All your display planning and targeting needs, all in one place

For some time now we've been working to unify all our helpful AdWords display tools in one easy and streamlined location. Today we're taking another big step in that direction by integrating three of our classic tools — The Contextual Targeting Tool, the Placement Tool and the Google Ad Planner — into the new Google Display Planner. As we mentioned in an earlier blog post, Display Planner is our new unified research and planning tool, bringing you targeting ideas and estimates that can help you build better display campaigns.

All the functionality you're used to is now part of Display Planner — and with all the tools in one place, everything's easier. Display Planner is built into AdWords, so with one click you can add all the keywords, placements, or other targeting ideas you choose directly into your campaigns. Display Planner also makes them easy to download and share with your team members.

The Contextual Targeting Tool and the Placement Tool will be sunsetted in the next few days, and Google Ad Planner will be deprecated in early September. If you use Google Ad Planner and have existing media plans and site lists, you should export and save them in the next few weeks.

Learn More
For more information on transitioning to Display Planner please check out the Guide to Display Planner for AdPlanner users and make sure to sign up here for our Display Planner Webinar on September 18th, 2013 1pm EST!

Ready to start using Display Planner now? You'll find it in the Tools and Analysis menu in your AdWords account.

Posted by Max Cohen, Product Manager Google Display Network

Google Catalogs in Lightbox -- a scalable way to distribute eCatalogs

Google’s Lightbox ad format -- a part of the Engagement Ads family, which consists of interactive ad formats that let advertisers create and scale brand messages across the web, while only paying when a user engages with the ad -- has seen a great deal of momentum since its launch in March.

Today we are announcing a brand new capability within this format – Google Catalogs in Lightbox.

Brands invest heavily in creating beautiful stories in their printed catalogs, and we want to make it easy for our users to connect with relevant, digitized versions of these catalogs around the web. With Google Catalogs in Lightbox, users can easily flip through the digital catalogs, to see the latest product selections, check product prices, and visit product pages without ever leaving the original page they were browsing. Advertisers pay on a Cost-per-Engagement (CPE) basis -- meaning that they pay when a user chooses to read their catalog. And with access to metrics like page flips and product views, advertisers have more customer insight than ever before.

We have received positive feedback on this format from users, advertisers and publishers. Users have responded well to the beautiful, immersive catalog experience. Advertisers have found it easy to create online catalogs within hours, using their existing PDFs and Google Merchant Center feeds. And finally, our publisher partners that have run Lightbox formats have seen their CPMs as much as double.

One of our beta partners, Brand USA, an organization that promotes international tourism to the United States, used Google Catalogs in Lightbox to showcase an interactive US travel guide to Canadian tourists. They digitized their existing print tourism guide and achieved massive distribution of their catalog online, reaching a fifth of the Canadian population, and actively engaging 1 in 40 Canadians.

To get started, including help with digitizing your catalog, contact your account team today.

Posted by James Beser, Sr. Product Manager 

Introducing a new way for brand advertisers to reach their ideal customer

Brand Advertisers often know who they want to reach, but connecting online with the audience that matters most to their brand at scale has proven to be a challenge. To help address this, we’re excited to announce the launch of Affinity Segments in AdWords and YouTube, which have been designed with TV-style audiences in mind to help solve the problem of connecting with ideal customers online. To understand someone’s affinity, our system takes into account the types of pages a user visits, along with how often and how long they spend there, associating interest categories with each person’s browser. Optimized for reach and frequency, Affinity Segments helps advertisers reach those most likely to enjoy their brand.

Make life easier
With Affinity Segments, we make it easy by helping brand advertisers reach their ideal audience via 80 unique lifestyle segments based on Interest Categories and Demographics . Brands can now reach their target audience at scale based on their interests – such as green living, fashion, or travel – and watch engagement grow.

And it doesn’t stop there. We know that as an advertiser you’re probably used to buying audiences offline for TV, and we know how challenging buying an online audience can be. To make life even easier for you, we defined our affinity segments the same way you target your TV audiences, so you can achieve massive reach online using the same segments you use on TV.

Mazda Canada drives success using Affinity Segments
Like most advertisers out there, Mazda Canada has been on the lookout for a solution that would enable them to reach precise audiences at scale. Over the past decade, the Mazda6 has undergone a few key redesigns – 2013 marked the launch of an all-new model combining Mazda’s signature design style with SKYACTIV Technology, its cutting-edge performance and fuel-saving technology, as well as some innovative safety features including Smart City Brake Support and Rear Cross Traffic Alert. The launch of this flagship vehicle demanded an innovative marketing approach: to build awareness of these technological advancements, inform consumers of the car’s new features, and drive them to the Mazda6 website to engage directly with the brand.

Click to enlarge

They knew their target audience: male urban professionals who are typically interested in technology and up-to-date on all the latest gadgets and automotive advancements.

Mazda Canada decided to give Affinity Segments a try, selecting the “technophile” segment to connect them with their ideal tech-savvy customers, who have demonstrated an interest in technology through visits to various websites focused on new gadgets.  By targeting the technophiles segment across Google Display, Mazda reinforced the messaging and impact of its television campaign geared to the same type of audience. Mazda saw impressive results and reached 10X more users than they were able to with previous campaigns, greatly exceeding their expectations.

“Affinity Segments delivered perfectly for this campaign in allowing us to reach many users in a short period of time who we knew would have a predisposition to appreciate the Mazda6’s technology upgrades.” said Michael Tsang, Interactive Marketing Manager at Mazda Canada. As a result of their overwhelming success, Mazda Canada decided to integrate Affinity Segments into their online media mix for their other car models and as a vital component for their advertising efforts.

Connect with the people who care
Affinity Segments offer broader reach by encompassing the broad passions that reflect a user’s lifestyle rather than niche curiosities.  Our wide variety of segments let you reach your perfect audience – from hardcore gamers, to foodies, to luxury shoppers, we have a high-reach segment designed to connect you with your ideal customers. If there isn’t a segment that is a perfect fit for your brand’s needs, you can contact your account manager to create a custom segment just for you.
Consumers can also update their own interest categories through Ads Settings – which gives users control over the ads they see online.

Learn More
Just like Mazda, you too can use Affinity Segments to expand your reach across the Google Display Network and focus on engaging with individuals who match what your brand is all about – delighting customers and creating future brand advocates.

To find out how to get started with Affinity Segments today, visit our Help Center for more information.

Posted by Diya Jolly, Senior Product Manager

Enhanced Campaigns for Display: Powerful Bidding Tools for a Multi-Device World

Last month we announced enhanced campaigns to help advertisers more simply and scalably reach their customers in a multi-screen world.  Today, we’ll look more closely at how enhanced campaigns work with your display campaigns.

Why Enhanced Campaigns For Display
In this constantly connected world, our customers are accessing information across multiple devices, and might look at 10 different sources - online reviews, newspaper and magazine articles, recommendations from friends and more - before making a purchase. Display advertising captures these signals and is an important part of connecting with consumers in this multi-screen world.  But determining the best way to reach the right person with the right ad is more complex than ever. Enhanced campaigns for display help you reach people with the right ads, based on people’s context like their location, time of day and device type -- all from a single campaign.

Key Features
Search and display use very different signals. In search, we use keywords to capture users’ intent. For instance, a travel booking website knows that a user searching for ‘Rome Vacation Packages’ is looking for a vacation in Rome. In Display campaigns, advertisers use a variety of other signals to reach their target customers with the right ad. In this example, a travel website may use:

• Interest Categories: to reach customers interested in “Rome”
• Demographics: to reach people 35-44, who have historically spent 3x the average
• Topic Targeting: to reach people browsing travel websites
• Remarketing: to reach customers who booked a vacation with them last year

In today’s constantly connected world, someone's intent and the actions they're looking to take may differ depending on their context, signals such as time of day, location and device:

• Time of day: Travelers typically book between 9am and 6pm
• Location: “People in the US” who may convert more often than people in Italy
• Device: Mobile users tend to browse on their smartphones, then book on their desktop

With enhanced campaigns, instead of having to create multiple campaigns, this travel website can easily manage all of this in one place. In a single campaign they can adjust bids across these various signals to reach the right people with the right ads.

Learn More
More tips on how to use enhanced campaigns for display are available in the AdWords Help Center. To learn more on how you can take advantage of Enhanced Campaigns for Display, register for our upcoming webinar this Thursday March 21st, at 10am PST.

Posted by Christian Oestlien, Product Management Director for the Google Display Network

Enhancing AdWords for a constantly connected world

Today we’re upgrading AdWords, by rolling out enhanced campaigns. This is a first step to help you more simply and smartly manage your ad campaigns in today’s multi-device world.

Why enhanced campaigns?
People are constantly connected and moving from one device to another to communicate, shop and stay entertained. In fact, a recent study of multi-device consumers found that 90% move sequentially between several screens to accomplish a task. There’s also a proliferation of new devices — PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, hybrid devices, mini-tablets, televisions, and more. And there are many more digital screens and devices to come, with the lines between them continuing to blur. For example, as devices converge, consumer behaviors on tablets and desktops are becoming very similar.

This creates great opportunities for businesses, but can also make marketing more complex and time-consuming. For example, a pizza restaurant probably wants to show one ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 1pm on their PC at work (perhaps a link to an online order form or menu), and a different ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 8pm on a smartphone a half-mile from the restaurant (perhaps a click-to-call phone number and restaurant locator). Signals like location, time of day, and the capabilities of the device people are using have become increasingly important in showing them the right ad.

With enhanced campaigns, instead of having to cobble together and compare several separate campaigns, reports and ad extensions to do this, the pizza restaurant can easily manage all of this in one single place. Enhanced campaigns help you reach people with the right ads, based on their context like location, time of day and device type, across all devices without having to set up and manage several separate campaigns.



Key features
Here’s an overview of some key features.

1. Powerful marketing tools for the multi-device world
   People want search results that are relevant for the context they are in — their device, location and the time of day. Enhanced campaigns help you better manage your campaigns and budgets for this multi-device world. With bid adjustments, you can manage bids for your ads across devices, locations, time of day and more — all from a single campaign.
   
   Example: A breakfast cafe wants to reach people nearby searching for "coffee" or "breakfast" on a smartphone. Using bid adjustments, with three simple entries, they can bid 25% higher for people searching a half-mile away, 20% lower for searches after 11am, and 50% higher for searches on smartphones. These bid adjustments can apply to all ads and all keywords in one single campaign.
   
   
2. Smarter ads optimized for varying user contexts
   People on the go or near your store may be looking for different things than someone sitting at their desk. With enhanced campaigns, you’ll show ads across devices with the right ad text, sitelink, app or extension, without having to edit each campaign for every possible combination of devices, location and time of day.
   
   Example: A national retailer with both physical locations and a website can show ads with click-to-call and location extensions for people searching on their smartphones, while showing an ad for their e-commerce website to people searching on a PC — all within a single campaign.
   
   
3. Advanced reports to measure new conversion types
   Technology is enabling people to take action on your ads in new ways. Potential customers may see your ad and download your app, or they may call you. It’s been hard for marketers to easily measure and compare these interactions. To help you measure the full value of your campaigns, enhanced campaigns enables you to easily count calls and app downloads as conversions in your AdWords reports.
   
   Example: You can count phone calls of 60 seconds or longer that result from a click-to-call ad as a conversion in your AdWords reports, and compare them to other conversions like leads, sales and downloads.
   

Upgrading to enhanced campaigns
Enhanced campaigns will roll out to advertisers as an option over the next few weeks, and we plan to upgrade all campaigns in mid-2013.

Enhanced campaigns are designed to help you succeed in a multi-screen world, but we know that transitioning may involve some initial changes. Here are some resources to help you:

• Website
  
• Help Center
  
• Upgrade videos and guides
  
• AdWords Community forum
  

Over the coming weeks we’ll dive into the new features with tips and best practices on the Inside AdWords blog and on our Google+ page. We’d love your feedback.

Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President of Engineering

More control with "mute this ad" [x] icon

We’re investing in many ways to give users control over the ads they see. On YouTube, our TrueView ad products enables users to skip video ads. On Google search, you can click “Why this Ad?” and stop sites you’re not interested in from showing you ads. Our Ads Preferences Manager, available with one click on the AdChoices icon on ads on the Google Display Network, enables you to edit your interest categories, or opt out of all interest based ads including remarketing ads on our Display Network.  

Over the next few weeks, we’re introducing a small [x] which will appear in the corner of some display ads on the Google Display Network. When a user clicks the [x], he or she will no longer see ads from that campaign. We’re starting by showing the [x] in ads that are based on remarketing and interest categories.

Users who click the [x] on an ad will be shown a confirmation page explaining that the advertisement has been muted, along with a link to the Ad Preferences Manager. The feedback this provides will also help improve our ads over time.

The muting is not a 100% guarantee you won’t see that ad again  -- for example, the same ad could be shown by a different ad company, or the marketer could run a separate campaign targeting specific web content.  But we believe it’s an early step in the right direction of giving users control over ads, while helping marketers and websites deliver ads that perform better.

We believe this early-look feature can bring benefits to the entire ecosystem: users have a way to control their experience and signal that they aren’t interested in certain ads; advertisers are no longer paying to show ads to people who aren’t interested; and publishers will receive better performing (and potentially more valuable) ads, and spend less time filtering out ads they think won’t be of interest to their audience.

Online advertising underpins the web and supports millions of businesses. It’s already unique in the level of control it can offer users. We’re at the early stages of these innovations, with much more to come in months and years ahead.

Posted by Michael Aiello, Product Manager

Building Display Creatives for Your Audience

If you’re audience targeting (or considering it), customizing your ads for your audience can yield better performance. Here are the top tips for audience targeted creatives learned through the collective experience of hundreds of Google AdWords account teams.

1. Make your ads a helpful step in the user experience

Make audience specific recommendations, differentiate yourself from the competition, and provide new information. For example remarketing ads could show complementary products that an existing customer may need. If you’re targeting new users, feature positive testimonials and reviews to highlight your good reputation.

Make better use of audience targeting by addressing different stages in the buying cycle within your ad.

click to view larger image

2. Be Transparent

This is particularly important if you’re using remarketing. Your audience may wonder how you knew they were on your site or interested in specific products. Be upfront; link to a description of why they’re seeing your ads and how they work from your landing page. Showing a variety of ads helps minimize overly-specific targeting and repetition.

3. Tailor ads to your user

To drive better performance: personalize ads based on the product or service your audience would be interested in. If you’re remarketing to a user who browsed your site, match your ads to content they viewed. For example, if a user viewed a variety of smart phones, you could show ads promoting individual phones, phone plans, or phone accessories.

click to view larger image

4. Landing Page Relevance

Seamlessly link your audience-relevant creative message to a landing page on your website with content pertinent to the product or service the audience is interested in.

To improve your audience campaign performance, ensure that your landing page is optimized for conversions. Tools like Website Optimizer or Google Analytics can make optimizing your landing pages much easier.

Creative and its relevant landing page

5. Call-to-Action

A compelling call-to-action is crucial for any targeting type or advertising goal. Use your knowledge of your audience to match your call-to-action to the user in both content and style.

Phrases like ‘See Offers’ perform double duty by communicating next steps and highlighting a promotion or benefit in clicking.

click to view larger image

6. Use All Ad Formats & Sizes

Not every site will offer every ad size and format – if you’re missing ad sizes you could be missing out on thousands of impressions. Remember, you want to reach your audience wherever they are online. Maximize your opportunity to reach your audience anywhere on a network and increase volume by utilizing all ad formats, text ads, and display ad sizes available.

We’d love your feedback. Let us know if this was helpful or how it can be improved at better-ads@google.com.

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew

Display ads on Google Images trial

As part of our Google Images redesign this July, we introduced Image Search Ads, which include a thumbnail alongside your ad text. We learned that on Google Images, image-based ads provided great results for our advertisers. They are also a highly useful format for users because they show commercial content directly related to the user's query.

Today we're expanding the image ad formats available on Google Images by testing rich media leaderboard units that appear above Google Images search results and invite you to try new products and services. With the introduction of this display ad format on Google Images, you now have a great opportunity to reach users with engaging ads, whether your goal is to build brand awareness, or to drive clicks and conversions.

Ad by Converse on Google Images, designed to gain awareness about their new shoe model.
Ad placed by Range Online, an iProspect Company.

click for full size image

Advertising on Google Images allows you to reach hundreds of millions of users around the world who use the site to find relevant photos and images every week. Today display ads on Google Images are available on a small fraction of queries in the US and UK only. Over time, we hope to make display ads on Google Images available on more queries globally.

Display ads on Google Images work the same as they would on other sites in the Google Display Network. They're triggered by the content on the page - in this case, that’s defined by the category of the search term that the user enters. If, for example, you target your ad to appear on Google Images on travel-related content, your ad may appear on Google Images if a user searches for related terms like [travel], [vacation], [beach] or [summer holiday].

It’s easy to start running display ads on Google Images. Just use the AdWords placement targeting tool to target Google Images like any other site on the Google Display Network, and choose the type of content you want to advertise alongside. You can upload your own leaderboard format ad or create one using Display Ad Builder. Pricing can be either CPM or CPC, depending on your goals. If you want more information about the advertising options on Google Images, visit the Help Center.

We’re invested in making display advertising work better for both users and advertisers. We look forward to introducing new, innovative placements and formats on the Google Display Network to help you reach your advertising goals.


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

YouTube Homepage: Promoted Videos advertisers can get it while it's hot

Cross posted from the YouTube blog.

For big advertisers on YouTube, the YouTube homepage is often seen as the holy grail. It's the highest-profile placement on YouTube, providing marketers with the ability to deliver a big impact and drive attention to content, trailers or advertising. To give you an idea of the scale we’re talking about, the homepage has been delivering nearly 45 million impressions per day and 18 million unique visitors a day in the U.S. — that's the equivalent to the ratings of several top-rated prime-time television shows combined. While impressions and unique visitors are never guaranteed, users who visit the homepage are actively looking for the next video to watch, so advertisers naturally want to be part of the action.

A little known fact is that a few days each quarter, we open up the YouTube homepage to Promoted Video advertisers. These companies end up getting a bit of extra exposure from their campaigns. There are a couple of ways to make sure your ads show up on the homepage, should the opportunity arise. First, log into your AdWords account, and under "Campaign Settings," consider the following:

• In order for Promoted Videos ads to appear on YouTube browse pages, watch pages, and on the homepage, select "Display Network"
• To appear *only* on YouTube placements, select "Relevant pages only on the placements I manage" and add youtube.com as a managed placement.
• To appear *only* on the homepage, select "Relevant pages only on the placements I manage" and add youtube.com::pyv-top-right-homepage as a managed placement
• Set a specific bid for the homepage and keep in mind that it is a more competitive placement
• Please note: this feature is only available in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.K., and The U.S.

Because the dates we run Promoted Videos on the YouTube homepage vary, we unfortunately don't have a set schedule for you. However, we typically know about 48 hours in advance. If you have a managed account, you can ask your Google representative to let you know when these opportunities arise so that you can increase your bids to improve your chances of showing up.

Several advertisers – large and small – have found great success showing Promoted Videos on the homepage. One YouTube advertiser, Dynomighty Design, grew their entire business by using Promoted Videos and getting placements on the YouTube homepage. Founder Terrence Kelleman says: "YouTube helps us sell our product, learn about our audience and build a strong brand image. And as a small company with a limited advertising budget, YouTube has become our main advertising strategy. Not only are costs low with Promoted Videos, but healthy conversions also make YouTube our #1 referring site in terms of traffic and revenue." To read more about Dynomighty's story, check out their original YouTube video and their feature on the Official Google Blog.

The YouTube homepage has a captive, engaged audience and it's our goal to let advertisers understand how best to reach customers that would be interested in hearing from them. For more information about advertising on YouTube, visit youtube.com/advertising, and for more information on Promoted Videos, check out ads.youtube.com.

Posted by Mark Sabec, Product Marketing Manager, YouTube

Get design tips to boost the impact of your display ad

While the right text and placement of your display ad are always crucial, you should also make sure that your ad is well designed. But how exactly can you ensure that your ad stands out on a web page, looks professional and is consistent with your overall brand message?

On Thursday, September 2nd, we’ll be holding a short one-off live course on effective display ad design. The session will give you a set of practical design tips including key insights on using color, font and images. The focus will be on the Display Ad Builder tool, although the tips are applicable to display design in general. The course is suitable for anyone interested in display advertising.

The course will be held on Thursday, September 2nd at: 3pm - 4pm BST / GMT+1 (London), 10am-11am EDT (New York), 7am-8am PDT (San Francisco).

Sign up here to attend.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

Google Display Network series: Measure everything. Optimize relentlessly.

In the last three weeks, we showed you tools to effectively plan your display advertising campaigns, develop compelling ads, and target your ads to reach precisely the right audience across millions of both popular and niche sites in the Google Display Network (GDN). In today’s final post, we’ll dive into measuring and improving your online display campaigns with powerful, free tools that bring accountability to your display advertising investment.

Campaign reporting and optimization

On the GDN, you have real-time reporting for every site and URL where your ads ran. You can view basic metrics like impressions, clicks, clickthrough rate (CTR) and cost, or, by implementing our free AdWords Conversion Tracking, you can measure conversion metrics to determine your campaign’s return on investment (ROI). We also recently introduced viewthrough conversion reporting to provide a more complete picture of your display campaign performance.

With rich site- and URL-level data like this, you can see exactly what’s working and respond on the fly. This means you can increase bids for sites generating lots of sales or decrease bids for, or exclude, poorer-performing sites.

With Conversion Tracking enabled, you can also unleash our bid management tool, Conversion Optimizer, to help increase your conversions while decreasing your cost-per-acquisition (CPA). One of the most powerful bid management tools available, the average campaign using Conversion Optimizer sees a 21% lift in conversions with a 14% lower CPA*.

Web analytics and optimization

Your campaign’s performance is heavily influenced by the experience visitors have on your site.Google Analytics is a free tool that helps you measure user behavior on your site, providing metrics like time spent on your site, page views, traffic sources, bounce rate, and more. Using this information, you can identify areas on your site you need to improve to increase conversion rates and ultimately, your ROI. Although Google Analytics works independently of Conversion Tracking, it’s possible to automatically import your Analytics data into Conversion Tracking, enabling you to consolidate reporting and optimization across these measurement tools.

While Google Analytics tells you what’s happening on your site, Website Optimizer empowers you to change it. You can show your visitors multiple versions of a page or elements on a page to test which are most effective, thereby getting more of your visitors to convert into customers.

Measurement beyond the click

Finally, research shows that the impact of display ads extends beyond immediate clicks and conversions. After seeing display ads, many users search for the advertised product or brand, or visit the advertiser’s web site days or weeks after having seen a display ad, even if they didn’t click on it. 

Recently, we launched Campaign Insights to help you measure the impact of your display campaigns beyond immediate clicks and conversions. Campaign Insights calculates the incremental lift in both online search activity and website visits that result from a display ad campaign. By comparing a data set of thousands of advertisers who saw a particular display ad with an equivalent group that did not see the ad, we can determine the incremental change directly attributable to the display campaign. With this insight, you can establish your display campaign performance, beyond just immediate clicks.

This post ends our series on the Google Display Network. Over the past four weeks, we hope you’ve discovered new ways Google can help you run successful display campaigns. For more on the GDN, please visit our microsite.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

* Analysis compares performance of Conversion Optimizer campaigns over the course of a year with a control set of campaigns and represents the average impact of Conversion Optimizer. Actual impact may vary form campaign to campaign.

Introducing the Google Display Network

Over the past year, we’ve been focused on investing in display advertising, and we’ve seen great momentum from the increasing number of you running display campaigns with Google. We’ve rolled out new features and targeting options and more precise measurement tools. To provide more places for you to run display ads, we’ve added more publisher sites (through Google AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange) to our ad network of over one million sites. Meanwhile, many of you have continued to run ads on YouTube and our own properties. In an effort to make our display media offerings clearer to advertisers like you and agencies, we’re creating a new umbrella name for all these properties, the Google Display Network. 

The Google Display Network will comprise all of the sites (apart from search sites), where you can buy ads through Google, including YouTube, Google properties such as Google Finance, Gmail, Google Maps, Blogger as well as over one million Web, video, gaming, and mobile display partners (our display partners include all of our AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange partner sites that allow text and/or display ads). The Google Display Network offers all ad formats -  text, image, rich media, and video ads - enabling you to unleash your creativity and engage potential customers across the Web. 

You can run ads on the Google Display Network the same way you always have. Either place bids through AdWords or make reservations on YouTube and Google Finance with the help of a Google account team.

In the upcoming weeks, you’ll see a change in the AdWords interface reflecting this new term, and you’ll see Google Display Network where you might have seen Google Content Network mentioned. We’ve also launched a new website showcasing the sites and benefits available to you on the Google Display Network. 

We’re working hard to offer the best display advertising solutions and we look forward to introducing new features on the Google Display Network that help you reach your advertising goals. 

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management

Reminder: Upcoming webinar on display advertising opportunities

We wanted to remind you that this week we’re holding a webinar about our recent innovations in display advertising and how marketers are incorporating it into their strategies.

Join us on May 20, 2010 at 11:00am PST / 1:00pm CST / 2:00pm EST.

Specifically, we’ll discuss:

• Google's vision and recent innovations in display advertising
• How to best take advantage of our offerings, from planning to improving your campaigns
• How advertisers are incorporating the Google Content Network into their marketing strategy

Hope to see you there!

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew

Now available: Reach the right audience through remarketing

Imagine you’re a travel company, and you’re trying to excite users during the holiday season about deals to tropical Caribbean destinations. Users may come to your website, browse the offers and think about booking a trip, but decide that the deal is still not cheap enough. Then, they continue to browse the web. If you later decide to offer discounted deals to the Carribean, how do you reach these users who have already expressed interest in travelling there?

To help you do this, this week we're rolling out a new feature called remarketing. Any AdWords advertiser can use remarketing to reach users as they’re browsing the web on sites within the Google Content Network. Remarketing is a simple way to connect with users, based on their past interactions with your website.

We opened a trial of remarketing last March as part of our interest-based advertising beta. We’ve received a tremendous response from the hundreds of advertisers who’ve been using it in recent months, across all industries - including automotive, retail, local and finance. We’ve seen that remarketing has worked well for many different kinds of advertisers - whether they’re looking to boost brand awareness, or drive clicks and sales, and whether they use display or text ads. For example, if you’re a search advertiser, you can use remarketing to create an integrated campaign strategy. After driving traffic to your site with search ads, you can then remarket to those users who reach your site by showing them tailored ads on sites throughout the Google Content Network.

You can easily set up and create a remarketing campaign through the new “Audiences” tab in AdWords. A remarketing campaign allows you to take advantage of the same features and reports you can use today in AdWords - it’s just a new way to reach the best audience for your ad.

(click for full size image)

Here’s an example of how it works. Let’s say you’re a basketball team with tickets that you want to sell. You can put a piece of code on the tickets page of your website, which will let you later show relevant ticket ads (such as last minute discounts) to everyone who has visited that page, as they subsequently browse sites in the Google Content Network. In addition to your own site, you can also remarket to users who visited your YouTube brand channel or clicked your YouTube homepage ad.

You can also run a number of remarketing campaigns at the same time. For example, you could offer discount game tickets to users who’ve previously visited your tickets page, advertise VIP hospitality packages to users who clicked on your “How to get to the arena” page, and advertise a sale on team merchandise to users who previously visited your YouTube brand channel.

Remarketing is a great way for businesses to reach users who are likely to be highly receptive to their ads and special offers. It helps advertisers and websites get higher returns. For example, Intercontinental Hotels Group has used remarketing to reach potential customers who have visited one of their hotel websites:

Ad by InterContinental Hotels Group using remarketing to offer incentive to users

(click for full size image)

It also means more relevant and useful ads for users, and more opportunities for your customers to receive special offers and discounts that may be of interest to them. As we announced when we launched our beta of interest based advertising, we want to put users in control of the ads they see, so anyone can opt-out of remarketing by using the Ads Preferences Manager. Our remarketing product complies with industry standards developed by self-regulatory groups such as the NAI and IAB and IAB UK.

To get started with a remarketing campaign, check out the information we’ve put together.

Posted by Aitan Weinberg, Product Manager

Opening up YouTube to new display advertisers

One of our goals is to democratize access to display advertising and make it accessible and open -- like search advertising -- so new advertisers can participate easily. We launched Display Ad Builder in 2008 to help you easily set up and run display ad campaigns.

Display Ad Builder is a self-service tool within AdWords that helps you choose from dozens of professionally designed templates to run ads across the 1 million sites that make up the Google Content Network -- including YouTube -- in a matter of minutes. Over 20,000 advertisers have used Display Ad Builder to create display ads quickly and simply, and over 80% them had never run a display ad campaign before.

Since we launched Display Ad Builder, we’ve added more templates and fonts to help you design display ads quickly. Today, we're announcing a new feature in Display Ad Builder that lets you use simple templates to create InVideo and companion ads on YouTube.

An InVideo ad is an animated flash overlay that appears at the bottom part of a video that a user is watching. It’s been one of the most effective ad formats on YouTube. With people watching over 1 billion videos a day on the site, overlays are an easy way to get your ad directly in front of a huge audience.

Building overlays has always been difficult for small advertisers, who often don’t have access to the resources needed to create these animated ads. That’s where Display Ad Builder in AdWords comes in.

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Now, any advertiser can use Display Ad Builder to turn their image ads into overlays and run a campaign on YouTube in minutes. Depending on the type of campaign an advertiser wants to run, overlays can be bought on a CPC (Cost Per Click) or CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) basis, and can be matched to YouTube videos based on numerous criteria, or even on a video by video level.

With this new format, Display Ad Builder will enable more advertisers to run display advertising campaigns on YouTube. For example, if you’re a small business that sells beauty products, you can quickly use a template in Display Ad Builder in AdWords to create an overlay ad and then run it on popular fashion and beauty videos.

If you're interested in creating your own InVideo ad, or any other type of display ad, click here to get started.

Posted by Emily Williams, Inside AdWords crew

​New tool for brand advertisers on the Google Content Network

Two types of advertisers run campaigns across the Google Content Network. The first group, direct response advertisers, measures the success of their campaigns by looking for clicks, traffic to their sites, and sales. In contrast, brand advertisers typically use display ads to raise awareness and purchase consideration for a product or service a person might buy down the road. Other advertisers are looking to achieve a combination of these goals.

On the Google Content Network, we've been focused on building new capabilities that make it a great place for brand advertising of all kinds. For example, last year we introduced frequency capping to enable advertisers to manage how often their campaign reaches the right users. We've also developed new innovative tools to measure the impact of brand campaigns. Today, in response to feedback from brand advertisers, we're announcing a new feature that allows these advertisers to reach their advertising goals more easily.

This feature, which filters out "below the fold" inventory, enables brand advertisers to be more selective about where ads appear. The new filter gives you the ability to show ads only in places that appear on the user's screen when the page loads, without requiring them to scroll down. Learn more in the Help Center.

With a host of different web browsers, monitor sizes, and screen resolutions, it’s hard for advertisers to predict where an ad will land, since the same placement may appear differently on each user's screen. To simplify the process for you, Google has implemented a statistically driven solution to determine which ads are above and below the fold. The statistically driven model only considers ads "above the fold" if they are completely on-screen when the browser window loads.

Our goal with this release is to give brand advertisers greater control over where their ads appear, and make the Google Content Network an even more powerful, controlled environment for running high performing brand campaigns.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

New holiday ad templates available in Display Ad Builder

This winter season take advantage of holiday-themed Display Ad Builder templates to advertise your products and services.

You can find these new templates in the "Seasonal" category of the Display Ad Builder gallery. Here are some examples of the templates:

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These templates use new high quality buttons and backgrounds to provide you with just the right holiday feel for your upcoming advertising campaigns. By changing the text and adding your own images, you can build customized ads in minutes.

We also recently launched 20 high quality templates in the "General" category, and 20 "People" ads featuring professional images of people.

To start creating your ads, visit the “Ads” tab in any campaign, click “New Ad,” and select “Display Ad Builder’ from the drop down.

Posted by Austin Rachlin, Inside AdWords crew

Google Campaign Insights: Better measurement for display advertising

As we've previously posted, one of our aims is to improve display advertising on the web. Three simple principles guide our approach: simplify the system for buying and selling display ads; deliver better performance that advertisers and agencies can measure; open up the ecosystem by making it accessible to more participants.

So how can you better measure the impact of your display ad campaign? At the moment, you can measure how many clicks your display ads achieve, measure conversions that result from those clicks, compare results with industry benchmark data, and use "View-through conversion reporting" to measure visits to your website from users who saw your display ad in the past.

Today, we're launching a new tool to measure the impact of your display ads - Campaign Insights. As of today, Campaign Insights is available for larger display ad campaigns across the Google Content Network in the US and UK.

Campaign Insights is a unique measurement tool that can give reliable data about how a campaign has raised brand awareness, or active user interest, in a particular product or service. It looks beyond the traditional measures of clicks and conversions to calculate the incremental lift in both online search activity and website visits that result from a display ad campaign.

We use the same expertise we use to improve our own services -- our ability to analyze large quantities of data. Campaign Insights compares two data sets: a large group of users (many thousands, minimum) who saw a particular ad, with an equivalent, large group that did not see the ad. It then measures whether there is any significant difference in searches and visits to your website between the two groups. Doing this, Campaign Insights can determine the incremental change that is directly attributable to the display ad campaign. With this insight, you can establish how well your display ad campaign is working beyond just clicks.

Campaign Insights provides highly reliable results to marketers because of the statistical methodology our computer algorithms use to combine and analyze large volumes of data from several sources -- the advertiser's own campaign information, ad serving logs, and sampled data from Google Toolbar users who have opted in to enhanced features. All of the results reported to advertisers are anonymized and aggregated over thousands of users.

If you run wide-scale display ad campaigns on the Google Content Network and want to try Campaign Insights, you should check with your Google representative.

Posted by Austin Rachlin, Inside AdWords crew

Announcing the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange

You may have seen our post on the Official Google Blog, announcing the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange. The Ad Exchange is a real-time marketplace to buy and sell display advertising space.

The "buyers" in the Ad Exchange are typically ad networks and agency-run networks with their own ad serving and optimization technologies, while the "sellers" are large publishers.

We're excited about what the launch of the Ad Exchange means for you, our advertisers. Ad Exchange sites will now be available for you to advertise on, as part of the Google Content Network, through your AdWords account. These sites are made available to you when Ad Exchange publishers choose to allow AdWords advertisers to compete for their inventory, and as long as that inventory meets all AdSense policy requirements.

So when you advertise on the Google Content Network, your ads will now be eligible to run across additional high-quality placements on those Ad Exchange sites, in addition to the hundreds and thousands of placements your ads can run on in the Google Content Network.

These placements will appear like any other Content Network placement in your AdWords reports. Like all Content Network placements, you can use the Placement Performance Report to see where your ads ran, which placements performed best, and act on that information by increasing or decreasing bids based on each placement's performance. On occasion, an Ad Exchange site may choose to remain anonymous, in which case, the site will appear in your reports with an anonymized label like "123456.anonymous.google." You can choose to exclude this placement, just like you can exclude any placement in the Content Network, if you see it's not meeting your performance goals.

You can still use all the AdWords targeting, bidding, formats, reporting, and controls for the Content Network that you're already familiar with. This just means that there will be more high-quality sites that you can access. As always, sites must meet the same quality requirements that we apply to all sites in the Google Content Network. Also, this change does not affect your search campaigns.

You can learn more about how the DoubleClick Ad Exchange can benefit you in the AdWords Help Center.

If you're not currently using the Google Content Network, you can learn more about how to get started here. If you're using the Content Network but have never tried running display ad formats, you might check out our Display Ad Builder tool, which can help you create new display ads in minutes.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

Google Ad Planner has a new look

On June 24, Google Ad Planner turned one year old, and what a busy year it's been. Marketers and media planners worldwide now manage tens of thousands of media plans with Google Ad Planner. Additionally, with publishers directly contributing their own site data and sharing their Google Analytics traffic numbers, we continue to provide you the most accurate data measurements for your media planning. We've also steadily released a variety of new features over the year based on your feedback, including pre-defined audiences, more site filters, and additional demographic data.

To celebrate these milestones, we've given Google Ad Planner a facelift. Starting today, you can find sites and manage your media plans even faster with the redesigned Google Ad Planner interface.

Screenshots of old vs. new Ad Planner interface

We've kept all the best features from before, but the new interface streamlines your research and media planning by making features easier to find and use. Simply enter the URL to jump directly to a site's profile page and see Ad Planner's rich profile data for the site. We've also improved your campaign management by allowing you to easily merge and copy media plans.

We hope you'll take advantage of the new Google Ad Planner interface. Visit www.google.com/adplanner to check out our new look and to find out more information about Google Ad Planner.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew