Every day, Google’s contextual engine scans billions of web pages to show users relevant ads, in real time, about the things they care about. Contextual targeting remains one of the most powerful ways agencies and advertisers can reach their audiences - precisely in the moment of relevance. It continues to deliver great campaign performance, but it’s also seeing renewed interest as a powerful complement to audience targeting.

Please join Google for an upcoming webinar to learn more about how contextual targeting can drive results for your clients. Specifically, we’ll cover:

• Contextual targeting strategies for specific marketing objectives
• The Contextual Targeting Tool, which helps you build and optimize better-performing campaigns in minutes, not hours
• Best practices and tips for boosting performance of contextually-targeted campaigns

Register here for the webinar to be held on February 23, 2011 at 11:00am PST / 1:00pm CST / 2:00pm EST.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Marketing Manager, Google Display Network

In 2010 we introduced a new Google AdWords Certification program to equip you and your companies with more up-to-date, comprehensive, strategy-focused training and certification on the latest tools and best practices for managing AdWords accounts. Along with the revised certification program, we launched Google Partner Search, an opt-in online, searchable directory that helps advertisers identify Certified Partners to help them manage their AdWords accounts.

Over the last few months, you’ve shared feedback with us that you’d like features which make it easier to associate your individual certification with a company and more intuitive to add users to your company profile. We’re pleased to share that we’ve now released features to address each of these points of feedback.

Request to link your individual qualification to a company
Historically, to join a company in the Google Certification Program, you would need to be invited by an Administrator on your company’s account, making it difficult to join if you do not know the Administrator. To fix this challenge, we now offer a feature enabling you to search for your company and request to join yourself. If you would like to contribute your individual qualification to a company account, you may now do so by clicking on the “My Company” link and searching for the company you wish to join. Be sure to type in at least one complete word that matches the company’s name.


Companies -- easily manage Professionals and Administrators
We’ve made it more intuitive for your company to manage the Professionals and Administrators within the Company account, as well as to review requests from users requesting to join the company, with the updated Account Access page.

On the “Users” tab, account administrators can change a user’s status to either Administrator or Professional, as well as revoke access:



The “Incoming requests” tab allows account administrators to see all requests to join from individuals, and either accept or reject them. Finally, the “Invitations sent” tab can be used to directly send invitations to qualified individuals.

Add or update Google Accounts associated with your profile
We know that qualified individuals may change companies, or use multiple email addresses throughout the day. We’ve therefore made it possible for you to add multiple Google Accounts to your account, as well as to change the primary email to which you receive communication for the Google Certification Program.


For more information on the new Google Certification Program feature changes, visit the Help Center.

Posted by Katie Wasilenko, Agency Team

Late last year we announced the launch of the Agency Help Center, a new section of the AdWords Help Center designed 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're pleased to share that the Agency Help Center is now available in 44 languages covering all major geographic regions, including Spanish (for Latin America and Spain), Russian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Tagalog, Turkish, Greek and Czech.

To see a complete list of languages, use the drop-down tab at the bottom of the page:


We hope this site continues to offer you the support you need for account management, product adoption, media planning, and identifying best-in-class examples.

Posted by Katie Wasilenko, Agency Team

Last week, we launched the Contextual Targeting Tool to help your clients more easily reach customers as they spend time on millions of sites in the Google Display Network.

As you already know, with contextual targeting you can reach potential customers as they read web pages related to your clients’ products or services. Now, with this tool, you can create contextually-targeted campaigns more easily and quickly, while generating more clicks and conversions for your clients’ campaigns.

What does the Contextual Targeting Tool do?
This tool automatically builds keyword lists that can be used to show your clients' ads on relevant web pages in the Google Display Network. Tightly-themed keyword lists are the basis of effective contextual targeting, and with the Contextual Targeting Tool, you no longer have to build them manually. In minutes, you can build dozens, even hundreds, of keyword lists, scaling client's campaign performance while ensuring accurate targeting for their ads. This means they can get more clicks and conversions for campaigns and you can create these campaigns more quickly. Many of you have previously been using the Wonder Wheel tool to do this. The Contextual Targeting Tool now automates this process, and it does it right within clients' AdWords accounts.

How do I use it?
Let’s say your client sells soccer equipment and gear. Normally, you'd have to manually build out separate ad groups for each of your product lines, like soccer gear, soccer balls, soccer cleats, etc. With the Contextual Targeting Tool, simply type each product category into the search box, and the tool will automatically generate tightly-themed keyword lists for you. For example, when you enter soccer gear into the tool, you get more specific ad groups, such as youth soccer gear, discount soccer gear, soccer uniforms, soccer bags, etc.



Along with the new ad groups, the tool provides suggested bids and predicted placements to give you an idea of the types of sites in the Display Network where the ads can appear.

The Contextual Targeting Tool has been available to agencies and advertisers using AdWords Editor. This week, you will be also able to access it from the Opportunities tab in AdWords accounts, although for now you'll still need AdWords Editor to implement the ad groups in clients' accounts (download AdWords Editor). However, this requirement will be lifted and you’ll be able to implement new ad groups directly from AdWords accounts in the coming months.

You can learn more about using the Contextual Targeting Tool by watching this video. We hope this tool will help you more easily and efficiently reach your clients’ goals with their Display Network campaigns.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Marketing Manager, Google Display Network

A year ago this month we launched a Click-to-call functionality for mobile ads that enables advertisers to directly connect with potential customers over the phone. In less than a year, Click-to-call (CTC) ads have come a long way and hundreds of thousands of advertisers are using the ad format today.

To help agencies and advertisers make the most of this functionality, our friends at the Google Mobile Ads Blog came up with five easy-to-implement optimization tips:

• Drive calls to a centralized number with Phone Extensions
• Focus on phone calls with Call-only Creative
• Measure performance with Call Metrics
• Use vanity phone numbers to make numbers memorable
• Reach local customers with Location Extensions

To learn more about these tips, visit the Google Mobile Ads Blog.

Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

Note: Google Engage has been replaced by Google Partners, a new platform that offers an enhanced suite of resources, including free certification, AdWords promotional offers, personalized tips and insights, new leads, and the opportunity to earn the Google Partner badge. To learn more and signup, please visit www.google.com/partners Are you a US or UK-based Webmaster? Web designer? SEO? Marketing consultant? Freelancer? or offer web related services to small and medium businesses? then keep on reading...

At Google, we’re committed to the success of the digital economy and we believe that helping small business get online and thrive is fundamental to that success.

We recognize that many SMBs rely on freelancers and small agencies to create and manage their online presence as well as help them with their online marketing. To make the jobs of these agencies easier, we’ve launched a new training and incentives program called Google Engage for Agencies.



Google Engage participants will receive free access to educational resources dedicated for them and more incentives to grow their own and their clients’ businesses.

If you’re a webmaster, web-designer, digital agency, freelancer, SEO, IT consultant, or provide any other web services to US or UK-based small businesses, you can apply to join the program starting today. Please see links below for information on participation for US and UK-based agencies:
Google Engage for US Businesses
Google Engage for UK Businesses

Note: if you are an established search engine marketing firm, media agency or digital agency with a strong foundation in Google media solutions, please visit the Google Certification Program homepage to learn more about training and certification programs designed for larger agency partners.

Check out Google Engage today and learn about the benefits the program can offer your business and the SMBs you support.

Posted by Alon Chen and Esra Guler, Product Marketing