New ways to optimize Content Network campaigns

We're often asked, "How can I maximize the ROI from Content Network campaigns?"

As part of our new Optimization University initiative, we've developed a Getting Started Guide and a series of 6 videos to help answer this question for you. The guide and videos provide a conceptual walk-through and demo of the major steps involved in executing a Content Network campaign. These include:

• Campaign setup best practices
• Creating appropriate ad groups
• Selecting effective keywords
• Developing high impact ad creative
• Bidding strategies
• Conversion tracking and tweaking for ROI

Along with simple tips and tricks to improve ROI, we also go over several tools, such as the Wonder Wheel, the Keyword Tool and Conversion Tracking, that can help you be more efficient. These recommendations are based on our analysis of thousands of campaigns to understand what works and what doesn't. We hope you can start applying them to your campaigns today.

If you're starting a new Content Network campaign, watch the first video below; you may find it to be particularly valuable.

(click here to view video)

You can also always bookmark the playlist or find all the latest videos on our YouTube channel.

[Note: this post is reprinted from the Google Agency Ad Solutions Blog.]

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

New resource for display advertisers on the Content Network

Over the last year and a half, we've made significant changes to the Google Content Network to deliver better performance for your campaigns and to simplify the process of serving ads across a range of websites. As we roll out more features, we want to make it easy for you to discover what best fits your needs. To this effect, we've just launched a new Content Network brand channel on YouTube.

The site is stockpiled with videos, links and downloads about the full suite of features and solutions on the Content Network. Structured into four key sections, you can learn about a number of different products we offer and how they can help you achieve your various advertising goals. You can also find case studies and research papers from various industries so that you can see what some of the most successful advertisers on the Content Network are doing.

Last but not the least, we've also introduced a new creative direction for our videos, adding a bit more color and fun. Enjoy the first 5 videos below, and let us know what you think by sharing your comments on YouTube.

(click here to view videos)

If you'd like to see more, you can always bookmark the playlist. Hope you find the new channel informative and fun!

[Note: this post is reprinted from the Google Agency Ad Solutions Blog]

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

Webinars on improving your AdWords performance

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

Coming up in October we have:

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

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

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

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

New Seminars for Success locations

If you're looking for some help with your online advertising for Q4 or 2010, consider attending one of our in-person full-day seminars about AdWords, Analytics or Website Optimizer.

In the coming months we'll be offering Seminars for Success in the following cities:

AdWords 101: Beginner and 201: Intermediate
October 5-6: New York City Area
October 26-27: Chicago, IL
November 2-3: Berkeley, CA
November 16-17: Charlotte, NC
December 7-8: Scottsdale, AZ

Adwords 301:Advanced Account Optimization and AdWords 302: Advanced Conversion Optimization
October 13-14: Dallax, TX
October 20-21: Seattle, WA
November 3-4: Los Angeles, CA

Analytics: Introduction and Analytics: Advanced
October 8-9: New York City, NY
October 22-23: Melbourne, Australia
October 28-29: Chicago, IL
November 4-5: Berkeley, CA
November 18-19: Seattle, WA
December 9-10: Scottsdale, AZ
December 9-10: Charlotte, NC

Website Optimizer
October 30: Chicago, IL
December 11: Scottsdale, AZ

For more information about Seminars for Success, including registration details, course outlines, and past attendees' comments, please visit http://www.google.com/awseminars

Posted by Austin Rachlin, Inside AdWords crew

New AdWords Bidding Tutorial

For today's Inside AdWords post we have a note from our Chief Economist at Google, Hal Varian. Hal and his team spend most of their time studying the AdWords auction and finding ways to make it more efficient. Today he'd like to share a new tutorial he and his team have put together on how to bid for maximum profitability on AdWords:

Last month we launched a new feature of AdWords called Bid Simulator. Bid Simulator takes some of the guess work out of cost per click (CPC) bidding by estimating the number of clicks or impressions you could have received if you had used a different maximum CPC bid. Today, I thought I would take the opportunity to help you make the most of this new feature by explaining how to use the data from Bid Simulator to maximize the profit from your marketing investment.

In general, when you increase your maximum CPC bid for keywords on search you are able to generate more clicks to your site. This may be because your new bid qualifies you to appear higher up in the Sponsored Links on the search results page, or because your higher bid qualifies your ad to appear in new, more expensive, auctions. The goal for you as an advertiser is to decide whether or not these additional clicks come at a cost that is still profitable for you.

To make this decision, you need to compare your expected value per click to your incremental cost per click. Your value per click is how much a click for a particular keyword is worth to you, on average. Your incremental cost per click is how much extra you are paying, on average, for the extra clicks you are getting from your higher bid. When your value per click is higher than your incremental cost per click it makes sense to increase your bid. On the other hand, if your value per click is lower than your incremental cost per click, you probably want to decrease your bid.

In the following video, I'll show you how to calculate these values, how to interpret them, and how to use the data to maximize the profit from your marketing investment. My team and I are always looking for ways to help make the AdWords auction easier to understand so if you have other topics that you'd like us to address, please leave a comment on the video and we may be able to make it a topic for a future video.

You can also watch the video or read the transcript in our help center:
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=163828

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Two more chances to attend a new AdWords interface webinar

For the last two months, we've been hosting weekly webinars about the new AdWords interface. In each webinar, members of the AdWords team walk through the changes in the new interface, show how you can use the new features to manage your advertising campaigns, and answer your questions.

Over the weeks, many advertisers have joined us to learn more about the new interface. Here's what a couple of them had to say about the webinars:

I'd like to thank you for today's webinar. It was very useful and I've learned more about the new features of AdWords interface.

This was truly a great session and I learned a few new tricks. Great shortcuts and tools for power users.

There are just two more webinars left in the series. The next webinar is tomorrow, Wednesday, August 5 at 9:30 AM PDT. Our final webinar will be on Thursday, August 20 at 9:30 AM PDT. You can register for either webinar on the new interface webinars site.

And if you can't attend one of the live webinars, the next best thing is a recorded one:

Hope to see you on the 5th or the 20th.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

Announcing the first Seminars for Success summit

From August 11 - 14 the Seminars for Success will host its first summit featuring in-depth training on Google's online marketing suite. Daily workshops will cover Google AdWords, Google Analytics and Website Optimizer along with special sessions on social marketing, mobile strategies and more. The summit will take place in Burlington VT, and you can register online for one or all four days of the summit.

If you can't make it to the summit, there are also a number of other seminars occuring over the next few months:

AdWords 101: Beginner and 201: Intermediate

September 14-15: Washington DC Area

September 28-29: Columbus, OH Area

October 5-6: New York City Area

October 26-27: Chicago, IL

November 2-3: Berkeley, CA

November 16-17: Charlotte, NC

December 7-8: Scottsdale, AZ

Adwords 301:Advanced Account Optimization and AdWords 302: Advanced Conversion Optimization

August 4-5: Denver, CO

August 25-26: Toronto, Canada

September 1-2: Atlanta, GA

September 23-24: New York, NY

Analytics: Introduction and Analytics: Advanced

July 29-30: Los Angeles, CA

September 16-17: Chicago, IL

September 17-18: Canberra, Australia

September 24-25: Sydney, Australia

October 22-23: Melbourne, Australia

Website Optimizer

July 31: Los Angeles, CA

For more information about Seminars for Success, including registration details, course outlines, and past attendees' comments, please visit http://www.google.com/awseminars.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

7 deadly sins of landing page design

Have you committed one of the "7 deadly sins of landing page design?"

Since it's the page visitors see after clicking your ad, your landing page is one of your most valuable tools. A bad landing page will drive visitors away, while a good one will turn AdWords clicks into customers. This is why we held a webinar on July 1st to expose the "7 deadly sins of landing page design", and explained how to fix them.

Tim Ash, one of our Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants, led this webinar and shared many insights and best practices to help advertisers improve their conversion rates. A recording of the webinar is now available for anyone who was not able to attend.

The recording is also available on the Website Optimizer Youtube Channel, where you can learn even more about improving your conversion rate with website testing.

We hope you will find these resources helpful as you improve your website landing pages to turn more clicks into customers.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

New Interface Thursday: You said it, we're fixing it!

We released the new AdWords interface early to get your feedback on it as soon as possible. And you haven't disappointed us! We receive thousands of comments every month covering likes, dislikes, and ideas for ways to further improve the AdWords interface. We read your comments carefully to prioritize the areas to work on next.

And we've made a lot of progress on the top issues our advertisers reported, so today we wanted to share these improvements with you.

Less horizontal scrolling

When working with certain browsers and monitor resolutions (especially 1024x768), you told us you needed to scroll back and forth in order view data tables and controls. We've now condensed the layout of AdWords pages and width of columns in order to eliminate the need to scroll horizontally. If you're still encountering this issue, please let us know.

If you'd like to further condense the view of your account, remember that you can customize your columns. Try hiding columns that aren't important to you and move other columns around to quickly compare important metrics side-by-side.

Support for Safari 4 and Firefox 3.5

Those of you working with the newest versions of Safari and Firefox will be happy to know that the new AdWords interface now works with these browsers. We'll continue to work to support the latest versions all major browsers in the future.

Faster load times

One of our most important goals with the new interface was to improve the efficiency of day-to-day campaign management tasks. We've heard from some advertisers that while integrated reports and roll-up tabs help them quickly access and act on important data, the data didn't always load as quickly as they'd hoped.

We've worked to improve the speed of the interface with the latest releases, and hope you can now see a noticeable improvement. However, our work isn't done, and we'll continue to focus on shortening load times with upcoming launches. For the fastest experience, we recommend using the following browsers: Chrome, Firefox 3+, Safari 4, or Internet Explorer 8.

Searching for keywords

We heard many of you are looking for quick ways to search for keywords, ad text, or campaign names within your account. In previous posts, we talked about how you can use filtering to focus on the data that matters to you.

While text filters allow you to search and act directly on the data you see, they also take a few clicks to set up for the first time. To help you work more quickly, we've added a new shortcut that lets you quickly search by text under the 'Filter and views' menu on any tab.

Try it on your Keywords tab to quickly find all keywords containing a specific term.

Educational materials

You told us you'd like more help with transitioning to the new interface. In addition to New Interface Thursdays and our new interface website, we recently started a series of free educational webinars, featuring the product team. Sign up now for the next webinar on July 10.

If you haven't been using the new AdWords interface to manage your campaigns due to a specific annoyance, now's a great time to to log in and see how the interface has improved. And please, keep your feedback coming. Just click on the Send Feedback link at the top right corner of your account to share your thoughts.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

New Interface Thursdays: Finding features from the previous interface

The basics of AdWords, such as bids, budgets, and Quality Score, haven't changed with the new interface. Still, every once in a while, you might find yourself asking, "Where did that go?" Here's a set of pointers to help you pick up where you left off in the previous AdWords interface.

Search my campaigns

In the previous interface, you could search your campaigns using a search box in the top corner of your account. In the new interface, we've replaced this functionality with text filters. You can now search for ads or keywords across your account by setting up a text filter. For searches you run often, you can save the filter to quickly access it at any time. Filters allow for more than just searching though, and you can read our earlier post to learn more about how filters can help you zero in on the data you care about most.

Keyword destination URLs

If you'd like to edit the destination URLs for individual keywords, you can do so by clicking the checkbox next to the keywords you'd like to edit, and then clicking on the "Edit" button at the top of the table. This will open up all keyword fields for editing, including the destination URL. If you'd like to see your destination URLs in your Keywords tab all the time, you can do so by customizing columns. By customizing columns, you can also find additional metrics like Quality Score that you might want to view and add them to the table.

Negative keywords

In the previous interface, you created negative keywords by adding a - sign to them. For example, you would add -free if you didn't want your ads to appear for searches containing the term free. Negative keywords were also mixed in with your regular keywords in your overall keyword list. With the new interface, negative keywords now have a home of their own. You'll find a section for negative keywords under your regular keywords in the Keywords tab. You can also view your campaign and ad group level negative keywords side by side.

Google Analytics and Website Optimizer

Where did the Analytics tab go? If you're looking for Google Analytics or Website Optimizer, you'll now find them under the Reporting tab at the top of your account.

Other questions?

If you'd like a side-by-side comparison of how to complete common tasks in new interface, we have a What's Changed page on the New Interface website.

Finally, we're providing webinars as another resource to help orient yourself in the new interface. The first webinar is tomorrow, June 19th at 11 AM PDT, and there's still time to register. We've scheduled the second webinar for June 26th also at 11 AM PDT.

Register for the June 19th webinar

Register for the June 26th webinar

We hope to see you at a webinar, and please continue to send us feedback on the new interface.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

Free Webinars for the New AdWords Interface

Last week we shared tips on how you can get ready for the new AdWords interface. We now have another resource to help you prepare for the change. Starting this week, we're holding weekly webinars about the new interface.

The first webinar is this Friday, June 19th at 11 AM PDT. The free 1-hour webinar will be led by Ariel Bardin, Product Management Director for the new AdWords interface. Ariel will walk you through the new interface, show you how to use the new features, and answer your questions.

You can register for the webinar here: New Interface Webinar Registration. Also, we have set up a Google Moderator page where you can send us your questions and vote for the questions you want answered. You can visit this page to submit your questions.

And, remember you can always visit the new interface microsite for additional help. We hope to see you on Friday.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

6 tactics for maximizing your AdWords investment

The current economy has been tough on businesses and customers alike, and it can be a lot harder these days to connect with more price-concious customers. To reach these customers, our internal team of AdWords optimizers has come up with 6 tactics that will help your AdWords campaigns be more relevant to your customers.

1. Focus your ads on low prices and savings.

2. Use value-related keywords.

3. Make sure your ad groups are targeted and relevant.

4. Don't waste money on irrelevant clicks.

5. Make it easy for customers to buy.

6. Focus your money on your high-performers.

You can read more about each of these tips including examples and instructions at www.google.com/adwords/tactics and you can also view these tactics in a pdf format at www.google.com/adwords/tactics/top_tactics.pdf. We hope these tactics will help you continue to see good returns from your AdWords investment.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

New "Google for Advertisers" site has launched

We're excited to announce the launch of Google for Advertisers. Google for Advertisers is a place where we've brought together information about the broad range of our marketing solutions -- and where you can explore and discover the combination of tools that best meet your own objectives.

Here are four ways to dive in and get the most from the site:

1. Read up on our various media platforms. This site gives straightforward descriptions of each of Google's platforms (like search, TV, the Content Network or mobile) and all of the supporting tools. You'll learn how to reach your audience in relevant and useful ways across devices, locations and languages.
2. Take a ride on 'The Marketing Cycle.' We put Google solutions in the context of how they can be applied across all the stages of building an effective advertising campaign -- ways to sculpt your strategy, creative development, media deployment, measurement and optimization -- which together help you better plan campaigns that make an impact and deliver strong ROI.
3. Stick it to a marketing objective. Explore a [very fictional] marketing example that illustrates how Google tools could come together to solve for a particular goal. We hope it inspires you, and offers a chuckle or two.
4. Build your personal 'toolkit.' As you browse the site and find Google tools that pique your interest, you can add them to your online toolkit. This way you can easily hone in on the solutions that are right for you and share them with your colleagues.

We invite you to have a look around and afterward, we welcome your feedback.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

Choosing the right mobile ad

Back in December we launched mobile ads for iPhone and Android devices. Unlike standard mobile ads, which show on WAP devices and require you to create mobile-specific text and image ads, the mobile ads for iPhone and Android phones allow you to show your regular text and image ads on these devices.

If you’ve been thinking about getting into mobile advertising, but don’t know where to start, check out this video to get a quick overview of the benefits and differences between the two ad formats:

You can also check out this post on the Google Mobile Blog which goes into more detail about the differences between the two types of ads.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

New Seminars for Success videos

To help you better maximize your AdWords investment this quarter, and to give you a preview of what you can learn at the Seminars for Success, we've just posted two videos by AdWords seminar leader Anastasia Holdren. The two videos are Explaining Quality Score and Advertising in a Down Economy, which you can also view below:

You can learn more about all the seminars we offer on the course description page of our website. And for those of you interested in attending future seminars, in the coming months we'll be offering Seminars for Success in the following cities:

AdWords
April 6-7: Austin, TX - AdWords 101: Beginner and AdWords 201: Intermediate
May 4-5: Tampa, FL - AdWords 101: Beginner and AdWords 201: Intermediate
May 20-21: Philadelphia, PA - AdWords 301: Advanced Account Optimization and AdWords 302: Advanced Conversion Optimization
June 4-5: Chicago, IL - AdWords 301: Advanced Account Optimization and AdWords 302: Advanced Conversion Optimization
June 15-16: San Diego, CA - AdWords 101: Beginner and AdWords 201: Intermediate
June 24-25: Boston, MA - AdWords 301: Advanced Account Optimization and AdWords 302: Advanced Conversion Optimization

Analytics
April 15-16: Orange County, CA - Analytics: Introduction and Analytics: Advanced
April 21-22: Honolulu, HI - Analytics: Introduction and Analytics: Advanced
April 27-28: Boston, MA - Analytics: Introduction and Analytics: Advanced
June 10-11: Miami, FL - Analytics: Introduction and Analytics: Advanced

Website Optimizer
April 17: Orange County, CA - Website Optimizer
April 23: Honolulu, HI - Website Optimizer

If you sign up for seminars at least seven days in advance, we'll even throw in a $50 AdWords credit (terms and conditions).

For more information about Seminars for Success, including registration details, course outlines, and past attendees' comments, please visit http://www.google.com/awseminars.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

New AdWords Help Videos

We'd like to share with you seven new help videos on popular AdWords topics. In each video you'll find the exact steps you can follow to use different features within your account. The videos cover the following topics:

• Entering billing information
• Adjusting your budget
• Using the Ad Preview tool
• Applying a Promotional Credit to an existing account
• Viewing Cost and Payment history
• Using the Ads Diagnostic tool
  

The seventh video, shown below, demonstrates how to use the Campaign Optimizer, a free AdWords tool designed to help you fine-tune your advertising campaigns. The Campaign Optimizer analyzes your budget, keywords, ad text, and landing page to create a customized proposal for your campaign. You can then review the proposed changes and accept the ones you want to apply to your campaign.

You can find all seven videos, and more, on the AdWords Help Center YouTube Channel.

Posted by Christian Yee, Inside AdWords crew

Google Analytics and AdWords: Better Together

Regardless of the year or economic climate, it's always been important to optimize the return on your advertising investment--but now it's more important than ever. Google Analytics specializes in providing you with the metrics you need to make informed advertising decisions.

By linking your Google AdWords and Analytics accounts, you can optimize your AdWords investment even more effectively with increased trackability and customized reporting. Check out this short video and learn more about the benefits of linking your accounts.

To learn more about advertising more effectively with Analytics you can watch the "Google Analytics in 60 Seconds" videos - a series of videos that illustrate simple tips such as how to optimize keywords and how to use placement targeting.

Posted by Cynthia Benin, Inside AdWords crew

Start the year with learning: Two upcoming webinars

Welcome back! We hope you enjoyed the holidays. To start 2009 off right, we'd like to offer you two webinars: Shaping the Heart of Your Marketing Strategy: Valentine's Day 2009 from the AdWords Retail team and Travel Shopping in Today's Economy from the AdWords Travel team. You can read more about each webinar and sign up below.

Shaping the Heart of Your Marketing Strategy: Valentine's Day 2009 Webinar

Wednesday, January 7th at 10 AM PST - Register to attend

As we wrap up the holidays, it's time to plan ahead for the new year and adapt your business strategy for upcoming opportunities and challenges. In this webinar, we will discuss strategies retailers can take to get the most out of this Valentine's Day. Join the Google Retail team and the Google Tech team on Wednesday, January 7th at 10 AM PST to learn about these topics:

• Understanding retail trends to reach consumers in today's landscape
  
• Building effective Valentine's Day ads using new Google tools
  
• Planning ahead based on online campaign performance trends
  
• Tips and tricks for optimizing your search campaigns
  

This webinar will run approximately 30 minutes, followed by a 30-minute Q&A session. Register here.

Travel Shopping in Today's Economy, presented by Compete and Google

Wednesday, January 14th at 11:00 am PST - Register to attend

As the economy has slowed, having an up-to-date perspective on consumer travel demand and preferences is more important than ever. Using an in-depth survey of traveler perspectives and a detailed online behavioral analysis, Google and Compete have partnered to create a new study exploring how consumers are shopping for travel in today's economy.

Join us on Wednesday, January 14th at 11:00 AM PST to learn:

• How the volume of travel research and booking activity changed as the economy has weakened
  
• How consumers are shopping for travel differently now than they have in the past, and what implications this has for travel marketers
  
• Consumer outlook on their plans for travel in the future and how travel sellers can take advantage of this
  

This webinar will run approximately 45 minutes, followed by a 15-minute Q&A session. Register here.

We hope these webinars help you get the most out of your 2009 campaigns.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

New Ads Quality videos

Ads Quality is important for you, our advertisers, as it directly affects your ads' position on the page and how much you pay for your ads.

Over the past few months we've made some big changes to improve how we calculate Quality Score and how your Quality Scores are displayed in your account. One of these changes was the transition from minimum bids to first page bids. To help explain Ads Quality and these changes, we've just released two instructional videos that walk through the basics of Ads Quality and the transition to first page bids.

The first video, Ads Quality Basics, provides a general introduction to Ads Quality, including an overview of Quality Score and answers to some common questions about Ads Quality. If you don't know how Quality Score works, this is a good video to watch.

The second video, Ads Quality Updates, goes beyond the basics and gives more detail on the recent changes made to Ads Quality. If you want to know more about how the change from inactive keywords to first page bids affects your campaigns, we recommend this video.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

Introducing Website Optimizer Seminars for Success

The Seminars for Success program continues to grow and we're happy to announce a new addition to the program: Website Optimizer Seminars for Success.

For those not familiar with Seminars for Success, they are full day, in-person seminars providing hands-on training on Google products. Seminars are currently offered for AdWords, Analytics, and now Website Optimizer. Seminars for Success are led by industry experts using a curriculum designed in conjunction with Google.

The first Website Optimizer Seminars will be held in the following cities:
December 4 - Alexandria, VA
December 10 - Seattle, WA
January 23 - Las Vegas, NV
February 11 - San Jose, CA

Sign up for Seminars at least 7 days in advance and we'll even throw in a $50 AdWords credit (View the terms and conditions of advertising credits). We'll be adding more Website Optimizer Seminars in the near future, so if you want to hear when seminars are happening near you, you can fill out this contact form.

For more information about Seminars for Success, including registration details, course outlines, and past attendees' comments, please visit www.google.com/awseminars.

Posted by Vivian Leung, Inside AdWords crew