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Greetings! As a member of the Audio Ads support team, I spend a large part of my day answering advertisers' questions regarding Google Audio Ads. I thought it would be helpful to share with you answers to some of the more common inquiries. What kind of radio adverting is this? This is traditional radio advertising, the kind of radio that our grandparents, parents and we ourselves have known throughout our lives. While you may hear ‘Google Audio Ads’ and immediately think it was created for use with online media such as internet radio or podcasting, Google Audio Ads are actually designed to facilitate advertising on traditional radio stations such as those you may listen to in the car, in the gym or anywhere else on your AM/FM radio. Our product aims to make the long standing process of buying radio advertising as simple and efficient as possible, while allowing you to manage it from your existing Google AdWords account.Is this an auction like AdWords? For advertisers familiar with the traditional AdWords auction, fear not - one of the two options for booking a Google Audio Ads campaign uses an auction system very similar to that currently used in your AdWords campaigns. Additionally, for advertisers interested in securing ad space in advance, campaigns can also be booked using a Reserve Buy. This option allows advertisers to make advanced bookings of specific inventory so they can ensure their ads will play when and where they want them to.Is this remnant inventory? No, Google Audio Ads is not remnant inventory. Remnant inventory (or leftover inventory) refers to unbooked advertising time that is sold by radio stations at the last minute to ensure all ad spots are filled. Google Audio Ads offers premium inventory throughout the entire week, including prime day parts such as morning and afternoon drive time. By offering inventory at all times and offering a Reserve Buy, Google Audio Ads ensures that you are able to effectively target who you want, when you want.What if I don't have an ad or need help? We've created the Google Ad Creation Marketplace, accessible from within your AdWords account, to connect you with professionals who can create affordable ads customized for your radio campaign. This feature is especially helpful for first time radio advertisers. The Ad Creation Specialists in our marketplace are radio industry professionals who've been individually selected to work with advertisers who are new to radio. Through the marketplace, you're able to establish a direct relationship with these specialists to ensure they generate ads which combine your specifications with their experience and expertise to create the most effective audio ad for your budget.I already use Google AdWords, why should I use Google Audio Ads as well? Combining your existing AdWords online campaigns with traditional radio advertising through Google Audio Ads can be more effective in increasing brand awareness than running online ads alone. In addition, radio and the Internet combined can reach over 83% of people aged 18-54, ensuring that your business is gaining the exposure needed to strengthen the value of its brand and drive users to seek out your products or services. You can learn more about the benefits of radio advertising here. [Source: The Radio Ad Effectiveness Lab (RAEL), 2007]
Keyword LengthResearch indicates that the majority of users' keyword searches are between one and five words long and that most users search with multiple-word phrases rather than single-word phrases. (Source: OneStat.com) While it is important to include a variety of keywords to ensure both quality and quantity of traffic, keep in mind that single-word, general keywords such as 'car' or 'mortgages' will be very high traffic but may not be targeted enough, while seven-word keywords, like 'find ways to rejuvenate unhealthy looking skin' may be so specific that no one ever searches on them.The keywords that perform best for you will depend on your specific products and services and how your customers search for them. People may search for mortgage refinancing with just a few words but may search for engagement rings with a longer search query. For example, a keyword targeting serious jewelry shoppers could be as detailed as 'three stone princess cut platinum diamond engagement ring'. As always, it's important to keep an open mind about keyword length and adjust your strategy based on your campaign results.Negative KeywordsNegative keywords, one of the four types of AdWords keyword matching options, can help target your ads to potential customers and increase your ROI and conversion rates. Unlike broad, exact, and phrase match keywords, negative keywords are keywords on which you do not want your ads to run. You can use negative keywords at either the ad group or the campaign level. When constructing a negative keywords list, try to be as exhaustive as possible, but be careful that none of your negative keywords overlap with your broad, phrase, or exact match keywords, as they will cause your ad not to show. For instance, an advertiser for a financial institution that provides loans but does not offer actual rate quotes may want to include 'rate' and 'rates' as negative keywords. However, if he wanted to include 'fixed rate mortgage' in his keyword list, he should not include 'rate' among his campaign negative keywords list.Just as you can use the Keyword Tool to find keyword variations and modifiers for your 'positive' keywords list, you can also use it to find keyword variations and modifiers for your negative keywords list. You may also want to try searching on some core keywords in Google Search and looking at the first page or two of organic search results to find possible irrelevant themes for which you would not want your ad to show.You may want to employ negative keywords to filter out certain searches for a number of reasons:Filter out different products or services: A real estate agent who is focused on selling homes may wish to include not only the negative keywords of 'rent' and 'renting,' but also use the Keyword Tool to find variations such as 'rents,' 'rental' and 'rentals.' Filter out irrelevant searches: An advertiser selling herbal remedies may discover that the name of a particular remedy also happens to be the name of a musical group. In such a case, it would be wise to include negative keywords such as: 'music,' 'band,' 'concert,' 'ticket,' 'lyric,' 'album,' 'mp3,' and the pluralized versions of these words.Filter for serious buyers: A seller of digital cameras may want to filter out research-oriented keywords such as: 'review,' 'rate,' 'rating,' 'compare,' 'comparing,' 'comparison,' and the pluralized versions of these words.Deleting KeywordsMost of the strategies we have discussed involve expanding keyword lists. If you are optimizing an existing account however, it may be equally valuable to delete keywords from your account, starting with identifying keywords that are performing poorly. Depending on what your advertising goals are, you may want to apply specific strategies to deleting keywords.If you are CTR focused, you may want to identify and delete keywords with high impression counts but low numbers of clickthroughs. These keywords may be too general or not relevant enough and are garnering many impressions but very few clicks. If you are conversion focused, you may want to identify and delete keywords that garner high costs but very few conversions. These keywords may be too specific and accrue very few impressions over a long period of time because very few people are searching on them.You can identify extremely specific or general keywords by running a report and either modifying or deleting these keywords.
This relationship with Clear Channel Radio makes a portion of premium and guaranteed radio inventory available to advertisers in Google Audio Ads. These Clear Channel Radio stations, when combined with our existing radio station partners, give AdWords advertisers access to radio inventory that includes 'Top 10' stations in 24 of the top 25 U.S. markets -- providing coverage (i.e. people can tune into the station) to over 99% of the U.S. population aged 12 and older. (Source: ACT1 / Arbitron)We are accepting additional advertisers to try Audio Ads each week, and would once again like to invite you to be considered as a beta tester. If you're uncertain whether Audio Ads would be a good fit for your business, and would like to learn more, please check out a new 10 minute demo that we've just added on our product site. We think it will help you make an informed decision.Please note that, because of the large number of stations involved and the technical integrations with each station, it will take some time for us to fully connect Google Audio Ads with all of Clear Channel Radio's stations. Still, Audio Ads beta testers will have the exciting opportunity of hearing their ads on an ever-increasing number of radio stations, across markets, in addition to the hundreds available today.
On Saturday, April 14th, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT due to scheduled system maintenance. While you won't be able to log into your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Clickbot.A is the name of a botnet that Google's Click Quality and Security Teams investigated last year. Using our findings, we published "The Anatomy of Clickbot.A" - a detailed case study on botnet-based click fraud for the benefit of the technical research community.Clickbot.A is an example of a botnet operator attempting a click fraud attack against syndicated search engines. Google was able to identify clicks on our advertisers' ads that exhibited Clickbot.A-like patterns and flagged them as invalid. While Clickbot.A is a specific example of a botnet application that conducted click fraud, botnets can also be used for keylogging, distributed denial of service (DDoS), and other types of attacks.Due to the potential for misuse and the inherent loss of control that can result from having a machine participate in such a botnet, we hope "The Anatomy of Clickbot.A" will help facilitate further collaboration between search engines, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), anti-virus vendors, and other parties on the Internet in managing botnets and similar threats.
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