were marketing for the client?
AAA’s main focus is to drive consumers to sign up for AAA Membership service. In addition, AAA has several other metrics that are considered when determining the success of the program, such as travel bookings and user interaction with their maps services.

What was the client's goal?
Essentially, AAA wanted to improve the user experience on branded search terms. Consumers identify with the AAA brand in different ways. For some consumers, AAA is synonymous with roadside assistance, while others may associate AAA with insurance or discounts when traveling. The client wanted to find a solution that allowed the messaging on branded terms to convey the different services offered and to understand which message converted better, ultimately informing future testing opportunities.

What Google solutions did you use to meet the goals?
Ad Sitelinks have allowed the team to tailor ad copy that encompassed the various AAA services by leveraging four additional links below the main ad copy. The links allow us to send consumers deeper into the AAA website and direct them to the most relevant landing page.

Can you describe the implementation process?
We chose the four services deemed most valuable by the client - Membership (join), Travel (bookings), Discounts, and AAA Map Services (Triptik Travel Planner) - and created a link for each service. We then selected the most relevant landing page for each link and created tracking that allowed us to monitor the performance of each individual link.


How did the Google solution perform?
The implementation of the Ad Sitelinks helped to improve both clickthrough rates (CTR) and conversion rates, as consumers were able to click on the link that was most relevant to the service they were interested in and sent them to the most relevant landing page.

What improvements did the client see as a result of this campaign?
The program saw significant improvements in performance across the board.
  • CTR increased by 40%.
  • The average CPC decreased by 11%.
  • Overall conversion rate increased by 11%.
  • The cost-per-conversion was 14% more efficient after implementation.
Did any results surprise you?
While we were not surprised that overall performance improved, we were surprised by how much the performance improved. Initially, the Ad Sitelinks were launched within a campaign that only included the core branded AAA keywords. This particular campaign is a key membership volume driver and already had extremely high CTRs and conversion rates. To see CTRs increase by 6% and conversion rates increase by 11% was a much higher increase than we anticipated.

If you did not use this Google solution, how would things have been different?
Had Ad Sitelinks not been made available, we wouldn’t have had the ability to improve the overall user experience. Ad Sitelinks have allowed us to give the users options of other services offered by AAA. The program would have likely remained steady and would have not seen the improvements in performance. Overall, we feel that this ad placement enhanced searchers' interaction with the AAA brand while simultaneously improving performance of the core metrics.

For more information on Ad Sitelinks, please visit the AdWords Help Center.