Tuesday, December 29, 2009

[Inside AdWords] Think2010: Series recap

We kicked off the Think2010 blog series 14 weeks ago with the idea of helping you prepare for the coming year by devoting one post each week to big-picture, forward-looking themes supported by actionable tips. Over the course of the series we've covered topics such as relevance, speed, experimentation and innovation. We've discussed the multiple roles that search can play, how to use data to better connect with customers, and the importance of staying focused on the fundamentals. We've also deliberately infused the series with perspectives from thought leaders both inside and outside of Google in order to give you a range of insights on the changing face of marketing. You can find a more in-depth version of this same conversation taking place on our Fast.Forward. YouTube channel.

As our series comes to a close this week and we prepare to usher in 2010, we'd like to thank you for reading and leave you with some parting thoughts. Here's what a diverse group of industry leaders have to say about the new marketing landscape and the vast opportunity that they believe lies ahead for 2010:


From the Think2010 team -- best wishes for a prosperous and successful 2010.



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Posted By Inside Adwords crew to Inside AdWords at 12/28/2009 12:49:00 PM

Friday, December 18, 2009

[Inside AdWords] New resource for display advertisers on the Content Network

Over the last year and a half, we've made significant changes to the Google Content Network to deliver better performance for your campaigns and to simplify the process of serving ads across a range of websites. As we roll out more features, we want to make it easy for you to discover what best fits your needs. To this effect, we've just launched a new Content Network brand channel on YouTube.

The site is stockpiled with videos, links and downloads about the full suite of features and solutions on the Content Network. Structured into four key sections, you can learn about a number of different products we offer and how they can help you achieve your various advertising goals. You can also find case studies and research papers from various industries so that you can see what some of the most successful advertisers on the Content Network are doing.

Last but not the least, we've also introduced a new creative direction for our videos, adding a bit more color and fun. Enjoy the first 5 videos below, and let us know what you think by sharing your comments on YouTube.



If you'd like to see more, you can always bookmark the playlist. Hope you find the new channel informative and fun!

[Note: this post is reprinted from the Google Agency Ad Solutions Blog]



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Posted By Inside Adwords crew to Inside AdWords at 12/17/2009 04:40:00 PM

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Thursday, December 17, 2009

[Inside AdSense] Keeping your account secure

We understand how important your AdSense account is to you. You need to sign into your account to generate ad code, manage the appearance of your ads, view your reports and check the status of your payments. However, keep in mind that your AdSense account is actually part of your Google Account. This means that you may have several Google products, such as AdSense, Gmail, AdWords, Blogger, etc, all tied to a single sign-in.

We take account access issues very seriously and would like to take some time to provide a few simple tips to help you protect your Google Account.

If you're having trouble signing in to your Google Account, usually resetting your password will do the trick. To add additional security to your account, you should update your alternate address, choose a strong security question (if you have Gmail), and add a mobile number to your account so Google can text you a recovery code if you ever forget your password. Also, if you have a Gmail address, we recommend providing a current secondary email address where you can receive our password-assistance email. If you don't have any of these set up, it will be difficult for us to verify your identify and reset your password, so please take some time to update your security options.

If resetting your password doesn't work, you can try filling out our account recovery form. We can usually restore access in a few hours if you're able to provide the necessary information to prove ownership.

Here are some additional tips to ensure that only you have access to your account:
  • Create a strong password and security question. Your password shouldn't be something that someone else can easily guess. The same goes for your security question. If someone that knows you can answer your security question, then it's probably not a good question. Review these tips for suggestions.
  • Don't share your account password with anyone. It may be tempting to share your password with your friends or family, but don't do it, especially if it's your personal account. If you need to create an account that is accessed my several people, make sure that the account is not tied to any products that contain personal information.
  • Don't respond to messages asking for your username or password. Google will never send you an email, IM, or any other communication asking for your sign-in information, so don't respond to any messages asking for it.
  • Be cautious of fake sign-in pages. Always look for www.google.com/adsense in the URL. If the URL is different, don't sign in on the page. If you think you may have signed in using a fake sign-in page for AdSense or any other Google product, please reset your password as soon as possible to prevent abuse of your Google services by a third party.
You can find more tips in the Google Accounts Help Center.



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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/17/2009 06:41:00 AM

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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

AdSense for Feeds

AdSense for Feeds


Socializing your feed with Twitter

Posted: 14 Dec 2009 12:40 PM PST

Sometimes you reach across the hedgerow to share with your nearby neighbors. Other times, members of the household move away and yet you can't keep from calling to remind them to wear a hat and such because it's chilly out. Today, we're celebrating acquaintances near-and-far by launching the ability to send your feed to Twitter.

FeedBurner has always been about measuring, managing, and monetizing syndicated content. Our hope is that by providing one application in which you can direct your feed in real-time to a number of endpoints, in this case Twitter in addition to the myriad feed readers, aggregators, and search engines that we have always supported, and then following on with providing analytics for measuring exactly how and where your feed gets distributed across social media, you can make better and more informed decisions about how to monetize your content.

Many of our publishers who have tried our Google Analytics feed item link integration have already noticed that their most popular feed items have been shared many times on Twitter.




We're now taking our distribution and analytics a step further by enabling the ability to automatically publish the feed items that meet your criteria to Twitter, using the Google URL shortener at goo.gl.

To get started, go to the Socialize service on FeedBurner's Publicize tab and add the Twitter account to which you would like to post items from your feed. You can take the default settings and click [Save] to start socializing immediately, or use the options we offer to customize exactly which feed items are sent to Twitter and how exactly you would like them to look. The next time you post a new item to your feed it will be sent to Twitter (as always, make sure to ping FeedBurner whenever you update your feed so this process happens as near real-time as possible).

For full details on all Socialize options, see our FeedBurner Help Center topic.





To see the results, take a look at the Twitter account in which you are sending your updates. This blog post, for instance, as well as select blog posts from this and the FeedBurner status blog, will appear from now on at http://twitter.com/feedburner. If Twitter is where you are consuming most of the latest content these days, please follow @feedburner to receive our updates in your favorite Twitter client.

Posted by Steve Olechowski  - Product Manager, on behalf of the Google FeedBurner team

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

[Inside AdWords] Think2010: Personalization and accountability

As part of our Fast.Forward. program, we've asked numerous industry leaders - from Google and beyond - about the online marketing trends they think will be significant in the year ahead. This week we'll talk about making your campaigns more personal by targeting mobile devices and increasing the accountability and sophistication of the metrics you use to evaluate your campaigns.

Penry Price, Google's VP of Global Agency and Industry Development, offers his thoughts on these topics.


To increase the personalization of your campaigns through mobile advertising, visit www.google.com/advertisers/mobile, and learn how to plan, target, create, and measure mobile ad campaigns with AdWords.

Whether it's robust reporting for media buys across platforms, or sophisticated-but-simple measurement tools like Google Analytics, Website Optimizer, and YouTube Insight, you can commit in 2010 to "being greater with data." Get more information about these measurement and optimization tools here.

Visit www.youtube.com/fastforward, to stay engaged with the industry dialog and keep up with additional perspectives on successful marketing in 2010 and beyond.




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Posted By Inside AdWords crew to Inside AdWords at 12/14/2009 05:54:00 PM

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Saturday, December 12, 2009

[Inside AdWords] Optimize your campaigns for mobile in time for the holidays

Shoppers increasingly use their smartphones to search the internet, and we typically see an increase in shopping-related queries on Android, iPhone and Palm WebOS devices during the holiday season.


Ensure that your online campaigns perform well on mobile devices with full internet browsers by viewing device statistics on your Campaign Summary, Ad Groups, or Ads reports within AdWords. Just select the "Device" segment option under the "Filter and Views" drop down.


You can now compare clicks, impressions, CTR and other performance metrics for desktop vs. high-end mobile devices. Note that this data only dates back to June 3, 2009.


Now is the perfect time to optimize how you target consumers on-the-go. Here are a few best practices we think you'll find helpful:
  • Create separate campaigns and ad groups for your ads that appear on mobile devices. This makes it easier to customize ads, keywords and bids to optimize performance.
  • Put your call to action in a spot on your landing page that's easy to find. Keep in mind that it's a bit more difficult to navigate websites on a mobile device, so consider shortening your checkout process.
  • Most mobile phones don't support flash, so make sure your landing page is written in HTML and contains little or no Flash.
We hope these tips help you create great campaigns both for desktops and mobile devices this holiday season.



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Posted By Inside Adwords crew to Inside AdWords at 12/10/2009 04:35:00 PM

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Friday, December 11, 2009

[Inside AdSense] A note about a messaging change in your AdSense account

Today we're changing some messaging in the AdSense interface concerning your earnings, and we wanted to give you some more information on why we're making this change.

In order to be more transparent about how our system calculates earnings, we've added the words "Estimated" and "Finalized" next to "Earnings" throughout your account. Rest assured these terminology changes don't reflect a change to the way your finalized earnings are calculated. It's simply intended to give you a clearer idea of what's our estimation of your earnings and what's finalized.

As you may have noticed in the past, the earnings on the Overview and Advanced Reports pages may sometimes differ from the earnings listed on your Payment History page. This is because earnings on your Overview and Advanced Reports pages reflect initial estimations based on our records. We aren't able to provide finalized earnings on these pages because they still need to be verified for accuracy, a process that takes place a few days after the end of every month. The finalized sum is then posted on your Payment History page by the 10th of the next month.

While we can't say how much these amounts would differ for any one publisher, most publishers will not see a significant difference. Again, please keep in mind that this is only a display change, and that your finalized earnings will continue to be calculated and credited to you in the same way as before.



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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/10/2009 01:14:00 PM

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Wednesday, December 9, 2009

[Inside AdWords] Update your skills - take the Google Advertising Fundamental...

As part of our ongoing efforts to improve training materials and the Google Advertising Professionals program we have updated the certification exam and learning center.

We've created a new Google Advertising Fundamentals exam designed to be more rigorous and strategy-oriented. Our teams have developed the new curriculum and exam to equip you with useful, relevant training to manage AdWords campaigns.

We've noted some questions since we introduced the new exam so we wanted want to tell you a little bit more:
  • We're testing a wider range of knowledge and the passing score is higher than the previous exam - 85% vs 75% on the previous test.
  • You can access the new exam through your Google Advertising Professionals account. Navigate to the My Exams tab where you can pick up your candidate ID to use on the testing site and follow the links to either the Learning Center or the Exam Testing Site.
  • The new exam is currently only available in English, but will be released in 20 additional languages in January.
Our goal was to bring the materials and exam up to date to ensure they cover all current products and best practices to help run and manage AdWords campaigns. We'll be introducing new advanced exams in 2010, so you may hear about some of them being tested now. At this time, however, you only need to hold a valid passing score in the previous exam or, if you're new to the program, the new Advertising Fundamentals exam.

Congratulations to those of you who've taken and passed the new exams and good luck to all test takers.



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Posted By Inside AdWords crew to Inside AdWords at 12/08/2009 01:09:00 PM

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Tuesday, December 8, 2009

[Inside AdWords] Think2010: The need for speed

In our Think2010 post a couple weeks ago, we noted how important experimentation will be in the coming year to help you optimize your campaign for the best possible ROI. A very closely-related tenet is the commitment to speed. There is great access to information and insights, and that information is now available faster than ever. This means that marketers who are nimble, work quickly, and iterate as they go will often be the ones who succeed.

A few ways to commit to speed in 2010:

* Set up custom Google Alerts to monitor news, blogs, videos and other coverage of topics related to your brand and its marketplace.
* Regularly mine Insights for Search to see trends as they're emerging for your brand or category -- and quickly create a plan to act on the opportunities you discover.
* Use Display Ad Builder to create display, rich media, and video ads in minutes by incorporating your own text, images, and logo into one of our professionally designed templates.
* Use Website Optimizer to quickly test variations of your landing page to see which works best -- then implement the winning version to maximize performance.



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Posted By Inside AdWords crew to Inside AdWords at 12/07/2009 05:26:00 PM

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[Inside AdSense] Search for Ads in the Ad Review Center

When we announced the new AdSense interface a few weeks ago, we mentioned how we've been working on building more functionality into the Ad Review Center to make it easier for you to find and manage your ads. Today, we'd like to let you know that we're introducing the ability to search for ads in the Ad Review Center. This option is currently available to a limited number of publishers using the new AdSense interface, but we're working on rolling this out more widely as we invite more publishers to test the new interface.

The search feature has been designed to improve your efficiency when finding ads to review. You'll be able to search for ads by keyword, display URL, or destination URL. For example, you can now search for all ads that have been placement targeted to your site with the destination URL of one of your competitors' websites. In addition, you can search across multiple AdSense products, like AdSense for mobile content and AdSense for feeds, and also specify whether you'd like to view allowed, blocked, or new ads.



Although we aren't able to add more publishers to the test at this time, we wanted to give you a glimpse into one of the ways we're working to make the Ad Review Center easier to use. We'll be collecting feedback from the first group of publishers testing this feature, and plan to improve it and then expand to additional publishers in the coming months.



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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/07/2009 10:07:00 AM

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Friday, December 4, 2009

[Inside AdWords] AdWords & Analytics Sessions at SES Chicago

Next week on December 7th and 8th, you can catch presentations by the Google AdWords team at SES Chicago. We'll be offering practical tips on how to quickly improve your search and display ads performance in the following sessions:
Finally, if you want to learn more about AdWords optimization tools, you can also watch a video walkthrough of the improvements we've made to AdWords this year. Ariel Bardin, the lead Product Manager for the AdWords web interface, will take you through the major new features and give you tips on managing your campaigns more efficiently.



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Posted By Inside Adwords crew to Inside AdWords at 12/03/2009 03:43:00 PM

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[Inside AdSense] A deeper look at channels: Targetable channels (Part III of ...

During the past 2 weeks, we walked you through the basics of URL and custom channels. In the final episode, Laurence Moore talks about the two ways in which advertisers can target your website: contextual and placement targeting. You'll also learn how to make your channels targetable by advertisers and label them with information such as size, location, and audience so the advertiser can easily find your channels and make an informed decision when choosing to target your site.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W8liKWj1k0&feature=channel

Thank you for watching the videos in our channels series, we hope you found them useful. If you'd like to watch more videos from the AdSense team, visit our official channel on YouTube.



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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/03/2009 01:43:00 PM

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Thursday, December 3, 2009

[Inside AdSense] Category filtering for French, German, and Spanish ads

We recently expanded category filtering to publishers in additional English-speaking countries, and we're happy to announce that the feature is now available for ads in French, German, and Spanish. With category filtering, you can prevent ads from up to 8 specific categories from appearing on your pages. Ads in these categories will be filtered if they're in any of the four supported languages, regardless of how they've been targeted to your pages. 

To set up category filtering, sign in to your AdSense account and visit your Ad Review Center, located under the 'AdSense Setup' tab. Once you click 'change', you'll be able to view the full list of categories you can filter. In addition, we'll show you the percentage of revenue and ad impressions you've been receiving from each category in the last 30 days, which can help you understand the impact that applying filters might have.

For more information about category filtering, feel free to visit our Help Center. We're still working towards making this feature available in more languages, and we'll be sure to let you know about any updates.



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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/02/2009 10:53:00 AM

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Wednesday, December 2, 2009

[Inside AdWords] Think2010: Innovate to better connect

As you plan your marketing approach for 2010, think of 'innovation' in a broad sense. You don't need to be the first to venture into uncharted territory or the one to make the biggest splash. You just need to think openly and differently about your customer connections. Strive to be nimble, current, and ever-more relevant as you create them.

In today's marketing world, this often means making use of insights and Analytics tools to continually tweak your approach. It means finding the right mix of social media to engage your customers in a compelling and authentic way, and it means making use of new mediums and targeting methods so you can connect your message to a consumer at the right time.

Here are a few ways you can innovate in 2010:

1) Become a more nimble marketer by crafting your campaigns around current trends. You can stay abreast of the trends related to your brand and business by using Insights for Search.

2) Converse with consumers on 'their turf,' but don't force it. For example, promote your message on YouTube, and then monitor its appeal and virality. Make use of what you learn and keep revising the conversation accordingly.

3) Adapt your strategy to connect with consumers on-the-go. You can try out high-end mobile device targeting to show your text and image ads on mobile devices with full Internet browsers. This means you'll be able to connect with mobile consumers with the same richness as you would via a desktop computer.



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Posted By Inside AdWords crew to Inside AdWords at 12/01/2009 02:02:00 PM

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[Inside AdSense] The AdSense Product Ideas page: Now accepting your submissio...


This past year, we've been working on building features based on your feedback, and we'd like to offer you the opportunity to tell us what's on your AdSense wishlist for 2010. What features or product updates would you like to see? Whether it's an idea for a brand new feature or just a small tweak that would simplify your workflow, we'd like to hear it. 

With that in mind, we've created a Product Ideas page just for AdSense, and invite you to sign in with your Google Account and submit your suggestions during the next two weeks. You can also look through all submitted ideas and vote on the ones you like.

While we aren't able to guarantee that all the ideas on this page will be implemented, we can guarantee that we'll take the top ideas (as voted by you), and bring them to the AdSense Product Management team for review. By submitting an idea, you agree that Google may use the idea to develop and enhance Google's products and services.

This Ideas page will be open until December 15th, so be sure to add your ideas and vote soon!



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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/01/2009 11:54:00 AM

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Monday, November 30, 2009

[Inside AdWords] 11/30/2009 08:18:00 AM

Black Friday may be behind us, but Cyber Monday, one of the busiest days of the year for online retailers, has just begun. And just as users' searches for Cyber Monday deals and information have increased over time, so have their expectations about the types of information they want from the ads.

Last week, the Official Google Blog provided an overview of some of the new search ad formats we've introduced over the last few months. These new formats are part of our AdWords New Ad Formats Initiative and showcase the ways we've worked to include richer types of information in our ads. This initiative is Google's next chapter in search advertising and over the next year it'll be a major focus for AdWords, so we'd like to give you an idea of what to expect.

The AdWords New Ad Formats Initiative has two themes: ad extensions and new ad models.
  • Ad extensions offer you the ability to enhance your existing text ads with additional relevant information. Some examples of ad extensions include Ad Sitelinks which allow you to provide additional links pointing to specific information on your site and Product Extensions which allow you to show images and prices of relevant products from your Google Merchant Center account. By putting the most salient information directly wiithin the ad, ad extensions are designed to help users more quickly and easily find the products and services they seek on Google.
  • New ad models are formats that offer better solutions to more complicated queries. For example, Comparison Ads enable users to specify the exact product or service they're looking for and compare multiple offers in a single location. New ad models also offer advertisers new pricing models, like cost per action for Product Listing Ads. Our new ad models are designed to make it easier for users to find exactly what they want and for you to reach more users with better information.
The AdWords New Search Ad Formats Initiative is part of our core mission to deliver the right information to the right user at the right time. As more and more users come online searching for products and services, we'll continue to test new ad extensions and new ad models that make it easier for them to find the information they're searching for. We hope you have a successful Cyber Monday and look forward to working with you to make AdWords even better in the new year.



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Posted By Inside AdWords crew to Inside AdWords at 11/30/2009 08:18:00 AM

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Friday, November 27, 2009

[Inside AdSense] Update your tax forms this holiday weekend

We hope you had a great Thanksgiving. Here in the U.S., we on the AdSense Team are spending the Friday after Thanksgiving enjoying holiday shopping, American football, and leftovers.

On this vacation day, we'd like you to remind you that tax season is approaching quickly, so you may wish to take a moment to review your address information and even re-submit your tax information to make sure it reflects your most current tax standing.

If you haven't entered tax information before, you can choose a form directly or follow our handy tax wizard within your account. If you're updating your tax information, feel free to click the 'change your tax information' link.

In addition, now would be the perfect time for our publishers in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to verify their bank accounts for Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) payments. If you're eligible for a payment at the end of December, you have until December 15, 2009 to select your bank account for payment, so we hope you give it a try!



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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 11/27/2009 08:04:00 AM

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009

[Inside AdWords] Product extensions available to all U.S. advertisers

Beginning today, all U.S. advertisers can get started with a new feature of AdWords called product extensions. Like Ad Sitelinks, which we introduced earlier this month, product extensions are a way for you to enrich your existing AdWords ads with more relevant and specific information. Product extensions allow you to use your existing Google Merchant Center account to highlight your products directly in your search ads. When your AdWords text ad appears, and your Google Merchant Center account contains products that are relevant to the searcher's query, product extensions show the images, titles, and prices of your products in a plusbox under your ad.


With product extensions you can show users the products from your site that are most relevant to their current query. You're charged the same cost-per-click (CPC) whether a user clicks on your main text ad or any of the offers within the product extensions plusbox; however, you won't be charged if a user simply expands the plusbox without clicking through to your site. Advertisers who implemented product extensions during our beta found that the additional product information helped improve the performance of their search campaigns. For example, Zeta interactive, who manages advertising for SonyStyle.com, reported seeing over a 10% increase in clickthrough rate (CTR) for their ads with product extensions.

Like Product Listing Ads, which we announced as a limited beta earlier this month, product extensions are part of our effort to make ads more useful and relevant for shopping-related queries by allowing advertisers to include relevant product information directly within the ad. However, unlike Product Listing Ads, which are automatically targeted and priced on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis, product extensions are priced on a cost per click (CPC) basis and will only display when your ad is triggered by one of the keywords in your product extensions enabled campaigns. What's more, product extensions give you the option to prefer which products are displayed when a user's query triggers your ads. For example, you may sell dozens of laptop computers but you want to promote the newest or best selling inventory using product extensions when a user searches for 'laptop computer' on Google.com. By making a simple addition to your Merchant Center account, you can easily control the products that display for certain queries. Of course, you can always use automatic targeting, and let AdWords determine the most relevant products in your account to a user's query.

It's easy to get started with product extensions. First, log in to Google Merchant Center and add your Adwords customer ID to your account. Then, simply visit the campaign settings tab in your AdWords account, find the 'Ad extensions' heading and select the option to "Use product images and information from my Google Merchant Center account." No need to create new campaigns or ad groups, update your keywords or change your ad text. Product extensions are available now to all U.S. advertisers, but remain in a limited beta outside the U.S. Over time, we hope to offer product extensions to all advertisers globally.



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Posted By Inside AdWords crew to Inside AdWords at 11/24/2009 10:27:00 AM

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Tuesday, November 24, 2009

[Inside AdWords] Think2010: Experimentation is worth the risk

When it comes to testing and experimentation, there's always a risk-reward scenario to play out. You could go with what you know and what feels comfortable -- or you could try something new and see how it fares. It could really pay off, but it could also flop. If you're responsible for cooking a big Thanksgiving feast this week, you may feel that lots of experimentation is clearly not worth the risk. When you think about your approach to marketing in 2010 however, testing and experimentation should be key elements.

With digital marketing, testing is a low-cost, fast way to learn. The ability to start, stop, or change your approach is easy and actually applying what you learn -- so you can capture the greatest opportunity -- can happen very quickly.

When you market online, the cycle of launching, measuring, and optimizing happens quickly and continuously. The more nimbly you manage this cycle, the stronger your results will be. Don't be afraid to try and possibly fail -- whether you're testing a new creative message, a new communication platform, a new promotion, or another strategy. The long term benefits of successful testing can quickly and easily outweigh the short term costs.

Brett Keller, CMO of Priceline.com, echoes these thoughts on the value of experimentation.

Here are a few testing ideas to apply in 2010:
  1. Use Website Optimizer to test content (e.g. headline, copy, images) or design alternatives for your landing page. This tool will help you quickly identify and implement the combinations that drive most conversions.
  2. Use YouTube as a focus group. Beyond monitoring views, ratings, and comments, use YouTube Insight to learn what's resonating, and where. Based on what you learn, invest in your 'winning' content by driving traffic via sponsored videos, altering your associated messaging in search campaigns, and ramping up geo-targeting in the areas where your video over-indexes in popularity. You may even consider testing that video as a TV spot (e.g. via Google TV Ads).
  3. If you're not yet using display ads, commit to testing them. Use Display Ad Builder to build display, rich media, and video ads in minutes by incorporating your own text, images, and logo into one of our professionally designed templates. This allows you to test a creative message and learn what is working before investing in a deeper level of creative support.


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Posted By Inside AdWords crew to Inside AdWords at 11/23/2009 04:37:00 PM

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[Inside AdSense] A deeper look at channels: Custom channels (Part II of III)

In the second part of our channels series, we'll focus on custom channels. Boyar Naito will walk you through how to set up custom channels to track the performance of specific ad units. You'll learn about the three pieces of information that are most important to us: ad size, ad location, and page content, and how to analyze this information to figure out what ad formats work best for your website.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWgYKjz6Cjo

You can find more information about custom channels in our Help Center. Catch the last part of this series next week, when we'll cover targetable channels.



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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 11/23/2009 02:42:00 PM

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Thursday, November 19, 2009

[Inside AdWords] Take advantage of advanced reports

For a long time, the Report Center has been the place to go to find detailed data about your campaign performance. Reports with dimensions like geographic performance and time of day can give you new insights through metrics that aren't available on the campaigns tab.

But there can be drawbacks to using the Report Center: customized reports take time to set up and run, and you have to navigate back to the Campaigns tab to take action on any insights you discover.

We're addressing these issues by better integrating advanced performance data into campaign management. Now, instead of running a placement performance report, you can manage your automatic placements on the Networks tab. Rather than run a search query report, you can use the "See search terms" option on the Keywords tab to see which searches are bringing up your ads. And if you prefer to look at your reports in a spreadsheet program, you now have the option to download nearly every table in your account (look under the "More actions..." menu above each table).

You can also use new segmentation functions to slice and dice your data directly within campaign management. Click on the "Filter and views" menu above your statistics, then choose the "Segment by" option to see different the levels of detail available for display.


The segmentation options available to you differ depending on whether you're looking at keywords, ad groups or campaigns. If you're looking at keywords, you can segment by match type. If you're looking at campaigns or ad groups, you can segment by network to quickly compare your performance on Google and search partner sites to your performance on the Content Network.

In addition to these segmentation options, we've recently introduced time-based segmentation for your campaigns, ad groups and keywords. Now you can break out statistics by day, week, month, quarter or year to isolate changes in your performance. For example, if your performance summary graphs show a sharp decrease in clicks, segmenting by day can show you changes in other statistics that might explain why your drop in traffic occurred.

You can also segment by day of the week. This option is helpful if you're looking for help with ad scheduling. Try segmenting your performance for the past few months: if your performance is dramatically different on a given day of the week, you can modify your bids to account for the change in user behavior.

We'll be bringing even more data from the Report Center into the Campaigns tab over the coming months. So next time you're searching for insights you can use to improve your performance, you won't have to look very far.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

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Posted By Inside AdWords crew to Inside AdWords at 11/18/2009 04:34:00 PM

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[Inside AdSense] A deeper look at channels: URL channels (Part I of III)

As many of you know, channels are a great tool for tracking the clicks and impressions on your ad units, as well as figuring out which ad placements, sizes, and colors generate the most revenue. With that in mind, three of our very own Mountain View-based AdSense optimization specialists have created videos showcasing best practices for setting up channels within your AdSense account.

In the first episode, Matthew Carpenter-Arevalo talks about URL channels which can help you track revenue on a specific URL or domain. You'll learn how to set up a channel within your AdSense account, what metrics you can track using channels, and how to use that data to increase your earnings by generating more clicks on your ads.




You can find more information about URL channels in our Help Center. Check back next week, when we'll cover custom channels.



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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 11/18/2009 03:38:00 PM

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Wednesday, November 18, 2009

[Inside AdWords] Think2010: Recap of the Four Winning Moves webinar

Last week, Google's US Managing Director Bonita Stewart hosted the 2nd webinar in the Think2010 series, entitled "Think2010: Four Winning Moves for 2010." She discussed tools and strategies that you can use to differentiate your offerings, increase competitive advantage, and ultimately seize opportunities as the economy recovers. Below are the four key takeaways from the webinar:

1) Use precision - Flexibility yields stealing share: Utilizing precision through search can serve as the world's largest focus group and allow you to understand how consumers want to engage with brands. Tools like Google Analytics and Insights for Search can help you increase this precision.

2) Develop deeper connections - Consumers want to connect: Understand your audience and how they are communicating, then develop marketing campaigns to target your ideal consumers. Utilizing new communication technologies within ad creatives can make your advertising more interactive. Advertising on community centric mediums like YouTube can help to increase brand engagement and ultimately help you develop deeper connections with consumers.

3) Innovate - Marry the art and the science: News and optimism about the economic recovery have increased over the past few months. Business leaders across the globe are thinking forward and seizing the opportunity to throw out old marketing rules and embrace innovation as they gear up for 2010. Large brands like GM and JetBlue, for example, are coming up with new digital strategies to act nimbly and ensure they're prepared for the opportunities the recovery will offer.

4) Be relevant - Consumers don't stop searching: It's important for you to stay engaged and in touch with consumer demands. Keeping a pulse on search trends is a live, real-time way for you to stay up to date on consumer interest and sentiment.

If you missed this webinar and would like to learn more, please visit the Google Business Channel on YouTube to see the recorded version. Also, be sure to stay engaged with the Think2010 series at www.google.com/think2010 where you can view videos, blog posts and future webinars.



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Posted By Inside AdWords crew to Inside AdWords at 11/17/2009 03:13:00 PM

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[Inside AdSense] Google Ad Planner Publisher Center: Take advantage of new wa...

Earlier this year, we introduced the Google Ad Planner Publisher Center to help you showcase your site to advertisers. Now we've enhanced the Publisher Center to give you even more ways to promote and manage your Ad Planner site profile. As a reminder, any publisher can use the Publisher Center, but the user interface is currently only available in English.

Claim your subdomains
You can now claim subdomains, such as myblog.blogspot.com, in Google Ad Planner. Your site's subdomains can also appear in Google Ad Planner to give advertisers a more detailed view of your site for their media planning. Learn how to claim your sites in Google Ad Planner.

Share more Google Analytics metrics
We've expanded the type of Google Analytics data you can share with Google Ad Planner. You can opt-in your page views, unique visitors (cookies), total visits, average visits per visitor, and average time on site, which ensures potential advertisers see the most accurate information for your site. Learn how to share your Google Analytics data.

Delegate site ownership 
Managing your website profile in Ad Planner has just gotten easier. You can now invite additional users to edit and maintain your Google Ad Planner site profile. 

Display an Ad Planner badge
Highlight your Google Ad Planner profile by displaying our new badge on your site. Advertisers who click your badge will be brought directly to your Google Ad Planner site profile, where they'll find your traffic, demographics, and advertising information.

Choose from four Ad Planner badges:



Tell us what you think
We invite you to sign in to Google Ad Planner now to try these new features, then send us your feedback and ideas so we can continue improving Google Ad Planner for you.



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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 11/17/2009 11:13:00 AM

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Saturday, November 14, 2009

AdSense for Feeds

AdSense for Feeds


"Afternoon, Frank." "Hey howdy, George."

Posted: 13 Nov 2009 06:56 AM PST


It's about time these two neighbors got to talking to each other. Most Saturday afternoons you'd find them politely waving as they passed at each other by with their push mowers, tending to their neatly manicured tables, charts, and graphs. It just made sense that the grounds would look that much more complete if they removed a bit of fence between them. And so they've done just that.

If you use either AdSense for feeds or Google FeedBurner to track item clicks and also use Google Analytics, as of today, you will automatically start to see your feed item click analytics show up in Google Analytics with some additional information added to help you understand how distributing your feed with FeedBurner leads to traffic on your site.

Specifically, we will help you classify your links by tagging the Source as "feedburner", the Medium as the channel in which we sent out your feed such as "feed" or "email", and the Content as the actual endpoint application in which the user viewed your feed content such as "Google Reader" or "Yahoo! Mail".  In order to slice your traffic by these endpoints, in the All Traffic Sources view in Google Analytics select the "Ad Content" field in the second column.

In the coming weeks, you will start to see many more distribution endpoints in your reports. The represent ongoing additions to our database of applications that process feeds.




By default, these analytics will show up in the "All Traffic Sources" and "Campaigns" views in Google Analytics. You can filter the results just to only the traffic that comes from Google FeedBurner by filtering on "feedburner" on the All Traffic Sources page or "Feed:" on the campaigns view.  You can also use these sources in the Advanced Segments views.

In this view below, we actually have two separate feeds driving traffic to this blog, and that can  now be tracked easily in one view.





If you have item click tracking enabled, we are now automatically tagging your item URLs with Google Analytics parameters. If you're not using Google Analytics, or for some other reason don't want these parameters in the requests coming to your website, you can turn off Google Analytics tracking on the "Configure Stats" page on the Analyze tab at http://feedburner.google.com.  If you don't have item click tracking enabled, this is also the perfect time to turn it on, which can be done on this same page.





For instance, if you would rather see the detail of where your feeds are read directly, you can add ${distributionEndpoint} as the medium, and then you will get views that look something like this.





Again this will happen automatically except in one specific case:  if you are already tagging your feed item URLs with Google Analtyics tags such as "utm_source" and "utm_medium" - we have disabled this feature and you will have to turn it on manually by selecting "Track clicks as a traffic source in Google Analytics."   Note that if you do this, we will replace any existing "utm_" tags that may be in your permalinks with the values generated from FeedBurner.

In the coming weeks, we will be releasing more features in Google FeedBurner that take advantage of this functionality, so we highly recommend that you register and set up your site with Google Analytics if you haven't done so already.


Posted by Steve Olechowski on behalf of the Google FeedBurner team

Friday, November 13, 2009

[Inside AdWords] Upgrade to AdWords Editor 7.6.1

AdWords Editor version 7.6.1 is now available for Windows and Mac. This new version includes support for ad scheduling, advanced location targeting, YouTube Promoted Video ads, and other features. For a complete list of changes and instructions, visit our release notes.

If you're already using AdWords Editor, you'll be prompted to upgrade automatically. If you're not already using it, you can visit our website to download AdWords Editor. To learn more, take a look at our AdWords Editor Help Center.




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Posted By Inside AdWords crew to Inside AdWords at 11/13/2009 07:57:00 AM

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Google Analytics Blog : New Feature Spotlight: Advanced Filters

jagoan has sent you a link to a blog:

good one

Blog: Google Analytics Blog
Post: New Feature Spotlight: Advanced Filters
Link: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-feature-spotlight-advanced-filters.html

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