Friday, May 22, 2015

Inside AdWords - EN

1:04 AM Posted by ScrollCash

Inside AdWords - EN

Delivering the right information in your ads

Posted: 21 May 2015 12:01 PM PDT

Now more than ever, people search online to find things nearby. In fact, Google search interest in "near me" has doubled since last year,1 with 80% coming from mobile.2 In these moments, consumers have heightened expectations for immediacy and relevance — 4 out of 5 say they want search ads to be customized to their city, zip code or immediate surroundings.3 That's why we continue to develop richer local ad formats that deliver more relevant information based on what someone searches for.

"Where's the nearest location?"
Last year we enhanced location extensions to show up to three different locations for a business in a single ad unit. This improvement offers consumers the flexibility to choose which of your locations is most convenient for them.

"What businesses are near me?"
Starting today, we'll show three or four different businesses for location-related searches like "nearby auto repair." Each ad unit will feature click-to-call and directions right at people's fingertips. This new format organizes the information that your on-the-go customers need so they can easily compare options and take action, like calling your business or visiting your store.
If you have location extensions enabled in your account, you'll be eligible to show these new mobile ad formats.

The wonderful world of extensions
With a world of information at their fingertips, consumers want what they want, right when they want it, so it's essential that ads are fine-tuned to be relevant to people's contexts.  In addition to location extensions, there are many types of extensions in AdWords that can make your ads more useful and engaging — and they deliver, on average, a 10% increase in click-through-rate.4  Showing more than one extension on an ad tends to see even higher engagement than that.

Search ads can trigger up to four extensions at the same time. This means your ad can show when and where a product is available at a nearby store, or show an app extension for someone on her mobile device. Here are some tips for best ways to use extensions for your business:

  • Sitelinks Try to enable at least six sitelinks for both desktop and mobile users.  Briefer sitelinks are generally the most effective, so try to keep them short and crisp.
  • Callouts Like sitelinks, you'll want to keep these short.  They're best used with specific and concrete information, like sizes or rates.
  • Reviews As long as you're quoting or paraphrasing from a reputable third-party source, you can apply one review to your entire account.  These are possibly the fastest extensions to put into place.

The specific extensions that are displayed in each auction are a function of previous performance, user context and available space on the page, among other factors  Enable whatever makes sense for your customers and the AdWords system will decide the best combination of those options to maximize the value you get from your extensions.

Ad extensions done right
For Accor Hotels, a strong combination of extensions led to a 14% increase in incremental conversions.  Accor Hotels' use of the right extensions for their business helped them meet their goals of driving online and offline conversions, giving customers the information they were seeking, and reinforcing customer trust.
This ad for Novotel, Accor's four-star International midscale brand for business & leisure travelers, checks off all of the right boxes.  Sitelinks drive online conversions, a location extension (with a phone number) allows for an offline customer interaction, while customer ratings and social extensions reinforce customer trust.

For more details about the new format of location extensions, head over to the Help Center.  And for more ad extensions Best Practices, check out our full collection on the Help Center.

Posted by Ayush Agarwal, Product Manager, AdWords
1 Google Trends, Data pulled March 30, 2015.
2 Google Data, Q4 2014.
3 Google/Ipsos MediaCT/Purchased, Research: Understanding Consumers' Local Search Behavior, May 2014.
4 Google Internal Data, results vary by client, business type and extension type (among other factors) and Google cannot guarantee this or any uplift.

Introducing TrueView for shopping – a new way to promote your products with video

Posted: 21 May 2015 09:01 AM PDT

Whether it's watching a product review or learning how to bake a soufflé, we look to video in countless moments throughout to the day to help us get things done. We call these micro-moments – when we reflexively turn to our devices to learn more, make a decision, or purchase a product. To connect the dots between the moment a person watches a video and the moment they decide to make a purchase, today we're introducing a new feature called TrueView for shopping that makes it easy for viewers to get more information on your products and click to buy.

TrueView for shopping allows you to showcase product details and images – along with the ability to click to purchase from a brand or retail site – all within your video ad. It's available for TrueView in-stream video ads on YouTube. And since we know that 50% of views on YouTube come from mobile devices, we've made sure that it works seamlessly across mobile phones, desktops, and tablets.
Built on the cards platform we announced last month, TrueView for shopping enables advertisers to scale the manual process of connecting individual products with individual videos. Thanks to the first-ever integration of the Google Merchant Center into video ads, advertisers need only connect their campaign with a Merchant Center feed to dynamically add products to their in-stream videos, customized for each user through contextual and audience signals like geography and demographic info.

Brands that have participated in our early tests of TrueView for shopping have seen strong results for driving interest and sales. Online home goods retailer Wayfair, for instance, saw a 3X revenue increase per impression served when compared to previous campaigns. And beauty retailer Sephora took advantage of this new ad format to drive +80% lift in consideration and +54% lift in ad recall, and an average view time of nearly two minutes.
We're excited to bring TrueView for shopping into our buying front end in the coming months. If you'd like to get started with TrueView for shopping today, please contact your Google account manager.

Posted by
Avi Fein, Product Manager, YouTube Ads
Pete Lidwell, Product Manager, YouTube Ads
Jean-Yves Delort, Technical Lead, YouTube Ads