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Building a brand online is about creating authentic connections with your audience. Since launching AdWords for video last year, we’ve helped more brands capture the power of sight, sound, and motion in a simple and easy way. Today, we’re helping brands further understand the impact of their campaigns by bringing three new measurement features to AdWords for video that make reporting more consistent with other media, more goal-oriented and just plain prettier.

Reach & Frequency Reporting: Speak the same measurement language across media
AdWords for video now displays reach and frequency metrics in your campaign reporting interface. These metrics give you more insight into how many unique viewers have seen your ad and the average number of times they’ve seen it, helping you better measure against other media such as TV. To view these metrics on a campaign, ad or targeting group level, just click on Columns >> Customize Columns and look under the Performance section.


Column Sets: Tell us your marketing goals, and we’ll pull the metrics
To help you organize the metrics that matter most to your campaign, we’re introducing the Column Sets feature which groups relevant metrics by marketing objective. So all you need to do is select your advertising goal and we’ll show you useful reporting columns for your account. For example:
  • Want to build brand awareness? Select the Branding objective in the “Columns” drop down to see how broadly your video ad was viewed. We’ll automatically show unique viewers, average view frequency and average impression frequency. 
  • Want to optimize for conversions? Select the Website Traffic and Conversions objective to see how your video ads drove viewers to action. We’ll show you website traffic, number of conversions, cost-per-conversion, and your conversion rate from people who viewed your ad. 
  • Want to grow your audience? Select the Audience objective to understand how your video ads drove people to watch and engage with more of your content. We’ll show you follow-on subscribers and follow-on views.
  • Want to drive more views? Select the Views objective to understand the follow-on actions viewers take such as when a viewer goes to your channel to watch more videos. We’ll show you follow-on views and unique viewers.

GeoMap: Visualize your views
Where in the world are your views coming from? With the new AdWords for video visualization feature, you can tell with a mere glance. Just select the Campaign tab and click “Map View” to generate a beautiful snapshot that displays view activity on an interactive map. You can even click on regions to drill down to states and provinces globally, and to the DMA-level in the U.S. These geographic insights can help you understand which of your ad messages are resonating with specific markets.


We hope these new features to help you easily compare campaigns across platforms, discover new metrics and derive actionable insights. Head over to AdWords for video to try them out today!

Posted by David Tattersall, YouTube Product Manager, recently watched “Top Gear - Reliant Robin Space Shuttle”
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What was your business’ New Year’s resolution, and how do you plan to keep it? At Google, ours is to help make the web work for you. Our new series of Learn with Google webinars will teach you how to use digital to build brand awareness, and they’ll give you the tools you need to drive sales. By tapping into technology that works together across your business needs, you can resolve to win moments that matter in 2013.

Check out our upcoming live webinars:

Build Awareness

02/12 [Multiscreen] Brand Building in a Multiscreen World
02/20 [YouTube] How to Build your Business with YouTube Video Ads
03/05 [Social] How to Use Google+ and Make Social Work for You
03/12 [Mobile] Understanding Mobile Ads Across Marketing Objectives
03/27 [Wildfire by Google] The Call for Converged Media

Drive Sales

01/29 [Analytics] Google Tag Manager: Technical Implementation *today*
02/07 [Search] Your Shelf Space on Google: Get Started with Google Shopping
02/26 [YouTube] From Awareness to Sales: Making the Most of Video Remarketing
02/27 [Search] What's New and Next in AdWords
03/06 [Display] Biggest Loser: Digital Ad Spend Edition
03/13 [Mobile] The Full Value of Mobile
03/20 [Display] Getting Started with Dynamic Remarketing

Visit our webinar site to register for any of the sessions and to access past webinars on-demand. You can also stay up-to-date on the schedule by adding our Learn with Google Webinar calendar to your own Google calendar to automatically see upcoming webinars.

During our last series of webinars, attendees had the chance to win a Nexus 7. Our lucky winner was Donella Cohen, who is happily enjoying her new tablet. Check out our upcoming webinars for another chance to win!

Learn with Google is a program to help businesses succeed through winning moments that matter, enabling better decisions and constantly innovating. We hope that you’ll use these best practices and how-to’s to maximize the impact of digital and grow your business. We’re looking forward to seeing you at an upcoming session!

Posted by Erin Molnar, Learn With Google
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On November 7th we rolled out several improvements and changes for AdWords impression share (IS) reporting. As we mentioned in that initial roll, we’re continuing with our plans to phase out the old IS columns on February 4th.

Any saved reports using the old IS columns will need to be updated to use the new columns. If you don’t remove/replace those columns before they’re retired on February 4th, you won’t be able to run those saved reports.

Upgrading to the new, network-specific columns comes with a number of improvements including:

  • Distinct search and display columns. We’ve added new columns to cleanly separate search and display impression share.
  • “Hour of day” segmentation. We’ve enabled “Hour of day” segmentation so you can evaluate how your ad coverage varies by the hour.
  • Filters, charts and rules. With the new IS columns you can apply filters, see charts, and apply automated rules using IS metrics.
  • Device segmentation.  Starting today you can also segment your IS columns by device so you can see coverage for desktop, mobile and tablet devices separately.

For more information on what’s changing and what you may need to do, visit our AdWords help center, which has additional details.

Posted by Rob Newton, Product Marketing Manager
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Understanding the true impact of advertising

Advertisers have a fundamental need to understand the effectiveness of their advertising. Unfortunately, determining the true impact of advertising on consumer behavior is deceptively difficult. This difficulty in measurement is especially applicable to advertising on non-brand (i.e. generic) search terms, where ROI may be driven indirectly over multiple interactions that include downstream brand search activities. Advertising effectiveness is often estimated using standard tracking processes that rely upon ‘Last Click’ attribution. However, ‘Last Click’ based tracking can significantly underestimate the true value of non-brand search advertising. This fact was recently demonstrated by lastminute.com, a leading travel brand, using a randomized experiment - the most rigorous method of measurement.


Experimental Approach

lastminute.com recently conducted an online geo-experiment to measure the effectiveness of their non-brand search advertising on Google AdWords.  The study included offline and online conversions.  The analysis used a mathematical model to account for seasonality and city-level differences in sales.  Cities were randomly assigned to either a test or a control group. The test group received non-brand search advertising during the 12 week test period, while the control group did not receive such advertising during the same period. The benefit of this approach is that it allows statements to be made regarding the causal relationship between non-brand search advertising and the volume of conversions - the real impact of the marketing spend.

Full lastminute.com case study

Findings

The results of the experiment indicate that the overall effectiveness of the non-brand search advertising is 43% greater1  than the estimate generated by lastminute.com’s standard online tracking system.

The true impact of the non-brand search advertising is significantly larger than the ‘Last Click’ estimate because it accounts for
  1. upper funnel changes in user behavior that are not visible to a ‘Last Click’ tracking system, and
  2. the impact of non-brand search on sales from online and offline channels.
This improved understanding of the true value of non-brand search advertising has given lastminute.com the opportunity to revise their marketing strategy and make better budgeting decisions.


How can you benefit?

As proven by this study, ‘Last Click’ measurement can significantly understate the true effectiveness of search advertising. Advertisers should look to assess the performance of non-brand terms using additional metrics beyond ‘Last Click’ conversions. For example, advertisers should review the new first click conversions and assist metrics available in AdWords and Google Analytics. Ideally, advertisers will design and carry out experiments of their own to understand how non-brand search works to drive sales.

Read more on AdWords Search Funnels
Read more on Google Analytics Multi Channel Funnels

 Anish Acharya, Industry Analyst, Google; Stefan F. Schnabl, Product Manager, Google; Gabriel Hughes, Head of Attribution, Google; and Jon Vaver, Senior Quantitative Analyst, Google contributed to this report.

1 This result has a 95% Bayesian confidence interval of [1.17, 1.66].

Posted by Jeremy Tully, Inside AdWords Crew
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While most people are working on productive New Year’s resolutions, scammers and bad actors will begin 2013 with the same old goal: make money with the help of bad ads.  Advertising helps fund businesses online and enables them to provide services and content for free to their users.  But, bad ads can ruin your web experience, putting you and legitimate businesses in harm’s way.  We have a vested interest in fighting bad ads and their sources with considerable firepower.

Luckily, our ads quality team hasn’t changed its New Year’s resolutions either: stop bad ads and eliminate bad actors from our systems.  In 2012, we continued to make progress towards this goal: we introduced new tools for stopping bad ads, provided greater transparency around the ads review process, and explained how advertisers can connect with us if we ever mistakenly disapprove good ads.  Below is a more complete look at our efforts to combat bad ads in 2012.


We will continue to do whatever it takes to keep our users, partners, and the web as a whole, as safe as possible.  We have zero tolerance for bad ads and will keep working tirelessly to maintain the most secure advertising systems in 2013, and beyond.

Signed by: David W. Baker, Ads Engineering
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Smartphones and tablets can be great creative canvases for brand advertisers, and many agencies are helping brands go big on mobile. But it’s hard for agencies and advertisers to experience the full interactivity of mobile rich media -- mobile video and HTML5 ads --  through static images alone. Last night at our annual Creative Sandbox event in New York, we unveiled the new Mobile Ads Showcase App, which lets you experience mobile ads exactly as your users will.

The app lets you explore what best-in-class advertisers are doing with mobile rich media, and learn about all that’s possible with Google Mobile Ads. Additionally, agencies can use the app as their mobile portfolio by coding, testing and uploading their HTML5 ad examples to the MRAID-compliant “My Ads” screen. The app is now available for Android smartphones and tablets through the Google Play Store.

See the app in action and learn more about how it works on the Creative Sandbox site. 



Posted by Jessica Sapick, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads
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Happy 2013! As our New Year’s gift to you, we here at Google are launching a new “Under the AdWords Hood” Hangout on Air series.

We took a vote on the Google Ads G+ page, and you told us which AdWords subjects you’re curious to learn more about in the new year. Over the next eight weeks, we’ll break down those topics and share with you what we do at Google, why we do it, and our best practices:

January 10th at 11 AM PDT: AdWords Policy

January 24th at 11 AM PDT: Breaking Down Ad Rank

February 7th at 11 AM PDT: Remarketing Tips

February 21st at 11 AM PDT: All About the AdWords Billing Cycle

To join the Hangouts, just sign into Google+ and add the Google Ads +Page to your circles. Each week we’ll put up a post soliciting your questions. Then, on Thursday, navigate to your Stream where you’ll be able to view our Hangout live with just one click. See you there!

Posted by Courtney Pannell & Divya Vishwanath, AdWords Support

We know marketers are always looking to run better search campaigns by going bigger, moving faster, and taking new opportunities across formats, devices, and channels. Our mission with DoubleClick Search is to help them do that. Over the past year, we’ve further invested in making DoubleClick Search a best-in-class platform for search management to meet the needs of agencies and advertisers. We’ve often called 2012 our year of transformation: after rebuilding DoubleClick Search from the ground up in 2011, our team focused 2012 on delivering powerful tools to make managing the world’s largest search campaigns more efficient and effective than ever before. Our goal is to make search simple -- providing easier, smarter, and faster ways to manage your campaigns -- and integrate it with your broader digital marketing efforts in the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform.



With this vision in mind, we’re kicking off the new year with a new look to our website, and a continued focus on investing in a search management platform that will save you time, get great campaign results, and help you make better digital marketing decisions. In the spirit of self-betterment, we invite you to join us in resolving to make 2013 your best year yet. Here are a few suggested resolutions to improve your life as a search marketer:

  1. I will remember important dates. Keeping track of anniversaries, birthdays, and other special occasions can be tricky enough. While Google Calendar can help you organize your personal events, DoubleClick Search has you covered the rest of the time, giving you reliable access to your campaigns on any day of the year without the worry of extended downtime and missed opportunities. Backed by Google infrastructure, DoubleClick Search is up and running when you need it most -- during critical dates like Black Friday, Christmas day, and throughout the holiday season. We’ll keep the lights on throughout 2013, so you can worry about finding that perfect anniversary gift.

  2. I will go to bed earlier. We get it; there’s just not enough time in the day. On top of back-to-back meetings, lunch dates, squeezing in some gym time and having dinner ready by 7, the last thing you want to do is manage a campaign that needs to go live at midnight. With DoubleClick Search, we help you get your life (and your search ads) on track with a set of scheduling features, including scheduled sync, scheduled UI edits, and scheduled upload sheets to effortlessly automate campaign changes around the clock. Coupled with easy bulk operations in the interface and ID-less uploads that have lowered bulksheet errors by 50% [cite: internal Google data], save time and your sanity by cutting out repetitive tasks. Go on and catch those extra zzz’s -- we’ve got it covered.
     
  3. I will save more for a rainy day. So you really, really want that new pair of shoes -- but resisting temptation can be hard. Ease your way into fiscal responsibility with DoubleClick Search Budget pacing reports, which allow you to keep track of your monthly search budgets at a glance. Visualize week-over-week, day-over-day, or month-over-month trends to quickly identify search campaigns that are under-spending or underperforming, and adjust keywords, bids, or budgets accordingly. (Now after setting up your Budget pacing reports, go out and get those shoes -- you deserve them!)
     
  4. I will be a better listener. No smartphones out during dinner. No talking over your friends. And no more ignoring key search insights. Just as listening to your friends and colleagues can mean more opportunities to develop better personal relationships, listening to your search campaigns can help you nurture better campaign results to meet your business goals. Our Performance Bidding Suite offers a variety of transparency features into the bid optimization process, including bid rationale, preview intended bids, chart bid history, and primary constraint to help you get down to the nitty-gritty of what might or might not be working. Are your min and max bids too constrained? Is your goal too aggressive? Just lend us your ear and we’ll help you discover those insights.
     
  5. I will spend more time with family. Your family is important -- they’re your bedrock, your confidants, and your circle of trust. That unified sense of integration and understanding is important to us, too. Because we know that search is one piece of a broader digital marketing “family,” we built DoubleClick Search to natively integrate with our display ad server, demand-side platform, and our rich media and analytics platforms -- all a part of DoubleClick Digital Marketing -- to help you take advantage of more opportunities across channels. Use Display remarketing from search ads to “close the loop” on paid search efforts, showing users display ads across major ad exchanges via DoubleClick Bid Manager, or across the Google Display Network. Then, call your mom. She misses you.

Here’s to your best year yet. Happy New Year from DoubleClick Search!
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