Car insurance Channel

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

A couple weeks ago, we announced the launch of Enhanced CPC, a new automatic bidding feature designed to increase your conversions and return on investment in your Max CPC campaigns.

We’d like to invite you to a free webinar hosted by members of the product development team to learn more about Enhanced CPC. Specifically, we’ll discuss:

• How Enhanced CPC works and benefits your campaign performance
• How Enhanced CPC complements your current bidding strategy, including 3rd party bid management solutions
• Key differences between Enhanced CPC and Conversion Optimizer and how to select the best bidding option for your campaign

Register here for the webinar to be held on September 8 at 9:30am PST / 11:30am CST / 12:30pm EST.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Today's post comes from the Official YouTube Blog:

We’re constantly working to give advertisers control and flexibility over their YouTube campaigns. We place great value on this because ads are an extension of what a company represents as a business, and we want YouTube to be a place where that reputation and image can flourish.

To that end, we’ve been rolling out features to keep advertisers in control of their campaigns. We announced one such example last week, when we launched a feature that gives select advertisers the ability to voluntarily age-restrict their videos. But there’s more work to do.

To date, we’ve given advertisers the ability to pick and choose individual videos on YouTube to target using our Video Targeting Tool. But one of the most frequently requested features we’ve heard from advertisers is the ability to exclude individual videos and channels from the campaigns they run on our site. Today, we’re excited to announce video and channel exclusions, a way for advertisers to pick specific YouTube videos and channel URLs that they don’t want their ads to appear on.

Here’s an example: let’s say you run a vegan bakery. You want to strike a balance between good exposure for your baked goods online, while staying true to your company values in offering items free of animal or dairy-products. Now you can indicate which videos are not the best fit for your audience. Since your customers are probably not watching "Homewrecker Hot Dog," you can provide this video exclusion under the "Networks" tab.

(click for full size image)

Similarly, you might run a keyword-targeted campaign on bakery-related keywords and exclude whole channels that you don’t feel suit your audience. So if FoodNetworkTV has videos centered mostly around cooking meat dishes, you have the controls to prevent ads from showing on that channel and specific videos.

Alternatively, if your ads are appearing on a video that has content you deem inappropriate for your audience, or perhaps isn’t performing in terms of click-through rate or conversions, you can optimize your campaign by using this new feature to exclude it.

Google has also been investing significantly in ensuring brand safety, transparency and control for advertisers across the Google Display Network. We’re hoping that these added layers of control will make your campaign targeting even more precise. Keep sending us your feedback so we can make future product improvements.

Baljeet Singh, Senior Product Manager recently watched “AH NOM NOM: Wholesome Bakery Best Vegan Bakery Food Cart In San Francisco”

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

We recently added a new course to the AdWords Online Classroom designed to help you set and improve your AdWords bids so you get the most for your money.

In this course, we'll show you how to calculate your value per click (the most you can pay for a click in order to still make a profit) and how to experiment with different cost-per-click (CPC) bids to find the most profitable bids for your business.

While this course is most suited to AdWords advertisers who're already measuring their ROI, we encourage anyone interested in learning more about AdWords bidding strategy to view it.

Click on the country flag most appropriate to you to watch this course now:

(US) (UK) (AU)

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

On Saturday, August 21st, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT due to our regularly scheduled system maintenance. While you won't be able to log into your account during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual.

AdWords system maintenance typically occurs on the second Saturday of each month during the above times. We'll continue to update you here as we always have, but you may want to take note of our intended dates and times to help you plan for any scheduled downtimes further down the road.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

We're excited to announce the launch of Enhanced CPC, a new automated bidding feature that can help you improve your ROI on your campaigns with manual bidding. Enhanced CPC uses your campaign's historical conversion tracking data to automatically adjust your Max CPC bid based on the likelihood that your ad will convert. As a result, you should receive more conversions while maintaining or reducing your overall CPA and hopefully spend less time managing your Max CPC bids.

How does it work?

Let's walk through an example. Jeff sells model airplane kits and has enabled Enhanced CPC for a campaign that contains the following keywords, each with a Max CPC bid set to $0.30: model airplane, model airplane kits, and build model airplanes. When a user searches for 'model airplane kits,' the AdWords system recognizes that this term has converted well for Jeff in the past, and therefore increases the Max CPC bid to $0.32 for this specific auction. If the likelihood of a conversion is very high, Enhanced CPC can bid up to 30% above the Max CPC. This means that the most that Jeff will be charged for a click is $0.39.

On the other hand, when a user searches on a term that has not converted well in the past, e.g. 'model airplane,' the AdWords system will lower the Max CPC bid for this specific auction to $0.20. By adjusting bids based on Jeff's conversion data, the AdWords system ultimately helps him increase sales while maintaining or decreasing his average cost per conversion.


Enhanced CPC has the unique ability to consider a number of factors when predicting the likelihood of a conversion. A few examples of what Enhanced CPC is able to do include:

• Adjust your bid depending on how well a particular search or display network partner site in the Google network has converted for you in the past
• Recognize when specific words within a keyword (e.g. 'kits') convert well and adjust your bid when users search on variations of these terms (e.g. 'model airplane kits for children')
• Detect attributes such as the user's location, language settings, browser, and operating system and analyze how these attributes may impact the likelihood of your ad converting

How to get started

To use Enhanced CPC, you'll need to first enable Conversion Tracking for your campaigns. Conversion Tracking not only allows you to take advantage of ROI-boosting features like Enhanced CPC but also provides you with valuable insight into how frequently your ads convert into sales and how much you're paying for these conversions.

If you're already using Conversion Tracking, getting started is easy. Simply navigate to the 'Bidding and Budgeting' section of the settings tab for your campaign, and select the checkbox under 'Enhanced CPC.'


If you're choosing between Enhanced CPC and Conversion Optimizer as your method for boosting ROI, please read this FAQ for more information on how these tools differ.

Visit the Google Ad Innovations site to learn more about Enhanced CPC.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Cross Posted from the Google Small Business Blog:

Most every business, including ours, starts small. These days, technology is giving businesses even more ways to grow bigger... faster.

In our recent Small Business series on the Official Google Blog, a handful of real-life entrepreneurs have shared their experiences building companies from scratch and embracing Internet tools that have taken their businesses to the next level. We’ve received fantastic feedback about these posts, and realized that there’s a healthy appetite among small- and medium-sized business owners who want to know all about the latest web tools and tricks. Fortunately, we have lots more to share with you, too!

That’s why we’re introducing the Google Small Business Blog, a central hub that brings together all the information about our products, features and projects of specific interest to the small business community. Rather than having to sleuth around in many different locations for details about templates for creating video ads on YouTube, tips for your employees using Gmail or how to respond to the business reviews on your Place Page, you can find all of this helpful information right here in one place.

Of course, we’ll continue to post relevant news about individual services such as AdWords, Apps, Google Places and YouTube on their respective “home” blogs, but feel free to visit or subscribe to this Google Small Business Blog to get everything relating to your small business needs. We’re starting small today, but who knows what tomorrow will have in store!

Posted by Deanna Yick, Small Business Blog Team

Late last year, we announced a beta version of the updated Keyword Tool, which brought you increased functionality and a streamlined way to identify new keywords for your account. Since then, we’ve been working hard to meet our long-term goal to combine all the features you love from both the Keyword Tool and the Search-based Keyword Tool into one comprehensive tool.

We think it’s the right time to begin this final transition since you can now find many of your favorite features from tools in the updated Keyword Tool.

Both of these tools will be available in their current forms through the end of August, after which time their addresses will redirect to the updated Keyword Tool. We’ll post again when the transition is complete and the updated Keyword Tool exits beta (and drops the “updated” from its name).

The updated Keyword Tool has a number of benefits over the older tools:

• Flexible search options: Search by any combination of keyword, website/URL, and category (where available) and receive a single set of results
• Easy keyword refinement: Filter results by word or keyword match type
• Advanced options: View statistics for mobile search and use data filters based on local searches, search and ad share, and more

We also listened to your feedback and added some completely new features:

• Removing Duplicate Keywords: When you access the Keyword Tool from within an ad group, keywords that are already in that ad group will appear with an “Already in ad group” message next to them

• Adding Negative keywords: Now, you can easily add keyword ideas as negatives right from your keyword idea list. Just click on a keyword and use the drop down menu to select and save your negative keyword

We’ll continue to improve upon the updated Keyword Tool to make it more useful for you. Give it a try if you haven’t yet to take advantage of its new look and features. If you need to, you can always access the tool without signing in to AdWords. However, for the best results, you should access the tool from within your account. Just click the “Keyword Tool” link from the Opportunities tab. For a full set of directions on accessing and using the tool, visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Last year, in an effort to provide better ads and a higher quality experience for our users, we adjusted our trademark policy in the U.S. to allow some advertisers to use third party trademarks in their ad text even if they don’t own that trademark or have explicit approval from the trademark owner to use it.

These advertisers include resellers, sellers of component, replacement or compatible parts corresponding to the trademark and informational sites.

We believe that this change has helped both our users and advertisers by improving the usefulness of text ads on Google.com and across partner sites in the U.S. For example, resellers of jeans have been able to highlight the actual brands they sell in their ad text making their ads even more specific and relevant for users.

Today, we're announcing that starting September 14 we'll be extending this policy to Canada, the UK and Ireland.

Separately, today we've also announced an update to our policy to enable advertisers across Europe to select trademarks as keywords. This update will also occur on September 14 and brings Europe in line with the trademark policy that already exists in the U.S. and most of the world today.

Our aim is to provide as much useful information to users as possible so that they can make better informed decisions. We believe that these changes to the ad text policy in Canada, UK and Ireland and our keyword policy change across Europe fits perfectly with this aim.

For more detail on our updated trademark policy in Canada, the UK and Ireland, please visit the FAQ in our Help Center.

Posted by Dan Stokeley, Product Manager

We’re back to dispel a few more of the myths you may have heard about AdWords. If you missed the first AdWords myths post last week, check it out to learn about common misconceptions around AdWords billing and spending.

Today we’ll cover three myths related to keywords and click-through-rate:

Myth # 3: Your conversion rate can impact your quality score

Fact: The conversion rate of your ads does not affect your quality score. Some advertisers using AdWords conversion tracking mistakenly believe that they should set an easy conversion event on their landing pages to artificially boost their conversion rates. In reality, this won't have any effect on their quality score and will simply make it harder to measure the true value of their AdWords investment.

Myth # 4: The AdWords keyword tool suggests keywords to use

Fact: The keyword tool doesn’t make any kind of recommendations about which keywords you should be using. The keyword tool just analyzes related queries that might be of benefit to you and displays them. It's up to you to decide which keywords you want to include in your account.

You should always assess the tool’s results in the context of your advertising goals. When you do so, the keyword tool can be a helpful way of finding new, meaningful keywords, including potentially profitable ones you aren’t currently using and those that you might have excluded as negative keywords in order to protect your click-through-rate.

Myth # 5: Upper and lower case letters in AdWords keywords matter

Fact: The AdWords system doesn't distinguish between uppercase and lowercase letters.

• “NYC” is the same as “nyc”
• “Android Phone” is the same as “android phone”

For the sake of simplicity, we recommend that you enter all of your keywords as lowercase letters.

Check back in with us next week for the truth behind myths related to the AdWords auction!

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew