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Yesterday, we announced Dynamic Search Ads, a new way to target relevant searches with dynamic ads generated right from your website. We hope you’ll find Dynamic Search Ads to be a useful tool in your toolbox to scale up clients’ campaigns quickly, discover unwanted gaps in keyword coverage, or keep search campaigns in sync with your clients' fast-changing inventory.

In addition to the details on the Inside AdWords blog and in the AdWords Help center, we wanted to share a few answers here to common questions that you or your clients might have.
Q. So Dynamic Search Ads are typically producing incremental traffic gains of 5-10% with satisfactory ROI. What’s typical implementation look like?
A. During our pilot, a typical implementation would have max CPC bids initially set at approximately 75% of a campaign’s average, budgets were not constrained, the whole site was targeted, and negatives were used. For these implementations, it was typical to see increases in traffic of 5-10% with satisfactory ROI across a wide range of clients.

Q. Which clients are most likely to see greatest results?
A. Dynamic Search Ads have greater potential for advertisers with large, fast-changing inventories where it can be challenging to keep AdWords campaigns in sync with what’s actually in-stock.

Q. How do Quality Scores for Dynamic Search Ads relate to Quality Scores for keyword-based campaigns?
A. They’re tracked independently and do not affect one another.

Q. Are there any mechanisms to avoid inadvertent policy violations with the dynamic ad headlines?
A. Filtering technology is used to help avoid inadvertent trademark and other policy violations in the ad text headlines.
For another perspective on Dynamic Search Ads from an agency involved in the pilot, please visit the RKG blog for their analysis and usage strategies.

Dynamic Search Ads are available in all languages and countries, but are in limited beta. To get Dynamic Search Ads enabled in your clients’ accounts, please contact your Google representative. If you don’t have a representative, you can sign up using our interest form.

We’ll be listening closely to how you’re using Dynamic Search Ads, as well as your results, suggestions, and unanswered questions. As with all our betas, we value and welcome your feedback.

Posted by Baris Gultekin, Director, AdWords Product Management
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There are more than 2.4 million conversations about brands every day. More than half of consumers involved in these conversation say they’re likely to make a purchase based on what they talk about.

It turns out that while most people still talk about brands face to face, their conversations are informed by the Internet more than any other media source. And, when they’re online, users go to search sites more than any other. This is even more true after conversations, especially those sparked by TV. People follow up by searching for more information and prices more than any other online activity including social media.




We we partnered with Keller Fay to see what effect the Internet and search has on a word of mouth. We looked at how media and marketing channels provided content before, during and after consumer conversations by surveying 3,000 adults across 12 categories.

Posted by the Google Agency Team
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Recently we had a chance to catch up with Matthew Mierzejewski of Rimm-Kaufman Group (RKG) to discuss his experience managing Product Listing Ads for his clients.

Founded in 2003, RKG is a data-driven online marketing firm that specializes in paid search marketing, multichannel attribution management, and display advertising. RKG has 170 clients that range from start-ups to the Fortune 500 and that include both B2C and B2B direct marketers. In August of 2008, RKG was named to Inc. Magazine's list of the Top 500 Fastest-Growing Private Companies in America.

Matthew Mierzejewski, RKG’s VP of Client Services, has been working with Product Listing Ads for clients since they launched last year, and he’s offered to share some of his results and recommendations for other saavy marketers here:

Inside AdWords (IA): What initially drew your interest to Product Listing Ads?
Matthew Mierzejewski (MM): We have many retail clients who are looking for scalable ways to increase their presence in search. Because Google managed the targeting for Product Listing Ads, we wanted to see how much incremental traffic we could gather outside of our existing keyword-targeted campaigns. Also, the prominent ad listings with highly relevant product images are an extremely attractive ad space to play in.

IA: Was the implementation challenging?
MM: Most of our retail clients are already using Merchant Center to get free traffic in Google Product Search. For those clients, the basic CPC implementation was pretty simple. Furthermore, working with Google to implement some additional attributes was helpful and has allowed us to accurately track and improve our ROI.

IA: How much incremental traffic should an advertiser expect from Product Listing Ads?
MM: It varies a fair amount based on product category and bid level, but we see some clients getting up to 10% additional traffic from Product Listing Ads. These are clients who have already done a lot of work with their core keyword-targeted accounts, so it was great for them to have another tool available.

IA: How do the conversion rates for Product Listing Ads compare to keyword-target text ads in search?
MM: We've seen conversion rates up to 10% higher on Product Listing Ads compared to average text ad conversion rates. Taking it one step further and looking at queries that serve both a Product Listing Ad and a text ad to the same product-level landing page, we're seeing Product Listing Ads in some cases with a 30% higher conversion rate. With all other elements being held equal, we conclude that since the user is able to see the exact item of interest, price, and often a promotional message, they are more likely to convert per click in Product Listing Ads versus text ads.

IA: How do the costs for Product Listing Ads compare to keyword-targeted text ads in search?
MM: In general, where the data is significant and we're bidding effectively to ROI targets, we're bidding and paying up to 15% more on Product Listing Ads compared to text ads. Though, as I called out earlier, in many cases we're seeing a greater return on Product Listing Ads traffic, so we can afford to be slightly more aggressive [with our bids].

IA: How do results vary between clients who use cost-per-click (CPC) pricing versus those who use the cost-per-action (CPA) pricing?
MM: We don’t see much difference in terms of conversion rates between CPC and CPA pricing. Though, in general, clients who use CPC pricing have been able to get more volume than those who are using CPA pricing. We like the idea of CPA pricing, but if we optimize our CPC bids we’re able to meet our ROI goals just as easily. It’s all a matter of testing and optimizing.

IA: Who do Product Listing Ads work best for?
MM: Advertisers with products that already do well in natural product search are ideal, since they know that users are already searching for their products. In general, when a user’s query can closely match a specific product in your Merchant Center feed, you’ll do better. For example, canon eos 60d will do better than men's suit coat. Think of it as objective versus subjective user intent that a robot would have a hard time parsing out.

IA: What advanced tips do you have for an advertiser using Product Listing Ads?
MM: Advertisers should be using some combination of, if not all available, Merchant Center parametersavailable to them: adwords_grouping, adwords_labels, adwords_publish, and adwords_redirect. Those attributes should be used to set up granular product targets inside of AdWords. Segmenting those bids will ensure proper ROI goals can be met. Sometimes this means using multiple attributes together to get the best result.
Finally, you should consider utilizing promotional messages for various product targets. These can easily differentiate your ad from the competition and can lead to higher CTRs and CRs if you can afford the offers.
We’d like to thank Matthew and RKG for taking the time to talk to us about their experience with Product Listing Ads so far. To learn more, including how to get started and best practices, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Cross-posted from the Inside AdWords blog
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We recently launched Google for Agencies in the US, a new site to inspire creative ideas and provide access to the programs, tools and resources to bring these ideas to life -- all in a single location.

Here’s a glimpse at what you’ll find on Google for Agencies:
  • Examples of best-in-class campaigns from the past year, showing how the palette of Google media solutions can be used to achieve client goals in innovative ways.
  • One-click access to relevant training programs -- the Google AdWords Certification program, targeted to agencies and advertisers managing $10K or more of spend each quarter, and Google Engage for Agencies, targeted to developers, consultants and small agencies working to bring small businesses online.
  • Links to the agency blog, newsletter and Twitter pages, making it effortless to find and subscribe to updates to keep you ahead of the digital curve.
  • A redesigned Agency Toolkit, showcasing the tools to drive client success, whether you’re planning a strategy, developing creative solutions, implementing targeted plans, or proving performance.
Google for Agencies is part of the re-launch of our advertising site, aimed to improve the user experience, as well as centralized case studies, training and resources by audience, ad type, product or brand. In addition to Google for Agencies, the re-launch includes new advertiser, experienced advertiser and publisher, as well as search, display, video and TV ads.

The site is currently live in the US, and will roll out to other countries in the coming months.

Posted by Katie Miller, Agency Team
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Today we released AdWords Editor Version 9.0 with a number of new features designed to help you make changes across accounts more efficiently, as well as to manage new ad features, such as Ad Sitelinks and high-end mobile targeting, at scale. We’ve highlighted key changes below. More details are available in the AdWords Editor Version 9.0 release notes.

AdWords Editor Version 9.0 highlights:
  • Scalably manage Ad Sitelinks - Version 9.0 provides full support for Ad Sitelinks, including downloading and uploading to your account, making edits, checking changes, and importing and exporting Sitelinks.
  • Improved Add/Update Multiple and Import CSV tools - When entering new data using the Add/Update Multiple tool, you can now enter your data with the columns in any order, assign the appropriate headers to each column, select the option to remember the order of your columns for your next import, and approve or cancel the changes in the account in one click. In addition, Import CSV now includes the option to Paste Text as well as to import From File.
  • Set high-end mobile targeting options - AdWords Editor now supports the ability to set campaigns to target high-end mobile devices, (including Android, iPhone, iPad and Palm) and carriers in Campaign Settings.
  • Better manage multiple accounts and MCCs - To help you better manage multiple accounts, AdWords Editor now offers sort and search for accounts, select and remove multiple accounts, and a new dropdown menu above the Account tree in AdWords Editor that displays recently accessed accounts, so that you can quickly switch to any one of them.

    In addition, when adding an MCC account to in the Add New AdWords Account dialog, you can search within the list of available child accounts, display extra columns, and move up to a different level in the MCC account hierarchy.
  • More easily find and make bulk changes to negative keywords, placements, or audiences - To more easily locate and manage negative keywords, placements, or audiences in your account, we’ve changed the way we display Negatives in AdWords Editor. The Negatives tab has been removed, and you can instead toggle between displaying negative or positive keywords, placements, or audiences by clicking the Positives or Negatives switch on each item’s respective tab.

    • The Select Duplicates button is now available for negative keywords when in the Duplicate keywords view mode.
The next time you log into your AdWords Editor account, you will be prompted to upgrade. You may also download Version 9.0 from the AdWords Editor website. After you install the new version of AdWords Editor, your accounts will need to be downloaded again. To preserve your comments and unposted changes, select the Backup then Upgrade option in the automatic upgrade prompt and save the backup file to your computer. Then, re-download your account and import the backup file to AdWords Editor.

For more information, check out the release notes and visit the AdWords Editor Help Center.

Posted by Katie Miller, Agency Team
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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
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Do online search campaigns lead to in-store sales? Controlled studies we call ‘Online to Store’ experiments prove time and again that they do! Check out the video below for results from large advertisers that tested the effects of keyword targeted products and categories, generic keywords and online coupons.



Highlights include in-store sales lift, return on ad spend (15:1 in some cases) and halo effects on overall sales. Understanding the effect of search ads on offline sales is a large part of accurately defining the full value of search campaigns, beyond direct conversion.

Consider these results and continue your own online to store testing.

Posted by Agency Blog Team
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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
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Please join Google and the Atlanta, New York and Boston chapters of the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) for an exciting panel and networking event on mobile search marketing. We're hosting the panel in Google's Atlanta office and broadcasting live to audiences in Google's New York and Boston offices. Although the Atlanta event is at capacity, there's still space available at the New York and Boston locations.

We've assembled an all-star panel from the mobile industry, with speakers from Google, Bing, Yahoo, Razorfish and 360i. This will be an interactive event with plenty of opportunity for networking and engaging with program speakers and audience members in all locations.

Date: Thursday, March 31, 2011
Time: 6:00pm - 9:00pm (Networking starts at 6:00 pm. Speakers present at 7:00 pm)
Price: Free for SEMPO members, Non-members pay $10
Location:
New York - Google Inc., 76 Ninth Avenue, New York, NY 10011 (register here)
Boston - Google Inc., 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142 (register here)

Not a member? Join today and attend this and other SEMPO events for free. Not sure whether your company is a member? Contact cmadden@sempo.org to confirm.

Look forward to seeing you on Thursday!

Posted by Katie Miller, Agency Team
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DoubleClick Search began in 2006, a tool for larger agencies and advertisers running large-scale online advertising campaigns across multiple platforms. It’s designed to manage the execution of paid search campaigns and centralize the measurement of performance across search and display advertising.



Think of search campaign management like an air traffic control system: directing one airplane to take off from a given airport at the right time is relatively simple. Coordinating thousands of airplanes, across many airports is more complex. The same is true of search campaigns: managing a search campaign is easy, but managing multiple campaigns and search engines, and comparing performance of search and display strategies, can be more difficult.

Today at SES New York, we’re giving the first glimpse of the latest version of DoubleClick Search (version 3), designed to make these tasks simpler.

We’ve spent the last 9 months talking to our customers and agency partners about what you want from a search campaign management tool, and we’ve heard you loud and clear: you want a powerful solution that lets you manage millions of keywords, across the leading search engines, from a fast, easy-to-use platform. So we took a look at our existing DoubleClick Search product and decided to rebuild it from scratch, designing it to take the activities you do on a daily basis and make them simpler, faster and more effective.

We are currently beta testing DoubleClick Search v3 with select partners and will be rolling it out to all partners later this year. Here are a few ways we’ve made our DoubleClick Search product better:

Workflow: We’ve simplified navigation with an easy-to-use, AdWords-like interface and enabled you make changes to your campaign directly from DoubleClick Search or directly in the search engines. We’ve also added the ability to upload campaigns in spreadsheets with up to 1 million rows, and manage campaigns globally with many language and currency options.

Reporting: DoubleClick Search now includes powerful filters and labels that allow you to highlight important keywords. Our revamped reporting features also allow you to manage where your ads appear with precise position controls, design your bidding strategy to meet specific ROI goals, and compare how your campaigns are performing across search and display, thanks to seamless integration with DoubleClick’s display platform, DoubleClick for Advertisers.

Optimization: We’ve given you new tools to enhance optimization, including the ability to view performance data across all the major search engines and a customizable reporting view so you can focus on what matters most to your business.

Here is a sneak peek at what the new DoubleClick Search will look like:


(Mock screenshot)

There will be more news in the weeks and months ahead, so please be sure to check back at our DoubleClick Search blog.

Originally posted to the DoubleClick Search Blog

Posted by: Ariel Bardin, Director of Product Management
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Who: Search engine marketers & SEO specialists

What: SES NYC

When: March 21-25, 2011

Where: Hilton, Midtown Manhatten

Why: Come to SES NY for a sneak peek of the upgraded DoubleClick Search product -- New features, new interface and improved speed (March 22, 2011 - 1:30 - 2:30pm).

Don't miss the crash course on the latest AdWords innovations -- New ad formats, tools to simplify and automate account management, scale your ads across the Google Network (Wednesday March 23, 1:00-2:00pm).

Want a sneak peek?

Get a discount: Enter 20GOOG for 20% off your day pass. Register here.

Come visit booth 1001 to chat about Analytics, AdWords, TV Ads, YouTube, AdSense & more.

Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team
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We'd like to remind you about an upcoming webinar on how to drive results with contextual targeting. The event is on Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 11:00am PST / 1:00pm CST / 2:00pm EST.

In this webinar, learn more about how contextual targeting can drive results for your clients - e.g.:
  • Contextual targeting strategies for specific marketing objectives
  • The Contextual Targeting Tool, build and optimize better-performing campaigns in minutes
  • Tips for boosting performance of contextually-targeted campaigns
For more details on the content being covered, visit last month's blog post. To register for the webinar, click here.

Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team
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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
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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
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It’s no secret that video consumption is growing. Fast. As more devices find their places in people’s homes and pockets, more video consumption is happening across live and time-shifted TV, computers, tablets, and mobile phones. What is most interesting, is while online video consumption has exploded, time spent watching TV has in fact also continued to grow, with the average US adult clocking in 158 hours of TV time per month.*

People are simply consuming more content than ever before and TV is still the center of that experience, remaining an effective way to broadcast your message to a national audience of engaged viewers. What's more is the link between TV and online behavior continues to emerge and strengthen, especially considering that nearly 60% of people now watch TV and surf the internet simultaneously.* If you're rolling your eyes at the prospect of spending media dollars on a mass medium like TV, hear us out because we believe that television advertising is still relevant and has become better targeted. Whether you’re a seasoned TV buyer or just beginning to think about offline media, a strategic approach to integrating TV into your larger media plan is absolutely critical. When planning, consider the following: marketing objectives, target audience, and seasonality.

Identifying marketing objectives is the first, most crucial step. What are the outcomes you’re anticipating from TV advertising? Is the goal of your campaign general branding or to increase sales of a specific product? As you can tell, different objectives lead to a very different budget allocation, core message (approach to creative), and campaign success metrics. For example, if your TV campaign goal is to sell 1,000,000 units of product X, your creative should contain specific production information, direct calls-to-action and at least one sales outlet (i.e. 1-800 number , a specific website URL, in-store coupon code, or all of the above). Using trackable mechanisms brings a new dimension to ROI measurement in TV, especially with innovations like Google's call reporting feature.

What about targeting? Increased viewership fragmentation within the TV universe (more program/network choices in any given time slot) has actually make it easier to pinpoint your target audience on TV since programming has become so interest specific. For instance, to reach females 25-54 who enjoy cooking and gardening, networks including Food Network and HGTV immediately come to mind. What’s great about Google’s TV Ads platform is that we’ve taken targeting even further by introducing technology and search-based targeting tools to the TV buying process. Google TV Ads allows you to choose specific networks, programs and even defined audiences based on demographics and interests. These features allow you to find and target your audience across 100+ networks reaching nearly 35M homes in the US, or almost 1/3 of the US population through one single platform.*

Lastly, timing and seasonality are of key importance. If your product or service is impacted by seasonality, it’s important to plan well in advance. For example, New Year resolutions bring finances, weight loss and fitness to people’s minds – a perfect opportunity for advertisers in these spaces to increase marketing efforts and reach consumers at this critical time. Planning in advance will allow you to have the required budgets and a sense of which media targets to hit as we ring in the New Year. To learn more about Google TV Ads and how to launch a targeted TV campaign in minutes, please visit www.google.com/tvads.

*Source: The Nielsen Company., Three Screen Report Q1’2010
*Google TV Ads will offer nearly 35M homes in 2011 with the integration of new cable partners DIRECTV and Verizon FiOs.

Posted by Chris Henrotin and Neha Mandel, TV Ads Team
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We're pleased to share another tips and tools update from our friends at the Inside AdWords Blog. We hope you find it useful for optimizing clients' keywords.

- The Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

We want to thank you for all the feedback you’ve given us on the Keyword Tool. The first thing you told us is that you want more keywords that are better targeted to your account and searches, and we’ve made improvements in this area. We’ve also added features such as better filters, the ability to star keywords, and copy them as text. And we’re not done yet! You can help us understand what’s important to you by continuing to provide us with feedback. Below is a more detailed look at some of our new features.

There are three new ways to filter and refine your keyword list. With our new updates, you can:

  1. Choose specific terms to include or exclude from your keyword list.
  2. Use the ‘More like these’ button to search for terms that are similar to the specific keyword ideas you've selected from the table.
  3. Get only results that include the exact words or phrases (and their close synonyms) you’ve typed in the search box.


Adding stars to keywords
Add stars to keywords that you'd like to save while you're still searching for new keyword ideas. You can review your starred keywords in the "Stars" panel on the left side of the tool.

‘View as text’ button
View your selected keywords in text form, so that you can easily edit them and paste them in a spreadsheet or AdWords Editor.


Your continued feedback is important, so please keep sending us your comments and we'll post about more improvements here.

Posted by Alexandra Kenin, Product Marketing Manager

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[Note: this is cross-posted from the Inside AdWords Blog]

Do you stay awake at night wondering where your bids are? Do you plan your vacations around fluctuations in click volume? Have you taken AdWords for Mobile as your +1 to a family wedding?

Managing an AdWords account to its full potential takes time - time that you could spend managing other important parts of your business. That’s why we’ve developed automated rules, a new feature available to US advertisers that lets you get the benefit of 24-hour account management while leaving you free to focus on other important things.

With automated rules, you’re able to create rules to automate bid, budget, and status changes on a specific part of your account (selected keywords, ad groups, campaigns, and ads) that are triggered at a particular time. For example, automated rules could be created to perform the following tasks:
  • Enable ads promoting a special offer late on a Sunday night when the offer goes live
  • Automatically raise your bid to the first page CPC for all keywords in a campaign that contain the word ‘sale’
  • Generate more traffic on your peak shopping days by automatically increasing your daily budget on Mondays and decreasing it on Wednesdays


Let’s walk through an example of creating a rule within a campaign to increase keyword bids for all keywords with a position worse than 4 so far today. First, we’ll navigate to the Keyword tab of the campaign, click the ‘Automate’ dropdown, and choose “Change Max. CPC bids when...”

In the window that appears, we’ll create our rule to raise bids for all but deleted keywords in the campaign by 10%. We’ll set specific parameters to make sure the rule is only applied when certain criteria are met. In this case, we’ll add a requirement that the average position must be worse than 4 so far today for any bid changes to be made.

Then, we’ll specify that the rule should be performed every day at 12pm using data from the same day. We’ll name our rule and choose to keep track of changes by receiving an email each time the rule runs.

As an important last step, we’ll click ‘Preview results,’ to see a list of changes that would be made if the rule were to run at that moment. When we’re satisfied that everything is in order, we’ll click ‘Save.’

To manage the rules you’ve created and keep track of changes automatically made to the account each day, visit the ‘Control panel and library’ section of your account and click ‘Rules.’

Automated rules will be gradually launched to US advertisers over the coming weeks. If you regularly perform manual tasks in your account, we encourage you to give automated rules a try. Once you’ve done so, we’d love to hear your feedback for how we can make automated rules even better. So let us know how it goes!

For more information on AdWords automated rules, visit Google Ad Innovations.

Posted by Lisa Coffey, Product Marketing Manager

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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
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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
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YouTube reports that it has served its 500,000,000th Promoted Video view this week. This ad product combines the branding capabilities of video with the direct response action of search advertising, allowing advertisers to promote their videos against search results or related videos on YouTube. Additionally, with the Promoted Videos API, agencies can now more easily manage complex campaigns across multiple clients. For additional information, please see the full story on the YouTube blog.

Posted by Jay Akkad, Product Manager, YouTube
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