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Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew
When people search for goods or services using their mobile phones, they often prefer to call a store rather than visit that store's website. Whether they're placing a direct order, making a reservation, or inquiring about services, the ability for prospective customers to easily call your business is a key distinguishing feature of searches made on mobile phones versus computers.

Now you can make it even easier for potential customers to reach you by adding a location-specific business phone number in ads that appear on mobile devices with full internet browsers. Users can click the number to call you just as easily as clicking to visit your website. And, since ads can be served based on user location, a potential customer will see -- and can click to call -- the phone number of your store location that's nearest to them, not one that's across town.

This new feature also makes it easier for you to fully measure the results of your ads by allowing you to track how many calls you actually receive.

Advertisers who participated in the beta trial have seen improved click-through rates. Plus, many advertisers received more visits to their websites in addition to incremental phone calls.

To show a click-to-call business phone number in ads on mobile devices with full Internet browsers, follow these two steps:

1. Set up location extensions and add your business phone number. Customers will be able to click to call your business location nearest to them.


2. Check that you've chosen to show your ads on iPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers in your campaign settings.


That's it. Customers can now click to call you from your ads. If your campaigns are already set up this way, your phone numbers will start showing as click-to-call on mobile devices with full browsers automatically. The cost of a click to call your business will be the same as the cost of a click to visit your website.

To find out how many calls you've received from your ads, go to the Campaign Summary tab in your AdWords account. Click the "Filter and views" dropdown (step 1 in the screenshot below) and select "Segment by", then "Click Type" (steps 2, 3). The report shows how many clicks and how many calls you received (step 4). You can view calls received at the campaign, ad group or keyword level.


If your campaigns are already set up with phone numbers in location extensions and opted in to mobile devices with full browsers, but you'd prefer to opt-out out of click-to-call, simply remove the phone number from your location extensions in AdWords.

Check out how click-to-call works in our latest Mobile (Ad)itude video below, or visit the AdWords Help Center to learn more.


Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew
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Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew

If you've chosen to show ads on iPhones and other mobile devices with full internet browsers, you can now target specific mobile devices or carriers.

This feature makes it easier for you to reach the right users if you have a carrier- or device-specific message. This includes landing pages that have been optimized for a specific device, billing relationships with certain carriers, or mobile apps developed for a specific platform. For example, if you sell iPhone cases, you can use device targeting to ensure that users with Android phones won't see your ads.



Starting today, we're also making sure that ads linking to mobile app downloads will automatically appear only on devices that offer those apps. Plus, the ad will display a 'Download' link instead of a URL. Simply include 'itunes.apple.com/' or 'market.android.com/' followed by the app name in the ad's visible URL, and it will automatically display as 'Download iPhone App' or 'Download Android App.'




We hope these new features will deliver a better, more relevant user experience.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew
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The display URL (the URL that appears within the ad itself) shows potential visitors to a site where they'll land when they click on an ad. For sites that sit on shared or hosted domains (such as blogspot.com), we're adjusting our display URL policy to make this more clear.

Beginning this week, all ads leading to sites on hosted domains will need to have display URLs that accurately reflect their destinations.

Let's say I wanted to create an ad linking to this blog: http://adwords.blogspot.com. In the past, blogspot.com would have been an acceptable display URL. Because there are so many independent blogs hosted on http://blogspot.com however, we now require the display URL to reflect the specific blog reached upon clicking the ad– in this case: adwords.blogspot.com.

Incorrect:

Destination URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com
Display URL: blogspot.com

Correct:

Destination URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com
Display URL: adwords.blogspot.com

Going forward, ads that don't include this additional information in their display URLs will be disapproved. A suggested display URL will be provided in the disapproval email notification, but we encourage you to proactively adjust any ads that you think might be affected by this change.

If you'd like to learn about this policy in greater detail, please
The display URL (the URL that appears within the ad itself) shows potential visitors to a site where they'll land when they click on an ad. For sites that sit on shared or hosted domains (such as blogspot.com), we're adjusting our display URL policy to make this more clear.

Beginning this week, all ads leading to sites on hosted domains will need to have display URLs that accurately reflect their destinations.

Let's say I wanted to create an ad linking to this blog: http://adwords.blogspot.com. In the past, blogspot.com would have been an acceptable display URL. Because there are so many independent blogs hosted on http://blogspot.com however, we now require the display URL to reflect the specific blog reached upon clicking the ad– in this case: adwords.blogspot.com.

Incorrect:

Destination URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com
Display URL: blogspot.com

Correct:

Destination URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com
Display URL: adwords.blogspot.com

Going forward, ads that don't include this additional information in their display URLs will be disapproved. A suggested display URL will be provided in the disapproval email notification, but we encourage you to proactively adjust any ads that you think might be affected by this change.

If you'd like to learn about this policy in greater detail, please visit the AdWords Help Center.

Thanks for your understanding, and for helping us to continue to improve the AdWords experience.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew
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This is an exciting time for mobile. Over the past year, consumers have increasingly turned to their mobile devices to access the internet. They're performing searches, browsing content, watching videos, and interacting with mobile applications. Looking ahead ...
This is an exciting time for mobile. Over the past year, consumers have increasingly turned to their mobile devices to access the internet. They're performing searches, browsing content, watching videos, and interacting with mobile applications. Looking ahead, analysts expect internet usage on mobile devices to continue to ramp up even faster than it did on desktop computers.

Even more exciting, is our new approach to buying a mobile phone. The Nexus One is a convergence point for mobile technology, apps, and the Internet. It's a great example of how users are able to access information wherever they are, and whenever they need it -- all from a device that fits in your pocket.

For the next few months, we'll be devoting a weekly post to mobile advertising. The series will highlight insights, new features, best practices, and tips for how to optimize your mobile ad campaigns.

As you begin to think about how mobile advertising fits into your plans, we hope the Go Mobile! series will be a helpful resource to stay informed and be inspired.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew
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Posted by Emily Williams, Inside AdWords crew
On Saturday, January 9th, 2010 the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10AM to 2PM PST, for maintenance. While you won't be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual.

AdWords system maintenance typically occurs on the second Saturday of each month from 10AM to 2PM.

We'll continue to update you via the blog as we always have, but please make note of the January 9th date and of our scheduled maintenance further down the road.

Posted by Emily Williams, Inside AdWords crew
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Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew
We're often asked, "How can I maximize the ROI from Content Network campaigns?"

As part of our new Optimization University initiative, we've developed a Getting Started Guide and a series of 6 videos to help answer this question for you. The guide and videos provide a conceptual walk-through and demo of the major steps involved in executing a Content Network campaign. These include:
Along with simple tips and tricks to improve ROI, we also go over several tools, such as the Wonder Wheel, the Keyword Tool and Conversion Tracking, that can help you be more efficient. These recommendations are based on our analysis of thousands of campaigns to understand what works and what doesn't. We hope you can start applying them to your campaigns today.

If you're starting a new Content Network campaign, watch the first video below; you may find it to be particularly valuable.


You can also always bookmark the playlist or find all the latest videos on our YouTube channel.

[Note: this post is reprinted from the Google Agency Ad Solutions Blog.]

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew
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