Our friends at the Inside AdWords Blog recently posted about the new look and fee of the Ad Innovations site. Visit it to view new marketing technologies, watch demos and try the latest tools.

Whether you’re most interested in search, display, mobile, or performance measurement, find a number of AdWords features to help you stay on top of the newest advertising developments.

It's also live in six new countries: the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and Brazil. For the full post click here.

Posted by Agency Blog Team

Word of mouth is powerful. When you have a choice to make, it’s common to turn to the people you trust. But what about word of click? How can getting a suggestion from a friend or co-worker when you need it be as simple as having a hallway conversation -- or even simpler?

We want to make it easy for Google users to get recommendations from the people they trust right when they’re searching. That’s why we’re introducing the +1 button. With a single click, the +1 button lets signed-in Google users recommend the content they like on the web to their friends and contacts right when it’s most useful -- on Google search.



+1 is a simple idea. Let’s use a hypothetical Brian as an example. When Brian signs into his Google account and sees one of your ads or organic search results on Google, he can +1 it and recommend your page to the world.


The next time Brian’s friend Mary is signed in and searching on Google and your page appears, she might see a personalized annotation letting her know that Brian +1’d it. So Brian’s +1 helps Mary decide that your site is worth checking out.
We expect that personalized annotations will help users know when your ads and organic search results are relevant to them, increasing the chances that they'll end up on your site. You don’t have to make adjustments to your advertising strategy based on +1 buttons, and the way we calculate Quality Score isn’t changing (though +1s will be one of many signals we use to calculate organic search ranking). Think of +1 buttons as an enhancement that can help already successful search campaigns perform even better.

At first the +1 button will appear for English searches only on Google.com, but we’re working to add more languages in the future. You don’t have to make any changes to your campaigns for +1s to help you -- over the coming weeks, we’ll add +1 buttons to ads and search results on Google.com.

But the +1 button isn’t just for search pages. We’re working on a +1 button that you can put on your pages too, making it easy for people to recommend your content on Google search without leaving your site. If you want to be notified when the +1 button is available for your website, you can sign up for email updates at our +1 webmaster site.

The +1 button is the next step in our effort to find relevance through relationships on the web. We’re excited about using +1s to make search, and your search campaigns, more personal, relevant and compelling. And we hope you’re excited too!

To learn more about the +1 button and how it affects your search ads, visit the AdWords Help Center.

Cross-Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords Blog

In 2011 TV and video viewership continues to climb in the US across numerous devices. This trend increases the importance of video for businesses. With that in mind, we’re excited to announce Google’s extended partnership with SpotMixer which allows Google AdWords and TV Ads customers to create custom ads absolutely free of charge.

This offer represents our increased commitment to advertisers who want to leverage video to increase brand awareness and ROI. Read more on the Google TV Ads blog.

Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

Over the past few weeks Google has released data on top search and YouTube video watching trends, highlighting what issues, entertainers, events and figures most powerfully captured the attention of the Internet population.

We here at the Agency Ad Solutions Blog have also compiled our top stories list of 2010, which show that the topics most relevant to our agency partners are the evolution of ad platforms (such as display and mobile), the need for powerful data and tools to manage accounts at scale, and the desire for resources to navigate the increasingly complex display ecosystem.

Below are the top stories of the year, as reflected in your readership:

New programs for agencies - We heard from you that you need relevant training at scale, cost-effective AdWords API pricing, and a centralized way to acquire new clients. In late April, we launched 3 programs to meet these needs -- a new Google AdWords Certification program for those managing AdWords accounts on behalf of advertisers; Google Partner Search, an online, searchable directory that helps advertisers identify Certified Partners to help with AdWords account management; and preferred AdWords API pricing, which gives qualified Google AdWords Certified Partners who manage client AdWords accounts free use of the AdWords API based on managed client spend.

Display advertising - While we didn't officially bring sexy back to display until September, you all expressed your interest and enthusiasm for display opportunities throughout the year. Hot topics included remarketing, the introduction of the Google Display Network, and the four-part Google Display Network series.

Managing accounts at scale - As agencies, the core of your business is effectively managing media spend across many clients. With the media landscape becoming increasingly complex with every passing day, it can be a challenge to keep up-to-speed on the latest opportunities, and incorporate them into client strategy. The need for effective account management tools was clear in your preferred blog topics -- broad match modifier, which balances reach with control; the updated Keyword Tool, with increased functionality; the Ads Multiplier plug-in for Docs to create templated ads at scale; and Google Ad Innovations, a single home for all of the latest and greatest ads launches.

A home for planners - Different roles within agencies need resources specific to their day-to-day responsibilities. This was none more apparent than for Account and Media Planners, who crave the latest data and insights to develop targeted and innovative strategies. For this role we partnered with our friends in DoubleClick to keep content fresh on Ad Planner, including the launch of the Ad Planner 1000 and integration with AdWords, the availability of Audience Interests, and a carry over from 2009 -- enhancements to Ad Planner and DoubleClick for Advertisers.

The year of mobile - It has been coming for years, but in 2010 it finally arrived. The year of mobile. You voraciously read tips and tactics shared in the 3-part "Going Mobile in 2010" series, as well as took advantage of training opportunities for mobile optimization best practices. With the launch of the Google Mobile Ads Blog, we'll have even richer mobile ads content for you in 2011, courtesy of our friends in the Google blog community.

The blog could not succeed without you, our loyal readers -- thank you. We look forward to continuing to bring you the content you need to be successful in 2011.

Posted by Katie Wasilenko, Agency 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]

We've announced September's list for the Ad Planner 1000, a list of the top 1,000 global sites on the web by unique users as measured by DoubleClick Ad Planner. The September edition offers annual fall trends as students across the northern hemisphere have returned to school, TV networks release their new shows, and the NFL season kicks off.

• As the school year got into full swing, homework and school projects influenced usage of reference sites, such as reference.com, thesaurus.com, wiktionary.org, merrian-webster.com and thefreedictionary.com.
• The return to school did not bode as well for online gaming and entertainment sites as we observed a decline in site traffic with many of them, such as Battle.net, 4399.com, duowan.com and pcgames.com.
• Thanks to the new television season, network sites re-entered the Ad Planner 1000: nbc.com at #679, cbs.com at #712 and abc.go.com at #748. Tvguide.com also benefited with enough of an increase to site visitors to crack the list at #820.
• In the U.S., football fervor is underway and the biggest beneficiary is nfl.com with a whopping 61% increase in unique visitors to their site. However, as playoff contenders emerge in the baseball post-season, the narrowing field of teams to follow seems to have affected mlb.com.

For the complete update, visit the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog and the Ad Planner 1000.

Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

We've announced July's list for the Ad Planner 1000, a list of the top 1,000 global sites on the web by unique users as measured by DoubleClick Ad Planner. The sites on this list reflect 3 seasonal trends:

• Users are playing, not watching sports - Fifa.com, NBA.com and ESPN.com all saw declines as regular visitors turned off their computers and headed outside to play.
• Users are, however, watching blockbusters - Fandango.com, moviefone.com, rottentomatoes.com and netflix.com all saw traffic increases.
• Users are being social - Cooking sites like allrecipes.com and cooks.com saw increases, as did dating sites zoosk.com and match.com, while twitter.com and hi5.com saw declines
  

For the complete update, visit the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog and the Ad Planner 1000.

Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

DoubleClick Ad Planner helps you research and identify the web sites most likely to attract your client's audience. With Ad Planner, you can select sites, add them to a client's media plan and easily export them directly into an AdWords account as a new campaign, or add them to an existing campaign or ad group.

Many of you requested this feature because you wanted an easy way to plan and buy Google Display Network (GDN) campaigns for clients using Ad Planner.

Exporting to AdWords is easy and this online tutorial will show you how to take advantage of it. In this video, you’ll learn more about:

• Creating a media plan and finding GDN placements
• Exporting your plan to AdWords
• Setting up a new campaign or adding to existing campaign in AdWords
  

Posted by Pamela Eng, Product Marketing Manager

This is our third post in a series on the Google Display Network (GDN). Today, we’ll look at the robust targeting options available to help you reach your audience with your display campaigns.

Reaching just the right audience is at the crux of every successful campaign. We continue to invest in powerful targeting technologies that enable this. Let’s look at what you can do today to reach your audience on the GDN.

Contextual targeting. What consumers read, right now at this very moment, says a lot about what they’re thinking about, making it a great opportunity to connect them with your message. Our sophisticated contextual targeting algorithm continually scans the millions of web pages in our network, understanding what they’re about, in real-time. Using this information, we automatically show your ads to the right users at the right time. It’s similar to our search technology that does a good job of finding relevant web pages for searches, increasing advertising engagement and reducing the clutter of irrelevant advertising. Contextual targeting works well for advertisers looking to generate conversions (like sales) through always-on direct response campaigns. However, you can also use contextual targeting for branding. For example, an advertiser who wants to associate their brand with environmental consciousness can contextually target their ads to appropriate pages with keywords like “green energy” or “green living”.

Placement targeting. What if you already know your audience is concentrated on specific websites? Placement targeting allows you to specify individual placements where you’d like to show your ads. Unlike contextual targeting, keywords aren't required; you simply choose the placements you’d like to target. A placement can be a website, or a subset of a site. For instance, if you're selling tennis gear and you’d like your ad to appear on a particular tennis website, or only on sports pages of a newspaper, you can specify that. Ad Planner or the Placement Tool can help you identify placements for your campaign.

Remarketing. Earlier this year, we announced remarketing, to help you reach users on the GDN based on their past interactions with your website. Remarketing is extremely effective because it targets a highly-relevant audience. With it, you can target users who:

• have visited your website or viewed specific product categories on your site
• didn’t convert or who abandoned their shopping cart
• have converted (in order to up- or cross-sell to them)
  

If you’re already driving traffic to your site through other means, like contextual targeting or your search ads, remarketing is a great complement to those efforts to increase your return-on-investment (ROI).

Interest category marketing. Currently in beta, interest category marketing allows you to reach people based on their interests. Leveraging the technology behind our contextual targeting engine, user interests are determined based on the type of web content they previously viewed. You can select from a list of interest categories (such as sports enthusiast or travel enthusiast) and we’ll show ads to people whose interests we think map to those categories. You can use interest categories in conjunction with contextual, placement and remarketing campaigns. Additionally, the Ads Preferences Manager gives users transparency and choice, enabling them to see the interest categories we think they fall into, add and remove categories, or opt out altogether.

Fine-tune targeting by adding geography and language, time, and demographic bids, or focus your brand presence with above-the-fold targeting. Further, you can apply a robust set of exclusions at the site, category or keyword level based on your goals and performance.

Whichever targeting options you choose, with the Google Display Network, precision doesn't have to come at the cost of scale. There is an Internet of opportunity, across mass-media, brand-name sites, all the way down to blogs, social networks, and local news. For every site you can name about a particular topic, there are dozens more you've never heard of that attract tens of thousands of monthly visitors.

We’ll see you next week, when we’ll talk about measuring and optimizing your display campaigns.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Marketing Manager, Google Display Network

Back in May we announced the Ad Planner 1000, a list of the top 1,000 global sites on the web by unique users as measured by DoubleClick Ad Planner. Published monthly, this list details the number of unique visitors, page views and reach for each site for the top 1,000 sites globally.

To keep agencies and advertisers up to speed on the newest additions to the Ad Planner 1000, our friends at DoubleClick post monthly updates on their blog, highlighting interesting and seasonal trends. For example, the month of June saw significant growth for sites like fifa.com, Apple and HTC, and kayak.com. Curious why? Visit the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog to learn more!

Stay tuned to the Agency Ad Solutions Blog and the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog for each month's updates.

Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

We recently introduced a new umbrella name for our online display media offerings, the Google Display Network (GDN) to make our solutions clear to advertisers and agencies. You also heard from us about the investments we’re making in display advertising and the promise it holds for marketers and agencies to drive great marketing results. In this series of posts, we’ll cover what you can do today on the GDN.

We’ve been busy working to improve every step of your display campaigns: from media planning and developing creative, to choosing targeting, measuring results and optimizing your campaign. Each week over the next month, we’ll talk about the solutions available to you in each area, starting with campaign planning.

With millions of sites on the web, how do you find exactly the people who will respond to your message? We introduced DoubleClick Ad Planner to help. It’s a free research and media planning tool to help identify web sites most likely to attract your audience. The insights provided by Ad Planner continue to get deeper and more robust. Let’s take a look:

Research sites by ones you know your audience visits, or by defining your audience based on what you know about them, such as geography, demographics, interests, sites they visit or keywords they search. Recently, we released more features to help you research more effectively:

• Pre-defined audiences. Select from commonly used audiences like Baby Boomers to save time or if you don’t know how to define your audience.
• With Ad Planner 1000, quickly reference and target the web’s largest sites.
• Use subdomain and ad placement data for more granular media planning.
• With Lists, create lists of your favorite sites and placements for future use.
  

Manage your site results by applying a variety of site ranking methods:

• See sites that are most likely to attract your target audience, see larger, mass-media sites to ensure campaign scale, or, see a balance between the two.
• Filter to see just sites in the Google Display Network, or all sites that accept advertising.
• Apply other filters to see sites accepting certain ad formats, sites in specific categories like Video Games or sites with a particular domain suffix like .edu.

View robust site details. For each site, you can see detailed information and audience visitation patters. A Site Overview shows general site information like thumbnail and description and site categories. Traffic Statistics and Demographics show unique visitor metrics and demographic information. Online Activity shows what other sites your audience visits or keywords they search. Finally, Ad Specifications show placement type, impressions/day and accepted ad formats and sizes. Most recently, we introduced audience interest information, showing the aggregate interests of a site’s visitors. It complements the demographic data available in Ad Planner, providing a deeper view into a site’s audience.

Build, analyze and export your media plan. After researching sites, you can select sites and add them to your media plan. As you do, you’ll see unduplicated unique users, reach, and page view statistics. You can then analyze your media plan by reviewing its aggregate demographic statistics. When you’re ready, you can export sites directly into your AdWords account or into CSV format to import into MediaVisor.

Beyond robust features like these, Ad Planner provides true scale for your campaigns because you can go beyond the most common sites, to tap into millions of sites and do it for over 40 countries and 20 languages. Further, web site owners can claim, manage and share their data on Ad Planner, providing another level of up-to-date and accurate information for your media planning.

You can stay on top of new enhancements in our Ad Planner release notes. Stay tuned for our next post about developing effective ads and the solutions available on the Google Display Network.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Marketing Manager, Google Display Network

Over the past year, we've focused on building new solutions on the Google Content Network for campaigns focused on branding. Last year we introduced frequency capping to help you manage how often your Content Network campaigns reach the right people. We then launched an “above the fold” filter to allow you to show ads only in places that appear on potential customers’ screens when the page loads. We also developed innovative tools to measure the impact of brand campaigns.

Today, in response to feedback from many of you who run branding campaigns, we're announcing a new filter that allows you to show your ads only on AdSense sites among the 1000 largest on the web as defined by DoubleClick Ad Planner. This new feature will ensure that your ads reach a large number of users, but only on well-known sites best suited for branding goals.

To activiate the new filter, select ‘non Ad Planner 1000’ within the ‘category filters’ section of your AdWords account. Keep in mind that not all sites in the Ad Planner 1000 are in the Google Content Network and that your ads will only show on those sites that are.

It's important to note that the Ad Planner 1000 does not take performance statistics into account, and that by enabling this filter, you may be excluding many sites that are relevant to your advertised products. Additionally, with this or any of our other brand filters enabled, your campaign will run on fewer sites, so you may need to raise your bids if you’d like to maintain your impression levels. We recommend experimenting to determine which feature or combination of features best meets your goals.

We hope this new feature gives you greater control and assurance over where your ads appear and makes the Google Content Network an even more powerful environment for effective branding campaigns.


Posted by Sean Harvey, Product Manager

Today, we are introducing several new features that integrate DoubleClick Ad Planner data with other Google advertising solutions. These features help streamline the process of planning and building online ad campaigns while offering advertisers access to better data for more informed media planning decisions.


Ad Planner Top 1,000 Most Visited Sites
The Ad Planner 1,000 list is a list of the top 1,000 global sites on the web by unique users as measured by Ad Planner. Published monthly, this list details the number of unique visitors, page views and reach for each site for the top 1,000 sites globally. It’s a great way to quickly reference the most popular sites on the web.

This latest resource represents yet another step in the evolution of Ad Planner in providing reliable traffic and audience information for websites. In conjunction with our Ad Planner 1,000 list, the Google Content just released an Ad Planner 1,000 targeting feature. These two features combined provide an example of how Google is working to provide more actionable data for online display advertisers.


Exporting Google Content Network Placements to AdWords
Many Ad Planner users are also AdWords users, and one of the top requested features is to provide a simple and easy way to buy Google Content Network placements advertisers find through Ad Planner. The newly launched Export to AdWords feature enables advertisers to simply export Google Content Network placements from Ad Planner into AdWords. These exported placements will be set up as a new campaign or ad group within AdWords.

For advertisers running text ads or display ads on the Google Content Network, this provides an easy way to build media plans of managed placements. Now translating the great audience research data in Ad Planner into your AdWords campaigns is easier than ever.


Creating Lists in Ad Planner
To help you create your own list of favorite sites to save and add your media plans, we also recently launched “Lists” in Ad Planner. With “Lists”, you can store sites and placements in lists for future use in media plans. To get you started, we’ve made the Ad Planner 1,000 list available to all Ad Planner user accounts for use as a handy reference or for download.

Our goal with the Top 1000 Sites and other recent updates is to deliver new tools for greater planning efficiency and data to make more informed advertising decisions.

Visit www.google.com/adplanner to check out our new features.

Posted by Rohit Kundaji, Software Engineer and Wayne Lin, Product Manager

Posted by Ben Chambers, Software Engineer

Posted by Wayne Lin, Product Manager, DoubleClick Ad Planner

Posted by Wayne Lin, Product Manager, DoubleClick Ad Planner

The latest enhancements to Google Ad Planner and DoubleClick's DART for Advertisers (DFA) bring new ways to help streamline your online display advertising workflow. With the newly launched DFA Analytics beta and beta integration of Google Ad Planner into the DFA platform, you'll now have a singular, seamless portal for planning, executing, and measuring campaigns -- with just one login. This unified set of tools, all accessible through the DFA platform, bring more efficiency to the campaign management process, saving valuable time and resources.

Beyond access enhancements, both DFA Analytics and Ad Planner also provide you with more data and more ways to analyze it. We've summarized the changes to each product for quick reference below, but be sure to check out the official DoubleClick and Ad Planner blog posts for full details.

The new DFA Analytics beta helps you:

• Gain insights quickly. Interactive reports mean easier navigation through your accounts and data. You can model data in charts and graphs, as well as drill up and down through criteria such as advertiser, campaign, or targeting settings.
• Get your reports faster. Reports update frequently - every few hours - and the new user interface enables you to access your data quickly.
• Use new types of reports. Pull geographic delivery data. Additional reports show delivery data by bandwidth, browser, and operating system.

And Ad Planner's new capabilities now enable you to:

• View subdomain data. See data including traffic estimates and demographics for the largest ten subdomains of any top-level domain. Once you identify subdomains to add, you can do so easily in Ad Planner.
• See available ad placements while researching sites. You'll also be able to search for ad placements alongside domains on the "Search by audience" tab and see traffic and demographic estimates for each placement
• Visualize audience data easily. Quickly compare reach and relevancy of sites you select with a new interactive graph.
• Access more granular publisher data. With publishers now able to opt-in their Analytics data, you'll receive more accurate and specific information about their sites.
• Use Ad Planner within DoubleClick DFA. Log in to your DoubleClick DFA account to access Ad Planner and have one tool for campaign planning, trafficking, and measurement. (Note: This feature is rolling out to all users over the next couple weeks)

If you haven't yet tried Ad Planner, give it a go at www.google.com/adplanner. And for more information on DART for Advertisers, visit DoubleClick.com and fill out an inquiry form.

Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

The leaves are changing and there's a chill in the air. Hot cocoa and comfort foods are just around the corner. Get ready to warm up with, you guessed it, Display Week!

On Monday November 9, 2009, we kick off our quarterly Display Week webinar series including 10 Tips for Display in 2010, YouTube Promoted Videos, and some very exciting Ad Planner demonstrations.

Webinar seats are limited so sign up today for the week of display. If you can't make the festivities, don't fret. All sessions will be recorded and posted to the training site after the week wraps up.

See you online!

Posted by Kate Stonich, Agency Team

As the third post in our semi-regular industry spotlight series, we're featuring two new resources created by our Travel Marketing team: a webinar discussing the most important travel resources for consumers, and a Google Content Network case study highlighting how an airline used display ads to increase brand awareness and sales in a difficult market.

Webinar: Google and OTX Present: The Traveler's Road to Decision
Wondering which online and offline channels are the most influential to a travel booker, or what resources they utilize before booking? And how does this behavior vary among different types of travelers?

To answer these questions, Google partnered with Online Testing Exchange to explore how travelers make decisions and to identify key points where brand message can make a difference. Join your hosts on Tuesday, July 21st at 10:00am PDT to learn:

• What the most important travel planning resources are for consumers
• How behavior among affluent, business, and leisure travelers differs
• Where and why search engines are used in the travel booking process
• When online travel videos are viewed and how they influence purchase decisions

Register here.

Case Study: Success takes flight for Hawaiian Airlines
Facing a challenging market, Hawaiian Airlines looked to expand its online presence beyond search marketing. It worked closely with digital agency Razorfish to increase direct response metrics through greater brand awareness and loyalty.

They started with a limited display ads test on the Google Content Network, targeting images of Hawaii to three key audiences: families going on vacation, baby boomers, and seniors. The images resonated with users, and the test successfully hit the company's sales goals, leading to further investment in display ads in the summer of 2008. Despite high fuel costs affecting travel behavior, Hawaiian Airlines saw 3% year-over-year growth in ticket orders and revenue, and display ads are now a core part of their advertising strategy.

Next, they tested the "What Island Am I?" application, which enabled Hawaiian Airlines to effectively reach new customers and help them plan their trips. According to Brooke Boyle, Razorfish search manager, “The ‘What Island Am I?’ campaign performed better than all of the other media we purchased, and branding with display paid off and fueled our search campaigns.”

Click here to download the case study. To learn more about advertising on the Google Content Network, visit the product microsite. In addition, check out on-demand training resources on Ad Planner and Content Optimization to help you create and optimize clients' content network campaigns.

Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

Being in the right places at the right times can be the determining factor for successful ads. Google Ad Planner can help you ensure that your clients' ads are indeed in the right places by identifying sites relevant to your target audience.

For more details on how to leverage Google Ad Planner and how to research information about sites (both on and off the Google Content Network) that your audience is likely to visit, join us for our upcoming webinar: Researching Your Media Plan through Google Ad Planner on Tuesday, July 15th.

You can register here with the passwords below. And make sure you have a client ID number handy to complete your registration.

Event password: planning1
Registration password: agency1

Posted by Lauren Usui, Product Marketing Manager