Today we announce a new family of ad formats called TrueView Video Ads. TrueView Video Ads give viewers choice and control over which advertiser’s message they want to see and when. And we charge advertisers only when a viewer has chosen to watch your ad, not when an impression is served.

Why are we offering cost-per-view video ads? We believe this model creates wins for everyone: consumers choose ads that are more relevant to them; advertisers more precisely find the audiences they want; and content creators continue to fund great content with an ad experience that is less intrusive.

In the end, it will also be the creativity of agencies and advertisers who will win. It’s not about being funny or clever – it’s about delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. And TrueView Video Ads can help get you and your client there, combining the brand engagement and reach of YouTube with the conversion tracking and optimization of online advertising.

Our first available cost-per-view format is TrueView Video Ads - InStream format. Viewers can choose to skip a video ad after 5 seconds or watch the ad. An advertiser only gets charged when the viewer has watched the full ad or 30 seconds, whichever is shorter.

If you’re interested in trying out TrueView Video Ads, contact your account manager today. This ad format is available for customers in the US and Canada and in limited testing for advertisers in the UK. We are working to add availability in additional countries.

For the complete announcement, please visit the Inside AdWords Blog.

Posted by Phil Farhi, Senior Product Manager, The YouTube Team

DoubleClick Ad Planner just made it easier to plan media buys for regional ad campaigns through two important upgrades.

First, the product has been localized to support 15 languages. In addition to American English, Ad Planner can now be displayed in British English, Russian, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and Turkish.

Second, the Ad Planner team has published lists of the top 100 sites in each of 22 regional markets. Named the “Ad Planner 100,” these lists provide a quick reference to identify the most popular sites by country. Check out the Ad Planner 100 lists for the countries you advertise within:

Australia Belgium Brazil Canada China France Germany Hong Kong

Italy Japan Korea Netherlands Poland Russia Spain

Switzerland Taiwan Thailand Turkey United Kingdom United States

Posted by Sally Cole, Product Marketing Manager

[note: this post has been reprinted from the DoubleClick Blog]

Hi Agency Blog readers! I am back for year 2 of my Black Friday tips. Enjoy!
~ Ben

It may be hard to believe (and a little scary), but Thanksgiving is next week and Black Friday is only 8 days away! (Momentary pause while the shock settles in) With this daunting thought in mind, there are two things to consider that should make the holiday shopping weekend go as smoothly (and hopefully as profitably for clients) as possible -- holiday promotion ads and a Black Friday placement pack.

1. When it comes to the holiday season, one of the clearest trends we have picked up on is that ads with promotions perform better than ads that don’t (seems that consumers like deals. Strange, I know). If clients have any upcoming promotions (free shipping, a percent off, sales, etc.), all ads should be promoting these. This is especially true if they have Black Friday specific sales. If this is the case, make a point of saying “Black Friday Sale” or indicate that this is a limited time only (“Fri – Sun”, “This Weekend Only”, etc.).
   
   If you plan on creating and implementing ads specifically for Black Friday and the shopping weekend after Thanksgiving, be sure to implement them in the account by the end of day Tuesday (11/23) to give them enough time to make it through the ad approval process.
   
   
2. Some of your clients may want to do a bit more than just create new ads for next week. If you have a client that would like to target users actively looking for Black Friday deals, then you may want to create a display campaign targeting sites that aggregate such deals. Using the Placement Tool in your AdWords account, search for words such as ‘black friday’ and ‘black friday sales’ to identify sites that would be good to target. With this list, there are two possible ways to use it:

• Create a campaign to target only managed placements and have a single ad group that contains all of these placements.
• Create a campaign with the same settings, but have multiple ad groups with keyword themes and set them to target these placements, creating an Enhanced Online Campaign. For example, if you have a cosmetics client, you might want to have a few ad groups with themes like “makeup”, “hair products”, “ cosmetics”, etc. Then, targeting these Black Friday placements, you will be in a better position to place ads in front of consumers looking for deals around products your client sells.

For either of these, set it to run starting this Friday (11/19) through EOD Sunday (11/28). If clients have deals carrying through cyber Monday, then extend it another day.

As always, with all of your clients, make sure that your budgets and bids are adjusted for this busy weekend. With the increase in traffic, budgets can get depleted more quickly (resulting in campaigns stopping ads from being shown) and competitors bid more aggressively. Make sure that budgets are set to keep campaigns running throughout the day and increase bids to maintain positions.

These can be stressful times in the online advertising world, but if you plan ahead by implementing things early and position your clients in front of customers looking for deals around their products, you can help to make this a great season!

Posted by Ben Sheldon, Agency Team

[This has been cross-posted from the Inside AdWords Blog]

As part of our Google Images redesign this July, we introduced Image Search Ads, which include a thumbnail alongside your ad text. We learned that on Google Images, image-based ads provided great results for our advertisers. They are also a highly useful format for users because they show commercial content directly related to the user's query.

Today we're expanding the image ad formats available on Google Images by testing rich media leaderboard units that appear above Google Images search results and invite you to try new products and services. With the introduction of this display ad format on Google Images, you now have a great opportunity to reach users with engaging ads, whether your goal is to build brand awareness, or to drive clicks and conversions.

Advertising on Google Images allows you to reach hundreds of millions of users around the world who use the site to find relevant photos and images every week. Today display ads on Google Images are available on a small fraction of queries in the US and UK only. Over time, we hope to make display ads on Google Images available on more queries globally.

Display ads on Google Images work the same as they would on other sites in the Google Display Network. They're triggered by the content on the page - in this case, that’s defined by the category of the search term that the user enters. If, for example, you target your ad to appear on Google Images on travel-related content, your ad may appear on Google Images if a user searches for related terms like [travel], [vacation], [beach] or [summer holiday].

It’s easy to start running display ads on Google Images. Just use the AdWords placement targeting tool to target Google Images like any other site on the Google Display Network, and choose the type of content you want to advertise alongside. You can upload your own leaderboard format ad or create one using Display Ad Builder. Pricing can be either CPM or CPC, depending on your goals. If you want more information about the advertising options on Google Images, visit the Help Center.

We’re invested in making display advertising work better for both users and advertisers. We look forward to introducing new, innovative placements and formats on the Google Display Network to help you reach your advertising goals.

Posted by Nathan Beach, Product Manager

YouTube provides a creative canvas for anyone with the gumption and a video camera to build an online marketing campaign that can reach millions. Orabrush is a company founded by a dentist to sell a tongue brush that would fight bad breath. After attempts to use traditional marketing channels failed, Jeffrey Harmon thought up a marketing campaign built around a YouTube video to spread the word about this new product. That first video cost $500 and has since earned the company over 13 million views, setting it on the path as an innovator in online video marketing.

Join a live Webcast with AdAge on Tuesday, November 16th at 11amPST / 2pmEST to hear Jeffrey Harmon and Abe Neiderhauser share their thoughts about what works and what doesn’t with online video advertising.

Posted by Serena Satyasai, YouTube Marketing

Our friends on the German Agency Team just launched Google Business Map, a new resource on business opportunities in 21 emerging markets.

Google Business Map provides details on each country's advertising market, Google search data and useful info bites to help you understand the unique panorama of emerging markets around the globe, spanning from the Atlantic Coast through Central and Eastern Europe around the Mediterranean Sea down to South Africa and, naturally, to China as one of the fastest growing economies worldwide. In addition, it offers unique contacts with local people who are pleased to help you explore and encounter these new and exciting places.


All of these countries have in common fast growing markets, rising middle classes, an ambitious younger generation, a high level of literacy and technology penetration and, last but not least, a “can do spirit” that characterizes every striving business person all over the world.

For more information, see the complete announcement on the Google Barometer Blog, or download Google Business Map here.

Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

[This has been cross-posted from the Google Mobile Ads Blog]

Usage of m.youtube.com is exploding and mobile consumers watch hundreds of millions of video views on YouTube Mobile each month. To better understand these users and their browsing and video consuming behavior we recently ran a survey of users on m.youtube.com and received >16,000 responses. Some of the results may surprise you:

• 75% of respondents say that mobile is their primary way of accessing YouTube
• 70% visit YouTube Mobile at least once a day
• 58% spend more than 20 minutes per visit to YouTube Mobile
• 38% feel that YouTube Mobile is replacing their desktop YouTube usage

However, these results may not be as surprising when you learn that, according to Nielsen, YouTube Mobile is the #1 video viewing mobile website in the US, with more than 7.1MM monthly unique users. Advertisers can now own 100% share-of-voice on YouTube Mobile (m.youtube.com) by purchasing a daily roadblock and owning all available ad impressions for 24 hours. Ads run on the Search, Browse and Home pages of the mobile website. Here’s an example of a recent Diet Coke campaign:


Advertisers from a range of verticals have successfully run roadblocks on YouTube Mobile including autos, CPG, entertainment, retail and others. Many advertisers choose to time their YouTube Mobile Roadblocks to coincide with product launches, sales events, or other days they are making a big media push. Purchasing a roadblock of YouTube Mobile is an excellent complement to campaigns you may be running on YouTube’s desktop as you can reach users as they interact with YouTube from their device of choice.

We’ve launched this opportunity in the US and we’re excited to roll it out in multiple international markets soon.

Posted by Johanna Werther, Advertiser Lead PMM, Google Mobile Display Marketing

As agencies, you face the unique challenges of mastering the suite of Google media solutions and account management tasks across many accounts. Knowing that you often have questions specific to managing multiple client accounts at scale, we've created an Agency Help Center to provide you with easy access to answers for your most common questions, as well as useful resources to help you strategically manage your businesses.


We also know that many different sites exist that offer support to agencies for account management, product adoption, media planning, and identifying best-in-class examples. To make life a little easier, we've added links to the Agency Help Center for the most frequently used resources -- including Google AgencyLand, the Agency Toolkit and the Google AdWords Certification Program -- so that you only need to go one place to find everything you need.


To date, the Agency Help Center is available for the US and UK. Over the course of Q4'2010, we'll be localizing this resource across multiple languages, as well as continuing to incorporate new agency-centric resources into the site.

Posted by Katie Wasilenko, Agency Team

We would like to invite you to 3 upcoming webinars targeted towards retail clients and the agencies that support them -- YouTube Holiday Planning, Intro to Mobile Ads and Mobile Best Practice. These sessions are designed to help you incorporate video and mobile ad strategies into clients' holiday campaigns and beyond.

YouTube Holiday Webinar
Thursday, November 11, 2010, 10amPST / 12pmCST / 1pmEST
During this session you'll learn how to capitalize on holiday shoppers browsing video content, including customization tips for your YouTube Channel, innovative strategies for sales focused YouTube campaigns and more.
Register here

Introduction to Mobile Ads
Friday, November 12, 2010, 11amPST / 1pmCST / 2pmEST
Learn about the opportunity mobile presents to your business, the mobile advertising products offered by Google and how you can get started.
Register here

Mobile Best Practices
Thursday, November 18, 2010, 11amPST / 1pmCST / 2pmEST
Learn how to measure and optimize your mobile campaigns to increase your mobile ROI.
Register here

Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

As we just announced on the Inside AdWords blog, we’re celebrating AdWords’ 10th birthday this month by asking our advertisers to submit stories of how online advertising has played a role in their businesses -- and then sharing their submissions with the world via a global map of the stories.

Think you can create something special by telling some of your best client stories? Let your clients know that you can help them capture the story of how you’ve partnered to reach their goals with AdWords (of course, you can also submit the story of your own agency business). When you’ve produced the videos, you can submit them on our birthday website.

We can’t wait to see your work -- and share it with the world!

Posted by Jason Shafton, Product Marketing Manager

What if you found out that your AdWords campaigns were bringing you more customers than you realized?

Zac Stafford, Senior Search Strategist at Nina Hale Search Marketing in Minneapolis, MN, recently discovered that this was true for his client, modern furniture retailer Room & Board. Stafford saw some encouraging results as an early beta tester of AdWords call metrics, a new feature that automatically includes a unique phone number in your ads to measure the calls that you receive from AdWords.

“By cross-checking our call metrics reports with our sales records, we saw that half the people who called the toll free number in our ad purchased online but the other half purchased in a store. Before using call metrics, we determined our ROI just by looking at the online sales numbers. Now we have proof that online search ad campaigns drive in-store purchases.”

Today we're announcing that AdWords call metrics is available for more advertisers, making it easier than ever to measure the phone calls that AdWords generates for your business. Using the technology behind Google Voice, call metrics assigns your campaign a unique phone number which is automatically inserted into your ad on both desktop and high-end mobile devices, where the number is clickable.

When a user calls the number in your ad, the call is automatically routed to your business, and AdWords notes that this call took place. Then, when you look at your AdWords reports, you’ll see the number of calls generated by each campaign, call duration, and in the near future, caller area code. You'll still only pay for clicks on your ads, but we intend to charge for call metrics in the future.

Once you know where your calls are coming from, you can refine your marketing strategy to make sure you’re getting the most out of your ads. For example, you could test different ad text variations to see which results in the most calls or reallocate budget to campaigns that truly bring you the highest ROI.

Currently, call metrics is only available to a limited number of US advertisers. We plan to make the feature available to more advertisers in the coming months. To find out if call metrics is available in your account and to learn more about the feature, visit Google Ad Innovations.


Additionally, if you want to see call metrics in action, watch the video above.

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Senior Product Manager, AdWords