If you're planning on attending Search Engine Strategies San Francisco in August, stop by our in-conference Learn with Google event, Search and Beyond with Google AdWords and DoubleClick, to learn how Google makes the web work for you. We'll have speakers across Google Search, the Google Display Network, and DoubleClick Search, with question and answer sessions following each presentation.

Tuesday, August 14

• Hear about recent enhancements to Google AdWords, Google Display Network and DoubleClick Search, as well as real-world examples of how these new solutions are already helping businesses solve some of their biggest challenges, presented by Ariel Bardin, Product Management Director - Google Search Ads
• Dive deep on how you can win the moments that matter with effective AdWords social, mobile and local solutions to reach your users, presented by Shannon Snow, Head of Industry - Education
• Learn about how DoubleClick Search helps marketers and agencies running some of the world's largest search campaigns more efficiently and effectitvely with Anthony Chavez, Senior Product Manager - DoubleClick Search
• Close the day with David Monsees, Product Manager - Google Display Network, to hear about how you can use the power of display advertising to extend the impact of your search campaigns with remarketing and contextual targeting

Wednesday, August 15

• During How to Win with Google & Bing, Ryan Gibson, Manager on the Agency business Development Team, will join the discussion on best practices for optimizing your campaigns, keywords, match-types, ads, bids, targeting, landing pages and quality scores for each network and highlight the most important differences that can make all the difference in highly-competitive markets
• Learn about Better SEM in a Cross-Channel World with Head of Emerging Products & Markets Stephen Yap, who will explore what marketers and agencies should expect from the next generation of search management platforms

The full SES agenda can be found here.

Additionally, we'll be offering 20-minute account optimization sessions with Google AdWords specialists, and 20-minute product demonstrations with DoubleClick Search specialists. If you’re interested in learning more about new features or best practices, let us know by filling out the form here. The deadline to sign up is Wednesday, August 8, 2012.

Still haven’t registered? We're happy to offer advertisers a promotional code for 20% off when you buy a Conference pass to SES SF. Reference our discount code 20GOOG upon registration.

If past conferences are anything to go by, this should be a fun and educational event, with lots of folks to meet, contacts to make, and tips and tricks to learn. We hope to see you there!

Posted by Katie Miller, Google Ads Team

A few years back, we introduced interest based advertising, including remarketing, as a way to reach the right audience with your message and re-engage with customers who have visited your site.

Since then, clients have seen great results - more engagement, better ROI and higher sales. At the same time, remarketing is helping our publishers and is funding content online. And with simple tools like Why this Ad?, the Ads Preferences Manager and Mute This Ad, we’re giving users increased control over the ads they see on Google and across the web.

In response to our clients’ feedback, we’ve been working to make these solutions even better: simplifying the process of getting started with remarketing, giving you more flexibility in managing your remarketing lists and adding new ways to connect with your target audience.

Some specific improvements that are starting to roll out:

• Smarter, more flexible ways to manage remarketing: Managing your remarketing lists (or getting started with remarketing) is easier and more flexible than ever. We’ve upgraded the AdWords remarketing tag so you only need to place it once across your entire site. You can then define as many lists as you like in AdWords—for example, for pages where the URL contains the word “electronics.” For Google Analytics clients, remarketing today involves multiple tags. We are simplifying this, so that a small edit to your Analytics tag will soon enable you to create remarketing lists right from your Analytics interface. Like lists created with the AdWords remarketing tag, these lists can be used to run campaigns on the Google Display Network. For more details on what’s rolling out in the the coming weeks, check here for the new AdWords remarketing tag and here for Google Analytics.


• Reaching the right audience: Remarketing delivers great results, but we think there’s even more we can do to help you reach potential customers and connect with a wide audience. For example:
• Reaching similar audiences: In the coming weeks, we’re gradually adding a new option to enable you to show ads to audiences that are similar to those on your remarketing lists, but who may not have visited your site yet. 
•  Reaching the right audience with search ads: We’re expanding a test we’ve been running for search ads (described here). This beta allows you to customize your search campaigns, based on your AdWords remarketing lists. It's being made available to clients who have a managed account; reach out to your representative if you're interested.

When online advertising is working at its best, businesses are able to efficiently and effectively connect with their customers, publishers are able to fund their great content, and users see ads that are useful and compelling. We’re committed to investing in the tools—like the ones we’ve discussed today—that can help make this possible.

Posted by Brad Bender, Director, Product Management

With a growing number of searches happening on mobile devices, it's more important than ever to provide consumers with a positive mobile web experience when they click on your ads. We know that many of you are considering whether to build a mobile website or to use responsive design. Our friends at the Mobile Blog recently wrote about the differences between them, and how you can decide which is right for you.

Visit the Google Mobile Ads Blog to learn more.

Posted by Katie Miller, Google Ads Team

Also posted on the Google Commerce Blog

We announced that we’re creating a new shopping experience, Google Shopping, to empower merchants of all sizes to compete effectively. Through feedback from our merchant partners, we understand that the transition to the new Google Shopping experience may seem intimidating for first time AdWords advertisers. We take this feedback seriously and want you, our merchant partners, to know that we’re here to help.

As a first step, today we’re launching a new simplified setup flow for Product Listing Ads in the familiar Merchant Center interface. The new setup flow provides a step-by-step guide on how to create an AdWords account and set up a Product Listing Ad campaign, as well as how to control when and where your products appear in Google Shopping with bids. You can also view basic campaign reporting through your Merchant Center account.

We’re excited to launch a series of Hangouts on Air to help guide small and medium sized businesses through the transition to Google Shopping. This series of Hangouts will guide you through an introduction to Google Shopping--giving you all the information you need to list your products on Google Shopping:

Session 1: Google Shopping Introduction and Overview: Friday, July 13th - 9:30am PDT
Session 2: Introduction to Merchant Center: Tuesday, July 17th - 9:30am PDT
Session 3: Creating and Optimizing Your Product Listing Ads for Google Shopping: Friday July, 20th - 9:30am PDT
Session 4: Trusted Stores Overview and Setup: Monday, July 23rd - 10:30am PDT

To tune into this Hangout On Air:

1) Visit the Google Ads Google+ Page at 9:30am PDT / 12:30pm EDT.
2) Look for the post in our stream (see image below for what it will look like), and click to tune in. Be sure you’re signed into Google+!


We look forward to seeing you there, but if you cannot join us, we’ll be posting each session to this blog and the Google Business YouTube channel.

Posted by Jon Venverloh, Senior Manager, Google Shopping

As online marketers, you are constantly juggling. From building and optimizing campaigns to analyzing reports and managing budgets - sometimes all before you’ve had your morning coffee. And while there are many tools and solutions to help automate these tasks - from AdWords Editor, DoubleClick Search, and everything in between - choosing the right one for your business can be challenging.

Please join us for a webinar tomorrow, Tuesday, July 10, 2012 that will shine a light on the powerful Google tools available to agencies and marketers to more efficiently run some of the largest search campaigns in the world. Specifically we’ll cover:

• An overview of four tools -- AdWords Editor, automated rules, AdWords scripts and DoubleClick Search -- to help you navigate your choices and make the best decision for your business 
• Example use cases and best practices 
• Requirements for adoption 

Date: Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Time: 10amPST / 1pmEST

Register at google.com/ads/webinars

We hope to see you there!

 Posted by Katie Miller, Google Ads Team