Friday, June 26, 2015

Inside AdWords - EN

1:28 AM Posted by ScrollCash

Inside AdWords - EN

Upgrade your URLs before July 1, 2015

Posted: 25 Jun 2015 02:01 PM PDT

We introduced Upgraded URLs in February to help you manage your landing page and tracking information separately, using the new final URL and tracking template fields. This new URL structure lets you track more insights into your ad performance, scale tracking updates across your account, and keep your ads running while making updates to your shared tracking templates.

As a reminder, all advertisers will need to use Upgraded URLs in place of destination URLs starting on July 1, 2015. If you do not use tracking parameters in your destination URLs or only use auto-tagging, you can wait for the auto-upgrade starting on July 1st.1

Today, we'd like to share tips to help you take advantage of the benefits of Upgraded URLs, and stories from advertisers who are succeeding with the new and improved URL system.

Tips for upgrading your URLs
  1. To track audience, location and mobile performance, add the new ValueTrack parameters to your tracking templates using the advanced upgrade.2
  2. Keep your ads running even while you make important edits to your tracking using the new shared tracking templates. For example, if you launch a new promotion, add your new tracking parameters to your campaign level tracking template - saving you time and avoid losing potential new business.
  3. If you make frequent tracking updates across your account, use the advanced upgrade and shared tracking templates. This lets you make tracking updates in one place and apply them to your entire account, campaign or ad groups.
To learn more about the benefits of Upgraded URLs, check out this video.

Early success

From time savings to reliable and scalable tracking management - here are some of the success stories we've heard from advertisers who are using Upgraded URLs.

"Our clients like to move fast, which means a lot of changes to landing pages and tracking that we need to append onto our URLs. Upgraded URLs let us be nimble with these changes, without the risk of losing our ad history or triggering a review. The new value track parameters let us see deeper insights into our business, and we can set them at the account level for easier implementation. I absolutely recommend upgrading to any advertiser." — Sean McEntee, Account Lead at 3Q Digital

"Upgraded URLs let us set different final URLs for mobile and desktop under the umbrella of a single ad. This gives our teams and our advertisers' businesses a more reliable way to update tracking and helps ensure customers land on the appropriate page, rather than relying on URL redirects." — David Gong, Director of Strategic Accounts at PMG

Upgrade today

If you haven't updated your URLs yet, check out our blog or the upgrade guide to learn how you can upgrade them today. As always, please contact us at any time for help with the upgrade.

 Posted by Leo Sei, Product Manager, Google AdWords
1 Your destination URLs will automatically be moved to the new final URL field for any ad groups that do not contain active or paused cross-domain redirect URLs. 
2 Adding the new ValueTrack parameters using the advanced upgrade, will reset your ad stats once during the upgrade. After the upgrade, any changes to your shared tracking template or custom parameters will not reset your stats. As a reminder, you can always access your historical ad stats in your normal AdWords reporting.

Better click quality on display ads improves the user and advertiser experience

Posted: 25 Jun 2015 02:00 PM PDT

Even as smartphone and tablet screen sizes get bigger, it can be hard for our fingers to keep up. It's still so easy to click when you mean to swipe or to tap on a link or ad you didn't mean to. When it comes to mobile ad clicks across networks, recent third party studies estimate that up to 50% of clicks are accidental. For advertisers, this can artificially inflate clickthrough rates and increase costs.

As we continue to enhance our display ad formats to make them more engaging, we also strive to maximize click quality. In 2012, we introduced confirmed clicks on banner ads to prompt users to verify that they actually meant to click on an ad. Over the past year, we've expanded on those efforts to provide greater automation and require less work from users. Now, to make the experience even more seamless, we're automatically blocking ad clicks in several instances that frequently lead to accidental clicks. Here are three new updates we've made:
  1. Blocking clicks that happen close to the image edge: On mobile image ads, we've identified the image border as an area prone to accidental clicks when users are trying to click or scroll to adjacent content. Now, they must click on a more central part of the image to navigate to an advertiser's website or app. 
  2. Blocking clicks on the app icon: On in-app interstitial ads, users will no longer be able to click on the app icon of an install ad given its proximity to the ad close button. Instead, users must click on the call-to-action button to visit an app store page and install the app.
  3. Adding a clickability delay: Ads will only become clickable after they've been onscreen for a short period of time. This gives users enough time to examine the content of an ad and helps eliminate accidental clicks from users who didn't expect to see an ad.
A better experience for both users and advertisers

These latest click quality enhancements improve the user experience by keeping them within their desired website or app and not involuntarily taking them to another page. They also benefit advertisers by reducing costs from accidental clicks and improving conversion rates. To date, we've seen a 15% average conversion rate lift on display ads by driving more qualified clicks with these updates.

In the long run, advertisers can further improve performance by re-investing spend saved from accidental clicks back into their display campaigns. To learn more about display campaigns and ad formats, visit our Help Center and read more on best practices, as well as our latest ad placement policies for apps and websites to maximize click quality.

Posted by Pasha Nahass, Product Manager, Mobile Display Ads