AdWords MENA Blog

Available today: three ad innovations for a mobile-first world

2016-08-10T09:13:00.000+01:00

The shift to mobile is no longer happening, or will happen — the shift to mobile has happened. At the Google Performance Summit in May, we announced a completely new ad platform built from the ground up to help consumers and marketers succeed in this mobile-first world: expanded text ads and responsive ads bring to life the canvas you use to connect with consumers, while device bid adjustments provide more control and flexibility so you can optimize with greater precision.

Starting today, these innovations will begin rolling out in AdWords to all advertisers around the world.

Get started with expanded text ads

Earlier this year, we removed right-hand side ads to improve the search experience and make it consistent across mobile, desktop, and tablet. This helped pave the way for the biggest update to our ad creative since we introduced AdWords more than 15 years ago.

Expanded text ads are optimized for the screen sizes of the most popular smartphones and feature two headlines, each with 30 characters, and one long 80-character description line. That’s nearly 50% more ad text for you to highlight your products and services.


Standard text ad	Expanded text ad

Our research shows longer ad headlines are more useful to mobile users because they provide additional information about your business before they click your ad. In fact, here are some early success stories from advertisers who have started using expanded text ads:

	“Working closely with our agency Adlucent, Guitar Center was one of the first to adopt expanded text ads. With the additional ad space, we’re now able to highlight our promotions and sales while preserving our core brand message — like we did for the 4th of July. Our non-brand campaigns alone have seen more than a 2x increase in CTR.” — Robert Spears, Digital Marketing Director at Guitar Center
	"Expanded text ads represent a tremendous opportunity for L'Oréal and our agency iCrossing. We’re now able to showcase the breadth and depth of our beauty products, and build brand love — all from a single ad creative. So far, expanded text ads have helped us deliver a 92% increase in click-through rate for one of our brands, compared to our old text ads.” — Kirsty Woolley, Multi Channel Acquisition Manager at L'Oréal Luxe
	“In such a competitive industry like telecom, it was critical for EE and our agency MEC to implement expanded text ads as quickly as possible. From the start, we utilized the additional ad text to tell a better brand story and provide more information for consumers. By combining our ‘50% faster network’ value proposition with details around EE’s competitive pricing and packages, we’ve been able to increase clickthrough rates by up to 79%.” — Sam Richardson, Digital Media Executive, EE
	“Kueski jumped at the opportunity to use expanded text ads and immediately implemented a strategy across our best performing campaigns. By highlighting the speed of our service, and safety and security of our platform, we were able to take advantage of the additional ad space and deliver amazing results, including an 18% increase in conversion rate for generic keyword campaigns.” — Rodolfo Orozco, User Acquisition Manager at Kueski

It’s important for advertisers to take advantage of expanded text ads as soon as possible, especially with back to school and the holiday season right around the corner. To help you get started, we’ve published a best practices guide that walks through tips and tricks for creating and optimizing expanded text ads. Specifically:

	Create and test multiple expanded text ads for each ad group, and evaluate performance before pausing or deleting your standard text ads
	Remember to include important information about your business and other tried-and-true components from your standard text ads, like price and keyword insertion
	Focus on your headlines: they’re the most prominent part of your text ad

AdWords Editor and the AdWords API also support expanded text ads, which means you can create and edit your ads in bulk to help save time. If you use leading 3rd-party tools to manage your ads, DoubleClick Search, Kenshoo, and Marin Software all support expanded text ads as well.

Starting on October 26th, 2016, you’ll no longer be able to create or edit standard text ads — meaning you’ll only be able to create and edit text ads using the expanded text ads format after this date. Existing standard text ads will continue to serve alongside expanded text ads.

Create responsive ads for display

In a mobile-first world, display ads need to fit seamlessly within the websites and apps people visit, while delivering a consistent experience across devices. We builtresponsive ads for display to help your ads adapt to the increasingly diverse mix of content types and screen sizes. Provide 25-character and 90-character headlines, a 90-character description, an image, and a URL, and Google designs ads that fit beautifully across more than two million apps and websites on the Google Display Network (GDN). Responsive ads also unlock new native inventory so you can engage consumers with ads that match the look and feel of the website or app they’re using.

JustFab.de, a fashion retailer, wanted to reach more shoppers as they browsed content online. JustFab provided headlines featuring its latest promotions, descriptions highlighting popular products like capri pants and strappy sandals, and images of its top selling items — and Google designed ads that fit anywhere on the GDN. As a result, JustFab drove a 56% higher conversion rate and a 55% decrease in CPA.

Set device bid adjustments

As we re-imagine how ads look in a mobile-first world, it’s also important to have more flexible tools that help you optimize device-level performance. New device bid adjustments allow you to maintain the efficiency of managing a consolidated campaign that reaches consumers across devices while giving you more control to set individual bid adjustments for each device type — mobile devices, computers, and tablets. Our updated best practices guide can help you evaluate your bidding strategy and set accurate performance targets that reflect the full value of mobile. You can also join us for a Hangout on Air at 9am PDT/12pm EDT on August 9th, 2016 for a live Q&A about device bid adjustments with Google product experts. Register here.

While device bid adjustments enable you to optimize with greater precision, you still need to factor in other signals which impact performance, like location, time of day, and audience. To optimize at scale across this wide range of contextual signals, you should take advantage of automated bidding. Smart Bidding utilizes the power of Google’s machine learning to set more informed bids and help you get the most out of your marketing budget. The latest Smart Bidding innovations are available in both AdWordsand DoubleClick Search. In the coming weeks, you’ll also be able to set device-specific CPA goals with Target CPA Smart Bidding in AdWords.

The way consumers use technology to connect with the world around them has changed. As a result, we’ve re-designed AdWords, from ad formats to bidding, to help you reach potential customers in more meaningful and relevant ways. We’re excited to undertake this journey with you and look forward to hearing your feedback.

Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President, Ads and Commerce

Ads and analytics innovations for a mobile-first world

2016-05-27T09:18:00.002+01:00

The shift to mobile is no longer a change on the horizon. It’s here.

Every year, there are trillions of searches on Google and over half of those searches happen on mobile. And across the millions of websites using Google Analytics today, we're seeing more than half of all web traffic now coming from smartphones and tablets.

When we asked people to describe the role smartphones play in their lives, they used phrases like "attached to my hip", "butler" and "lifeline." Smartphones have become the companion that people turn to in I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-do and I want-to-buy moments throughout the day.

To help marketers succeed in this mobile-first world, we have redesigned AdWords -- from the ground-up -- and re-thought everything from creatives and bidding, to workflow and measurement.

We’re also making it easier for marketers to bridge the digital and physical worlds. With location-related mobile searches growing 50% faster than all mobile searches, it’s clear that consumers are moving seamlessly between online and offline experiences. So it’s important to help marketers think this way too.

It was incredibly exciting to share new innovations with advertisers this morning at the Google Performance Summit. Below are highlights from today’s announcements. You can watch a replay of the full program here.

AdWords re-imagined for the mobile-first world

Over the last several years, we’ve discovered that accounting for mobile and designing for mobile-first are two very different things. That’s why we’ve completely transformed how we think about and build AdWords.

In order to enable advertisers and developers to drive more downloads of mobile apps -- across Google properties -- we built Universal App Campaigns. To date, Universal App Campaigns has delivered more than 2 billion downloads for advertisers, across Google Search, Google Play, YouTube, and the Google Display Network. And last week at Google I/O, we announced this campaign type is now available on iOS.

Today, we are announcing even broader changes to advertising with Google, from how text and display ads work, to the way advertisers optimize campaigns.

What do text ads look like in the mobile-first world? Mobile has revolutionized the canvas where ads live. Earlier this year, we removed right-hand side ads on desktop to improve the search experience and make it more consistent across devices. This paved the way for us to introduce the biggest changes to our text ads since AdWords launched fifteen years ago.

Optimized for screen sizes of the most popular smartphones, new expanded text ads in AdWords provide more ad space so you can showcase more information about your products and services before the click. Here are the key changes:

These upgrades help your ads work harder across screens, especially for the on-the-go mobile consumer that wants to know exactly what you offer before tapping into your website.

Based on early testing, some advertisers have reported increases in clickthrough rates of up to 20% compared to current text ads. We encourage you to start planning for this upgrade before it rolls out later this year.
How do display ads look in a mobile-first world? From sites to apps to videos, mobile has unlocked a universe of new spaces to reach consumers. Responsive ads for display adapt to the diverse content across the more than two million publisher sites and apps on the Google Display Network (GDN). They also unlock new native inventory so you can engage consumers with ads that match the look and feel of the content they’re browsing. Simply provide headlines, a description, an image, and a URL -- and Google will automatically design these beautiful responsive ads.

Responsive ads for display adapt to fit any app or site on the GDN.

We’re also extending the reach of GDN remarketing campaigns by giving you access to cross-exchange inventory, which includes more websites and apps around the world. With this inventory, European airline SAS drove about 20% more conversions at a similar CPA for its remarketing campaigns. Learn more

What does bidding look like in a mobile-first world? Marketers need more control and flexibility to optimize bids on specific devices. In the next few months, you’ll be able to set individual bid adjustments for each device type -- mobile, desktop and tablet. This lets you anchor your base keyword bid to the device most valuable to your business and then set bid adjustments for each of the other devices. You will also have a wider range to adjust bids, up to +900%. With more controls, you can now optimize with greater precision while keeping things simple with a single campaign that reaches consumers across devices.

Mobile is local, bridging digital and physical worlds for marketers

Nearly one third of all mobile searches are related to location. People’s online and offline worlds are colliding — whether you’re researching restaurant ideas for dinner on Friday night or looking for a store that sells rain boots in your size.

To help advertisers reach consumers searching for physical business locations, we’re introducing new local search ads across Google.com and Google Maps. Advertisers using location extensions will be able to prominently showcase their business locations when consumers search for things like “shoe store” or “car repair near me.” Learn more

We’re also investing in more branded, customized experiences for businesses on Google Maps -- geared towards helping you increase store visits. First, we’re experimenting with a variety of ad formats on Maps that make it easier for users to find businesses as they navigate the world around them. For example, Maps users may start to see promoted pins for nearby coffee shops, gas stations or lunch spots along their driving route. Local business pages are also getting a brand new look -- to encourage consumers to explore your store before they even arrive, we’re adding new features like special offers and the ability to browse product inventory.

Ads in Maps : promoted pin and business page

With online ads bringing more people to your storefronts, how do you measure the impact?

AdWords is the largest online-to-offline ad measurement solution in the world. In fact, since AdWords store visits were introduced two years ago, advertisers have measured over 1 billion store visits globally.

Businesses across a variety of industries around the world are using insights from AdWords store visits to measure the impact of online ads on offline activity. Nissan UK discovered that 6% of mobile ad clicks result in a trip to a dealership, delivering an estimated 25x return on investment. See the full story here.

Succeeding in a mobile-first world

As consumers live their lives online and blur the lines between online and offline, it’s more important than ever to build your business for mobile. Google’s building for this mobile-first world as well and we’re excited to go on this journey with you.

To see the full range of ads and analytics innovations announced, watch the Google Performance Summit keynote here. Also check out the new AdWords Marketing Goals site to learn how to use ads solutions to meet your business objectives.

Posted by: Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President, Ads and CommercePost contentPosted by SoAndSo, SoAndSo Team

Introducing the AdWords app for iOS

2016-02-26T19:43:00.003+00:00

Today, we’re rolling out the AdWords app on iOS to all AdWords customers globally – you can download it from the App Store. With the AdWords app, many campaign activities can now be managed while you’re on the go from the convenience of your iPhone:

Monitor campaign performance like clicks, CTR and CPC

Update bids and budgets

Act on suggestions that may help improve campaign performance

Get real-time alerts and notifications about your billing and ad status

Call a Google expert

Customers like The Honest Company, MuleSoft and PMG use the AdWords app to easily manage their campaigns, stay in touch with the needs of their customers and quickly access important business insights – from anywhere. “Amidst the hectic holiday festivities, this app saved me from having to leave the dinner table to monitor performance and make quick changes to my accounts. That meant more time with my family. I'm excited for what's to come!”

– Josh Franklin, Manager, Search Marketing, The Honest Company

“The app helps me access high level data on the go which can come in handy in the boardroom, or anytime I need to quickly understand how our campaigns are performing. Also, having the ability to make adjustments to our campaigns – such as changing bids and budget – invaluable.”

– Nima Asrar Haghighi, Director, Digital Marketing & Analytics, MuleSoft

“The consumer shift to mobile means our retail clients' campaigns have to be responsive to meet the needs of consumers at all times of the day. The app makes it easy for us to address issues without being chained to our laptops. PMG has been able to deliver prompt account adjustments from campaign to keyword level for our clients, as well as keep our customer satisfaction rates high.”

– Kyle Knox, Account Manager, PMG

Get started

You can learn more about the AdWords app in the AdWords Help Centre.

Posted by Sugeeti Kochhar, Product Manager, AdWords

Share Google Analytics data and remarketing lists more efficiently using manager accounts (MCC)

2015-12-16T10:33:00.000+00:00

From monitoring account performance at scale to making cross-account campaign changes, manager accounts help many of the most sophisticated AdWords advertisers get more done in less time. To deliver more insightful reporting and scale your remarketing efforts, we’re introducing two new enhancements to manager accounts: Google Analytics account linking, and remarketing tag and list sharing.

Access your data with a single link

You can now link your Google Analytics or Google Analytics Premium account directly to your AdWords manager account using the new setup wizard in AdWords under Account Settings. This streamlined workflow for linking accounts eliminates the need to link each of your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts individually.

Now when you import your goals, website metrics, remarketing lists, or other data from Google Analytics, you'll only need to do it once. And whenever you add a new AdWords account to your manager account, it will automatically be linked with the same Analytics properties.

These enhancements save time so you can focus on optimizing your campaigns. You can learn more about linking your Google Analytics account into your manager account in the AdWords Help Center.

Scale your remarketing strategy

Many advertisers are seeing tremendous success re-engaging customers and finding new ones using Display remarketing, remarketing lists for search ads, and similar audiences. To help scale these efforts across the AdWords accounts you manage, you now have options for creating and sharing remarketing lists directly in your manager account from the new “Audiences” view, including any lists imported from Google Analytics or Customer Match.

You can also create remarketing lists using a manager-level remarketing tag and use them across your managed accounts. This eliminates the need to retag your website and manage multiple lists in each AdWords account. If any of your managed accounts have their own lists, they can be made available for use in your other managed accounts.

These enhancements make it easier and faster than ever before to get your remarketing strategy up and running. You can learn more about sharing remarketing tags and lists in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Vishal Goenka, Senior Product Manager, AdWords

Introducing new interactive ads to drive app installs

2015-12-04T08:00:00.000+00:00

Developers are constantly looking for new ways to bring users to their apps. But because people’s attention on mobile is becoming shorter and more intent-rich, finding engaged users of your app is an ongoing challenge -- both before and after an install. In fact, we found that one in four installed apps is never even used. We’ve focused our efforts on offering developers advertising tools that engage users and showcase an app at its best. We recently redesigned one of our in-app ad formats, and are building on our desire to create beautiful app ad experiences. That’s why today we’re introducing two new rich, immersive ad formats to our growing suite of creative app install solutions.

Play a game within an ad with Trial Run Ads

Trial Run Ads are an app ad format that lets a user play a game for up to 60 seconds by streaming content from the app before downloading. The immersive demo increases the likelihood that an install is coming from someone who enjoys playing the game. Users get a taste of the game before going through the download process, and the app developer attracts better qualified users who’ve chosen the game based on their experiences in the app.

Trial Run Ads provide:

Ultra-immersive and delightful ads designed for games
The opportunity for gamers to trial before download
More relevant ad clicks, app downloads, and pre-qualified app users

Cookie Jam’s Trial Run Ad

Get ultra-creative with customized mobile ads

We’re also launching a beta for Interactive Interstitial ads, which are HTML5 ads that offer a completely customized user experience tailored to each advertiser's app. They give advertisers creative freedom to use HTML5 instead of standard templates and pull in data dynamically. Diversity potential is high with this format and it's not limited to just gaming apps. Interactive Interstitials offer a truly custom experience that can include your app’s value proposition and the functionalities you want to highlight, all painted in your personal branding strategy. This is particularly valuable for advertisers who are looking for higher user engagement in installers.

Interactive Interstitials provide:

A beautiful and flexible canvas for the advertiser to become truly creative
Unique testing and optimization capabilities
The opportunity to bring a piece of the app experience to the user before download
Unique brand building possibilities

Marketers are already taking advantage of these engaging ads to drive app installs. Zalora built an ad that allowed users to swipe to discover an exclusive offer.

Zalora’s Interactive Interstitial allows users to use a finger to swipe

a screen to discover a special promotion.

Customization can be as big or small as you want - from adjusting standard templates to developing a fully custom creative. Marketers can also use their live app content to create compelling, real time ad formats. With more control over layout and interaction, you can A/B test creatives and try various CTAs to increase conversions. Rather than just telling a user about your app, you can offer them an experience unique to your app that inspires them to want to spend time with your app.

Advertisers can use interactive Interstitials to showcase their latest product offerings through galleries, highlight elements of their personal branding, and to more powerfully demonstrate the value of their app before someone installs.

Zalora showcases a gallery of products that users can swipe through in its Interactive Interstitial ad.

We understand that experiences on mobile need to be made for mobile, and an ad is no different. We’re continually exploring new and better ways to build out interactive formats for the small screen.

Trial Run Ads and Interactive Interstitials are currently in beta and available to a limited set of advertisers. Reach out to your account manager if you are interested in joining the betas.

Posted by Sissie Hsiao, Director of Product, Display and Pasha Nahass, Product Manager, Display

Enhancing the Google Display Network with new innovations

2015-10-13T17:15:00.000+01:00

Consumers have higher expectations than ever because of mobile — they want everything right, and they want everything right away. To connect with consumers in the intent-rich moments when they want to buy, find or do something, marketers are increasingly turning to programmatic advertising — which uses data and technology to reach the right person at the right time. The Google Display Network (GDN) brings this sophisticated technology to all advertisers so you can be there in the moments that matter the most for your brand.

Today we’re introducing several tools that further enhance what the GDN offers for display advertisers.

More transparency: take action with AdWords audience insights
When you understand your customers well — like their age, location, and interests — you can make more informed decisions about your marketing programs. AdWords audience insights give advertisers aggregate information about people on your remarketing lists, including demographics, interests, locations, and device usage.¹ Since these reports are available right in AdWords, you can quickly and easily take action on the insights. For example, if most people who converted on your site are jazz enthusiasts, you may wish to add this affinity audience to your campaign. Or, if many of your customers are females between the ages of 25 and 34, you might want to customize your ad creative to appeal to this demographic. Learn more.

Example: AdWords audience insights shows 30% of customers on this remarketing list are 25-34 years old
compared to an average of 19.9% in the US.

BASE, a Belgian telecommunications company, used AdWords audience insights and discovered cycling enthusiasts were twice as likely as the average customer to buy a mobile phone subscription. Based on this insight, BASE engaged with cycling enthusiasts on the GDN and doubled its conversions. BASE now uses AdWords audience insights to inform its campaigns, online and offline.

Sony PlayStation discovered classical music enthusiasts were likely to engage with its brand using AdWords audience insights. Sony then connected with this audience on the GDN and drove a 31% higher view-through rate than with its average affinity audience. This allowed Sony to capture more views for its budget. Now, Sony uses AdWords audience insights to uncover the best audiences for its new campaigns.

More accountability: the GDN is going 100% viewable
Most display ads — 56% in fact — never had a chance to be viewed because they were below the fold, scrolled out of view, or in a background tab. Soon, we’ll make the GDN one of the only media platforms where advertisers don’t pay for an ad impression unless it was viewable. This means your media dollars will only be spent where they can have impact. In the next few months, all campaigns that buy on a CPM basis will be upgraded to be viewable CPM (vCPM).

More impact: a fresh approach to dynamic remarketing ads
People use devices of varying shapes and sizes, engaging with content that can be horizontal, vertical, tapped, swiped or pinched. This means ads must be flexible so they can show across varying placements. Today, we introduced enhancements to dynamic remarketing so ads can be automatically re-shaped and re-sized to fit all device types. Ads are also touched up to look great on any mobile or desktop site, or app. For example, if your logo is predominantly blue and yellow, AdWords may use these colors to shade the border and background of your ad. We’ll even try out varying color combinations and use the ones that drive the best performance. As always, you have control to make changes to these selections based on your personal style and preferences.

Meeting consumer expectations requires technology to answer their needs the moment they have them, wherever they are, whatever kind of device or screen they are using. Programmatic advertising ensures that brands are there in those important moments when decisions are made and preferences are shaped. Our hope is that the GDN brings this enterprise-level technology to all advertisers so you can be there at the moments when it matters most for your brand.

Posted by Brad Bender, VP of Product Management, Google Display Network

1 All insights are based on anonymized, aggregated data.

Google brings you closer to your customers in the moments that matter

2015-10-06T10:35:00.002+01:00

Mobile has changed the game for both consumers and brands. Consumer expectations for immediacy and relevance are higher than ever, and successful brands are those that connect with people in the moments that matter most to them -- the I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-do, and I-want-to-buy moments. Google is a company built on meeting people’s needs in the moment. Through our ads innovations, we’ve brought that ability to businesses large and small.

On Monday afternoon at Advertising Week’s Times Center Stage, I’ll be announcing two new products, Customer Match and Universal App Campaigns, to help you be there and be relevant in those intent-rich moments that truly matter.

Reach your most valuable customers with Customer Match

70% of online consumers agree that the quality, timing, and relevance of a brand’s message influences their perception of a brand.¹ Google is in a unique position to connect consumers with your business in the most relevant ways. Whether they’re searching on Google, checking promotions on Gmail, or watching videos on YouTube, we can deliver the most relevant information based on what they’re doing, wherever they are, when they’re looking, and on any device they’re using. Today, we’re building on these capabilities with new ads innovations to deliver even more relevance.

When it comes to your most valuable customers, they expect even more from you. And now, Google can help you reach customers that you already have a relationship with -- like those in your loyalty program or who have made a previous purchase -- in ways that are most relevant to their intent and context.

Customer Match is a new product designed to help you reach your highest-value customers on Google Search, YouTube, and Gmail -- when it matters most. Customer Match allows you to upload a list of email addresses, which can be matched to signed-in users on Google in a secure and privacy-safe way. From there, you can build campaigns and ads specifically designed to reach your audience. Users can control the ads they see, including Customer Match ads, by opting out of personalized ads or by muting or blocking ads from individual advertisers through Google Ads Settings.

Let's say you’re a travel brand. You can now reach people who have joined your rewards program as they plan their next trip. For example, when these rewards members search for “non-stop flights to new york” on Google.com, you can show relevant ads at the top of their search results on any device right when they’re looking to fly to New York. And when those members are watching their favorite videos on YouTube or catching up on Gmail, you can show ads that inspire them to plan their next trip.

Using Customer Match, you can also generate Similar Audiences to reach new customers on YouTube and Gmail who are likely to be interested in your products and services. For example, you can drive awareness on YouTube for new non-stop flights by showing TrueView ads to prospective customers who have similar interests and characteristics to your rewards members.

With Customer Match, your brand is right there, with the right message, at the moment your customer is most receptive. Only Google can help you do this to delight your most loyal customers in the moments that truly matter.

Customer Match and Similar Audiences will be rolling out to all advertisers over the next few weeks. Learn More.

Promote your apps with unparalleled reach

People discover new apps in many ways: online searches, recommendations while watching their favorite videos, and in-app suggestions. If your business has an app, you need a scalable way to reach the customers that are most likely to install your app -- across a variety of channels.

Starting today, Universal App Campaigns will be available to all developers and advertisers as a new AdWords campaign type that helps you connect with app users across Google Search, Google Play, YouTube, and the Google Display Network (GDN). In just a few simple steps, you can promote your app with unparalleled reach across the world’s largest network and platforms.

Let’s say you’ve built an adventure game. With Universal App Campaigns, you have unparalleled reach: you can drive installs on YouTube, the platform with 1B+ users who watch hundreds of millions of hours of content everyday. Your ads can also reach specific audiences across 650K apps and 2M+ websites in the GDN. And importantly, Universal App Campaigns tap into intent-rich searches like “adventure games” and “puzzle games” that are happening throughout the day on Google Search and Google Play so your app can be seen when people are looking to download something new.

All you need to do is give us your desired cost-per-install and we do the rest. Universal App Campaigns are the one-stop-shop campaign type that scales your reach and maximizes Android app installs across Google’s entire suite of ad platforms. We’ve automated campaign set-up by pulling in your app images, videos, and app description directly from your Google Play store listing to generate ad formats that look amazing wherever they’re placed.

From there, our systems will optimize your campaigns using dynamic learning to maximize app install volume at your target cost-per-install. By testing different versions of your ad text and app images in each of the eligible Google networks, we determine the highest-performing variations so only your best ads show. Learn more.

The energy and buzz at Advertising Week 2015 (Join the conversation) reinforces what an exciting time it is to be a marketer. I’m privileged to get to build products that help brands tell their stories and connect with consumers in the moments that really matter to them.

Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President, Ads and Commerce

The power of video meets the capabilities of AdWords – all TrueView campaigns now in AdWords

2015-10-06T10:23:00.001+01:00

You know how you have to go to a special section within AdWords to create and manage your TrueView video campaigns? And jump back and forth when you want to report and optimize across all your campaigns? And you still can’t take advantage of AdWords bulk tools for your video campaigns? Well, good news, friends: those days are now over. TrueView is joining Search, Display, and Shopping campaigns within the core AdWords interface.

With the simplicity of a single interface and a more consistent experience, AdWords makes it easier for you to optimize across campaign types. Plus, you can take advantage of powerful bulk management tools to save time and effort when working on multiple TrueView campaigns. And now that all campaign types share the same structure, we can bring you new features for video, faster than ever before.

Now if you’ll follow us, we’d love to show you around…

In the top left corner, you can find the campaign type selector. This is useful to see only campaigns of a certain type. For instance, selecting “Video” gives you a view of your campaigns that looks similar to AdWords for video – meaning you’ll see only the tabs and columns that are most relevant for managing video campaigns. And best of all, we remember your column preferences whenever you switch among views, so you don’t need to change them around each time you toggle campaign types.

Campaign type selector

We’re also replacing targeting groups with ad groups, the basic building blocks for Search, Display, and Shopping campaigns. Now every ad group will have a single TrueView format, either in-stream or in-display. Though each ad group has only one format, campaigns can have multiple ad groups so you can still run both in-stream and in-display ads in the same campaign. To create a new campaign, just click the +CAMPAIGN button, click the newVideo campaign type, and then create new ad groups within each campaign by clicking +AD GROUP.

Ad group creation

Now that TrueView has joined the party in AdWords, you’ll have access to a trove of goodies designed to help you manage, optimize, and report on accounts with lots of campaigns. For instance, bulk UI editing lets you modify information for multiple campaigns at once – directly from the UI, and bulk uploads let you download a snapshot of your campaigns, make changes en masse, and upload the changes live to your account. And report scheduling gives you the ability to set up a schedule for reports to run automatically, and have them emailed regularly to account users.

Bulk edits

Reporting for video campaigns is getting more powerful as well, as you’ll now have the ability to filter your results to isolate things like campaign name, label, cost, and conversions.

Filters

You’ll also see popular video features in familiar places in AdWords. For example, video remarketing is now in theAdWords shared library and YouTube account linking is in the Linked accounts section. Plus you’ll be able to see analytics for your video ads within the new "Videos" tab, and manage your targeting within the "Video targeting" tab.

Creating remarketing lists

Linking YouTube channels

Customers who’ve previewed the new interface found it saves them time and offers more powerful reporting. "As avid users of TrueView, we were eager to beta test the new TrueView in AdWords, and see how the change impacted our most complex campaign setups," said Pixability CTO Andreas Goeldi. "The increased functionality allows for improved workflow, better reporting, and significant time saved."

Whether your goals are to drive direct response or to build your brand, you now have a single, unified tool to address your full range of marketing goals. Starting today, you’ll be able to upgrade your campaigns to the new ad group structure, and say goodbye to those days of going to “All Video Campaigns” to get to your TrueView campaigns. To upgrade, just head to AdWords for video by clicking All video campaigns (once more, for old time’s sake) and click into the Upgrade Center to easily switch over all your campaigns in one fell swoop. And don’t worry – all your historical stats and targeting will carry over (just drill down to the campaign level to see them). If you’d rather not upgrade your campaigns yourself, no problem – we’ll automatically upgrade your campaigns, starting in six weeks.

And if you’re a video type of person (we certainly are!), check out all the content of this blog post in video form here.

For more information, check out the AdWords Help Center.

Search Ads on Google Play and new app promo tools roll out to advertisers and developers

2015-08-03T08:28:00.004+01:00

People turn to their phones billions of times a day for I want-to-know, I want-to-go, I want-to-do, and I want-to-buy moments. And in these intent-rich moments, they often turn to apps to get what they need. Runners may search for a “mileage tracker” app as they start training for a marathon, foodies may look for “restaurant” apps to check out the trendiest new places in town, and frequent fliers may search for “top games” to play before a long flight. In fact, search is one of the biggest drivers of app installs in the Play Store.

That’s why we’re investing in new ways to help people discover apps with Search Ads on Google Play and innovating on new technologies to simplify campaign management and improve measurement for developers.

They’ve arrived: Search Ads on Google Play

Search Ads on Google Play will begin to roll out today to all advertisers and developers who use Search app installcampaigns on AdWords.

Google Play reaches more than 1 billion people on Android devices in more than 190 countries. With such an extensive reach, Search Ads on Google Play can provide consumers new ways to discover apps that they otherwise might have missed and help developers drive more awareness of their apps.

Companies like Booking.com and Nordeus are already extending their app promotion strategy to include showing ads on the Play Store.

Tomislav Mihajlović, CMO of Nordeus shared that, "Search has already been a key component of our app promotion strategy to reach high-quality users. With new Search Ads on Google Play, we have an even bigger opportunity to connect with people in the moments they’re looking for new apps to download. We are already seeing significantly more app installs from Search with the addition of Google Play inventory for our game Top Eleven.”

Improved conversion tracking for Android

As we expand the opportunities for developers to promote their apps, we’re also committed to providing conversion tracking tools that work seamlessly across channels and align with whichever measurement solution a developer chooses to use. That’s why we’re introducing Android first app opens, a new conversion tracking solution that measures when a user first opens an app after clicking on an ad and completing an Android app install. In addition to providing app conversion tracking across Search, Display and YouTube, this new solution also allows developers to better align the conversion volume they see in AdWords with the data they see in a third-party measurement solution. First app opens are the standard conversion type for third-party solutions, so we’re working with key partners like Tune, AppsFlyer, Kochava, Adjust and Apsalar to ensure data consistency and give developers the freedom to use reporting and optimization features across AdWords and third-party solutions of their choice.

An even easier way to scale your app install ads across Google networks

In a few weeks, Universal App Campaigns will make it even easier to promote your apps on Google Play and across all Google properties, including: Search, YouTube, the AdMob in-app network, and the 2M+ sites on the Google Display Network. Simply let us know what your ad will say, who you want to reach, your budget and target cost-per-install, and we’ll do the rest.

As the apps ecosystem continues to grow, we’re dedicated to creating products that help developers get their apps to the users who will love them. From adding search ads to Google Play, to improving Android conversion tracking and simplifying campaign management with Universal App Campaigns, we hope these new tools will bring even more success to our app developer community.

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Director, Product Management, Mobile Search Ads

Introducing more powerful Dynamic Search Ads, built for your business

2015-08-03T08:19:00.000+01:00

Whether it’s “hotels near me” or “nearby hotels,” people often search for the same things differently. So reaching your customers in the moments that matter can sometimes be a moving target. In fact, of the billions of searches made on Google every day, 15% of them have never been seen before.¹ Couple that with shifting product inventory and content hidden deep within your website, people don’t always find what they’re looking for. That’s why three years ago we introduced Dynamic Search Ads (DSA).

Today, we’re excited to announce that DSA has been enhanced and retooled from the ground up, and is now available to all advertisers globally.

What’s Dynamic Search Ads?

DSA helps you reach your customers with the right information, in the moments they’re searching -- without the need to manage keywords. Using Google’s organic web crawling technology, DSA indexes your website to determine which searches to show ads for. If a search is relevant to the content on your website, Google will automatically create an ad to enter into the auction. Your ads’ headlines and landing pages are generated based on the products and services you offer, and what people are searching for. These highly targeted ads also complement other AdWords campaigns by delivering value for relevant searches that aren’t covered by existing keywords.

Show ads based on your website

Now, there’s an even more powerful way for you to reach your customers. In addition to crawling and indexing your website, DSA now organizes your website content into recommended categories for targeting your ads. Recommended categories are customized to your products and services, for example “furniture,” and only trigger ads for search queries where you have a relevant landing page. Each category can also be refined to show additional, more specific categories.

Recommended categories for DSA

For example, you might drill into the recommended category for “furniture” to advertise just your “dining room furniture” or “living room furniture.” Select as many or as few categories as you want, or select the option to show ads based on your entire website.

Ad previews and insightful recommendations

Once you’ve selected your categories, we’ve added new tools to provide more transparency into how your ads will show. For each recommended category, you’ll now see samples of the search queries you’ll be targeting, the text ads that’ll appear, and the pages your customers will land on. To help get your campaign started, a recommended bid is also calculated for each category. These recommendations are based on the performance of your existing keywords that are targeting similar search queries.

Many customers have seen early success with these enhancements to Dynamic Search Ads.

As a global player, trivago constantly faced the challenge of covering their huge hotel inventory throughout all markets. DSA and the new categories allowed them to do just that, even in markets with limited resources. Leveraging the scalability of DSA, trivago was able to roll out DSA to over 25 markets in a short period of time.

Hayneedle.com, one of the nation’s largest online retailers, helped beta test DSA. They used their new recommended categories to deliver a 5% incremental lift in qualified search traffic to their website.

Immense reach with incredible ease

DSA is now more powerful than ever -- and it takes less than 10 minutes to set up your first campaign. An improved workflow guides you through campaign creation, which includes a more intuitive way to ensure your ad templates remain relevant to your dynamic ad targets.

You can learn more about Dynamic Search Ads in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Jen Huang, Senior Product Manager, AdWords

¹Internal Google data.

Reminder: Upgrade your URLs by July 1, 2015

2015-06-28T10:02:00.001+01:00

In February, we announced Upgraded URLs - a faster and easier way to manage your URLs in AdWords. With Upgraded URLs, you’ll be able to manage your landing page and tracking information separately using the new final URL and tracking template fields. Check out this video to learn more about the benefits of Upgraded URLs.

Starting on July 1st, all advertisers will need to start using Upgraded URLs in place of destination URLs. If you’ve already updated your URLs to Upgraded URLs, then you’re all set and no further action is required. If you haven’t upgraded yet, read on to find out what will happen to your ads¹ and URLs starting July 1, 2015, and your options for the upgrade.

What happens starting July 1, 2015

Starting on July 1st, please prepare for the following changes:

Destination URLs can no longer be edited or created. Any new URLs will need to be created using the newUpgraded URL fields.
Destination URLs will be automatically moved to the new final URL field for any ad groups in your account that do not contain cross-domain redirect URLs.² In your AdWords account, you will receive an alert informing you of any remaining ad groups that were not upgraded.
Any ads with destination URLs that have not been updated to Upgraded URLs will stop serving in a few months. We’ll let you know 30 days before your ads stop serving by email and with an alert in your account.

Frequently asked questions

See answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about the upgrade below.

Q: Do I need to upgrade if I don’t use URL tracking, or if I only use auto-tagging?

A: No, you can wait for the auto-upgrade starting on July 1st. Our system will automatically move your destination URLs into the new final URL fields, and your reporting columns will update to reflect these changes. During the auto-upgrade, your ad performance statistics will not be reset, and your ads will not be required to go through policy review.

Q: Which URL types will not automatically be upgraded and eventually stop serving?

A: URLs that fall under this category include those that contain the following: cross-domain redirects, the “{copy}” ValueTrack parameter, tracking parameters using “{}” that are not an AdWords ValueTrack parameter, or a domain different from the one used in your ad’s display URL. Please manually upgrade these URLs prior to July 1st.

Q: How do I upgrade my cross-domain URLs?

A: Use the basic or advanced method with help from our upgrade guide for these URLs, making sure to upgrade both your paused and active URLs. Please work with your third party tool provider if you need help.

Q: Will my ad stats be reset during the upgrade?

A: To preserve your ad stats, use the automated or basic upgrade methods, or wait for our system to auto-upgrade your URLs. Your performance statistics will be retained and your ads will not need to go through policy review.

If you don’t mind re-setting your ads stats and taking full advantage of the benefits of Upgraded URLs, then use the advanced upgrade method. This lets you use the new tracking templates and theValueTrack parameters. Any changes made after this upgrade will not reset your ad stats.

As a reminder, you can still access all historical performance statistics for your removed ads through your AdWords reports.

Q: I use dynamic tracking in my URLs, what do I need to do?

A: You will need to manually upgrade your URLs using the basic upgrade method before July 1st.Learn more.

For additional details, please see the FAQ on our upgrade guide.

Help with the upgrade

We know that this update requires some work from you, and we’re here to help. Here are some resources to help you pick the best upgrade option and guide you through the process.

Upgrade guide: learn how to upgrade your URLs at https://g.co/ads/upgradedurls
AdWords Editor 11.1: use Editor to upgrade your URLs
HOA: watch step-by-step instructions for upgrading your URLs using bulksheets
URL builder: build URLs using the new Upgraded URLs format
URL tester: test your landing pages and tracking templates

We look forward to your continued success with AdWords. Please contact us at any time for help with the upgrade.

Posted by Leo Sei, Product Manager, Google AdWords

¹Everywhere we say ads, we also mean URLs used in keywords, sitelinks, auto-targets, and other targeting options available for the Search Network, Display Network and Shopping.

²Destination URLs using cross domain redirects - meaning your URLs redirect to a site other than your domain - are not eligible for the auto-upgrade. You must manually upgrade your URLs with help from the upgrade guide.

Introducing cross-account campaign management and reporting enhancements for manager accounts (MCC)

2015-06-28T09:58:00.000+01:00

Designed with some of our most sophisticated advertisers in mind, an AdWords manager account is a powerful tool for monitoring and managing multiple accounts. To help save you time and provide more visibility into account performance, we’re introducing a number of exciting enhancements, including cross-account campaign management, powerful reporting tools, and improved account navigation.

Manage your campaigns at scale

Creating reports and making quick changes to campaigns across multiple accounts can be incredibly time consuming. To help you manage and report on all of your campaigns at scale, from a single view, we’ve added a new “Campaigns” view to the manager account dashboard.

The campaign-level actions you’re familiar with at the individual account level are now available at the manager account level. You can add columns, apply segments, and set filters to report on campaign performance for up to 20 selected accounts. Or, you can take action by quickly updating daily budgets and enabling or pausing your campaigns across those accounts. You can also create a new campaign for any individual account right from your manager account.

Create better, more insightful reports

Data freshness in the manager account dashboard now matches the rest of AdWords. This means you no longer have to navigate to individual accounts for the most up-to-date reporting metrics. To make the dashboard reports more useful, you can now select a custom date range beyond the last 90 days, and compare it to any period you want. We’ve also added more reporting columns, including conversions, as well as the ability to chart performance directly in the dashboard.

To help you explore your account data in more meaningful ways, we’ve added advanced segmentation and filtering tools. Quickly slice your data based on what matters most to your business, such as by network, click type, or device. Then, apply filters to help identify new opportunities or to simply see the data you’re interested in.

If you use sub-manager accounts, there’s also a new dropdown to help you refine your dashboard to only show performance data across directly linked sub-manager and individual accounts, all linked sub-manager and individual accounts, or all linked individual accounts.

Navigate faster between accounts

Finally, we’ve made it easier to find the account you want to view. You can now search for or select the manager account or individual account you want to jump to by expanding the dropdown at the top of your AdWords account.

Customer stories

Many customers are already seeing early success with these enhancements to manager accounts.

“Our product line recently expanded, resulting in a dramatic increase in the number of AdWords accounts we manage. However, the ability to identify meaningful trends in campaign performance and take action where it’s most impactful — all from a single view — not only saves us 4-5 hours each week, but also gives us more confidence in the health of our accounts.” — Katherine Doty, Global Search Marketing Manager at Rosetta Stone

“We have over 90 individual AdWords accounts and rely on a strong campaign naming convention to effectively manage all of them. Thanks to the new campaigns view in our manager account, we can now manage and optimize all our campaigns from a single view. This saves us countless hours since we no longer have to click through and manage our campaigns, account by account.” — Jeremy Legrand, Head of SEM at Kaymu

New enhancements, new name

To simplify our naming convention and align with these new enhancements, we’ll no longer use “My Client Center” and “MCC” to refer to AdWords manager accounts. Throughout the year, you’ll see these changes reflected across the AdWords Help Center and in our future communications.

You can take a tour in AdWords of the new enhancements, or learn more about manager accounts in the AdWordsHelp Center.

Posted by Zak Stern, Product Manager, AdWords

New media partnerships and ad solutions for mobile app promotion

2015-06-10T19:50:00.000+01:00

As complexity increases in the app ecosystem, successful developers are looking for new ways to measure, manage, and optimize across multiple ad networks and operating systems. This morning, at our annual I/O conference, we announced via Livestream a new set of media partnerships and ads offerings designed to meet the unique needs of mobile app marketers.

Transparent, open and reliable measurement solutions

For app developers looking to drive installs and engagement, it’s critical to understand the effectiveness of various media partners and placements. That’s why we have been investing in solutions to help developers apply consistent measures across a fragmented ecosystem of ad networks, and understand the quality of users that each delivers.

Google Analytics for Apps provides an industry-leading solution for in-app analytics that is increasingly benefiting advertisers as they seek more transparency into ad effectiveness across networks. You can already use Google Analytics to track the performance of your mobile app install campaigns and understand the lifetime value of your users on both Android and iOS. As of today, we’ve built partnerships with 20+ ad networks including InMobi and Millennial Media since launching iOS conversion tracking late last year. Data integration with these partners provides a comprehensive view of app value across networks based on the metrics developers care about (i.e., LTV and retention), helping you make better decisions on where to spend your advertising dollars. In the next few months, you’ll be able to “postback” your conversions to referring networks in order to optimize your traffic -- all made possible with a single SDK.

And it's not just about our measurement solutions. We recognize that developers should have choices when it comes to attribution vendors, and are committed to open solutions for the industry. That’s why we also announced the ability to integrate app install and event data from key third party measurement partners into AdWords. Working with third parties, including Adjust, Appsflyer, Apsalar, Kochava, and Tune, we are able to increase measurement accuracy between different trackers in AdWords, ensuring your data is accurate and reliable.

By partnering with these leading ad platforms and tracking systems, we believe we can make the entire mobile apps ecosystem stronger and more connected — all with the goal of making developers more successful.

But we didn’t stop there.

It’s easier than ever to promote your apps across Google

For developers looking to promote their app, we offer a variety of placements across Google Search, the AdMob network, mobile sites, and YouTube. And earlier this year, we announced Search Ads on Google Play. By showing ads alongside app search results, you can reach consumers right when they’re looking for a new app, at the moment they are ready to install.

Today we announced Universal App Campaigns, a new campaign type that allows advertisers to reach consumers across Google media more efficiently and effectively. Universal App Campaigns offers a simple way to set up install ads for your Android apps in AdWords or directly from the Google Play Developer Console.

With a single campaign, you can scale your reach across Google Search, the AdMob network, mobile sites, YouTube and Google Play. Just provide us with a few inputs about your app — what your ad creative will say, the audience you wish to reach, and how much you want to spend — we’ll do the rest for you. Behind the scenes, our ad creation and bidding engines will help maximize performance for your campaigns so you can spend more time building and enhancing your apps. Search Ads on Google Play and Universal App Campaigns will be rolled out to developers and advertisers in the coming months.

Complete solutions for your entire business

Today at I/O we also announced solutions to help you develop apps, engage users organically, and earn more money from your app. Our innovations in analytics and ads are designed to complement these offerings, and allow you to grow your business with measurement solutions that are open and reliable, and promotion tools that make ad buying easier and more effective. Thank you to all the developers out there who are building these experiences. We look forward to engaging with your apps and supporting your ongoing innovation by working closely with you and your partners in the ecosystem.

Adwords Editor 11.1

2015-05-27T18:15:00.000+01:00

AdWords Editor now supports labels, Upgraded URLs, ads in apps, and more!

Late last year, we introduced AdWords Editor 11.0, which represented the most significant update to the tool since it was released in 2006. Today, we’re introducing another exciting update to AdWords Editor, available to all advertisers globally. This version includes full support for labels, Upgraded URLs, call-only ads, ads in mobile apps, and much more. Let’s explore further.

Labels

Based on your feedback, AdWords Editor now has full support for labels. Labels are an effective way to organize objects in your account, like campaigns and keywords, into meaningful groupings so you can quickly and easily filter and report on the data that’s most relevant to your business.

Now you can create, edit, or delete labels using the Labels tab under the Shared library in AdWords Editor. Assign or remove labels to and from your campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ads in their respective data views. You can also filter your views using labels as well as export and import any account changes related to labels.

Upgraded URLs

Earlier this year, we introduced Upgraded URLs to help you save time when managing URL tracking information, reduce how often Google crawls your website, and provide access to new ValueTrack and custom tracking parameters. To help you upgrade to the new system by July 1st, we’ve added support for Upgraded URLs. You can now upgrade your destination URLs using AdWords Editor, and once you’ve upgraded, manage your final URLs and tracking templates at scale. You can learn more about how to upgrade your URLs in our Help Center article.

Call-only ads

Call-only ads represent an easy and efficient way for mobile consumers to connect with your business over the phone. Now you can create and manage these ads in AdWords Editor.

Ads in mobile apps

By showing ads in mobile apps, you can reach the growing number of people using mobile devices to play games, listen to music, and stay entertained. Under “Keywords and targeting,” you can now choose to show your ads for certain categories of apps, including specific apps (or placements) and mobile app categories, like Games and Shopping.

Parental status and custom affinities on the GDN

Demographic targeting enables you to reach people across the Google Display Network (GDN) who are likely to be within a particular demographic group. In addition to gender and age, you can now select to reach your customers based on their parental status.

We’ve also added support for custom affinity under Audiences. Using custom affinity audiences, you can create your own affinity audiences, tailored to your business, to reach the right customers who are interested in your products or services.

And much more...

This latest version of AdWords Editor also features improvements to the search bar, more localization support, and enhancements to overall UI navigation. You can learn more about all the new features in our Help Center article.

Upgrade to AdWords Editor 11.1 today!

Posted by Geoff Menegay, Product Manager, AdWords Editor

Adwords Performance Summit (APS) Recap

2015-05-27T16:31:00.000+01:00

Building for the next moment

Billions of times per day, consumers turn to Google for I want-to-know, I want-to-go, I want-to-do, and I want-to-buy moments. And at these times, consumers are increasingly picking up their smartphones for answers. In fact, more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan. This presents a tremendous opportunity for marketers to reach people throughout all the new touchpoints of a consumer’s path to purchase.

Together, we’ve come a long way since this time last year:

Our suite of app promotion tools are now driving real results, even as we’re piloting new innovations like ads in the Play Store. A study published today shows that search engines and app stores are among the top ways smartphone users discover new apps.
Businesses around the world are measuring the impact of their search and display campaigns as consumers switch between multiple devices, using cross-device conversions.
And with mobile searches driving in-store commerce, we're helping businesses measure the full impact of their campaigns. Our store visits measurement is now available in the US, Canada and Australia and will roll out for thousands of advertisers in 10 countries in the coming months.

But there's so much more to come. This morning, we announced more AdWords innovations in front of a global livestream audience of 20,000 customers. Below are highlights from today’s announcements.

Ad experiences that win the moment

Consumers, particularly on mobile devices, now have higher expectations than ever before - they want everything right, and they want everything right away. This requires that marketers answer their needs in the moment, whenever and wherever they are. Our investments in mobile are driven by consumers’ expectations for immediacy and relevance in the moment. Based on your feedback and our insights about how people search for information, we’ve built a whole new generation of ad experiences that are richer, more engaging and designed for screen-swipes instead of mouse-clicks so we meet consumers’ needs, right when they are looking:

Automotive: Car buyers spend up to 15 hours online researching, comparing and learning. When people browse the web for automobiles, they want to see pictures and visuals of their dream car. In fact, about half of Google searches for cars contain images. That’s why we introduced Automobile Ads - a new search ad format that takes you directly from Google.com to a beautiful carousel of car images that shows you how a car looks inside and out -- like how the sleek metallic finish looks with the black leather and wood trim. Tapping on an image brings up more information about the car, like horsepower and estimated MPG while tapping on the “Dealers” link takes you to a page with nearby dealer listings.

Hotel Ads: There are millions of searches for hotels everyday — that’s millions of potential hotel bookings. When people search for hotels, they’re looking for information like rates, availability, locations, user reviews, editorial descriptions, Google Street View, and high resolution photos. Today, we announced that Hotel Ads will start to show globally for hotel partners around the world, one click away from Google.com. Hotel Ads show current prices from a variety of sources and when a traveler is ready, they can select “Book” to complete their reservation on the partners’ sites.

Mortgages: Buying a home is one of the biggest financial decisions in life, so understanding your options and having the right tools is critical. Today, we introduced the newest addition to Google Compare in the US: mortgages. Whether someone is a first-time home-buyer or looking to refinance, consumers will soon be able to find the latest mortgage rates from multiple mortgage providers, and review a customized set of criteria like interest rate, terms of the loan and fees. They’ll be able to apply directly with an approved lender or speak to a qualified adviser for more information, directly from the Google search ad.

Automation to capture moments at scale

Consumers engage with brands, across billions of monthly searches, billions of hours of videos watched every month, and billions of interactions with various sites and apps. The sheer scale can be staggering, but with automation you can master the complexity and show exactly the right ads for consumers’ intent and context.

Automated Bidding AdWords bid strategies are setting billions of bids per day for tens of thousands of advertisers, enabling you to be more efficient and effective. Today, we introduced a new reporting dashboard that provides more transparency and control as you evaluate the performance of bid strategies over time. New simulation tools also show advertisers the tradeoff between volume and cost at different CPA targets.

Dynamic Search Ads are a powerful way to automatically show timely and relevant ads based on the content of your website -- without the need to manage keywords. Today, we announced significant enhancements, including recommended category targets based on your website's content, suggested CPCs for every category and more visibility into the ads that will show and pages where your customers will land.

Measuring every moment that matters

Marketers need to ensure they’re measuring all the moments that matter -- from first impression to final conversion. To do so, you need methods and metrics that speak to today’s increasingly complex path to purchase--across devices, apps, calls, and stores. By incorporating all of these touchpoints, marketers can measure the full impact of their campaigns and make better decisions for their business.

Today we introduced several new products to help you do so:

AdWords attribution We are making it easy for search marketers to move beyond a last-click attribution model. You’ll be able to select an attribution model for each of your conversion types. The choice you make will be reflected in your AdWords reporting and integrated into your automated bidding. We’re also introducing data-driven attribution, which uses your own conversion data to calculate the actual contribution of each keyword across the conversion path.
Cross-device conversions integrated with automated bidding New consumer paths to purchase make it more important than ever for marketers to measure activities that start on one device and are completed on another. Later this year, you’ll be able to take action on these insights when cross-device conversions are integrated into automated bidding. This is part of a broader update that will give you the option to include cross-device conversions as part of the Conversions column.
Marketing experiments This morning, we introduced new tools to help marketers measure the incremental impact generated from your Google ads. HomeAway, a global vacation rental marketplace, worked with the Google account team and learned that its Google Display Network ads are driving a 49% lift in click-related traffic to its website. Read the case study here and reach out to your AdWords account team to learn more.

Google is a company built on intent and immediacy. Our mission has always been to connect people with what they are looking for in the exact moment they are looking. These are moments that matter to consumers, to marketers and to us at Google because they are when decisions are being made and preferences shaped.

Thank you to everyone who attended the AdWords Performance Summit or watched the livestream. I can’t wait to see the great things you do with these new products. We look forward to continuing this journey with you: delivering the best possible experiences for consumers in the moments that matter.

Jerry Dischler, Vice President, Product Management, AdWords

Join us as we announce the latest AdWords innovations on May 5th

2015-04-15T14:07:00.001+01:00

Mobile has forever changed the ways people engage with the world around them -- from the way we shop to the way we communicate. In fact, 91% of smartphone users now turn to their phones for ideas while right in the middle of a task¹ -- like picking out new running shoes or looking up a chocolate cake recipe. Because we can be online anywhere at any time, we count on information being immediately available and relevant. This expectation has changed how people make decisions and has created tremendous opportunities for marketers.

To meet the heightened expectations of today’s consumers, Google is focused on delivering AdWords innovations that enable you to better reach and influence your customers in the countless moments throughout the day when they are looking for answers, discovering new things, or making decisions. On May 5, 2015 at 9:30am PT / 12:30pm ET, I will be hosting a livestream to share these new products with you. You can watch the 45-minute event live, right here on the Inside AdWords blog.

Register for the livestream here.

Join us to learn about new products that are designed to:

Create better mobile experiences for your customers at the moments when they’re looking for your products and services
Measure all the moments that matter to your business – online and offline, across multiple devices and touchpoints
Customize and scale everything you do in AdWords, to unlock the full potential of increasingly complex consumer journeys

These innovations are built based on unique insights about how consumers engage with technology and feedback from customers, large and small, from around the world. I can’t wait to share them with you.

Please register and join us May 5th. Until then, follow us on our +GoogleAds page for sneak previews of what’s to come.

¹Google/Ipsos Consumer Research Study, March 2015

Posted by Michelle,The MENA Google Adwords Team

AdWords app launches on Android

2015-04-15T13:53:00.002+01:00

Staying on top of your campaigns just got easier

Today, we’re introducing the AdWords app, an easy way to view and manage your ads’ performance when you’re on the go. This new Android app is available globally for existing AdWords customers.

Businesses, large and small, are increasingly using smartphones to manage everything from customer support to product orders to marketing. Now, you can use your smartphone to keep your AdWords campaigns running smoothly—no matter where your business takes you.

As a companion to your desktop account, this app lets you:

View campaign stats
Update bids and budgets
Get real-time alerts and notifications
Act on suggestions to improve your campaigns
Call a Google expert

Download the AdWords app for Android

Tommy Sands, Senior Paid Search Manager from Philly Marketing Labs, tells us, “Having the ability to quickly review and take action in my AdWords accounts when I only have my mobile device enables me to be better and more efficient at managing my campaigns. It's nice to know that I'm only a few taps away from the information I need, no matter where I am.”

Review (and make changes) on the go

Whenever you open the app, you’ll see an overview of your clicks, costs, and conversions. For deeper insights, you can view metrics by ad group, day of week and device.

Changes in campaign performance can happen at any time—now you can address them quickly, even when you’re away from your desk. For example, if you see your best performing campaign is maxing out on budget, you can make adjustments so you don’t lose out on potential sales. You can even pause or enable a campaign for a time-sensitive promotion.

You’ll also receive customized suggestions that you can act on immediately. For example, if there’s an opportunity to get more impressions by adjusting your bids, we’ll let you know so you can make the change right from the app.

Get the app

The AdWords app is now available for devices that use Android 4.0 or later. To get started, download it today from the Google Play Store. And for more information, visit our Help Center. We look forward to hearing your feedback as you bring AdWords with you on your business adventures.

Posted by Michelle
The MENA Google Adwords Team

Charge up your phones with call-only campaigns

2015-03-05T20:31:00.000+00:00

If you’re shopping for insurance or looking for storage space, chances are you’ll make a phone call. In fact, 61% of mobile searchers say that click to call is most important when making a purchase, as opposed to when researching. As a result, many businesses value these phone calls more than clickthroughs to their website. That’s why today we’re introducing call-only campaigns, an easy way to only drive calls to your business.

Call-only campaigns allow you to create mobile-ready ads that feature a click-to-call button and description text, so your customers can only call you from mobile search results.

Let’s say you’re a self-storage business where a majority of reservations are made over the phone. You can use call-only campaigns to drive people exclusively to your call center to take advantage of your higher call conversion rates. Or let’s say you’re a local business working to develop your mobile web experience. With call-only campaigns you can still reach your mobile, on-the-go customers on Google search and connect with them over the phone.

“Call-only ads have been a great tool for connecting us with customers at a specific point in their buying cycle, without having to send them through a website first. In the end, this leads to better performance for our ads and a better customer experience.”

Josh Leibner

Director of Paid Search at Red Ventures

Optimized for calls

Simplified bidding Call-only campaigns are designed for and will only show ads on devices that make calls. You’ll only pay for clicks to call your business, as opposed to click to your site. That means you can adjust keyword bids and optimize directly based on the value of those calls -- no mobile bid modifier needed.
Customized for your business When you connect with customers over the phone, it’s important to provide the information they’re looking for about your business. With call-only campaigns, you can customize your ads to enhance the click-to-call experience. For example, your ad might say “Call to get a quote” to encourage more qualified leads, or “Speak with a specialist today” to let customers know they can talk directly to a real person.

If you are currently using a setting in call extensions to create call-only ads, details on how to upgrade to call-only campaigns will be shared in email communications over the next few weeks..

Learn more

You can learn more about creating mobile call-only campaigns in the AdWords Help Center. If you want to be sure you’re doing everything possible to drive calls for your business, check out Driving Calls in AdWords, a new Best Practices guide.

Michelle

The MENA Adwords Team

Get faster and easier URL tracking with new Upgraded URLs

2015-03-05T19:57:00.000+00:00

URL management just got easier

Constant connectivity has increased the ways that people engage with your business, meaning more data and metrics for you to use to manage ad performance. That’s why we are introducing Upgraded URLs to provide an easier and faster way to manage and track important information about each click on your AdWords ads*.

Upgraded URLs offer several benefits for advertisers, including:

less time spent managing URL tracking updates
reduced crawl and load times on your website
new ValueTrack parameters that help you gain additional insights about your ads. Learn more.

Johannes Lipka, Product & Solution Manager at eProfessional GmbH, says: “Upgraded URLs have been one of the most time-saving tools we’ve used in AdWords. It’s allowed us to change custom tracking parameters for a group of URLs all in one place, without re-setting ad stats. We plan to upgrade our clients’ accounts over to upgraded URLs as soon as possible.”

Destination URLs today

If you use URL tracking today, you’ll notice that Destination URLs are made up of two components:

Landing page URL This is the URL that customers see in their browsers when they get to your landing page after clicking on your ad.
Tracking This section includes information like redirects to third party tracking services, ValueTrack parameters, or custom creative IDs.

In the example below, blue represents the landing page, and green represents the tracking information.

www.example.com?creative=12345

With destination URLs, anytime you need to adjust tracking, you have to update the entire destination URL. This triggers a re-review of your entire destination URL and your ads stop running while your URL is re-reviewed -- causing you to lose time and potential new business.

What’s changing with Upgraded URLs

Upgraded URLs let you enter the landing page portion of your URL and your tracking information separately in AdWords. Now you have the option to update your tracking information at your account, campaign or ad group without having to re-set your ad stats.

Let’s see how the example URL above could be constructed using the new upgraded URL fields.

Final URL is where you’ll enter your website’s landing page URL.

The landing page ‘www.example.com’ is now entered in the Final URL field

Tracking templates are where you enter your tracking information and tell AdWords how to assemble your URLs. Now, if you’d like to scale your tracking updates across multiple URLs, you can use a shared tracking template at the account, campaign or ad group level. If you’d prefer to manage your URL tracking information at the individual URL level, you can use a tracking template at the ad, keyword, or sitelink level.

In the example below, we’ve used a tracking template at the account level to apply our tracking information across all of the URLs in the account.

Tracking information for all URLs in the account is placed in the account level tracking template

Custom parameters let you customize the information you’d like to monitor as well as the specific values that get inserted into your URLs when your ad clicks are triggered. For example, if you’d like to insert the value 12345 whenever this specific ad is clicked, you can set the custom parameter

{_mycreative} in this ad.

Enter ‘_mycreative’ in the custom parameter field to insert 12345 whenever that ad is clicked

New URLs, new insights

As part of this upgrade, you’ll gain access to many new insights about your ad clicks.

New ValueTrack parameters let you track additional insights about your business. For example, if you’d like to track how many ad clicks were triggered for your creative by location, you can use the new {loc_physical_ms} ValueTrack parameter. To optimally use the new ValueTrack parameters, you can set them up at the account level so you can track these values across all the URLs in your account. Learn about the new value track parameters.

The valuetrack for location {location_physical_ms} is in green in the account level tracking template

Next steps

We’ll be rolling out upgraded URLs to all advertisers starting this week. We encourage all advertisers who use tracking in their URLs to upgrade to the new system by July 1, 2015. Starting on that date, your URLs will begin updating to the new structure.

If you're using a tracking platform to manage your URLs, we encourage working with them to manage these changes.

To learn how you can start using Upgraded URLs for your new ad URLs, please see our article on Help Center.

___________________________________________________________________

*Everywhere we say ads, we also mean other targeting options available for the Search Network, Display Network, and Shopping.

Michelle

The MENA Adwords Team

Case Study | Opensooq | PERF - App download

2015-01-08T09:41:00.001+00:00

Published by Jeannette Ashak - Google AdWords Team

Managing your accounts at scale, made easier

2014-11-17T18:50:00.000+00:00

A few months ago, we announced ad customizers, a tool for optimizing your ad text and connecting with your customers in real-time. This kicked off a series of Tools for the Power User built to help you simplify campaign management, and act on key business insights at scale.

As the holiday season approaches, advertisers are busy ensuring their campaigns are set up for success, making it more important than ever to manage time-sensitive updates and make changes to your campaigns quickly and efficiently.

This month, we’re turning our focus to scalable and efficient workflow management in AdWords. Our goal is to help you find time-saving ways to manage these tasks at scale using simpler, integrated workflows within AdWords, so you can focus on your core business.

Our workflow tools fall into three core areas:

Bulk editing directly within AdWords

Advertisers need to manage multiple campaign tasks directly in the AdWords interface more efficiently. We’ve added new tools for editing your settings and extensions in bulk across your campaigns and ad groups. For example, you can edit location targeting or ad rotation settings across multiple campaigns, or update your ad extensions -- like sitelinks, callouts, and apps -- to promote your latest holidays deals across hundreds of your ad groups with just a few clicks.

Change multiple sitelinks using the Edit menu in your +Extensions tab

CarsDirect.com was able to add sitelinks across its accounts using the new bulk editing features, and saw a 13% increase in CTR, and 6% decrease in CPC. Allison Query from CarsDirect says, “The bulk feature for ad extensions has been crucial for keeping us competitive in the search results! It has trimmed our work time from hours to minutes."

You can also take advantage of other existing bulk workflows supported in AdWords to scale your work. Save time by using the copy and paste feature to swiftly copy over your existing keyword lists, ads, and ad groups into your new campaigns.

Improved tools for uploading changes in bulk

Advertisers need easier ways to make quick changes offline in spreadsheets, and apply them directly into AdWords where and when they need them. The improvements to bulk uploads include more intuitive spreadsheet formats, in-context options to upload changes directly into the appropriate campaigns and ad groups, and the ability to preview your updates and check for errors before posting them. Now, you can quickly upload new seasonal keywords into your ad groups, update your budgets across several campaigns, and post your changes with confidence because you can review them before you post them.

Review your spreadsheet edits with the preview tool before applying them to your campaigns

Advanced tools for more customized changes across your accounts

Earlier this year we launched AdWords Scripts for MCC to help advertisers with more complex editing needs quickly make customized changes across multiple accounts. You can use simple JavaScript code to make cross-account changes, create customized reports, send automated emails, and even pull data into and out of Google Spreadsheets. Learn more.

Many agencies are using AdWords Scripts for MCC to power customized ad text changes across their customers’ accounts, save time, increase relevancy, and improve their ad performance. iProspect uses Adwords Scripts to dynamically insert sitelinks into Cleartrip’s ad units and change their landing pages on the fly, resulting in a 34% increase in CTR and 24% decrease on Cost-of-Acquisition. Performics is using AdWords Scripts for MCC to update ad parameters with real-time discounts across their customer's accounts. Using MCC scripts for MonShowroom, Performics cut their workflow time by 60%.

These are just some of the tools we’ve created to help you move faster, and make changes at scale across AdWords. Stay tuned as we continue to improve AdWords Editor -- another important tool to help with complex changes at scale. New updates are coming soon!

The AdWords MENA Team

Billing technical issue affecting some AdWords accounts

2014-05-28T13:02:00.002+01:00

Over the past couple of days we have encountered a technical fault that has caused problems in many Egyptian and MENA-based accounts. Some of you might have seen an alert appear in your accounts stating the following: Your Account isn't active- to activate your account and start running your ads, please enter your billing information.

We are fully aware that this alert is appearing in accounts that have entered their billing information and we are in the process of solving the issue. We understand that this inconvenience might put you in a less than ideal situation. Please be assured that we are working with our engineering specialists in order to get things back to normal.

Thank you for your patience and understanding regarding this matter.

Sincerely,

The Google AdWords Team.

Introducing AdWords Editor 10.4

2014-04-22T16:00:00.000+01:00

Introducing AdWords Editor 10.4

Starting today, you can download the new version of AdWords Editor. Here are a few highlights of the new version:

More options for managing bids and bid strategies, including flexible bid strategies from your AdWords Shared library.

Updated network settings, including all four AdWords campaign types: Search Network only, Search and Display Networks, Search Network with Display Select and Display Network only.

Version 10.4 also includes support for engagement ads, viewable CPM, more image ad sizes and improved sitelink import. You can read about all the changes in the version 10.4 release notes.

To start using AdWords Editor 10.4 now, you can download the new version on the AdWords Editor website, or you can wait for the automatic update prompt. To learn more about upgrading, including how to keep unposted changes and comments, please review these instructions.

Support for previous versions of AdWords Editor will continue for four months to allow you time to upgrade. To ensure uninterrupted use of AdWords Editor, you will need to upgrade by 1 August 2014.

Introducing a simpler, more capable TrueView in AdWords for video

2014-04-21T17:02:00.000+01:00

Since its debut in 2010, the TrueView format has enabled advertisers to break free of time constraints, grow view count with opted-in views and only pay when people choose to watch their video ads. Thanks to these benefits, TrueView advertising connects users with relevant ads, and empowers creators to monetize their content. In our ongoing quest to help advertisers unlock the power of online video, today we’re announcing a forthcoming improvement to make TrueView both simpler and more capable.

On April 15, we will go from three TrueView formats to two: TrueView in-stream and TrueView in-display. This will effectively combine the in-search and in-display formats into one format called TrueView in-display.

In addition to simplifying campaign creation and management, this change offers the following:

Organizes TrueView around how a user interacts with the ad (either by viewing as a pre-roll video or clicking on a thumbnail) rather than where the ad appears.
Tell us where you want your ads to appear at the campaign level – YouTube videos, YouTube search and the Google Display Network – and all ads within that campaign will run on your selected networks
Deliver more relevant ads on the YouTube search page. Just as you can use in-stream ads to reach different demographics or audiences, now you can tailor in-display ads running on YouTube search pages to these same parameters, in addition to keywords

We believe this change will make TrueView an even more effective tool to help you build your brand with videos. For further reading, please visit our Help Center article.

Posted by Ryo Akasaka, Product Manager, AdWords for video

Introducing a simpler, more capable TrueView in AdWords for video

2014-03-27T09:24:00.001+00:00

Organizes TrueView around how a user interacts with the ad (either by viewing as a pre-roll video or clicking on a thumbnail) rather than where the ad appears.
Tell us where you want your ads to appear at the campaign level – YouTube videos, YouTube search and the Google Display Network – and all ads within that campaign will run on your selected networks.
Deliver more relevant ads on the YouTube search page. Just as you can use in-stream ads to reach different demographics or audiences, now you can tailor in-display ads running on YouTube search pages to these same parameters, in addition to keywords

What do you need to do?
Starting April 15, all new video campaigns will use new campaign settings and simplified ad formats. At the same time, you'll have access to an upgrade center where you can upgrade any or all of your existing campaigns to the new functionality. Starting May 15, all campaigns will be automatically upgraded.

We believe this change will make TrueView an even more effective tool to help you build your brand with videos. For further reading, please visit our Help Center article.

Posted by Jeannette Ashak - The Google AdWords Team