Dynamic Search Ads to Improve Targeted Traffic & Conversions

Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) generate incremental leads and sales by promoting your business on more commercial queries than you’re reaching today. After all, even well-managed AdWords campaigns containing thousands and thousands of keywords can miss relevant searches, experience delays getting ads written for new products, and get out of sync with what's actually available on your website.

If you’re not already familiar with how Dynamic Search Ads work, you may want to read about the targeting controls available,reporting and optimization features, and support for third-party PPC tracking.

Successful Beta Test
Many of our beta testers set up DSA to run alongside their existing large-scale search campaigns. And DSA delivered.

• Incremental and efficient results. On average, Dynamic Search Ads boosted beta testers’ traffic and conversion volume from AdWords by 10% and outperformed their non-exact keywords by 10% on clickthrough rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC) and cost per action (CPA).
• Success. A few examples of successful DSA beta testers include:
• Jonathan Meager, Marketing Manager at Gear4music (.pdf case study)
• Matt Wilkinson, Director of Search and Media at Rosetta and Steve Baruch, VP of eCommerce at MSC Industrial Supply (.pdf case study)
• Larry Cotter, GM at Apartment Home Living (video case study).

We also made numerous product improvements during the beta test including:

• Bid auto-optimization. Since one of our chief goals for DSA was more results with less work, we devised a system to automatically ratchet bids downward whenever specific queries for an advertiser produce lower conversion rates or user engagement levels. As a result, your ROI for Dynamic Search Ads can improve over time automatically. 
• Website crawl frequency. Any indexed page with a matched DSA impression will be crawled at least once daily. Pages with more impressions and clicks may be crawled more frequently. So DSA will now better reflect the latest products and inventory conditions on your web site. That means more clicks, higher conversion rates and better ROI.
• Mobile and tablet support. Given the growing importance of mobile campaigns, we developed full support for DSA on mobile and tablet platforms.
• Extension support. Dynamic Search Ads support the same ad extensions as other search ads.  
• Conversion Optimizer compatibility. Once enabled, many beta test participants reported success using the combination of DSA and Conversion Optimizer to simultaneously expand their campaign reach while automatically optimizing bids to meet their average CPA goal.

Get Started
Now any business interested in boosting their AdWords results can try DSA. You can find starting points on creating a DSA campaign and setting up dynamic targets in the AdWords help center.

If you’re interested in learning even more about Dynamic Search Ads, please stay tuned to our blog. More information and an invitation to join us for a Hangout on Air will be coming soon.

Source: http://adwords.blogspot.in/2012/10/boost-your-results-with-dynamic-search.html

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Shared Budgets a New Feature in Google Adwords

Shared budgets is a new feature that lets you establish a single daily budget that’s shared by multiple campaigns in an AdWords account. Shared budgets can make it easier to match your AdWords spending with how your business allocates marketing budget. And they can save you time and improve your AdWords results. Let’s see how with an example.

How Shared Budgets Work
Say you’re an outdoor furniture seller with a single line of products. You’re currently running three campaigns: 

1. A desktop search campaign
2. A mobile search campaign
3. A remarketing campaign to reach people who have visited your site but didn’t convert

Your overall marketing plan allows you to spend $100 per day across your three campaigns. Without shared budgets, you’d next have to decide how to allocate the $100 daily AdWords budget across each of your three campaigns. Say you set a $60 daily budget for your desktop campaign, a $20 daily budget for your mobile campaign, and $20 to your remarketing campaign.

On most days, each campaign hits its daily budget and you’re satisfied with the ROI of each campaign. But on some days, your desktop search campaign sees fewer impressions and clicks than other days. So you only spend $90. On these days, your overall campaign results could be stronger if you were able to put an additional $10 into your mobile search campaign or remarketing campaign.

Using shared budgets allows automatic adjustments across campaigns, so you don’t have to constantly monitor and change individual campaign budgets throughout the day.

Creating a shared budget
It’s simple. Log into the AdWords interface, then click Shared library, and select Budgets. Then follow the steps to Create a new shared budget (see image below).

Reporting
The “Shared library” is also where you can review aggregate performance metrics for multiple campaigns with a shared budget.

Learn more
For more on shared budgets, please visit the AdWords Help Center or the AdWords Community to ask questions or share tips.

Posted by Vidya Iyer, Ads Engineering

Social that Adds Up: Performance and Measurement

| 7:59 AM

Labels: Social, Webinars

Join us for a webinar on Tuesday, September 18th at 11am PT, in partnership with Hootsuite, to learn how we can make better decisions based on performance metrics of social networks using Google Analytics social reports. Register today, it’s open to everyone!

Adam Singer, the Product Marketing Manager for Google Analytics, will go beyond the current social metrics of followers, +1’s, likes and others, to discuss the true impact your social media is making on your brand’s bottom line. Many of the current metrics available allow us to measure the reach of our message, but not necessarily the ROI. Learn how to connect visits to your social pages all the way through to a sale or conversion on your website.

You’ll also learn how social media can impact the rest of your digital presence. For example, when you verify your Google+ Page, recommendations from your customers and fans may be more likely to appear in search results on Google. This can raise the social awareness of your business and increase its relevance. For paid marketing campaigns, social can actually help you improve clickthrough rate performance. 77% of US consumers trust recommendations from their social media connections, more than any other media source, meaning that +1s may have a positive effect on purchase decisions. On average, search ads with annotations have a 5-10% uplift in clickthrough rate. Some of our advertisers have seen even higher uplifts, H&M achieved 22% uplift and Cadbury achieved 17% uplift in clickthrough rates on their search ads.

Start measuring the value you’re creating through your social media campaigns!

Source: http://adwords.blogspot.in/2012/09/new-adwords-budget-option-shared-budgets_17.html

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Real Time Bidding - The Future of Search Engine Marketing

Real-time bidding (RTB) emerged at the intersection of data liquidity and inventory liquidity. Today, third-party data suppliers have put the power of audience information in the hands of media buyers. At the same time, the marketplace for online inventory has never been more liquid. There are vast pools of online inventory available to every kind of media buyer, from small businesses running their first display campaigns to large agency trading desks buying on behalf of Fortune 500 advertisers.

At this intersection of data and inventory, there’s been an explosion of choice of where display ads can run. With millions of sites accepting display ads, it’s too difficult for media buyers to buy the audience they want when buying directly from each individual site. To buy an audience across even a small selection of a few dozen sites, a buyer would have to define the audience for the campaign individually with each site on the media plan. It’s operationally impossible to get the exact same audience targeting criteria setup with all these sites.

Real-time bidding helps media buyers find audiences at scale. This, in turn, helps drive performance by ensuring an advertiser’s ad is seen by the audiences most likely to respond. All media buyers can appreciate an enhanced ability to find audiences at scale, but how did real-time bidding emerge in the first place?

The Rise of Exchanges
When ad exchanges opened, they brought more liquidity to the marketplace for online inventory. 2007 was
a pivotal year for ad exchanges. Three major exchanges were acquired that year: Yahoo! bought Right Media
in April, Google bought DoubleClick in May and Microsoft bought AdECN in August. Each company quickly made vast pools of inventory available, which greatly improved the experience for many parties to transact in online display.

The Rise of Consolidated Buying
To help advertisers take advantage of this new liquidity, a new type of media buying intermediary quickly sprangup. These companies could access inventory from multiple exchanges with no need to aggregate inventory through relationships with publishers. Among these companies include the demand-side platforms (DSPs) who built their businesses on technology and services catering solely to the “demand-side” of the industry, the agencies and advertisers. As Figure 1 shows, 2007 was a banner year for DSPs too. Five of today’s DSPs were founded that year, including Invite Media, a company Google acquired in 2010.

DSPs weren’t the only companies to take advantage of the inventory exchanges made readily available. Ad
networks began to look to exchanges as a way to supplement their existing inventory. Plus, other types of
buying intermediaries began to specialize in niche businesses within the intersection of data liquidity and
inventory liquidity, such as retargeting and audience targeting specialists.

Before RTB, buying from multiple exchanges was time-consuming and inefficient for these companies. They
had to use a different system to access each exchange. And since a typical campaign would pull inventory
from more than one exchange, there was no easy way to achieve de-duplicated reach or to cap the number of
impressions that audiences would see from any given campaign. They needed a faster, more automated way
to buy across exchanges.

RTB Delivers Heretofore Unreachable Efficiency for Cross-Exchange Buyers

Now with large pools of liquid inventory and a robust ecosystem of buyers capable of accessing it, the market
was ripe for innovation. RTB was the missing piece. RTB was conceived as a workflow solution tied to new
opportunities in data-driven display advertising. Seeing the opportunity to grow the overall pie for online
advertising, exchanges began to develop real-time bidding APIs.

As Figure 2 shows, a surge of activity took place in 2009 and 2010, when many ad exchanges and supply-side platforms (SSPs) announced support for RTB.

Since RTB offered a solution for efficiently acquiring online ad inventory, it began an unstoppable pattern
of rapid growth. Cross-exchange buyers—DSPs, ad networks, agency trading desks and other media buying
intermediaries—were quick to take advantage of RTB. This rapid uptake of RTB can be seen in the track record of DoubleClick Ad Exchange (ADX). As Figure 3 shows, ADX inventory sold through RTB jumped from 8% in January 2010 to 68% in May 2011—a tremendous upswing in just under a year and a half.

RTB has taken off for one simple reason: Buyers see real benefits from it. For example, in a comparison of
ADX campaigns running in April and May of 2011 executed via RTB versus those executed through non-RTB mechanisms, RTB provided for a 19% savings on CPM rates and raised CTR performance by .06 percentage points, from .09% to .15% CTR.

In a recent survey by Google and Digiday, 47% of advertisers and agencies who responded said they intend
to spend more on digital advertising in 2011 because of the benefits of RTB.2 A full 88% of advertiser and
agency respondents plan to buy online display via RTB in 2011, up from 75% in 2010.3 Plus, among media
intermediaries (such as DSPs and ad networks), 29% expect their RTB volume will increase by 100% or more over last year; 19% believe it will go up by at least 200%.

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Exact and Phrase Matches Obliges to Google's Wish -)

Its time for change.. Mr.Exact Match & Mr.Phrase match. How on earth can you be unchanged for a long time? It is high time for you to relax and be flexible to users queries.

Google will wave the wand you to have to meekly surrender to it's wish. It is as simple as that!

Here you go directly to the post buddy.. http://adwords.blogspot.in/2012/04/new-matching-behavior-for-phrase-and.html

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DigitalMarketing Contest 2012 - DMC

Head over to my new blogger.com blog... "digitalmarketing contest2012" at http://digitalmarketingcontest2012india.blogspot.com/ . Happy reading!

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Join Google Engage Community - Free Vouchers

Join Google Engage Community to Enjoy Fabulous Offers from the God of Search Engines - Google.

Benefits include:

50,000 Rs free voucher
Facility to request more and more vouchers
Free vouchers to write all Google Adwords exams
Just pass the exams to get the company certification
Lots of powerful videos to make to power you to get more clients

Join the program now by visiting the following link http://www.google.com/ads/engage2011/engage-seo/

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Landing Page Policy Violations and Penalty

Landing page quality contributes a fair amount to the goodness of your Quality Score along with other factors.

Landing page policy compliance has a different purpose.The main purpose of this policy is to prohibit sites that are not legal, trustworthy and safe. Showing a page full of Ads to make a profit out of it is also a policy violation.Below mentioned belong to the policy violation category.

• Arbitrage
• Bridge page
• Counterfeit goods
• Get rich quick
• Hacking
• Mirroring and framing
• Misleading and inaccurate claims 

Google now explicitly tell the Adwords users if they are labeled under landing page policy guidelines violation through their Adwords account. 
The keywords that are affected would have the "site suspended" status and this can be seen via keyword tab. Serious landing page violations will also mean suspension of Google Adwords account.

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My Site Ranks First in Google, A Blog Site Created for Participation in SEO Contest

I have created a blog site for being part of an SEO contest.

Here is the link My Site Ranks First in Google.

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Google AdWords Certification Program Exams | Google Adwords Certified Professional India Chennai

I have cleared the Google AdWords Certification Program. Thanks to Google for giving the voucher codes to write the two exams freely, otherwise I would have to spent $100 to take up the exams.


I wrote the fundamental exam few months back only to get failed even after scoring 82%. The minimum amount of score percentage to pass the exam is 85%. At that time I spent $50 from my pocket to attempt the exam. After a month I got an email from Google saying we will give you 6 months of time to use the free voucher code to write the exam and to retain your Adwords professional status. I relished after reading the email and thought of giving a second try in the near future before the end of six months time.

Wrote the fundamental exam on September 14 and cleared it with 87%. It was really a big sigh of relief. Did show the courage of writing the second exam; Search Advertising Advanced and cleared it with just 80%. It was a joyous moment, firstly because I have passed the exam, secondly I need not shell a penny from my pocket for another one year to write the exam, thirdly because I wrote the exam free of cost.

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Adwords Billing Page Adorns a New Look | Payment Process Simplified

Adwords billing page adorns a new look with great features that simply the payment process. As of now this new feature is open to only U.S advertisers. This feature is still in the beta version and has the scope for further improvement.

Also, there are few changes in the terminologies. Post Pay, Pre Pay and Direct debit get new names.. Read More New Adwords Billing Interface

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Reducing the CTR to Improve ROI ?

It would be strange to hear from me on 'Reducing the CTR' of your Adwords keywords. The reality says reducing the CTR is a wise move... okay.. before you start calling me good names, I will break the suspense.

B2B keywords are costlier than B2C keywords. The average amount needed to pay for a click is between $2.70 & $3 according to Marketing Sherpa’s 2006 benchmark report. In highly competitive B2B segments the marketers pay anywhere between $16 to $50. Increasing the CTR alone without increasing the conversions is a not a wise move..right?

Hence the ads for B2B have to be more precise and specific by having all sorts of information to make sure to pre-qualify the persons clicking on the ad. This will ensure high Return on Investment even though the quality score is less. Because of low quality score your ads will be pushed down, although, your ROI will be growing leaps and bound.

Weeding out unwanted clicks is best practice for both B2B and B2C products / services.  In this case of B2B ads marketers have to sacrifice their CTR to pre-qualify the clickers.

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Google Adwords Promo Code , Activation Fee & Limited Time / Expiration Date to Spend the Amount

You got a worthy promo code from Google for Adwords.. First of all Congrats for receiving this!

To spend the amount offered you ought to pay the activation fee $5 and please also note that you have to burn the amount in a limited time period. Lot of people do the mistake of spending a small sum daily, by doing this you may quickly reach the limited time period and never ever you will be able to spend the full offered amount.

So once you receive the coupon please spend the amount within 10 days of time to fully utilize the offer extended.

From the horse mouth (Google)

• Once the promotion code amount is used up, we'll continue serving your ads and will start charging the form of payment you provided.
• The promotion code does not apply to the activation fee.
• An expiration date often applies, so keep in mind that you only have a certain amount of time to redeem your credit.

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Google Advertising Professional Exam, Google Advertising Fundamental Exam, Adwords Exam Preparation Guide

Preparing for Google Adwords Exam to become a Google Advertising Professional? Not able to get sufficient information on the process and procedure or on the learning part. Try reading this.

What is the exam name?

Google Advertising Fundamental Exam [(Google Advertising Fundamentals Exam fulfills one of the requirements to become a Qualified Google Advertising Professional (we will have three advanced exams launching soon)]

Is there any help files that could assist me in preparing for the exams?
https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/go/learningcenter?hl=en
https://adwords.google.com/support/select/professionals/?hl=en

Where can I write the exam?
http://google.starttest.com

What is the cost to write the exam?
$50 - One time

What are the requirements to write the exam?
-Pay $50
-Fetch the Candidate Id by logging into Google Advertising Professional account (http://adwords.google.com/professionals/)
-Download the test browser from https://www.programworkshop.com/drivers/google/Testing%20Center%20Browser.exe
-My Client Center account

How many questions will be here?
120.

What is the exam duration?
2hours.

Can I pause the exam while writing?
No.

Can I modify my answers in-between?
Yes.

Can I refer to any help files while writing the exam?
No. You will not be allowed to open any new browser window while writing the test, hence no chance of looking for answers.

What is the passing score?
85%

What you get after passing the exam?

Google Advertising Professional status and certification in the form of a logo. Highly Valued Recognition!

Do I need to spend anything on Adwords to get the status?
Yes, you are required to spend $1000 in three months of time, from the time of your passing. Don't worry you need not spend it from your pocket, you can very well link the adwords account you manage from your MCC account.At present Google gives you 20 coupons once you pass the exam, each equivalent to $100. If you don't manage client account just spend half the amount Google gives you, this is more than enough to get the Google Advertising Professional certification and status.

An Important step to follow is LINKING MCC account to Google Advertising Professional account!
Create a company profile and link to your MCC account from https://adwords.google.com/professionals/. This will help Google to ensure you spend the required $1000 in three months of time.

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Google Adwords Product Extensions in Search Ads

Google Adwords have thrown open the gates to the Google base merchant center to get displayed in Search Ads.

Adwords advertisers can now capitalize on this opportunity to display product images from their Google base merchant center beneath Search ads.

For this the Adwords advertisers have to follow couple of simple steps. Advertisers have to specify their Adwords customer Id in their merchant center. After this step they will be seeing the product extensions link in their Adwords account. Clicking on the link will allow them to add the product images directly from the merchant center.

Please note that the advertisers would be charged for every click on their adcopy/the product images. Even then the chances of increasing the CTR and conversions are high.

As you all know increasing the CTR would well result in increasing the Quality score and ultimately in decrease in Avg. CPC.

Reference:
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2009/11/product-extensions-available-to-all-us.html

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Select the Keywords and See the Full of Keywords Enabled for Broad Match and Phrase Match Keywords

In my last post I wrote about the great Google decision to show off all the keywords that triggered ads for Broad match and Phrase match keywords in the Search Query Performance report..

Now there is yet another announcement from Google that would minimize the time taken to generate Search query performance report to check the list of keywords enabled for Broad match and Phrase match keywords. The new feature would allow advertisers to see the full list of keywords triggered for a Broad match or Phrase match keywords by selecting the keywords and clicking on 'See Search terms' and then again click 'Selected.' Advertisers can download the keywords in a report format and need not always go the report center to create Search query performance report.

Decisions to delete/pause/mark as negative/ w.r.t the keywords can be taken wisely and quickly.

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Get Full List of Keywords Enabled for Broad Match & Phrase Match Keywords by Generating Search Query Performance Report

Being an Google Advertising Professional and having spent millions of dollars for my Clients Adwords account I frowned on Google's attitude for not disclosing the precise keywords enabled for Broad match and Phrase match keywords.

Google simply lables the keywords as "unique queries" in the Search query performance report. It was an event to celebrate on May 19 when Google decided to show all the keywords that triggered ads for Broad match and Phrase match keywords. Google whacked out the label "Unique Queries" and presented the advertisers a granular insight by rendering them the full list of queries.

Now the Adwords campaign managers can make use of the transparent view and see their full list of keywords enabled by generating Search Query Performance report. I appreciate the transparency bestowed by Google to advertisers thereby facilitating them to spend every dime in potential keywords.

Reference URL:
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2009/05/enhanced-search-query-performance.html

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Import Goals & Transactions to Adwords Account from Google Analytics Account

Adwords has added another feather to its cap by allowing advertisers to see Google analytics goals and transactions inside the Adwords account.

The new feature enables Adwords customers to measure the ROI more easily & accurately. To enjoy viewing the goals and transactions follow the below stated steps.

1) Login to Google Analytics account.
2) Click on "Edit Account and Data Sharing Settings"
3) Select a minimum of one option beneath 'Share my Google Analytics data'
4) Save the settings
5) Head over to "Google Adwords Conversion Tracking" page
6) Click on 'Link your Analytics goals and transactions'
7) Select the profiles form which you would like to import Goals or Transactions
8) Click "Link" button on the bottom of the page

Please note that your analytics data won't be immediately shown in the Adwords account, it may take up to two weeks to get reflected.

The best part of this feature is that you can easliy understand your Adwords performances by having the Goals and Transactions listed side by side in your conversion tracking page.

Reference:
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=105598&hl=en_US

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Free PPC Landing Pages Finder Tool- Google Search-based Keyword Tool

Choosing and setting the right landing pages for the PPC keywords is highly indispensable for obtaining more customers and enhancing Adwords Quality score.

All the keyword suggestion tools out there in the market have got the capacity to produce the keywords with high search volume. Even then you are required to do some extra bit of work while handling PPC marketing. The extra work is to find the relevant landing pages for the keywords. Incorrecly identified and set landing pages would only lead to higher customer attrition rate and end up in a low Quality score.

The introduction of Google Search-based keyword tool wipes away all the worries encountered while attempting to find right landing pages for the keywords selected. Just input the website URL in the Search-based keyword tool it will gift you the high search volume keywords picked from your website content and adjacent to eack keywohds it would show you the landing pages that can be targeted for the keywords.

Initially this tool was available only to US and UK. Only April 21st 2009 the usage of Search-based keyword tool was made available in the following countries viz. Australia, Canada, China, Japan, and New Zealand. Below are some of the new features announced.

1)Filter results according to countries and language.
2)Filter by Ad Share and Search Share,.

Link to Search-based Keyword tool.

Search-based keywords tool is helpful even to non-Adwords advertisers.

References:
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2009/04/search-based-keyword-tool-wider.html
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/11/announcing-search-based-keyword-tool.html

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Adwords New Interface Undergoes Beta Test

Google beta tests new adwords interface. The news interface carries more flexibility for managing the campaigns and supplies complete understanding of the performances of the campaigns.

New interface would certainly bring down the number of reports generated to look into the performance of the campaigns.This is because of the clear insights the new interface can facilitate to the campaign managers.

The planning and commitment shown by the Adwords team of the new interface plies in-depth information of the campaigns performance by just taking a casual look. Commendations to the whole Adwords team for presenting such a wonderful interface to billions of Adwords advertisers.

Below are the fantastic features of the new Adwords interface:

1) Performance graphs for every metrics available in Adwords
2) Clicking on Adgroups tab will portray the performance of Adgroups across all campaigns.
3) Setting tab renders details of the settings and editing options(Easy Edit Options).
4) Ads tab provides adcopies information(Easy Edit Options).
5) Keywords tab list all the keywords(Easy Edit Options).
6) Networks tab displays network info(Easy Edit Options).
7) Damn easy to change keywords bid in the new interface.


















Heavy insights about the performace of the campaigns with easy edit choice would do a world of good for Adwords campaign managers. On the whole Advertisers intention of increasing the sales of products or services can be met if the features provided by the new interface is properly utilized.

In the initial stages of the beta testing the only selected US advertisers were given the opportunity to try the new interface. Recently Google has extended the opportunity to more US advertisers and also to advertisers in United Kingdom and Australia advertisers.

Any body willing to sign up to try the new interface irrespective of the location can fill in the Beta Sign up form.

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New Expandable Ad Formats in Content Network

Google Adwords beta test expandable ad formats for Content network. These ads can expand double the size of the original ads thereby rendering the users with a wonderful experience.





Users need to click on the ads to expand it or contract it. Helps Adsense publishers to enagage visitors for more time. At present the feature is only available for U.S. advertisers taking part in Google's 3rd Party Ad Serving program.

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