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(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog and the Inside AdWords Blog)

As the advertising industry has grown and evolved, so too has our relationship with advertising agencies. These companies, from SEMs to the largest traditional agencies, play a critical role in the continued success of Google, our advertisers and our industry — so we spend a lot of time talking to agencies about how we can make it easier for them to work with us and our advertisers.

We’ve had a lot of great feedback from agencies and today we’re announcing changes designed to offer them better training and more rigorous certification in AdWords proficiency, and to lower costs for those who help advertisers get the most out of AdWords. We’re also making it easier for advertisers to find certified agency partners to work with them on digital advertising. Here’s an overview of what’s changing today.

Raising the bar for Google AdWords Certification

We're retiring our long-standing Google Advertising Professionals (GAP) program and replacing it with a new Google AdWords Certification program for those managing AdWords accounts on behalf of advertisers. The new program provides agencies and their employees with more up-to-date, comprehensive, strategy-focused training and certification on the latest tools and best practices for managing AdWords accounts, including:
  • New training materials to help agencies better understand recent changes in search marketing and AdWords functionality, available via webinar series, learning center, or on-site training at Google
  • More challenging certification exams to test practical application of knowledge and best practices (rather than simple recall of knowledge)
  • Advanced-level exams to highlight competency in search, display, reporting and analysis
  • A redesigned Certified Partner badge, which includes a “Click to Verify” element so advertisers can view the partner’s profile page for additional information.

For more information on the AdWords Certification Program or to create an account, visit the Google Certification program site and help center.

Helping advertisers find Google Certified Partners

Google Certified Partners can opt in to Google Partner Search, an online, searchable directory that helps advertisers identify Certified Partners that meet their criteria. Small and medium-sized advertisers who haven’t previously used an agency have told us that evaluating potential partners can be a daunting task, so we think Google Partner Search will be especially valuable for them.

To show up in advertiser searches through Google Partner Search, agencies must opt in and fill in details about their core attributes and capabilities. Searches can be filtered by location, agency experience within a particular budget range, the types of services provided and the industry verticals an agency serves. Advertisers can then evaluate the list of Certified Partners that meet their criteria and contact the partners who seem best suited to their needs. To learn more about Google Partner Search, visit the Help center.

Introducing preferred AdWords API pricing

The Google AdWords API allows developers to build applications that interact directly with the AdWords platform. Agencies and developers of search engine marketing tools use these applications to manage large AdWords campaigns more efficiently and creatively.

Today, we’re announcing preferred AdWords API pricing. This gives qualified Google AdWords Certified Partners who manage client AdWords accounts free use of the AdWords API based on managed client spend. To apply, agencies must have an active agency profile page and remain compliant with the AdWords API terms and conditions. We’ll evaluate applications for preferred AdWords API pricing based on the criteria listed here.

We hope preferred AdWords API pricing will encourage agencies and developers to experiment with new strategies, expand the functionality of their tools, and build more comprehensive client campaigns without worrying about increased costs. You can learn more about preferred pricing and how to apply at the preferred AdWords API pricing site.

We’re looking forward to receiving feedback on all of these initiatives and to continuing to improve our partnership with agencies.

Posted by, Penry Price, Vice President, Global Agency Development
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Here on the Google Agency Team, we commonly get requests to share case studies, both as a way for you, our agency partners, to feel confident in the effectiveness of a product or strategy, but also for you to learn best practices and be inspired by best in class examples.

To provide you with more case studies more often, we're pleased to bring you a new blog series, "Coffee break with clients." Each post will highlight a brief chat we've had with a client on how he or she has used a Google solution to solve a marketing challenge or meet an advertising goal, focusing on specific steps that you can replicate for your own clients.

For our first post, Google Account Manager Kali Steinman had the opportunity to sit down with Quinn Veysey, Direct Sales Manager of Vineyard Vines, a clothing company known for its fun, comfortable attire. Vineyard Vines worked with Google to execute an experiment to determine the value of branded keywords to its paid search efforts. The company asked itself "are we bidding against ourselves and incurring costs that could be better spent growing the brand?" Here's what Quinn shared:

Q: What were the goals of your experiment?
A: Our goal was to get quantitative data showing whether there was value to bidding on our branded keywords. On one hand, we felt that by bidding on our brand terms, we were paying for keywords that may have been at the top of the organic search result. On the flip side, if we were missing out on conversions/sales, it may be valuable to pay for those terms. Basically, we wanted to take the visceral piece out of the conversation and replace it with facts.

Q: How did you set up and execute the experiment?
A: We worked closely with Google to conduct the experiment in a statistically meaningful manner, from concept, execution, and analysis.

We set up an A/B test in Google AdWords by creating two campaigns, each targeting half of our focus demographic marketing areas (DMAs), distributed so each campaign targeted a similar audience size. The first campaign included brand terms while the second campaign did not. The test ran for 30 days.

Q: How did the Google solution perform?
A: The results were impressive. We realized that by paying for our brand terms, there was only a 33% cannibalization rate - in other words, by not running on branded keywords in paid search, we only made up one third of the clicks with organic traffic, losing out on thousands of incremental visitors to our site. We also found that the conversion rate on branded keywords was 5.12%

Q: What actions, if any, did you take as a result of this campaign?
A: We immediately tripled our ad spend with Google and are still making impressive double digit ROAS.

Q: If you did not use this Google solution, how would things have been different?
A: We would have continued spending precious time debating personal theories on the value of branded keywords to paid search that had no data behind them. We are now taking search much more seriously and are incorporating it as a significant factor in our growth strategy.

For more information on geographic targeting options, visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team
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Art Directors Club President Doug Jaeger introduces YouTube Show & Tell, a new program and partnership with the ADC to showcase the best examples of marketing on YouTube.

As president of the Art Directors Club, an organization for creatives and designers in integrated media and the first international creative collective of its kind, it’s my job to continually look for new opportunities to translate the club’s mission -- to connect, provoke, and elevate advertising initiatives into action. That’s why I’m honored, and totally psyched, that ADC is part of an amazing new initiative launching today, YouTube Show & Tell.

Show & Tell is a new gallery-style brand channel showcasing the best marketing and advertising campaigns on YouTube. YouTube developed the concept and serves as the platform; ADC’s ongoing role is to curate content, drawing on 89 years experience in identifying the most creative marketing ideas and recognizing the work that exhibits exceptional excellence and craft.

Each quarter, ADC will curate a lively and interesting new body of work in four categories -- brand channel, home page, viral video and interactive. We will promote the entry process, assemble creative experts to review campaigns that have run on YouTube, and elevate the best work to the forefront. All advertising and marketing work appearing on YouTube is eligible.

Our team of creative reviewers will change each quarter and will be selected based on their ideas, body of work and contributions to the industry to sound off on their favorite examples. These world-renowned creative directors, designers, art directors, digital creatives and copywriters will represent a range of creative thinking and execution, ensuring that the visual voice on YouTube Show & Tell represents a broad cross-section of leading-edge perspectives.



For the first curation, we’ve worked together with YouTube to feature some of the most creative campaigns we’ve seen so far, but this is by no means an exhaustive list of great campaigns we’ve seen on the site. So check out the site and check back often. And kudos to the great creative minds behind the examples that are currently on the site.

Posted by Doug Jaeger, president, Art Directors Club, who recently watched Augustin Hadelich - DAWN on YouTube

[This post has been reprinted from the YouTube Blog]
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ad:tech San Francisco is next week, from April 19th to April 22nd, and we'll be there. Our product experts will be on hand at the Google booth Tuesday and Wednesday to answer questions and provide updates on AdWords, Analytics, DoubleClick, YouTube, AdSense and the Google Content Network. In addition, we're holding the workshops "Insights Lickety Split in AdWords Search Funnels and Google Analytics" and "Google Ad Innovations @ ad:tech," as well as speaking at the session "Marketing Masters - The Bleeding Edge of Advertising Innovation."

Still not sure whether to head to ad:tech San Francisco? It's not too late to register, and Google is pleased to offer a 20% discount on conference passes with the code GGLESPON.

Posted by Amanda Matuk, Events Team
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Lady Gaga isn't the only one creating a ruckus about "Telephones" these days. Google and Compete are excited to share their latest research findings on cell phone and smart phone shoppers.

With so many choices, how do consumers make wireless telephone purchase decisions? How do they shop online, and how can marketers effectively command their attention?

For answers to these questions and more, join Compete's Mobile & Wireless expert, Danielle Nohe, and Google Tech Industry Account Planners, Megan Runser and Marl Gatchalian, on Tuesday, April 20th, at 2pm EST/11am PST, for ThinkTech: Wireless 2.0 Shopper.

Specifically, we'll cover:
  • How to reach and influence the consumer within this competitive marketplace
  • Strategies that drive new customer acquisition
  • The role Search plays in the wireless research process, from query to purchase
Date: Tuesday, April 20th 11amPST / 1pmCST / 2pmEST
Register here

Posted by Megan Runser, Google Tech Team
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Advertisers can now build media plans to reach audiences with interests relevant to their campaigns using DoubleClick Ad Planner. Audience interests represent the aggregate interests of visitors to any given website. With today’s release, the top ten audience interests for each site are now listed on the profile page for each of the millions of sites profiled in Ad Planner. This provides an important complement to the demographic data that’s already widely available. By combining an understanding of a website’s demographic appeal with the range of interests of the audience the site attracts, advertisers can get a more complete picture of who they will reach by advertising on the site.

To date in Ad Planner, advertisers have used site categories, which describe the content of websites, as a proxy for audience interests. For example, to plan an ad campaign for a pet product, advertisers would look for sites with content about pets for their media plan. While this may be an appropriate proxy, it also may overlook some great sites, since when people are interested in a topic, they don’t only visit sites about that topic. Audience interests in Ad Planner helps advertisers find a wider range of sites for their media plan without compromising their ability to reach the right audience.

With the “Search by audience” tab in Ad Planner, selecting the “Pets” interest will reveal a list of sites that have a high affinity with audiences interested in pets. While some of the sites will be about pets, many additional sites will be about other topics. Take the screenshot below, which is from the Ad Planner profile for a site about politics. Although the site is not about pets, it scores a high (36.9x) affinity with audiences who are interested in pets, which means visitors to this site are 36.9 times more likely to be interested in pets than the average Internet population. A category filter on pets would never locate this site, but an interests search on pets would.


Audience interests gives advertisers a new tool for selecting the best sites for their media plans. To learn more about how we generate the data for audience interests, please refer to our methodology document. To try out the new audience interests features, visit www.google.com/adplanner.

Posted by Ben Chambers, Software Engineer

[note: this post has been reprinted from the DoubleClick Blog]
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For an agency today, it's very difficult to reach a client's customers online because their customers are consuming media everywhere. To reach users as they browse millions of websites across the Internet, agencies need to buy and to tailor ads across thousands of websites, and they need to measure how well these campaigns performed on all of these sites as well.

At Google, we've built tools and platforms to address these challenges for agencies. Google is focused on delivering performance to advertisers and agencies through the Google Content Network (GCN), our ad network of over a million AdSense sites, which includes some Google properties like Google Finance and YouTube.

One of the ways we deliver high performing ads is through contextual targeting, the science of matching the right ad with the right website content. For example, we might show an ad from a tech company on a tech review site because the ad will be relevant to the user and therefore, perform well for the advertiser. We've been working on helping agencies match the best ad through more precise contextual targeting that enables advertisers to focus on very specific themes. Over the past year, we've made over 60 improvements to our contextual targeting technology. In August, we enabled advertisers and agencies to do more precise contextual targeting, and we've seen that it can be used to effectively drive conversions.

MediaWhiz tested this strategy for American Laser Centers to promote the client's hair removal and aesthetic services. The agency used both text and display ads to raise brand awareness as well as to drive customer action. Instead of creating a few ad groups with many keywords, it created hundreds of small, very specifically targeted ad groups containing around four to six keywords each. The highly targeted groups cut across a wide range of American Laser Centers’ business areas, covering laser hair removal, skin aesthetics spa treatments, at-home hair removal and many more related topics and themes. By using small, focused keyword lists in each ad group, the team was able to increase the relevance of the client's ads on the Google Content Network, helping to attract the exact customers interested in the services American Laser Centers offers.

Using the Google Content Network Placement peformance report, MediaWhiz could optimize and measure exactly how well American Laser Centers' campaign did. According to Erick Maks, advertising director at American Laser Centers:
This strategy of multiple ad groups containing tightly grouped keywords helped American Laser Centers raise its campaign conversion rate by 233 percent in the first three-month period. During the same period, by fine-tuning at the ad group level and reducing waste, it also cut impressions in half—while simultaneously increasing conversions by 365 percent.
The complete case study is available for download here. If you're interested in additional resources, be sure to check out this post on using the Wonder wheel to generate ad group themes, and watch the recording of last year's webinar on more precise contextual targeting.

Posted by Jesse Nichols, Agency Team
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DoubleClick Ad Planner is our free, online measurement product that helps advertisers and agencies to create media plans by providing reliable traffic and audience information for websites on which they may wish to advertise. It measures millions of sites in over 40 countries and is used by thousands of advertisers and agencies to build media plans. In recent months, we've been investing significantly in new features for DoubleClick Ad Planner. (Better site data in DoubleClick Ad Planner, Ad Planner updates provide more data, more ways)

To further our commitment to provide reliable data in DoubleClick Ad Planner, we have submitted it for accreditation by the Media Rating Council (MRC). The MRC is an advertising industry group that works to accredit audience measurement services that are valid, reliable, and effective. MRC accreditation is voluntary and some third-party measurement products have submitted for accreditation, as we have; some have not. Once complete, the MRC accreditation will provide independent confirmation that Ad Planner's methodologies, and the processes supporting this technology, adhere to industry standards.

As part of the MRC audit, we're sharing more details about our data sources and methodology. For our traffic measurement, Ad Planner uses a hybrid measurement methodology that combines direct-measured site traffic, through Google Analytics data that publishers have chosen to opt in to provide us, and sample aggregated data from Google products and services. We currently have over 10,000 sites that are contributing direct measured opt-in data to Ad Planner. Our sample data comes from a variety of sources including anonymized, aggregated Google Toolbar data from users who have opted in to enhanced features, opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in external consumer panel data, and other third-party market research. All of this data is aggregated over millions of users and is powered by computer algorithms. The breadth and reliability of this aggregated data means that our traffic measurements are among the most accurate in the industry.

To learn more about Ad Planner's data, we invite you to read our recently updated methodology document. To start using Ad Planner, visit us at www.google.com/adplanner.

Posted by Wayne Lin, Product Manager, DoubleClick Ad Planner
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In part three of our series on mobile ads best practices, we'll focus on how customers can connect to your clients' businesses through location extensions or a national phone number. For either of these options, you have two types of phones to consider - WAP and mobile devices with full Internet browsers.

Our mobile phones are with us for a large part of the day. When you're on the go, and there's no time to turn on a laptop or computer, it's natural to reach for your phone when you need to conduct a search, especially now that many phones have the capability to access the Internet (curious how much reach this provides? According to the Kelsey Group, there are currently 54.5 million mobile Internet users in the United States, representing 25% of online users).

One of the main features distinguishing a phone from a laptop or computer is the ability to make phone calls. With Click to Call, Google allows customers to connect with businesses directly from their ads. It's easy to include Click to Call phone numbers in your ads, regardless of which type of phone the customer is using.

Click to Call on Internet-capable devices
There are two ways to implement Click to Call for Internet-capable phones: either through location extensions or phone extensions.

If clients' campaigns include location extensions, and have also included phone number(s) in the location extension, then that phone number will appear for users that are closest to the business location, alongside the address information targeted for the location extension.

Phone extensions allow clients to add phone numbers that will be displayed whenever their ads are triggered, regardless of the user's location. The number will appear as the last line of any ad text within existing or new campaigns. This enables customers to connect with your clients' businesses by phone directly from the ad and can be especially useful if they have a call center to handle customer inquiries.

For details on how to set up location extensions or phone extensions, as well as how these formats work together, visit the Help Center.

Click to Call on WAP devices
The majority of mobile phones currently have WAP browsers. Originally, targeting these types of phones meant creating a mobile-specific webpage. But your clients don't need a website at all to advertise on these phones. Simply include a Click to Call phone number in their ads if you'd like to enable customers to connect with their businesses by phone.

Visit the Help Center to learn more about setting up Click to Call phone numbers in mobile ads that appear on WAP devices.

Whether your clients are trying to capture leads by phone, or rounding out an integrated marketing strategy, click-to-call offers an additional way for them to connect with their customers.

Posted by Josephine Tsay, Agency Team
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