Best Life Hacks | Web Marketing

My New Laptop Arrived Today – DELL ALIENWARE AREA-51M R2

9 January 2020 by
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“Taylor, which Laptop do you recommend?”

I get this question all the time. So I decided to write a blog and answer some of the reasons why I bought this laptop.

After researching for 2 solid nights and watching laptop comparison Youtubes, I finally made a decision to buy a Dell Alienware laptop.

In this blog, I am going to be talking about the magic of the Alienware Area-51M R2 Gaming laptop, and the reasons why I bought it.  

To be clear, I am not a gamer. As an online marketer, I am on the computer all day long though and knew that if I wanted something with high-performance capabilities, a gaming laptop was the way to go.

I frequently have 100 tabs open on my PC, and I needed something that would support that, all the time. 

Does Your Laptop PC Multi-Task?

Mine can. Like a beast!

When I started researching laptops and comparing the best ones, I quickly zero’d in on a few things in particular as deal breakers:

  • How much RAM? Expandable?
  • How much hard drive space? SSD?
  • Backlit keyboard?
  • SD Card Reader?

I needed something that could function quickly, and manage a significant amount of work open at the same time.

Is this a reputable laptop brand?

Dell is a solid brand, there are few brands that are more competitive than Dell, or that have been around for as long as Dell.

The Alienware brand has been around since 1996, a company founded by Michael Dell himself, along with Frank Azor, Arthur Lewis, and Joe Balerdi. I knew getting this model would be a good investment backed by brand longevity.

Is the Alienware Area-51M R2 expensive?

Yes, it can be expensive. It’s a higher end laptop, starting at around $2 thousand dollars. However, when I compared it to a few other brands it came in well under their sticker price. After turning it on and using it for a few days, I knew it was worth every penny.

Does the Alienware Area-51M look good?

This is a machine that I love to show off. The Area 51M has a stunning design, stylish at every corner. Its weight justifies its performance. At almost 10 pounds, you can feel that it has power. The first thing I noted was the heavier back end with an exhaust at the rear. It feels sturdy too. I’m not seeing any wobble here as you do with many laptops. When the laptop first boots, its touchpad feels light and I loved the feel of the tap. 

The 17.3” display features Tobii Eye tracking technology that lets the screen recognize you as you are looking at it. It’s easy to see why this is touted as the “world’s most powerful and overclockable laptop.” The Alienware logo on display also is super cool.

Are there enough ports?

There are more ports than you will probably need, and two adapters to give it juice. You want to know if you can use your multimedia devices on this, especially if you are considering it for gaming. The answer is yes, it has a lot. It also includes a media card reader, 2 SODIMM memory slots, separate ports for headset and audio, 2 Gen 1 ports, and 1 Thunderbolt 3 port that supports USB 3.2 Gen 2 and DisplayPort 1.2. The Alienware Graphics Amplifier Port is a nice touch too. 

To compare with others, USB 3.0 is a standard port, and I want a laptop with at least two of these. There are a lot of ports here to work with. Whatever peripheral you have, there’s a slot for that, even for your favorite gaming controller.

How does this laptop perform?

It’s an Intel Core i9 processor, which is the best in the world. You can’t just call a laptop the world’s most powerful, unless it actually is, or comes pretty close. With this price, I felt like I was getting the best of the best in performance. In both speed and durability, you can’t get better than a tenth Gen. 3.6-GHz Intel Core i9 processor and 64GB of Ram.  Laptops with an i9 core processor are the largest and most powerful known to man. That’s where the sticker price is coming from. 

The performance claims are real. I ran 60 open tabs on Google Chrome, used Twitter, streamed YouTube, and scrolled through some Netflix when test-driving the Area51M for the first time. When a machine is described as “overclockable,” the manufacturer is saying the CPU can run faster than the manufacturer intends. This claim stands up to the test.

Does the Alienware Area51-M R2 have good audio quality?

I’m not even a gamer, but this computer could turn me into one. For audio, you have the joy of front-firing speakers, and an AMD Radeon RTX 2080 graphics card ensures I am not missing a single thing when streaming, gaming, or working on this machine. The display is 360HZ FHD, and on the 17″ screen, makes looking at my work a beautiful thing.

The integrated 720p at 30fps HD camera and dual-array microphones give me everything I need for Zoom meetings and will keep multi-player gamers very happy.

Battery life with its 90 Wh lithium-ion battery is not my favorite feature. I’m only getting 2 and a half hours unplugged. Gamers are going to be okay with that, I walk around with my machine when I am working. Even so, that battery lifespan is longer than the Eon.

Alienware Area-51M Extras

The extras I’m looking for in a laptop, high performance or otherwise, are software packages and warranties. All of these are optional, but Windows 10, which was fine by me. I have the option for McAffee LiveSafe Consumer subscription, for 12 or 36 months, but I also had the option to decline McAffee. Accidental Damage Service is available for one to four years, or that could be declined as well.

The hardware warranty is a one-year warranty where I get the house call from the tech for in-home service, and that is a follow-up from a remote diagnosis.

Get this Laptop

Who am I to say this laptop has something wrong with it? It’s going to eventually. It’s a man-made product with a lifespan. That being said, it’s a powerful tool whose appearance alone suggests it plans on crushing it with the highest performance possible for as long as it can. And, with its warranty, tech support, and optional security features, it has everything I needed and stuff I didn’t even know I could get in a system.

If you’re in the market for a laptop, you can’t go wrong with Alienware Area-51M – it’s touted as the “world’s most powerful and overclockable” laptop because it can go faster than it says it can. It’s ideal for gamers and considered a gaming laptop, but I am not a gamer and love it. 

I can run 60 different Windows at once, and stream from both YouTube and Netflix at the same time, and it doesn’t even offer the flicker of downtime. The specs it offers for a high-performance laptop are ideal for me and the workload I put on a machine.

I’ve reviewed it here as thoroughly as I can. This is a laptop that is fully loaded, with the best-in-class 3.6 GHz 10th Gen Intel core i9 processor.

Buying a laptop is never a easy. The research process can be time consuming. I hope these tips are helpful to you and best of luck with your next laptop purchase!

Google Marketing

An Update On Our Political Ads Policy

20 November 2019 by

We’re proud that people around the world use Google to find relevant information about elections and that candidates use Google and search ads to raise small-dollar donations that help fund their campaigns. We’re also committed to a wide range of efforts to help protect campaigns, surface authoritative election news, and protect elections from foreign interference.

But given recent concerns and debates about political advertising, and the importance of shared trust in the democratic process, we want to improve voters’ confidence in the political ads they may see on our ad platforms. So we’re making a few changes to how we handle political ads on our platforms globally. Regardless of the cost or impact to spending on our platforms, we believe these changes will help promote confidence in digital political advertising and trust in electoral processes worldwide. 

Our ads platforms today

Google’s ad platforms are distinctive in a number of important ways: 

  • The main formats we offer political advertisers are search ads (which appear on Google in response to a search for a particular topic or candidate), YouTube ads (which appear on YouTube videos and generate revenue for those creators), and display ads (which appear on websites and generate revenue for our publishing partners). 
  • We provide a publicly accessible, searchable, and downloadable transparency report of election ad content and spending on our platforms, going beyond what’s offered by most other advertising media.  
  • We’ve never allowed granular microtargeting of political ads on our platforms. In many countries, the targeting of political advertising is regulated and we comply with those laws. In the U.S., we have offered basic political targeting capabilities to verified advertisers, such as serving ads based on public voter records and general political affiliations (left-leaning, right-leaning, and independent). 

Taking a new approach to targeting election ads

While we’ve never offered granular microtargeting of election ads, we believe there’s more we can do to further promote increased visibility of election ads. That’s why we’re limiting election ads audience targeting to the following general categories: age, gender, and general location (postal code level). Political advertisers can, of course, continue to do contextual targeting, such as serving ads to people reading or watching a story about, say, the economy. This will align our approach to election ads with long-established practices in media such as TV, radio, and print, and result in election ads being more widely seen and available for public discussion. (Of course, some media, like direct mail, continues to be targeted more granularly.) It will take some time to implement these changes, and we will begin enforcing the new approach in the U.K. within a week (ahead of the General Election), in the EU by the end of the year, and in the rest of the world starting on January 6, 2020.

Clarifying our ads policies

Whether you’re running for office or selling office furniture, we apply the same ads policies to everyone; there are no carve-outs. It’s against our policies for any advertiser to make a false claim—whether it’s a claim about the price of a chair or a claim that you can vote by text message, that election day is postponed, or that a candidate has died. To make this more explicit, we’re clarifying our ads policies and adding examples to show how our policies prohibit things like “deep fakes” (doctored and manipulated media), misleading claims about the census process, and ads or destinations making demonstrably false claims that could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process. Of course, we recognize that robust political dialogue is an important part of democracy, and no one can sensibly adjudicate every political claim, counterclaim, and insinuation. So we expect that the number of political ads on which we take action will be very limited—but we will continue to do so for clear violations.

Providing increased transparency

We want the ads we serve to be transparent and widely available so that many voices can debate issues openly. We already offer election advertising transparency in India, in the EU, and for federal U.S. election ads. We provide both in-ad disclosures and a transparency report that shows the actual content of the ads themselves, who paid for them, how much they spent, how many people saw them, and how they were targeted. Starting on December 3, 2019, we’re expanding the coverage of our election advertising transparency to include U.S. state-level candidates and officeholders, ballot measures, and ads that mention federal or state political parties, so that all of those ads will now be searchable and viewable as well. 

We’re also looking at ways to bring additional transparency to the ads we serve and we’ll have additional details to share in the coming months. We look forward to continuing our work in this important area.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing

Balance Your Spend Across YouTube And TV With Reach Planner

20 November 2019 by

YouTube is focused on helping brands reach their audiences and drive business impact. That’s why we launched Reach Planner in April 2018 to give advertisers a better way to plan their YouTube and video media. To help make it even easier for users to for users to discover the optimal mix of TV and YouTube to maximize the reach of a video based media plan, today we’re launching  Nielsen TV Data in Reach Planner. Now you can see how different distributions of spend on TV and YouTube can affect your reach.

Using this together with Nielsen Total Ad Ratings (TAR), you can compare YouTube and TV reach from the planning stages through to post campaign reporting.

With audiences shifting to digital, it’s important to plan TV and digital together

With audiences shifting to digital, it’s important to plan across channels. According to Nielsen, there are thirty one percent fewer available weekly 18-49 GRPs across broadcast and cable television compared to just five years ago. TV’s decline in reach to 18-49 year olds now requires a forty six percent increase in frequency for marketers to achieve the same GRP levels.1

Advertisers can offset this decline and grow their business by adding YouTube to their overall video plan. Across the 20 Total Ad Ratings (TAR) studies we’ve commissioned with Nielsen, YouTube has consistently driven incremental reach at a more balanced frequency compared to TV.2

Get started in Reach Planner

By adding Nielsen TV data to Reach Planner, advertisers can optimize their mix of TV and online video to maximize reach, balance frequency, and reduce waste.  Advertisers can also change the mix of YouTube formats to see the effect on the overall campaign.

TV Data in Reach Planner is available to all eligible users of Reach Planner in the US. This feature will be available in more countries in 2020.

To get started, reach out to your Google team to get TV Data in Reach Planner enabled for your planning team.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Youtube Marketing

Shaping Ad Experiences To An Evolving YouTube Viewership

31 October 2019 by

Think back … can you remember the first time you heard about YouTube? Or even better–can you recall the first video you watched? It’s a fun parlor game we YouTubers sometimes play–and an occasion to reflect on how far the platform has come since its earliest days.

And for those of us who have been on the ads team for more than a few years, it’s particularly remarkable to think about how our ad products have changed as well. Back when we introduced TrueView 9 years ago, people entered the site typically from a link and typically on desktop, watched a short form video and then left to do other things. In fact, desktop represented 90 percent of all YouTube usage in 2010. The appetite for in-stream ad experiences was extremely low in these contexts, which prompted us to introduce a skippable video format that put the choice to view an ad in the hands of the user. Advertisers only paid if viewers watched the complete ad or 30 seconds if longer, so it was a win-win.

In the years since then, YouTube has grown to accommodate not only diverse content types and audiences, but also a new diversity of viewing patterns. In 2016, mobile viewing eclipsed desktop, and in 2019 TVs are our fastest growing screen. Today, viewers may just as readily binge six or seven short videos on their mobile phone, before they switch on YouTube on their TV and watch several hours of longer form video.

In short, YouTube viewing has evolved to serve seemingly divergent consumer mindsets – active browsing sessions where they discover new content and more longer, more leaned-back sessions. This has required a reconsideration of how we serve ads in each of these varied contexts.

Our mission as an ads team is to build the right ad experience for each of these contexts – from active discovery through to more leaned-back sessions:

The changing ways people watch YouTube also means that a view has different value in different contexts. This is why we continue to develop additional metrics beyond views and view-through rate–like Brand Lift, or direct actions and conversions – to quantify ad impact, while also developing new ad formats that are matched to viewing patterns and advertiser goals. While we work on these new ad experiences, our priority is to align pricing with anticipated advertiser value.

This led us to introduce Smart Pricing over a year ago, which aligns media costs with anticipated value of a given context. For example, if we know a user is watching content in a longer, TV-style session – we will price those ad impressions according to what our effectiveness models indicate is the typical value of that type of viewing mode. Smart Pricing delivers better results for advertisers – at launch we saw:

  • More efficient awareness—5 percent gain in brand awareness per dollar
  • Higher ROI for advertisers – 7 percent gain in ad recall per dollar

Beyond Smart Pricing, we are also working on ways to align YouTube media directly to your marketing objectives, and delivering value as you measure it. For instance, with video reach campaigns, you can optimize for your reach and awareness goals more easily using multiple video creatives and formats within a single campaign. Google’s machine learning will automatically serve the most efficient combination of those formats to help you reach your audience at scale.

The variety of viewing contexts is an asset, as YouTube increasingly meets the needs of viewers looking for short form, long form, TV screen experiences, a go-anywhere music player, social video, highly produced traditional video and more. And the continued evolution of our ad experiences means brands will see a benefit from each viewing mode. We take pride in continuously evolving our platform based on changing user behavior and will continue to experiment with delivering advertiser value across a variety of user contexts. And we invite you, our trusted customers, to partner with us as we build an effective video ad system for the age of choice.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Social Media Marketing | Web Marketing

SOCIAL MEDIA TOOL REVIEW: Why We Use Socialinsider

19 October 2019 by
SOCIAL MEDIA TOOL REVIEW: Why We Use Socialinsider

As a social media marketer did you ever ask yourself, “I wonder what my competitors are doing on social media, and whether their strategy works better than ours?” Well, maybe not those exact words, but surely you notice if your Google rankings take a header, or your competitor suddenly starts raking in the dough.

Here at Search Engine Pros, it is crucial for us to keep up-to-date on what our competitors are doing in the social media space. We also keep tabs on what the competitors for our clients are doing so we can provide spot-on recommendations and implement effective counter-punch online marketing strategies.

That’s why we use Socialinsider, a social media analytics tool which serves up a full view of any competitor’s digital strategy for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Why Do You Need a Competitive Awareness Strategy?

There are lots of reasons to find out what your competitors are doing. Here are just a few:

  • Find out how you rank: If you’re not at the top of search results, you’re losing out. In the fast-moving online world, you need to know exactly what content your competitors are using that works, when they post, their engagement metrics, audience growth, and their overall digital strategy so you can take appropriate counter measures.
  • See if you should boost any content: Sometimes a competitor will get a bump in results because they spent money to boost a blog post or video. You need to know when this happens so you can determine whether to boost any posts of your own.
  • Track, analyze, and tweak: Some online marketing tactics work better than others, but you need to keep track of everything from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter so you can compare your results against those of your competition and make necessary changes.
  • Get new ideas: When you know what your competitors are doing, you can either offer a different take or show why you can do it better.
Social Media Publishing Tool


How Does Socialinsider Give You the Competitive Edge?

At Search Engine Pros, we love the way Socialinsider gives us and our clients the competitive edge:

  • Facebook Analytics and Reports: Not only do you get insights for your own Facebook pages’ performance, you can also sneak a look at the boosted content strategy of your competitors’ Facebook pages. Get key insights on historical post data and page evolution, as well as audience growth, engagement performance and content performance. It also allows users to perform a multi-page performance comparison and analyze comment activity.
  • Instagram Analytics and Reports: Find out how a competitor’s Instagram profile has grown over time, so you can promote your own brand more aggressively. You can review historical posts data to see what campaigns they roll out and when, so you can time yours to run concurrently. You can also get engagement reports and compare profiles to gain insights about content strategy.
  • Twitter Analytics and Reports: Keep an eye on how your competitors use Twitter to engage with their target audience. See what content they publish on Twitter, when they post and what engages the most on their profiles. You can review engagement reports now, and will soon be able to compare Twitter profiles as well.
Social Media Publishing Tool

We love it, but you don’t have to take our word for it. Socialinsider is trusted by such big-names as HubSpot, BlitzMetrics, Geometry Global and Georgia Tech. And their pricing is pretty cost-effective for all the insights you get – $59 per month for the Social Media Manager plan, $99 for Small Agency, and $199 for Agency, with a two month discount for yearly plans. Best of all, you can get started with a seven day free trial. Now you can act like the pros and get the competitive social media marketing information you need with Socialinsider.

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,  web programming, and marketing SEO. Visit the website at https://TheSearchEnginePros.com for a complimentary Google rank analysis. “Like” the Facebook page for regular insights on WordPress SEO. Call 800-605-4988 to learn more about online marketing.

Google Marketing

Investing In The Next Generation Of Measurement On YouTube

16 October 2019 by

Ad reporting and measurement is an important part of getting digital advertising right. We invest a lot to help our advertisers understand the value of running ads on services like YouTube. 

Advertisers use different tools to understand the effectiveness of their ad campaigns. One type, called pixels, has played an important role across the web for over a decade, but was built for a world of single screens, not for the ways many people watch YouTube today. While more than 70 percent of time spent watching YouTube globally occurs on mobile devices, pixels can’t report on the effectiveness of ads that appear in mobile apps. And many third-party pixels lack the privacy controls and user protections of newer technology. That’s why, for the past several years, we’ve been taking action to limit the pixels we allow on YouTube while investing in a cloud-based measurement solution called Ads Data Hub that allows our advertisers to understand the effectiveness of their ads in a secure, privacy-safe environment. 

Over the last year, we’ve been working with key measurement companies including Nielsen, Comscore, DoubleVerify, Dynata, Kantar and Integral Ad Science to migrate their services to Ads Data Hub. Once the migrations are complete early next year, we will stop allowing third-party pixels on YouTube.

Unlike pixel-based measurement, Ads Data Hub allows advertisers to understand how their advertising is performing across screens, including mobile apps, through aggregated insights from Google ad platforms, including YouTube, Google Ads and Display & Video 360. Because Ads Data Hub limits the use of user data, it adds another layer of privacy protection for users while still enabling marketers to measure their YouTube ad campaigns. 

Over the past year, we’ve invested significantly in infrastructure improvements to Ads Data Hub to make it faster, easier to use and more reliable. This has allowed us to dramatically increase the number of advertisers and technology providers we can serve and the use cases supported in Ads Data Hub. Advertisers have run millions of successful queries to date. 

While there is still more work to be done, we think this change will be beneficial to consumers and advertisers. With the migration from pixels to Ads Data Hub, our third-party measurement partners will be able to provide YouTube advertisers with more comprehensive reporting and measurement, using technology that’s built to enhance user privacy.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog  

Youtube Marketing

Simpler Ways To Drive Growth Across The Customer Journey With Video

23 September 2019 by

Consumers are moving faster, jumping from channel to channel, and researching more often in unexpected ways. This explosion of touchpoints means more opportunities—and more complexities—for marketers. But just because today’s customer journey is more complicated, doesn’t mean orchestrating your advertising campaign has to be. At Advertising Week New York, we’re sharing new ways to help marketers use video to more efficiently and effectively connect with consumers across their purchase journey.

A simpler way to drive reach

We’re constantly working on better ways to help you achieve your marketing goals—whether you want to build awareness for a brand, shift perceptions, or drive a specific action. But while it’s great to have options, mixing and matching these solutions takes time and can add complexity. Today we’re announcing Video reach campaigns—a simpler, more efficient way for marketers to achieve their brand awareness goals with YouTube. 

Rather than managing separate campaigns for 6-second bumper ads, skippable in-stream ads, and non-skippable in-stream ads, now you can upload multiple video creatives into a single campaign. From there, Google’s machine learning will automatically serve the most efficient combination of these formats to help you reach your audience at scale.

Early adopters like Ford are already seeing strong results using Video reach campaigns. In alpha tests, the automaker lowered their campaign cost over 20 percent compared to their previous YouTube benchmarks. “Ford is using data and machine learning technology, like Video reach campaigns, to drive a learning culture across all of our media. The positive results of the Video reach campaign not only provided cost efficiencies while maintaining effectiveness but also the confidence to implement this tactic across additional campaigns” says Lisa Schoder, head of U.S. media.

A complete solution across the journey

For brands looking to build a full-funnel video strategy, we recommend complementing Video reach campaigns with TrueView for action to drive whatever online action is important to your business. Soon TrueView for action ads will seamlessly extend to the YouTube Home feed, a tremendous opportunity for any advertiser looking to drive more, high value conversions. The Home feed has long been a great place for users to discover their next favorite creator, and now it can be a great place for them to take action with your brand.

Reach audiences where they are watching 

 In addition to Video reach campaigns, we’re also bringing the YouTube Masthead to our fastest growing surface—the TV screen, where daily watch time tops 250 million hours per day. This means advertisers have a unique opportunity to reach people who are increasingly cutting the cord, right where they are watching their favorite content. 

Through the globally-available beta, marketers can purchase the YouTube Masthead on TV screens on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) basis, and customize the audiences they want to see it. Like CPM-based Mastheads on the desktop and mobile home feed, it will be available as a reserved placement to ensure brands can drive the visibility they need on the dates that matter most. It can be purchased as part of a cross-screen or single-screen Masthead buy.

And, we know the rich audio and visual experience of YouTube on TV screens means the potential to drive upper-funnel impact is greater than ever. According to a recent experiment we conducted with Media Science, YouTube ads on TV screens drive a 10 percent greater lift in recall than ads on linear TV. 

By focusing on marketing objectives rather than media tactics, we believe we can be a more strategic partner to help you sustainably grow your business. We hope these new solutions help you make it easier for you to get ahead of the pack and drive real results across the entire customer journey.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing

Google Ads Auction-Time Bidding Comes To Search Ads 360

18 September 2019 by

Smart Bidding in Google Ads uses machine learning to set bids at auction-time by factoring in a wide range of signals that help predict performance. Now you can take advantage of Google Ads auction-time bidding in your Search Ads 360 bid strategy. By activating auction-time bidding you can enhance your performance when bidding on Google Search, while still maintaining your cross-channel bidding strategy powered by Search Ads 360. During beta testing hundreds of Search Ads 360 advertisers enabled Google Ads auction-time bidding and saw an average lift in conversions of fifteen to thirty percent at the same or better ROI.

Identify more opportunities with auction-time signals

Every day billions of people turn to Google to find answers. While people are often searching for the same things, their searches are unique thanks to their context. This includes their device, browser, language, location, time of day, and other factors. Google Ads auction-time bidding automatically sets bids based on these signal combinations.

For Vodafone, factoring these signals into its bidding strategy was mission critical. Vodafone is one of the world’s largest telecom companies with mobile operations in 25 countries. During the beta period, Vodafone enabled Google Ads auction-time bidding in Search Ads 360 to ensure the right bid was being set for each auction across every location in which they operate. Now the team plans to activate Google Ads auction-time bidding across their Search Ads 360 bid strategies.Auction-time bidding in Search Ads 360 has enabled us to leverage the full potential of Google’s Smart Bidding technology in combination with Search Ads 360 Floodlights. As a result we have been able to lower our cost-per-conversion by 15%.Samantha Mikula
Marketing Specialist, Vodafone

Reach more customers when they are ready to convert

Google Ads auction-time bidding anticipates when a conversion is likely by analyzing your account history, Floodlight conversions, and exclusive signal combinations. This unique approach improves Search Ads 360 bidding results by helping you reach more customers when they are ready to convert.

Head of Marketing, Jamima White, at Australian energy company AGL, discovered that Google Ads auction-time bidding helped drive results for her business in a competitive environment. With Google Ads auction-time bidding enabled, AGL saw conversion volume increase nineteen percent at the same cost per acquisition.With Search Ads 360 and Google Ads auction-time bidding we have been able to increase conversions by 19% while maintaining the same cost per acquisition efficiency.Jamima White
Head of Marketing, AGL

Give Smart Bidding time to learn and improve

Google Ads auction-time bidding performance improves over time with more data. When enabling auction-time bidding, plan for a one-week window where Google Ads Smart Bidding learns about your business and doesn’t set auction-time bids. After the initial learning period, Google Ads will begin setting auction-time bids while continuously learning and adapting to changes in your performance. 

How to enable Google Ads auction-time bidding functionality in Search Ads 360

Auction-time bidding in Search Ads 360 is generally available for Google Search campaigns, and launching in open beta for shopping campaigns. If you’d like your shopping campaigns in Google Ads added to the beta, reach out to your account representative.

To get started with Google Search campaigns navigate to an existing bid strategy. Then, under “Engine features”, check the box for “Auction-time bidding.”

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing

Next Steps To Ensure Transparency, Choice, And Control In Digital Advertising

22 August 2019 by

Ads play a major role in sustaining the free and open web. They underwrite the great content and services that people enjoy and support a diverse universe of creators and publishers. But the ad-supported web is at risk if digital advertising practices don’t evolve to reflect people’s changing expectations around how data is collected and used. 

The mission is clear: we need to ensure that people all around the world can continue to access ad supported content on the web while also feeling confident that their privacy is protected. As we shared in May, we believe the path to making this happen is also clear: increase transparency into how digital advertising works, offer users additional controls, and ensure that people’s choices about the use of their data are respected. 

Working together across the ecosystem

The web ecosystem is complex—it includes users, publishers, advertisers, technology and service providers, advocacy groups, regulatory bodies and more. We’ve seen that approaches that don’t account for the whole ecosystem—or that aren’t supported by the whole ecosystem—will not succeed. For example, efforts by individual browsers to block cookies used for ads personalization without suitable, broadly accepted alternatives have fallen down on two accounts. 

First, blocking cookies materially reduces publisher revenue. Based on an analysis of a randomly selected fraction of traffic on each of the 500 largest Google Ad Manager publishers globally over the last three months, we evaluated how the presence of a cookie affected programmatic revenue. Traffic for which there was no cookie present yielded an average of 52 percent less revenue for the publisher than traffic for which there was a cookie present. Lower revenue for traffic without a cookie was consistent for publishers across verticals—and was especially notable for publishers in the news vertical. For the news publishers in the studied group, traffic for which there was no cookie present yielded an average of 62 percent less revenue than traffic for which there was a cookie present.1

Second, broad cookie restrictions have led some industry participants to use workarounds like fingerprinting, an opaque tracking technique that bypasses user choice and doesn’t allow reasonable transparency or control. Adoption of such workarounds represents a step back for user privacy, not a step forward.

Exploring new privacy-forward standards for the web

Today, Chrome shared an update on their efforts to explore new foundational technologies for the web that will deliver on the vision laid out above—widespread access to free content and strong privacy for users. Chrome has offered a number of preliminary proposals to the web standards community in areas such as conversion measurement, fraud protection and audience selection. The goal of these proposals is to promote a dialog on ways browsers could advance user privacy, while still ensuring publishers can earn what they need to fund great content and user experiences, and advertisers can deliver relevant ads to the right people and measure their impact.

Getting the web standards community to work on developing a new set of technologies is a tall order, but it’s not unprecedented. The community has worked together on a number of similar challenges over the years—such as gaining consensus to phase out browser plug-ins and reaching agreement to move away from Flash. We expect this will take years, not months, and we don’t anticipate any near-term changes to how our ads products work on Chrome. But this is important work and we support the effort. 

Pursuing a new level of ads transparency and user control

While Chrome explores new technologies for the web, we’re also acting on the commitment we made in May of this year to increase the transparency of digital ads and offer users more control. Over the past few months, we’ve been listening to feedback from users and partners, and have arrived at an initial proposal to give people more visibility into and control of the data used for advertising. We’ve begun sharing this proposal for discussion to key industry and stakeholder groups and we’re eager to hear and incorporate feedback.

Whether it’s working with the standards community to explore a new set of technologies, or getting feedback from participants across the digital ads industry on a proposal to increase transparency and offer users more control, Google is committed to partnering with others to raise the bar for how data is collected and used. Only by working together can we define and implement new practices that result in better, more privacy-focused experiences for users while addressing the requirements of publishers and advertisers that fund and ensure access to free content on the web.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing

Growing In-App Viewability Coverage With Open Measurement

15 August 2019 by

People are spending more time on their mobile phones, especially in apps, and move across screens frequently. As people’s usage of mobile apps has grown, so has the importance of standardizing the way viewability is measured on mobile devices.

Today we’re sharing how we’ve made in-app inventory more measurable through the IAB Tech Lab’s Open Measurement standard. Integrating the Open Measurement Software Development Kit (SDK) into both our Google Mobile Ads (GMA) and Interactive Media Ads (IMA) SDKs has allowed us to enable Open Measurement on 85+ percent of in-app display and video impressions on Google AdMob and Google Ad Manager publishers. This means that buyers of this inventory can now take viewability measurements using solutions like Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify, Comscore, and Moat in addition to measurement that was previously available with Active View.  

“IAB Tech Lab’s Open Measurement (OM) initiative makes it easier for ad buyers and sellers to work together for viewability measurement and other verification needs,” said Dennis Buchheim, Executive Vice President and General Manager, IAB Tech Lab. “The sell-side has been adopting OM quickly, and we ask brands, agencies, and Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) to get more active and take advantage of what OM offers.” 

Advertisers can get started today by appending Open Measurement enabled tags from their viewability vendor of choice to their creatives.

Measurement vendors are lauding this development as progress for a more measurable future. Joseph Ranzenbach, Director of Product Management, IAS says, “Google’s adoption of the Open Measurement SDK is a huge step in moving the industry forward and creating more transparency for advertisers.” Sumit Shukla, SVP, Strategic Partnerships, Comscore says, “It’s important for Brands to consistently measure viewability across the entirety of their media buys. With Comscore’s cross-platform campaign measurement as a trusted market currency, this close partnership with Google further helps Brands measure what matters.”  

Viewability measurement unlocks high-performing In-app inventory for advertisers

Viewability continues to be an integral part of measuring ad effectiveness—it helps advertisers understand if their ad had the opportunity to be seen and it helps publishers offer more high-quality inventory.

In-app viewability means that advertisers can confidently take advantage of this high-value inventory. In 2018 we worked with Ipsos MORI to understand the impact of in-app advertising and found it was successful in driving action. People were 50 percent more likely to interact with a brand, buy a product or service, follow a call-to-action or recommend a brand to their family or friends after seeing its ad in an app, compared with those who saw it via a browser. Display & Video 360 customers can now confidently extend their brand campaigns to apps knowing they are able to measure ad viewability at the impression level as they would in other environments.

Publishers like Pandora recognize the importance of holistic viewability measurement. Maria Breza, VP, Ad Quality Measurement and Audience Data Operations at Pandora said, “Advertisers should be able to seamlessly use one viewability provider to measure their buys across all publishers and platforms. Open Measurement has allowed Pandora to make this a reality for our clients with less latency, less maintenance and more stability.”

What’s next for Open Measurement

We’re continuing to work with the IAB’s Tech Lab Open Measurement Working Group to expand Open Measurement to use cases beyond viewability, as well as to other environments such as web video. We believe Open Measurement has the potential to create a more transparent and accountable digital media ecosystem across all screens. Reach out to your measurement partners and Google representative to find out how you can take advantage of this new measurement technology.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

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