Google Marketing | Youtube Marketing

Get Your Business Ready For What Comes Next

6 October 2020 by

Advertising Week is an event I look forward to every year—it brings global thought leaders together to find new ways we can use technology to solve business challenges. Over the past few months, I’ve had a chance to meet virtually with many of you to learn how COVID-19 is impacting your business and how partners like Google can help. I’ve been inspired by how you’re supporting your local communities and re-imagining ways to run your business. 

You’ve also shared great ideas for how we can build better solutions that help you grow your business online. Today at Advertising Week, I’m excited to share innovations that will give you new insights about changing consumer behavior and help you meet customer demand in real time through automation.

Get insights tailored for your business

Consumer behavior is constantly changing, and the pandemic has only accelerated the pace of that change. For example, Kettlebell Kings saw a surge in interest for home fitness products when communities began sheltering in place. By meeting this demand from customers, the team processed more sales in one day than they typically would have over the course of months! For Zazzle, an online marketplace for customized products, exploring search trends allowed them to identify rising categories like puzzles and outdoor games as people looked for activities to do at home. By investing in these categories, Zazzle was able to deliver on customer needs and improve campaign performance. 

These businesses are proving how important it is to stay ahead of shifts in consumer behavior in order to drive continued growth. That’s why we’re introducing the new Insights page in Google Ads to give you custom insights specific to your business. We’re rolling out the beta in the coming months and will add new information over time—including audience and forecasting insights. 

The Insights page will feature a trends section that shows current and emerging search demand for the products or services most relevant to your business. For example, an outdoor retailer can quickly take notice of rising demand for tents as consumers gear up for more outdoor adventures. And a vacation rental company might see a growing trend for cabins. Explore these trends to uncover opportunities for categories you already promote in your campaigns—as well as for new, related areas you could tap into.

You can deep dive into a trend to understand which queries consumers are searching for or the geographic locations where demand is growing the most. These trends are aggregated and anonymized across many queries and can’t be tied to any individual user. Also use the integration with recommendations to easily activate keyword, budget and bidding optimizations in a few steps. You can apply these learnings to unlock new business opportunities, like new product areas to pivot into or future promotions to highlight. 

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Keep up with consumer demand and take action in real time

Insights help you keep a finger on the pulse of changing consumer demand, and automation makes it possible to act on it in real time. To bring the full value of automation to more businesses, we’re introducing Performance Max campaigns, a new way to buy Google ads across all our inventory.

Google Ads currently offers fully-automated campaigns for app marketers, retailers, and businesses with physical locations to drive results across Google’s surfaces. Performance Max campaigns will build on learnings from those campaigns to deliver a comprehensive solution that works for all advertisers across a wider range of marketing objectives. They’ll deliver four main benefits:

1. Customer reach: Performance Max campaigns will complement your keyword-based Search campaigns, and be the most complete solution to help you drive conversions and revenue by unifying Google’s ad inventory.

2. Performance towards your business goals: Over time, you’ll be able to choose from multiple marketing objectives like online sales, new customer acquisition, and offline sales. For the first time, you’ll also be able to drive new leads across Google from one campaign. Machine learning will automatically optimize for your most valuable customers across channels. 

A new goals-first setup makes it easier to fully define your conversion goals. For example, if your objective is to generate leads, you can make sure you’re capturing both form submissions and phone calls as goals.

3. New reporting and insights: Get a deeper understanding of how machine learning is working for your business, such as which audiences and creative asset combinations are performing the best. Performance Max campaigns will also be included in the new Insights page to help you understand what’s driving changes in your performance.

4. New campaign inputs: While automation helps you drive better results, your expertise and knowledge of your business can improve how machine learning performs. Speed up the campaign learning process by specifying which audiences are most likely to convert. Combine these inputs with value rules to indicate which conversions are worth the most to your business based on characteristics like audience, location and device.

We’re still in the early stages of testing Performance Max campaigns and will invite more advertisers to join the beta next year. You should continue to use existing campaign types to meet your business goals during this important holiday season.

Reach more viewers and inspire action

As people spend more time at home, video streaming is a key area where a “new normal” is emerging.  On YouTube in particular, over 2 billion people globally are gravitating towards timely content to stay entertained, keep up with current events, and learn new skills. In the coming weeks, Video action campaigns will expand to all advertisers to help you drive more conversions from video and inspire action across YouTube and Google video partners.

People are also watching YouTube in more ways than before—for example in the U.S., over 100 million people watch YouTube and YouTube TV on their TV screen each month. Given this boom in TV viewership, we’ll continue exploring ways your ads can appear with Video action campaigns and test direct-response video ads on new surfaces like connected TVs over the next year.

Even as the world around us continues to change, our commitment to you remains the same: we’re here to help businesses of all sizes grow online and get ready for what comes next. To learn more about our latest product innovations, watch the full Advertising Week keynote.

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

Google Marketing

New Innovations To Grow Your App Business With Ads

31 July 2019 by

App developers around the world are pushing the limits of innovation to meet consumers’ high expectations. In an increasingly competitive global market, it’s more important than ever for app developers to find better ways to build and grow their businesses.

Today at Think Games at ChinaJoy, we are sharing innovations that help you find more users and grow your revenue with Google’s latest solutions.

Reach more users when they’re looking for something new 

Connecting with the right people at the right time is key to building a strong user base. Google App campaigns make it easy for you to find app-happy users across Google Search, Play, YouTube and over 3 million sites and apps in our network. Here are some new ways App campaigns can help you expand your global reach.

Discover (formerly known as the Google feed) helps over 800 million monthly active users uncover fresh and interesting content related to the things they care about—like global news and topics of interest like sports, music, and mobile games. Now, you can access Discover inventory through App campaigns to make a strong impression on more users with relevant and visually engaging ads.

App campaigns running in the United States will now automatically reach more potential users on Discover who are open to exploring your app. And in the coming months, your app ads on Discover will also serve in Malaysia, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Canada, Brazil, Japan and Indonesia. We aim to bring app ads in Discover to all available markets before the end of this year. 

In addition to Discover⁠, we’re introducing new reach opportunities on two more platforms:

  • App ads on YouTube Search: Your app promotion ads are now eligible to show in the top slot of YouTube’s mobile search results. Combining YouTube’s global audience with rich intent signals helps you deliver relevant and useful ads to more prospective app users.
  • In-stream video ads in our display network: Display in-stream video ads are skippable video ads that play before, during, or after a video a user is watching. Starting next month, you can reach more people with your ads while they’re viewing video content on mobile apps and sites in our network.

Grow revenue and deliver a better user experience

Finding the right users is important, but developers need to think about growing overall revenue in order to build sustainable businesses. By integrating ads during natural break points in your app you can build a new revenue stream and deliver a better user experience.

Our new app open ad format allows you to show ads to your users as they wait for your app to load. Designed to seamlessly integrate with your app’s branding, this format gives you new ways to earn revenue while creating a good user experience. Reach out to your account manager to get started with this format in alpha.  

In addition to the new app open ads, here are two more ways we are helping you grow revenue while delivering better ad experiences for your users:

  • Smart segmentation is now available for rewarded ad units. This feature, announced earlier this year for interstitial ads units, only shows ads to users unlikely to make purchases in your app. This protects the user experience of your purchasers while growing your ads revenue.
  • AdMob Insights: Our new Insights feature provides alerts to your AdMob dashboard when our system detects abnormal changes to your key metrics like eCPM, impressions and revenue. This new beta lets you know instantly if changes in your app are impacting user experience.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing

Smart Strategies For Growing Your App Business With Ads

8 May 2019 by

Every year Google I/O showcases the delight that technology can bring to our lives. Mobile apps have extended that delight to billions of people around the world, paving the way for app developers to unlock new business opportunities.  

Today we’re sharing a few ways to help scale your business using Google’s growth and monetization solutions.

Find the right app users

Smart user acquisition starts with reaching the people who will be most engaged with your app and help you generate the most revenue. With Google App campaigns, you can choose a bidding option that best supports your growth goals. Target CPA bidding, for example, makes it easy for you to find new users who install your app and take an in-app action.

To grow profitably, it’s also important to also consider how much revenue you generate relative to the cost of driving those installs and actions. That’s why, you’ll soon be able to bid on a target return on ad spend (tROAS) so you can automatically pay more for users likely to spend more, and pay less for users likely to spend less. If you’re looking for users who will spend twice as much as they cost to acquire, you can set that multiplier for your tROAS bid, and it will find you the right users accordingly. tROAS will be available next month for Google App campaigns on iOS and Android globally. Learn more.

Bidding is a great lever to reach the customers you want. The next step is to win and keep these customers’ attention. That’s why we’re giving you new ways to develop and manage your creatives, making it easier for you to show your customers more relevant ads in more places.

  • YouTube–you automatically qualify to promote your app in two new YouTube placements when you have at least one landscape image and one video. The first placement is on the YouTube homepage feed, and the second is on in-stream video.
  • Ad groups–starting later this month, you can set up multiple ad groups in the same campaign and tailor the assets in each ad group around a different “theme” or message for different customers. Learn more.
  • Agency partnerships–we’re teaming up with 8 trusted agencies including Vidmob, Consumer Acquisition, Bamboo, Apptamin, Webpals Mobile, Creadits, Kaizen Ad and Kuaizi to help you manage creatives end-to-end, from design to reporting.

Monetize more easily

The second piece to building a profitable apps business is creating a sustainable revenue stream. In other words, you need to keep users engaged with your app, while still monetizing it effectively, which can be tough to balance. That’s why AdMob is investing in automated solutions to help you earn more from your app while delivering a great user experience.

Last year we announced a new monetization model called Open Bidding that helps you maximize the value of every impression automatically. Since then, dozens of developers have joined the beta and are seeing meaningful revenue lift, including Korea-based game developer Sticky Hands.

“We’re really excited about Open Bidding. In one month, revenue and ARPDAU have grown by 14% and 15% respectively, and we expect them to keep climbing as more demand sources come online. What’s even better is that we’re spending almost no time managing it.“
– Minu Kim, CEO of Sticky Hands

In addition to the revenue lift, Open Bidding offers simplicity and time savings compared to traditional mediation–fewer SDKs means less time spent on integrations and more stability for your app. Stay tuned, as we’ll be expanding the program to all publishers later this year.

In the meantime, here are a few more ways AdMob can help you grow your overall app revenue and protect user experience more easily:

  • Image search is a robust new search tool that helps identify and remove bad ads across every size, campaign, and rotation, using just a screenshot of the ad. Learn more.
  • Maximum ad content rating can prevent inappropriate ads from being shown to young users. Learn more.
  • User metrics, such as daily active users and average session time, will be available soon in a new dashboard card, so you can quickly see how changes to your monetization strategy (e.g. adding a rewarded ad) impact key indicators of user engagement. These insights can help you optimize the lifetime value of your users across all your revenue sources – ads, in-app purchases, and commerce. Learn more.

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