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With 2018 only weeks away, our team compiled a few AdWords New Year’s resolutions for you to consider.
With 2018 only weeks away, our team compiled a few AdWords New Year’s resolutions for you to consider.

1. I will try out new AdWords innovations.
The new AdWords experience is packed with new features like promotion extensions and ad variations that have helped advertisers improve performance. For example, Torrid saw a 30% lift in conversion rate when using promotion extensions to highlight limited time offers alongside ad copy that emphasized quality and fit. Merkle also increased conversions by 14% after running an ad variations test with expanded text ads. And new shortcuts like pressing “G” then “T” let you navigate to any page within your account so you can get to the data that matters to you, faster.
As you search in AdWords, keyboard shortcuts will be suggested for future use.

 2. I will test more.
Testing in AdWords is crucial when optimizing your account. To increase return on ad spend (ROAS), the Honest Company used campaign drafts and experiments for efficiently exploring new strategies—saving 50% more time compared to manual trials. The Honest Company experimented with sending shoppers to product pages versus special offer landing pages for "bath" and "body" keywords. As a result of the test, the Honest Company saw a 47% increase in ROAS when sending shoppers to unique offer landing pages.

3. I will do more in less time.
Smart Bidding helps marketers bid both more efficiently and effectively. Powered by Google’s machine learning, it automatically sets the right bid for each and every auction. Bonprix, a leading fashion brand in Europe, drove 25% more revenue at the same ROAS and more than 50% in incremental revenue on mobile, by using Smart Bidding with Target ROAS. According to Sönke Harms, Bonprix’s Head of Shopping ads, Smart Bidding allowed the team to focus on “delivering key analyses, identifying strategic opportunities, and driving important initiatives.” Read our best practices guide to get started with Smart Bidding.

4. I will reach more shoppers.
Mobile searches for “where to buy” grew more than 85% over the past two years.1 That’s why it’s critical to help shoppers find your business both online and when they’re on-the-go. With location extensions, you can show your address, business hours, a map to your location, and more. You can also reach and bid higher specifically for people who are located near your business. Jerome’s Furniture combined location extensions with local inventory ads and store visits measurement to increase conversions by 93% across online and offline channels.
Location extensions show your business information in various formats on the Search Network, Display Network, and Google Maps.

5. I will stay informed.
With the AdWords app, you can receive timely alerts notifying you of issues and opportunities in your account. You can also easily pause campaigns and adjust budgets and bids. Adding, editing, and removing keywords is also simple. Best of all, you can do all of this right from the palm of your hand. Download the app now on Android or iOS.
With the AdWords app, you can manage your keywords and more on-the-go.


To receive more AdWords tips and tricks, be sure to subscribe to our Best Practices newsletter.

From our AdWords family to yours—happy holidays, and we’ll see you in 2018!

Posted by Karen Yao, Director of Product Management, AdWords
1. Source: Google Data, U.S., Jan.-June 2015 vs. Jan.-June 2017.

Would it surprise you to hear that we see 34% more shopping searches on Christmas Day than on Black Friday 1? That’s just one of the eye-opening consumer trends we’re watching closely now that the 2017 holiday season is in full swing.
Would it surprise you to hear that we see 34% more shopping searches on Christmas Day than on Black Friday1? That’s just one of the eye-opening consumer trends we’re watching closely now that the 2017 holiday season is in full swing.

With mobile, shoppers know they can easily find and get what they’re looking for up until the last minute. So, despite all of the improvements retailers have made to shipping speed and product availability, many people still wait to buy. That means that a lot of December’s holiday shopping happens right before—and even after—Christmas, giving more reason for retailers to continue to drive store traffic from online and offline media throughout the season.

Early birds they are not

Retailers may be pushing their holiday deals earlier and earlier, but some shoppers are still waiting longer and longer, weighing their options to make their final choices.

When shoppers consider a new purchase, they spend 13 days on average shopping for the item. But once they decide to buy, almost half expect it either the same day or the next day2. In fact, mobile searches related to “same day shipping” have grown 120% since 20153.

It’s no wonder, then, that we see online conversions from the week before December’s shipping cutoff date on par with the the week of Cyber Monday4, as holiday shoppers make a last-ditch effort to get their presents sent to their doorstep.

Once shipping cutoff hits, last-minute shoppers make a mad dash

The last week before Christmas is crazy busy, of course, but it's also very local. Around Dec. 21, when the online shipping cutoff passes, shoppers increasingly turn to their hometown stores to get what they need.

Regardless of which day of the week Christmas falls, the in-store holiday rush starts on the Friday one full week before Christmas. The Saturday after that is typically the second-busiest day of December. The busiest day of all in the last month of the year? That’s Dec. 23, regardless of what day of the week it falls on5.

Searches for “where to buy” peak on Dec. 23 as last-minute shoppers grab their final gifts and stocking stuffers. Some popular examples: “where to buy Cards Against Humanity?”, “where to buy Yeti Cups?", and even “where to buy coal?”6


‘Where to buy’ searches in 2016

Meanwhile, mobile searches for “open now” and “store hours” grow through December and peak on Christmas Day. That includes searches like, “what stores are open near me on Christmas?”, “what grocery stores are open on Christmas?” and “what stores are open right now?"7

This year, retailers have an edge: With Christmas on a Monday, there are two full weekends (Dec. 15-17 and 22-24) in the 10 days before the holiday. This bodes well for store traffic with shoppers out in force on Fridays and Saturdays.

The takeaway? With people turning to stores at the last minute, be sure to highlight your local products for the best chance at drawing shoppers to your door. Check out our Shopping best practices guide to learn how you can drive traffic to your store this holiday season.

Christmas may be over, but the shopping isn't

The days between Christmas and New Year's Eve are just as busy as every other day in December (other than Christmas week itself). For general shopping queries (such as “shopping near me” or “store hours”), we see 34% more searches on Christmas Day than we do on Black Friday. Though searches for “where to buy” increase up until Dec. 23, the queries recover to pre-Christmas week levels and stay steady for the final week of the year8.

And this post-Christmas shopping busyness isn’t just happening online. In fact, last year we saw about 20% of all December store traffic happen in the six days after Christmas9. And why is that? With searches for “clearance” spiking on December 2610, shoppers are likely looking to redeem gift cards, make returns and exchanges, find gifts for people they haven’t seen yet, or decide to “gift” themselves a little extra.


Aggregate store traffic vs. toy stores and video game stores in 2016
Green: Aggregate store traffic | Dark blue: Toy stores | Light blue: Video game stores

While Black Friday is still a major in-store shopping day for some categories, such as electronics and furniture, many specialty stores see more foot traffic leading up to, and after, Christmas Day than on Black Friday. In 2016, toy stores and bookstores, for example, saw the most foot traffic of the holiday season on Dec. 23, while video game stores saw their busiest holiday shopping day on Dec. 2611.

Mobile has fundamentally changed the way holiday shoppers complete their lists. They expect to be able to find what they want, when they want it. And that means holiday shopping is happening right before—and even after—Christmas. That's a big opportunity for marketers who keep the lights on even after Santa slides through.

For more holiday insights, be sure to check out Think with Google.

Posted by Emily Eberhard, Head of Shopping B2B Marketing at Google
1. Google Data, U.S., Nov.-Dec. 2016.
2. Google/Ipsos Fall Shopping Study, n=4,720, U.S., Sept. 2017, High Consideration Purchases.
3. Google Data, U.S., Jan.-June 2017 vs. Jan.-June 2015.
4. Google Analytics, Based on data from Google Analytics accounts that have authorized Google to share website data in an aggregate way, Shopping vertical only, Nov.-Dec. 2016.
5. Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized store traffic from a sample of U.S. users that have turned on Location History, U.S., Nov.-Dec. 2015 and 2016.
6. Google Data, U.S., Nov.-Dec. 2016.
7. Google Data, U.S., Nov.-Dec. 2016.
8. Google Data, U.S., Nov.-Dec. 2016.
9. Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized store traffic from a sample of U.S. users that have turned on Location History, U.S., Nov.-Dec. 2015 and 2016.
10. Google Data, U.S., Dec. 2016
11. Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized store traffic from a sample of U.S. users that have turned on Location History, U.S., Nov.-Dec. 2015 and 2016.

Since we introduced product ratings, we’ve been working on new ways to help you gather feedback about your products and drive more qualified traffic to your site. Today, we’re making product ratings available in all markets where ...
Since we introduced product ratings, we’ve been working on new ways to help you gather feedback about your products and drive more qualified traffic to your site. Today, we’re making product ratings available in all markets where Google Shopping is present.

Product ratings appear in the form of stars and review counts on Shopping ads. This 5-star rating system represents aggregated review data for the product, compiled from multiple sources including merchants, third-party aggregators, editorial sites and users.


How to enable product ratings on Shopping ads

If you have a Merchant Center account for your store, you’ve already taken the first step towards displaying Product Ratings. Once you sign up and satisfy the program requirements, you can begin uploading Product Ratings feeds to your Merchant Center account. Alternatively, you may want to work with one of our approved third-party aggregators.

Additionally, you can now collect reviews about the products you sell through Google Customer Reviews. Whenever your shoppers complete a purchase, we’ll ask them about their shopping experience with your store, as well as the product they purchased. The reviews collected about their shopping experience will contribute to your seller rating and, the product reviews collected can make you eligible to show product ratings. To learn more about how to use Google Customer Reviews to collect product reviews, see here.


Learn More

The product rating program is now available globally. For more information, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Naga Hariharan, Google Shopping Product Manager

The holiday season is upon us, and millions of consumers around the world are looking forward to unwrapping their new devices and downloading their favorite apps. People have so many choices when it comes to apps, so it’s critical for you to capture their attention and give them a reason to engage with your app.
The holiday season is upon us, and millions of consumers around the world are looking forward to unwrapping their new devices and downloading their favorite apps. People have so many choices when it comes to apps, so it’s critical for you to capture their attention and give them a reason to engage with your app.

That’s why we’re rolling out HTML5 playable ads in Universal App campaigns (UAC)—so users can quickly spin a wheel, score a point or jump into level two, right from the ad.


Playtika gets more people in the game

To show how playable ads in UAC benefit game developers and app marketers, let’s take a look at how Playtika, a leading mobile gaming company, used this format to reach more users for its game: House of Fun. People can spin a wheel directly in the ad and experience the thrill of the game before downloading. This gives game lovers a sense of how the game works, and what it takes to win, before installing.

After introducing interactive and engaging playable ads and testing multiple creative formats, Playtika increased its return on ad spend (ROAS) by 1.8X.

According to Nir Schlaen, Marketing Team Leader, “We want to put Playtika’s games in the hands of more potential players at scale…We've found that playables drive more engagement and long-term customer value because users have already had a taste of the game.”

Here are three tips to help you get started with playable ads in UAC.

 1. Make it short and sweet: Keep playable content short and engaging so that users don’t choose to skip your ad. We recommend that your ad be between 30-60 seconds long. Tailor the length for your app; it can vary depending on vertical and complexity of the ad. And gameplay in the ad should be easier to complete than in the actual game.

 2. Be engaging but accurate: Make sure to include how you want users to interact with your ad into its design. This starts with a good first impression. Focus on the aspects of your game that capture people’s attention and gets players to come back. Set clear user expectations by including clear instructions and captions about how gameplay works—for example “swipe to scroll” and “shake your phone to jump”.

 3. Have a clear call to action: This is your chance to summarize your game and to encourage users to play the full version by downloading your app. As an example, “Enjoyed playing? Download now to beat level two.” It’s important to make the call to action as clear as possible with a clickable area for a smooth transition into your game.


We’re committed to innovating on Universal App campaigns—playable ads as the most recent addition. To learn more about how to make the most of UAC check out our best practices.

Posted by Sissie Hsiao, VP of Product, Mobile App Advertising at Google

With the launch of self-sign up earlier this year, thousands of top brands and manufacturers have already begun using Google Manufacturer Center to enhance their product’s images, descriptions and variants in Shopping ads. Today, we’re excited to announce new ways to help brands -- both in the US and abroad -- manage their data more easily and provide a more consistent brand experience on Google and across the web.
With the launch of self-sign up earlier this year, thousands of top brands and manufacturers have already begun using Google Manufacturer Center to enhance their product’s images, descriptions and variants in Shopping ads. Today, we’re excited to announce new ways to help brands -- both in the US and abroad -- manage their data more easily and provide a more consistent brand experience on Google and across the web.


Manufacturer Center expands to more countries

To help brands abroad, we’ve expanded availability for Manufacturer Center to the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, Brazil, and the Netherlands. Now, brands with products sold in these markets can use Manufacturer Center to best represent their products to shoppers, access unique analytics and insights, and improve the performance of Shopping ads featuring their products.


Increase opportunities to highlight your products’ best features and benefits

Shoppers are constantly looking for information, trying to ensure the product they ultimately choose is the perfect fit for their needs. Information from Manufacturer Center now appears in Google Knowledge Panels in the US, highlighting core product features to shoppers at key decision making stages. With descriptions, images, features and more directly supplied by you, the manufacturer, shoppers will be better informed and feel more confident choosing your branded products.


Manage product information programmatically with the Manufacturer Center API

We know that manually uploading, editing, deleting, and distributing product data can make it difficult to keep up with a brand’s ever-changing product assortment, and using feeds may not offer the desired level of control. With the launch of the Manufacturer Center API, brands (or their 3rd party data partners) can streamline product data updates in the following ways:
  • Add new products directly to Manufacturer Center.
  • Update existing products in Manufacturer Center with the most current product data.
  • Delete products from an existing Manufacturer Center account.
  • Monitor data quality and review product data errors to optimize a brand's presence on Google.
  • Surface Google's product data feedback in external data management tools.
  • Streamline product data updates and syndication to Google by creating custom workflows compliant with data management policies and procedures.

To get started with the Manufacturer Center API, check out the Developer's Guide and Portal article here.

To learn more about Manufacturer Center, to read success stories, and to sign up, visit our website.

Posted by Limor David, Product Manager, Google Shopping

In those spare moments between basting the turkey, assembling gingerbread houses, and planning your ugly-sweater party, you might find yourself reaching for your phone to research holiday gifts you still need to buy. You’re not alone: With information readily available at the swipe of a finger, holiday shoppers are ...
In those spare moments between basting the turkey, assembling gingerbread houses, and planning your ugly-sweater party, you might find yourself reaching for your phone to research holiday gifts you still need to buy. You’re not alone: With information readily available at the swipe of a finger, holiday shoppers are doing more research before buying than ever before. Indeed, mobile searches for “ideas” (i.e., “$25 gift ideas”) have increased by 55 percent over the past two years1. And with new improvements to our knowledge panel on Google.com, we’ve made it even easier for shoppers to quickly find product photos, videos, reviews, descriptions and more.


Armed with mobile devices as their “anywhere” assistants, today’s holiday shoppers are more informed than ever. The result? Promotion-driven shopping events like Black Friday are no longer anchored on a single day. Consumers are now in the driver’s seat—researching to find the best deals of the season before, during, and after Black Friday, and hatching a game plan to determine what, where, and when to buy.


Researching around the clock

With retailers sharing Black Friday deals earlier and earlier, shoppers have a bigger opportunity to make more informed decisions about their purchases. We're seeing these curious consumers leaning into holiday shopping research with increasing frequency, trading in time spent standing in line for time spent researching everything from door-busting deals to details around specific products.

For example, mobile searches containing “Black Friday” increased by 80% over the past two years (e.g., “when is black friday,” “lowes black friday,” “best black friday deals”)2.

Beyond searching to find more information for Black Friday, people are also researching brands over the holidays. Earlier in November, we see generic, non-branded searches for Black Friday outpacing branded searches (e.g.,"black friday furniture sale" and "black friday makeup deals 2016"). Then, about 2.5 weeks before the four-day weekend, there is a switch to searches for Black Friday becoming mostly branded (e.g., "ashley furniture black friday" and "sephora black friday 2016") as shoppers narrow down their options and begin laser-focusing their research on the specific items they want to buy.3

And what items are they searching for? We’ve got a good idea. We looked at popular trending products going into Black Friday, and here’s what we saw4:




Creating a game plan

Once shoppers have done their research, they’re shifting their focus to the best way to go about crossing off gifts on their lists—whether that’s in store or online. We see mobile searches for “where to buy” (e.g. “where to buy ugly christmas sweaters” and “where to buy gift boxes”) grew more than 85% over the past two years.5

For Thanksgiving weekend specifically, with large sales happening within a few days of each other, people want to determine the best time to shop. Among the top Black Friday searches, we’re seeing searches for “cyber monday vs black friday,” “which is better black friday or cyber monday,” and “is cyber monday as good as black friday.”6


Purchasing with purpose

Having done the research and determined what they’re getting and where they’re buying it, today’s empowered consumers are deciding exactly when and how they want to purchase. These factors help explain why Black Friday is becoming less important as an anchor in-store shopping holiday.

As proof—and in line with industry reports—we see that foot traffic on Black Friday is declining. In fact, Black Fri-"day" is becoming a weeklong event. During the three-week period leading up to Black Friday, retailers are experiencing a larger percentage of store traffic the week before Black Friday7.

Changes in the concentration of store traffic during the lead up to Black Friday
Source: Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized store traffic from a sample of U.S. users that have turned on Location History, Nov. 2014, 2015 and 2016, U.S. Compared the percentage of store traffic to clothing stores, department stores, electronics stores, toy stores and shopping malls during the three-week period leading up to Black Friday weekend: Nov. 10-30, 2014, Nov. 9-29, 2015, and Nov. 7-27, 2016.

But with all the scrutiny around store traffic on Black Friday, it’s worth noting that online conversions stay steady throughout November, spiking on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In fact, we see that the mobile transaction rate jumps 40% during the Thanksgiving weekend when compared with the rest of the year.8 It’s a sign that mobile researchers are likely to become mobile buyers over the four-day holiday break.


3 tips to reach the empowered holiday shopper this year

Ready to reach shoppers on-the-go as we head into the holidays? Take advantage of these 3 solutions from Google to help you find your next customer, whether they’re searching for ideas, hatching a game plan, or ready to buy:


For more insights into the holidays and beyond, check out Think With Google for the latest shopping trends.

Posted by Emily Eberhard, Head of Shopping Ads Marketing at Google
1. Google Data, US, Jan- Jun 2015 vs. Jan-Jun 2017
2. Google Data, US, October - December 2014 and 2016
3. Google Data, US, November 2016. Search examples are among the top 1000 searches
4. Google Shopping Insights, U.S., all devices, Nov. 1 2016 – Nov. 13, 2017.
5. Source: Google Data, U.S., Jan.-June 2015 vs. Jan.-June 2017.
6. Google Data, US, October - December 2016. Search examples are among the top 10,000 searches
7. Source: Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized store traffic from a sample of U.S. users that have turned on Location History, Nov. 2014, 2015 and 2016, U.S. Compared the percentage of store traffic to clothing stores, department stores, electronics stores, toy stores and shopping malls during the three-week period leading up to Black Friday weekend: Nov. 10-30, 2014, Nov. 9-29, 2015, and Nov. 7-27, 2016.
8. Google Analytics, US, January - December 2016. Based on data from Google Analytics accounts that have authorized Google to share website data in an aggregate way.

Consumers are more curious, more demanding, and more impatient than ever—and even more so during the busy holiday season. AdWords has been redesigned to help you reach these mobile-first consumers in faster and easier ways.
Consumers are more curious, more demanding, and more impatient than ever—and even more so during the busy holiday season. AdWords has been redesigned to help you reach these mobile-first consumers in faster and easier ways. Today, we’re introducing more innovations available only in the new experience. From promoting your latest offers to finding ways to grow your business, these products can help you save time and boost performance. Learn how some advertisers are seeing an increase in conversion rate and return on ad spend when applying these innovations to their campaigns.


Highlight your top deals with promotion extensions

People are always looking for deals, whether it’s for a discount on holiday gifts or a cheaper flight. In fact, 7 out of 10 internet users look for sales or discounts before visiting a store.1 To help attract these deal-seeking customers with your latest offers, we’re introducing promotion extensions.
Show your latest offers with promotion extensions

Promotion extensions make it easy for you to keep your promotions up to date without the need to create new ads. They also free up the rest of your ad for more unique content, like your brand terms or a clear call to action.

For example, if you’re a shoe store, you might use promotion extensions to show a “30% off” promo code on all Black Friday orders. You can also make these types of seasonal offers more prominent in your ad by selecting one of 12 occasions, like Black Friday or Back-to-school.

Brands like Torrid and Shoe Carnival have already seen great results after using promotion extensions:
“Promotion extensions effectively communicate our promotions without sacrificing our core message of quality and fit, giving us a conversion rate lift of 30%.” – David Chau, Senior Digital Marketing Analyst at Torrid Brands

"Promotion extensions give customers even more reason to come to our site and buy–all while raising our ROAS by 20%. This extension should be in every ecommerce advertiser’s toolbox.” – Michael Nuss, Director of Digital Marketing at Shoe Carnival


Test drive new ideas with ad variations

Sometimes small changes to your ad text—like adding a touch of holiday spirit or using a different call to action—can dramatically affect performance. That’s why today, we’re rolling out ad variations in the new AdWords experience: a fast and easy way to test changes across your text ads at scale.

For example, you may want to see how “Happy Holidays” performs when used in your text ads. With ad variations, you can test this change across thousands of ads in just a few clicks. In fact, some advertisers have set up variations for more than 1 million ads in less than a minute.2

You’ll then get the test results as soon as they’re statistically significant. If you see that an ad variation is doing well, you can quickly replace all of your original ads with the new variation.

Businesses like Merkle and Agoda are already using ad variations to test, measure, and apply variations that drive better results for their business in less time.


Performance marketing agency Merkle helped their client, a leading online educator, achieve a 13% increase in clicks and a 14% increase in conversions when their ad variations test revealed that expanding their text ads and implementing optimized ad rotations would improve their performance.

"With ad variations, we're able to test ad copy changes across our entire account in just a few minutes, which previously took hours of manual work. This means we get to quickly test ad copy and make improvements that result in better ad performance." - Robert Tayon, Head of PPC at Agoda


Reach the right shoppers with custom intent audiences

Right now, people may be actively shopping for gifts that only you can deliver. To help you reach these I-want-to-buy shoppers, we’re rolling out custom intent audiences for the Google Display Network. Custom intent audiences make it easy for you to reach people who want to buy the specific products you offer–based on data from your campaigns, website and YouTube channel.

For example, if you’re a travel agency offering holiday getaways, Google could automatically create an audience of people shopping for “all-inclusive ski resorts” or “flights to Palm Springs.” We’ll then show you reach and performance estimates for each audience, so you can plan your campaign with precision.


Find new opportunities to grow your business

Looking for more ways to improve campaign performance this holiday season? The Opportunities page now offers more actionable recommendations, relevant insights, and best practices to help you meet your business goals. With manager account support and the ability to filter by category (like “bids & budgets”), your opportunities are clearly organized so you can apply them across all your accounts and campaigns with just a few clicks.

Customers like Mindshare said the improvements on the Opportunities page were very helpful for their business:

"The Opportunities page in our manager account lets us quickly identify optimization and efficiency improvements, estimate cost, traffic, and performance impact across multiple markets, and implement them in one click." – Amy Perkins, Paid Search Account Director, Mindshare


Get started

Log in to the new AdWords experience to start using these innovations and deliver better results for your business.

Posted by Anthony Chavez, Director of Product Management, AdWords
1. Google / Ipsos Connect, How devices connect consumers to stores, March 2016
2. Google internal data, October 2017

The “last minute” is getting later and later for holiday shoppers: with mobile searches for “where to buy” peaking on Christmas Eve, today’s empowered consumers still expect to be able to find and get that perfect gift—right up until those final hours.
The “last minute” is getting later and later for holiday shoppers: with mobile searches for “where to buy” peaking on Christmas Eve, today’s empowered consumers still expect to be able to find and get that perfect gift—right up until those final hours.

To help you reach those last-minute shoppers in a hurry this holiday season, we’re sharing new innovations from Merchant Center and AdWords.


Get more of your products online with new Merchant Center features

More products means more chances to get in front of those last-minute customers searching for what you sell. This holiday, be sure to take advantage of these new features in Merchant Center that will help you save time and find your next customer:
  • Drive more holiday clicks by regularly checking for new Opportunities to prioritize your product data changes.
  • Make changes directly in Merchant Center to fix any disapprovals or optimize your product data with expanded Feed Rules and supplemental feeds.
  • Make sure to stay alerted of account, product or performance issues immediately by adding relevant users to your Merchant Center account and updating email preferences.
  • Show customers your holiday shipping deadlines by adding the cutoff dates in your shipping settings. (Available soon in the U.S. only)


Keep your most valuable products at the top of the list

Shopping ads in the top results on mobile see up to 3X the engagement from shoppers.1 We recently launched absolute top impression share (ATIS) to help you identify opportunities to stay above your holiday competition, especially on mobile where visibility on a small screen matters. Use the bid simulator to get estimates on optimizing bids for your top products with gaps in ATIS, or use the Target ROAS Smart Bidding strategy to automate your bids to stay in the best position for the most relevant queries. Advertisers using Target ROAS Smart Bidding are twice as likely to be in the first position for queries that convert most, versus those on manual bidding, when controlled for average cost.2


Re-engage your customers with Gmail ads

We’ve extended remarketing campaigns and dynamic remarketing ads to Gmail, allowing you to reconnect with customers in their inbox with the right offer at the right time. For example, when someone clicks on your dynamic remarketing ad, they’ll be taken to an immersive shopping experience where they can swipe and tap through four of your products.
Your dynamic remarketing ads can now show in Gmail


Ready to get started? Get more tips and best practices to ramp up for this holiday season.

Wishing you happy holidays and shopping success!

Posted by Thomas Houit, Product Manager, Google Shopping and Omry Pruzan, Group Product Manager, Gmail ads
1. Google Internal Data, 2016
2. Google Internal Data, Q3 2017

This holiday season, consumers want to get exactly what they want, instantly and effortlessly. And it's often a mobile app that delivers what they need — whether it's a flight home or a new puzzle game to pass the time during the flight.
This holiday season, consumers want to get exactly what they want, instantly and effortlessly. And it's often a mobile app that delivers what they need — whether it's a flight home or a new puzzle game to pass the time during the flight.

To reach these consumers when they’re ready to take action, marketers, app developers and agencies turn to Universal App campaigns (UAC). UAC uses Google’s unique machine learning technology to help find more customers based on business goals you define — across Google’s largest properties like Google Search, Google Play, YouTube and the millions of sites and apps in the Display Network.

Advertisers that have upgraded to Universal App campaigns are finding more of the customers and driving more of the results that matter to their business. Here are some of their stories.

Reminder: Existing Search, Display and YouTube app promotion campaigns will stop running on November 15th, 2017, so it’s important to upgrade to UAC as soon as possible.


ChimpChange and Bamboo bank 12K new registrations

Consumers use banking and finance apps to stay on top of important tasks, like budgeting for holiday gifts. ChimpChange partnered with Bamboo to find users who are more likely to make daily transactions in its app.

“We saw UAC as an opportunity to reach users that matter most to our business. By leveraging Bamboo’s marketing expertise, UAC gave us quality growth in LTV users, in addition to 12K new in-app registrations,” says Tom Russell, VP of Product & Marketing at ChimpChange.


PeopleFun and Incipia spell out a 60% higher retention rate

PeopleFun wanted to find more active players for Wordscapes, a hit game that combines word searching and crosswords for brain challenging fun. So they partnered with Incipia to find new players via UAC, and doubled down on creative assets—particularly images and vertical videos—to deliver more effective and engaging ads. This helped PeopleFun acquire users with a 60% higher retention than their day 7 retention goal.

“Google is an important marketing partner. Working with Incipia to manage and optimize our UAC campaigns enabled us to focus on our product and grow our broader marketing efforts,” says John Boog-Scott, COO of PeopleFun, creator of Wordscapes.
Wordscapes reached 34th-rank in US Games



Choices and Bidalgo play to a new level: Top 25 grossing app in the US

How do you become a top grossing app in the US? Pixelberry thinks it’s by developing “games with heart” and finding quality players who are likely to come back and convert. Bidalgo captured new users’ attention with images and videos that presented users with a typical decision that they'd face in the game, like “should I go to the party or study for that all-important test coming up?”

“Pixelberry has only three people leading the marketing for Choices: Stories You Play. With the help of Bidalgo’s ad automation platform and design expertise, Universal App campaigns allowed us to reach millions of players around the world...(which drove) a 4X increase in scale,” says Filippo De Rose, Head of Marketing and Ad Monetization at Pixelberry.

Growing your app business like these leading agencies and marketers is easy. Check out our most recent UAC best practices for specific tips on creative, bidding strategies and measurement.

Posted by Sissie Hsiao, VP of Product, Mobile App Advertising at Google

According to research, 61% of marketing decision makers said they struggled to access or integrate the data they needed last year. 1 And who can blame them, given how hard it is to gather data in one place and make it easy to understand? It's not easy to pull reports in all kinds of formats, import them into spreadsheets or databases, calculate and derive fields, share it all with stakeholders … and then repeat the next day.
According to research, 61% of marketing decision makers said they struggled to access or integrate the data they needed last year.1 And who can blame them, given how hard it is to gather data in one place and make it easy to understand? It's not easy to pull reports in all kinds of formats, import them into spreadsheets or databases, calculate and derive fields, share it all with stakeholders … and then repeat the next day.

Google Data Studio was created to solve this problem. It's a dashboarding and reporting tool that customers can use to connect all their data ― from Google AdWords, Google Analytics, DoubleClick Campaign Manager, Google Sheets and more ― and turn it into dynamic, self-updating reports that are easy to understand and share.

Now Data Studio has a new feature that makes sharing even more powerful: AdWords Data Control.


Choose Your Sources

Now Adwords Data Control lets each user choose the source accounts for the data they want to see in any Data Studio report. There's no need to build separate reports for every user and account.

Suppose you have set data you monitor every day in your AdWords accounts. With Data Studio, you can build a report, then use AdWords Data Control to populate the report with data from your other active accounts. That makes it easy to monitor all the data for your business while also seeing individual accounts that interest you.


Are you a large organization with many websites for different brands, regions, or business units? Do you want to unify AdWords reporting and team KPIs across them all? Do you need to share data, collaborate, and add or revoke permissions at any time? Just build a template report in Data Studio, add the AdWords Data Control, and share the report across your organization. Every user will see their AdWords data in your curated report.

As always with Data Studio, you can pull data from over 127 AdWords dimensions and metrics, from CTR to conversions and average position. The reports are easy to share with your whole team or company, so everyone can make better decisions.



Getting Started is Easy

Data Studio comes with sample reports and templates so you can get started right away. Multiple data connectors help you import data from multiple sources ― like Google AdWords and Google Analytics ― into a single report. And now Data Control makes gathering and sharing data even easier.

To learn more about Data Control, see our help center. If you're already a Data Studio user, get started now.

Posted by Alon Gotesman, Product Manager
1. Source: Google Surveys, U.S., "2016–2017 Marketing Analytics Challenges and Goals," Base: 203, marketing executives who have analytics or data-driven initiatives, Dec. 2016.

This holiday season, millions of people around the world will use mobile apps to shop, travel, and get things done. Consumers have more choice than ever before, so it’s critical for marketers and developers to deliver seamless experiences that keep users coming back. During this busy time of year, it's even more important for marketers to engage people with relevant ads that make it easy for people to take action — whether that’s booking a hotel room or purchasing a flight home or buying a phone case.
This holiday season, millions of people around the world will use mobile apps to shop, travel, and get things done. Consumers have more choice than ever before, so it’s critical for marketers and developers to deliver seamless experiences that keep users coming back. During this busy time of year, it's even more important for marketers to engage people with relevant ads that make it easy for people to take action — whether that’s booking a hotel room or purchasing a flight home or buying a phone case.

Today, we’re introducing Dynamic Remarketing for Apps — to make it easier for your customers to take action in your app from Google ads this holiday season and beyond.


Connect more customers to what they care about in your app

Previously, Dynamic Remarketing focused primarily on web visitors. Now, we’re launching Dynamic Remarketing for Apps to help you engage existing app users with relevant ads about the products or items they engaged with most recently in your app.

For example, imagine that Dan is a happy Wish customer who is in the in market for a cool new phone case. He browses through various styles in the Wish Android app, and eventually settles on a highly rated phone case he really likes.

With Google’s new Dynamic Remarketing for Apps solution Wish can reach Dan with an ad for the phone case he liked and other recommendations while he browses on the 3 million sites and apps on the Google Display Network. Dan can quickly tap on the ad and take action for the same product in the Wish app.
(1) After seeing the phone case in Wish’s app, Dan visits a website in the Display Network
(2) Dan clicks on the ad and completes the purchase in the app

The dynamic nature of these ads means that they are perfect for businesses with large product catalogs. We organize your product catalog into a feed, and when ads are shown to people who visited your app, details about the items they viewed are pulled from this feed into the ads.

The Wish team participated in a beta for Dynamic Remarketing for Apps, and saw 4X click-through rate as compared to static remarketing ads. Whether you offer phone cases or flight deals or anything between, Google can connect your customers directly to products or deals within your app.


Three easy steps to help you get started with Dynamic Remarketing for Apps

1. Ensure deep linking is enabled: App deep linking helps you connect customers directly to relevant product pages within your iOS and/or Android apps. Depending on the deep linking technology you are using, you may need to implement changes on your feed.
2. Set up remarketing and conversion tracking. Identify the remarketing and conversion events you’d like to track and set up an SDK in your app by using one of the following options.
  • Third-party SDK
  • Google Analytics for Firebase
  • Server-to-Server
3. Create a campaign. If you have an existing Dynamic Remarketing campaign, this campaign can be leveraged for Dynamic Remarketing for Apps. Otherwise, you can create a new dynamic remarketing campaign and serve the right ads to users of your app.


Reconnect with your app users this holiday season

When a user decides to download your app, they are signaling that they want a more engaging experience with your brand. This is a great opportunity to engage with these core users and deliver a custom, native experience that is easier to navigate for both you and your customers.

The holidays can be hectic, so let's make reconnecting with your users easy. To get started on Dynamic Remarketing for Apps review our help center overview and setup guide.

Posted by Jyoti Vaidee, Senior Product Manager

It’s almost time to move all your AdWords app install campaigns to Universal App campaigns (UAC). Existing Search, Display and YouTube app promo campaigns will stop running on ...
It’s almost time to move all your AdWords app install campaigns to Universal App campaigns (UAC). Existing Search, Display and YouTube app promo campaigns will stop running on November 15th, so it’s important to start upgrading to UAC as soon as possible.

With UAC, you can reach the right people across all of Google’s largest properties like Google Search, Google Play, YouTube and the Google Display Network — all from one campaign. Marketers who are already using UAC to optimize in-app actions are seeing 140% more conversions per dollar, on average, than other Google app promotion products.

See better results with UAC by following some best practices, which I’ve shared in these blog posts:

Steer Performance with Goals
Create a separate UAC for each type of app user that you’d like to acquire — whether that’s someone who will install your app or someone who will perform an in-app action after they’ve installed. Then increase the daily campaign budget for the UAC that’s more important right now.


Optimize for the Right In-app Action
Track all important conversion events in your app to learn how users engage with it. Then pick an in-app action that’s valuable to your business and is completed by at least 10 different people every day. This will give UAC enough data to find more users who will most likely complete the same in-app action.


Steer Performance with Creative Assets
Supply a healthy mix of creative assets (text, images and videos) that UAC can use to build ads optimized for your goal. Then use the Creative Asset Report to identify which assets are performing “Best” and which ones you should replace.



Follow these and other best practices to help you get positive results from your Universal App campaigns once you upgrade.

Posted by Sissie Hsiao, VP of Product, Mobile App Advertising at Google

Yesterday at SMX East in New York City, I shared new innovations to help local and omni-channel marketers drive more foot traffic to business locations. To help you succeed with these new innovations, we also updated our Best Practices guides with new recommendations to ...
Yesterday at SMX East in New York City, I shared new innovations to help local and omni-channel marketers drive more foot traffic to business locations. To help you succeed with these new innovations, we also updated our Best Practices guides with new recommendations to drive more offline sales with online ads, and to glean more actionable insights from your store visits data.

So how can you make your ads more useful for nearby shoppers? First, enhance them with location extensions — which are now available across Search, Display and YouTube — and point people to helpful information like your store hours and directions to your business. Or show them what’s in-stock at the nearest store using local inventory ads for your Shopping campaigns. As we announced yesterday, a new local ad for Display will also help you bring your traditional catalogs and circulars to life online, and spotlight in-store products and promotions in richer ways.

Next, it’s critical to get a holistic view of your conversions to measure the full impact of your ads across online and offline channels. Use store visits for eligible advertisers to understand how your digital campaigns drive in-store performance.

A recent study of over 140 advertisers globally showed that Google Search and Shopping ads drive a substantial number of incremental store visits across a wide range of verticals — these are visits that wouldn't have happened if a user hadn't engaged with a Google ad. They also influence more valuable purchase behavior once someone arrives at your store.
To give you better insight into omni-channel performance, impression-based store visits are coming soon for display advertisers so you can measure when consumers visit your store after seeing your ad, even if they don’t click through. New time lag, new vs. returning customers and demographic reporting will also help you understand where your store visits come from. Use these alongside distance and geographic reporting for store visits to make smarter decisions about location targeting and bidding around your stores.

Get more details on our latest innovations by watching the full keynote from SMX East or reading yesterday’s in-depth blog post. And don’t forget to check out our best practices on how to get more offline sales from your online ads.

 Posted by Kishore Kanakamedala, Director of Product Management, Online-to-Offline Solutions

The end of 2017 is just around the corner, and for many marketers, the most important time of year is still to come: the holiday season. With mobile as their “anywhere” assistant, today’s researched-obsessed shoppers are more ...
The end of 2017 is just around the corner, and for many marketers, the most important time of year is still to come: the holiday season. With mobile as their “anywhere” assistant, today’s researched-obsessed shoppers are more curious, demanding and impatient than ever before. Today, we’re introducing innovations to help you meet these rising consumer expectations and win more customers during the holidays and beyond.


Drive discovery of your brand and products

Consumers sometimes know exactly what they're looking for, but over 40% of shopping-related searches on Google are still for broad, research-oriented terms like "women's athletic clothing" or "living room furniture."1 To help curious holiday shoppers discover your brand and product selection when they’re still in exploration mode, we’ve launched Showcase Shopping ads in the new AdWords experience, and made it available to more advertisers globally in 15 new countries. These ads let brands curate a collection of lifestyle images and products to help people explore and discover what they want to buy and who they want to buy from. Additionally, If you use DoubleClick Search, Kenshoo or Marin as your third party bid management system, you can also track and report on Showcase Shopping ads, as they are now supported.

We began testing Showcase Shopping Ads last year and found that shoppers who engage with them are more likely to consider your brand as they narrow down their search. On average, users search for a merchant’s brand terms twice as often after they’ve expanded that brand’s Showcase Shopping ad.2


Brands like Overstock.com are seeing the benefit: the team recently created 50+ Showcase Shopping ads and saw a 3x increase in brand searches and 32% more click-assisted conversions leading to a purchase compared to standard Shopping ads.

And to help you reach shoppers looking for just the right holiday outfits, we’re introducing a new apparel search experience which includes a visually-rich design alongside brand logos, and filters that let shoppers quickly narrow down options based on special sizing, price range and more. Additionally, "Similar looks" surfaces more recommendations based on a user’s previous clothing preferences.


Make it easy for shoppers to move between online and stores

While some consumers may get their holiday gifts shipped early, last-minute shoppers might need to head to a store to find the perfect present. To make it easier for them to find you, we’ll be launching local inventory on the Google Assistant so products from your local stores may be organically surfaced to users. By asking the Assistant, “Ok Google, where can I buy _____ nearby?” on Google Home or their phones, holiday shoppers can easily learn what’s available in a store around them. If you have a local product inventory feed, your products may begin automatically appearing in relevant results on the Assistant.


Marketers can also use promoted local experiences across Google to drive more foot traffic. Soon, we’ll be introducing a new local ad for Display so you can spotlight in-store products and promotions, much like you would with your print catalogs or circulars. Reach out to your Google account team to join this pilot and use the local inventory feed from your Shopping ads to get up and running quickly.

Drive incremental and higher-value store visits

With their smartphones in hand to do research, the customers walking through your doors are more ready to buy than ever before. For example, ‘shop with me’ videos are soaring in popularity, with watchtime growing over 10x in the past two years on mobile alone. Meanwhile, watchtime of ‘store tour’ videos on YouTube also grew by 10x in the same two years to help shoppers explore your store before they arrive.3

But as consumers move between channels, marketers often wonder which touchpoints and tactics are most impactful. To understand how Google Search and Shopping ads drive incremental store visits -- ones that wouldn't have happened if a user hadn't engaged with a Google ad -- we recently ran an in-depth study with over 140 advertisers globally, across a wide range of verticals. Here’s what we found:


Another study showed that people who click on a Google ad before visiting a store are over 25% more likely to buy something while they’re there and spend over 10% more, on average.4 Together, these studies help show the combined impact of investing in omni-channel marketing to drive a substantial number of new, incremental store visits and to influence higher-value purchases once someone gets to your store.


Get a deeper understanding of how your online ads connect people to stores

To help you capture the full offline impact of local ads and other formats on the Google Display Network, we’re enhancing store visits measurement for display advertisers. Impression-based store visits will become available in the coming months to give you a more comprehensive view of when seeing your display ad keeps your brand top-of-mind and drives users to take action later at a store, even when they don’t click through. Store visits are measured based on aggregated and anonymized data from users who opt in to activate Location History. This is done in a secure, privacy-safe way without sharing any personal location information.

Finally, after introducing distance and location reporting for store visits last year, we have three new reports to help you find more granular insights from your data:
  • Time lag report (available now) - see how long it takes users to visit a store after clicking on your ad and understand how quickly they take action offline.
  • New vs. returning customer report (coming soon) - understand how many of your store visits come from repeat customers.5 Together with the time lag report, this can help you gauge how your ads drive incremental visits.
  • Demographic report (available now) - add store visits as a column to your existing demographic reports to see which groups are more likely to visit your locations.


For the holidays and beyond, we hope these new innovations will help you reach new customers and measure the impact to your business. Here’s to your best holiday season yet!

Posted by Jenn Liu, Director of Product Management, Google Shopping and Kishore Kanakamedala, Director of Product Management, Online-to-Offline Solutions
1. Google Data, anonymized, aggregated searches that trigger a Product Listing Ad, US, November, 2015
2. Google internal data, Global, May 2017. Time period is measured four hours post-click compared to four hours pre-click.
3. YouTube Data, US, Classification as Store Tour video was based on public data such as headlines, tags, etc., and may not account for every such video available on YouTube, January - June 2015 and 2017.
4. Google data, U.S., Median percent difference comparing in-store purchase-per-visit and spend value between merchants’ search ad click-attributed and unattributed subgroups, Oct-Nov 2016, Advertisers = 25
5. You can set the window for defining a “returning customer” up to six months. If a user returns to any business location in your linked Google My Business account within that time frame, they will be counted as a returning customer.

As technology enables more assistive experiences, consumer's expectations for seamless web experiences are now higher than ever before. In fact, a one second delay in mobile page load can decrease conversions up to 20%.
As technology enables more assistive experiences, consumer's expectations for seamless web experiences are now higher than ever before. In fact, a one second delay in mobile page load can decrease conversions up to 20%.1 But when someone clicks an ad with URL tracking, this can cause a delay that prevents them from reaching a website for hundreds of milliseconds.2 While this may not sound like much, this lost time can impact campaign performance.

To avoid these delays and create better user experiences, we'll begin rolling out parallel tracking later this year. With parallel tracking, users will head immediately to your landing page after clicking your ad while their browser processes URL tracking requests in the background. We've seen this help users on slower networks reach landing pages up to several seconds faster.3 When more visitors can reach and engage with your site more quickly, this can help reduce wasted ad spend and increase conversions for your business.


Important next steps

Parallel tracking will finish rolling out to all AdWords accounts in early 2018. If you use a third-party provider, you should reach out to them as soon as possible to make sure your clicks will continue to be measured with parallel tracking.

Providers will need to make changes to their platform that could take several months to complete, so it's important to get started early. We're also working closely with key providers to help make the transition as easy as possible for all advertisers.

To learn more about parallel tracking and how to prepare, please visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Leo Sei, Product Manager, AdWords
1. "State of Online Retail Performance," Akamai, April 2017
2, 3. Google Internal Data, Japan/India/US. Aggregated anonymized data from a sample of users that have clicked on an AdWords ad with URL tracking, August 2017