Congratulations, you have made it to the final installment of the Google Media Solutions series! We get frequent questions about Google TV Ads, whether it's the right platform, how much it costs, how it works. Here’s your crash course.

Google TV Ads is an online marketing place that allows anyone to launch national TV campaigns and measure their success with timely reporting. Google TV Ads allows you to buy the programs that you want without bundling, pay only for impressions delivered and access viewership data from a sample of millions.

Ready to jump in? Let’s dispel a few myths that your clients might have heard:

• Does TV advertising fit into my marketing mix?: Television advertising allows you to reach a wider audience than any other advertising medium. Generate brand awareness and demand through sight, sound and motion. It’s also a great supplement to any online strategy - read how ooVoo used TV to drive a 500% increase in site traffic!
• We want to get started, but we don’t have a commercial. Can you help?: Of course! You can use the Google Ad Creation Market Place to connect with professional ad production houses for as little as $200. Creating compelling, effective TV ads at relatively low costs has never been easier.
• But is TV Measurable?: If you have a website, we recommend tracking and comparing website visits with your TV campaign metrics using Google Analytics. Google Analytics can track TV campaign metrics like TV impressions alongside daily web traffic volume.

What does it take to get started? Create a video ad, log into AdWords, choose targets and shows and see your ad on TV within 48 hours! Visit the Getting Started Guide for more tips.

This post concludes our Google Media Solutions series. Over the past four weeks, we have reviewed Google AdWords, the Google Display Network, Remarketing, YouTube and Google TV Ads. Hopefully you have learned some tips and tricks along the way.

Posted by Laura Salzberg, Agency Team

Welcome to the third installment of the Google Media Solutions series. In this post, we will review the Google Display Network. The Google Display Network is a large group of websites and blogs that display AdWords ads and allows advertisers to scalably reach their customers at moments of relevance. Clients are using it for direct response, web engagement as well as driving offline conversions.

We have rolled out many new features for the Google Display Network. One that we would like to highlight is remarketing. Google remarketing uses custom technology to reach potential customers who have previously visited your clients’ websites. Implementing the remarketing tag is very easy; you simply add a pixel to the clients’ sites. After adding the pixel, you can use remarketing to help capture additional sales or leads by re-targeting users who have already visited the site, and generally convert better and at a lower CPA. To learn more about remarketing and other innovative targeting options on the Google Display Network, you can check out this post from the Google Display Network blog series.

We frequently hear some common misconceptions from advertisers about the GDN that we’d like to clarify:

• I’ve tried the GDN before - what has changed?: The Google Display Network has changed a lot in the past few years. Today, the median advertiser gets approximately 20% of their conversions from the GDN at a CPA that is comparable to search.* To drive results like these, we are investing heavily in many new features that make the GDN an effective platform for advertisers with any marketing objective. Examples of features we've introduced over the years include site exclusions, above the fold targeting, frequency capping, and consolidated view-through conversion reporting.
• The Google Display Network only works for branding: Contextual targeting and remarketing are just a few examples of great tools that direct response marketers can use to reach potential customers in the later stages of the buying cycle, like consideration and decision. The Conversion Optimizer can also help you generate additional conversions at an attractive cost-per-acquisition (CPA). With powerful tools like these, you can make sure you are capturing all your potential customers as they spend time across the web.

Thanks for reading the third part of the Google Media Solutions blog series. Next week, we will discuss how you can use Google TV to drive results for your clients.

Posted by Laura Salzberg, Agency Team

*Internal analysis of North America advertisers advertising on both search and content, with conversion tracking enabled, from Dec. 2007 – Nov. 2008

Thanks for joining us for the second installment of the Google Media Solutions series. We switched things up and will be sharing a YouTube update this week, with the Google Display Network and Remarketing post coming next week.

Online video represents a huge opportunity to reach potential customers with new, compelling formats. YouTube is the perfect platform to reach these customers, drive sales and enhance branding initiatives.

There are many benefits to advertising on YouTube. It is a unique platform which allows your clients to reach potential customers who are engaging online. You can set up YouTube campaigns through the AdWords interface. With our new YouTube Video Targeting Tool, you can target specific audiences based on interest, demographic or specific video content. Your clients can create their message and share it with consumers with their videos or display ads. Additionally, after running a campaign, you can use YouTube Insight to learn how potential customers are interacting with your clients' videos.

There might be some confusion around YouTube ad formats, so here’s some clarification:

• I am not sure if my clients' audiences are on YouTube?: Your clients' audiences are watching YouTube videos. YouTube has users of all ages and 32% of users are between the ages of 35 and 54*. In fact, if the YouTube audience were a country, it would be the 3rd largest country in the world with over 420 million unique visitors every month.
• Our clients don’t have video content. How can we use YouTube?: You don’t need to have video content to advertise on YouTube. You can target your clients' audiences on YouTube with display, text or video ads. Our recommendation, since YouTube is a visual medium, is to test out display ads.
• Is there professional content on YouTube?: YouTube has over 3,500 content partners, including CBS, TV Guide, Fred and JuicyStar07. Our partners are actively uploading content and the video landscape is constantly changing. As this is the case, your clients' target audiences are returning to see new, updated content on YouTube!

Check in next week for the third post, which will be on the Google Display Network, Remarketing and great tips for reaching your customers while they browse the web!

Posted by Laura Salzberg, Agency Team

* comScore MediaMetrix, September 2009

Over the next four weeks, we will be sharing tips and tricks for positioning Google products to your clients in the Google Media Solutions Series. We are excited to share the benefits of our solutions, debunk common myths and pass on easy implementation tips to help your accounts reach their full potential.

So, let's get started with Google’s search marketing product, Google AdWords. Using Google AdWords, you can target Google.com and the Google Search Network. This is a great solution to connect with potential customers who are searching for your clients’ products and services. It is flexible, measurable, and accountable. With AdWords, you can easily manage the spend of the account and control costs by setting a daily budget and maximum cost-per-click (CPC). Another benefit is that it’s easy to make changes to your clients’ ad text, as changes to ads take affect almost instantaneously. Lastly, as an added benefit, you can track the return on investment (ROI) of your account by using Conversion Tracking or Google Analytics.

There are some common myths that your clients may have heard regarding search and we want to make sure that we clarify these misconceptions:

• My website shows organically, so I don’t need to advertise: It is great to have a highly ranked organic listing; however you can’t control the message to your potential customers with organic listings in the same way that you can control it with search marketing campaigns. By advertising on Google.com and the search network, you can control the message that you share with all potential customers and determine the landing page to which you direct your potential customers after they click on the ad. These features can lead to increased sales.
  
  In addition, organic results are likely only capturing a very small portion of the relevant traffic on Google. For example, a consumer electronics advertiser might appear high in the search results for their brand terms, or specific trademarks relevant to their company, but AdWords can expose their message on a wide variety of related terms like 'digital cameras' 'netbooks' and 'HD TVs'.
  

• Competitors can click on my ads maliciously: We take the security of AdWords accounts very seriously and have many resources in place to prevent your account from accruing invalid clicks. While invalid clicks occur less often than commonly perceived, we have three filters in place to protect your account: detection and filtering techniques, advanced monitoring techniques and manual reviews from our team.

Stay tuned for next week’s post on the Google Display Network, remarketing and great tips for reaching your customers while they browse the web!

Posted by Laura Salzberg, Agency Team