Car insurance Channel

Many of you have used the Opportunities tab to find keyword, bid, and budget ideas for your account. With each optimization idea, we provide estimates for how these ideas may affect your impressions, clicks, and cost. Now you can test these optimization ideas on your own campaigns when you run experiments in the Opportunities tab.

This new feature uses AdWords Campaign Experiments to run experiments on the keyword and bid ideas in your Opportunities tab. Experiments run on 50% of your AdWords traffic for thirty days, during which time you’ll have the chance to compare your original campaign setup with your test setup. You can decide at any time whether you want to apply your experiment settings to 100% of your traffic. If you take no action after thirty days, your experimental changes will be applied to your campaign automatically.

The ability to run experiments in the Opportunities tab has already launched in some English-language accounts and will be available to all English-language accounts over the next few days.

Start an experiment in just a few clicks:

1. Select keyword or bid ideas you want to test.
2. Select the checkbox for "Evaluate this idea for up to 30 days."
3. Click "Apply now."

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Keyword experiment setup in the Opportunities tab

Monitor your experiment performance:

When your experiment is running, you’ll be able to monitor your experiment performance from the Ideas page of the Opportunities tab.

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Monitoring experiment performance in the Opportunities tab

You’ll also be able to view performance statistics for individual keywords and bids on the Keywords tab when you segment by "Experiment."

For those of you who have wanted to try ACE but didn’t know what to test, this should help get you started. This is also a great feature for those of you who want to see a positive performance improvement before making changes to all of your traffic.

No matter how your new keywords and bids perform relative to your original setup, you’ll leave your experiment with more knowledge than you had previously, which means every experiment is a good experiment.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

Word of mouth is powerful. When you have a choice to make, it’s common to turn to the people you trust. But what about word of click? How can getting a suggestion from a friend or co-worker when you need it be as simple as having a hallway conversation -- or even simpler?

We want to make it easy for Google users to get recommendations from the people they trust right when they’re searching. That’s why we’re introducing the +1 button. With a single click, the +1 button lets signed-in Google users recommend the content they like on the web to their friends and contacts right when it’s most useful -- on Google search.


+1 is a simple idea. Let’s use a hypothetical Brian as an example. When Brian signs into his Google account and sees one of your ads or organic search results on Google, he can +1 it and recommend your page to the world.


The next time Brian’s friend Mary is signed in and searching on Google and your page appears, she might see a personalized annotation letting her know that Brian +1’d it. So Brian’s +1 helps Mary decide that your site is worth checking out.


We expect that personalized annotations will help users know when your ads and organic search results are relevant to them, increasing the chances that they'll end up on your site. You don’t have to make adjustments to your advertising strategy based on +1 buttons, and the way we calculate Quality Score isn’t changing (though +1s will be one of many signals we use to calculate organic search ranking). Think of +1 buttons as an enhancement that can help already successful search campaigns perform even better.

At first the +1 button will appear for English searches only on Google.com, but we’re working to add more languages in the future. You don’t have to make any changes to your campaigns for +1s to help you -- over the coming weeks, we’ll add +1 buttons to ads and search results on Google.com.

But the +1 button isn’t just for search pages. We’re working on a +1 button that you can put on your pages too, making it easy for people to recommend your content on Google search without leaving your site. If you want to be notified when the +1 button is available for your website, you can sign up for email updates at our +1 webmaster site.

The +1 button is the next step in our effort to find relevance through relationships on the web. We’re excited about using +1s to make search, and your search campaigns, more personal, relevant and compelling. And we hope you’re excited too!

To learn more about the +1 button and how it affects your search ads, visit Google Ad Innovations.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Many of you use contextual targeting on the Google Display Network to reach potential customers as they read web content directly related to your products or services. To date, you've been able to do this by specifying keywords that work together to show your ads on relevant webpages. This week, you'll also be able to specify topics to contextually target your ads to pages in the Google Display Network. With this additional contextual targeting option, you'll be able to select from over 1,750 topics and sub-topics to target your ads, helping you quickly reach a broad audience across the web that's actively engaged with content related to your business.

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Using topics versus keywords to target your ads

Using topics to contextually target your ads offers broad targeting and reach and is a good way to connect with a large audience quickly and easily to generate awareness or drive sales. When using topic targeting, our system looks at all the terms on a page to determine the topic of the page and is less reliant on particular keywords. On the other hand, using keywords to contextually target allows you to target your ads to a more specific set of pages in the Display Network, since you use individual keywords to develop a theme in your ad groups. However, both targeting options can be used together to effectively reach an audience across the Google Display Network. Let's walk through a use-case.

Let's say you're selling digital cameras. Here's how you might use keyword- and topic-based contextual targeting together to achieve different campaign objectives like raising awareness and driving sales.

1. Create an ad group targeting the sub-topic News & Current Events >> Technology News with a display ad to increase awareness of your cameras among technology enthusiasts.
2. Then target the sub-topic Photo & Video >> Cameras, using a display or rich media ad format like video to educate people interested in cameras on your products' features and benefits.
3. Finally, create a separate ad group using keyword-based contextual targeting with keywords focused on a specific brand or camera model. Then run a text or display ad which includes a special offer or discount on your camera to drive purchases among users reading reviews of that camera brand or model.

This is just one example of how you can use topic- and keyword-based contextual targeting together to build awareness, increase consideration, and drive sales. You can also exclude topics and sub-topics to refine your targeting.

As with other targeting options on our Display Network, contextual targeting by topic supports all ad formats, such as text, display, video, and rich media, as well as all our bidding options, such as cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-thousand-impression (CPM), and cost-per-acquisition (CPA). In addition, you still have access to URL-level reporting and other tools such as the Conversion Optimizer.

To find out if this targeting option is right for you, you can read our best practices. Then learn more by watching this video and reading our Help Center articles.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

You may have noticed when creating a new AdWords campaign that we sometimes suggest targeting multiple languages based on the location that you’ve targeted. To help you understand why we make those recommendations, here’s a refresher in how language targeting works today.

Refresher

Campaigns that target a language are targeting the interface language that a user has set as the language in which they’d like the Google interface to be displayed. A Spanish-speaker living in the United States, for instance, may want to perform searches on www.google.com but change the interface language setting to Spanish. Alternatively, an English-speaker living in Japan may want to perform searches on www.google.co.jp but see an English interface.

Currently, your ad appears only when the user's interface language matches the targeted language. This means that your ad won't necessarily appear when a user searches for a keyword in the language that you're targeting, if the user’s interface is in another language.

For example, if you sell motorcycles in the United States using the keyword motorcycles, and you target only the English language, your ads won’t appear to bilingual users who search for motorcycles but do so within a Spanish interface. Especially when targeting a geographic area with bilingual residents, targeting multiple interface languages can help your ad appear in front of as many potential customers as possible.

New improvement

Determining the language of the search from the query itself can sometimes be difficult, since some words are common to more than one language. However, there are five languages in AdWords that can be uniquely identified by their characters: Greek, Hebrew, portions of Japanese, Korean, and Thai. Therefore, starting in late April, if you're targeting any of these five languages, your ad will be eligible to show for all queries in that language that match your keywords, regardless of the user's interface language (your location targeting settings will still apply).

For example, if you have the keyword λουλούδια (Greek for flowers) in a campaign that targets the Greek language, your ad will be eligible to appear whenever a user searches for λουλούδια, even if the user’s interface is in English.

While targeting multiple interface languages will continue to be the best way for many of you to maximize the amount of traffic that your campaigns receive, we’ll continue to look for new opportunities to improve our language targeting offering.

To learn more about targeting interface languages, please read this FAQ.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

During last year’s Super Bowl, we did something unprecedented for Google--we aired our first Super Bowl commercial. Our television commercial, Parisian Love, is what we now call a “search story,” since it tells a user’s story through the eyes of the Google.com search box.

Since the first airing of Parisian Love, many new search stories have been created. While each story is unique, they all highlight the ways in which users are searching, whether it’s on Google.com, Google Maps, or mobile--and whether users are clicking on a search result or an ad.

We believe that ads are information and can be a vital part of the search process. As AdWords advertisers, we know you feel that way too, and we wanted to share with you three of our favorite search stories. These stories are all very different, but they all feature ads! As you watch the videos, can you spot them all?

For the full video playlist, watch here.

On Wednesday, March 30th, we’ll be holding an interactive webinar about making more profit with Google Analytics.

In this live online course, we’ll provide an overview of some key reports that can help you unlock new insights into your site's performance. We'll show you how to get more sales, reach more visitors, and achieve better ROI through the use and careful analysis of your Google Analytics account.

This webinar will be presented by AdWords Specialists as part of the AdWords Online Classroom (UK) and will take place on Wednesday, March 30, 2011, from 3 pm to 4 pm BST*, so make sure to sign up now!

* Due to Daylight Savings (clocks changing) in the UK, please check your local time zone for the correct equivalent time.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

Over a year ago we introduced the AdWords New Ad Formats Initiative to bring more relevant ads to Google.com. Since then, we’ve launched over a dozen new ad formats, and tested many more. Our new ad formats are designed to make sure that you’re able to reach potential customers with the right information, in the format they want. That’s why we’re proud to introduce our latest format, Media Ads.

Media Ads is a new ad model that introduces new ways to target, pay for, and experience video ads on Google.com. Unlike Video Extensions, which simply attaches a video player to your existing AdWords ads, Media Ads is an entirely standalone format designed to put your videos front and center.

To start, Media Ads isn’t targeted like typical AdWords ads on Google.com. With Media Ads, you don’t pick any keywords -- the targeting is completely automated. When someone enters a search on Google.com that our algorithms determine is directly related to your movie title (most commonly the title and variations on it), we automatically display your Media Ad at the top of the search results page. Our research shows that when someone searches for a movie title on Google.com, they’re most commonly looking for a trailer. With Media Ads, we’re able to help you ensure that those users find exactly what they’re looking for.

The second thing that’s unique about Media Ads is the way you pay. Unlike typical AdWords ads on Google.com, you don’t enter any bids for Media Ads. Instead, clicks on Media Ads are charged at a flat rate. This simplified pricing model makes it easier to budget for your Media Ads campaign and to know exactly how much an interaction is going to cost.

Lastly, and most exciting, Media Ads changes the way that you experience video on Google.com. Unlike Video Extensions, which uses an in-line video player to show videos on Google.com, Media Ads introduces a new Lightbox media player. When someone plays your video either by clicking the thumbnail or the “watch” link, the Lightbox player expands to the center of the screen and dims the rest of the page around it. The experience is meant to put the viewer’s full attention on the video and to create a much more theater-like experience.


Media Ads is still in limited release to major motion picture studios promoting new release features. Over time, we plan to offer Media Ads to more advertisers in more industries to help them promote their videos on Google.com.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords Crew

Experiments are only as useful as the results they produce. For those of you who use AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE) to run experiments on your keywords, bids, placements, ad groups, ad creatives, and more, you’ll be happy to know that you can now run an AdWords report to evaluate your experiment performance. You can evaluate data in your report or easily export to a spreadsheet (no more cutting and pasting)!

ACE reports are now one of the many reports you can run from the Campaigns tab (or through the API!). When you run a report segmented by “Experiment,” you’ll see a side-by-side comparison of the performance of your experimental campaign changes (“experiment”) versus your original setup (“control”). You’ll also be able to see the level of statistical significance for your experiment performance, which should help you judge if experiment performance was due to chance or an actual difference in performance. You can learn more about evaluating your results and statistical significance here.

Understanding your experiment's performance can help you determine whether you’re ready to accept your changes fully, remove changes or keep running your experiment. Reports also serve as an important record of experiment outcomes as you won’t see your past experiment data after you’ve accepted or removed your changes.



ACE can provide you with invaluable real-time data on how campaign changes affect your account. Whether you find that you have significant improvements to make or your account is running just fine, every experiment is a good experiment! To learn more about ACE, watch our video series on YouTube or visit the AdWords Help Center.

What are you waiting for? Ready, set, test!


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

On Wednesday, March 23rd, we’ll be holding a live and interactive webinar about optimising AdWords for the Display Network.

The Google Display Network, which reaches over 70% of unique Internet users around the world, allows you to reach potential clients beyond search. It also has the advantage of reaching potential customers at different points of the buying cycle.

This live webinar will give recommendations on how you can structure your Google Display Network campaigns, as well as provide various optimisation tips and tools such as advanced bidding options, interest category marketing, and reporting that will help you in the optimisation process.

This webinar will be presented by AdWords Specialists as part of the AdWords Online Classroom (UK) and will take place on Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011, from 3 pm to 4 pm GMT, 7 am to 8 am PST, so make sure to sign up now!



Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

You've probably noticed that ads appearing on the Google Display Network have a special "i" icon that expands to an "Ads by Google" label in the bottom corner of the ad. Users who click this label are taken to a page where they learn more about online advertising and the ads they've seen. Giving users clear notice about the ads they see is a high priority for Google and for many in the online advertising industry at large.

We'll soon start to change our in-ads notice icon to a new icon that expands to an "AdChoices" label. These notifications were developed by the online advertising industry’s Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising to more proactively give users notice and choice about the ads they see. With the change from our "i" icon and "Ads by Google" label to these new notifications, we hope to show our support for this cross-industry initiative, and to increase our users' understanding about ad choices through adoption of an icon they'll see on ads across the web.

In a few weeks, we'll begin to show the new icon and label on most ad formats across the majority of English-language sites. Over time, we’ll expand the notice to ensure that all English-language publisher sites in the Google Display Network come within the Self-Regulatory Program (until then, these sites will show the existing “i” icon and “Ads by Google” label). This will be the single most widespread rollout of the "AdChoices" label to date, and we're encouraged that others in the industry are also adopting it. Additionally, we’re looking at ways to increase transparency and control in other languages and countries. In the meantime, those languages and countries will continue to see the “i” and “Ads by Google” notice.

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Just like before, users who click on the "AdChoices" label will be taken to a page where they can learn more about online advertising and the ads they've just seen. This page will also provide a link to the Ads Preferences Manager, where users can control the types of interest-based ads they see. Our tests of this new icon and label showed that they shouldn't have any effect on ad performance. We think this rollout will help users better understand the ads they're seeing, and we look forward to seeing widespread adoption of this label throughout the industry.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

Today we released new functionality in Google Partner Search that allows advertisers looking for account management support to directly contact certified partners by filling out a lead form, and for certified partners to easily review and respond to advertiser inquiries.

When Google Partner Search first launched in April 2009, if you found a partner listing and wished to contact the company, you would need to go directly to the company site to find contact information.

Now, to make the lead management process more efficient, we added a “Contact us” button on the company profile page:

This enables you to review and contact certified partners directly through Partner Search:


You'll automatically receive a confirmation email that the lead was sent, and the prospective partner will receive an email alert that a new lead is available for review. Partners can review their leads using the new Lead Management function on their Google AdWords Certification Program page, and from there they can follow up on the lead.

If a partner decides not to pursue your request, you'll receive a notification email informing you of their decision. If this is the case, we encourage you to contact additional partners. To increase the likelihood of finding a suitable partner for your business, we recommend filling in your approximate budget.

If you’re a certified partner, and wish to learn more about the benefits of these features, visit the Agency Ad Solutions Blog.

For more information on these, and other features of the Google Certification Program and Partner Search Engine, please visit the program Help Center.

Posted by Gordon Zhu, Inside AdWords crew

It’s that time of year again - the AdWords team is making its annual pilgrimage to New York for Search Engine Strategies. If you’re planning on attending the conference, we’d love you to stop by and meet the team. We’ll have senior AdWords and DoubleClick executives presenting our newest ad innovations as well as a booth full of knowledgeable Google staffers to answer your questions.

Here are a few Google sessions to put on your SES agenda (for the full Google schedule, refer to the SES website):

DoubleClick Search V3 Preview
Tuesday, March 22, 1:30-2:30pm

Over the past few months, the Google team has been hard at work on an upgraded version of DoubleClick Search - a tool that allows you to manage search campaigns across the major search engines in one interface. With significant improvements in speed, intuitive design, and new features, DoubleClick Search V3 is being built to make your life as a search marketing professional much easier. See how we’re innovating in this area and get a preview of the upgraded product.
Speakers:

• Ariel Bardin, Director of Product Management
• Scott Silver, Director of Engineering

Ad Innovations
Wednesday, March 23 1:00-2:00pm

Search funnels and site links and and call metrics - oh my! Take a crash course in the latest AdWords innovations. Discover new ad formats, tools to simplify and automate account management, new ways to scale your ads across the Google Network, and more. For a sneak preview, visit: www.google.com/ads/innovations/
Speakers:

• Jeff Gillis, Product Marketing Manager, Search Funnels and Analytics
• Dan Friedman, Product Marketing Manager, New Ad Formats
• Aleandra Kenin, Product Marketing Manager, Opportunities tab and ACE
• Jessie Marmon Haines, Group Product Marketing Manager, Mobile

Ads in a Quality Score World (Panel)
Wednesday, March 23 3:45-4:45pm

More and more, ranking well in paid search listings is less and less about how much you pay and more about the "quality" of your ad campaign. But what goes into making up your quality score? In this panel, we'll take a closer look at quality factors and give tips on increasing the perceived relevancy of your campaigns.
Speaker:

• Frederick Vallaeys, AdWords Evangelist, Google

We hope to see you in New York. If you can’t make it to SES in person, join in on the fun by exploring our new features on our Ad Innovations site or by keeping up with the AdWords Facebook page and @adwords Twitter account. We’ll be posting ad innovation-related information to these forums frequently over the course of next week.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Want to know how to analyse your account performance? On Wednesday 16th March we’ll be delivering a live tutorial as part of the AdWords Online Classroom (UK) that will highlight best practices for generating AdWords reports and analysing the results.

We’ll focus on four key reports including; Keyword Report, See Search Terms Report, Ad Performance and Campaign Performance Reports, which will allow you not only analyse your performance but also highlight opportunities to optimise your account. In addition we’ll also show you how to download, save, schedule and e-mail these reports.

This tutorial will be presented by AdWords Specialists and is appropriate for all advertisers wanting to make their ads as informative as possible. It will take place on Wednesday, March 16th, 2011 3-4pm GMT, 7-8am PST so make sure to sign up now!


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

When we launched Product Listing Ads to all U.S. advertisers last year we also launched a new bidding and targeting technology, Product Targets. This feature allows you to bucket the items in your merchant center account into manageable groups, and to bid differently on those groups based on a number of attributes like brand and product type.

Since we launched we’ve been working on new targeting features to help you improve your performance with Product Listing Ads even further. Today, we’re announcing the launch of one of these features - negative keywords.

Negative keywords for Product Listing Ads work just like they do with normal text-based search ads. Adding a negative keyword to your ad group or campaign means that your product listing ads won't show for search queries containing that term.

Using negative keywords, you can limit the chances that your ads will show on unrelated, or low value queries. For example, if you sell sheet sets, but you don’t carry twin sizes, you can add the negative keyword [-twin] to your Ad Group and your Product Listing Ads won’t show for any queries that contain the word [twin].

You can also manage negative keywords across multiple campaigns using the negative keyword list feature that we introduced earlier this year.

Negative keyword functionality for Product Listing Ads is available now to all U.S. advertisers. To learn more about Product Listing Ads, including best practices, visit our help center.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

On Wednesday March 9th we’ll be holding a live and interactive tutorial all about Ad Extensions in AdWords. Ad Extensions allow you to expand a standard text ad with one or more lines that provide additional information such as an address and phone number, additional page links and product images.

While the standard text ad format can often provide enough information for users to find what they’re looking for, including a picture, for example, could make the message more relevant and valuable. Similarly, having a map can help someone find your location more easily. During this live course we’ll discuss the benefits and implementation of Sitelinks as well as Location, Product and Mobile Extensions.

This live course will be presented by AdWords Specialists as part of the AdWords Online Classroom (UK) and is appropriate for advertisers who want to make their ads as informative as possible. It will take place on Wednesday, March 9th, 2011 3pm - 4pm (GMT), 7am-8am (PST) so make sure to sign up now!

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Back in November, we announced call metrics, a new AdWords feature that lets you generate and measure phone calls directly from your ads.

Since then, we've heard from many of you that while it's useful to see the number of calls generated by each campaign, you'd also like to view details about individual calls.

Today we’re happy to announce new detailed call reports that show you specific metrics about each individual call that your campaign has received since call metrics was enabled, including:

• Call start time
• Call end time
• Call duration
• Call status (missed or received)
• Caller area code

To view detailed reports about each call, you’ll need to first enable the Dimensions tab in your account. Click here for instructions. Once you’ve enabled the Dimensions tab, click View and select Call metrics calls to open the detailed call report.

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While detailed call reports let you dive deeper into the individual calls you’ve received, you’ll still be able to view aggregated call reports for each campaign on the Campaigns tab. These metrics include total number of calls, received calls, missed calls, total call duration, and average call duration.

Note that call metrics is only available to a limited number of US advertisers. To learn more about call metrics or request the feature in your account, visit Google Ad Innovations.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew