Introducing Simpler Brands And Solutions For Advertisers And Publishers

We launched AdWords nearly 18 years ago with a simple goal—to make it easier for people to connect online with businesses. A search for eco-friendly stationeryquilting supplies, or for a service like a treehouse builder gave us an opportunity to deliver valuable ads that were useful and relevant at the moment. That idea was the start of our first advertising product and led to the ads business we have today.

A lot has changed since then. Mobile is now a huge part of our everyday lives. People quickly switch from searching for products, to watching videos, browsing content, playing games and more. As a result, marketers have more opportunities to reach consumers across channels, screens and formats. The opportunity has never been more exciting, but it’s also never been more complex. Over the years, Google ads have evolved from helping marketers connect with people on Google Search, to helping them connect at every step of the consumer journey through text, video, display and more.  

That’s why today we are introducing simpler brands and solutions for our advertising products: Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Ad Manager. These new brands will help advertisers and publishers of all sizes choose the right solutions for their businesses, making it even easier for them to deliver valuable, trustworthy ads and the right experiences for consumers across devices and channels. As part of this change, we are releasing new solutions that help advertisers get started with Google Ads and drive greater collaboration across teams.  

Google AdWords is becoming Google Ads 

The new Google Ads brand represents the full range of advertising capabilities we offer today—on Google.com and across our other properties, partner sites, and apps—to help marketers connect with the billions of people finding answers on Search, watching videos on YouTube, exploring new places on Google Maps, discovering apps on Google Play, browsing content across the web, and more.  

For small businesses specifically, we’re introducing a new campaign type in Google Ads that makes it easier than ever to get started with online advertising. It brings the machine learning technology of Google Ads to small businesses and helps them get results without any heavy lifting—so they can stay focused on running their businesses. To learn more, visit this post.

We’ll introduce more new campaign types at Google Marketing Live. Sign up to watch the livestream on July 10.

Stronger collaboration with Google Marketing Platform

We’re enabling stronger collaboration for enterprise marketing teams by unifying our DoubleClick advertiser products and the Google Analytics 360 Suite under a single brand: Google Marketing Platform

We’ve heard from marketers that there are real benefits to using ads and analytics technology together, including a better understanding of customers and better business results. Google Marketing Platform helps marketers achieve their goals by building on existing integrations between the Google Analytics 360 Suite and DoubleClick Digital Marketing. The platform helps marketers plan, buy, measure and optimize digital media and customer experiences in one place. To learn more, visit the Google Marketing Platform blog.

As part of Google Marketing Platform, we’re announcing Display & Video 360. Display & Video 360 brings together features from DoubleClick Bid Manager, Campaign Manager, Studio and Audience Center to allow creative, agency, and media teams to collaborate and execute ad campaigns end-to-end in a single place. We’ll share more details about Display & Video 360 in the coming weeks, including a demo during the keynote at Google Marketing Live.

Google Ad Manager: A unified platform

We recognize that the way publishers monetize their content has changed. With people accessing content on multiple screens, and with advertisers’ growing demand for programmatic access, publishers need to be able to manage their businesses more simply and efficiently. That’s why for the last three years, we’ve been working to bring together DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange in a complete and unified programmatic platform under a new name–Google Ad Manager

With this evolution, we’re excited to do even more for our partners—earning them more money, more efficiently, wherever people are watching videos, playing games or engaging with content, and however advertisers are looking to work with them. To learn more, visit the Google Ad Manager blog.

Transparency and controls people can trust

We know that the media and technology advertisers and publishers choose to use impacts the relationships they have with their customers. As always, our commitment is to ensure that all of our products and platforms set the industry’s highest standard in giving people transparency and choice in the ads they see. For example, we recently announced new Ads Settings and expanded Why this ad? across all of our services, and almost all websites and apps that partner with us to show ads.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Taylor Reaume To Speak At Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference

Taylor Reaume To Speak At Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference

For Immediate Release – Santa Barbara, CA – June 20, 2018: Taylor Reaume, president and founder of Search Engine Pros (SEP), a full-service web marketing company in Santa Barbara, CA, will be a member of a panel discussing “Navigating the Amazon: Building Your Author Platform” at the upcoming Santa Barbara Writers Conference. This prestigious conference brings together writers from around the world to meet with fellow storytellers, celebrate well-known authors, and network with publishing professionals. The 46th Annual Santa Barbara Writers Conference will be held at the charming, beachside Hyatt Centric from June 17-22 for a week-long journey through the exciting world of writing.

The panel discussion in which Reaume will participate will be held on Friday, June 22 at 4:00p.m. in Vista III. With over a decade of expertise in e-business and marketing, he has developed over 600 websites and online businesses, built 30,000+ inbound links to his client’s web sites, and published over 10,000 pages of content on the web. Reaume holds a B.S. in Marketing and Economics, promotes the ideas of social business, and demonstrates how search marketing can help spread awareness for businesses, nonprofits and authors.

“Writing a screenplay or book, and building a platform to bring attention to that work are two different skill sets. At the panel, I’ll be sharing tools, tips and websites that will help writers create an effective web strategy which builds appreciation for their work,” commented Reaume.

Other members of the panel with Reaume include moderator Marla Miller, author Janet Randall, screenplay writer Cathy Byrd, author and noted screenplay writer Eric Edson – whose web presence was built by Search Engine Pros. This session will be open to registered conference attendees as well as the public, for only $10 at the door. The conference also includes substantial networking opportunities, five days of workshops, five keynote presentations by successful authors, book signings with author-speakers, and optional one-on-one manuscript consultations.

About Search Engine Pros:  Search Engine Pros is a full-service web marketing agency located in Santa Barbara, CA. The company provides web marketing services, including social media consulting WordPress web designcustomized WordPress pluginsweb programmingand internet marketing strategy. Visit the website at https://TheSearchEnginePros.com for a complimentary Google rank analysis. “Like” the Facebook page for regular insights on WordPress SEOWriters can call 800-605-4988 to learn more about using online marketing to build their author platform.

New Innovations Remove Friction From Discovering Products In-Store And Online

Driven by rapid changes in technology and mobile, consumer expectations continue to rise at an unrelenting pace. There are brand new ways for people to find and engage with businesses, and it’s becoming critical for marketers to remove friction at every step of the consumer journey. This morning at Search Marketing Expo Advanced, we made three announcements for marketers and retailers including:

1. New innovations to highlight your physical locations

Almost 80% of shoppers will go in-store when they have an item they want immediately.1 To help capture this demand, we’re expanding affiliate location extensions to video campaigns on YouTube– on top of Search and Display campaigns. This helps brand manufacturers drive and measure foot traffic to nearby retail stores and auto dealers that sell their products. We’ve seen that adding affiliate location extensions to TrueView in-stream and bumper ads can increase the clickthrough rate by over 15%.2

New local catalog ads on Display will also roll out to all advertisers by the end of the month to help shoppers discover what you sell, then visit your store. One-third of shoppers say finding inspiration is something they enjoy most about shopping.3 This interactive experience highlights a hero image and your inventory in an easy-to-scroll, mobile layout that helps shoppers explore your products. It also features in-store availability and detailed pricing information. This new format can complement your traditional print campaigns – including catalogs, flyers, and circulars – with the added audience and measurement benefits of digital ads.

Boulanger is one of the largest electronics and appliances retailers in France. The retail brand had a special promotional event for Spring 2018, so it turned to local catalog ads to boost its sales. Boulanger showcased a cheerful lifestyle image, a message welcoming the season and products carefully curated for local in-store promotion. With help from both click-based and impression-based store visits* (launched in March), the campaign drove over 20K visits to its stores, delivering a return of 42 times its investment on ad spend.

*Store visits are estimates based on aggregated, anonymized data from a sample set of users who have turned on Location History.

Onboarding to both local catalog ads and local inventory ads is now much easier for retailers of all sizes with the new local feed partnership program. The new program allows point-of-sale or inventory data providers, like CayanPointyLinx, and receipts, to provide sales and inventory data to Google on behalf of merchants, so they don’t have to create their own local product feeds. As an additional benefit, retailers can showcase their local inventory for free on the “See What’s In Store” feature on the search knowledge panel.

2. Competitive pricing insights to help deliver better sales results

Beyond availability of products in store, we know that price is also a top consideration for consumers. New price benchmarks in AdWords reporting will be available soon to show Shopping advertisers how other retailers are pricing the same products. You can use these pricing insights to inform your bidding strategy when you have price-competitive products to promote, to influence pricing strategy with your merchandising teams, or to troubleshoot performance drops due to competitors’ pricing.

For example, let’s say you find that you’re selling a sweater for $40 while most retailers are selling the same sweater for $60. You may choose to bid upon this sweater because your product is more price-competitive in the current market and will appeal to more potential customers.

3. Updates for our Shopping Actions program

Consumers continue to be open to new ways of discovering and buying products. Today at SMX Advanced, we shared an update on Shopping Actions, the program we launched in March to give consumers an easy way to complete the purchase from retailers, while on Google platforms like Search, the Assistant, or by voice.

Since its launch, thousands of retailers have requested to join through our interest form, and more than 70 retailers are live on the program today. Early testing indicates that participating retailers on average see an increase in total clicks and conversions at a lower overall cost per click and conversion, compared to running Shopping ads alone.4

As always, SMX Advanced is an exciting event that brings leading marketers together. We hope you’ll join us in our Learn with Google Classroom to connect and hear more about how these new products can help you grow your business.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog