Richer information about your business can help potential customers understand why your product or service is right for them. Advertisers have long found it valuable to show positive reviews, awards, or accolades in their ads. Today, we're bringing this capability to your search ads. With review extensions (beta), you can show accolades from reputable third parties right in your search ads.
You can submit either a direct quote or a summary of a key point from a review, as shown above.
It's important, both for you and for users, that the reviews provided be high-quality:
Content displayed in review extensions must come from a reputable 3rd party source, and must comply with standard AdWords policies.
It’s your responsibility to ensure that you’re allowed to use a specific review in your ads.
To protect users and other businesses from deceptive claims, we use automated and human-based systems to confirm the validity and policy compliance of all review extensions.
Currently, review extensions are available globally in English only. Please stay tuned for updates as we expand to other languages. We're looking for more advertisers to participate and soon we'll be adding support for review extensions in the AdWords interface. If you would like to participate in the beta, please contact your AdWords representative.
Posted by Lakshmi Kumar Dabbiru, Software Engineer, AdWords
Advertisers understand that sometimes it's easier to 'show' rather than 'tell' when promoting a business. As search ads continue to evolve, we want to make it easier for you to do both. Today we're announcing the beta launch of image extensions, which will allow you to add new visual elements to your search ads. We’ve added many extensions to search ads to help you be more relevant to users. Image extensions enable you to more accurately convey the body style of a car, the cut of a pair of jeans, or a particular shade of eyeshadow, making your ads richer and more informative so they stand out in a crowded marketplace.
As the web evolves, Google users expect richer and more diverse content. More than one in six searches on Google today provide results with visual content. Image extensions will show in some cases when we determine that a search is likely for visual content. For example, it is more likely that your image extensions will show for a query like luxury car designs than locations of nearby car dealerships.
You can choose the images that you want displayed with your search ads and send them to us for review. You must have the necessary rights to the the images you wish to display with your ads. We encourage you to submit your images as we continue to experiment with and improve our visual ad formats.
Image extensions are currently running in English globally. If you are interested in participating in the image extensions beta, contact your account manager or fill out this form.
Posted by Awaneesh Verma, Product Manager, Ad Formats
Since introducing Dynamic Search Ads in beta in October, we’ve seen questions from around the web asking about real-world performance and recommendations for implementation. Today we’re grateful to share the perspectives of Matt Mierzewski and Jen Syverud at RKG, an online marketing services firm with B2B and B2C clients ranging from startups to the Fortune 500 (details about RKG below).
Here’s a short video followed by Q&A. RKG has further offered to answer any other questions you might have about their experience with Dynamic Search Ads over on their blog.
Q. What’s your strategy for using Dynamic Search Ads with your clients today?
We think of Dynamic Search Ads as an advertiser-specific broad match type. Here, instead of allowing Google to match searches related to your keywords, you're allowing them to match searches related to your website.
For advertisers without automated pay-per-click inventory-based management solutions, Dynamic Search Ads can help identify products that are new or re-emerging. The system is tremendous in keeping up with changes to inventory in real time. For example, a product line may have been suspended for years, but quietly (without the search marketing team's knowledge) appears back on the website. In this case, keywords for the product line would still be paused until the marketing team is made aware, but Dynamic Search Ads are able to catch the change immediately, create ads, and generate orders. As another example, for advertisers frequently offering clearance products, Dynamic Search Ads are similarly able to offer ads while these limited quantity items are in-stock. In both examples, Dynamic Search Ads act as a safety net for advertisers wishing to advertise on dynamic products and/or inventories.
Q. What were your main concerns with Dynamic Search Ads and how have you addressed them?
One initial concern was that Dynamic Search Ads would cannibalize existing traffic, siphoning it away from active keyword campaigns. What we found was that the vast majority of Dynamic Search Ads traffic was complementary to our campaigns. Another concern was that we would have little to no control over what keywords Google was able to match on. However, Google has provided a great deal of controls within the Dynamic Search Ads product to ensure that the matching queries are relevant to the advertiser.
Q. What does your typical implementation of Dynamic Search Ads look like?
Implementation strategies will vary. In general, however, it is wise to consider pages that the advertiser wishes to exclude, as well as any known keyword negatives within the accounts, and add those from day one. From there, segmenting pages into campaigns or ad groups based on product margin, conversion rates, and so forth will allow for custom max CPC bids and maximum ROI.
Q. What best practices would you suggest for using Dynamic Search Ads?
Through restrictive targeting, exclusions and negatives, tight budgets and close monitoring, Dynamic Search Ads can be made very low risk and the results you see should be encouraging. For conservative advertisers, start by targeting only product level pages in your best converting categories.
A higher-level strategy is to add a site-wide target at a conservative bid with appropriate exclusions, and then layer on additional, more finely targeted ad groups and copy with bids corresponding to their expected performance. This approach is similar to the best practices for running Product Listing Ads and ensures wide coverage, but with a preference towards better quality traffic.
Use the power-tools that Google has made available in both targeting specific pages, while excluding other pages and search queries.
Q. How is Dynamic Search Ads doing with respect to matching relevant queries and landing pages?
With Dynamic Search Ads we can see every search that triggers a dynamic ad, the headline generated, the landing page selected, and, of course, performance stats. The searches that we’ve seen targeted are absolutely relevant to the website content -- it’s the only place Google is able to generate its targeting information from. If the system is matching to any query that the advertiser does not care to be matched on to meet their performance goals, it is very easy to restrict that traffic by URL or Keyword level negatives.
Q. What kind of results are you seeing with Dynamic Search Ads across your clients? Which is it working best for?
We’ve seen Dynamic Search Ads incremental sales impact range from 0.5% to 12%, so it’s important to note that individual account results may vary. The product is compatible with our tracking and reporting systems which makes it easy to measure performance and do head-to-head comparisons with our existing keyword-based campaigns.
Dynamic Search Ads work best for advertisers that have an extensive product offering and well developed web pages for Google to index and match relevant content to.
Q. What do you focus on when optimizing Dynamic Search Ads?
Like other AdWords campaigns, proper campaign management and optimizations are a necessity. Just like broad match, the Dynamic Search Ads product is most successful with carefully selected negative keywords, pages and categories of the website that do not perform optimally, and/or are not goal-oriented. Also similar to broad match, advertisers should monitor queries that produce conversions, and add them back as keywords to other AdWords campaigns.
Q. To what degree do you think Dynamic Search Ads are cannibalizing organic search traffic?
We haven’t seen evidence of cannibalization. But we’ll continue to evaluate performance and, if needed, make adjustments.
Q. Would you recommend Dynamic Search Ads for novice-to-intermediate or intermediate-to-advanced advertisers?
RKG would recommend Dynamic Search Ads for intermediate-to-advanced advertisers. Because it necessitates ongoing management, and is best utilized as a complement to robust keyword campaigns, it’s not likely to be a good fit for novice advertisers. Additionally, as previously mentioned, the richer the site content, number of pages, and breadth of product offering, the more fruitful Dynamic Search Ads will be. Naturally, these characteristics lend themselves to more established and sophisticated campaigns and advertisers.
About RKG
Founded in 2003, RKG is a data-driven digital agency that combines savvy marketers with sophisticated technology to deliver unrivaled results for over 180 clients in paid search marketing, search engine optimization, multichannel attribution management, display advertising and comparison shopping management. Long recognized as the thought leader in search marketing, RKG clients range from start-ups to the Fortune-500, and include both B2C and B2B direct marketers in retail, travel, finance and education. RKG is an independent, privately held agency with offices in Charlottesville, VA, Bend, OR and Boston, MA.
This week we introduced Google+ Pages, a new way to get closer to your customers online. At that time we announced that you’d be able to link your Page to your AdWords campaigns, so that all your +1s -- from your Page, your website, ads and search results -- get tallied together and appear as a single total. We’re happy to announce that starting today, and rolling out to all advertisers globally over the rest of the week, we’re making this functionality available with a new AdWords feature called Social Extensions.
With Social Extensions, consumers will be able to see all the recommendations your business has received, whether they are looking at an ad, a search result or your page. This means your +1’s will reach not only the 40+ million users of Google+, but all the people who come to Google every day.
Currently (and for campaigns that don’t have Social Extensions enabled) your AdWords ads only show +1’s from people who have +1’d that ad’s landing page. This limits the likelihood that someone who sees your ad will have a friend or contact who’s recommended it. By enabling Social Extensions on your ad campaigns you’re able to leverage all the +1’s your brand has received, whether it be on a search result, on your Google+ Page, your website or on your ads, making it more likely that someone who sees your ad will have a friend or contact who has recommended it.
We believe that this has the potential to improve your overall ad performance. In fact, 71% of shoppers say that recommendations from friends and family impact their purchasing decisions.* These additional recommendations may result in more conversions and deeper engagement with your business overall.
Not only have we enabled you to serve more personalized ads, but we’ve also added a new reporting segment that will help you better understand the impact that social annotations are having on your campaigns and ads. Starting today you can segment any campaign, adgroup, keyword or ad by a new +1 annotation segment.
This segment will breakout your performance metrics into three categories
Impressions with personal annotations - (impressions where the viewer had a friend or contact who had +1’d your brand.)
Impressions with basic annotations - (impressions that included an anonymous count of people who +1’d your brand)
Impressions without any social annotations
Note that this segment works on all campaigns, even ones that don’t leverage the new Social Extension (since +1 annotations can come from a number of sources, and not simply Google+ Pages).
To enable Social Extensions on your AdWords campaigns simply click the Ad Extensions tab in your account and select Social Extensions from the drop down menu and choose new extension. You’ll be prompted to add your connected Google+ Page URL and click save.
You can link your Google+ Page to your AdWords campaign with Social Extensions. Social Extensions are available in the ad extensions tab in your AdWords account
To learn more about the AdWords Social Extensions please visit the AdWords Help Center.
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 parameters available 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.
Since we launched Ad Sitelinks back in 2009, we’ve worked to extend the format to appear on more queries and more devices. We’ve also enhanced Ad Sitelinks with smart serving to automatically show your highest-performing Sitelinks more frequently. Today we’re introducing a new feature of Ad Sitelinks, embedded sitelinks, that makes it even easier to integrate targeted links within your ads.
With the embedded format of Ad Sitelinks, there are no additional lines appended to your text ad. Instead, text in your ad that exactly matches one or more of the sitelinks in your campaign will automatically be linked to that sitelink’s destination URL. With embedded sitelinks, potential customers can pick the part of your ad that applies directly to their current interests and visit the most specific page for that topic.
For example, if you sell home goods, your ad may mention that you sell appliances, furniture, and flatware. If you have separate sitelinks set up for the words “appliances,” “furniture,” and “flatware,” those words would be hyperlinked in your ad text, leading potential customers to a page for the specific part of the ad that drew their interest. We believe that these targeted destination URLs may encourage more users to click on your ad and make it easier for them to find what they’re searching for when they arrive on your site.
To show with embedded sitelinks, your campaign must be enabled for Ad Sitelinks. Also, your ad must appear above the search results, and part of your ad text must exactly match one or more of your Ad Sitelinks. Additionally, embedded sitelinks will only show for ads that don’t meet one or more of the requirements for one- or two-line Ad Sitelinks.
Embedded sitelinks are now available to AdWords users globally, excluding China, Japan and Korea. To learn more about Ad Sitelinks and the new embedded sitelinks feature, you can visit the AdWords Help Center.
Back in late 2009, we launched our initial test of AdWords Comparison Ads for Mortgages. With Comparison Ads, we provided a way for you, our advertisers, to create more relevant and targeted offers for users searching on Google.com. For example, using Comparison Ads, a lender can enter offers for users with specific credit ratings, loan amounts, ZIP codes, and more.
Since our initial mortgages launch, we’ve expanded into a number of additional financial areas, including credit cards, checking and savings accounts, and certificates of deposit. We’ve also seen some great recognition of the value that Comparison Ads provides. For example, according to a study done by Leads360, an industry leader in lead management software, mortgage leads from AdWords Comparison Ads converted at a higher rate than from any other source.
Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Google Advisor, our new user-friendly interface for comparison offers, including AdWords Comparison Ads. Google Advisor is a consumer destination site that helps to guide users through various financial decisions by making it even easier to find and compare relevant offers from qualified financial institutions.
Google Advisor contains offers that come from our Comparison Ads advertisers as well as other sources across the web. By aggregating the most relevant offers and making it easy for users to filter and compare them side-by-side, Google Advisor aims to make financial research faster and easier.
To learn more about Google Advisor, you can read the Official Google Blog post or watch the video below.
At this time, AdWords Comparison Ads remains available only to a limited number of advertisers. Over time, we hope to increase the availability of Comparison Ads to additional advertisers. You can find more information about AdWords Comparison Ads in our Help Center.
In an AdWords ad, the display URL may be last, but it’s certainly not least. In fact, the display URL can be an important deciding factor in whether a user clicks on your ad.
That’s why, starting today, we’ll automatically show your display URL domain in the headline for select top placement ads on Google. As a result, your brand will be featured more prominently in your ad, and you can use the text in the headline to highlight other information. Potential customers, on the other hand, will be able to more easily identify the site to which they’ll be taken after they click on your ad.
When shown in the headline, the display URL will be separated from the rest of the text by a vertical bar and will include only the domain, not the “www.” prefix or any subdirectories. Your display URL will also continue to appear as normal below the description line. Of course, if the headline already contains your domain, we won’t display it again. Finally, it’s possible for the display URL domain to appear in addition to a description line that is promoted to the headline, as long as the resulting headline is sixty-eight characters or less.
This is a global launch that affects all countries and languages. For more information, please visit our Help Center.
With the recent international launches of the Ad Innovations site, we want to take a minute to call out a few simple things you can do to quickly improve the performance of your AdWords ads. Give the tips below a try and see how our Ad Innovations can improve your performance.
Ad Sitelinks allow you to extend the value of your existing AdWords ads by providing additional links to specific, relevant content deeper within your site. Rather than sending all users to the same landing page, Ad Sitelinks will display up to four additional destination URLs for users to choose from. On average, advertisers see a 30% increase in clickthrough rate (CTR) for the same ads with Ad Sitelinks.
We recently made a change to top ads that allows you to display more information where it’s most likely to be noticed--in the headline. By taking information from the first description line and moving it to the headline, we found that we’re able to create a better user experience and improve advertiser performance. In fact, ads with longer headlines receive a 6% average increase in CTR compared to the same ads with a standard headline and description. To increase the chances that your ad will appear with the longer headline, make sure that description line 1 is a complete phrase or sentence and ends in punctuation (e.g., a period or question mark).
Location extensions allow you to extend your AdWords campaigns by dynamically attaching your business address to your ads. In addition to the description lines and URL that appear in your ad text, your ad can also display your business name, address, and phone number. This helps promote your business brand, products, and services and associates your business with a specific location of interest to the user.
By linking a Google Places account to your AdWords ads, you can quickly and easily make sure all your location information is available when it’s most relevant.
Seller rating extensions make it easier for potential customers to identify highly-rated merchants when they're searching on Google.com by attaching your merchant star rating from Google Product Search to your AdWords ads. These star ratings, aggregated from review sites all around the web, allow people to find merchants that are highly recommended by online shoppers like them. On average, ads with Seller Ratings get a 17% higher CTR than the same ads without ratings.
If your online store is rated in Google Product Search, you have four or more stars, and you have at least thirty reviews, you'll automatically get seller ratings with your ads. If you have high customer satisfaction, then make sure we know about it:
Regularly ask your users for reviews (e.g., in confirmation emails after purchases)
Make it easy for users to review you--include links to your site's page on the third-party review sites used by Seller Rating Extensions.
Product extensions are a way for you to enrich your existing AdWords ads with more relevant and specific information about your retail merchandise. Product extensions allow you to use your existing Google Merchant Center account to highlight your products directly in your search ads.
With product extensions, you're charged the same cost-per-click (CPC) whether a user clicks on your main text ad or any of the offers within the product extensions plusbox. Of course, you can always learn about the many additional AdWords innovations by visiting the Ad Innovations website and subscribing for the latest updates.
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 Google Ad Innovations.
Over a year ago we introduced the AdWords New Ad Formats Initiative to bring more relevant ads to Google.com. Since then, we’ve launched over a dozen new ad formats, and tested many more. Our new ad formats are designed to make sure that you’re able to reach potential customers with the right information, in the format they want. That’s why we’re proud to introduce our latest format, Media Ads.
Media Ads is a new ad model that introduces new ways to target, pay for, and experience video ads on Google.com. Unlike Video Extensions, which simply attaches a video player to your existing AdWords ads, Media Ads is an entirely standalone format designed to put your videos front and center.
To start, Media Ads isn’t targeted like typical AdWords ads on Google.com. With Media Ads, you don’t pick any keywords -- the targeting is completely automated. When someone enters a search on Google.com that our algorithms determine is directly related to your movie title (most commonly the title and variations on it), we automatically display your Media Ad at the top of the search results page. Our research shows that when someone searches for a movie title on Google.com, they’re most commonly looking for a trailer. With Media Ads, we’re able to help you ensure that those users find exactly what they’re looking for.
The second thing that’s unique about Media Ads is the way you pay. Unlike typical AdWords ads on Google.com, you don’t enter any bids for Media Ads. Instead, clicks on Media Ads are charged at a flat rate. This simplified pricing model makes it easier to budget for your Media Ads campaign and to know exactly how much an interaction is going to cost.
Lastly, and most exciting, Media Ads changes the way that you experience video on Google.com. Unlike Video Extensions, which uses an in-line video player to show videos on Google.com, Media Ads introduces a new Lightbox media player. When someone plays your video either by clicking the thumbnail or the “watch” link, the Lightbox player expands to the center of the screen and dims the rest of the page around it. The experience is meant to put the viewer’s full attention on the video and to create a much more theater-like experience.
Media Ads is still in limited release to major motion picture studios promoting new release features. Over time, we plan to offer Media Ads to more advertisers in more industries to help them promote their videos on Google.com.
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