Take advantage of advanced reports

For a long time, the Report Center has been the place to go to find detailed data about your campaign performance. Reports with dimensions like geographic performance and time of day can give you new insights through metrics that aren't available on the campaigns tab.

But there can be drawbacks to using the Report Center: customized reports take time to set up and run, and you have to navigate back to the Campaigns tab to take action on any insights you discover.

We're addressing these issues by better integrating advanced performance data into campaign management. Now, instead of running a placement performance report, you can manage your automatic placements on the Networks tab. Rather than run a search query report, you can use the "See search terms" option on the Keywords tab to see which searches are bringing up your ads. And if you prefer to look at your reports in a spreadsheet program, you now have the option to download nearly every table in your account (look under the "More actions..." menu above each table).

You can also use new segmentation functions to slice and dice your data directly within campaign management. Click on the "Filter and views" menu above your statistics, then choose the "Segment by" option to see different the levels of detail available for display.

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The segmentation options available to you differ depending on whether you're looking at keywords, ad groups or campaigns. If you're looking at keywords, you can segment by match type. If you're looking at campaigns or ad groups, you can segment by network to quickly compare your performance on Google and search partner sites to your performance on the Content Network.

In addition to these segmentation options, we've recently introduced time-based segmentation for your campaigns, ad groups and keywords. Now you can break out statistics by day, week, month, quarter or year to isolate changes in your performance. For example, if your performance summary graphs show a sharp decrease in clicks, segmenting by day can show you changes in other statistics that might explain why your drop in traffic occurred.

You can also segment by day of the week. This option is helpful if you're looking for help with ad scheduling. Try segmenting your performance for the past few months: if your performance is dramatically different on a given day of the week, you can modify your bids to account for the change in user behavior.

We'll be bringing even more data from the Report Center into the Campaigns tab over the coming months. So next time you're searching for insights you can use to improve your performance, you won't have to look very far.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 4:34 PM

Think2010: Recap of the Four Winning Moves webinar

Last week, Google’s US Managing Director Bonita Stewart hosted the 2nd webinar in the Think2010 series, entitled “Think2010: Four Winning Moves for 2010.” She discussed tools and strategies that you can use to differentiate your offerings, increase competitive advantage, and ultimately seize opportunities as the economy recovers. Below are the four key takeaways from the webinar:

1) Use precision - Flexibility yields stealing share: Utilizing precision through search can serve as the world’s largest focus group and allow you to understand how consumers want to engage with brands. Tools like Google Analytics and Insights for Search can help you increase this precision.

2) Develop deeper connections - Consumers want to connect: Understand your audience and how they are communicating, then develop marketing campaigns to target your ideal consumers. Utilizing new communication technologies within ad creatives can make your advertising more interactive. Advertising on community centric mediums like YouTube can help to increase brand engagement and ultimately help you develop deeper connections with consumers.

3) Innovate - Marry the art and the science: News and optimism about the economic recovery have increased over the past few months. Business leaders across the globe are thinking forward and seizing the opportunity to throw out old marketing rules and embrace innovation as they gear up for 2010. Large brands like GM and JetBlue, for example, are coming up with new digital strategies to act nimbly and ensure they're prepared for the opportunities the recovery will offer.

4) Be relevant - Consumers don’t stop searching: It’s important for you to stay engaged and in touch with consumer demands. Keeping a pulse on search trends is a live, real-time way for you to stay up to date on consumer interest and sentiment.

If you missed this webinar and would like to learn more, please visit the Google Business Channel on YouTube to see the recorded version. Also, be sure to stay engaged with the Think2010 series at www.google.com/think2010 where you can view videos, blog posts and future webinars.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew

Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 3:13 PM

Upgrade to AdWords Editor 7.6.1

AdWords Editor version 7.6.1 is now available for Windows and Mac. This new version includes support for ad scheduling, advanced location targeting, YouTube Promoted Video ads, and other features. For a complete list of changes and instructions, visit our release notes.

If you're already using AdWords Editor, you'll be prompted to upgrade automatically. If you're not already using it, you can visit our website to download AdWords Editor. To learn more, take a look at our AdWords Editor Help Center.

Posted by Emily Williams, Inside AdWords crew

Friday, November 13, 2009 at 7:57 AM

AdWords system maintenance on November 14th

On Saturday, November 14th, 2009 the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10AM to 2PM PST, for 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 from 10AM to 2PM.

We'll continue to update you via the blog as we always have, but please make note of the November 14th date and of our scheduled maintenance further down the road.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 6:15 PM

Announcing Product Listing Ads

Each day we see many users come to Google.com to research products and find where to buy them. To better serve these users, we've been testing a new feature of AdWords called Product Listing Ads. Product Listing Ads works with an advertiser's Google Merchant Center account to serve highly targeted ads that include richer product information directly in the ad itself - including product image, price, and merchant name. Starting today, U.S. users searching on Google.com may begin to see Product Listing Ads more frequently on their shopping related queries.

Two examples of Product Listing Ads (click for full size image)

Product Listing Ads is part of our effort to simplify the advertising process for merchants with large product inventories. Some of the key features of Product Listing Ads include:

• Pay only for results: Product Listing Ads are charged on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis, which means that you only pay when a user clicks on your ad and completes a purchase on your site. Because Product Listing Ads is charged on a CPA basis, it offers a risk-free way for you to reach a larger audience on Google.com.
• List your entire inventory: Product Listing Ads requires no keywords or additional ad text. Whenever a user enters a search query relevant to an item in your Google Merchant Center account, Google will automatically show the most relevant products along with the associated image, price and product name. Product Listing Ads makes it easy for you to promote your entire product inventory on Google.com.

At this time, Product Listing Ads is still a beta feature and is only available to a limited number of retail advertisers. Over time, we'll increase the number of users who see Product Listing Ads as well as the number of advertisers able to participate.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Google Ad Planner: Now even easier to find the right audience for your campaigns

In our ongoing effort to give you in-depth data for your media plan, we've released a number of Google Ad Planner enhancements that provide a more granular view of where your audience can be found.

Subdomain data
We've added subdomain data to Google Ad Planner to give you a more detailed view of sites. This information can help you refine your media plan by providing more information about specific pages.

With subdomain data, you can search for subdomains; view the top subdomains based on total domain traffic for a site; view traffic, demographics and other data for the subdomain itself; and add subdomains to your media plan. Learn how to search for subdomains.

Ad placements
Ad placements are specific sections on a website where advertising can be purchased, such as the middle right section of a page.

Google Ad Planner now offers ad placement data so that you can make better informed decisions about where to target your ads. You can review placement data for sites in the Google Content Network, and beta test publishers using Google Ad Manager. Additional placement data is coming soon. Learn how to search for ad placements in Google Ad Planner.

Reach and relevance at a glance
With our new interactive graph, you can easily see which sites in your plan provide the best reach and relevance. In its default setting, the graph will compare sites in your search results by audience reach and composition index. Sites with the most reach will appear in the top-left quadrant. Sites with the most relevance will appear in the bottom-right quadrant. Sites near the top-right quadrant will have the best combination of both reach and relevance. You can customize the graph to visualize and compare sites in a variety of ways.

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In the example above, a graph of sites reaching seniors age 65 or older shows that newsmax.com has the best relevance, facebook.com has the best reach, and nytimes.com has a mix of both.

More detailed publisher data
Publishers and site owners can now use Google Ad Planner to share additional Google Analytics data points such as page views, unique visitors, total visits, average visits per visitor, and average time on site. As a result, you can feel even more confident in the accuracy of Ad Planner data, and make better informed decisions about the sites you include in your media plan.

We hope you will try out these new features, and please send us your feedback so we can continue to improve Google Ad Planner.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew

Think2010: Stay focused on the fundamentals

As you look to get ahead of the recovery and set yourself up for success in 2010, let's revisit some of the lessons learned during the recession that you can apply going forward. We've been compiling both forward-looking perspectives and retrospective wisdom on our Fast.Forward. channel on YouTube. In this week's post, we want to call out some advice from Rick Carpenter of the agency DDB in Chicago.

From Rick's perspective, the recession underscored the fundamental truth in marketing: you need to continually, and earnestly, focus on the customer. This means understanding what's going on in their lives and what their mindset is, and it's critical to be relevant to the people that the message will reach.

The recession also taught us that marketers must retrench and commit to their own fundamental core values. Your brand and company shouldn't continually have to reinvent itself to adapt to the macro-economic climate. As you prepare for 2010, is your positioning clear?

Listen to what Rick has to say here:

(click to watch video on YouTube)

To stay engaged with our Think2010 series more broadly, visit www.google.com/think2010.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 11:15 AM

New alerts for your campaigns

Alerts are a great way to stay on top of changes in your account. In addition to the account alerts already available for billing and campaign maintenance, you can also use custom alerts to monitor shifts in key metrics like clicks and cost. We'd like to tell you about two additional alert options that we're introducing today.

First, we've added alerts for new keyword and budget ideas in the Opportunities tab. Ideas are personalized tips to help you potentially improve your campaigns' effectiveness. New ideas are usually generated for campaigns and ad groups every few weeks, but you may miss ideas that can expand your coverage and boost your traffic if you don't check the Opportunities tab regularly. Now, when there are new ideas available for your review, you'll see them highlighted along with the rest of your campaign alerts.

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Second, if you're using AdWords conversion tracking, you can now create custom alerts for changes in conversion volume, conversion rate, and cost per conversion. By setting alerts for your conversion data, you can make sure that you're quickly notified about fluctuations in your key metrics.

Please note that we're still working to bring custom alerts to all linked accounts for My Client Center (MCC) users. In the meantime, you can still set custom alerts for your individual accounts if you're able to log into them directly.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Monday, November 09, 2009 at 11:19 AM

AdWords Conversion Tracking is now even easier

If you use AdWords Conversion Tracking, you may have noticed that the interface for this tool has been redesigned so that it's easier to implement, monitor, and troubleshoot.

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There are now 3 easy-to-use tabs - Conversions, Webpages, and Code - that help you manage your conversion data. Let's take a closer look at each of them:

Conversions: This is where you see information about the conversion actions you're tracking.

• The "Tracking Status" column lets you know whether a conversion action is tracking properly. It shows you if a conversion has ever been recorded, if it has recently stopped recording, or if it's working just fine.
• The "Value" column shows the accumulated value of the conversions you've received based on the value you've assigned to each action.
• The "New Conversion" button allows you to easily create new conversion actions or import them from a linked Google Analytics account. (Note: In order to import Google Analytics goals, you'll first need to follow a few steps.)

(Click to see full size image)

Webpages: Here, you'll see which pages on your site are getting conversions. You can also see a breakdown of the number of conversions per page on your site. This is useful for troubleshooting, as you can make sure conversions are coming from the pages you expect and identify pages that are not reporting conversion activity.

Code: This is where you get the tracking code for each conversion action. You can also change the value of an action, which helps you calculate ROI.

If you're not currently using AdWords Conversion Tracking, now is a great time to start. Conversion Tracking gives you an accurate way to measure the success of your AdWords campaigns. You can learn more about the benefits and how to implement it here.

We hope you enjoy the new interface and happy optimizing!

Posted by Emily Williams, Inside AdWords crew

Thursday, November 05, 2009 at 2:52 PM

Think2010: Four Winning Moves webinar

In last week's Think2010 post, we highlighted the value of search marketing to prompt direct conversions and advance branding goals. In this post, US Managing Director Bonita Stewart briefly discussed the role search played during the economic downturn.

On Tuesday, November 10th, Bonita Stewart will be hosting our second Think2010 webinar titled "Think2010: Four Winning Moves for 2010." Bonita will elaborate on fundamental search advertising strategies that marketers should employ to get ahead of the recovery moving into 2010. She'll also dive deeper into the relevance and importance of search as a core behavior, the significance of innovation in marketing, the value of developing the deeper connections that consumers are seeking, and the precision needed to target the right audience and speak to their interests.

In our ever-changing marketplace, it's important to thoughtfully plan the decisions that will differentiate your offerings, increase your competitive advantage, and create opportunities as the economy recovers. If you're interested in attending the Think2010: Four Winning Moves for 2010 webinar, please register here.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew

Wednesday, November 04, 2009 at 10:46 AM