Bid Adjustment Reporting in Google Analytics

Our constantly connected world presents a great opportunity for marketers to be more effective and relevant to customers by optimizing for context -- device, location and time. Earlier this year, we launched enhanced campaigns to help advertisers take advantage of these new opportunities and manage their ad campaigns more effectively. Bid adjustments make it easy to raise or lower your bids based on user context.

To help you optimize your bid adjustments, we're introducing bid adjustment reporting in Google Analytics, allowing you to analyze performance for each of your bid adjustments across devices, locations, and time of day. You can access the new report by going to Traffic Sources > Advertising >AdWords and clicking the Bid Adjustments link.


With the new Bid Adjustments report, you can take advantage of the full range of visitor metrics available in Google Analytics to optimize your bid adjustments. This provides a window into your users’ behavior, allowing you to optimize bid adjustments based on behavior & goal conversion data like bounce rate and time-on-site.

In addition, with Ecommerce tracking enabled in GA, you can now use this data to fine-tune your bid adjustments in AdWords based on the actual revenue generated, instead of conversions. This means you can optimize for ROI instead of CPA goals.

A quick example illustrates this (illustrated in the above screenshot). Imagine a hotel chain has set Time bid adjustments of +20% on Saturday and Sunday after observing a better ROI on those days. Using this new report in GA, the hotel chain now observes that their ROI on Sundays is actually higher than on other days of the week. The hotel chain's analyst finds that customers book more expensive rooms and longer stays on Sundays. Using this information, the hotel chain increases its existing Time bid adjustment for Sundays.

This new bid adjustment report is available in all Analytics accounts that are linked to AdWords. We recently made it much easier to link your accounts, so now is a great time to do so if you haven’t already. 

Posted by Nikhil Roy, Product Manager, Google Analytics Team

Combined Power of AdWords and Analytics

Last Tuesday, Rachel Witalec and Simon Rosen, Global Sales Strategy Leads, shared tips for getting more out of your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts by using them together. During the webinar, they showed why it’s important to link your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts (which is now even easier to do) and how to see Google Analytics data in AdWords as well as AdWords data in Google Analytics. They also presented a live demo of the reports and how to use them.

If you missed the webinar, you can check it out here:



Read on below for answers to some of the top questions we received during the webinar:

Why should I link my AdWords and Google Analytics accounts?
Linking your AdWords and Google Analytics accounts is an important practice to ensure the two measurement tools can work together to help you get the most from your advertising. The bottom line is that linking Analytics and AdWords gives you powerful information that can tell you where you should be spending more or less based on real ROI data. When you link accounts, the data can flow both ways - from Google Analytics to AdWords (for example, engagement metrics or remarketing lists), and from AdWords to Google Analytics (for example your AdWords cost data). In particular, you can take advantage of powerful features such as:
We covered this topic in detail during the webinar, so watch the video above to learn more.
    Could you share the list of resources that were provided during the webinar?
    Of course! Here are the links and resources we shared:
    What are the best practices around importing Google Analytics Goals? If i’m using AdWords Conversion Tracking should I also import goals?
    If you’re currently using AdWords Conversion Tracking, there are still benefits to also importing some of your goals from Google Analytics. In particular, some goals (such as engagement goals) can’t be tracked with AdWords Conversion Tracking, so importing these into AdWords can complement your Conversion Tracking data. However, it’s important not to import any goals that you are already tracking through AdWords Conversion Tracking as this can create double-counting and duplication, which would make your conversion data hard to interpret.

    Is it possible to link a My Client Center (MCC) account to Google Analytics?
    At this time it’s not possible to link an MCC to Google Analytics. Each individual AdWords account within an MCC needs to be linked to the appropriate Google Analytics property. Learn more here.

    How do I import Google Analytics engagement metrics into AdWords?
    The process for importing the metrics is straightforward, but it’s important to note that there are a couple of additional steps needed beyond linking the AdWords and Analytics account. The full set of instructions can be found here.

    I have noticed discrepancies between the data in my AdWords and Google Analytics accounts, do you know why?
    AdWords and Google Analytics differ in some very important ways regarding how they measure and report on data. It’s important to understand these key differences, which are outlined here. Additionally, there are key differences between AdWords Conversion Tracking and Google Analytics, which are covered in detail here.

    Can someone help me get more support with AdWords and Google Analytics?
    Yes, Google partners with a global network of certified partners to help. For AdWords, you can get support directly from Google or you can work with a Google Certified Partner to help with your AdWords management. You can learn more about both of those options here. If you’re looking for help with Google Analytics, you can tap into our global network of Google Analytics Certified Partners, who offer paid services for anything from Google Analytics tag implementation to product training to more strategic support. Learn more here.

    What is a tag?
    Tags are tiny bits of website code that let you measure traffic and visitor behavior, understand the impact of online advertising and social channels, use remarketing and audience-based marketing, test and improve your site, and more. The tags we mentioned in the webinar are AdWords Conversion Tracking and Google Analytics. These both help you understand the performance of your digital campaigns. While AdWords tracks the performance of your Google AdWords campaigns, Google Analytics tracks the performance of any traffic to your website -- such as from email marketing campaigns or social media. You can learn more about how they’re different here and through some of the content in the webinar.

    What is a conversion?
    A conversion is an action that a customer takes on your website that has value to your business, such as a purchase, a sign-up, or a view of a key page. These actions are called conversions because a customer's click translated -- or converted -- to business. Think of it as the cha-ching! from your cash register. A conversion happens when someone clicks your ad and then does something that’s valuable to your business, such as an online purchase or a call to your business from a mobile phone. Conversions help you understand how much value your ads bring to your business. You can read more here

    Improving Analytics & AdWords Account Linking

    Many businesses advertise to find new customers, and optimizing advertising campaigns to reach the right people will increase marketing effectiveness and ROI. Google Analytics helps marketers achieve this by offering insights into customer behavior on an advertiser’s websites, apps, and other properties. By linking AdWords and Analytics accounts together, these rich insights from Analytics can flow into AdWords.

    Today, we’re happy to announce some useful improvements making it easier for Google Analytics and AdWords account owners to link their accounts.


    Here are a few specific benefits of combining AdWords and Analytics data:
    All of these features depend on linking AdWords and Analytics accounts, and this process is now easier than ever before. Previously, linking accounts involved multiple steps on many pages spread out between two products, and this process has now been consolidated into just a couple steps all in one linking wizard.



    Once the new linking process launches to all Analytics accounts in the coming weeks, you’ll be able to create additional links from the Admin section of your Analytics account. (If you’re logged in to your AdWords account, you can also link accounts by going to Tools and Analysis > Google Analytics and following these same instructions.)  Just click AdWords Linking in the Account column, and then click the New link button to start the linking wizard.

    To take advantage of simplified account linking, benefit from combining data in both products, and get more out of your marketing campaigns, follow the steps above to link your accounts or learn more in our help center.

    Posted by Chris Morgan and Matt Matyas, Google Analytics Team

    See the full Impact of Unclicked Display and Video Ad Impressions using Google Analytics

    Originally posted on the Google Analytics blog

    Every customer journey is different — a customer may see your display or video ads, receive an email, and then click through to your site from a search ad or organic search listing. Often, viewing display ads can attract your clients’ interest in your product and brand even if no click occurs. Traditionally, measurement technology separated out impressions or “view throughs” from clicks, but this separation missed out on valuable data on the impact of display advertising.

    Thanks to our integration with the Google Display Network (GDN), Google Analytics can now break down the separation between clicks and impressions and give a more complete view of the customer journey. When a user views display ads on the GDN, or video ads on YouTube, and later visits your website and converts, these interactions with your brand can now be captured in Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels reporting.

    GDN Impression Reporting is now available through limited whitelist. You can sign-up through this form to participate. Please note that we cannot guarantee access, but we will do our best to provide this feature to as many users as possible. Please also note that this data will only surface in the Multi-channel Funnels reports in Google Analytics. For more information on how to enable the feature in GA please see our help center article.

    Read on below for more tips on how to make the most of this new feature.

    How does Display fit on the conversion path?
    By enabling GDN Impression Reporting in Google Analytics, you can learn how your display impressions assist your conversions.


    In the Multi-Channel Funnels Overview Report you will see two additional conversion metrics. Impression Assisted Conversions shows how many of your conversion paths were touched by a display impression. Rich Media Assisted Conversions shows how many of your conversions had a rich media interaction on the path to conversion. Rich media interactions are user interaction with YouTube or rich media ad formats, such as ad expansion, video control (such as play, pause, and resume), or switching a video ad to full screen.

    With the new Interaction Type selector you can now immediately filter your reports based how your users interacted with your marketing.

    • Select Impression to see conversion paths from customers who saw your GDN display ads but did not click on them.
    • Add Direct to the mix, to see who saw an ad and then visited your site directly to convert on a relevant transaction or Goal.
    • If you want to focus on Rich Media interactions, you can select this interaction type to see how your users convert after interacting with your rich media and YouTube ads.

    How do I quantify the impact of display on the conversion path?
    In the Multi-Channel Funnels Top Conversion Path report you can see two new path elements, which indicate the presence of a display interaction. The “eye” symbol indicates a pure display impression from a non-interactive display image. This means a user has been exposed to your display ad on the journey to conversion, without clicking on it. The “movie” symbol indicates a user has interacted with one of your Rich Media ads, such as a YouTube video ad.


    Now you can see how many conversion paths, and how much associated value, has been driven through paths which benefited from a display impression or rich media interactions. To better quantify your brand targeted display efforts, consider breaking out these campaigns using custom channel grouping.



    Assigning partial credit to valuable display interaction touchpoints
    You can use the custom model builder from the Attribution Modeling tool to assign partial credit to these display events. Consider giving these events on the user’s conversion path more credit, and compare this against your baseline model.

    We also added a new set of dimensions to help you define valuable custom segments for your analysis. Want to see how many users are watching your TrueView video ads fully? Just create a custom segment using one of our new dimensions, TrueView. The full list of new dimensions is:
    • Above the Fold: This dimension uses the Google Active View measurement solution. The value is “Yes” if the ad was in the visible area of the screen when the page was loaded.
    • Video Played Percent: The value can be “>=25%”, “>=50%”, “>=75%”, and “100%”, allowing you to see how much of a video ad was watched.
    • TrueView: If a user has watched more than 30 seconds of an ad, or watched the ad completely, this will have a value of “Yes.” This is a payable event.
    Enabling GDN Impression Reporting in Google Analytics
    Once we have whitelisted your account, please ensure you have successfully linked your AdWords account to your Google Analytics account. Linking accounts takes just a few moments. Under ‘Data Sources’ > ‘AdWords’ you can then see an entry for each linked AdWords account. In the row there is a toggle switch named ‘GDN Impression Reports’, which turns the display impression data from the Google Display Network On and Off. Data is recorded from the time the switch is turned On.


    We hope these new tools will help you understand the full impact of your display campaigns through Multi-Channel Funnels and Attribution. Sign up today for GDN Impression Reporting in Google Analytics.

    Unleashing the Combined Power of Google Analytics and AdWords: Webinar Next Tuesday, 6/18

    In many ways, Google Analytics and AdWords were made for each other. AdWords helps advertisers reach an audience and reports on advertising performance, and Google Analytics can tell you what actions your users take when they actually get to your site. You may have a high clickthrough rate (CTR) in AdWords, but what if you could see that 70% of those users left immediately after arriving on your landing page? While understanding the conversion rate of AdWords ads is critical, it’s also important to understand what happened to the users that did not convert or complete the action you wanted them to. For example, did users ‘bounce’ after landing on your site or did they view a few other pages and then leave? How much time did they spend on your site? Which keywords drive the majority of your Ecommerce revenue?

    Thanks to built-in Google product integrations that provide unique insights into your data, you can view reporting and data in Google Analytics that directly relates back to your advertising in AdWords. Understanding how to use both of them together will help you refine your AdWords campaigns and improve the performance of your business.


    Next Tuesday, join Rachel Witalec and Simon Rosen, Global Sales Strategy Leads, for a detailed look at how to use Google Analytics and AdWords together. In this webinar, we'll show you why it's important to link your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts, how to see both Google Analytics data in AdWords and AdWords data in Google Analytics, and walk through a live demo of the reports and how to use them. You'll learn how to make your marketing more effective by analyzing Google Analytics data, such as bounce rate, pages per visit, conversion rate, and Ecommerce revenue in conjunction with AdWords factors, such as keyword performance, ad copy, ad groups, and more. The webinar will also include a live Q&A section.

    Date: Tuesday, June 18, 2013
    Time: 10am PDT / 1pm EDT/ 6pm GMT
    Duration: 1 hr
    Level: 101 / Beginner
    Register: Register here

    Webinar Next Thursday 5/30: Measuring Success in a Multi-Device World

    The digital journey has grown more complex, giving customers the option to move seamlessly across media and devices. This shift in technology can make it challenging to get a complete picture of customers’ interactions.  As a marketer, your success depends on gaining visibility into your customers’ preferences and behaviors.


    Next Thursday, join Sara Jablon Moked, Product Marketing Manager for Google Analytics, for a detailed look at effective measurement for today's multi-device world. We will discuss strategies and best practices for measuring customer behavior, and we’ll look at how Google Analytics and other Google tools can help you measure and respond to the evolving customer journey.

    The webinar will include live Q&A.

    Date: Thursday, May 30, 2013
    Time: 10am PST / 1pm EST/ 6PM GMT
    Duration: 1 hr
    Level: 100 / Beginner
    Register: Register here

    Dashboards, Advanced Segments, And Custom Reports For Your Business Needs

    A version of this post originally appeared on the Google Analytics Blog.

    We’ve heard you loud and clear that getting started on Google Analytics can be challenging. It’s such a robust tool with a variety of reports, filters, and customizations that for a new user it can be overwhelming to figure out where to look first for the data and insights that will enable you to make better decisions. For more advanced users it can be time consuming to build out different variations of reports and dashboards to get the clearest snapshot of your performance. That is why we’ve created the Google Analytics Solution Gallery.

    The Google Analytics Solution Gallery hosts the top Dashboards, Advanced Segments and Custom Reports which you can quickly and easily import into your own account to see how your website is performing on key metrics. It helps you to filter through the noise to see the metrics that matter for your type of business: Ecommerce, Brand, Content Publishers. If you're not familiar with Dashboards, Advanced Segments and Custom Reports, check out these links to our help center for detailed descriptions on how they work and the insights they can help provide.

    Examples

    Here are a few examples of the solutions that can be downloaded into your Google Analytics account to see how the analysis works with your data.

    Note: You should already have an Analytics account with data to have these solutions be effective for you.
    • AdWords (Google CPC) Performance - Use this segment to analyze the performance of AdWords traffic. You can also create segments to compare your CPC traffic from other sources and compare performance between them.
    • 6+ Keywords - Learn which long-tail keywords with more than six words your visitors are using to find your site. Then refine your pay-per-click ads and SEO to drive more qualified visitors to your site.
    • Paid vs. Organic Search Performance - Do you know the behavioral differences between users who click on your paid ads and those who click on your organic search results? Use this report to understand the different ways they interact with your site and how to improve performance based on these findings.

    How do I add these to my account?

    We’ve designed it so it’s easy to get started. Simply go to the Google Analytics Solution Gallery, pick from the drop drown menu the solutions that will be most helpful for your business. Select from Publisher, Ecommerce, Social, Mobile, Brand, etc.. . Hit “Download” for the solution you want to see in your account. If you are not already logged into Google Analytics we’ll ask you to sign in. Then you’ll be asked if you want to accept this solution into your account and what Web Profile do you want to apply it to. After you select that it will be in your account and your own data will populate the report.

    We’re planning on expanding on this list of top solutions throughout the year so be sure to check back and see what we’ve added. A big thank you to Justin Cutroni & Avinash Kaushik for supplying many of the solutions currently available.

    Ian Myszenski, Product Marketing Manager, Google Analytics Team 

    Google Tag Manager: Video and Q&A

    Have you ever struggled with implementing new marketing and measurement tools on your website? For many people, deploying data collection “tags” (like conversion tracking, remarketing, audience reporting and analytics) can take weeks or months. Worse, the tag implementation is often incorrect, meaning you’re missing out on valuable information about your site and its users.

    It doesn’t need to be difficult. We recently held a webinar to introduce users to Google Tag Manager, a free tool that helps marketers and IT departments manage their marketing and measurement tags quickly and easily. Watch the video here to learn more about:
    • Overall benefits and features of using Google Tag Manager
    • A quick demonstration of how to deploy a new tracking tag
    • Tips for getting your company started with Google Tag Manager



    In addition to this webinar, we’ll be hosting a technical webinar in January to help new users through the nuts and bolts of installing Google Tag Manager (with lots of concrete examples). Stay tuned -- we’ll share registration information in a future blog post, or you can check back on the Learn with Google webinar site.

    Read on for responses to some of the top questions we received during the webinar.

    Questions and Answers

    Where can I find out more about the core concepts described in the webinar?
    To learn more about the Google Tag Manager management interface, please visit our Help Center -- you may want to start with our Before you Begin article. There you can find more information about key concepts like Tags, Rules, and Macros. For developers interested in how to implement Google Tag Manager, please visit our developer documentation. Or if you’d like help with implementation, you can contact one of our Partners. You can also ask questions (and find responses to questions from others) on the Google Tag Manager product forum.

    What happens to historical data if we move to Google Tag Manager?
    All of your historical data should be preserved when you move to Google Tag Manager. Google Tag Manager only changes the way that tags are deployed and managed on your site, it does not change the way data is collected.

    How would you migrate a tag?
    Follow these steps to migrate tags -- whether it’s a single tag or all the tags on your site. If you’re just getting started, take a look at our Before you Begin article.
    • Create a Google Tag Manager Account and a Container associated with that account.
    • Install that Container code snippet on every page of your website (so that it appears immediately after the opening <body> tag). The container should be empty.
    • Map your site - thinking about what data you want to collect, what events you want to track, and which tags you want to use to track that data. You should think about where your current tags are implemented, but now is a great time to rethink your overall data collection goals and start fresh.
    • (Optional) If you would like to make use of the Data Layer functionality, create a data layer on the pages where you wish to pass information or fire tags
    • Create Tags, Rules and Macros within the Google Tag Manager interface according to the map you just created. Make sure to apply the correct Rules to your Tags to make sure they fire in the right place.
    • Test the changes you’ve made in Google Tag Manager using debug and preview mode.
    • Then push a version of your site live that has removed the hard-coded tags from within the page. At this time, also Publish your changes using the Publishing feature of Google Tag Manager, which pushes the changes live to the site.
    For more precise details on these steps, read our developer documents about migration.

    Can you add tags to events or buttons?
    Definitely! In order to use Google Tag Manager to fire tags on events and buttons, follow these steps (for more detail, read our developer document on event handlers):
    • On your page, proactively add the dataLayer.push({ ‘event’: ‘myEventName’}) to the event handlers for all events and buttons you might want to track.
    • Create a new rule where “event equals myEventName”.
    • Associate this rule with any tag you’d like to fire when the specified event happens.
    Can hard-coded tags and tag manager co-exist? Do I have to remove my other tracking tags?
    We strongly recommend that you completely migrate all your tags, so you can take advantage of the benefits of managing and updating those tags within Google Tag Manager. However, if a full migration seems too hard, you can use Google Tag Manager in parallel with hard-coded tags. Some of our users use Google Tag Manager to only manage adding new tags.

    If you choose to do a partial migration to Google Tag Manager, you need to be very careful to make sure you don’t accidentally start double-counting your tags. If you decided to deploy a tag via Google Tag Manager, make sure that you don’t have a version of the same tag firing on the same page.

    Can you build your own custom tag templates? And how do I become a recognized Tag Vendor within Google Tag Manager?
    Custom Tag templates within Google Tag Manager allow you to copy/paste any HTML or Image tags directly into Google Tag Manager and fire it based on your predefined rules and macros. To turn it into a template, use the {{macro_name}} syntax to populate the tag code with dynamic values. We will also do a syntax check to ensure that when you copy your 3rd party tag, it will fire as intended.

    If you’re interested in having your tag added to the list of predefined templates, apply to become a Tag Vendor within Google Tag Manager by completing this interest form.

    How does this work with Google Analytics? How do you do things like track pageview and track event within Google Analytics?
    Google Tag Manager is a convenient way to correctly deploy Google Analytics across your site. To use Google Analytics within Google Tag Manager, simply create a Tag with the Google Analytics tag template. You can select the “Track Type” as either a pageview, an event, or a transaction.

    Make sure you have some version of the Google Analytics tag firing across all pages on your site. A good way to do this would be to have a basic tag firing on all pages, but blocking on pages where your more customized tags are firing (like the thank you page where you’d be firing a specialized transaction tag type).

    Can the Google Tag Manager snippet be placed in <head>? How about in my footer?
    The recommended best practice is to have the Google Tag Manager snippet at the top of the <body> to maximize data collection, but some clients may find it easier to implement the Container snippet elsewhere in the in the page, like the footer.

    Do not place the Google Tag Manager snippet in <head> (for the IT folks: this is because there is an iframe in the <noscript> case, which can have unpredictable results in some browsers).

    No matter where you install the container snippet, you will need to make sure that this snippet of code is on every page of their site. Google Tag Manager will still work if you only deploy it on part of your site, but Google Tag Manager’s rule based system will only work on pages where the snippet is deployed. For more details, read our developer documents.

    Does Google Tag Manager replace Doubleclick Floodlight?
    No, Google Tag Manager does not replace Floodlight -- they are complementary. Floodlight is a conversion pixel for DoubleClick products (Floodlight tags can now be deployed within Google Tag Manager), and Google Tag Manager is a tag management system or “container tag” for multiple tagging technologies. Floodlight has previously been used by some users as a container tag as well, but moving forward, Google Tag Manager is a way to deploy all tracking technology.

    You also have the ability to pass custom floodlight variables through Google Tag Manager into Floodlight, through the Data Layer. For more information, please review the material in the Developers Guide.

    We hope this webinar and this blog post will help you as you get started with Google Tag Manager, and we look forward to seeing you at our technical webinar in January. (Registration details coming soon).

    Make better decisions in AdWords with your Google Analytics data

    If you’re already using Google Analytics, you know how useful it can be to help you make better decisions and improve your online marketing. Now, we’re making it possible to use your Google Analytics data right in AdWords. After setting up AdWords to import your Google Analytics data, you’ll have access to Bounce Rate, Pages Per Visit, and Average Visit Duration columns directly in the AdWords interface. With more performance data available right where you’re managing your campaigns, you can make better informed decisions and improve your AdWords ROI.

    Using your Google Analytics data
    With Google Analytics you can find insights that matter, including how visitors arrive at your website, how they use it, and how you can keep them coming back. Here are some ways you can take advantage of the new Google Analytics data available in AdWords to improve your results.
    • Attract more engaged users. If highly engaged users are an important goal, sort your ad groups to find the ones that deliver visitors who stay on your site the longest (“Average Visit Duration” or “Pages Per Visit”), and bid more for these.
    • Discover opportunities to convert more engaged visitors. You might find certain keywords or ads that have relatively low conversion rates, but great engagement metrics. You could lower your bids by a little and move on. Or you could see this as a great opportunity to convert clearly engaged visitors into buyers. By adjusting your offer, adding an incentive (like a coupon or discount code), or making your call to action more obvious and accessible, you might be able to improve your ROI and your conversion volume. To look for these types of opportunities, create a filter based on conversion rate and sort by Average Visit Duration, Pages per visit, or Bounce Rate.
    • Identify ads with badly matched landing pages or inaccurate targeting. Pages with both low conversion rates and low engagement metrics (low Average Visit Duration or High Bounce Rate) could indicate a poor landing page for a particular ad or keyword. It might also suggest inaccurate targeting. To identify and troubleshoot these problems, set up a filter for low conversion rate and low engagement rate and regularly monitor it. Since you’re using Google Analytics, you can easily set up A/B testing on the landing page using a Content Experiment.
    Success in action
    Casamundo, the biggest vacation rental listing service in Europe, has been an early tester of this new feature. They've used Google Analytics since 2008 and over the past 5 years they've grown and refined their AdWords campaigns to over 50 million active keywords across 10 languages. Their analysis shows that converting visitors research vacation rentals over an average of 7.4 visits, so understanding whether their ads and keywords can create strong engagement is vital to their business and how they optimize their AdWords campaigns. Seeing high bounce rates and low average time on site for a keyword means that the offer or destination page might not be a good match for that keyword.

    Having easier access to Google Analytics data right in AdWords has helped Torge Kahl, Online Marketing Manager, at Casamundo make better decisions and make optimizations more quickly. According to Torge:
    “The combination of using both Google AdWords and Google Analytics has proved to be the perfect set of tools for us to achieve our goals, and we're very happy to see this combination get more integrated and powerful. Using Analytics data right within AdWords has let me better optimize our account and significantly improve the return on our AdWords investment."
    More details
    Please visit the AdWords Help Center for step-by-step directions on how to connect your Google Analytics profile data to your AdWords account and for more details.

    To exchange tips and ask questions of others, please visit the AdWords community. You can always contact AdWords support for help if you need it.

    Digital marketing made (much) easier: Introducing Google Tag Manager

    (Cross posted from the Analytics Blog)

    Over the past few years, we’ve seen massive improvements in digital marketing sophistication and capabilities. Today there’s a rich suite of tools allowing marketers to gain better insights, reach audiences in new ways, and develop improved marketing campaigns so users have better web experiences. Yet many modern marketing tools—like web analytics, conversion tracking, remarketing, and more—depend on adding "tags" to your website.

    Website tags help enable today’s sophisticated digital marketing technologies
    Tags are tiny bits of website code can help provide useful insights, but they can also cause challenges. Too many tags can make sites slow and clunky; incorrectly applied tags can distort your measurement; and it can be time-consuming for the IT department or webmaster team to add new tags—leading to lost time, lost data, and lost conversions.

    We’ve been hard at work to help take the pain out of tagging for everyone. That’s why today, we’re announcing our first release of Google Tag Manager. We’re launching globally in English, and the product will soon be available in many other languages.

    Google Tag Manager is a free tool that consolidates your website tags with a single snippet of code and lets you manage everything from a web interface. You can add and update your own tags, with just a few clicks, whenever you want, without bugging the IT folks or rewriting site code. It gives marketers greater flexibility, and lets webmasters focus on other important tasks. Take a quick look at how easy it is to set up an account and manage your tags:


    Google Tag Manager is built to handle your tagging needs, and it works with Google and non-Google website tags. We’ve packed in lots of great features, including:
    • Asynchronous tag loading—so your tags can fire faster without getting in each other's way, and without slowing down the user-visible part of the page
    • Easy-to-use tag templates, so marketers can quickly add tags with our web interface, as well as support for custom tags
    • Error-prevention tools like Preview mode (so you can see proposed changes before implementing them), the Debug Console, and Version History to ensure that new tags won’t break your site
    • User permissions and multi-account functionality to make it easy for large teams and agencies and clients to work together with appropriate levels of access
    • Plus we have exciting plans to add great new features over the next several months

    We’re also happy to announce our tag vendor program: If your company provides tag technology and you’d like Google Tag Manager to include a template for your tag, please contact us here to become a tag vendor.

    Dozens of companies have already begun using Google Tag Manager and have seen great results. Ameet Arurkar, Director of Search Engine Marketing at QuinStreet, reports:
    “Google Tag Manager took one big chunk of time out of the tagging process. What took 2 weeks now takes less than a day—sometimes just hours. We, the campaign managers, now make the call on which tags to use, and we can implement the tags ourselves.”

    “Google Tag Manager just makes business sense. Why would we want to manually add hundreds of tags for our pages?”


    Setting up Google Tag Manager is quick and easy—you create an account, add one snippet of code to your site, then start managing tags. If you want more help, contact a Google Certified Partner—they’ve been carefully vetted and meet rigorous qualification standards.

    Get started today at www.google.com/tagmanager.

    Posted by Laura Holmes, Product Manager, Google Tag Manager