Watch 3 videos to become an AdWords Display Ad Builder Guru
Google AdWords has a tool called ‘Display Ad Builder’. This tool allows you to quickly create image, video, and interactive ads within the AdWords interface. This if very useful if you want to quickly build a variety of banner ads. These ads are only displayed on the content network.
The tool uses ad templates. You can customize the colors, images, and text within the templates to fit your needs. In addition, the Display Ad Builder will build your ad in several sizes from the single template. This is a huge time saver.
Below are some of the more useful videos to get you started with the Display Ad Builder.
Why the Display Ad Builder is Useful
Ignore the fact that the video is called ‘become an expert’. This video really shows some of the reasons you should use display ad builder and some tips for building these ads.
How to Video: Create a Display Builder Ad
This video presents a nice walk through of building an ad using the Display Ad Builder
Seasonal Templates
This is a video of building a St. Patrick’s day template. You don’t need to watch it if you’ve watched the previous video (How to create a display ad builder above). What’s notable about the display ad builder is that they launch a lot of seasonal templates that can be useful to stay relevant to holiday seasons.
Even More Videos
If you would like to see more videos about the Display Ad Builder, Google’s Business channel has ten videos in the Display Ad Builder playlist.
Beginners Guide To Creating Mobile AdWords Campaigns
My latest Search Engine Land column is out entitled: Beginners Guide To Creating Mobile AdWords Campaigns.
The article walks through:
- Reaching users on iPhones, Blackberry Storms, or phones will full internet browsers
- Reaching users who are using a phone without a full internet browser, such as a Blackberry Curve or Razor
- How to create a mobile website
- Previewing mobile results
- Conversion tracking
If you are running mobile campaigns, or thinking about testing a mobile PPC campaign, the article is a nice primer to get you started.
Enjoy Beginners Guide To Creating Mobile AdWords Campaigns.
Privacy or Convenience? Which path will you take with Firefox and Google AdWords?
The new version of Firefox 3.5 contains a program that can give away your location to a website. Don’t worry, you can disable this setting. The marketer in me gets excited about this technology. The privacy advocate in me shutters.
While I don’t mind my information being used in aggregate, IP addresses are not considered personal information. Therefore, a website can easily collect actual location, IP address, and any information you enter into forms. Now, on an eCommerce site, this doesn’t matter too much as you are already giving your credit card billing information. However, on a site where you normally just give something like an email address, a good marketer might use this service to automatically put your email into a specific location and send you targeted ads. Having access to data is one thing, being able to use it is quite another.
Firefox 3.5 is shipping with a new feature called Geode. This feature used Loki technology to determine the user’s location. The way Loki works is it maps Wi-Fi signals (therefore, if you are on dial-up or a wired connection, the feature will not work, and the geo-location presumably will fall back on standard Google location services (that’s a guess, I can’t find process documentation on that instance). In addition, it appears at present (but this is subject to change) that each site that uses location aware services (API Info) will have to ask permission before looking up your location. If you want to disable this feature permanently, How-To Geek has a nice write-up about the plug-in and disabling the feature in RC 3.5.
However, while Loki is the technology used, what actually happens is your data is sent to Google Location Services where Google will store:
- your computer’s IP address,
- information about the nearby wireless access points, and
- a random client identifier, which is assigned by Google, that expires every 2 weeks
That’s what’s listed is stored, but if you are logged into a Google account, they could also associate your entire Google account with a location every time a new site asks for your location.
Seeing Geode in Action
If you visit, http://3liz.org/geolocation/ the new Firefox will popup an info bat at the top of the browser:
Here you have the option of sharing location or not to share. If you do not choose ‘remember this for this site’, the next time you visit the site (or refresh the page) you will have to choose to share the location on that same site again.
The resulting page will attempt to guess your location:
(Click to see full view).
The exact same location is shown for me as I see with Google Latitude from my house. Now, I must live in a strange area as Google latitude (and Geode) seem to have large error margins (they often place me more than a mile from my actual location). However, when I venture more than a few miles from my house, the accuracy increases significantly. This seems strange to me as I live inside the Washington DC beltway, an urban area with so many cell towers and wireless signals that this service should be as accurate here as anywhere in the US. However, for whatever reasons, its not that accurate at all time.
I also tried this at the airport, and the service showed me at the airport in the correct terminal. So, there are times it’s eerily accurate.
What does this mean to marketers?
According to w3Schools, Firefox is up to 47% marketing share. w3Schools does not break out Firefox version 2 vs 3 in their stats. So it is difficult to see how quickly individuals upgrade to new versions of Firefox.
If Loki is really accurate to 10-20 meters (I’ve heard that’s for urban areas and it’s less accurate in rural areas, accuracy is subject to wi-fi data points), then its much more accurate than today’s geo-location features that often rely on host provider to IP mapping.
Unofficially, I hear the Yahoo elves whisper they are 90% accurate at a city level, and I hear the Google one’s whisper around 85% at that level. At the state level they are much more accurate, and everyone is exceptionally close to 100% at the country level.
Most campaigns find success with location targeting at the city level, but the success starts to diminish significantly when you move to smaller than a city level (such as a neighborhood, or radius targeting).
If consumers opt to allow the search engines to see their location (presumably because you could see some nicely tailor search results if your actual location was known, along with the engines already know a lot about you, so how much does location actually matter?), then marketers could once again start using very small targeting areas to reach consumers in very specific areas.
However, what I can’t find the answer to is if Google will always have your location data, or be able to use it, from other website’s you may have visited. If you visit a site where a unique identifier is used, and that identifier is set by Google (Because Firefox is using Google location services), can Google just use the information without even asking?
The Consumer’s Path?
Personally, I’ll try out some location services and see how much it creeps me out compared to gives me better results. I’m not sure which way I’ll fall yet. The marketer in me says:
- the better the results (including ads) the consumers see
- the more they like ads and click on them
- the better the targeting becomes in reaching a consumer
- and consumer’s don’t become blind to ads
- and it saves the consumer time
Consumers like relevant ads. If an ad is relevant to the consumer, consumers will click and buy. Relevant ads save the consumers time in trying to find the correct service or product. Relevant ads are a win-win for both consumers and marketers.
However, many countries place a high value on privacy. When a benefit it high enough, consumers will give up private information
- an email address for a free download
- personal information for a credit card application to receive 10% off a purchase
- letting a grocery store know every single thing you buy so that you get a small percentage off of some items
What is the tradeoff for location based information? Only time will tell how the new location services will affect marketing; however, I do know they will have an effect, I just don’t know how positive or negative it will be.
If nothing else, after a few years, no one will care and will consider it part of daily life. Remember when GMail launched and everyone was worried about Google reading their email? Google did not change anything. They still how ads based upon an email’s content. However, GMail is one of the fastest growing email clients today. After a few years, it becomes part of live and the privacy concerns fade away.
Be careful of updating to the new AdWords Editor
A few recent updates to the AdWords editor needed to be pulled and re-launched due to back-ups being lost, data corruption, and other issues.
The new update is now out (if you open the AdWords editor, it should give you a dialogue box to upgrade the editor); but be very careful.
After upgrading my editor, when I tried to open the file, I only received a ‘this program is no longer responding’ error from windows. I actually had two different versions of editor on my computer (which shouldn’t happen). I tried for a while, but nothing worked. Eventually, I had to completely uninstall and re-install the program.
Luckily, the data was still saved on my computer and I didn’t lose notes like a previous update.
The latest editor has a few nice updates. My favorite one is being able to sort the data by multiple columns.
You can sort by any three columns that are in your current view. For instance, if you do not have quality score being displayed in the current view, you need to first display quality score and then you can sort by it.
This will help in creating priorities of what keywords, ad copy, etc to change within your account.
Google changes trademarks again. Learn how to cope with the changes.
My latest Search Engine Land column, titled How Will Google’s Recent Trademark Changes Affect You? is now published.
Google has made a few big changes to how they handle trademarks in ad copy as well as expanding the countries where it is allowable to use trademarks as keywords.
In addition, Lori Weiman wrote a nice column this week titled Brand Aid How To Protect Your Brand Under Google’s New Trademark Policies which is more focused around helping brands protect their marks.
You have to use the new AdWords interface in 30 days
I received the below email from Google today for one of my accounts which is not currenlty using the new interface. It seems they now have only 30 days before they are forced to use the new one. I sure hope that Google finishes fixing the bugs as I have to go back to the old interface quite a bit these days as there are so many things that are either faster, easier-to-read, or just only in the old interface.
Hello,
In the coming weeks, we’ll upgrade your AdWords account (Customer ID: xxx-xx-xxxx) to a new web interface designed to make campaign management faster and easier. You can try it now; log into your account to use the new interface immediately.
You’ll have at least 30 days from the date of this email before you’ll be required to use the new interface to manage your campaigns. During this time we’ll continue to release additional features and make adjustments to the new interface based on advertiser feedback.
We’re working to ensure that the new interface contains all of the reports and controls you need to manage your campaigns effectively. We won’t upgrade your AdWords account to the new interface until we’re confident that it will meet your advertising needs.
Before we upgrade your account, you can switch between the new and previous interfaces at any time. Click the "Previous Interface" and "New Interface (Beta)" links in the top corner of your account (next to your email address) to switch back and forth.
To make sure that you’re prepared for the upgrade, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the new interface as soon as possible. We’ve prepared a set of online materials to help you get ready for the changes:
* Review the new interface microsite to get a quick overview of the changes and watch videos demonstrating the improvements: http://www.google.com/adwords/newinterface/
* Our "Getting Started Guide" will give you an overview of major new features and their benefits. You can download a PDF at: http://www.google.com/adwords/newinterface/new_interface_guide.pdf
* Wondering how to complete common AdWords tasks in the new interface? Visit our "How to" guide at: http://www.google.com/adwords/newinterface/standard/ads-and-keywords.html
* Search a full set of frequently asked questions in the Help Center for the new interface: https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/The help materials above will still be available after your account has been upgraded.
We hope you find that the new interface increases your advertising efficiency and makes it easier for you to improve your results. If you have any thoughts about the new interface, please let us know by clicking on the Feedback link in the top corner of your account. And as always, thank you for advertising with AdWords!
Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team
Use Google’s new Wonder Wheel for Keyword Research
Google just launched a few new site refinement enhancements such as viewing results based upon time, reviews, forums, etc (informative video below). However, there are two enhancements that should be used for keyword research.
Introducing the Wonder Wheel
The Wonder Wheel lets you see related information to your initial query in a pretty diagram. Each link of the diagram is clickable, and let’s you resort the information. While it looks similar to visual thesaurus (which is paid). The data is relatively similar (but better) to KwMap.net (please note the .net extension – do not visit the .com extension).
While you might not use the suggestions as keywords, they are fantastic for understanding ad group organization and choosing negative keywords. In addition, you can click on a link and pull up related information to that link.
For instance, if you view the results for canon printer (below), the top six terms are:
- canon printer manual
- canon printer portable
- canon printer support
- canon large format printer
- canon printer driver
- canon printer review
If you are selling Canon printers, you probably do not want to pay for clicks from people looking for support, drivers, and manuals. Instantly, you have three keywords (and you should add some variations on those as well).
In addition, your canon printer ad groups should be broken out to include different landing pages for large format printer and portable printers as they are different products.
While this tool will not give you the answers to your keywords and organization, it can help you with ideas.
You can also combine this data with Microsoft adLabs Search Funnel to receive a nice picture of not only related queries, but how the search queries change over time.
Related Searches
Google has shown related search information for some time, but it’s a good review – related search information can help you find keywords, and structure your ad groups.
New Search Option Video
If you’d like to see how to find these new search options, here’s a short 2 minute video:
Remember, none of these items aren’t magic bullets. They should just be added to your keyword research and organization ideas and tool sets, such as spidering search results for ideas.
Connect Your Google Analytics Goals to Your AdWords Conversion Tracking
Google very quietly rolled out a new feature – use your Google analytics goals as conversions in your AdWords accounts.
It’s been live for at least a week; and very straightforward to use.
Navigate to the conversion tracking screen (in either UI); and there’s a link for ‘Link your Analytics goals and transaction’.
However, when you go to link your AdWords and Analytics goals together, you can only use Goal 1 from your Google Analytics account:
Hopefully, this will be fixed sometime in the future.
Goal Confusion
I looked for a while; but as much as I could have – so if you know the answer or the link please post it in the comments.
Google Analytics treats a goal as the last site entrance, and is attributed to the day of the click.
Google AdWords treats as goal as the last AdWords ad clicked, and the goal as the date of the click (not the date of the conversion).
Therefore, is linking these two together just going to create more goal confusion – or will some nice pattern work itself out?
Google has a help file on connecting AdWords and Analytics; however, on that page the link to the help file “Read about how AdWords Conversion Tracking works with Google Analytics once the two are linked.” goes to a 404, not found page; hence the unanswered questions above.
Future?
I might have to set up another couple profiles and just set up single goals to see how well this works.
Since Analytics is a 1st party cookie, and AdWords is a 3rd party cookie – the analytics would be a better tracking mechanism once the details for how a conversion is actually counted are determined. The business rules laid out by Google will determine if this is actually useful for all.
I’d love to hear comments, links to other articles where this is discussed.
AdWords Mobile Pages Officially Close
I just received this email from Google:
Hello,
We’re sorry to inform you that, beginning May 6, we will no longer host AdWords Business Pages for mobile ads. As of that date, the product will be retired due to low usage. This means that all mobile Business Pages content will be removed, and any ads you have that link to an AdWords Business Page for mobile will stop running.
To continue running mobile ads after May 6, you’ll need to direct them to a different mobile landing page or to a phone number. For suggestions on how to create a new mobile landing page for your ads, visit http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=138513. For directions on creating a “click-to-call” mobile ad that links to your phone number, visit http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=32541.
We decided on this change after much consideration, and we apologize for any inconvenience it might cause you.
Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team
As a reminder, here’s a guide to make a quick Wordpress mobile site if you want to either move your Google mobile page, or test out mobile advertising.
Google releases whitepaper on the content network’s effectiveness
Google released a whitepaper that highlighted the content network’s effectiveness. I wanted to make a few notes and points before linking to the paper:
- Google says that the two most common features used by advertisers who see good returns from smart pricing are site exclusion (blocking your ad from being shown on certain sites) and Google’s conversion optimizer.
- Unfortunately, Google does not make mention of account organization (content only campaigns, search only, mixed, etc)
- In general, I agree that using excluded domains is key, but only after your organization is correct. However, I’m a larger fan of site targeting and a different keyword sets.
- Google only mentions the CPA differences, not the bidding differences of successful advertisers.
- The paper breaks spend down into three categories (per month)
-
- Less than $1,138
- Between $1,138 and $5943
- More than $5943
- I must admit, those numbers seem confusing to me. They seem to indicate that of those advertisers in the study that 1/3rd falls into each spend level. Unfortunately, they don’t call out if that spend is only on the content network or the overall spend of the account.
- Google has found that the smaller spends do better on content network, and that there seem to be a limit to the total numbers of available conversions on content.
- I really wonder, and have absolutely no data to support this, if affiliates are throwing off those spend numbers. Many ‘make a million dollars overnight’ affiliate training classes are made up of individuals with smaller spends; but hear wonderful things about the content network (I often find that the more sophisticated the advertiser; the more likely they like content. This does not mean that the content network will work for all advertisers even if they do it right – just a general observation as more sophisticated advertiser’s often test things themselves to see the results).
-
- Overall, the content network and search network end up with similar CPAs (a bit of variety by country).
- Again, this does not surprise me at all as it’s an aggregate number. I see many companies who do fantastic with content, and many who see the opposite. If that’s average out; seeing similar CPAs isn’t surprising.
- In addition, since the other feature that Google states is a common thread between account who do well on the content network is conversion optimizer where you set a CPA; seeing the CPAs on those accounts regardless of traffic should be similar.
Anyway, it’s a good read, just remember to optimize your accounts properly:
Very important things to keep in mind about the content network:
Google AdWords
Seminars for Success
Learn about Google AdWords from experts hand selected by Google.
These seminars will educate advertisers on the creation and management of successful AdWords campaigns.
Upcoming Seminars:
Boston AdWords Seminars June 24th & June 25th
Minneapolis AdWords Seminars July 16th & July 17th
Denver AdWords Seminars August 4th & 5th
Learn More about the Seminars:
Seminar Information
Official Google Seminar Page
Suggest a new city
Brad Geddes
Leslie Clark
Other Memberships
