Partners Blog
What's new @ Google? Tips and tools for agencies
A new year, a new traffic model for Ad Planner
Thursday, January 29, 2009
If you are looking for more site information to help plan your display advertising campaigns and understand audiences on the web,
Google Ad Planner
can help. Our goal is to provide you with the most accurate site information for better planning and decision-making, and we're excited to kick off the new year with an improved traffic estimation model as well as several other features.
The new traffic estimation model should help reduce some of the confusion that often surrounds tracking the number of unique visitors to your site. When creating campaigns, many advertisers use media planning tools, including Ad Planner, to look at unique visitors based on estimates of real world users. However, publishers typically rely on web server logs or web analytics tools, such as
Google Analytics
, to measure unique visitors based on cookie counts. Discrepancies arise when these two types of unique visitors are compared. You can learn more about this topic by reading the
IAB guidelines
on Audience Measurement.
To address the various ways of measuring site traffic, we:
Added
Unique Visitors (cookies)
, a new cookie-based metric, to help you cross-check and compare metrics, similar to Google Analytics unique visitor metrics.
Changed
Unique Visitors
to
Unique Visitors (users)
so it's clearer that you're reviewing estimated numbers of real world users.
Placed the
Unique Visitors (cookies)
and
Unique Visitors (users)
metrics on a site's
profile page
so you'll have a more comprehensive view of how a specific site can support your media planning. Learn how to
make the most of these two metrics
.
In addition, our new model improves our traffic estimates. You'll notice our page view estimates are now more accurate and consistent with web server measurements.
(Click image for a full-size version)
We've also added country demographics for Australia, Brazil, Japan, and Switzerland, which brings our demographics total to ten countries, with more coming in the future. In select countries we've also added a new demographics category, Children in Household, which can be used to
research sites
.
You've told us that defining an audience to fit your intended customers can be difficult. In response, we've created Pre-defined Audiences that represent commonly used audiences. Now you can
experiment with different criteria
without having to choose them manually.
This release represents only a fraction of what we're planning for 2009. Stay tuned for more Google Ad Planner announcements soon.
[Note: this post has been reprinted from the Inside AdWords blog]
New ideas for working with the display ad builder
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Since launching our
display ad builder
a few months back, we've updated you on several new features, such as our
seasonal templates
which are now available. We're focusing on building this product primarily for advertisers with limited display experience on our network but we'd also like to highlight ways in which agencies can use our tool to improve efficiency for their clients and themselves.
As has been our goal, our "long tail" of users are expanding their knowledge of effective text-based advertising into display: over 80 percent of active users of the display ad builder have never before used display ads on Google's content network. And of the other 20 percent, many are display "dabblers," having commissioned the production of a few display ads but never fully devoting much time or resources to the effort. Even of those with extensive display experience, very few work with agencies that provide creative services on a regular basis.
Although the primary users are these small- and medium-sized businesses, here are some ways that various types of agencies can use the display ad builder to their advantage:
Use it to test early concepts and messaging. Try one of our templates to test out various calls to action, headlines, images, or color schemes. Gathering test campaign data, you'll have the insights to prove that the final creatives your teams produce have the highest impact. You can also use this data to help positively persuade clients who are on the fence about investing in a display campaign.
Smaller agencies can use it as a mock-up tool for simple creatives. In just a few minutes, you can create a mock and grab a screenshot to show prospects the potential for display advertising.
SEMs and interactive agencies without display creative teams can use the display ad builder to apply their knowledge about optimizing performance for text ads on Google's network to the creation of simple display ads that get results.
Hopefully we've helped you think about some new ways to use this tool, and we're looking forward to launching more features that make the display ad builder even more useful. As always, feel free to
send us product feedback
or any other thoughts.
Posted by Ryan Hayward, Product Marketing Manager
Industry webinar: The Online Market for Consumer Credit Cards
Monday, January 26, 2009
If you have clients in the financial or credit markets, or just want to learn more about how consumers are thinking about and using credit cards today, join us for our upcoming webinar on Thursday, January 29 at 12pm EST/9am PST.
Google and Compete, Inc. partnered on a study to analyze consumers' credit card-related shopping and application behavior, with an emphasis on the role of search in the process. The webinar will present the study's findings - with data as recent as December 2008 - and will answer the following questions:
How is the consumer credit card market being impacted by economic conditions?
How long do consumers shop around for a credit card?
When and how do consumers use search in their research and application process?
How are conversion rates affected by various search path approaches?
Aaron Katz, Director, Financial Services for Compete, Inc. and Masha Korsunsky, Senior Industry Marketing Manager, Financial Services for Google will co-present. Learn more and register for the webinar on our
registration page
, and we hope you'll join us.
Posted by Jack Krawczyk, Industry Marketing Manager, Financial Services
Tell us your thoughts on Ad Planner
Friday, January 23, 2009
Over the past few months, the Ad Planner team has released a number of
new features
that were based largely on user feedback. To continue improving Ad Planner, we invite you to take
this brief survey
on how you're using the tool today and what you'd like to see in the future.
To thank you for your time, complete responses that include contact information will be eligible to win 1 of 50 $50 gift certificates to the
Google Store
! You can find the official rules for the survey
here
, and we look forward to hearing from you.
Posted by Annie Hsu, Product Specialist
Coming soon: Holiday display promotions made easier
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Although many of you have just wrapped up winter celebrations, the holidays are still rolling in. Valentine's Day and President's Day are nearing, and with them come new templates for the
display ad builder
. In the coming weeks, you'll see 7 new customizable templates you can use to enhance your clients' holiday promotions. To give you a sneak peek of the new templates, we've included two of the designs below. Each has different design, animation, and image customization options, so you'll be able to select the format that meets your needs.
If you've tried the display ad builder for your clients, you know that it can help you get a promotion up and running quickly, without needing to re-design new ads from scratch. The creation of timely and relevant display ads is free and efficient with the display ad builder, making it particularly handy for seasonal promotions.
We'll be releasing these templates in the 13 languages in which the display ad builder is available, so stay tuned to this blog for an update when they're available.
To start creating your ads, click Display Ad Builder on the Ad Variations tab within a new or existing ad group in your AdWords account. If you want to learn more about creating and running display ads, visit our
Display Ads 101 tutorial site
. Happy display planning!
Posted by Ryan Hayward, Product Marketing Manager
Unlink Analytics from AdWords: Your DIY guide
Friday, January 16, 2009
To get the most insight from your client's Analytics account, we recommend linking it to their AdWords account for a number of reasons: Once linked, you don't have to toggle between AdWords and Analytics accounts to compare data, you don't have to
manually tag
AdWords links, and if you have
e-commerce tracking
enabled you'll see revenue-per-click data within Analytics. And linking the two accounts is easy - just follow
these steps
.
But what do you do if you accidentally link the wrong account? Or if your clients have existing Analytics and AdWords accounts that you need to re-link to the AdWords accounts you create for them? In the past, you'd have to contact AdWords support for assistance with unlinking the accounts. Now, however, it's just as easy as linking them, since we've introduced the ability to unlink the accounts yourself. Follow
these four steps
and you'll be unlinked in no time.
Keep in mind that unlinking your AdWords and Analytics accounts will cause AdWords data to stop importing while unlinked. If you re-link the accounts, the data won't retroactively be imported, so unlink with care. We hope this helps you manage your accounts more easily.
Posted by Jesse Nichols, Agency Team
Search-based keyword tool and keyword library
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Every year, Google releases a year-end
Zeitgeist
, showing the top searches across various categories to give insight into cultural trends and current events. For instance, which movie trailer generated the most searches in 2008? (Dark Knight) Which campaign buzzword got the most search volume on Google in the U.S.? (Joe the plumber)
Uncovering what people are searching for can be an interesting exercise as well as a powerful tool when used for your clients' AdWords campaigns. The
Search-based Keyword Tool
, which provides keyword ideas that are based on actual Google search queries and are matched to pages of your website, has a new feature, the keyword library, which allows you to see the top keywords across various categories. You can think of it as sort of an advertiser's Zeitgeist.
You can browse the results for different categories in the Search-based Keyword Tool
here
or by clicking on the link that reads "See top keywords across all categories" when you access the tool. Best of all, if you sign in to the tool with your client's AdWords login information, it will scan your client's site for popular and relevant keywords that aren't yet in their AdWords account. You'll be able to find new, relevant keywords that you aren't currently advertising on.
Give the tool a try, and if you have feedback for us (or just want to share your personal favorite movie trailer of 2008),
let us know
.
Posted by Lisa Coffey, Product Specialist
Quality Score fact of the day
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
To wrap up our
series
on Quality Score and start off the new year, we've saved one of our favorite facts for last:
Changing a keyword from broad to exact match will not improve its Quality Score.
With broad match, your ads may show on variations of your keywords. However, ad performance on these variations won't affect your keywords' Quality Scores. For example, say your ad group contained the broad-matched keyword
resolution
. Your ad could potentially show when a user searched for
new year's resolution
or
conflict resolution
, although its performance in these instances would have no impact on Quality Score. The keyword's Quality Score would only be affected by how your ad performed on the search term
resolution
, since it exactly matches the keyword. Changing a broad-matched keyword to an exact match, therefore, won't improve its Quality Score.
We hope you've found these installments useful, and although this concludes our series, we're still all ears when it comes to your questions and feedback. Let us know at agencyblog-feedback@google.com.
Posted by Dan Friedman, Product Marketing Manager
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