Since we introduced product ratings, we’ve been working on new ways to help you gather feedback about your products and drive more qualified traffic to your site. Today, we’re making product ratings available in all markets where Google Shopping is present.
Product ratings appear in the form of stars and review counts on Shopping ads. This 5-star rating system represents aggregated review data for the product, compiled from multiple sources including merchants, third-party aggregators, editorial sites and users.
How to enable product ratings on Shopping ads
If you have a Merchant Center account for your store, you’ve already taken the first step towards displaying Product Ratings. Once you sign up and satisfy the program requirements, you can begin uploading Product Ratings feeds to your Merchant Center account. Alternatively, you may want to work with one of our approved third-party aggregators.
Additionally, you can now collect reviews about the products you sell through Google Customer Reviews. Whenever your shoppers complete a purchase, we’ll ask them about their shopping experience with your store, as well as the product they purchased. The reviews collected about their shopping experience will contribute to your seller rating and, the product reviews collected can make you eligible to show product ratings. To learn more about how to use Google Customer Reviews to collect product reviews, see here.
The holiday season is upon us, and millions of consumers around the world are looking forward to unwrapping their new devices and downloading their favorite apps. People have so many choices when it comes to apps, so it’s critical for you to capture their attention and give them a reason to engage with your app.
That’s why we’re rolling out HTML5 playable ads in Universal App campaigns (UAC)—so users can quickly spin a wheel, score a point or jump into level two, right from the ad.
Playtika gets more people in the game
To show how playable ads in UAC benefit game developers and app marketers, let’s take a look at how Playtika, a leading mobile gaming company, used this format to reach more users for its game: House of Fun. People can spin a wheel directly in the ad and experience the thrill of the game before downloading. This gives game lovers a sense of how the game works, and what it takes to win, before installing.
After introducing interactive and engaging playable ads and testing multiple creative formats, Playtika increased its return on ad spend (ROAS) by 1.8X.
According to Nir Schlaen, Marketing Team Leader, “We want to put Playtika’s games in the hands of more potential players at scale…We’ve found that playables drive more engagement and long-term customer value because users have already had a taste of the game.”
Here are three tips to help you get started with playable ads in UAC. 1. Make it short and sweet: Keep playable content short and engaging so that users don’t choose to skip your ad. We recommend that your ad be between 30-60 seconds long. Tailor the length for your app; it can vary depending on the vertical and complexity of the ad. And gameplay in the ad should be easier to complete than in the actual game. 2. Be engaging but accurate: Make sure to include how you want users to interact with your ad in its design. This starts with a good first impression. Focus on the aspects of your game that capture people’s attention and get players to come back. Set clear user expectations by including clear instructions and captions about how the gameplay works—for example, “swipe to scroll” and “shake your phone to jump”. 3. Have a clear call to action: This is your chance to summarize your game and to encourage users to play the full version by downloading your app. As an example, “Enjoyed playing? Download now to beat level two.” It’s important to make the call to action as clear as possible with a clickable area for a smooth transition into your game.
With the launch of self-sign up earlier this year, thousands of top brands and manufacturers have already begun using Google Manufacturer Center to enhance their product’s images, descriptions, and variants in Shopping ads. Today, we’re excited to announce new ways to help brands — both in the US and abroad — manage their data more easily and provide a more consistent brand experience on Google and across the web.
Manufacturer Center expands to more countries
To help brands abroad, we’ve expanded availability for Manufacturer Center to the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, Brazil, and the Netherlands. Now, brands with products sold in these markets can use Manufacturer Center to best represent their products to shoppers, access unique analytics and insights, and improve the performance of Shopping ads featuring their products.
Increase opportunities to highlight your products’ best features and benefits
Shoppers are constantly looking for information, trying to ensure the product they ultimately choose is the perfect fit for their needs. Information from Manufacturer Center now appears in Google Knowledge Panels in the US, highlighting core product features to shoppers at key decision-making stages. With descriptions, images, features, and more directly supplied by you, the manufacturer, shoppers will be better informed and feel more confident choosing your branded products.
Manage product information programmatically with the Manufacturer Center API
We know that manually uploading, editing, deleting, and distributing product data can make it difficult to keep up with a brand’s ever-changing product assortment, and using feeds may not offer the desired level of control. With the launch of the Manufacturer Center API, brands (or their 3rd party data partners) can streamline product data updates in the following ways:
Add new products directly to Manufacturer Center.
Update existing products in Manufacturer Center with the most current product data.
Delete products from an existing Manufacturer Center account.
Monitor data quality and review product data errors to optimize a brand’s presence on Google.
Surface Google’s product data feedback in external data management tools.
Streamline product data updates and syndication to Google by creating custom workflows compliant with data management policies and procedures.
To get started with the Manufacturer Center API, check out the Developer’s Guide and Portal article here.
Maintaining my “cool uncle” status was not the only reason I bought my OJO scooters, although it was indeed a factor for sure. ; )
I recently bought two OjO electric scooters from Electric Bikes of California, and I’ve had so much fun that I’m actually a little sorry I waited this long. When I asked Electric Bikes to help me find the best electric scooter, they pointed me in the direction of the OjO (pronounced Oh-Joe) Commuter Scooter. It’s all-electric and has a lot of nifty features which have transformed it into a smart electric scooter, or e-scooter.
Convinced that this was the best electric scooter on the market, I got two OjOs from Electric Bikes for just under $2000 each. I’ve been using them to run my errands like going to the post office, eating at my favorite restaurants in Santa Barbara, checking out the beach, and meeting with clients. I’m really enjoying life in the bike lane, and the savings on gas are a big plus.
I love to update my readers on products and services available here in California that I think are perfect for our area. With the beautiful climate and easy terrain of Santa Barbara, this is a great location to scoot around and enjoy our sunny weather and warm breezes. And there is no better way to do that than with an electric scooter.
My OjO Commuter Scooters are very sturdy, and provide quite a safe and comfortable ride. I even had my niece and nephew check them out – helmets are required for riders under 12 – and they gave the official kids’ seal of approval by saying they “had a blast.”
I’m not alone in enjoying the benefits of this form of transportation. In fact, Statista reports that by 2024 the projected global market for people who want to buy electric scooters will be well over 4.4 million. This could be attributable to their low cost and eco-efficiencies, but I think the growing popularity is all about the fun.
When you compare electric scooters to electric bikes, you’ll see they have similarities and differences. Electric Bikes says their eBikes are a bit larger and are based off of traditional bike designs. They feature a battery pack, controller, and an electric hub motor. Their OjO electric scooters, on the other hand, have smaller tires which make them very maneuverable. Riders can stand or comfortably sit on the ergonomically designed OjO, which makes it perfect for the commuter or outdoor enthusiast. Whatever your outdoor riding needs may be, Electric Bikes can help you find the ride that is best for you.
The Benefits of the OjO Electric Commuter Scooter
If you want to buy an electric scooter, now is the time to take the leap. They’re perfect for personal use, or make a great holiday gift idea. Here are just a few of the things I love about my OjO e-scooters:
Durability: This isn’t your kid’s Razor Scooter, by a long stretch. The OjO is designed for comfort, security and agility, making it the perfect ride for kids AND adults. A fully-welded lightweight aluminum frame and durable integrated ABS automotive grade plastic fairings create a combination of strength and beauty. Best of all, the aluminum design means it’s weatherproof, waterproof, and rustproof. I feel safe and secure riding on this luxurious mode of electric transportation.
Stability: Good-sized, treaded, all-weather tires provide maximum grip for turning, in case I get caught in a California shower. Protective mud flaps help maintain peak performance. The front and rear disc brakes provide a safe, quick and controlled stop.
Sturdy: The OjO features a wing-shaped body and an all-welded heavy gauge extruded aluminum under-chassis for optimal strength and stability. It can easily hold up to 300 pounds, but it only weighs 65 pounds itself. I can throw it in the back of the car and take it anywhere around Santa Barbara for a day of outdoor fun.
Range: The removable 48V Lithium Ion battery provides a range of up to 25 miles when fully charged, depending on the terrain and speed. A patented on-board charger with retractable cord plugs into any 110V wall outlet, so you can recharge while enjoying lunch at our Santa Barbara restaurants.
Speedy: There are three speed modes – easy, economy, and sport – with a top speed of 20 mph. The OjO also has the power to climb hills up to 12-15 degree grades.
Comfort: The OjO was ergonomically designed, and features heavy-duty mono-front and double-rear shocks, so it’s really comfortable to ride, even for the longer distances.
Tech-Friendly: You know I love my gadgets, and the OjO completely satisfies this need. A special capacitive, non-glare touchscreen allows me to choose from the three speed modes, review current and historical distance information, and control the e-scooter’s lighting and sound features. It has a Bluetooth-enabled sound system with high-fidelity, dual waterproof integrated speakers, so I can enjoy my tunes. There is even a convenient USB port for charging my phone while I’m on the go.
Safety: Front and rear LED lighting maximizes my vision and makes the e-scooter easier for others to see. An electric safety horn lets them know where I am. I have a secure key fob for starting it up, locating it if I forget, and activating the security system. The motion-activated alarm serves as a reliable theft deterrent.
There are no harmful emissions because it is electric, and it’s incredibly easy to maintain. You can choose from a variety of colors including gloss white, matte black, sky blue, rose gold, graphite, orange and the way-cool street art. Available accessories are a handy basket for holding your necessaries, mirrors, additional battery, replacement tire, and optional battery charger.
The OjO Commuter Scooter was developed at the company’s headquarters in Santa Monica, California. It is available at Electric Bikes shops in Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, Corona Del Mar and Malibu. If you’re looking for a fun, safe form of transportation in Santa Barbara, compare the OjO electric scooter to other options and you’ll see that it can make a great choice for you and your family.
Consumers are more curious, more demanding, and more impatient than ever—and even more so during the busy holiday season. AdWords has been redesigned to help you reach these mobile-first consumers in faster and easier ways. Today, we’re introducing more innovations available only in the new experience. From promoting your latest offers to finding ways to grow your business, these products can help you save time and boost performance. Learn how some advertisers are seeing an increase in conversion rate and return on ad spend when applying these innovations to their campaigns.
Highlight your top deals with promotion extensions
People are always looking for deals, whether it’s for a discount on holiday gifts or a cheaper flight. In fact, 7 out of 10 internet users look for sales or discounts before visiting a store.1 To help attract these deal-seeking customers with your latest offers, we’re introducing promotion extensions.
Show your latest offers with promotion extensions
Promotion extensions make it easy for you to keep your promotions up to date without the need to create new ads. They also free up the rest of your ad for more unique content, like your brand terms or a clear call to action.
For example, if you’re a shoe store, you might use promotion extensions to show a “30% off” promo code on all Black Friday orders. You can also make these types of seasonal offers more prominent in your ad by selecting one of 12 occasions, like Black Friday or Back-to-school.
Brands like Torrid and Shoe Carnival have already seen great results after using promotion extensions:
“Promotion extensions effectively communicate our promotions without sacrificing our core message of quality and fit, giving us a conversion rate lift of 30%.” – David Chau, Senior Digital Marketing Analyst at Torrid Brands
“Promotion extensions give customers even more reason to come to our site and buy–all while raising our ROAS by 20%. This extension should be in every ecommerce advertiser’s toolbox.” – Michael Nuss, Director of Digital Marketing at Shoe Carnival
Test drive new ideas with ad variations
Sometimes small changes to your ad text—like adding a touch of holiday spirit or using a different call to action—can dramatically affect performance. That’s why today, we’re rolling out ad variations in the new AdWords experience: a fast and easy way to test changes across your text ads at scale.
For example, you may want to see how “Happy Holidays” performs when used in your text ads. With ad variations, you can test this change across thousands of ads in just a few clicks. In fact, some advertisers have set up variations for more than 1 million ads in less than a minute.2
You’ll then get the test results as soon as they’re statistically significant. If you see that an ad variation is doing well, you can quickly replace all of your original ads with the new variation.
Businesses like Merkle and Agoda are already using ad variations to test, measure, and apply variations that drive better results for their business in less time.
Performance marketing agency Merkle helped their client, a leading online educator, achieve a 13% increase in clicks and a 14% increase in conversions when their ad variations test revealed that expanding their text ads and implementing optimized ad rotations would improve their performance.
“With ad variations, we’re able to test ad copy changes across our entire account in just a few minutes, which previously took hours of manual work. This means we get to quickly test ad copy and make improvements that result in better ad performance.” – Robert Tayon, Head of PPC at Agoda
Reach the right shoppers with custom intent audiences
Right now, people may be actively shopping for gifts that only you can deliver. To help you reach these I-want-to-buy shoppers, we’re rolling out custom intent audiences for the Google Display Network. Custom intent audiences make it easy for you to reach people who want to buy the specific products you offer–based on data from your campaigns, website and YouTube channel.
For example, if you’re a travel agency offering holiday getaways, Google could automatically create an audience of people shopping for “all-inclusive ski resorts” or “flights to Palm Springs.” We’ll then show you reach and performance estimates for each audience, so you can plan your campaign with precision.
Find new opportunities to grow your business
Looking for more ways to improve campaign performance this holiday season? The Opportunities page now offers more actionable recommendations, relevant insights, and best practices to help you meet your business goals. With manager account support and the ability to filter by category (like “bids & budgets”), your opportunities are clearly organized so you can apply them across all your accounts and campaigns with just a few clicks.
Customers like Mindshare said the improvements on the Opportunities page were very helpful for their business:
“The Opportunities page in our manager account lets us quickly identify optimization and efficiency improvements, estimate cost, traffic, and performance impact across multiple markets, and implement them in one click.” – Amy Perkins, Paid Search Account Director, Mindshare
Get started
Log in to the new AdWords experience to start using these innovations and deliver better results for your business.
This year, around 90% of global sales will happen in a physical store.1 To bring more shoppers through the door, businesses need tools to efficiently reach nearby consumers and measure their campaign performance across channels. That’s why we introduced store visits measurement back in 2014. Since then, businesses around the world have measured over 7 billion store visits in AdWords.
Unlock offline results with YouTube
As we shared at Shoptalk Europe today, location extensions and store visits measurement are now available on YouTube. With YouTube’s first-ever ad extensions for TrueView in-stream and bumper ads, you can influence viewers to engage with your brand offline and drive more visits and in-store purchases. People watching your videos will see your address, directions, and business hours—right in the ad. You can then use store visits measurement to see how your video campaigns drive foot traffic and measure their performance against other online and traditional marketing channels, like television, print, and radio ads.
Says Darrin Kellaris, Executive Director, Marketing at IHOP, “Video has been an integral part of our digital strategy to optimize guest interactions online with relevant and distinctive content. We were happy to partner with Google to find new ways to measure the full value of our video campaigns. Through Google’s store visits solution, we gained useful consumer insights that helped us drive visits from YouTube for less than $1 per guest. Insights like this have given us an innovative way to measure business impact beyond standard brand metrics and to understand how video helps drive lower-funnel actions. This is something we’d like to see become more prevalent across all media partners.”
Jerome’s Furniture has included store visits in their Search measurement and optimization since 2015. It is now using location extensions and store visits for YouTube to drive more customers into stores and understand offline performance across channels. YouTube has proven to send qualified visits to our stores at a very efficient cost. The visibility into YouTube’s impact on store visits has opened our eyes and our investment in YouTube advertising has risen, dramaticallyScott Perry Senior Vice President of Digital Marketing
Elgiganten, a Swedish electronics retailer, turned to video to help drive its omnichannel marketing strategy. After the first half of 2017, the company found that its video campaigns brought 6-10% of users who viewed its ad on YouTube to its stores. Overall, the brand has seen an 8.8% increase in its sales, and learned that its mobile search traffic delivers a 21% higher return on ad spend on mobile phones versus desktop. We can see which products are more likely to drive people to the store rather than buying online, and how people who are close to a retail location and using a mobile device are more likely to visit the storeNiko Niva Digital Specialist at Elgiganten
Engage local consumers on sites and apps across the GDN
Earlier this year, we fully rolled out location extensions and store visits measurement to campaigns on the Google Display Network (GDN). Now, you can reach more nearby customers when they’re ready to buy and get a better understanding of your offline performance across channels. Advertisers large and small across industries have seen success using display ads to drive customers to their physical businesses—even those who usually depend on traditional offline campaigns, like catalog and circular ads.
Lawson, a convenience store chain with nearly 15,000 stores globally, was the first advertiser in Japan to use store visits to measure the full value of its display ads. Historically, the company focused most of its advertising on offline campaigns. After testing store visits for Display, the brand learned that mobile ads were more effective and cost-efficient at driving foot traffic to their stores, saving them 45% more in costs per visit compared to desktop and tablet ads. Understanding how effective our mobile display ads are and the profiles of the customers visiting our stores after seeing our online ads is a huge step forward for our business. This helps us better cater to customer needs and optimize our marketing
The Home Depot Canada, Canada’s leading home improvement retailer, used store visits insights to learn that 18% of people who clicked on its display ads visited a store within 30 days. It also discovered that 50% of these customers made an average in-store purchase of $65 Canadian dollars.This is valuable data, and we look forward to relying on store visits insights like this to help us keep driving our online to offline marketing strategy
In the coming weeks, we’ll also begin introducing more local ad formats powered by location extensions to help people find the products they’re interested in at nearby businesses. To start, we’ll be rolling out affiliate location extensions for display ads, which allow manufacturing brands to show which retail chains sell their products.
If you’re focused on engaging omnichannel customers, you can now use location extensions and store visits measurement across Video, Display, Search, and Shopping to drive more visitors to your business offline.
We recently announced that we’ll be moving all AdWords app install campaigns to Universal App Campaigns (UAC). Starting on October 16th, all new app install campaigns created in AdWords will run on UAC. Existing Search, Display, and YouTube app promo campaigns will stop running on November 15th, so it’s important to start upgrading to UAC as soon as possible.
Check out our UAC best practices for more tips on creatives, bidding strategies and conversion tracking options.
How UAC helps you find the customers that matter most
UAC uses Google’s unique machine learning technology to help find your “star” customers based on business goals you define like signing up for a free trial or even making a purchase — across Google’s largest properties like Google Search, Google Play, YouTube and the millions of sites and apps in the Display Network.
Advertisers across the world and in different industries have found more of their best customers with UAC. Here are some of their stories.
STARZ is the second-largest premium content provider in the U.S. that features movies and original TV series. Alison Hoffman, Chief Marketing Officer, says “A new slate of STARZ customers now use our mobile app to watch their favorite shows and movies. STARZ partnered with Google to support the new seasons of our hit series Power and Outlander. (We) used Universal App Campaigns to drive potential fans to sign up for the STARZ mobile app … Universal App Campaigns helped STARZ nearly double the number of fans found through Google.”
Viber is a free messaging and calling app owned by Japanese online retailer Rakuten Inc. Viber’s growth team used UAC for Actions to acquire users with a 21% higher retention rate. “Using Universal App Campaigns with action optimization helped us acquire more high-quality users with better budget utilization. It allowed us to directly optimize our campaign for our business goal, which is to acquire loyal users,” says Moshi Blum, Head of User Acquisition.
Looking for more balance and mindfulness? Then the personalized meditation training and guidance in the Headspace app may be for you. Universal App Campaigns makes it easier for Headspace to improve the health and happiness of the world. According to Head of Growth, Robert Lamvik, “Headspace has a small, yet ambitious team, so we partnered with Google and use UAC to create more scalable campaign activity that brings us higher quality users. What’s great is that UAC finds people likely to take the actions we care about — like starting a meditation session or subscribing.”
Looking for more balance and mindfulness? Then the personalized meditation training and guidance in the Headspace app may be for you. Universal App Campaigns make it easier for Headspace to improve the health and happiness of the world. According to Head of Growth, Robert Lamvik, “Headspace has a small, yet ambitious team, so we partnered with Google and use UAC to create more scalable campaign activity that brings us higher quality users. What’s great is that UAC finds people likely to take the actions we care about — like starting a meditation session or subscribing.”
As you may have heard, we’ll be moving all AdWords app install campaigns to Universal App Campaigns (UAC) later this year.
With UAC, you can reach the right people across all of Google’s largest properties like Google Search, Google Play, YouTube and the Google Display Network — all from one campaign. Marketers who are already using UAC to optimize for in-app actions are seeing 140% more conversions per dollar than other Google app promotion products.1
Over the last few weeks, we’ve discussed how to steer performance for UAC using goals and your creative assets. In today’s post, we’ll talk about another very important topic when it comes to UAC — optimizing for the right in-app action.
This is important if you want to find app users who will do something specific after they’ve installed your app — whether that’s adding something to a wishlist for your shopping app, entering their frequent flier info to your traveler app or joining a group in your game.
First things first: take a look at what’s happening inside your app.
Track and send AdWords your in-app events
You wouldn’t stop measuring at the landing page of a website, so why would you stop at the install for a mobile app?
Each post-install event that you track and pass back to AdWords is a chance to learn more about how users engage with your app. The more we learn about your best app users, the easier it is to find more people like them. If you’re not sure what to track, look at this list of events by app category. Pick the one that’s most like your app and use it as a guide.
Let’s go back to our mobile game example: Before you start advertising your new mobile game, you pay a visit to the part of your office where the developer team sits. You kindly ask them to implement all the in-app events that apply to a gaming app — and you take some to discuss whether there are any other in-app events that are specific to your game.
Understand how users interact with your app
Once you’ve built up a user base, follow your users along their journey beyond the install. Create what’s called a “user funnel.” What are the key steps people take that lead to a purchase?
Example: You happen to sit next to your analytics team so you swivel your chair around to see if they have a moment to chat. You’d like to get their thoughts on a user to funnel you’ve created for your game: installs, opens, completes the tutorial, reaches level 5, joins group, reaches level 10, and then finally — makes a purchase. You and the team agree that this stuff is important to track so you schedule a regular meeting to analyze your game’s user funnel. Constant review of the metrics with your analytics team will help determine if your ads are bringing in the right users.
Pick the right in-app action for your campaign
Now comes an important question: what do you want new app users to do in your app? The answer will help determine the in-app action(s) you’ll pick as the optimization goal for UAC.
Example: During a one-on-one with your boss, you learn that driving in-app purchases is a priority for the business right now. You’re worried because you don’t see many in-app purchases happening per day (at least not yet), and you remember that UAC needs to optimize for an in-app action that happens at least 10 times a day. You need to pick another in-app action that’s more common. You remember that your analytics team pointed out that users who join a group are very prone to making an in-app purchase 30 days later. And your data shows that this in-app action happens about 40 times a day so you set “Join a group” as the in-app action to optimize for.
Improve the user experience
What else can you do with the information you’ve collected? Review your user funnel. Identify where people are having trouble and see if you can help them out.
Example:During one of your meetings with the analytics team, you spot a big drop off at the tutorial section of the app. After your meeting, you rush downstairs to where your UX team sits. You work with the team to brainstorm a different way to teach beginners how to play your game. You want to see if this can improve how people get onboarded. If you’re successful, not only will you get better conversion rates for your ads — but you’ll create a better app experience for everyone!
Review these principles for more ideas on how to improve user experiences and conversions for your mobile app.
And don’t forget to check out our best practices guide to learn more about how to get the most from your Universal App Campaigns.
We look at our phones while we watch TV. We watch TV on our phones while we walk to work. We work on our laptops while we cast a video to a set-top box. We spend the majority of our days connected, often via multiple devices—so much so that reach has become a commodity in advertising. And while reach is plentiful, attention is scarce.
Unless we’re talking about online video. Our latest research with Ipsos suggests people are 3x more likely to pay attention to online video ads vs. television ads.1 And within online video, people pay nearly 2x more attention to video ads on YouTube than they do on other social media.2 That’s because on YouTube, ads are more likely to be seen and people are more likely to arrive with intent to watch video—2X more likely than other online platforms.3 Today we’re sharing four new tools to help you capture the attention of your audience on YouTube:
1) Helping brands reach the right audiences
Intention is what has made search advertising so effective—the ability to quickly connect people looking for something they want or need, with a business that offers just that. Since January we’ve seen that what’s worked great for search works great for video as well. We found that campaigns that use intent-based audiences on mobile have 20 percent higher ad recall lift and 50 percent higher brand awareness lift relative to campaigns that only use demographic audiences.4
In order to help you deliver more relevant, useful ads on YouTube, we’re expanding the ways you can use Google’s broad ecosystem using Custom Affinity Audiences to reach people based on the kind of searches they do, or the kind of places and apps they like. That means an outdoor outfitter could use Custom Affinity audiences to potentially reach people who have searched for skis, spent time at ski resorts, or have downloaded a ski resort’s trail guide app.
2) Enabling custom creative at scale
Custom audiences are most valuable when paired with creative that is relevant to them. But personalization at scale can be difficult—new video creative is pricey and takes time to make.
We’re launching Director Mix to simplify the process of creating different versions of the same creative tailored for each audience—you give us the building blocks of your video ad, like different voiceovers, background and copy, and our system will create thousands of versions to match your various audience segments.
Campbell’s Soup used Director Mix to create videos with clever copy based on the content people were about to watch. For instance if you clicked to watch clips from Orange is the New Black, you’d see a bumper asking “does your cooking make prison food seem good? We’ve got a soup for that.” And it worked: Campbell’s earned a 55 percent lift in sales and a 24 percent lift in ad recall with this campaign.
3) Telling a story that breaks free of a single unit
Similarly, we’re introducing Video Ad Sequencing to help you architect an ad experience that unfolds over time. This new feature in AdWords Labs lets you string together ad creative. You can pivot, you can react—and you can take consumers down a different path depending on which ads are working for them.
For instance, you could start with a fifteen-second TrueView ad to build awareness, continue with another, longer spot that communicates product attributes, then follow with a six-second bumper ad to keep top-of-mind and drive to purchase.
To drum up excitement for their new Assassin’s Creed game, Ubisoft cut four sequential six-second bumper ads, each with a critical element of their longer trailer. The brand used Affinity Audiences and Video Ad Sequencing to serve the ads to core E3 audiences. The campaign reached almost 15 million unique viewers and resulted in best-in-class lifts in awareness (+25 percent), search lift for “Assassin’s Creed” (+224 percent) and search lift for the Assassin’s Creed trailer (+375 percent).
4) Measuring the impact—New ways to measure sales lift
And finally, you need a way to measure that you earned attention—and one way to do that is to look at its effect on offline sales.
We’re rolling out a new, global approach to measuring sales lift with Nielsen MPA (Matched Panel Analysis). This geo-based solution offers a fast, media-agnostic way to determine which online ads drive offline sales. With this implementation of Nielsen MPA, CPG clients can measure video alongside other Google media.
From looking at the Nielsen MPA studies we’ve run to-date, we found that YouTube drove sales lift for the advertised product in 14 of 19 studies globally.5
We’ve also expanded our Oracle Datalogix ROI offering in the U.S. to include six-second bumper ads so that brands can more comprehensively measure their YouTube campaigns. And we’ll continue working to deliver more solutions to complement our Nielsen MPA, Oracle DLX ROI, MMM and store visit offerings today, so you’ll have the measurement that works best for your business.
At YouTube, our aim is to show ads that are relevant and useful, so that instead of interrupting people’s viewing experiences, you’re enhancing them. This means matching what advertisers have to offer with what people are interested in—leading to a better YouTube experience backed up by comprehensive user controls. We hope you try out these new features as they become available, and hope to see you at Advertising Week.
The holiday season is right around the corner – are your Shopping campaigns prepared to maximize increased shopping traffic? To help you get a head start identifying product data gaps and measuring your competitiveness in Shopping campaigns, we’re rolling out product status reporting and absolute top impression share.
Recover potentially lost Shopping traffic
If your Shopping campaign includes products not eligible to serve, that means disapprovals could be affecting the number of shopping results you show up on. See how many of your products are ready to serve by adding product status reporting to reporting charts in the ‘product’ and ‘product groups’ page. For example, a dip in ‘products ready to serve’ means your products are no longer eligible to participate in the auction.
A new diagnostics report in the products page helps identify your aggregate product status, like products ‘ready to serve’ or ‘disapproved.’ Add performance columns like Clicks and Conversions to the report to prioritize where product updates can make the biggest impact on lost traffic. Click on each product status to see more details on how to fix the issues immediately. Alternatively, you can also view a full list of affected products directly in AdWords from the report. Develop a routine cadence to go through your Shopping campaigns and identify the top-performing products not eligible for auction as product details frequently change, especially with the peak holiday season coming up.
New metric shows how often your Shopping ad is in the top spot
Now that your products are eligible to serve, it’s time get them in front of shoppers. The left-most ad on mobile Shopping results get up to 3X more engagement from shoppers1; impressions in this position are called “absolute top” impressions. To see the percentage of time you’re showing in this top position, use absolute top impression share (Search abs. top IS column in AdWords).
Absolute top impression share is the number of “absolute top” impressions you received in Shopping results over the total times you could’ve been in the top impression.
For instance, if you showed up as the “absolute top” in 8 search results but were eligible for 20 results, then your absolute top impression share would be 40%. If you have a high absolute top impression share, it means your products often appear at the top position in Google Shopping results. “Absolute top” impressions include ads from the Shopping carousel on Google search results are available for both Shopping ads and Local Inventory Ads.
You can use this metric to optimize seasonal campaigns and get in front of more shoppers. Let’s say you sell kitchenware and plan to have a holiday sale on pots and pans. Separate out the sale products into their own product group. Monitor it for two days and adjust bids upwards if you need to make your ads more prominent. Also review absolute top impression share by device at the ad group level. You can optimize an underperforming device audience by increasing the bid modifier. Ad quality is the other factor in growing your absolute top impression share; include high quality images, relevant product titles, and the correct GTINs across your inventory to improve the quality. To monitor your impact in key categories, you also can combine absolute top impression share with other competitive metrics such as click share. By increasing both metrics, you’re claiming more of shoppers’ attention.
The diagnostics report and absolute top impression share are available starting today in the new Adwords experience2.
