AdWords MENA Blog: October 2015

Enhancing the Google Display Network with new innovations

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Consumers have higher expectations than ever because of mobile — they want everything right, and they want everything right away. To connect with consumers in the intent-rich moments when they want to buy, find or do something, marketers are increasingly turning to programmatic advertising — which uses data and technology to reach the right person at the right time. The Google Display Network (GDN) brings this sophisticated technology to all advertisers so you can be there in the moments that matter the most for your brand.Today we’re introducing several tools that further enhance what the GDN offers for display advertisers.More transparency: take action with AdWords audience insightsWhen you understand your customers well — like their age, location, and interests — you can make more informed decisions about your marketing programs. AdWords audience insights give advertisers aggregate information about people on your remarketing lists, including demographics, interests, locations, and device usage.1 Since these reports are available right in AdWords, you can quickly and easily take action on the insights. For example, if most people who converted on your site are jazz enthusiasts, you may wish to add this affinity audience to your campaign. Or, if many of your customers are females between the ages of 25 and 34, you might want to customize your ad creative to appeal to this demographic. Learn more.

Example: AdWords audience insights shows 30% of customers on this remarketing list are 25-34 years old
compared to an average of 19.9% in the US.

BASE, a Belgian telecommunications company, used AdWords audience insights and discovered cycling enthusiasts were twice as likely as the average customer to buy a mobile phone subscription. Based on this insight, BASE engaged with cycling enthusiasts on the GDN and doubled its conversions. BASE now uses AdWords audience insights to inform its campaigns, online and offline.

Sony PlayStation discovered classical music enthusiasts were likely to engage with its brand using AdWords audience insights. Sony then connected with this audience on the GDN and drove a 31% higher view-through rate than with its average affinity audience. This allowed Sony to capture more views for its budget. Now, Sony uses AdWords audience insights to uncover the best audiences for its new campaigns.More accountability: the GDN is going 100% viewableMost display ads — — never had a chance to be viewed because they were below the fold, scrolled out of view, or in a background tab. Soon, we’ll make the GDN one of the only media platforms where advertisers don’t pay for an ad impression unless it was viewable. This means your media dollars will only be spent where they can have impact. In the next few months, all campaigns that buy on a CPM basis will be upgraded to be viewable CPM (vCPM).More impact: a fresh approach to dynamic remarketing adsPeople use devices of varying shapes and sizes, engaging with content that can be horizontal, vertical, tapped, swiped or pinched. This means ads must be flexible so they can show across varying placements. Today, we introduced enhancements to dynamic remarketing so ads can be automatically re-shaped and re-sized to fit all device types. Ads are also touched up to look great on any mobile or desktop site, or app. For example, if your logo is predominantly blue and yellow, AdWords may use these colors to shade the border and background of your ad. We’ll even try out varying color combinations and use the ones that drive the best performance. As always, you have control to make changes to these selections based on your personal style and preferences.Meeting consumer expectations requires technology to answer their needs the moment they have them, wherever they are, whatever kind of device or screen they are using. Programmatic advertising ensures that brands are there in those important moments when decisions are made and preferences are shaped. Our hope is that the GDN brings this enterprise-level technology to all advertisers so you can be there at the moments when it matters most for your brand.Posted by Brad Bender, VP of Product Management, Google Display Network
1 All insights are based on anonymized, aggregated data.

Google brings you closer to your customers in the moments that matter

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Mobile has changed the game for both consumers and brands. Consumer expectations for immediacy and relevance are higher than ever, and successful brands are those that connect with people in the moments that matter most to them -- the I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-do, and I-want-to-buy moments. Google is a company built on meeting people’s needs in the moment. Through our ads innovations, we’ve brought that ability to businesses large and small.On Monday afternoon at Advertising Week’s Times Center Stage, I’ll be announcing two new products, Customer Match and Universal App Campaigns, to help you be there and be relevant in those intent-rich moments that truly matter.Reach your most valuable customers with Customer Match70% of online consumers agree that the quality, timing, and relevance of a brand’s message influences their perception of a brand.1 Google is in a unique position to connect consumers with your business in the most relevant ways. Whether they’re searching on Google, checking promotions on Gmail, or watching videos on YouTube, we can deliver the most relevant information based on what they’re doing, wherever they are, when they’re looking, and on any device they’re using. Today, we’re building on these capabilities with new ads innovations to deliver even more relevance.When it comes to your most valuable customers, they expect even more from you. And now, Google can help you reach customers that you already have a relationship with -- like those in your loyalty program or who have made a previous purchase -- in ways that are most relevant to their intent and context.Customer Match is a new product designed to help you reach your highest-value customers on Google Search, YouTube, and Gmail -- when it matters most. Customer Match allows you to upload a list of email addresses, which can be matched to signed-in users on Google in a secure and privacy-safe way. From there, you can build campaigns and ads specifically designed to reach your audience. Users can control the ads they see, including Customer Match ads, by opting out of personalized ads or by muting or blocking ads from individual advertisers through Google Ads Settings. Let's say you’re a travel brand. You can now reach people who have joined your rewards program as they plan their next trip. For example, when these rewards members search for “non-stop flights to new york” on Google.com, you can show relevant ads at the top of their search results on any device right when they’re looking to fly to New York. And when those members are watching their favorite videos on YouTube or catching up on Gmail, you can show ads that inspire them to plan their next trip.Using Customer Match, you can also generate Similar Audiences to reach new customers on YouTube and Gmail who are likely to be interested in your products and services. For example, you can drive awareness on YouTube for new non-stop flights by showing TrueView ads to prospective customers who have similar interests and characteristics to your rewards members.With Customer Match, your brand is right there, with the right message, at the moment your customer is most receptive. Only Google can help you do this to delight your most loyal customers in the moments that truly matter.Customer Match and Similar Audiences will be rolling out to all advertisers over the next few weeks. Learn More.Promote your apps with unparalleled reachPeople discover new apps in many ways: online searches, recommendations while watching their favorite videos, and in-app suggestions. If your business has an app, you need a scalable way to reach the customers that are most likely to install your app -- across a variety of channels.Starting today, Universal App Campaigns will be available to all developers and advertisers as a new AdWords campaign type that helps you connect with app users across Google Search, Google Play, YouTube, and the Google Display Network (GDN). In just a few simple steps, you can promote your app with unparalleled reach across the world’s largest network and platforms. Let’s say you’ve built an adventure game. With Universal App Campaigns, you have unparalleled reach: you can drive installs on YouTube, the platform with 1B+ users who watch hundreds of millions of hours of content everyday. Your ads can also reach specific audiences across 650K apps and 2M+ websites in the GDN. And importantly, Universal App Campaigns tap into intent-rich searches like “adventure games” and “puzzle games” that are happening throughout the day on Google Search and Google Play so your app can be seen when people are looking to download something new.All you need to do is give us your desired cost-per-install and we do the rest. Universal App Campaigns are the one-stop-shop campaign type that scales your reach and maximizes Android app installs across Google’s entire suite of ad platforms. We’ve automated campaign set-up by pulling in your app images, videos, and app description directly from your Google Play store listing to generate ad formats that look amazing wherever they’re placed.

From there, our systems will optimize your campaigns using dynamic learning to maximize app install volume at your target cost-per-install. By testing different versions of your ad text and app images in each of the eligible Google networks, we determine the highest-performing variations so only your best ads show. Learn more.The energy and buzz at Advertising Week 2015 (Join the conversation) reinforces what an exciting time it is to be a marketer. I’m privileged to get to build products that help brands tell their stories and connect with consumers in the moments that really matter to them.Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President, Ads and Commerce

The power of video meets the capabilities of AdWords – all TrueView campaigns now in AdWords

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

You know how you have to go to a special section within AdWords to create and manage your TrueView video campaigns? And jump back and forth when you want to report and optimize across all your campaigns? And you still can’t take advantage of AdWords bulk tools for your video campaigns? Well, good news, friends: those days are now over. TrueView is joining Search, Display, and Shopping campaigns within the core AdWords interface.

With the simplicity of a single interface and a more consistent experience, AdWords makes it easier for you to optimize across campaign types. Plus, you can take advantage of powerful bulk management tools to save time and effort when working on multiple TrueView campaigns. And now that all campaign types share the same structure, we can bring you new features for video, faster than ever before.

Now if you’ll follow us, we’d love to show you around…

In the top left corner, you can find the campaign type selector. This is useful to see only campaigns of a certain type. For instance, selecting “Video” gives you a view of your campaigns that looks similar to AdWords for video – meaning you’ll see only the tabs and columns that are most relevant for managing video campaigns. And best of all, we remember your column preferences whenever you switch among views, so you don’t need to change them around each time you toggle campaign types.

Campaign type selector

We’re also replacing targeting groups with ad groups, the basic building blocks for Search, Display, and Shopping campaigns. Now every ad group will have a single TrueView format, either in-stream or in-display. Though each ad group has only one format, campaigns can have multiple ad groups so you can still run both in-stream and in-display ads in the same campaign. To create a new campaign, just click the +CAMPAIGN button, click the newVideo campaign type, and then create new ad groups within each campaign by clicking +AD GROUP.

Ad group creation
Now that TrueView has joined the party in AdWords, you’ll have access to a trove of goodies designed to help you manage, optimize, and report on accounts with lots of campaigns. For instance, bulk UI editing lets you modify information for multiple campaigns at once – directly from the UI, and bulk uploads let you download a snapshot of your campaigns, make changes en masse, and upload the changes live to your account. And report scheduling gives you the ability to set up a schedule for reports to run automatically, and have them emailed regularly to account users.

Bulk edits
Reporting for video campaigns is getting more powerful as well, as you’ll now have the ability to filter your results to isolate things like campaign name, label, cost, and conversions.

Filters
You’ll also see popular video features in familiar places in AdWords. For example, video remarketing is now in theAdWords shared library and YouTube account linking is in the Linked accounts section. Plus you’ll be able to see analytics for your video ads within the new "Videos" tab, and manage your targeting within the "Video targeting" tab.

Creating remarketing lists

Linking YouTube channels

Customers who’ve previewed the new interface found it saves them time and offers more powerful reporting. "As avid users of TrueView, we were eager to beta test the new TrueView in AdWords, and see how the change impacted our most complex campaign setups," said Pixability CTO Andreas Goeldi. "The increased functionality allows for improved workflow, better reporting, and significant time saved."
Whether your goals are to drive direct response or to build your brand, you now have a single, unified tool to address your full range of marketing goals. Starting today, you’ll be able to upgrade your campaigns to the new ad group structure, and say goodbye to those days of going to “All Video Campaigns” to get to your TrueView campaigns. To upgrade, just head to AdWords for video by clicking All video campaigns (once more, for old time’s sake) and click into the Upgrade Center to easily switch over all your campaigns in one fell swoop. And don’t worry – all your historical stats and targeting will carry over (just drill down to the campaign level to see them). If you’d rather not upgrade your campaigns yourself, no problem – we’ll automatically upgrade your campaigns, starting in six weeks.
And if you’re a video type of person (we certainly are!), check out all the content of this blog post in video form here.
For more information, check out the AdWords Help Center.