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As users increasingly spend time across a growing number of sites, however, display advertising is becoming more challenging. Last year alone there were 47 million new web sites created*. Contextual targeting can help by automatically showing your ad to users on web pages related to your products on the millions of sites in the Google Display Network (GDN). But building and managing your campaigns can still be time-consuming. So how do you reach your target audience easily and efficiently while meeting your business goals?
Today, we’re launching two tools -- the Display Campaign Optimizer and the Contextual Targeting Tool -- to help you maximize your performance on the GDN, while saving you valuable time and resources.
Display Campaign Optimizer. This new tool automatically manages targeting and bidding for your Display Network campaigns with the goal of increasing your conversions while meeting your advertising objectives. You simply provide us with your target cost-per-acquisition (CPA), creatives and budget, and the Display Campaign Optimizer goes to work, showing your ads in all the right places, automatically. It monitors your campaign performance and, in real time, adjusts your campaign accordingly. Your campaigns stay optimized, as it “learns” and does more of what’s working and less of what isn’t. For example, Seventh Generation, a company that sells eco-friendly household cleaning, baby care and personal care products, was looking to connect with more “green” consumers across the web and get them to download coupons from their site for use in-store. After implementing the Display Campaign Optimizer, the tool delivered 60% of the coupons downloaded from their site, with a CPA 20% below their target. Further, analysis of our beta testers showed that on average, campaign using Display Campaign Optimizer were likely responsible for almost one-third of the accounts’ total conversion volume with CPAs within 6% of their peer group CPA.**
The Display Campaign Optimizer is now available globally for larger campaigns running on the Google Display Network.
Contextual Targeting Tool. While the Display Campaign Optimizer is an automated solution that does all the heavy lifting on your behalf, the Contextual Targeting Tool helps you more efficiently build your own display campaigns. This tool is ideal for those of you who prefer transparency and control over your campaigns’ targeting and bidding. The Contextual Targeting Tool builds tightly themed keyword lists for your display campaigns, which are used to contextually target your ads. Tightly themed keyword lists are the basis of effective contextual targeting. With this tool, you can build dozens, even hundreds, of ad groups in minutes, quickly scaling your campaign performance while ensuring accurate targeting and control over your campaign.
For example, if you sell yoga gear, normally, you might take the time to build out separate ad groups around each of your product lines, such as yoga mats, yoga clothing, yoga gear, etc. Inputting each product category into the Contextual Targeting Tool will generate even more tightly themed keyword lists. For example, inputting ‘yoga mats’ into the tool generates more specific ad groups, such as designer yoga mats, thick yoga mats, yoga mats with designs, etc. These are all separate ad groups that can help you generate additional traffic and sales, that you wouldn’t necessarily think of creating when manually building out your campaigns.
This week, we’re beginning a phased launch of the Contextual Targeting Tool, and it will become available to more advertisers over the coming weeks and months.
Whether you’re looking for easier ways of building out your display campaigns or looking for a more robust, automated solution that continually optimizes bids and targeting, we think these tools will help you easily and efficiently achieve performance at scale with your display campaigns.
Posted by Woojin Kim, Product Manager and Shaun Seo, Product Manager
* Source: Netcraft Web Server Survey, Dec. 2009** Source: Internal analysis of active beta testers, in comparison with peer group advertisers. Oct. 2010