Car insurance Channel

Today we're excited to begin testing a new feature of AdWords called AdWords Comparison Ads, which lets users compare multiple, relevant offers more easily. Comparison Ads is part of our continuing effort to make ads more relevant and useful to our users and to help you, our advertisers, reach the people who are most interested in your products and services.

AdWords uses a host of targeting and relevancy signals to determine the best ads for each query. However, sometimes a user's query doesn't provide enough information for us to confidently predict what they want. Take, for example, users who search for "mortgage." Do they want a new home loan or a refinance? Do they want a fixed rate or an adjustable rate loan? Comparison Ads improves the ad experience on Google.com by letting users specify exactly what they are looking for and helping them quickly compare relevant offers side by side.

With Comparison Ads, you can also target your offers at a more granular level, leading to more valuable, qualified leads. To see how it works, let's use our mortgage example. Users searching for "mortgage" on Google.com may see a promotion from Comparison Ads prompting them to select the type of loan they are looking for and to compare various rates.


If they click the promotion, users are taken to a page with more detailed sponsored results. They can choose directly from the offers listed on that page, or they can further refine their search by providing additional information like income and home value. By giving users the ability to refine their search on a number of relevant attributes, we are able to show more targeted ads and provide you with more valuable leads.

Once users find an offer that matches their specific needs, they can either call you directly or request a quote. If a user requests a quote, Google automatically anonymizes the user's phone number and sends you a unique code that you can use to contact the user. You only pay if a user calls the phone number on your offer or fills out a form to request a quote.


While Comparison Ads is still an early-stage feature, we've focused on a number of ways to enhance the user experience:

• Speed -- Comparison Ads shows targeted offers in less than a second. There are no long forms for users to fill out - Users see specific offers immediately and only need to fill in additional information if they wish to further refine their results.
• Transparency -- Comparison Ads only shows real products. There are no teaser rates, or bait and switch offers. Comparison Ads also standardizes the information presented to users, making it easy for them to sort and compare offers on a side by side basis.
• Privacy -- Comparison Ads won't send advertisers any user information, including anonymized phone numbers, unless the user explicitly requests more information about an advertiser's offer.

At this time, Comparison Ads will only show to a small number of users in select U.S. states and is only available to a limited number of advertisers in the mortgage/refinance space. Over time, we'll increase the number of users who see Comparison Ads offers as well as the number of advertisers able to participate.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Google Content Network campaigns differ from Search campaigns in how they're set up, optimized, and tracked. If you've been interested in advertising on the Content Network but aren't sure how to get started, we now have a step-by-step Getting Started Guide to help you hit the ground running. You can think of it as a do-it-yourself instruction manual for how to best structure, optimize, and track your Content Network campaigns.

Not sure how to create an effective content campaign? You can refer to the campaign, ad group, and ad sections to find tips for optimal account structure.

Not sure what's working well? You can use the optimization section to determine which of your ads are performing well and which you should edit or delete. You can also take further control of your campaigns by learning how to select where your ads are shown and how to exclude certain sites and keywords.

Not sure how much to bid? Use the guide to learn more about how bidding works on the Content Network. You can also get tips to refine your bids and improve your performance.

Don't forget to check out our Content Network microsite for even more information on Content Network campaigns, including details on available ad formats and a list of some of the websites we partner with to show your ads.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Stay engaged with additional perspectives and resources for our Think2010 series at www.google.com/think2010.Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

As we've previously posted, one of our aims is to improve display advertising on the web. Three simple principles guide our approach: simplify the system for buying and selling display ads; deliver better performance that advertisers and agencies can measure; open up the ecosystem by making it accessible to more participants.

So how can you better measure the impact of your display ad campaign? At the moment, you can measure how many clicks your display ads achieve, measure conversions that result from those clicks, compare results with industry benchmark data, and use "View-through conversion reporting" to measure visits to your website from users who saw your display ad in the past.

Today, we're launching a new tool to measure the impact of your display ads - Campaign Insights. As of today, Campaign Insights is available for larger display ad campaigns across the Google Content Network in the US and UK.

Campaign Insights is a unique measurement tool that can give reliable data about how a campaign has raised brand awareness, or active user interest, in a particular product or service. It looks beyond the traditional measures of clicks and conversions to calculate the incremental lift in both online search activity and website visits that result from a display ad campaign.

We use the same expertise we use to improve our own services -- our ability to analyze large quantities of data. Campaign Insights compares two data sets: a large group of users (many thousands, minimum) who saw a particular ad, with an equivalent, large group that did not see the ad. It then measures whether there is any significant difference in searches and visits to your website between the two groups. Doing this, Campaign Insights can determine the incremental change that is directly attributable to the display ad campaign. With this insight, you can establish how well your display ad campaign is working beyond just clicks.

Campaign Insights provides highly reliable results to marketers because of the statistical methodology our computer algorithms use to combine and analyze large volumes of data from several sources -- the advertiser's own campaign information, ad serving logs, and sampled data from Google Toolbar users who have opted in to enhanced features. All of the results reported to advertisers are anonymized and aggregated over thousands of users.

If you run wide-scale display ad campaigns on the Google Content Network and want to try Campaign Insights, you should check with your Google representative.

Posted by Austin Rachlin, Inside AdWords crew

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

From time to time you've probably noticed the 'Ads by Google' message on ads around the web -- we display this label because we want users to have an awareness and understanding of the ads they see online and where they come from.

As more and more advertisers use rich media ad formats, such as Flash and interactive ads, we want to provide the same benefit to users for those ad formats.

So today we're starting to add the "Ads by Google" message to rich media ads in a way that's unobtrusive to your ad creative and the publisher site, but as user-friendly as our current "Ads by Google" notices on other ad formats.

You'll soon notice a small 'i' (for "information") icon overlay in the bottom right-hand corner of these ads, which will expand when the user hovers over it. This was specially designed for rich media ads. This new message will appear on your AdWords rich media ads, and will show up on standard AdSense ad units.


Just like before, users who click on the 'Ads by Google' label will be taken to a page where they can learn more about online advertising and the ads they've just seen. Our tests of this new message format on rich-media ads showed it doesn't affect ad performance.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Earlier this year we posted on how to advertise your business on YouTube through Promoted Videos, and now you can advertise with Promoted Videos directly through AdWords.

If you have a video about your business, Promoted Videos allow you to drive viewership of your videos by targeting the hundreds of millions of searches that happen on YouTube every day. You can also use Promoted Videos to have your videos appear on the YouTube homepage, video watch pages, and across the AdSense network.

To get started in your AdWords account:

1) Select Display Ad Builder >>Video>>YouTube Promoted Videos Template
2) Create your ad text
3) Select your video
4) Choose your thumbnail
5) Save your ad

To learn more you can visit http://www.google.com/ads/youtube.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

Last week Analytics Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik, hosted a Think2010 webinar on "Using Data to Better Connect with Your Customers." He discussed how to find and use data from Google tools such as Trends for Websites, Insights for Search, Ad Planner and the Search Based Keyword Tool. You can use the data to focus on your most relevant audiences, maximize your return-on-investment, and drive your businesses forward -- now and as you charge forward into 2010. To recap the four key takeaways that Avinash stressed:

1) Mine website trends: Utilize Trends for Websites and other tools to index your performance, identify your competitors' strengths, and find untapped opportunities.
2) Analyze the "database of intentions": Use Insights for Search to segment your share of voice, obtain competitive gains, understand how to most effectively target your campaigns, and find out where you should focus your search efforts.
3) Monetize the long tail: Leverage powerful Search Based Keyword Tool to identify your long tail keywords based on your site's content, and to find additional cost-effective targeted keywords.
4) Identify relevant audiences: Utilize Ad Planner to understand the demographic profile and search behavior of your site visitors, and that of your competitors, to effectively target your messages on the Google Content Network to the most relevant audiences.

Most importantly, follow Avinash's #1 rule: Make sure that your website doesn't stink. Use data to identify fixes (e.g. pay attention to bounce rates) so that your clients stay and interact with your website. To learn more about how to improve your web pages, check out this post by Avinash: Six Tips For Improving High Bounce / Low Conversion Web Pages.

If you missed the webinar and are intrigued to learn more, visit our Google Business Channel on YouTube to see the recorded version.

Interested in more information on our Think2010 series? Visit our site to learn more and sign up for our next webinar, Four Winning Moves for 2010, to take place on November 10th.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

Coming to ad:tech New York? So are we. We're organizing a number of sessions at ad:tech and its partner conference, Content Revenue Strategies (CRS), to help you get more out of your search and display spend with Google. Here's the lowdown:

The Google Ads Factory Tour, 11/4/09-11/5/09

The Factory Tour consists of two days of live workshops at ad:tech NY designed to provide you with a comprehensive overview of Google's latest measurement and optimization tools. You'll hear directly from the Google ads team and walk away with practical tips you can immediately use to improve your search and display performance.

On day one, we'll spend the morning highlighting recently released AdWords search optimization tools such as the Opportunities tab and Bid Simulator, and in the afternoon we'll take you through effective optimization techniques for text and display campaigns on the Google Content Network.

The second day we'll expand our scope to cover measurement tools such as Google Analytics and Website Optimizer, search ads quality, and advertising strategies for local and mobile campaigns.

The Factory Tour is open to all exhibit hall and conference passholders.

Content Revenue Strategies, 11/5/09

Formerly known as ADSPACE, CRS is the first and only expo dedicated to AdSense and contextual advertising. CRS will take place alongside ad:tech New York and offers sessions tailored to advertisers as well as small and medium sized publishers. Here you can attend sessions designed to help you maximize your performance on Google’s Content Network and emerging blog, video and social media networks.

Additionally, a team of AdWords and AdSense optimizers will be present at the conference and answer your questions. You can stop by our Optimization Lounge to receive customized performance tips for your campaigns, as well as share your product feedback and suggestions.

Both CRS and the Google Ads Factory Tour will be held in the Javits Center along with the rest of ad:tech NY. We recommend you register ahead of time to save on admission fees. Enter the promotional code 20EXNY9 to receive 20% off an ad:tech full conference pass. If you're only attending CRS, enter the code CRSGoogle to receive $100 off the price of your CRS conference pass.

Hope to see you next month in NYC.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

On Saturday, October 10th, 2009 the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10AM to 2PM PDT, for maintenance. While you won't be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual.

AdWords system maintenance typically occurs on the second Saturday of each month from 10AM to 2PM.

We'll continue to update you via the blog as we always have, but please make note of the October 10th date and of our scheduled maintenance further down the road.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Every month we run free AdWords webinars to help you better understand your online advertising and to answer your questions live.

Coming up in October we have:

• Optimizing for the Content Network
• Export Series: Using AdWords to reach new markets
• Export Series: Using mail services to grow your export business
  
• Export Series: Using Online B2B Marketplaces
• Export Series: Selling to customers who don't speak English
  
• Make Your Website Work: A Manager's Perspective

For more details and to sign up today, please see our webinar calendar.

Due to the timing of these webinars they will be most suitable for UK and East Coast advertisers.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

Welcome back to the Think2010 series. In last week's introductory post, we noted that this series will be devoted to looking forward, focusing on themes, trends and perspectives to help plan for the coming year. In this second post, we'll get the ball rolling by providing a collection of perspectives from some very important people - everyday consumers.

In our random (and diverse) sampling a couple things seem to be ringing true. Firstly, consumers seem optimistic and hopeful about the year ahead and the extra "breathing room" that will be afforded them. And secondly, it's clear that their media habits continue to evolve, with ongoing and increasing involvement online, from searching to shopping to social media.

Have a look at what these everyday people have to say as they consider the economy, their lives and their media habits for next year along with some of their perspectives on how they interact with online ads.


Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

Because high-end mobile phones offer a browsing experience that is similar to the desktop computer, advertising on mobile is a natural extension for any AdWords campaign. With high-end mobile phones like the iPhone and phones running Android offering full (HTML) Internet browsers, consumers are using their phones and desktop computers in similar ways. However, it has not always been easy to reach people on these new mobile phones. That's why we're investing in new high-end mobile advertising products. We hope to make advertising on high-end mobile devices as intuitive and powerful as our existing AdWords tools.

We've just launched a new AdSense feature that will allow you to target your standard AdWords ads to high-end mobile phones. You will be able to extend your existing campaigns to mobile and reach users on the go, all without having to create separate mobile ads. Remember that if you don't want your ads to show on mobile phones, you can choose to target desktop computers only by editing your device settings in your AdWords campaign settings.

Here are three easy tips to help you take advantage of these features and get you started advertising on mobile:

1. For your image ads, create ads sized 300x50, 250x250, 200x200, and 300x250. These sizes will ensure that your ads are shown on high-end mobile phones surfing mobile-optimized web content.

2. Limit the use of Flash on your website. You want to ensure that users have a good experience and flash won't work for all browsers. Instead, consider creating a mobile-optimized version of your website.

3. Make it easy for users to reach your conversion event. For example, you may choose to put your call to action in a spot on your landing page that users will find quickly or have users land directly on a page that gets users closer to the target action. Keep in mind that it's a bit more difficult to navigate websites on a mobile device, so consider shortening processes for users.

By extending your existing ad campaign to mobile, you can reach your consumers wherever they are.

Posted by Austin Rachlin, Inside AdWords crew