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.
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
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:
- Search Ads & Contextual Ads Are Different! You Need To Treat Them Separately
- How to optimize a contextual search advertising campaign
- Block low quality traffic
- Peak behind the curtain to see to learn what AdSense sites are doing for you
- About smart pricing
- Content network suggestions from Google
Using Dynamic Keyword Insertion Can affect Your Quality Score
In the old days, before October 08 when Google changed QS to be real time, using dynamic keyword insertion could help your QS because the ad received a higher CTR; not because the keyword was suddenly in the ad.
This is no longer true. DKI can affect your actual QS (what is calculated when the ad is being shown).
As Google is evaluating the ad copy and keyword to the search query in real time, they are using the actual ad (after DKI) being seen by the searcher to determine the QS.
each keyword’s Quality Score is determined after the keyword is triggered and inserted into the ad seen by the user. This is true of any AdWords text ad, where the ad and keyword are included in the Quality Score evaluation. Each ad variation and keyword combination will undergo its own Quality Score evaluation, and accrue its own individual performance history within your account.
Source: AdWords Help
One of the issues with quality score is that it’s at the:
- ad copy
- keyword
- geography
- search partner intersection
You are only seeing a ‘generic’ quality score in your account. It’s the one you have to optimize for as you can’t see all the variations.
Your Broad Match Keywords Are Not Converting Higher than Your Exact Match Keywords
I was recently looking at an AdWords account where:
- The broad match conversion rates were higher than the phrase or exact match keywords
- The broad match cost per conversion was much lower than the phrase or exact match keywords
The company had therefore bid the broad match much higher than the other match types.
Broad match does not convert higher than phrase or exact match.
There are variations of other search queries that are triggering the broad match keyword to be shown that are actually converting. (As with any blanket statement, there are a few rare exceptions).
Just a reminder, with broad match keywords, you ad could show for related search queries. Just because a keyword is related does not mean it will convert or you even offer that product or service. Broad match is useful to find new keywords because: “20% of the queries Google receives each day are ones we haven’t seen in at least 90 days, if at all?” – source.
For example, if your ad group had these statistics:
| Keyword | Match Type | Conversion Rate | Cost per Conversion |
| coffee mug | broad | 5% | $5 |
| coffee mugs | exact | 3% | $7 |
| coffee mugs | phrase | 2% | $12 |
| blue coffee mug | exact | 4% | $12 |
| red coffee mug | exact | 4% | $6 |
What is actually happening is that if you were to look into the broad match keyword ‘coffee mug’ and see the variations of searches that is being triggered for this keyword, you will have a chart like this:
| Actual searches triggering the broad matched word ‘Coffee Mug’ | Conversion Rate | Cost per Conversion |
| Starbucks coffee mug | 1% | $9 |
| travel coffee mug | 6% | $3 |
| tea cup | 0% | N/A |
| car coffee mug | 4% | $6 |
| coffee mug set | 2% | $8 |
If you were to see that data, you should add the keywords (and maybe a dedicated landing page) for travel coffee mug, and car coffee mug. There will be decisions to be made about keeping coffee mug set and Starbucks coffee mug. And you probably want to add the negative keyword –tea (and maybe –cup).
How do you learn the search queries for which your broad match keyword is being Displayed?
If you see your broad match converting higher than your other match types (and this is a good exercise to run regardless of broad match converting higher than other keywords):
- Run a search query report. This report will show you the actual search queries which are triggering your ad to be displayed.
- Look for the search query variations which are converting
- Add these variations as keywords (either to that ad group or possibly a new one depending on how related the terms are)
- Look for variations which are not converting
- Add them as negative keywords
- Change your bids so that your broad match is lower than your other keywords. If you bid broad match the highest, you are giving Google the ad serving control. If you have a phrase or exact match keyword – you know more about the user intent and cost per conversion – you should want the more specific variation to show.
Take Control of Your Ad Serving
Its very easy to give Google a significant amount of control for serving your ad. A liberal use of broad match keywords, or bidding broad match keywords higher than your more specific match types – essentially takes the control out of your hands which keyword will be shown for a given query.
You know your business better than Google.
You should know that when someone searches for a given query:
- Which keyword you want matched
- What ad copy you want shown
- Which landing page the visitor will see after the click
If you are not controlling those elements, you have lost some control of your account. Take back the control and you should find yourself with a more successful AdWords campaign.
Google AdWords
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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
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Learn More about the Seminars:
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