Today we’re excited to unveil a significant upgrade to our display advertising offerings for marketers.
In 2008, we launched a product to make display advertising easier and more accessible, called Display Ad Builder. Display Ad Builder provides very simple and engaging templates for display ads (including images, videos and more), that can be run across the 2 million-plus sites in the Google Display Network. It’s been a real hit - 100 new advertisers use Display Ad Builder every day, 80% of whom have never run a display ad campaign before.
Now, many of these advertisers have become seduced by the possibilities of today’s display advertising - and realize that they missed the glory days in the late 1990s and 2000s.
So today, we’re helping them make up for lost time, by unveiling “old school” ad units in Display Ad Builder.
The formats available are as follows:
“Punch the Monkey” - using the latest interactive technology, you can invite users to punch on a monkey that moves randomly through the ad unit, to learn more about your product.
“Click here for smileys” - put a smile on your users’ faces - literally! Your brand can offer potential consumers the chance to click on smiley faces that they can insert into their “instant messaging” conversations (available for Internet Explorer and Netscape browsers only).
“LOLcat” - cash in on the craze by creating an ad unit containing a photo of a cute cat with a funny message. Great for brand association.
“Dancing .gif” - what’s funnier than some dance moves in your browser? This is a 180 x 150 unit containing a funky animated .gif image, under which you can include a tailored message.
“Congratulations, you’ve won” - using modern text to speech technology, you can speak directly to your users. This ad is a video format, set to auto-play, that yells out “Congratulations, you’ve won!” repeatedly to the user. If a user clicks to stop the video, they are redirected to your website.
“Pop ups galore” - Google prohibits pop-up ads - until now! This ad format causes the user’s browser to open multiple browser windows, each containing a different message about your brand. You can customize the number of windows you want to open - up to 20. Users will love it!
“Scratch off” - this is a supersized leaderboard banner ad which invites a user to hold their mouse button down and “scratch” across, to reveal an underlying message promoting your brand (such as “You are the 10,000th visitor to our site!”).
The templates for these ads are very easy to customize within Display Ad Builder. You only need a basic working knowledge of Fortran.
For these “old school” templates, we’ve done a lot of work to ensure that running a campaign evokes the charm of earlier years. You simply create your ads, then fax us a form, listing what sites and URLs you’d like these ads to run on, what time of day, and how many impressions. We will then send you a quote. You sign the quote and hand-write in the registration number of each of the ads and presto! Your ads can be live within 8 to 10 weeks.
These ads will deliver great results, and make users’ experience with online advertising far better and more immersive. Early studies show they have a very significant impact on brand recall.
We’re really excited about this announcement. Rich media ads and dynamic creative ads may be buzzy at the moment, but nothing beats the simplicity and nostalgic elegance of older display ads. We’re bringing smart and sexy back.
Our friends at the Google Mobile Ads Blog recently launched the "Getting Mobile Ready" series to help you and your clients establish their presence on the mobile web.
To stay up-to-date on this series, and other ways to make the most of the big opportunity on the small screen, subscribe to the Google Mobile Ads Blog feed. Posted by Agency Blog Team
Last week, John Nicoletti, Head of Agency Development at Google, shared his thoughts on the emergence of digital marketing channels and the role SEMs can play in guiding marketers to success in developing and measuring multi-channel online campaigns. In particular, he honed in on how SEMs could be the next generation of Man Men:
SEMs' mature knowledge of exploring, optimizing and integrating search ads position them as handy GPS devices for navigating the rapidly expanding digital superhighway
The performance-based DNA of SEMs can help marketers truly capture the opportunity of mobile, understand display measurement strategies and technologies, and promote and measure the power of video and social advertising
Word of mouth is powerful. When you have a choice to make, it’s common to turn to the people you trust. But what about word of click? How can getting a suggestion from a friend or co-worker when you need it be as simple as having a hallway conversation -- or even simpler?
We want to make it easy for Google users to get recommendations from the people they trust right when they’re searching. That’s why we’re introducing the +1 button. With a single click, the +1 button lets signed-in Google users recommend the content they like on the web to their friends and contacts right when it’s most useful -- on Google search.
+1 is a simple idea. Let’s use a hypothetical Brian as an example. When Brian signs into his Google account and sees one of your ads or organic search results on Google, he can +1 it and recommend your page to the world.
The next time Brian’s friend Mary is signed in and searching on Google and your page appears, she might see a personalized annotation letting her know that Brian +1’d it. So Brian’s +1 helps Mary decide that your site is worth checking out. We expect that personalized annotations will help users know when your ads and organic search results are relevant to them, increasing the chances that they'll end up on your site. You don’t have to make adjustments to your advertising strategy based on +1 buttons, and the way we calculate Quality Score isn’t changing (though +1s will be one of many signals we use to calculate organic search ranking). Think of +1 buttons as an enhancement that can help already successful search campaigns perform even better.
At first the +1 button will appear for English searches only on Google.com, but we’re working to add more languages in the future. You don’t have to make any changes to your campaigns for +1s to help you -- over the coming weeks, we’ll add +1 buttons to ads and search results on Google.com.
But the +1 button isn’t just for search pages. We’re working on a +1 button that you can put on your pages too, making it easy for people to recommend your content on Google search without leaving your site. If you want to be notified when the +1 button is available for your website, you can sign up for email updates at our +1 webmaster site.
The +1 button is the next step in our effort to find relevance through relationships on the web. We’re excited about using +1s to make search, and your search campaigns, more personal, relevant and compelling. And we hope you’re excited too!
To learn more about the +1 button and how it affects your search ads, visit the AdWords Help Center.
Many of you use contextual targeting on the Google Display Network to reach potential customers as they read web content directly related to your products or services. To date, you've been able to do this by specifying keywords that work together to show your ads on relevant webpages. This week, you'll also be able to specify topics to contextually target your ads to pages in the Google Display Network. With this additional contextual targeting option, you'll be able to select from over 1,750 topics and sub-topics to target your ads, helping you quickly reach a broad audience across the web that's actively engaged with content related to your business.
Using topics to contextually target your ads offers broad targeting and reach, and is a good way to connect with a large audience quickly and easily to generate awareness or drive sales. When using topic targeting our system looks at all the terms on a page to determine the topic of the page, and is less reliant on particular keywords. On the other hand, using keywords to contextually target allows you to target your ads to a more specific set of pages in the Display Network, since you use individual keywords to develop a theme in your ad groups. However, both targeting options can be used together to effectively reach an audience across the Google Display Network. Let's walk through a use-case.
Let's say you're selling digital cameras. Here's how you might use keyword- and topic- based contextual targeting together to achieve different campaign objectives like raising awareness and driving sales.
Create an ad group targeting the sub-topic News & Current Events >> Technology News with a display ad to increase awareness of your cameras among technology enthusiasts.
Then target the sub-topic Photo & Video >> Cameras, using a display or rich media ad format like video to educate people interested in cameras on your products' features and benefits.
Finally, create a separate ad group using keyword-based contextual targeting with keywords focused on a specific brand or camera model. Then run a text or display ad which includes a special offer or discount on your camera to drive purchases among users reading reviews of that Camera brand or model.
This is just one example of how you can use topic- and keyword-based contextual targeting together to build awareness, increase consideration and drive sales. You can also exclude topics and sub-topics to refine your targeting.
As with other targeting options on our Display Network, contextual targeting by topic supports all ad formats, such as text, display, video and rich media as well as all our bidding options, such as cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-thousand impression (CPM), and cost-per-acquisition (CPA). In addition, you still have access to URL-level reporting and other tools such as the Conversion Optimizer.
Please join Google and the Atlanta, New York and Boston chapters of the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) for an exciting panel and networking event on mobile search marketing. We're hosting the panel in Google's Atlanta office and broadcasting live to audiences in Google's New York and Boston offices. Although the Atlanta event is at capacity, there's still space available at the New York and Boston locations.
We've assembled an all-star panel from the mobile industry, with speakers from Google, Bing, Yahoo, Razorfish and 360i. This will be an interactive event with plenty of opportunity for networking and engaging with program speakers and audience members in all locations.
Date: Thursday, March 31, 2011 Time: 6:00pm - 9:00pm (Networking starts at 6:00 pm. Speakers present at 7:00 pm) Price: Free for SEMPO members, Non-members pay $10 Location: New York - Google Inc., 76 Ninth Avenue, New York, NY 10011 (register here) Boston - Google Inc., 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142 (register here)
Not a member? Join today and attend this and other SEMPO events for free. Not sure whether your company is a member? Contact cmadden@sempo.org to confirm.
Sites like YouTube are like large global focus groups. They can launch people, videos and ideas into fame faster than ever before. If you've ever wished for a way to explore and understand what is happening in real time, then you'll love YouTube Trends.
Stay on top of what's happening on YouTube and around the world -- from pop culture to breaking news -- through daily blog posts about the latest video phenomena and new content feeds like Most Shared, Trending Videos, and Trending Topics. Twice a day -- at 4am ET and 4pm ET -- we also highlight four videos receiving buzz around the web.
Dig Deeper Using the new YouTube Trends Dashboard, discover what people are passionate about across demographics in different corners of the world. Explore the Most Shared or Most Viewed videos by location, age group and gender*. Compare three different sets of videos: e.g. find out what's popular with teens in Birmingham versus Hawaii or Poland. (* demographic data based on self-reported, logged-in users)
How Does It Happen? Using YouTube data, we can learn a lot about how videos get viewed and shared. Throughout the week, we look behind the viral successes and examine the phenomena trending within the YouTube community to better understand the content people love to watch, whether it’s a funny home movie, breaking news footage, or a popular new TV ad.
Having a mobile strategy is key when engaging with tech savvy, connected consumers -- especially when you want online and in-store conversions.
To that end, our mobile team posted five tips for driving smartphone users to purchase from your site on their blog. Check out their post here for the full scoop.
DoubleClick Search began in 2006, a tool for larger agencies and advertisers running large-scale online advertising campaigns across multiple platforms. It’s designed to manage the execution of paid search campaigns and centralize the measurement of performance across search and display advertising.
Think of search campaign management like an air traffic control system: directing one airplane to take off from a given airport at the right time is relatively simple. Coordinating thousands of airplanes, across many airports is more complex. The same is true of search campaigns: managing a search campaign is easy, but managing multiple campaigns and search engines, and comparing performance of search and display strategies, can be more difficult.
Today at SES New York, we’re giving the first glimpse of the latest version of DoubleClick Search (version 3), designed to make these tasks simpler.
We’ve spent the last 9 months talking to our customers and agency partners about what you want from a search campaign management tool, and we’ve heard you loud and clear: you want a powerful solution that lets you manage millions of keywords, across the leading search engines, from a fast, easy-to-use platform. So we took a look at our existing DoubleClick Search product and decided to rebuild it from scratch, designing it to take the activities you do on a daily basis and make them simpler, faster and more effective.
We are currently beta testing DoubleClick Search v3 with select partners and will be rolling it out to all partners later this year. Here are a few ways we’ve made our DoubleClick Search product better:
Workflow: We’ve simplified navigation with an easy-to-use, AdWords-like interface and enabled you make changes to your campaign directly from DoubleClick Search or directly in the search engines. We’ve also added the ability to upload campaigns in spreadsheets with up to 1 million rows, and manage campaigns globally with many language and currency options.
Reporting: DoubleClick Search now includes powerful filters and labels that allow you to highlight important keywords. Our revamped reporting features also allow you to manage where your ads appear with precise position controls, design your bidding strategy to meet specific ROI goals, and compare how your campaigns are performing across search and display, thanks to seamless integration with DoubleClick’s display platform, DoubleClick for Advertisers.
Optimization: We’ve given you new tools to enhance optimization, including the ability to view performance data across all the major search engines and a customizable reporting view so you can focus on what matters most to your business.
Here is a sneak peek at what the new DoubleClick Search will look like:
TED, the organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, ran their inaugural Ads Worth Spreading challenge in Q1. It was designed to solicit best-in-class ads that raise the bar, elevate the craft and invent new forms of engagement, both online and in general. The results are in:
Beginning in early January, TED and YouTube began the call for submissions. In less than a month, nearly 1,000 ads were submitted from around the world, varying in length from 30 seconds to five minutes. The winners were selected by a diverse judging panel made up of 24 artists, business people and thought leaders, including Robert Wong from Google’s Creative Lab and YouTube creative champion Terrence Kelleman of Dynomighty. One-third of the entries came from outside of the U.S., across a wide variety of brands and causes.
In early March, Chris Anderson announced the 10 winners of the challenge from the stage of the annual TED conference in Long Beach, California. The winners represent some of the most creative, compelling and out-of-the-box executions of the past year. They embody a new paradigm for advertising creative, pushing the boundaries on what will move audiences and spur action by embracing longer-form storytelling as advertising.
Video is a powerful medium for spreading ideas. Our mission--like TED’s--is supported in part by advertising. Any great video--whether original content or advertising--should make you think, make you respond, and make you want to share. We hope to continue to see more enthusiasm and more passion in online advertising, solidifying it as the medium that elevates the craft and practice of brands spreading ideas. The winning videos can be seen today on the YouTube homepage, and you can also take a look at behind-the-scenes commentary on YouTube Show & Tell, our resource for the best creative marketing on YouTube.
Post by Mark Sabec, Product Marketing Manager, YouTube, who recently watched Janna Levin’s TED talk: “The sound the universe makes”
Today we released new functionality in Google Partner Search that allows advertisers looking for account management support to directly initiate contact with certified partners by filling out a lead form, and for certified partners to easily review and respond to inbound inquiries. We’re making this change in response to both advertiser and certified partner feedback that they’d like to see improvements to the lead management process, as well as the request process for inquiring clients.
When Google Partner Search first launched in April 2009, if a prospective client found your listing and wished to contact you, he would need to go directly to your company site to find contact information.
Now, to make the lead management process more efficient, we added a “Contact us” button on the company profile page, enabling clients to review and contact certified partners directly through Partner Search:
Prospective clients will automatically be sent a confirmation email that the lead was sent, and your company will receive an email alert that a new lead is available for review. You can then review the leads by clicking on the “Lead Management” link, and from there can elect to take further action:
For certified partners, the new “Lead Management” link will make it easier to track where leads are coming from, and understand conversion rates for different lead sources.
If you’re a certified partner with offices in multiple countries we recommend having a profile page for each country to make the most of this new functionality. This will make it easier for prospective clients to find local partner support. If you opt to do this, you will need to have a minimum of one certified individual in the respective country (a certified individual can only be associated with one company profile).
In addition, to increase the likelihood of receiving targeted leads, make sure that your company’s profile information is complete and up-to-date, and that you’ve set the budget range to what you’re willing to manage. You may edit the minimum and maximum budget managed, along with industries, languages and countries served, and services provided, by clicking on the “My Company” tab, selecting the “Profile” link, then reviewing your company’s “Service Information.”
For more information on these, and other features of the Google Certification Program and Partner Search Engine, please visit the program Help Center.
In 2011 TV and video viewership continues to climb in the US across numerous devices. This trend increases the importance of video for businesses. With that in mind, we’re excited to announce Google’s extended partnership with SpotMixer which allows Google AdWords and TV Ads customers to create custom ads absolutely free of charge.
This offer represents our increased commitment to advertisers who want to leverage video to increase brand awareness and ROI. Read more on the Google TV Ads blog.
Creative people on YouTube love turning an idea into a brilliant production. They want their work to matter.
With this in mind, we’ve partnered with the 58th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity on Good Work, a new program that gives creative professionals the opportunity to use their skills to make a difference and gain recognition their work. Learn more in this video:
Through Good Work, nonprofits from all over the world can submit a brief for a video ad promoting their cause. These organizations often lack the resources and time to create a truly great ad for their cause - and this is where you can help. Pick a brief you want to work on from the Good Work briefs gallery and make an ad for that organization. Your ad can be inspirational, thought-provoking, funny, or serious - just make sure it’s innovative and compulsively watchable.
If you succeed, you might be strutting your stuff at this year’s Cannes Festival - five talented people will win a trip to Cannes and have their work showcased there. Could it be you?
The deadline to submit your entry here is May 9, 2011. A jury of top industry experts chaired by Craig Davis, Chief Creative Officer Publicis Mojo and founder of Brandkarma, will announce the winners on May 21, 2011.
Posted by Supriya Sharma, YouTube Product Marketing Managaer
Our friends at the Mobile Ads Blog just posted a new video case study on Volvo highlighting how to kick it with branding via mobile ads. Visit the mobile ads blog to learn more!
We’re pleased to announce the launch of AdWords API v201101, which allow you to more efficiently run reports, as well as implement campaign experiments and other recently released advertising features at scale. Through the AdWords API forum and developer events we’ve heard frequent requests for the newly available services. We’ve highlighted some of the new features below. A complete list of changes is available in the v201101 release notes.
v201101 highlights:
Easily run reports across clients: ReportDefinitionService now supports My Client Center (MCC) cross-client reports, which are fetched asynchronously. The ReportDefinition type has two new fields with which you specify retrieval of a cross-client report, and all report types have new fields for use in cross-client reporting. In addition, the following new reports have been added: Geo Performance, Demographic Performance, Ad Extensions Performance, Destination URL and Creative Conversion. See Report Types for more information.
Greater data control and filtering with a single generic selector: The get operations for a number of services now use a single generic selector, rather than service-specific selectors. The generic selector provides more control over the data returned, lets you filter on almost any field, and specify sorting and paging. For information about migrating your code, see the Selector Migration Reference.
Try out campaign experiments: A campaign can now try out sets of ads experimentally by using the ExperimentData in the AdGroupAd type. A new set of report fields provide information about how an advertiser experiment performed. The Ad Group Performance, Campaign Performance, Keywords Performance, and Managed Placements Performance reports each have a field that lets you segment on the control arm or experiment arm. In addition, a report field for each statistic indicates the significance in the change of that statistic in the experiment arm. For more information about campaign experiments, see the AdWords Campaign Experiments overview.
Differentiate locations for desired targeting: A new setting for the Campaign type -- GeoTargetTypeSetting -- lets you specify how to apply geo targeting. The setting lets you differentiate between the user’s physical location and the location that’s targeted in the search.
Run interest-based advertising at scale (coming soon): Adwords API will fully support interest-based advertising via the ConversionTrackerService, which enables you to create a new conversion event and get the Javascript tag to create new lists. This service will be released in the coming weeks.
Deprecation timeline for previous versions
With the release of equivalent functionality in v201101, the following versions and services will be deprecated:
API versions v13 (ReportService and TrafficEstimatorService only), v200909, v201003, v201008
BidLandscapeService (being moved to the DataService)
We will be sunsetting these versions and services in August 2011.
As with every new version of the AdWords API, we encourage you to review the resources in the AdWords API client libraries. If you have any questions please post them on the AdWords API forum.
Google AdWords transformed search advertising by only charging an advertiser when someone clicks on a search ad. A similar revolution is beginning to take shape in online video as viewer-initiated video ads are proliferating across the Web. The currency is slowly changing from impressions to views as pre-rolls allow viewers choose which ad to watch and in-banner video ads require a viewer initiated click-to-play. Google’s latest foray into the medium is TrueView, an in-stream video format on YouTube that actually lets viewers skip an ad, while only charging for actual video views.
As the landscape changes, TubeMogul and Google have jointly proposed a new, standardized metric for pricing and serving video ads to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Digital Video Committee: “Cost Per View” (CPV). The CPV framework would distinguish videos ads that viewers choose to watch ("views") from ads that automatically load in a video player ("impressions"). This emphasis on "views" is more powerful and a better indicator of viewer engagement.
Read more in the joint editorial in AdAge from Brett Wilson of TubeMogul and Baljeet Singh of YouTube, explaining the impetus for this proposal. To get the latest updates on the proposal’s status, follow TubeMogul on Twitter (@TubeMogul).
Posted by Neha Mandal, Marketing Manager for YouTube
Who: Search engine marketers & SEO specialists What: SES NYC
When: March 21-25, 2011 Where: Hilton, Midtown Manhatten Why: Come to SES NY for a sneak peek of the upgraded DoubleClick Search product -- New features, new interface and improved speed (March 22, 2011 - 1:30 - 2:30pm).
Don't miss the crash course on the latest AdWords innovations -- New ad formats, tools to simplify and automate account management, scale your ads across the Google Network (Wednesday March 23, 1:00-2:00pm).
