As the Inside AdWords blog approaches its three year anniversary we thought it would be useful to repeat a few reader favorites from our distant past, for those of you who have joined us only recently.Read More

As the Inside AdWords blog approaches its three year anniversary we thought it would be useful to repeat a few reader favorites from our distant past, for those of you who have joined us only recently.

Today we re-visit a popular post from 2006, regarding the several ways in which you'll see 'CPC' mentioned in your account.

---

Over the years, a specialized vocabulary has evolved around cost-per-click (CPC) advertising, and many newer advertisers find themselves a bit at sea until they've spent a good amount of time with their accounts -- and in the AdWords Help Center, where they'll find a helpful glossary of the most commonly used terms.

One particular area of confusion revolves around the three types of CPCs -- Maximum CPC, Average CPC, and Minimum CPC -- so let's take a closer look at these terms:

CPC is an abbreviation for cost-per-click, and refers to the cost that you will pay (per click) when a user clicks on your ad.

Maximum CPC is a maximum amount that is set by you, the advertiser, and defines the most you wish to pay for a click on a keyword. Keep in mind that you don't automatically pay this maximum amount because the AdWords Discounter will always reduce the amount you are charged to be just one cent more than the minimum necessary to keep your position on the page.

Average CPC (also seen as Avg. CPC in your account) is literally that: an average. Since each click you receive may have a different CPC depending on a variety of factors, we show you the Average CPC in your account to give you an effective overview. The Average CPC is determined by totalling the cost of all clicks and then dividing that total by the number of clicks.

Minimum CPC (more commonly known as the minimum bid) is an amount based on the keyword's Quality Score that is assigned to each keyword in your account. The minimum bid is the least amount you may pay per click in order for your keyword to show ads.

We hope this sheds some light on the subject - and invite you to do a little further exploring in the searchable Help Center, if you'd like a greater depth of detail.

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

In January, we invited AdWords advertisers to join a beta test of a new feature: demographic bidding. Many of you responded and helped make that test a success, and we'd like to offer our sincere thanks.Read More

In January, we invited AdWords advertisers to join a beta test of a new feature: demographic bidding. Many of you responded and helped make that test a success, and we'd like to offer our sincere thanks.

Today we're announcing that demographic bidding is now available for all AdWords advertisers.

What is demographic bidding? It's a feature that helps you target your ads to users of a particular age group (such as ages 18-24), by gender, or to combinations of those groups. You can use demographic bidding whether you are using contextual or placement targeting and with both CPC and CPM bidding. You can refine your reach based on users' gender and age on certain sites in the Google content network such as MySpace and Friendster, whose users provide that information about themselves. AdWords receives the data in anonymous and aggregate form from participating partner sites, which means that users can’t be personally identified.

Here's an example of how demographic bidding works: suppose you sell women's basketball shoes and want your ad to be seen by 18-24 year-old females. You could raise your bids to increase the frequency with which those users see your ads. You can also restrict your ads from certain users if you think they're not meeting your ROI goals. In the case of women's basketball shoes, you might find that the male, 18-24 year-old demographic is receiving a significant number of impressions but not clicking-through or converting well, and decide to restrict that group.

Overall, demographic bidding gives you more control over the demographic groups who see your ads. You can also use demographic reports, available in the AdWords Report Center, to get insight into how your ads perform for specific demographics. These metrics can help you decide how to adjust your bid modifiers and restricts to reach the audiences that give you the most clicks and the best ROI.

Lastly, it's helpful to know that demographic bidding and demographic site selection are two separate ways of targeting your ads. Demographic site selection, found in the AdWords Placement Tool, helps you find and target entire websites that, in general and based on comScore data, have the audience you're trying to reach. On the other hand, demographic bidding lets you modify your bids or restrict your ads' visibility based on the age and gender of the users viewing your ads on participating sites in the Google content network.

Ready to give it a try? Learn more and get started.

Posted by Trevor, Inside AdWords crew

Next week, specialists from Google's Print Ads team will host two free online seminars called "Now What? Getting The Most From Your Print Campaign." These sessions will focus on how to develop and optimize highly effective print campaigns, as well as techniques for measuring success.Read More

Next week, specialists from Google's Print Ads team will host two free online seminars called "Now What? Getting The Most From Your Print Campaign." These sessions will focus on how to develop and optimize highly effective print campaigns, as well as techniques for measuring success.

The two webinars cover identical content, so you can sign up here for either the session on March 25th or the one on the 26th. Afterwards, you'll receive an email with your access information. You can sign up anytime prior to the event but spots tend to fill up quickly. Grab yours early.

Posted by Christian, Inside AdWords crew

Regular readers may have noticed that we've offered quite a number of webinars lately. If you've been waiting for an 'entry level' webinar to help you learn to manage your campaigns using ...Read More

Regular readers may have noticed that we've offered quite a number of webinars lately. If you've been waiting for an 'entry level' webinar to help you learn to manage your campaigns using AdWords Editor, we have excellent news for you.

On March 20th at 11-12pm PDT, Mollie Klurfeld, an AdWords Editor specialist, will be presenting a free "Introduction to AdWords Editor" webinar. The agenda includes demonstrations on how to use AdWords Editor to make the following bulk changes:

• Adding campaigns, ad groups, ad text, and keywords
• Editing ad texts and keywords
• Copying/moving ad groups and keywords
• Find/replace ad text, find duplicate keywords
• Advanced bid and URL changes

Following these demonstrations, you'll also have the opportunity to ask questions of our team of specialists. We hope you'll join us.

If you'd like to attend, please register here. Or, you may join the session right before it begins -- by using the 'Join Event Now' entry fields on that same page.

For more information about AdWords Editor, please visit this page.

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

Over the last year, we've released a number of new tools, which all have the same goal of giving you more transparency and control when advertising on the Google content network ...Read More

Over the last year, we've released a number of new tools, which all have the same goal of giving you more transparency and control when advertising on the Google content network. We've talked about the benefits that placement performance reports, CPC bidding for placement targeting, and category exclusion each offer individually to content network campaigns, but we haven't yet discussed how these tools can be used together to improve performance.

If your advertising goals focus on getting customers to perform a particular action on your site, you can effectively measure these statistics by using AdWords conversion tracking, Google Analytics, or ValueTrack. You can also follow our content network optimization tips by creating a separate content campaign, uploading ads specifically designed for the content network, and linking to landing pages that closely match the message in your ads.

In order to further improve your content network performance, you can use a combination of our tools to see detailed statistics about your content network campaigns and make changes accordingly.

• Placement performance reports and CPC bidding for placement targeting

After a campaign has accrued a significant number of clicks on the content network, you can run a placement performance report to see where your ads have appeared. We recommend that you focus on sites where your ads have received a statistically significant amount of traffic (about 50 clicks or more). For more suggestions on how to use placement performance reports, please see these best practices.

To increase traffic from sites that are performing well, consider creating a new placement-targeted campaign and selecting CPC bidding instead of CPM. This strategy allows you to bid more for high-performing sites without increasing your bids for the rest of your content network traffic in existing campaigns.

• Placement performance reports and category exclusion

If you run a placement performance report and notice URLs that have received a significant number of clicks, but are driving very few sales, you can first check these URLs to see if the low-performing pages you're appearing on are similar in any way.

You can then use the Site and Category Exclusion tool to see if any categories available for exclusion match the patterns you've seen across low-performing URLs. By viewing statistics for each category within the tool you can confirm that a category is performing poorly before you exclude it.

• Placement targeting and category exclusion

If you'd like to run a campaign focused on increasing awareness of your business, you can create a CPM-priced placement targeting campaign to reach your target audience. If your primary goal is to generate awareness or maximize impressions, you should consider selecting CPM instead of CPC pricing.

You can then exclude categories for your placement-targeted campaign if you know that pages matching a certain topic or page type don't fit your business objectives. This allows your ads to appear on the placements you've selected while avoiding pages classified in the categories you've excluded.

The above ideas are just a few of the ways you can use our new tools to improve your account's performance. If you're interested in a simpler way to meet cost/conversion goals for your content network campaigns, you can use our new Conversion Optimizer bidding feature for campaigns that meet our minimum requirements.

By experimenting with different strategies and focusing on the statistics in your account we hope that you continue to find new ways to advertise successfully on the content network in the future.

Posted by Heather, Inside AdWords crew

Today, Google completed its acquisition of DoubleClick. This acquisition is one of many steps we're taking toward enhancing monetization and serving technology for advertisers, agencies, and publishers, making search and display advertising more targeted, and improving advertising relevance for users.Read More

Today, Google completed its acquisition of DoubleClick. This acquisition is one of many steps we're taking toward enhancing monetization and serving technology for advertisers, agencies, and publishers, making search and display advertising more targeted, and improving advertising relevance for users.

Over the next few months, we'll work with advertisers, agencies, publishers, and users to determine the best approach for enhancing DoubleClick's offerings.

While the acquisition will bring about some exciting new opportunities, rest assured that it won't change our commitment to Google products, DoubleClick products, and our service to you.

For more information about the DoubleClick acquisition, please review our press release.

Posted by Trevor, Inside AdWords crew

We'd like to remind you that the Website Optimizer team will be presenting a free online seminar tomorrow, March 11th at 9 am PDT. This one hour session will provide a brief introduction to Website Optimizer, review testing best practices, and discuss some of the top elements to test on any webpage. There is still time to sign up, so if you would like to attend, please register ...Read More

We'd like to remind you that the Website Optimizer team will be presenting a free online seminar tomorrow, March 11th at 9 am PDT. This one hour session will provide a brief introduction to Website Optimizer, review testing best practices, and discuss some of the top elements to test on any webpage. There is still time to sign up, so if you would like to attend, please register here.

If you'd like to learn more about using Website Optimizer, you can also visit the Website Optimizer website.

Posted by Trevor, Inside AdWords crew

The Google Audio Ads and Google Analytics teams have been working hard to create integrated reporting tools so advertisers can more easily track the impact and the resulting ROI of their Audio Ads campaigns. We're very excited to announce that these tools are now available to AdWords and Analytics customers.

For the first time, advertisers can now easily track website visits, conversion rates, revenue, transactions, and other metrics generated by Audio Ads campaigns. These metrics are available in the Analytics tab of AdWords accounts, as well as in Analytics accounts.

As you can see in the image below, the Audio Campaign report shows the correlation between your campaign impressions and website traffic, for example. Keep in mind though, that the website traffic may include traffic generated by other channels, not just Audio Ads.

Read More

The Google Audio Ads and Google Analytics teams have been working hard to create integrated reporting tools so advertisers can more easily track the impact and the resulting ROI of their Audio Ads campaigns. We're very excited to announce that these tools are now available to AdWords and Analytics customers.

For the first time, advertisers can now easily track website visits, conversion rates, revenue, transactions, and other metrics generated by Audio Ads campaigns. These metrics are available in the Analytics tab of AdWords accounts, as well as in Analytics accounts.

As you can see in the image below, the Audio Campaign report shows the correlation between your campaign impressions and website traffic, for example. Keep in mind though, that the website traffic may include traffic generated by other channels, not just Audio Ads.

(Click on the image for a full-size version)

Bedding.com, a leading online home furnishings store and beta tester of the new report, used Google Audio Ads to reach their target customers in areas like Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, New York, and other smaller markets. Then, they used Google Analytics to analyze the reach and success of their campaign, by looking at website traffic, conversion rates, revenue, and more.

Here's what Ted Kavana, President & CEO of Bedding.com, had to say:

"Using Google Audio Ads and Google Analytics, we were able to reach thousands of new customers very fast and at an incredible price. As the customers arrived at Bedding.com, Google Analytics made it very simple to analyze the data and start preparing for our next advertising blitz."

Bedding.com has seen unique visits increase by over 32% and sales by 28% since running Audio Ads.

If you're new to Audio Ads and are interested in starting a campaign, just sign in to your AdWords account and look for the Other Campaign Types link at the bottom of the Campaign Summary page. From there, you can create an Audio Ads campaign. Once you've run your first radio campaign, the Audio Campaign report will automatically appear in your Google Analytics account if you've linked it to your AdWords account.

If you already run Audio Ads campaigns, learn more about how you can use the Audio Campaign report to track your progress.

Posted by Heather, Inside AdWords crew

As part of our continuing efforts to improve the user experience, we will soon incorporate an additional factor into Quality Score: landing page load time. Load time is the amount of time it takes for a user to see the landing page after clicking an ad.Read More

As part of our continuing efforts to improve the user experience, we will soon incorporate an additional factor into Quality Score: landing page load time. Load time is the amount of time it takes for a user to see the landing page after clicking an ad.

Why are we doing this?
Two reasons: first, users have the best experience when they don't have to wait a long time for landing pages to load. Interstitial pages, multiple redirects, excessively slow servers, and other things that can increase load times only keep users from getting what they want: information about your business. Second, users are more likely to abandon landing pages that load slowly, which can hurt your conversion rate.

When are we making this change?
In the next few weeks, we will add load time evaluations to the Keyword Analysis page (we'll notify you when they are available). You will then have one month to review your site and make necessary adjustments.

After the one month review period, this load time factor will be incorporated into your keywords' Quality Scores. Keywords with landing pages that load very slowly may get lower Quality Scores (and thus higher minimum bids). Conversely, keywords with landing pages that load very quickly may get higher Quality Scores and lower minimum bids.

To learn more about the upcoming change, please see this article in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

We've updated the Site Exclusion tool to give you more control over where your ads appear on the Google content network. It's now called the Site and Category Exclusion tool ...Read More

We've updated the Site Exclusion tool to give you more control over where your ads appear on the Google content network. It's now called the Site and Category Exclusion tool, and it allows you to exclude certain categories of webpages from your content network campaigns in addition to excluding individual sites.

If you find that you're repeatedly excluding many sites of the same type, either to optimize for the content network or to further control your campaign's exposure, using category exclusion can be a simpler way to control your ads' visibility. Category exclusion can be used with any type of campaign running on the content network: keyword-targeted or placement-targeted.

Here's how category exclusion works: when we use our contextual targeting technology to scan a page in the Google content network and determine relevant ads to show, we also check to see if the content on the page matches any of the topics or page types available for exclusion. If there is a match between a category you've excluded and the page's classification, your ads won't show on that page. We classify pages dynamically, so even as the content of a page changes your ads should be prevented from showing for categories you've excluded.

Before using category exclusion, it's important to consider the following points:

• All sites in the content network are already required to comply with Google's AdSense policies. Several levels of review are in place to detect that pages in the network comply with these guidelines. However, some advertisers have requested the ability to avoid additional types of content that don't meet their advertising goals, and we've released category exclusion in order to provide this control.
  
  
• Excluding a category could potentially block your ads from appearing on a number of relevant pages and severely impact your campaign performance. We recommend that you refer to the statistics provided in the Site and Category Exclusion tool before making any exclusions. Keep in mind that a low clickthrough rate on content network pages is not necessarily an indication of poor performance, especially if your goal is to maximize ROI. Further, your ads' clickthrough rate on the content network does not affect your quality score, minimum bids, or position on Google.com or other pages in the search network.
  
  
• While webpages are categorized to the best of our technology's ability, excluding a category does not guarantee that you have excluded every related webpage. If you see that your ad has shown on an undesired webpage, you can exclude that page by adding the URL through the tool's Sites tab.

Category exclusion is our latest tool to give you increased control over your content network campaigns. If you are looking for additional insight and flexibility when advertising on the Google content network, we encourage you to check out CPC bidding for placement targeting and Placement Performance reports.

Posted by Trevor, Inside AdWords crew

On Wednesday, March 5th from approximately 9am to 2pm PST, some web pages containing the AdWords Conversion Tracking code snippet presented visitors with a browser message indicating a Google server certificate had expired.Read More

On Wednesday, March 5th from approximately 9am to 2pm PST, some web pages containing the AdWords Conversion Tracking code snippet presented visitors with a browser message indicating a Google server certificate had expired.

This issue has since been fixed. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused.

Please note that conversion tracking data collected during this brief period may under-report the number of actual conversions achieved.

Posted by Trevor, Inside AdWords crew

On Saturday, March 8th, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PST due to our regularly scheduled maintenance. While you won't be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual.Read More

On Saturday, March 8th, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PST due to our regularly scheduled maintenance. While you won't be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual.

AdWords system maintenance typically occurs on the second Saturday of each month during the above times. We'll continue to update you via the blog as we always have, but you may want to take note of our intended dates and times to help you plan for any scheduled downtimes further down the road.

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew