Now available: Reach the right audience through remarketing

Imagine you’re a travel company, and you’re trying to excite users during the holiday season about deals to tropical Caribbean destinations. Users may come to your website, browse the offers and think about booking a trip, but decide that the deal is still not cheap enough. Then, they continue to browse the web. If you later decide to offer discounted deals to the Carribean, how do you reach these users who have already expressed interest in travelling there?

To help you do this, this week we're rolling out a new feature called remarketing. Any AdWords advertiser can use remarketing to reach users as they’re browsing the web on sites within the Google Content Network. Remarketing is a simple way to connect with users, based on their past interactions with your website.

We opened a trial of remarketing last March as part of our interest-based advertising beta. We’ve received a tremendous response from the hundreds of advertisers who’ve been using it in recent months, across all industries - including automotive, retail, local and finance. We’ve seen that remarketing has worked well for many different kinds of advertisers - whether they’re looking to boost brand awareness, or drive clicks and sales, and whether they use display or text ads. For example, if you’re a search advertiser, you can use remarketing to create an integrated campaign strategy. After driving traffic to your site with search ads, you can then remarket to those users who reach your site by showing them tailored ads on sites throughout the Google Content Network.

You can easily set up and create a remarketing campaign through the new “Audiences” tab in AdWords. A remarketing campaign allows you to take advantage of the same features and reports you can use today in AdWords - it’s just a new way to reach the best audience for your ad.

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Here’s an example of how it works. Let’s say you’re a basketball team with tickets that you want to sell. You can put a piece of code on the tickets page of your website, which will let you later show relevant ticket ads (such as last minute discounts) to everyone who has visited that page, as they subsequently browse sites in the Google Content Network. In addition to your own site, you can also remarket to users who visited your YouTube brand channel or clicked your YouTube homepage ad.

You can also run a number of remarketing campaigns at the same time. For example, you could offer discount game tickets to users who’ve previously visited your tickets page, advertise VIP hospitality packages to users who clicked on your “How to get to the arena” page, and advertise a sale on team merchandise to users who previously visited your YouTube brand channel.

Remarketing is a great way for businesses to reach users who are likely to be highly receptive to their ads and special offers. It helps advertisers and websites get higher returns. For example, Intercontinental Hotels Group has used remarketing to reach potential customers who have visited one of their hotel websites:

Ad by InterContinental Hotels Group using remarketing to offer incentive to users

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It also means more relevant and useful ads for users, and more opportunities for your customers to receive special offers and discounts that may be of interest to them. As we announced when we launched our beta of interest based advertising, we want to put users in control of the ads they see, so anyone can opt-out of remarketing by using the Ads Preferences Manager. Our remarketing product complies with industry standards developed by self-regulatory groups such as the NAI and IAB and IAB UK.

To get started with a remarketing campaign, check out the information we’ve put together.

Posted by Aitan Weinberg, Product Manager

​New tool for brand advertisers on the Google Content Network

Two types of advertisers run campaigns across the Google Content Network. The first group, direct response advertisers, measures the success of their campaigns by looking for clicks, traffic to their sites, and sales. In contrast, brand advertisers typically use display ads to raise awareness and purchase consideration for a product or service a person might buy down the road. Other advertisers are looking to achieve a combination of these goals.

On the Google Content Network, we've been focused on building new capabilities that make it a great place for brand advertising of all kinds. For example, last year we introduced frequency capping to enable advertisers to manage how often their campaign reaches the right users. We've also developed new innovative tools to measure the impact of brand campaigns. Today, in response to feedback from brand advertisers, we're announcing a new feature that allows these advertisers to reach their advertising goals more easily.

This feature, which filters out "below the fold" inventory, enables brand advertisers to be more selective about where ads appear. The new filter gives you the ability to show ads only in places that appear on the user's screen when the page loads, without requiring them to scroll down. Learn more in the Help Center.

With a host of different web browsers, monitor sizes, and screen resolutions, it’s hard for advertisers to predict where an ad will land, since the same placement may appear differently on each user's screen. To simplify the process for you, Google has implemented a statistically driven solution to determine which ads are above and below the fold. The statistically driven model only considers ads "above the fold" if they are completely on-screen when the browser window loads.

Our goal with this release is to give brand advertisers greater control over where their ads appear, and make the Google Content Network an even more powerful, controlled environment for running high performing brand campaigns.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

New holiday ad templates available in Display Ad Builder

This winter season take advantage of holiday-themed Display Ad Builder templates to advertise your products and services.

You can find these new templates in the "Seasonal" category of the Display Ad Builder gallery. Here are some examples of the templates:

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These templates use new high quality buttons and backgrounds to provide you with just the right holiday feel for your upcoming advertising campaigns. By changing the text and adding your own images, you can build customized ads in minutes.

We also recently launched 20 high quality templates in the "General" category, and 20 "People" ads featuring professional images of people.

To start creating your ads, visit the “Ads” tab in any campaign, click “New Ad,” and select “Display Ad Builder’ from the drop down.

Posted by Austin Rachlin, Inside AdWords crew

Google Campaign Insights: Better measurement for display advertising

As we've previously posted, one of our aims is to improve display advertising on the web. Three simple principles guide our approach: simplify the system for buying and selling display ads; deliver better performance that advertisers and agencies can measure; open up the ecosystem by making it accessible to more participants.

So how can you better measure the impact of your display ad campaign? At the moment, you can measure how many clicks your display ads achieve, measure conversions that result from those clicks, compare results with industry benchmark data, and use "View-through conversion reporting" to measure visits to your website from users who saw your display ad in the past.

Today, we're launching a new tool to measure the impact of your display ads - Campaign Insights. As of today, Campaign Insights is available for larger display ad campaigns across the Google Content Network in the US and UK.

Campaign Insights is a unique measurement tool that can give reliable data about how a campaign has raised brand awareness, or active user interest, in a particular product or service. It looks beyond the traditional measures of clicks and conversions to calculate the incremental lift in both online search activity and website visits that result from a display ad campaign.

We use the same expertise we use to improve our own services -- our ability to analyze large quantities of data. Campaign Insights compares two data sets: a large group of users (many thousands, minimum) who saw a particular ad, with an equivalent, large group that did not see the ad. It then measures whether there is any significant difference in searches and visits to your website between the two groups. Doing this, Campaign Insights can determine the incremental change that is directly attributable to the display ad campaign. With this insight, you can establish how well your display ad campaign is working beyond just clicks.

Campaign Insights provides highly reliable results to marketers because of the statistical methodology our computer algorithms use to combine and analyze large volumes of data from several sources -- the advertiser's own campaign information, ad serving logs, and sampled data from Google Toolbar users who have opted in to enhanced features. All of the results reported to advertisers are anonymized and aggregated over thousands of users.

If you run wide-scale display ad campaigns on the Google Content Network and want to try Campaign Insights, you should check with your Google representative.

Posted by Austin Rachlin, Inside AdWords crew

Announcing the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange

You may have seen our post on the Official Google Blog, announcing the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange. The Ad Exchange is a real-time marketplace to buy and sell display advertising space.

The "buyers" in the Ad Exchange are typically ad networks and agency-run networks with their own ad serving and optimization technologies, while the "sellers" are large publishers.

We're excited about what the launch of the Ad Exchange means for you, our advertisers. Ad Exchange sites will now be available for you to advertise on, as part of the Google Content Network, through your AdWords account. These sites are made available to you when Ad Exchange publishers choose to allow AdWords advertisers to compete for their inventory, and as long as that inventory meets all AdSense policy requirements.

So when you advertise on the Google Content Network, your ads will now be eligible to run across additional high-quality placements on those Ad Exchange sites, in addition to the hundreds and thousands of placements your ads can run on in the Google Content Network.

These placements will appear like any other Content Network placement in your AdWords reports. Like all Content Network placements, you can use the Placement Performance Report to see where your ads ran, which placements performed best, and act on that information by increasing or decreasing bids based on each placement's performance. On occasion, an Ad Exchange site may choose to remain anonymous, in which case, the site will appear in your reports with an anonymized label like "123456.anonymous.google." You can choose to exclude this placement, just like you can exclude any placement in the Content Network, if you see it's not meeting your performance goals.

You can still use all the AdWords targeting, bidding, formats, reporting, and controls for the Content Network that you're already familiar with. This just means that there will be more high-quality sites that you can access. As always, sites must meet the same quality requirements that we apply to all sites in the Google Content Network. Also, this change does not affect your search campaigns.

You can learn more about how the DoubleClick Ad Exchange can benefit you in the AdWords Help Center.

If you're not currently using the Google Content Network, you can learn more about how to get started here. If you're using the Content Network but have never tried running display ad formats, you might check out our Display Ad Builder tool, which can help you create new display ads in minutes.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

Google Ad Planner has a new look

On June 24, Google Ad Planner turned one year old, and what a busy year it's been. Marketers and media planners worldwide now manage tens of thousands of media plans with Google Ad Planner. Additionally, with publishers directly contributing their own site data and sharing their Google Analytics traffic numbers, we continue to provide you the most accurate data measurements for your media planning. We've also steadily released a variety of new features over the year based on your feedback, including pre-defined audiences, more site filters, and additional demographic data.

To celebrate these milestones, we've given Google Ad Planner a facelift. Starting today, you can find sites and manage your media plans even faster with the redesigned Google Ad Planner interface.

Screenshots of old vs. new Ad Planner interface

We've kept all the best features from before, but the new interface streamlines your research and media planning by making features easier to find and use. Simply enter the URL to jump directly to a site's profile page and see Ad Planner's rich profile data for the site. We've also improved your campaign management by allowing you to easily merge and copy media plans.

We hope you'll take advantage of the new Google Ad Planner interface. Visit www.google.com/adplanner to check out our new look and to find out more information about Google Ad Planner.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

Follow-up on the Content Network performance trends white paper

Last week, we released a study on performance trends on Google's Content Network. The study compared the cost per acquisition (CPA) on Google's Content and Search Networks and found that, for the median advertiser, the average CPAs were about the same on both channels. Since the release of the white paper, we've received some questions from our advertisers about why CPAs were similar and what actions you should take based on the findings in the white paper. We are addressing these questions in this post, and to better reflect the insights from the detailed analysis, we've made some clarifications to the executive summary and concluding paragraph of the white paper.

As the white paper indicates, the primary reason for similar cost-per-acquisition on the content and search networks is a result of our smart pricing system. Smart pricing is a feature that automatically reduces the price advertisers pay for clicks if our data shows that a click from a Content Network page is less likely to result in a conversion. This means that if our smart pricing system predicts a particular Content Network page is likely to have a low conversion rate, we will automatically reduce the price advertisers pay for that click. As the white paper indicates, the conversion rate on the Content Network sample was 27.9% lower than on the Search Network but this was offset by the fact that CPCs on content are 28.4% lower than search.

In terms of what actions you should take based on the findings in the white paper, we recommend you:

• Consider complementing your search campaigns with campaigns on the Content Network, if you haven't done so already. Remember that success on the Content Network starts with good campaign structure, so please refer to our optimization tips when setting up your campaigns.
• Use the new tools we offer for content optimization such as the Conversion Optimizer, Placement Performance Reports, and the Site and Category Exclusion tool. They can help you further tailor your Content Network performance to meet your advertising goals.

Of course, it's important to recognize that performance can vary from advertiser to advertiser, both in terms of CPA as well as conversion volume.

The report describes the experiences of those advertisers who adopted tools such as the Conversion Optimizer and Placement Performance Reports and continued to use them. We think that the evidence is strong that these tools have been useful to these advertisers.

We believe that search is still the most effective advertising medium for providing a strong base of conversions. At the same time, the Content Network can be a cost-effective way to gain additional conversions beyond those you get via search.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

A Google white paper: Content Network performance trends

Many of our advertisers show their AdWords ads on the Google content network to reach potential customers as they spend time across the web.

How effective is the Content Network for these advertisers? We wanted to find out, so we looked at performance metrics for advertisers who show their ads on both the Google search and content networks.

Our findings, captured in the white paper, CPA Performance Trends On the Google Content Network, show that ads on the Content Network are likely to be as cost-effective as ads on the search network. In fact, we found that the median advertiser showing their ads on both the search and content networks has a cost-per-acquisition (CPA) that's about 2% lower on the Content Network than on search pages, with the Content Network driving close to 20% of their total conversions.

In the analysis, we looked at thousands of AdWords campaigns and many geographic regions. We also analyzed how conversion rates improve for advertisers using campaign management tools such as the Conversion Optimizer and site exclusion.

These findings show there's a substantial opportunity for advertisers who complement their search marketing campaigns with ads on the Content Network. To learn more about advertising effectively on the Google Content Network, we recommend you review our Content Network optimization tips.

You can read the full white paper here. We hope it helps shed light on the potential to meet your performance goals when advertising on the Google Content Network.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

Display ad builder contest winners

We're happy to announce the winners of our display ad builder contest, where we challenged advertisers to use their creativity and innovation to create compelling new display ad builder ads. The top five entries stood out for their choices of template, ad copy, use of images, and overall creativity.

First place: Wilshire Grand Hotel in Los Angeles, whose display ads have helped them significantly increase online reservations.


Second place: ResortQuest.com, whose ads received a low cost per conversion compared to other ads in the ad group.


Third place: TripRes.com, who used text-only display ad builder ads to achieve a lower cost per conversion compared to text ads in the same ad group.


Honorable Mentions: Printglobe.com, a promotional products company, and the tea company, Teavana.

Congratulations to the winners and thank you to everyone who participated!

We also invite you to learn more about display ad builder, and how you can build your own great ads that will reach your customers in new ways. Or, if you use Twitter, you can follow @GoogleAdBuilder to ask questions and get the latest display ad builder updates.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

New templates for coupon display ads, as used by Razorfish

We now have two new display ad templates available which allow you to easily create online coupons to run on sites across the Google content network. You can probably guess why coupon-based promotions might be especially effective these days, and display ads allow you to add in eye-catching ad copy, coupon codes, and customized color schemes that wouldn't be possible with simple text ads.

Razorfish, a top digital advertising agency, has begun to use templates for coupon-based promotions for a major national retailer in the U.S. Danny Huynh, Associate Search Director at Razorfish, has this to say about the tool: "We see the display ad builder as a great creative sandbox, allowing us to us to quickly test and iterate with new ad formats and capabilities that simple text ads can't offer. The coupon templates in particular are allowing us to bring the messages from our customers' offline circulars, to the online world, at scale with Google's content network. We're planning to test display ad builder templates on an ongoing basis."

Each of our new templates has a prominent slot for featuring a price or a discount, e.g., "20% off," and has extra room for coupon codes. As with any of our other templates, you can easily edit your ads on an ongoing basis to change the discount level, prices and any other customizable aspect. Just remember that any edits will need to reviewed by an AdWords specialist, and may take 2-4 business days to take effect. Here's an example of the new templates, which come in several sizes:

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To access these new templates, log in to your AdWords account and choose the "Display ad builder" ad format option within any ad group. Then, choose the "Retail" category to find the coupon templates. This video can also show you how to access the feature.

Posted by Christian Yee, Inside AdWords crew

A display ad builder contest reminder

Happy St. Patrick's Day. We recently announced a contest for the AdWords display ad builder. We've received some great entries, and with the deadline of March 24th coming up soon, we wanted to remind you to enter. Just fill out the form with your basic account and contact information, and we'll evaluate entries and choose winners based on creativity and innovative uses of the tool. For example, let us know if you've used the tool to create a great St. Patty's Day ad using our holiday template, or if you've used it to provide coupons to your customers to get them to visit your site. The top five entries win up to $1000 in AdWords credits, so get your entry in soon. This contest is only open to anyone in the U.S. with an AdWords account.

Posted by Austin Rachlin, Inside AdWords crew

St. Patrick's day display ad templates now available

If you're looking to add a bit of luck to an upcoming campaign, you might want to try out one of our two new St. Patrick's Day display ad templates, which are available in the "Seasonal" category of the display ad builder. We're excited to offer template ads for another holiday, after debuting the feature with Valentine's Day and President's Day in the U.S.

To show you these templates and how you can use them, we have a short tutorial video:

To access the display ad builder, log in to your AdWords account, and choose the "Display ad builder" ad format option within any ad group. This video can also show you how to access the feature.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

New how-to videos for the AdWords display ad builder

We've created four new videos to help you complete the most important and useful tasks with the display ad builder. Combined with the two videos we already had, the new videos help us cover a broader range of topics. Our library now addresses all of hte following issues, arranged by the order in which they'll arise:

How to access the feature in AdWords

How to search for the display ad templates that are right for you

How to create an ad

How to create an ad with no images required

How to copy ads across ad groups

Full product tutorial

If you're looking to get started with the display ad builder for the first time, you may find the first video on this playlist to be particularly useful:

Check out the individual videos above or go here to bookmark the playlist of all these videos.

To get started now, log into your AdWords account.

Posted by Austin Rachlin, Inside AdWords crew

Valentine's Day & President's Day ad templates now available

Last week, we gave you a sneak preview of our seasonal display ad templates for Valentine's Day and President's Day. We're excited to let you know that these new templates are now available for you to use in your campaigns -- just visit the "Seasonal" section of the Display Ad Builder gallery in AdWords to get started.

We're always interested in your feedback and ideas for more template themes, so let us know if you're looking for something special. One of our advertisers, Jason Barnes of Superb Internet Corporation, helped us come up with the idea for easier, more timely display ad promotions. Jason and his team wanted a way to bring more relevancy to display ads, without the cost or lead time it would otherwise require, so he got in touch with us. Here's what Jason had to say:

Using Google's display ad builder is just a smoother process. Say we wanted to do a one-day holiday sale of 50% off, and the rest of the week, 30% off. That can be a hassle with standard image ad directories, but with the Display Ad Builder, we can easily swap in text if we have an image. It's a great time saver, and we'll definitely continue to use it that way.

You can adopt Jason's strategy of making quick text changes to your image ads in the Display Ad Builder, whether or not you decide to use one of our new seasonal templates.

If you're new to Display Ads, you can get started by clicking "Display Ad Builder" on the "Create an ad page" within a new or existing campaign. To learn more about creating and running display ads, visit our Display Ads 101 tutorial site.

Posted by Heather Lane, Inside AdWords crew

New seasonal templates for display ad builder: coming soon!

Celebrate Valentine's Day and President's Day with ad templates dressed up specially for the occasions. In a few days, we'll offer seven new templates in the display ad builder -- each with elements and animations designed for the upcoming holidays. Seasonal templates are a fun, effective way to make your message more relevant to customers, no matter what you're advertising.

As a sneak preview, we've included some screenshots of a few upcoming templates. Keep in mind that customization options for each template will vary, so we encourage you to check out all the options once you're ready to create your ads.

(Click screenshots to enlarge the images.)

The new holiday templates will be offered in all of the display ad builder's 13 languages. We'll update the blog once the holiday templates are available to you.

Posted by Heather Lane, Inside AdWords crew

Build your own display ads in minutes

Today we released the AdWords display ad builder, which lets you create professional-looking display ads in AdWords without needing to hire a designer or start from scratch. If you've wanted to expand beyond your text ad campaigns, or if you've been looking for an easier way to build display ads, this tool can help.

This new tool lets you create customized display ads with your own text, images, and logo. You can also change colors and backgrounds. The tool can create ads to fit all possible placements across the Google content network, including video and game placements. The display ad builder is available now to all advertisers in the U.S. and Canada.

We've also put together a short video demonstrating how to create your first ad:

And for a more detailed look you can watch a longer tutorial.

To start creating your ads, click Display Ad Builder on the Create an ad page within a new or existing campaign in your AdWords account. If you want to learn more about creating and running display ads, visit the new Display Ads 101 tutorial. As we continue adding new templates and features to the tool, we're want your feedback. Please let us know what would make the display ad builder better for you.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew