Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Faster, Safer And Better Ad Experiences For Consumers

17 May 2018 by

Consumers have high expectations for faster, safer, and better digital experiences. This means it’s more important than ever for brands to deliver on these expectations.

At Google, we’re building new innovations to help AdWords advertisers design the best web experiences for your customers.

Speed: Improvements to click measurement

Speed matters. In fact, a one-second delay in mobile page load can decrease conversions up to 20%.1 That’s why we announced support for Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) as landing pages in AdWords and developed new tools like the Mobile Speed Scorecard and the Impact Calculator. With just a few inputs, this tool estimates the revenue impact that can result from improving the speed of your mobile website.

Another way we’re improving mobile site speed is parallel tracking (blog | help center) — which was introduced earlier this year for advertisers using click measurement systems. How does this improve speed? After an ad click, web browsers will process click measurement requests in the background, helping people reach your site up to several seconds faster.2 This creates better user experiences, leading to more conversions and less budget spent on bounced clicks.

Starting October 30, 2018, parallel tracking will be required for all AdWords accounts. To get a jump start, you can now opt in your Search Network and Shopping campaigns. And even if you don’t intend to turn it on today, you should start talking with your click measurement providers to ensure that they are ready for this change. Doing so, ensures there’s no disruption to your click measurement system.

If you’ve confirmed that your click measurement system is already compatible, you can opt in from your account-level “Settings” page in the “Tracking” section. Learn more

Security: Focus on HTTPS

You want your customers to have a safe and secure experience, every time they engage with your website. But too many brands still use unencrypted HTTP to send users to their landing pages. That’s why Google strongly advocates that sites adopt HTTPS encryption, the industry standard for ensuring the security and integrity of data traveling between the browser and the website.

Over the last year, Chrome has marked an increasingly large set of HTTP pages as “not secure.” Beginning in July 2018 with the release of Chrome 68, Chrome will mark all HTTP pages as “not secure.”

To make sure your users continue to have the best possible landing page experience, we’ve taken a few extra steps:

  • Enabled HTTP Search ad clicks to automatically be redirected to HTTPS when we know that your site prefers HTTPS, which we will begin rolling out the week of June 11.
  • Launched Ad version history to allow advertisers to update your landing page URLs from HTTP to HTTPS without resetting all of your performance statistics. 
  • Will start to warn advertisers in AdWords when you’re using less secure HTTP addresses for landing pages, in the next few weeks.

We hope that these innovations will help people browse more quickly, confidently, and securely.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing | Youtube Marketing

A New Video Format To Reach People Across The Mobile Web And Apps

17 April 2018 by

Over the last year, we’ve been working on a way to extend the reach of your video campaigns to people beyond YouTube, especially as they spend more and more time interacting with apps and sites on their mobile devices. Starting today, you can use out-stream video ads, a new format built exclusively for mobile environments, to reach more potential customers with your video creativity.

Outstream ads drive incremental, cost-efficient and viewable reach beyond YouTube. Ads show on Google video partners, which are high-quality publisher websites and mobile apps where you can show video ads, including TrueView in-stream and Bumper ads. When outstream video ads come into view on a mobile screen, they begin to play with sound off. After that, a user can tap the ad to turn sound on and restart the video from the beginning, or simply keep scrolling.

In every context, an ad needs the opportunity to be seen in order to drive impact, which is why our outstream video ads are charged on viewable CPM. This means that every impression you pay for has been on screen and viewable (as measured by MRC standards). In addition to Active View and unique reach reporting, you can use brand interest lift to measure incremental interest in your brand or product as assessed by an increase in organic searches on Google.com or YouTube.

Outstream video ads complement our efficient reach solutions for YouTube: TrueView for reach and Bumper ads. Now, you can reach even more of your audience across the mobile web and apps with a video ad designed for the ways people read, play, swipe, and scroll on mobile.

Advertisers like Hong Kong Tourism board are already using out-stream video ads to increase awareness and cost-efficient reach. Tina Chao, General Manager, Marketing, says, “To build awareness for Hong Kong as a travel destination, the Hong Kong Tourism Board used out-stream video ads to reach a broad set of potential travelers across Asia. Outstream video ads delivered strong results for our global brand campaign: 30% incremental reach with a 40% lower cost per completed video view and 85% lower CPM.”

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Protecting Our Ad Network: How Advertising Policies & Policy Enforcement Work

27 March 2018 by

On March 14, we shared information about our work to remove bad ads and bad sites from our ad networks. With a combination of people, policies, and technology we took down more than 3.2 billion ads in 2017, up from 700 million in 2015. That’s more than 100 bad ads per second. Today, we want to share more details about how our policies and policy enforcement work to help protect our network.

Policies
We continuously monitor ads and content for policy compliance.

  • If you’re an advertiser, our AdWords policies determine which ads are acceptable and what types of products or services can be promoted with Google ads. For example, we prohibit technologies that attempt to deceive users or abuse our network, like auto-redirecting ads, malware-laden sites, or “trick-to-click” ads. 
  • If you’re a publisher, our AdSense program policies outline the kinds of websites and content we allow to show Google ads. For example, our dangerous and derogatory content policy prohibits publishers from running Google ads on content that promotes discrimination against marginalized groups. 

We constantly review and update our policies to protect consumers, advertisers and publishers. In fact, in 2017, we added 28 new advertiser and 20 new publisher policies.

Technology & Talent

To enforce these policies, we use a combination of people and technology. Google’s technology is designed to detect when ads or content violate our policies and disable them quickly. We employ automated filters that continuously identify policy issues, clean, and defend our ad systems. And we consider user feedback when people report sites and ads that they believe may be in violation of our policies.

Technology helps us spot potential violations, but our talented reviewers and interdisciplinary team also work to enforce policies. When we review advertisers’ ads, we review everything from the ad creative to the landing page. For publishers, we evaluate elements including traffic patterns on the site and whether the content is appropriate to be monetized. Our teams are constantly reviewing because a publisher or an advertiser who is compliant with our policies today may not be tomorrow. 

Controls
In addition to evaluating ads and sites for policy compliance, we provide advertisers controls they need to manage where and when their ads appear, and provide publishers the ability to control the type and format of ads appearing next to their content. For example, an advertiser of an extreme sporting event may use a Digital Content Label, the film-rating style control for maturity level, to place their ads alongside content suitable specific audiences. Advertisers can couple these controls with placement exclusions, which allow advertisers to specify publishers, apps, or videos to avoid in their campaigns.

Protecting our network

Maintaining the health of our ad network is key to supporting the ecosystem of creators, publishers, and advertisers that rely on Google ads to build their businesses. That’s why our teams are committed to refining our policies and fine-tuning our systems and controls to make sure Google ads work for everyone.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Grow Your Business Beyond Borders

15 February 2018 by

As more consumers come online around the world, there’s more opportunity than ever for marketers to reach potential customers beyond their borders. In fact, research shows that customers aren’t concerned about where a business is based as long as they’re happy with the product or service. For example, 96% of people didn’t know that Booking.com is from the Netherlands, and of these, 90% said this wouldn’t affect the likelihood of their buying from the company again.1

To get started, check out our Official Guide to Expanding Internationally with AdWords. This four-step guide outlines best practices and free resources that can help advertisers find more customers in new countries.

There are many tools and resources for businesses looking to expand. For example, Market Finder is a powerful tool built with insights from Google Search to prioritize the best markets for your business based on search volumes in your category, ease of doing business, consumer purchasing power, and more. It’s available in the US, UK, and China, with more countries on the way in 2018. Another resource is Consumer Barometer, which helps advertisers learn about consumer preferences and trends. Did you know that clothing, books, cosmetics, and computer hardware/software are the products most often purchased online from abroad?2 Last but not least, tap into the Go Global Community for the latest research on emerging market trends, conversations with international market specialists, and updates on new ad innovations. Companies from around the world have grown their businesses with these tools. For example:

Kabam is a leading provider of mobile games, including Marvel Contest of Champions with over 130M downloads. To expand its game into Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, Kabam used insights from consumer gaming trends and video engagement from each market to localize its Search and YouTube campaigns. As a result, the game reached the top 10 in download charts for its category on both iOS and Android in target APAC markets.

French DIY website ManoMano offers two million products from 750 sellers, including electrical, hardware, furniture and tools. The DIY market is highly seasonal and constantly changing — customers love gardening and outdoor activities in warm seasons and indoor projects during the winter. ManoMano predicted these purchase patterns, understood consumer trends in each market, and engaged customers with timely, localized campaigns. As a result, its sales more than doubled in 2016, and ManoMano now has nearly 2 million customers across Europe, with localized websites in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Grow Your App Business With Google’s New Education Program For Universal App Campaigns

17 January 2018 by

Today, we’re launching a new interactive education program for Universal App campaigns (UAC). UAC makes it easy for you to reach users and grow your app business at scale. It uses Google’s machine learning technology to help find the customers that matter most to you, based on your business goals—across Google Play, Google.com, YouTube, and the millions of sites and apps in the Display Network.

UAC is a shift in the way you market your mobile apps, so we designed the program’s first course to help you learn how to get the best results from UAC. Here are a few reasons we encourage you take the course:

  • Learn from industry experts. The course was created by marketers who’ve been in your shoes and vetted by the team who built the Universal App campaign.
  • Learn on your schedule. Watch snackable videos at your own pace. The course is made up of short 3-minute videos to help you master the content faster.
  • Practice what you learn. Complete interactive activities based on real-life scenarios like using UAC to help launch a new app or release an update for your app.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Product Ratings On Shopping Ads Now Available Globally

5 December 2017 by

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.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Win Over More Users With A New Playable Ad Format In Universal App Campaigns

4 December 2017 by

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.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Google Manufacturer Center Rolls Out International Expansion, API Updates, And New Content Discovery Opportunities To Help You Better Showcase Your Brand Online

29 November 2017 by

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.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

New AdWords Innovations To Drive Better Results For Your Business

16 November 2017 by

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.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing | Youtube Marketing

Bring More Foot Traffic To Your Business With YouTube And Display Ads

10 October 2017 by

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.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

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