Perspective on Dynamic Search Ads - Guest Q & A with RKG

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.

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew

Get closer to your customers with Google+

Since the initial launch of Google+ just a few months ago, we’ve welcomed over 40 million people and introduced more than 100 new features. For all these people, one important part is still missing - your business.

We want to help you make the same kinds of lasting connections with your customers online the way you can in real life. That’s why we are introducing Google+ Your Business, a collection of tools and products to help you get closer to your customers. At the heart of this is Google+ Pages, your business’s identity on Google+.

Google+ Pages: Have real conversations with the right people

To get your business on Google+, you first need to create a Google+ Page. On your page, you can post updates and news about your business, engage in conversations with your customers, send tailored messages to specific groups of people, and see how many +1’s you have across the web. Here are a few features of Google+ Pages that we think will help you build relationships:

Google+ Pages are at the heart of Google+ for Business

Hangouts
Sometimes you might want to chat with your customers face-to-face. For example, if you run a bookstore, you may want to invite an author to talk about her latest novel, or if you market a cosmetics line, beauty specialists might want to hold how-to sessions for makeup tips. Hangouts make this easy, by letting you have high-quality video chats with nine customers, with a single click. You can use Hangouts to get product feedback, help solve problems or simply get to know people better, all in real time.

Hangouts let you meet your customers, face to face

Circles
Circles allow you to group followers of your Page into smaller audiences. You can then share specific messages with specific groups. For example, you could create a Circle containing people who are your most loyal customers and offer them a special discount.


+1 button and Google+ badge: Inspire current customers to recommend new ones
Google+ Pages also help you deliver your great content to users in a way that’s easy to share with their friends. We introduced the +1 button as a way for your customers to recommend your business across the web - on Google search, in your ads, on sites across the web and on mobile devices. Now, your customers can +1 your Page, recommending your actual brand -- not just an individual ad or a site -- directly to their friends.

To help your customers find your page and start sharing, we have two buttons you can add to your site by visiting our Google+ badge configuration tool:

The Google+ icon is a small icon that directly links to your Page.

In the coming days, we’re introducing the Google+ badge, which lets people add your page to their circles, without leaving your site, to start getting updates from your business via Google+.


Make your +1’s count, improving the performance of your ads
Coming soon, we will also make it possible to link your Page to your AdWords campaigns for your site, so that all your +1s -- from your Page, your website, ads and search results -- will get tallied together and appear as a single total.

Your +1’s will be shown with your brand wherever it appears, including search, ads, Google+ and your website

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, meaning your +1’s will reach not only the 40 million users of Google+, but all the people who come to Google every day. In the coming days. you'll be able to link your page to your AdWords campaigns by following the instructions in the AdWords Help Center.

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.

Bringing Google+ to the rest of Google
Our ultimate vision for Google+ is to transform the overall Google experience-- weaving identity and sharing into all of our products. Beginning today, with a select group of websites at launch, we’re rolling out a new feature, Direct Connect -- an easy way for your customers to find your Google+ Page on Google search. For eligible pages, when someone searches for your business with the ‘+’ sign before it Direct Connect will send them directly to your page. For example, try searching for ‘+YouTube’ on Google. Users will also be prompted to automatically add Pages they find through Direct Connect to their circles. Direct Connect will not work for everyone.

Direct Connect suggestions start populating as you type on Google.com

Just the beginning
We wanted to help you get your business on Google+ as soon as possible, so we’re opening the field trial for Google+ Pages to everyone today. Creating a Google+ Page only takes a few minutes. To get started, you’ll need a personal Google+ profile. If you don’t have a Google account, it’s very quick and easy to join. And if you are looking for inspiration, check out some of the companies that are already starting to set up their Pages:

To learn more about how Google+ works for your business, check out the Google+ Your Business site. We’re just getting started and have many more features in the coming weeks and months. To keep up to date on the latest news and tips, add the Google+ Your Business page to your circles. If you have ideas on how we can improve Google+ for your business, we’d love to hear them.

Posted by Dennis Troper, Product Management Director, Google+ Pages

Ads are just answers

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

When CafePress first started printing shirts in 1999, online retail was still a nascent industry and Google had yet to sell its first ad. Soon CafePress started selling products through search ads on Google, and their business took off. Today, CafePress hosts millions of shops online where customers can choose from more than 325 million products on nearly any topic, from wall art to phone cases.

Just as CafePress has broadened its offerings over time, we've also worked to improve and expand our search advertising products. What started as three lines of simple text has evolved into ads that are multimedia-rich, location-aware and socially-amplified.

Today CafePress uses Sitelinks to direct people to specific pages of their website, helping customers find what they’re looking for faster. On average, ads with three rows of links, or three-line Sitelinks, are more than 50 percent likely to get clicked on than ads without Sitelinks. More than 200,000 advertisers have joined CafePress in using Sitelinks in at least one campaign.

Monday at Advertising Week in New York City, I’ll be talking about how advertisers have been quick to adopt these new formats since we first began experimenting nearly two years ago. Businesses from the smallest retailer in Idaho to the largest Fortune 500 company in New York have seen how these innovations in search advertising can help grow successful businesses. In fact, roughly one-third of searches with ads show an enhanced ad format.

Here are a few ways these new ad formats are helping people find valuable information faster:

Visual. Not only can you find theater times for a new movie, you can watch the trailer directly in the ad. Media ads put the sight, sound and motion of video into search ads. With Product Ads, people can see an image, price and merchant name, providing a more visual shopping experience. Because this format is often so useful, people are twice as likely to click on a Product Ad as they are to click on a standard text ad in the same location, and today, hundreds of millions of products are available through Product Ads.

Local. More than 20 percent of desktop searches on Google are related to location. On mobile, this climbs to 40 percent. Location-aware search ads can help you find what you’re looking for more easily by putting thousands of local businesses on the map—literally. More than 270,000 of our advertisers use Location Extensions to attach a business address on at least one ad campaign, connecting more than 1.4 million locations in the U.S. via ads. And, with our mobile ad formats, not only can you call a restaurant directly from the ad, you can also find out how far away the restaurant is located and view a map with directions.

Social. With the +1 button people are able to find and recommend businesses with their friends. Since introducing the +1 button earlier this year, we now have more than 5 billion impressions on publisher sites a day. If you’re a business owner, the +1 button enables your customers to share your products and special offers easily with their network of friends, amplifying your existing marketing campaigns.

We're continuing to experiment with search ads to help businesses like CafePress grow by connecting with the right customers. Starting today, you can drop by our site to check out what’s new with search ads and learn about all the improvements we’ve been working on recently.

We’re developing ads that provide richer information to you because we believe that search ads should be both beautiful and informative, and as useful to you as an answer.

Posted by Nick Fox, Vice President of Product Management

Google+: 108, the +1 button is coming to display ads

Earlier today we announced several exciting new additions to Google+, including many on mobile. We’d like to announce one more addition for our AdWords advertisers, +1 on the Google Display Network.

Since its introduction on search results and search ads, the +1 button has been installed on over a million websites across the web with over 4 billion impressions daily. Starting early October we’re expanding that to include display ads across the web on both desktop and mobile. For the first time, you’ll be able to run social-enabled ad campaigns that work across millions of sites in over 40 countries around the world.

If you’re running display ads through the Google Display Network you may begin seeing the +1 button and personal annotations with your ads. With a single click, people can recommend the ad’s landing page to their friends and contacts.

Incorporating personal recommendations into display ads has the potential to change the way people view advertising. A display ad becomes much more powerful when people can see which of their friends and contacts have chosen to endorse it.

For example, take Elaine, who sees an ad for discount flights. She +1’s the ad, thinking her friends might value similar deals. Now when Elaine’s friends and contacts are logged into Google and see the discount flight ad on any of the millions of GDN partner websites, they’ll see Elaine’s picture across the bottom of the ad with a note saying she +1’d it.

On desktop, the +1 button and recommendations will appear at the bottom of display ads, then fade out until the viewer hovers over the ad. The viewer can also close the overlays by clicking the ‘x’.

On mobile, the +1 button will replace the existing ‘g’ logo and recommendations will appear for several seconds, then fade out.

Elaine’s friends and contacts will also be more likely to see the ad. Because a recommendation from a friend is such a strong signal of relevance, the Google Display Network gives ads that have been recommended an extra boost by including them in the auction for any page a friend visits. Of course, if you’re targeting specific placements or audience segments (including interest categories and remarketing lists), your ads will only show on pages that match those restrictions. Additionally, your ads will never show on any placement or category on an exclusions list.

What’s even better is that the +1 button on display ads will work together with +1 buttons on search results, search ads, and websites. A single +1 applies to the same content across the web, no matter where it appears.

On the Google Display Network (GDN), the +1 button will be added to image, animated GIF, Flash, Display Ad Builder ads and select mobile inventory. You can also choose to include the +1 button on your DoubleClick Rich Media ads, which can run on or off the GDN.

We’re confident from our initial experience with the +1 button on search that this’ll be a great addition to your GDN campaigns. However, if you’re not sure that you want the +1 button and recommendations associated with your ads, starting today you can opt-out at the campaign level in AdWords under campaign settings.

To learn more about the +1 button and how it affects your ads and search results, visit our +1 button site.

Published by Eider Oliveira, Senior Software Engineer

Learn about the latest in Video Ads on Ad Innovations

Google offers the world's largest online video audience, based on users of Google.com search, our partnerships with top video publishers across the Google Display Network, and the reach of YouTube, the world's largest video property. On YouTube alone, users generate 3 billion video views daily and upload 48 new hours of video per minute. The online video market is huge for users, and we believe this means it also holds a lot of potential for online advertisers.

For those of you who are already passionate about this large and growing market, we’ve just launched a Video page on Ad Innovations -- your destination for exploring our latest advertising developments.

On this page, you can learn about new video innovations that can help you prepare your campaigns and promote your business.

Prepare your campaign

• Ad Creation Marketplace - Hire a professional to create a TV or video ad that fits your needs, budget, and deadlines.
• YouTube Video Targeting Tool - Search by keyword or audience to find YouTube videos where you might want to advertise.
• YouTube Insight - Learn about the video likes and dislikes of audiences you define.

Promote your business

• TrueView video ads by YouTube - Give users choice and control over which advertisers' messages they want to see and when. Pay only when a user chooses to view your ad, increasing your view count on YouTube.
• Video extensions - Include click-to-play videos for trailers, previews, and product demonstrations that play right below your ads on Google.com.
• Media Ads - Discover new ways to target, pay for, and experience video ads on Google.com.

Check out our new Video innovations page and send us feedback on these new features. We’ll add more items to this page as we bring new video advertising features to you.

If you're new to video advertising, start with the basics. We have online resources available where you can learn about all our video advertising solutions including YouTube advertising.

Posted by Lauren Barbato, Inside AdWords crew

Webinar: Implementing the +1 Button

A few weeks ago, we launched the +1 button for your site, which can help your site stand out by making it easy for visitors to recommend your pages on Google search. As a result, the +1 button could bring more, better-qualified traffic from your search results and ads. But how do you make sure this experience is user friendly? Where should you position the +1 button? How do you make sure the correct URL is getting +1’d?

On Tuesday, June 21 at 3pm ET, please join Timothy Jordan, Google Developer Advocate, to learn how to best implement the +1 button on your site. He’ll talk about the technical implementation details as well as best practices to ensure the button has maximum impact. During the webinar, we’ll review the topics below and save time for Q&A:

• Getting started
• Best practices
• Advanced options
• Measurement

If you'd like to attend, please register here. For more information on how the +1 button affects your ads, visit Ad Innovations.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords Crew

5 Simple Ways to Improve Your AdWords Performance

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.

1. Enable Ad Sitelinks

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.
2. Optimize your ad text for longer headlines

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).
Before: After:
3. Link a Google Places account to a campaign to show location extensions

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.
4. Get reviewed to show Seller Rating Extensions

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.

5. Link a Merchant Center account to a campaign to show product 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.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Ad Innovations launches in six new countries

Ad Innovations is a site where you can explore new AdWords marketing technologies. You can watch demos, try the latest tools, and share your feedback with our teams. We’re posting today to announce that Ad Innovations is now live in six new countries: the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and Brazil.

And for those of you in the US, you’ll notice that Ad Innovations has a new look! We’ll be rolling out this updated design to all Ad Innovations sites in the next few months.

(click for full-size image)

Whether you’re most interested in search, display, mobile, or performance measurement, we hope you’ll be able to find a number of AdWords features to help you stay on top of the newest advertising developments. Head to your local site and see which innovations are available in your market.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew