We've just released two videos to help you make the most of My Client Center (MCC) features released over the last few months.

First, learn about the different permission levels available to users at the MCC-level, how you can invite users, and how you can edit their level of access:



Next, check out the changes to reporting within MCC, including how to customize with segments, filters, columns, as well as how to add email-only users to scheduled reports:



For additional resources on MCC, including FAQs on the new optional-login accounts feature, visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Katie Miller, Agency Team

[Note: this has been cross-posted from the Google Mobile Ads Blog]

We’re always looking for new mobile insights to help advertisers better understand the mobile environment, build their brands and grow their businesses on this platform. Today, we’re announcing that we’re teaming up with Digitas, an integrated brand agency, to deliver original mobile marketing insights and usage research. The initiative will combine original Google and Digitas search and marketing data to forecast trends, inform investment strategies, and drive the creation of mobile optimized websites. Below is the the first of many outputs from this collaboration -- specific insights from Mother’s Day 2011.

Mother’s Day is the second largest U.S. consumer spending holiday¹. As we’ve discussed in previous posts, the mobile device has become a trusted shopping companion for many users and this Mother’s Day consumers once again turned to mobile to help them find the perfect gift for mom. Google analyzed both mobile and desktop search behavior in the days leading up to Mother’s Day and here’s some initial findings:

• On Mother's Day 2011 (May 9th), 33% of Google search queries on the term “flowers” came from mobile devices.
• Mobile search queries for "flowers" both on Mother’s Day 2011 and in the week leading up to the holiday increased by over 100% compared with the same periods last year.
• In the week prior to Mother’s Day desktop searches for “flowers” increased from Monday to Friday, then declined on the weekend, while mobile queries steadily increased all week and maxed out on the weekend. While this is in line with general mobile/desktop usage trends, on the weekend of Mother’s Day, the increase in mobile searches on “flowers” was much higher that usual, as last minute shoppers scrambled to find a bouquet for mom.
• Google searches on “mother’s day gifts” were relatively consistent across mobile and desktop suggesting that perhaps flowers were the last minute purchase of choice for many Mother’s Day shoppers.

Relative to last year, Mother’s day shoppers looking for flowers relied more heavily on mobile.

Mobile technology is clearly changing the way businesses engage their consumers. In response to Mother’s Day activity, Rich Lesperance, Heads of Online Marketing at Walgreens, commented: “Mobile is critical to our long-term goals of reaching customers and building relationships. Our shoppers are busy and on-the-go, and mobile is the gateway to provide them information, access and service when they need it. This is especially true for last minute shopping around important holidays like Mother’s Day.”

Over the course of the year, our collaboration with Digitas will look at a range of mobile trends to better understand how the advancement of mobile technology and smartphone adoption impacts consumer behavior. We look forward to sharing them with you.

¹National Retail Federation survey, April 2010

Posted by: Torrence Boone, Managing Director, Google Agency Business Development

As part of our continued effort to improve the account management tools for agencies and large advertisers, we rolled out optional-login accounts, a new feature that simplifies the account creation process within My Client Center (MCC) by enabling a new AdWords account to be created within the MCC without a login or password.

The benefit of optional-login accounts is that it allows agencies and clients to create new AdWords accounts with the MCC without the need to create email addresses and passwords exclusively for the new account.

Here are some FAQs to help you take advantage of this feature:

1. How do I create an optional-login account in AdWords?
When you click on the button ‘Create Account’ within your MCC, complete the three required fields: account name, time zone and currency. You’ll also see a collapsible link to “Invite another user (optional),” which provides the option to invite a user to the account. Even if you opt not to, once you click save, you will have a new, live account.

2. What if I want an account to have a login?
You can either “Invite another user (optional)” during the account creation process, or follow the normal process for inviting a user to an AdWords account: go to the “My Account” tab, click on “Account Access” and choose the link “Invite other users."

3. Where do notifications go for optional-login accounts?
Red Alert Account Notifications (such as billing notifications or policy violations emails) will be sent to the email associated with the MCC. For non-red alerts, make sure you’ve opted in to notifications on the ‘My Client Settings’ page at the MCC level. You also may opt into performance suggestions and newsletters specifically for the optional login account. Such notifications will be sent to the email associated with the MCC.

Visit the AdWords Help Center for additional FAQs for optional-login account creation.

Posted by Katie Miller, Agency Team

A guest post by Avinash Kaushik, Google Digital Marketing Evangelist

I am so incredibly impressed with the rapid evolution of advertising and marketing possibilities around us. Offline, online, social-- there are so many things to do, and so little time (and budget!).

One of the absolute delights of online marketing (regardless of type) is the amount of accountability you can bring to your marketing budgets. How many people looked at your ad in a magazine and took action? You can measure this for your digital display ads. How many potential customers how were actively looking for cars, saw your ad on TV, and then went to your destination? You can measure this for your search ads. How often do prospects listen to your radio ads completely and then take engage with you? You can measure this for your YouTube ads.

I could keep going. It is so exciting what we can measure, regardless of the online channels we use, or the measurement tools in which we have access.

And yet, it is heartbreaking how little we bring all this awesomeness to bear upon our digital efforts. So much of our marketing is simply replicating our offline advertising online. And what is particularly heartbreaking to me, the author of two books on web analytics, is how we bring our low expectations of offline measurement to our online efforts.

So let's change this. Together.

On May 19th I conducted a webinar that will shares my point of view on three stages of digital marketing and measurement. See it here:

On May 9, 2011, we announced the Google APIs Discovery Service, which is the secret sauce behind the new client libraries. This service exposes machine readable metadata about Google APIs including:

1. A directory of supported APIs.
2. A "Discovery document" for each of the supported APIs that includes:

• A list of API resource schemas based on JSON Schema.
• A list of API methods and available parameters for each method.
• A list of available OAuth 2.0 scopes.

3. Inline documentation of methods, parameters, and available parameter values.

For more information, please check out the full post about the Discovery Service on the Official Google Code blog.

Posted by The Agency Blog Team

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

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