Car insurance Channel

Many of you use location extensions to automatically show your business address and other information in your ads on Google. These ads also show directions to your business location, along with your address and phone number. By clicking on the directions, potential customers can map the quickest route from their location to your business.

We’ve observed that location extensions with directions are beneficial to users and lead to more interactions with your ads. In January, we launched a report in AdWords to help you measure these useful interactions.

Over the next few weeks, you’ll see performance metrics for directions alongside those for clicks and phone calls. We’ll also begin to charge for clicks on directions in the same manner as clicks on your ad’s headline or phone number. If your campaign has a high number of these clicks, this indicates that your customers are interacting with your ads to get directions to your business.

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Below are some answers to a few questions that you may have as a result of this change:

Where will I see performance metrics for clicks on directions?

You can see the number of clicks on directions in the same place as your other click metrics (select Segment, then Click type from your summary tables). You can review the performance of these clicks to determine if they're helping you meet your marketing goals.

How will directions appear in ads on desktop and mobile devices?

For AdWords campaigns with location extensions enabled, a “Directions” link will be eligible to appear in your ads and sponsored Google Maps info windows on desktops.

On mobile search ads, a “Get directions using Google Maps?” pop-up will appear when the user clicks on the expandable map. Clicking on “OK” in the pop-up allows users to get directions to your business.

Where can I see the past performance of clicks on directions?

For a report, select the Free clicks view within the Dimensions tab of your AdWords account. If you don't see the Dimensions tab in your account, click on the arrow button next to the existing tabs above your performance table, and select it in the dropdown menu.

I don't want to pay for clicks on directions. How can I opt out?

You can do this by removing the location extensions associated with your campaign. However, location extensions provide valuable information to local customers about your business, so we encourage you to carefully analyze your campaign performance before doing so.

To learn more about location extensions and directions in ads, please see the location extensions overview section of the Help Center.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

One of the main benefits of online advertising is the ability to target campaigns to specific locations, such as cities, regions, or countries. For example, to reach users looking for rental cars in San Francisco, a car rental company could target a campaign to San Francisco and include only San Francisco-specific discounts in the ads.

In February, we launched city targeting in an additional 17 countries, and our goal is to make location targeting more accurate, easier to use, and more flexible. As part of planning for future improvements, we’re making several changes to our AdWords location targeting capabilities. These changes will start occurring after July 8, 2011, and include:

Changes to existing available locations: Due to changes in real-world geography or the existence of duplicate or overlapping location targets, we’re removing certain location targets in countries such as Japan, Denmark, Spain, and the Netherlands, among others. For example, in 2010, six provinces were abolished in Finland, and while you’ll no longer be able to target these provinces, you can continue targeting cities in Finland. You won’t be able to target these provinces in AdWords, but you’ll be able to continue targeting cities in Finland. After the changes take effect, you won't be able to add the locations that are listed here to new campaigns. If you're currently targeting any of these locations in your existing campaigns, you should migrate them to the recommended targets in the list. Otherwise, we'll migrate them automatically. Please review the list carefully since some of these changes will result in migration to larger locations.

Sunset of custom shapes (multi-point or polygon targets): You’ll no longer be able to add multi-point targets in AdWords. You’ll still be able to view and delete existing shapes in your current campaigns, and we’ll continue to use them until the end of 2011. After that, all polygon targets that are still present in your AdWords campaigns will be migrated to available locations such as a nearby city or a map point with a radius. We encourage you to replace your polygon targets with these alternatives or we’ll migrate them automatically at end of 2011.

Removal of ‘Show address in the ad’ feature: In some countries, you currently have the option to show an address with your ads by checking the “Allow address to show in my ad” option for campaigns that target an area around a map point. This option will no longer be available. If you want to display your business address or phone number, you’ll need to use AdWords location extensions.

If you’re using these features with the AdWords API, check out the AdWords API Blog for more information on the changes being made.

These changes will take place after July 8, 2011. We recommend that you adjust the location targeting settings of your campaigns immediately with the available alternatives.


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Back in late 2009, we launched our initial test of AdWords Comparison Ads for Mortgages. With Comparison Ads, we provided a way for you, our advertisers, to create more relevant and targeted offers for users searching on Google.com. For example, using Comparison Ads, a lender can enter offers for users with specific credit ratings, loan amounts, ZIP codes, and more.

Since our initial mortgages launch, we’ve expanded into a number of additional financial areas, including credit cards, checking and savings accounts, and certificates of deposit. We’ve also seen some great recognition of the value that Comparison Ads provides. For example, according to a study done by Leads360, an industry leader in lead management software, mortgage leads from AdWords Comparison Ads converted at a higher rate than from any other source.

Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Google Advisor, our new user-friendly interface for comparison offers, including AdWords Comparison Ads. Google Advisor is a consumer destination site that helps to guide users through various financial decisions by making it even easier to find and compare relevant offers from qualified financial institutions.

Google Advisor contains offers that come from our Comparison Ads advertisers as well as other sources across the web. By aggregating the most relevant offers and making it easy for users to filter and compare them side-by-side, Google Advisor aims to make financial research faster and easier.

To learn more about Google Advisor, you can read the Official Google Blog post or watch the video below.

At this time, AdWords Comparison Ads remains available only to a limited number of advertisers. Over time, we hope to increase the availability of Comparison Ads to additional advertisers. You can find more information about AdWords Comparison Ads in our Help Center.


Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

In an AdWords ad, the display URL may be last, but it’s certainly not least. In fact, the display URL can be an important deciding factor in whether a user clicks on your ad.

That’s why, starting today, we’ll automatically show your display URL domain in the headline for select top placement ads on Google. As a result, your brand will be featured more prominently in your ad, and you can use the text in the headline to highlight other information. Potential customers, on the other hand, will be able to more easily identify the site to which they’ll be taken after they click on your ad.

Before

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After

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When shown in the headline, the display URL will be separated from the rest of the text by a vertical bar and will include only the domain, not the “www.” prefix or any subdirectories. Your display URL will also continue to appear as normal below the description line. Of course, if the headline already contains your domain, we won’t display it again. Finally, it’s possible for the display URL domain to appear in addition to a description line that is promoted to the headline, as long as the resulting headline is sixty-eight characters or less.

This is a global launch that affects all countries and languages. For more information, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

This Wednesday, May 18th, we’ll be hosting a live, online course on media planning in our AdWords Online Classroom (UK). The course will highlight the best practices of media planning and focus on how to create and execute a successful media plan. Topics covered will include how to determine your marketing strategy, how to set your advertising and campaign goals, and how to target your audience. We'll show two examples of different marketing strategies and campaign set ups, including new customer acquisition and building a loyalty loop with existing customers.

The course will be delivered by an Online Media Specialist and will last for approximately one hour, including time for Q&A. It will take place on Wednesday, Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif 18th, 2011, from 3 pm to 4 pm BST.

If you’re interested, make sure to sign up now!

And make sure to visit our AdWords Online Classroom for additional live and on-demand courses.


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

A guest post by Avinash Kaushik

I'm so incredibly impressed with the rapid evolution there's been in the advertising and marketing possibilities available to us. Offline, online, social—there are so many things to do and so little time (and budget!).

One of the absolute delights of online marketing (regardless of type) is the amount of accountability you can bring to your marketing budgets. For example, think about how challenging it is to know how many people looked at your ad in a magazine and took action. In contrast, think about how easy it is to measure the same thing for your digital display ads. How many potential customers were actively looking for cars, saw your ad on TV, and then went to your destination? You can measure this for your search ads. How often do prospects listen to your radio ads completely and then engage with you? You can measure this for your YouTube ads.

I could keep going. It's so exciting what we can measure, regardless of the online channels we use or the measurement tools to which we have access.

And yet, it's heartbreaking how little we bring all this awesomeness to bear upon our digital efforts. So much of our marketing is simply replicating our offline advertising online. And what's particularly heartbreaking to me, the author of two books on web analytics, is how we bring our low expectations of offline measurement to our online efforts.

So let's change this. Together.

UPDATE:

In case you were unable to attend the webinar on this topic last week, here is the recording of what was discussed. Look for more webinars in the coming months on topics such as campaign attribution, mobile metrics, and branding metrics, to name a few!

-Avinash

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

As part of our continued effort to improve the account management tools for agencies and large advertisers, we've rolled out optional-login accounts, a new feature that simplifies the account creation process through My Client Center (MCC) by enabling a new AdWords account to be created within the MCC without a login or password.

The benefit of optional-login accounts is that it allows agencies and clients to create new AdWords accounts within the MCC without the need to create email addresses and passwords exclusively for the new account.

Here are some FAQs to help you take advantage of this feature:

1. How do I create an optional-login account in AdWords?
   Click on the "Create Account" button within your MCC, then complete the three required fields: account name, time zone and currency. You’ll also see a collapsible link to “Invite another user (optional),” which provides the option to invite a user to the account. Even if you opt not to, once you click "Save", you'll have a new, live account.
2. What if I want an account to have a login?
   You can either “Invite another user (optional)” during the account creation process or follow the normal process for inviting a user to an AdWords account: go to the “My Account” tab, click on “Account Access” and choose the link “Invite other users”.
3. Where do notifications go for optional-login accounts?
   Red Alert Account Notifications (such as billing notifications or policy violations emails) will be sent to the email address associated with the MCC. For non-red alerts, make sure you’ve opted into notifications on the "My Client Settings" page at the MCC level. You also may opt into performance suggestions and newsletters specifically for the optional-login account. Such notifications will be sent to the email address associated with the MCC.

Additional FAQs for optional-login account creation are in the MCC section of the AdWords Help Center.

For more resources on My Client Center and other tools to effectively manage large accounts at scale, visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

It’s one of our company’s guiding principles that data beats opinion. And as such, we’ve put a lot of effort into asking some interesting questions—How do new mothers use the Internet? When do people really start their holiday shopping? What trends typify today’s Hispanic web user?—and answering them with concrete information.

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We’re now pleased to share this knowledge at Think Insights with Google, the website where we’ll be publishing our learnings and insights about digital marketing trends. From papers to case studies to videos, Think Insights' content represents the ongoing work we’re doing to better understand how web users are embracing new media platforms and how marketers are adapting to this changing terrain. We’ll be updating this site frequently, so if you'd like to keep up with our latest news, sign up here for your monthly Think Insights fix.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

Since we launched Enhanced CPC last year, many of you have used it to increase your conversions and ROI. In fact, approximately $3 billion in annual spend is now being managed through Enhanced CPC and Conversion Optimizer.

With Enhanced CPC, you can get more conversions at or below your current CPA by simply checking a box on your Settings tab. The feature uses your Conversion Tracking data to determine the likelihood that a user will convert and dynamically raises or lowers your bid for each auction based on this information. Since Enhanced CPC is designed to work with max CPC bids, you can continue to manage your bids as you always have—even if you use a third-party bidding tool.

W3i, a company that distributes and monetizes desktop and mobile apps, found success in using Enhanced CPC to complement their third-party bid optimization tool. Enhanced CPC incorporated Google’s unique knowledge of the user and auction to automatically adjust bids that were set by the third-party tool, thereby “enhancing” its performance.

By using Enhanced CPC with their third-party bid optimization tool, W3i increased their conversions by 19.7% and decreased their CPA by 9.7%. It also reduced the amount of time that they had been spending on manually adjusting bids based on factors such as time of day and allowed them to focus on their business. You can download the full case study here.

To learn more about how Enhanced CPC works with third-party bidding tools, visit our Help Center. There, you’ll also find instructions for enabling the feature in your account. Maybe the next Enhanced CPC success story will be yours!

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

Today we’re announcing an update to the algorithm behind the traffic estimates you see in AdWords. As a result of our updates, we hope to provide you with better statistics for estimated clicks, cost, and ad position. This change is effective now and affects all AdWords accounts globally.

You can find keyword traffic estimates in a number of places across AdWords including the Traffic Estimator, the Keyword Tool, and on the Keywords tab.

One of the most common uses of traffic estimates is to evaluate potential keywords and decide whether you should add them to your account. Traffic estimates are also useful in determining if your bids and budgets are appropriate for these new keywords.

In order to determine if you’re setting an appropriate target bid, try entering a few different values in the Max CPC field the next time you use the Traffic Estimator. Look at how these different bids affect your statistics, and then decide which bid gives you the best return on investment. You can use the same process for trying out new budgets.

Let us know how the new keyword, bid, and budget traffic estimates are working for you.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

With more than 165 million tablets expected to ship over the next two years, tablets are becoming a popular device with engaged, tech-savvy consumers. So we’re pleased to announce that we’re developing new targeting options to help you better connect with this audience. To give you greater control over your AdWords ads, we’re changing the way you can target tablet devices.

In the next couple of weeks, the “Networks and Devices” section of your Settings tab within your AdWords account will include a new targeting option titled “Tablets with full browsers.” While you’ve been able to specifically target Apple iPad devices in the past, the new capability will enable you to easily target your ads to the entire tablet device category. In addition, you'll be able to select more precisely the types of devices and operating systems on which your AdWords ads will show. For example, to display your ads on the Apple iPad, you’ll be able to choose “Tablets with full browsers” as your device targeting setting and “iOS” as your operating system setting. Tablet targeting will be available initially for Apple devices only, but we'll expand ad serving to other specific devices in the near future.

Once this capability is available in your account, your ads will automatically start running on tablet devices and no further action will be necessary on your part. If your campaigns were specifically targeting Apple iPad devices, you may notice an increase in impressions and costs as we include more tablets in our ad serving options. If you don't want your ads to appear on tablet devices, you’ll be able to specify this preference in your device targeting settings by following these step-by-step instructions.

For now, only standard text and image ads can be shown on tablet devices. So please make sure your landing page renders properly on tablet devices, as our system will automatically limit your ads from running on tablet devices if we detect that users will be led to a landing page containing a significant amount of Flash or other content that will not render properly. To learn more, please visit this Help Center article.

We’re constantly working to provide our advertisers with new targeting capabilities for their AdWords campaigns. We hope that these targeting options will enable you to successfully connect with your customers across a variety of devices and platforms.



Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

We’re pleased to announce the launch of a resource library in the Google AdWords Certification Program portal. We’ve developed this tool based on feedback from agencies and advertisers that they’d like a centralized place to access and download training materials, research, and resources to stay ahead of the digital curve and effectively adopt Google solutions. This new tool is currently available to users with individual certification program accounts who are based in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand (users do not need to be certified to access it). We’ll be rolling out the resource library in the coming months to additional countries.

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The library contains product and industry education above and beyond the certification curricula, as well as sales and marketing resources to help agencies and third parties acquire and retain clients. A sample of content includes:

• On-demand eLearning modules
• Market insights research
• Case studies
• Product one-sheeters
• Relevant videos from the Google Business Channel

The “Recently Added” page will allow you to see the new resources in the library.

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To get started:

• Log in to your Google AdWords Certification Program account. New users can visit http://www.google.com/adwords/professionals/ and click “Join the Program.”
  
  Note: While you don't need to complete the certification program to access the resource library, we encourage you to do so. Individual certification requirements are outlined here.

• You can get a preview of what’s available in the library from the home page. We’ve identified four key categories of information—industry research, case studies, continuing education, and product one-sheeters—and you can access samples of them by clicking the hyperlinks under the descriptions.

• If you have a specific search you wish to conduct, you can enter it into the search box. From there, you’ll see a list of relevant resources, which you can then expand to see a complete description and, if applicable, a download button. For the most accurate results, input detailed queries, and use quotation marks around the keyword phrase. In addition, if you're looking for something from one of the predefined categories, be sure to include this term in your query (e.g., "automotive" + "industry research", "YouTube" + "case study", "Google Analytics" + "course").

If you have feedback on the resources returned for your specific search results or have requests for additional content for the library, please submit your comments here.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

On Wednesday, May 11th, we’ll be holding a live and interactive webinar about optimising AdWords for the Google 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 make recommendations for the optimal structure for your Google Display Network campaigns and provide various optimisation tips and tools—such as advanced bidding options, interest category marketing, AdWords Campaign Experiments, and reporting—that will help you in the optimisation process. We’ll also discuss using Google Analytics and Website Optimiser to improve campaign performance.

The webinar will be presented by AdWords Specialists as part of the AdWords Online Classroom (UK) and will take place on Wednesday, May 11th, 2011,from 3 pm to 4 pm BST, so make sure to sign up now!


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Today we’re releasing AdWords Editor Version 9.0, with a number of new features designed to help you make changes across accounts more efficiently and manage new ad features, such as Ad Sitelinks and high-end mobile targeting, at scale. We’ve highlighted key changes below. More details are available in the AdWords Editor Version 9.0 release notes.

AdWords Editor Version 9.0 highlights:

Scalably manage Ad Sitelinks
Version 9.0 provides full support for Ad Sitelinks, including downloading and uploading to your account, making edits, checking changes, and importing and exporting.

Improved Add/Update Multiple and Import CSV tools
When entering new data using the Add/Update Multiple tool, you can now enter your data with the columns in any order, assign the appropriate headers to each column, select the option to remember the order of your columns for your next import, and approve or cancel the changes in the account in one click. In addition, Import CSV now includes the option to Paste Text as well as to import From File.

Set high-end mobile targeting options
AdWords Editor now supports the ability to set campaigns to target high-end mobile devices (including Android, iPhone, iPad, and Palm) and carriers in Campaign Settings.

Better manage multiple accounts and MCCs
To help you better manage multiple accounts, AdWords Editor now offers sort and search for accounts, select and remove multiple accounts, and a new dropdown menu above the Account tree in AdWords Editor that displays recently accessed accounts, so you can quickly switch to any one of them.

In addition, when adding an MCC account to the Add New AdWords Account dialog, you can search within the list of available child accounts, display extra columns, and move up to a different level in the MCC account hierarchy.

More easily find and make bulk changes to negative keywords, placements, or audiences
To more easily locate and manage negative keywords, placements, or audiences in your account, we’ve changed the way we display Negatives in AdWords Editor. The Negatives tab has been removed, and you can instead toggle between displaying negative or positive keywords, placements, or audiences by clicking the Positives or Negatives switch on each item’s respective tab.

The Select Duplicates button is now available for negative keywords when in the Duplicate keywords view mode.

The next time you log into your AdWords Editor account, you'll be prompted to upgrade. You may also download Version 9.0 from the AdWords Editor website. After you install the new version of AdWords Editor, your accounts will need to be downloaded again. To preserve your comments and unposted changes, select the Backup then Upgrade option in the automatic upgrade prompt and save the backup file to your computer. Then, re-download your account and import the backup file to AdWords Editor.

For more information, check out the release notes and visit the AdWords Editor Help Center.



Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

AdWords should be a safe, fair, and trusted marketplace for both you and the users who click on your ads. That’s why many AdWords policies focus on transparency, user safety, and security.

On May 17th, we’ll be adding three requirements to our existing AdWords policies that cover disclosure and usage of personal information. These requirements will apply everywhere AdWords is available.

If your site requests payment, financial, or personal information from visitors, please review the new requirements and make any needed changes to avoid having your ads suspended.

1. Clear, accessible disclosure before visitors submit personal information
   Our existing policy requires you to clearly describe how any personal information you solicit will be used. Soon, we’ll require that your description must also be easily accessible before site visitors submit their details.
2. Option to discontinue direct communications
   In the same description of how personal information will be used, you’ll also be required to describe how people can opt out of future emails, phone calls, or other direct communications.
3. SSL when collecting payment and certain financial and personal information
   Many websites use what are known as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connections to encrypt sensitive information that travels between the user's browser and the website's servers. To help ensure user safety, AdWords policy will require all advertisers to use SSL when collecting payments and certain financial and personal information (like bank account and social security numbers).

For more details, check out the following resources:

• Specific personal and financial information governed by these policies
• Getting started with SSL

To stay current on all AdWords policy changes, please visit the AdWords Policy Change Log.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Today we have a post from Aitan Weinberg, product manager for AdWords remarketing:

We’ve always believed that display advertising has the potential to be smarter, better performing and more measurable. Today we’d like to shine a light on one of the quiet stars of the display world that is enabling this transformation: remarketing. Remarketing allows you to reach your website visitors with a relevant message as they browse other sites across the web. We rolled it out one year ago across the Google Display Network, and we think we have a hit on our hands. In 2010, the total number of advertisers using remarketing grew an average of 113% every quarter after launch. A few examples of how some of you have used remarketing to great effect:

• Yankee Candle Company used remarketing to re-engage shoppers and increased conversion rates by 600% while cutting cost-per-conversion in half.
• Lenovo PC manufacturers increased sales by 20% and lowered their overall expense-to-revenue ratio by 14% in a campaign that included remarketing and display across multiple networks.
• etrailer.com, an online towing parts retailer, saw twice the click-through-rate at a 75% lower cost-per-click with remarketing compared to their typical display advertising campaigns.

In the year since launch, we’ve boosted performance and scale with three key enhancements to make remarketing even more powerful for the largest to the smallest of advertisers. First, we now enable you to show a relevant ad right after a potential customer leaves your site, when our internal analysis shows they’re most likely to click. Second, we’ve improved the algorithm that helps determine, in real time, how much you should pay for each impression in order to maximize the possibility that a user will click on your ad. Finally, the growing reach of the Google Display Network means you can reach your customers on more and more sites across the web. On average, we reach 84% of the people on a typical remarketing list and we serve hundreds of billions of advertising impressions every month to over 500 million Internet users worldwide.

As we continue to show more relevant ads across more sites, this means more users and publishers benefit as well as advertisers.

• Publishers are seeing significant revenue lift from serving remarketing ads on their sites. Our studies have shown that a remarketing ad brings in nearly 2X the revenue as other display ads.
• Users have told us that they like the more targeted ad experience that remarketing provides. Marie DeOrio, Founder of Vintage Fashion Directory, calls remarketing ads “fascinating and fabulous. It’s that experience where ads don’t feel like ads. If they’re correctly targeted and it’s something you’re interested in, it’s valuable information.” Marie notes that she serves remarketing ads on her own website, vintagefashiondirectory.com as she believes that they "provide a better experience for users."

We’re not finished, either. In the coming months, we have plans to introduce a suite of new features that will make remarketing even smarter, faster, and more dynamic. We anticipate that interest in remarketing will only continue to grow, as advertisers, publishers and users continue to see the benefits, and as we continue to find new technologies that help satisfy the ultimate goal: showing the right ad to the right person at the right time.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew