Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing | Youtube Marketing

Find More Of Your “Star” Customers With Universal App Campaigns

9 October 2017 by

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.”

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing | Youtube Marketing

Know Their Intention, Get Their Attention: New Ways To Connect And Measure On YouTube

25 September 2017 by

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.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

New Reporting To Show How Often Your Shopping Ad Is In The Top Spot

31 August 2017 by

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.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Introducing A Better, Simpler Ad Rotation

29 August 2017 by

The right ad rotation can help you show your best ads to people looking for what you have to offer. However, it’s not always clear which rotation makes the most sense for your business. That’s why, starting in late September, we’re simplifying ad rotation to two settings: “optimize” and “rotate indefinitely.”

Optimize for your best ads

Powered by Google’s machine learning technology, the new “optimize” setting prioritizes ads that are expected to perform better than other ads within an ad group. This setting will optimize your ads for clicks in each individual auction using signals like keyword, search term, device, location and more.

Keep in mind that using an optimized ad rotation with three or more ads per ad group can increase both clicks and impressions. The more of your ads our system can choose from, the better the expected ad performance.

If you’d like to prioritize conversions, the best way is to use Smart Bidding. Smart Bidding helps you tailor your bids based on the likelihood of a conversion, and will choose the ad most likely to drive that conversion. Note that if you’re using Smart Bidding, AdWords will automatically use the “optimize” ad rotation.

Simplifying even rotation

While an optimized ad rotation works best for most advertisers, we know that some of you prefer more control with an even rotation. Because the “rotate indefinitely” setting is already the easiest way to give your ads equal preference, it will be the sole option for an even rotation going forward.

And to give you even more control, ad rotation settings will be available at the ad group level–meaning that you can use multiple rotation settings across a single campaign. Learn more about ad rotation in the AdWords Help Center, and read our best practices guide to find out which rotation setting is right for you. 

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Ramp Up Your Calls With Call Bid Adjustments

26 July 2017 by

Click-to-call ads were introduced seven years ago to help you connect with more customers over the phone. Since then, we’ve heard one thing loud and clear: you want to drive even more calls. And it’s no surprise—on average, calls convert three times better than web clicks.1

To help you generate more calls, we’re rolling out new call bid adjustments, which allow you to control how often the call option appears with your search ads. Use call bid adjustments to increase bids on campaigns that drive valuable phone calls. For example, if you’re a travel advertiser, you may see higher order values from calls because it can be easier to cross-sell rental cars, group tours, and other vacation add-ons during a live conversation. Raise your call bid adjustments to show call extensions more frequently and drive more of these high-value call conversions.

“Calls are an important source of new customer leads for us. Call bid adjustments help us improve our click-to-call visibility and ensure we’re appearing in the top 1-2 positions on mobile. Our on-the-go customers convert quickly within a short window of time, so it’s critical to be front and center, and show them that we offer storage units at the right price and location. Since implementing call bid adjustments and bidding higher for calls, we’ve seen a 37% increase in call volume with a 22% decrease in average cost-per-call.”
– Stephanie Christensen, Paid Acquisition Analyst

“Our customers want to speak to a real person to make sure they’re choosing the right medical alert system for themselves or a loved one. When we can walk them through our offerings live and give them that peace of mind, they have a 30% likelihood of converting, which is nearly 2x higher than with web leads. Someone connecting with us from a call extension is more valuable than a website click, so call bid adjustments to allow us to optimize for that greater value. We’ve worked with our agency, Metric Theory, to increase bids specifically for calls and improve how often the call extension shows. As a result, we’ve generated 20% higher call volume while decreasing the cost by 60%.” 
– Matt Guerrieri, Director of Marketing

“Call bid adjustments have helped us meet a key marketing objective by delivering a strong uplift in performance year over year, with a 79% increase in click to call rate. It has also enabled us to target our audience to generate higher value insurance policies. The flexibility of the service allows us to make the call option more prominent, thereby driving a greater number of relevant calls. Calls deliver a significant proportion of our monthly leads and we are currently working to push call bid adjustments even harder.”

– Anthony Gamble, Head of Digital Marketing (Acquisition)

Call bid adjustments are available exclusively in the new AdWords experience, which will roll out to all advertisers by the end of the year.2 To learn more about AdWords calls solutions, visit our Help Center. You can also check out best practices for maximizing call performance and improving the caller experience. 

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

AdWords Editor 12 Offers A Fresh Look And New Features To Help Simplify Your Workflow

29 June 2017 by

A new version of AdWords Editor, with a refreshed design, is now available for all advertisers globally. You’ll find it even easier to manage your campaigns at scale with custom rules, faster account downloads, and more.

Custom rules help you build high-performing campaigns

With AdWords Editor 12, you can now use custom rules to check for changes that don’t align with your best practices. For example, our best practices suggest showing search ads with four or more site links. When you use this rule, AdWords Editor will let you know which campaigns or ad groups don’t meet this best practice before you post changes. You can get started by using our recommended rules or create custom rules based on your own best practices.

Faster account downloads for new AdWords Editor versions

To reduce the time you spend waiting for your accounts to download after you update AdWords Editor, we’ll now transfer more of your data from previous versions.

A new look and feel

You’ll also see a new design that better aligns with Google’s commitment to material design. While the changes will be subtle and won’t affect how you manage your accounts, you’ll now have a more cohesive visual experience across AdWords Editor, the new AdWords experience, and other Google products.

and more …

The new version of AdWords Editor also supports bidding to maximize conversions, uploading up to 20 images and videos for Universal App Campaigns, and using the new customization fields for responsive ads. You can learn more about all Version 12 updates in the AdWords Editor Help Center, or download AdWords Editor 12 here. 

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Maximize Conversions With Smart Bidding

30 May 2017 by

When your goal is to get the most conversions from your marketing budget, it can be challenging to set the right bid and bid adjustments. Where do you spend your next dollar to get your next customer? To help you make the most out of your budget, we’re introducing Maximize Conversions: a new Smart Bidding strategy that automatically sets the right bid for each auction to help get you the most conversions within your daily budget.

For example, if you’re a clothing retailer trying to quickly sell last season’s styles, Maximize Conversions will help you get you the most number of sales from your existing budget by factoring signals like remarketing lists, time of day, browser and operating system into bids. Smart Bidding uses Google’s machine learning technology to optimize for conversions across every ad auction—also known as “auction-time bidding”.

Trex, a luxury composite decking company, used Maximize Conversions to build brand awareness and saw a 73% increase in conversion volume: We wanted to increase the conversion volume of our high-priority campaigns without raising budgets. In our first test campaign, we saw a 73% increase in conversion volume, 59% increase in CVR, and 42% decrease in CPA, with no change in our spending Chris LaRoche
PPC Team Lead at Seer InteractiveIt’s easy to set up Maximize Conversions. Simply go to your campaign’s settings page, click “Change bid strategy” and select Maximize Conversions. You can test Maximize Conversions, get insights and monitor your bid strategies to understand their performance.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing | Youtube Marketing

Say It In Six: Why Marketers And Creatives Are Embracing The Newest Video Ad Length

26 April 2017 by

Have you heard the good news about YouTube’s six-second bumper ads? These little wonders have swept the globe for three simple reasons: they provide wide reach, they drive brand results and they’re a great canvas for creativity.

And we’re ready to mark the one year anniversary of bumpers by giving them their star turn – for the 2017-2018 upfront season, we’re making bumpers available for Google Preferred buys. This format is a perfect match to the sought-after content included in Google Preferred and will help advertisers drive reach and build awareness during increasingly mobile viewing moments.

Let’s take a closer look at this little format that could, built to capture attention wherever and whenever it’s available.

Bumpers drive efficient reach

Sold on a simple CPM, bumpers aren’t just an easy way to get your brand in front of a lot of people – they also effectively drive upper funnel results. We looked across 122 bumpers campaigns in the US last year and found that 70% drove a significant lift in brand awareness, with an average lift of 9%.1 On ad recall, they perform even better – over 9 in 10 drove ad recall globally, with an average lift of over 30%.2 Given their high success rate and ease of use, bumpers can be a great building block for your YouTube campaigns.

Bumpers work for brands

Thanks to their efficiency and efficacy, many brands are weaving bumpers into their campaigns. For instance, Busch used bumpers to continue the story from their first-ever Super Bowl ad. Busch worked with their creative agency Deutsch to collect extra footage from their Super Bowl shoot and create bumpers with different themes. This approach resulted in a double-digit lift in both purchase consideration and brand awareness among viewers. Knowing how well its bumpers performed across various brand lift metrics, Busch was also able to optimize its campaign in real-time, tailoring its creatives to audience segments most likely to consider buying the beer after seeing a particular ad. As Anheuser-Busch’s Senior Director, Digital Victoria Vaynberg points out, “Capturing consumers’ attention is always a challenge, so short and contextually-relevant content is key to getting over this hurdle. By using YouTube bumpers, we were able to tap into a great product that is built to address this challenge and successfully break through with consumers.”

Under Armour also turned to bumpers for a recent product launch. They took a strategic hybrid approach for advertising on YouTube, leading with a TrueView ad, which helped to engage the audience through an emotional narrative, followed by bumpers that highlighted the innovation of the new product.

“Under Armour is committed to making all athletes better through performance and innovation, while inspiring the next generation of athletes with powerful storytelling,” said Jim Mollica, Vice President of Consumer Engagement at Under Armour. “Our forward-thinking strategy guided our athletes through a unique engagement funnel, which was evidenced by double the lift in product interest among people who saw our YouTube bumper ad and our TrueView ad combined, compared to those who only saw our TrueView ad.”

We’ve also seen strong results in third party studies when using a comparable approach to Under Armour’s – using bumpers to remarket to TrueView views produced a significantly higher lift in ad recall vs TrueView alone, with an average higher lift of 42% for the skipped views and 104% for the paid views.3 We’re excited to see other brands follow a similar playbook, orchestrating their storytelling across ad lengths to maximize results.”

Bumpers offer a great canvas for creativity

It’s no surprise that some of bumpers’ earliest fans have come from the creative community. Part of the reason bumpers are such a fertile format for storytelling is that creativity thrives in constraint. At SXSW, we challenged artists, filmmakers and agency creatives to re-imagine classic works of literature in six seconds – effectively re-telling these stories in miniature. The results were by turns evocative, funny, poignant and beautiful, and they showed that six seconds is a natural and adaptable ad length. For more insights into how to build bumpers that work, check out our new article “Success in Six” on Think with Google.

For more information on bumpers, including how to set up a campaign, check out the Help Center, and don’t forget to #bumpitup.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Introducing Smart Display Campaigns

20 April 2017 by

There are now over 3 million apps and websites on the Google Display Network (GDN), from popular news websites to the latest gaming apps. No matter what your customers are doing to stay informed or entertained across the GDN, it’s important to reach them with timely and relevant messages. In order to do that, you need to find the right customers, tailor your creativity to them and set optimal bids. Starting today, Smart display campaigns begin rolling out to all advertisers, letting you reach more customers easily on the GDN. Smart display campaigns use the power of Google’s machine learning to automatically:

Only Google provides automation like this at scale, helping you deliver richer experiences to consumers and better results for your brand. In fact, advertisers who use Smart display campaigns are seeing an average 20% increase in conversions at the same CPA,1 compared to their other display campaigns.trivago, a hotel search platform, is using Smart display campaigns to help travelers around the world find hotel rooms that meet all their travel needs—like a room large enough for a family of four, one with hi-speed Wi-Fi for a business trip, or one with an ocean-front view for that well-deserved beach vacation. The travel brand provided:

  1. Creative assets: Headlines like “Find Great Hotel Deals,” descriptions of its hotel listings, beautiful images of destinations like Rome and London, and its logo
  2. Business goals: A target CPA and daily budget

AdWords did the rest—creating over 25,000 tailored ads and showing them to travelers shopping for hotel deals. For instance, people browsing a travel blog might see a message with trivago’s “Find Great Hotel Deals” headline and a breathtaking image of the Coliseum. With Smart display campaigns, trivago drove 36% more conversions at the same CPA, compared to its other similar display campaigns. The brand now uses Smart display campaigns across markets in Europe, Asia, and North America.

Credit Karma, free credit and financial management website, used Smart display campaigns to get more signups and drove 37% more conversions at a similar CPA.2Smart display campaigns help our team save time, engage new customers, and scale our marketing efficiently

Andrew Tam
Senior Director of Marketing at Credit Karma

Hulu Japan, a subscription video service, turned to Smart display campaigns to reach new subscribers and drove a 37% higher conversion rate.3Smart display campaigns make it simple to set up and manage our campaigns using the power of automation. They’re a really effective way to promote our service to prospective customers

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Dynamic Search Ads Are Now More Effective Than Ever

28 March 2017 by

Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) help you reach people who are searching for your products and services—without the need for you to actively manage keywords or ads. Today we’re introducing three improvements to DSA: page feeds, expanded ads, and quality enhancements. 

Control the products you advertise

Page feeds give you additional control over your DSA campaigns to ensure only relevant products and services are shown to your customers. Simply provide us with a feed of what you want to promote and select the landing pages that you want to include in your auto targets. We’ll use this information to determine when your ads will show, and where to direct your customers to on your website.

You can also apply custom labels in your page feeds to keep your ads organized. For example, create a label called “Holiday Promotion” and apply it to a group of products to easily activate and pause all ads within that promotion at the same time. Mark out-of-stock products with an “Unavailable” label to prevent driving traffic to them.

Hot Pepper Beauty, one of Japan’s top salon booking services, uses page feeds and has reduced its time spent managing DSA campaigns by 90%:DSA with page feeds helps us expand our audience reach and dramatically reduces operational overhead while maintaining targeting control at the URL level

Tomoyuki Ishii
Manager of Digital Marketing at Recruit Lifestyle

Booking.com, the world leader in booking accommodations online, has also experienced positive results with page feeds:
DSA Page Feeds has provided us with better ad performance through more relevant ads and allows us to reach more potential customersRichard Gradwell
Richard Gradwell, Director Marketing PPC Booking

Expand your Dynamic Search Ads

Earlier this year, Search and Display campaigns fully transitioned to expanded text ads. Over the next month, we’re rolling out support within DSA campaigns for this expanded format. Longer headlines and description lines allow you to show more information about your business before people click your ad. When you create a new ad, use the expanded description field to provide deeper messaging that focuses on what consumers care about. 

Show more relevant ads

It’s important that your ads only show when they’re most relevant to what people are searching for. For example, if you’re a baker in Palm Springs, your ads should only show to people who are looking for baked goods in Palm Springs. That’s why we’re always improving the effectiveness of our DSA campaigns. With our latest updates, advertisers are seeing on average an increase in conversion rate and a decrease in CPA. 

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

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