Check out and subscribe to the new Google Ads blog.
Greetings! As a member of the Audio Ads support team, I spend a large part of my day answering advertisers' questions regarding Google Audio Ads. I thought it would be helpful to share with you answers to some of the more common inquiries. What kind of radio adverting is this? This is traditional radio advertising, the kind of radio that our grandparents, parents and we ourselves have known throughout our lives. While you may hear ‘Google Audio Ads’ and immediately think it was created for use with online media such as internet radio or podcasting, Google Audio Ads are actually designed to facilitate advertising on traditional radio stations such as those you may listen to in the car, in the gym or anywhere else on your AM/FM radio. Our product aims to make the long standing process of buying radio advertising as simple and efficient as possible, while allowing you to manage it from your existing Google AdWords account.Is this an auction like AdWords? For advertisers familiar with the traditional AdWords auction, fear not - one of the two options for booking a Google Audio Ads campaign uses an auction system very similar to that currently used in your AdWords campaigns. Additionally, for advertisers interested in securing ad space in advance, campaigns can also be booked using a Reserve Buy. This option allows advertisers to make advanced bookings of specific inventory so they can ensure their ads will play when and where they want them to.Is this remnant inventory? No, Google Audio Ads is not remnant inventory. Remnant inventory (or leftover inventory) refers to unbooked advertising time that is sold by radio stations at the last minute to ensure all ad spots are filled. Google Audio Ads offers premium inventory throughout the entire week, including prime day parts such as morning and afternoon drive time. By offering inventory at all times and offering a Reserve Buy, Google Audio Ads ensures that you are able to effectively target who you want, when you want.What if I don't have an ad or need help? We've created the Google Ad Creation Marketplace, accessible from within your AdWords account, to connect you with professionals who can create affordable ads customized for your radio campaign. This feature is especially helpful for first time radio advertisers. The Ad Creation Specialists in our marketplace are radio industry professionals who've been individually selected to work with advertisers who are new to radio. Through the marketplace, you're able to establish a direct relationship with these specialists to ensure they generate ads which combine your specifications with their experience and expertise to create the most effective audio ad for your budget.I already use Google AdWords, why should I use Google Audio Ads as well? Combining your existing AdWords online campaigns with traditional radio advertising through Google Audio Ads can be more effective in increasing brand awareness than running online ads alone. In addition, radio and the Internet combined can reach over 83% of people aged 18-54, ensuring that your business is gaining the exposure needed to strengthen the value of its brand and drive users to seek out your products or services. You can learn more about the benefits of radio advertising here. [Source: The Radio Ad Effectiveness Lab (RAEL), 2007]
Keyword LengthResearch indicates that the majority of users' keyword searches are between one and five words long and that most users search with multiple-word phrases rather than single-word phrases. (Source: OneStat.com) While it is important to include a variety of keywords to ensure both quality and quantity of traffic, keep in mind that single-word, general keywords such as 'car' or 'mortgages' will be very high traffic but may not be targeted enough, while seven-word keywords, like 'find ways to rejuvenate unhealthy looking skin' may be so specific that no one ever searches on them.The keywords that perform best for you will depend on your specific products and services and how your customers search for them. People may search for mortgage refinancing with just a few words but may search for engagement rings with a longer search query. For example, a keyword targeting serious jewelry shoppers could be as detailed as 'three stone princess cut platinum diamond engagement ring'. As always, it's important to keep an open mind about keyword length and adjust your strategy based on your campaign results.Negative KeywordsNegative keywords, one of the four types of AdWords keyword matching options, can help target your ads to potential customers and increase your ROI and conversion rates. Unlike broad, exact, and phrase match keywords, negative keywords are keywords on which you do not want your ads to run. You can use negative keywords at either the ad group or the campaign level. When constructing a negative keywords list, try to be as exhaustive as possible, but be careful that none of your negative keywords overlap with your broad, phrase, or exact match keywords, as they will cause your ad not to show. For instance, an advertiser for a financial institution that provides loans but does not offer actual rate quotes may want to include 'rate' and 'rates' as negative keywords. However, if he wanted to include 'fixed rate mortgage' in his keyword list, he should not include 'rate' among his campaign negative keywords list.Just as you can use the Keyword Tool to find keyword variations and modifiers for your 'positive' keywords list, you can also use it to find keyword variations and modifiers for your negative keywords list. You may also want to try searching on some core keywords in Google Search and looking at the first page or two of organic search results to find possible irrelevant themes for which you would not want your ad to show.You may want to employ negative keywords to filter out certain searches for a number of reasons:Filter out different products or services: A real estate agent who is focused on selling homes may wish to include not only the negative keywords of 'rent' and 'renting,' but also use the Keyword Tool to find variations such as 'rents,' 'rental' and 'rentals.' Filter out irrelevant searches: An advertiser selling herbal remedies may discover that the name of a particular remedy also happens to be the name of a musical group. In such a case, it would be wise to include negative keywords such as: 'music,' 'band,' 'concert,' 'ticket,' 'lyric,' 'album,' 'mp3,' and the pluralized versions of these words.Filter for serious buyers: A seller of digital cameras may want to filter out research-oriented keywords such as: 'review,' 'rate,' 'rating,' 'compare,' 'comparing,' 'comparison,' and the pluralized versions of these words.Deleting KeywordsMost of the strategies we have discussed involve expanding keyword lists. If you are optimizing an existing account however, it may be equally valuable to delete keywords from your account, starting with identifying keywords that are performing poorly. Depending on what your advertising goals are, you may want to apply specific strategies to deleting keywords.If you are CTR focused, you may want to identify and delete keywords with high impression counts but low numbers of clickthroughs. These keywords may be too general or not relevant enough and are garnering many impressions but very few clicks. If you are conversion focused, you may want to identify and delete keywords that garner high costs but very few conversions. These keywords may be too specific and accrue very few impressions over a long period of time because very few people are searching on them.You can identify extremely specific or general keywords by running a report and either modifying or deleting these keywords.
This relationship with Clear Channel Radio makes a portion of premium and guaranteed radio inventory available to advertisers in Google Audio Ads. These Clear Channel Radio stations, when combined with our existing radio station partners, give AdWords advertisers access to radio inventory that includes 'Top 10' stations in 24 of the top 25 U.S. markets -- providing coverage (i.e. people can tune into the station) to over 99% of the U.S. population aged 12 and older. (Source: ACT1 / Arbitron)We are accepting additional advertisers to try Audio Ads each week, and would once again like to invite you to be considered as a beta tester. If you're uncertain whether Audio Ads would be a good fit for your business, and would like to learn more, please check out a new 10 minute demo that we've just added on our product site. We think it will help you make an informed decision.Please note that, because of the large number of stations involved and the technical integrations with each station, it will take some time for us to fully connect Google Audio Ads with all of Clear Channel Radio's stations. Still, Audio Ads beta testers will have the exciting opportunity of hearing their ads on an ever-increasing number of radio stations, across markets, in addition to the hundreds available today.
On Saturday, April 14th, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT due to scheduled system maintenance. While you won't be able to log into your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Clickbot.A is the name of a botnet that Google's Click Quality and Security Teams investigated last year. Using our findings, we published "The Anatomy of Clickbot.A" - a detailed case study on botnet-based click fraud for the benefit of the technical research community.Clickbot.A is an example of a botnet operator attempting a click fraud attack against syndicated search engines. Google was able to identify clicks on our advertisers' ads that exhibited Clickbot.A-like patterns and flagged them as invalid. While Clickbot.A is a specific example of a botnet application that conducted click fraud, botnets can also be used for keylogging, distributed denial of service (DDoS), and other types of attacks.Due to the potential for misuse and the inherent loss of control that can result from having a machine participate in such a botnet, we hope "The Anatomy of Clickbot.A" will help facilitate further collaboration between search engines, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), anti-virus vendors, and other parties on the Internet in managing botnets and similar threats.
General Keyword Advice and FormattingBefore we discuss how to create and expand keyword lists, it's important to make a few points about keyword formatting.Keywords are not case-sensitive, so 'flights to new york city' is recognized as the same keyword as 'flights to New York City.'You do not have to include punctuation such as periods, commas, and hyphens. 'Eye-glasses' are the same as 'eye glasses,' but different from 'eyeglasses,' so do include two separate keywords when appropriate -- one with the space, and one without.Wherever appropriate, be sure to include both singular and plural variations of your keywords. Though the 'broad matching' feature in the Keyword Tool will generate other keywords to include potential synonyms, you can ensure that you are not missing out on relevant traffic by including both singular and plural variations.You may want to avoid including duplicate keywords across ad groups and campaigns in the same account. Your ad will only be shown once for a given search, and these duplicate keywords will be competing with each other to appear.Once you've understood the basics of keywords, you can begin to think about your keywords in terms of what we will refer to as 'core keywords' and 'keyword variations and modifiers.'Core KeywordsCore keywords are the foundational themes of your advertising campaign, the most basic keyword phrases that describe your products or services. Depending on your overall advertising objectives, you may or may not want to include these core keywords in your keyword list; but these core keywords can be helpful when you first begin to think about how to advertise what the product or service you are offering.The account structure you outline will help you identify these basic keyword themes. You can also use the Keyword Tool with the 'Use synonyms' boxed checked to get a broader range of ideas, or browse other sites to see how similar businesses describe their products. Keep in mind that customers may use different terms to find your product or service than the terms you would normally use. An advertiser selling nutrition bars may think of his product as 'protein bars' for body builders, when a large portion of his customers are busy professionals looking for 'meal replacement bars.'It's important to note that core keywords will often be very general, high-traffic, and highly competitive keywords. As we've mentioned in an earlier post about knowing your advertising goals, if you are focused on conversions or return-on-investment, you may choose not to run on such general keywords, but only on the more specific variations of those core keywords.Keyword Variations and ModifiersOnce you've identified some core keywords, you can start expanding on variations of those core keywords. You can use the Keyword Tool, with the 'Use synonyms' box unchecked, to find keyword variations that will help you better understand how customers may search for your products or services. You may find that many of these variations are related to your business in some way and may wish to include these in your keyword list. An advertiser promoting laser skin treatment may find that variations on 'wrinkle,' such as 'wrinkle cream' or 'anti wrinkle products' are relevant and should be included. However, the advertiser will not want to include unrelated variations such as 'wrinkle free pants'. Instead, the advertiser may choose to include terms like 'pants' and 'shirts' in his negative keyword list. (Stay tuned for the second half of this topic for more on negative keywords.)If core keywords are the basic themes that help you build your keyword lists, keyword modifiers will help you home in on a particular audience. If an advertiser is trying to reach the appropriate audience for a designer handbag line, for instance, he may find using general keywords like 'handbag' or 'purse' alone ineffective. Combining these core keywords with modifiers such as 'luxury,' 'high end,' and 'authentic' will help target an audience that is willing to pay top dollar for a high quality handbag, rather than a bargain hunter who is looking for a lower-end one.Modifying keywords can also help you achieve the goals you defined for your advertising campaign. An advertiser selling electronics, for instance, may be focused more on sales and conversions rather than branding. Her goal, then, is to distinguish shoppers who are closer to buying from those in the research stage of the sale cycle. One way to do this is to use conversion-oriented modifiers such as: 'buy,' 'buying,' 'order,' 'ordering,' etc. She can also include specific brand names, product names, and even model numbers. Users searching on highly specific terms know exactly what they are looking for, and could be more likely to convert for you.
Over the past few years, the sponsored links above the search results have been displayed in a box with a blue background that a user can click on in order to reach an advertiser's landing page. We've now made two changes to the way that we display these ads to improve the experience of our users and advertisers.First, we thought it was time for a new look: after months of testing, we decided to switch the background color of the top ads from blue to yellow. Second, we've modified what counts as a click in this box to be consistent with what counts as a click for the ads on the right hand side. Instead of clicking anywhere in the box, users now need to click on the link in the top line of an ad in order to be taken to an advertiser's site. Together, these changes help decrease the likelihood that a user will unintentionally click on an ad, while making our highest quality ads more visible.
We'd like to invite advertisers to check out the most recent issue of the AdWords Retail Newsletter. In this issue, you'll find a number of tips to get your AdWords campaigns ready for Mother's Day and Father's Day and a helpful recap of the winter holidays. According to the National Retail Federation, Mother's Day ties with Valentine's Day as the second-largest spending holiday in the U.S. We hope our newsletter will help you make the most of it!
Since October, we've worked closely with our beta testers to improve the application and today, we're happy to offer the latest version to everyone who signs up through the Website Optimizer homepage. If you're not quite ready to sign up right away, don't worry -- Website Optimizer will be available in all AdWords accounts within the next few weeks.If you're unfamiliar with Website Optimizer, it is a free multivariate testing application built into AdWords that helps online marketers increase visitor conversion rates and overall visitor satisfaction by enabling them to continually test different combinations of site content. Why guess what site content you think will work best, when Website Optimizer can save you time by telling you what worked best based on visitor data collected from experiments on your site?We mentioned earlier that we've been working closely with our beta testers so we thought we'd share with you what they've been telling us:'Multivariate testing used to be only accessible to the big internet companies. Now anyone can do it! Just throw your marketing ideas into the pot... and Google Website Optimizer picks the winners.' - Ben Jesson & Dr Karl Blanks, Founders of Conversion-Rate-Experts.com'We've learned more than just what works on the Calyx Flowers site. We've learned a testing approach that is applicable to all our web properties. Website Optimizer provides the empirical results I need to make solid marketing decisions going forward.' - Irene Steiner, VP of Marketing for Calyx Flowers If you'd like to review additional comments from our beta testers, you'll find them here. Or, if you prefer a more in-depth look at how Website Optimizer has worked for other advertisers, feel free to check out a few case studies.
Official guides to help you get the most out of AdWords.
FOLLOW GUIDES
Get AdWords advanced tips and product updates right in your inbox.
GET THE NEWSLETTER
Follow