Google Accounts for AdWords

You may have seen a message in your account recently about how we're updating the AdWords login system to Google Accounts. To give you more information straight from the source, we asked Ann-Lee, from the Google Accounts team, to answer several questions we thought our advertisers might have.

What is a Google Account?

A Google Account is a single email and password that gives you a simple and secure way to sign in to multiple Google services, without having to log in and out each time. Your login information is the only thing that will change. All your account information -- such as billing and campaign details -- will remain the same.

Do you have to have a Gmail account to update to Google Accounts?

No, you can use any of your email addresses as your Google Accounts login.

What if advertisers prefer to keep personal and business accounts separate?

You can opt to create multiple Google Accounts, and in this way, separate your personal from your business accounts.

So, what should advertisers do now?

Over the next few weeks, we'll be asking you to update your AdWords login to a Google Account when you first login to AdWords.

Though updating to Google Accounts will remain optional from October 19, 2005 until January 15, 2006, we advise you to complete the process and begin using your new Google Accounts login as soon as possible. After January 15, 2006, you'll need to update before you can access your account.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

Reaching local prospects

A lot of advertisers – everyone from realtors to dog walkers, florists to dentists – take advantage of local targeting to specify the cities or regions (or even latitude and longitude coordinates!) where their ads should show.

For businesses which serve particular states, cities, or regions, this is an effective way of focusing your AdWords campaign on your target audience. So how does it work? If a San Francisco dog walking company creates a campaign targeted to the San Francisco area with keywords such as ‘dog walking’ and ‘dog walkers,’ their ad will show when a user, whose Internet Protocol (IP) address identifies her as being located in San Francisco, searches for those keywords.

Google can usually identify the IP address of the searcher to determine their location, then show ads targeted to the relevant area. However, some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use a relatively small number of shared IP addresses for a large number of users. In these cases, since we can’t always determine the user’s regional location, we show national and global ads only.

But don’t despair! There’s a way to help ensure that your ads reach as many people as possible in your target area, including users whose location can’t be identified from their IP addresses. Here’s how: in addition to your locally targeted campaign, create another nationally targeted campaign with region-specific ad text and keywords. Our San Francisco dog walkers would target the entire United States, but use keywords like “san francisco dog walker” and “sf dog walking company.” Their ad text for this campaign would make it clear that their business was located in San Francisco as well.

For more information about creating local and national campaigns, check out this quick guide.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

We get letters

Shortly after our "Distorted images" post, we received a letter from Recipezaar publisher Gay Gilmore:

What a surprise today!

I would have loved to comment on what great results we have seen since we implemented image ads, but you guys don't allow comments -- I understand why ;-) -- so I thought I'd pop an email.

Well, nothing makes us happier than to hear about publishers seeing great results, so we followed up with Gay to learn a little more about their success:

We've seen a 34% increase in AdSense revenues by allowing image ads in our ad codes and implementing section targeting on key pages. These technologies by their nature mean that impressions may initially drop, however, we have still seen increased revenues because our eCPM has doubled. Making more money from fewer impressions is a GREAT thing.

Of course Google doesn't give us all the stats yet on image v. text v. site-targeted ads, so we can't be sure exactly what the cause is ;-).

AdSense now offers us a more competitive eCPM than other ad publishing networks (without the annoying banners or attention-grabbing layer ads), so we are sending more and more traffic to Google. Our users are happier too. Because our AdSense ads are super-targeted, our customers tend to view them as "additional content" rather than diversionary advertising.

Thanks for the Link Love ;-)

Gay, thanks for sharing this part of your AdSense success story - and how additional reporting will be useful for you. No promises, but we'll keep doing our best to give you what you need to maximize your AdSense earnings.

Posted by Sandra - AdSense Publisher Support

AdWords success in 25 words or less

Long ago, in the misty past, someone challenged me to sum up how to be successful with AdWords in 25 words or less. My best effort at the time is shown below, and I think it still serves as a pretty good summary.

However, I'm betting that one of our readers might do an even better job, so I invite you to put my version to shame. Send us your best effort, and sometime soon we'll publish the top results.

I can't wait to see what you all come up with! In the meantime, here's mine:

• Targeted Ad Groups!
• Specific keywords describing your products
• Ads about same thing as the keywords
• Send user to a highly related page on your site

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

Advertising outside of the (text) box

All AdWords advertisers are familiar with the text ads that show alongside the Google search results and across the Google Network. After all, each one of you has created at least one. However, not everyone is aware of the power of image ads. These graphical AdWords ads are served on content sites in the Google Network and allow you to reach your customers in a whole new way.

You can create image ads in both keyword and site-targeted campaigns, so you have control over the reach and placement of your ads. Creating a keyword-targeted campaign will allow your image ad to be placed on relevant content sites across our network, while you are able to choose the specific sites where you'd like your ad to show with a site-targeted campaign.

Whatever you decide, and we do suggest that you test and track your results, you can take advantage of both static and animated image ads. We accept image ads (.JPEG, .PNG, .GIF), as well as Flash (.SWF), which is a new addition.

Before you add a little image ad flair to your advertising campaign, make sure you review our Editorial Guidelines for this type of ad. These specify the do's and don'ts of image ad creation and steer you down the path to image ad success. Once you're comfortable with these guideliens, you can create an image ad using one of the five ad sizes accepted. Remember, you can create multiple image ads per Ad Group, and it's always best to test until you find what works best for you. Questions? Let us know, and we'll help clear them up.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew