Inside AdWords: August 2017

New reporting to show how often your Shopping ad is in the top spot

Thursday, August 31, 2017

The holiday season is right around the corner - are your Shopping campaigns prepared to maximize increased shopping traffic? To help you get a head start identifying product data gaps and measuring your competitiveness in Shopping campaigns, we’re rolling out product status reporting and absolute top impression share.

Recover potentially lost Shopping traffic

If your Shopping campaign includes products not eligible to serve, that means disapprovals could be affecting the number of shopping results you show up on. See how many of your products are ready to serve by adding product status reporting to reporting charts in the ‘product’ and ‘product groups’ page. For example, a dip in ‘products ready to serve’ means your products are no longer eligible to participate in the auction.

Historical performance using Shopping product status

A new diagnostics report in the products page helps identify your aggregate product status, like products ‘ready to serve’ or ‘disapproved.’ Add performance columns like Clicks and Conversions to the report to prioritize where product updates can make the biggest impact to lost traffic. Click on each product status to see more details on how to fix the issues immediately. Alternatively, you can also view a full list of affected products directly in AdWords from the report. Develop a routine cadence to go through your Shopping campaigns and identify the top performing products not eligible for auction as products details frequently change, especially with the peak holiday season coming up.

Use the products tab (1) and diagnostics report(2) to see product status (3)

New metric shows how often your Shopping ad is in the top spot

Now that your products are eligible to serve, it’s time get them in front of shoppers. The left-most ad on mobile Shopping results get up to 3X more engagement from shoppers¹; impressions in this position are called “absolute top” impressions. To see the percentage of time you’re showing in this top position, use absolute top impression share (Search abs. top IS column in AdWords).

Absolute top impression share is the number of “absolute top” impressions you received in Shopping results over the total times you could’ve been in the top impression.

For instance if you showed up as the “absolute top” in 8 search results but were eligible for 20 results, then your absolute top impression share would be 40%. If you have a high absolute top impression share, it means your products often appear at the top position in Google Shopping results. “Absolute top” impressions include ads from the Shopping carousel on Google search results and is available for both Shopping ads and Local Inventory ads.

The “absolute top” impression in mobile Search results

You can use this metric to optimize seasonal campaigns and get in front of more shoppers. Let’s say you sell kitchenware and plan to have a holiday sale on pots and pans. Separate out the sale products into their own product group. Monitor it for two days and adjust bids upwards if you need to make your ads more prominent. Also review absolute top impression share by device at the ad group level. You can optimize an underperforming device audience by increasing the bid modifier. Ad quality is the other factor in growing your absolute top impression share; include high quality images, relevant product titles, and the correct GTINs across your inventory to improve the quality.

To monitor your impact in key categories, you also can combine absolute top impression share with other competitive metrics such as click share. By increasing both metrics, you’re claiming more of shoppers’ attention.

The diagnostics report and absolute top impression share are available starting today in the new Adwords experience².

To learn more about how to use absolute top impression share and other metrics to prepare for the holidays, visit our Help Center.

Posted by Thomas Houit, Product Manager, Google Shopping

1. Source: Google internal data, Q4 2016 on US mobile Shopping carousel
2. The new AdWords experience is rolling out to all advertisers throughout 2017. Once you have access, you can switch back and forth between the new and previous experiences.

Introducing a better, simpler ad rotation

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

we’re simplifying ad rotation to two settings: “optimize” and “rotate indefinitely.”

Optimize for your best adsSmart Bidding Simplifying even rotationAdWords Help Centerbest practices guidePosted by Sylvanus Bent, Product Manager, AdWords

Go beyond the click with the “Landing pages” page

Thursday, August 24, 2017

12 The “Landing pages” pageintroducednew AdWords experience*mobile-friendly

Sort “Clicks” in descending order to identify landing pages you may want to fix

“An ad click is just the start of the customer's journey. Everything after that―the speed, mobile-friendliness, ease of use―is paramount to the success of our campaigns. So naturally we're incredibly excited to see this landing page data in AdWords.”― Nicole Jennings, Senior VP of Paid Digital Media, PMX Agency

“It’s amazing how quickly we can now identify landing page issues and propose the right fixes. When we can get web teams to prioritize changes that improve both organic and paid search performance, it's a big win for everyone.”― Zach Morrison, President of Elite SEM Mobile-friendly Click RateGoogle's Mobile-Friendly Test Test for mobile friendliness

Google's Mobile-Friendly Test

Learn moreAdWords Help CenterAccelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)Posted by Jon Diorio, Group Product Manager, AdWords1-2. Google / Ipsos Connect, Rising Consumer Expectations in the Micro-Moment, U.S., Dec. 2016 n=1,516 US online smartphone users, A18+
* The new AdWords experience is rolling out to all advertisers throughout 2017. Once you have access, you can switch back and forth between the new and previous experiences.

Universal App Campaigns: Steer performance with goals

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

announced

UAC ad in the Google Play store

best practices Pick the right goal for your campaign Example: Say you’re a mobile game developer who’s about to launch a new app. You want as many users to install your app as possible for a target cost-per-install (CPI). Say you expect 1 out of 10 people who install your game to buy a $20 upgrade in the first 30 days. You can afford to pay up to $2 per install (or $20 ÷ 10 installs). Pick the campaign objective “Install volume” and set your target cost-per-install (CPI) to $2.

Reach different types of users with different campaigns Example: After launching your game, you decide you’d like more users who are likely going to buy something, like a $20 upgrade you offer. This doesn’t mean that you’d like to stop finding other types of users. You may still want to find people who will install and engage, but not necessarily pay. You create a separate campaign alongside your first one. You set this second campaign’s objective to be “In-app actions.” You calculate your target cost-per-action (CPA) of to be $20, equal to the value of the upgrade.

Setting campaign bidding objectives

Then, you decrease the target CPI and lower the budget for the first campaign focused on “Install volume.” This signals to AdWords that you’re more interested in users who are likely to complete an in-app action. Use budgets to find the right mix of users Continuing the example: Say it’s been a couple of months and you’ve added a social feature and new levels to your game. You want to get this update to as many new users as you can.You adjust the target CPI and budget UP for the campaign that’s focused on “Install Volume.” At the same time, you adjust the budget DOWN for the campaign that’s focused on “In-app actions.” You’re signaling to AdWords yet another change in direction.

“Zynga now operates 100% of AdWords spend through UAC, however we did not get here overnight as it was a long process of testing and learning to understand how to make UAC work for us at scale. We are now able to scale up games profitably and increase operational efficiencies across all aspects of our user acquisition efforts by leveraging UAC machine learning.”- Tyson Nguyen, Senior Manager User Acquisition

“Performance is at the core of our business and Universal App Campaigns out-performed manual campaign management, allowing us to achieve efficiency at scale.”- Jonna Onselius, Mobile Marketing Manager

“As the largest online bus booking platform in the world, increasing bus booking transactions is crucial for our business to stay competitive. UAC helped us achieve this by maximizing transactions at a minimal cost and adapting faster to changing market dynamics when compared to standard app install campaigns.”- Rajiv Kondal, Director, Performance Marketing

“Using relevant ad placements in the Google Play Store, Universal App Campaigns have accelerated our new user growth and expansion into new markets.”- Richard Fenning, Digital Marketing Specialistbest practices guidePosted by Sissie Hsiao, Director of Product Management, Mobile Advertising

Important updates to AdWords Terms and Conditions

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Starting today, we’re rolling out new Terms and Conditions in all countries and territories.

More flexibility to notify or inform you via phone calls, text messages and emails.

New provisions related to how products and features are tested within AdWords.

In the U.S., Canada, and most countries in Latin America and Asia, a provision to use arbitration to resolve disputes rather than jury trials or class actions.^* Follow the instructions in the dispute resolution section of the terms to opt-out of this provision (U.S. and Brazil only).

New provisions related to the disclosure of technical errors and bugs within AdWords.

New data protection terms related to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other EU privacy frameworks.

Action requiredPlease review and accept the new Terms and Conditions by signing in to your AdWords account. Don’t see the new terms?AdWords Help CenterPosted by Sugeeti Kochhar, Product Manager, AdWords* Does not apply to countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Propel your mobile app growth with Universal App Campaigns

Monday, August 14, 2017

Universal App Campaigns140%1To help more advertisers take advantage of these benefits, we'll be focusing our efforts and moving all AdWords app install campaigns to UAC later this year.
Three easy steps to help you move your campaigns to UAC

Review your current AdWords app promotion campaigns: log into AdWords > click the Ads tab and identify your top performing text, banner and video ads.

Tip: export your campaign performance to make it easy to determine baseline UAC bids.

Create a new UAC and set the right performance goal: build a new UAC by clicking the +Campaign drop-down menu from the "Campaigns" tab > select Universal app. Copy and paste any top performing creatives, especially images and videos, into your new UAC.

Set up AdWords conversion tracking through Google Analytics for Firebase, Google Play or one of our third-party App Attribution Partners to find more of your high-value users. Learn more
Then, choose the bidding option that best supports your business or campaign goals:

Set the right bids: calculate the average CPI, CPA or ROAS of your existing campaigns as the starting point for your UAC performance goal. Then, monitor your new UAC and adjust bids over time to meet your goal, as there may be some natural changes in performance as you transition between campaign types.

Best Practices How UAC helps you find more of the right app users

Posted by Sissie Hsiao, Director of Product Management, Mobile Advertising1. Google Internal Data, July 2017

Delivering more informative sitelinks, callouts and snippets

Wednesday, August 09, 2017

65%1expanded text adswe’re changing how mobile ads show sitelinks, callouts and structured snippets Useful, tappable sitelinksSitelinks

2 Making callouts and snippets more readableCalloutsstructured snippets3Help Centerbest practices guidePosted by James Parker, Product Manager, AdWords1. Google / Ipsos Connect, Rising Consumer Expectations in the Micro-Moment, U.S., Dec. 2016
2. Google internal data
3. Google internal data

Inside AdWords

We've moved!

New reporting to show how often your Shopping ad is in the top spot

Introducing a better, simpler ad rotation

Go beyond the click with the “Landing pages” page

Universal App Campaigns: Steer performance with goals

Important updates to AdWords Terms and Conditions

Propel your mobile app growth with Universal App Campaigns

Delivering more informative sitelinks, callouts and snippets

Google Best Practices

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