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

Even More Reasons to Join the Sitelinks Party

Since launching Ad Sitelinks last November, more than 100,000 of our advertisers have made use of the format to provide deeper access to their sites’ relevant content directly from ads on Google.

If you’re still on the fence about using Sitelinks, or haven’t looked into it yet, here’s even more reason to add them to your campaigns: on average, campaigns that have used one-line Sitelinks have seen an increase in CTR of more than 10 percent, and those with two-line Sitelinks continue to see the bump of more than 30 percent that we noted back in June.

Others are seeing even larger performance boosts. After implementing Sitelinks on their branded campaigns, Nationwide Insurance saw their CTR rise by 73 percent and conversions increase 60 percent over a 90-day period. Check out their full case study here.

Sitelinks offer a great way to give users a variety of paths to take based on their interests. For instance, if you search for “engagement rings”, Blue Nile gives you three different additional links that they think will help meet your needs. Maybe you’re trying to get ideas for what’s popular right now in engagement rings, or already have something in mind that you’re ready to craft. In either case, this ad directs you the appropriate way.

click for full size image

If you’re looking for more information on how to implement and get the most out of Sitelinks, check out our new online course on the feature and read the FAQ in the Help Center.


Post Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Google Instant and Google Analytics

Today, we announced the launch of Google Instant, a new Google.com interface that shows relevant results while the user types. This exciting new search interface applies to both search results and related ads. We expect Google Instant will help users find what they’re looking for faster. With this change, you might notice some fluctuations in AdWords impression volume and in the distribution of organic keywords. For example, you may find that certain keywords receive significantly more or fewer impressions moving forward.

To read more about how this change affects AdWords advertisers, please visit the Inside AdWords Blog. Users of Webmaster Tools should also see their post about Google Instant.

Update at 5:10pm PST: Clarified that you may see a change in the distribution of traffic of organic keywords.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

New Ad Planner features: the Ad Planner 1,000 and greater integration with AdWords

Today, we’re introducing several new features that integrate DoubleClick Ad Planner data with other Google advertising solutions. These features help streamline the process of planning and building online ad campaigns and give you useful data for making more informed media planning decisions.

Ad Planner Top 1,000 Most Visited Sites

One of these new key releases is the Ad Planner 1000 list, a list of the top 1,000 global sites on the web by unique users as measured by Ad Planner. Published monthly, this list details the number of unique visitors, number of page views, and reach for each of the sites included. It’s a great way to quickly reference the most popular sites on the web.

The Ad Planner 1000 list is another step in the evolution of Ad Planner in providing reliable traffic and audience information for websites. In conjunction with it, the Google Content Network just released an Ad Planner 1,000 targeting feature. We hope that the combination of these two features helps provide you with more actionable data to use in your display ad campaigns.

Exporting Google Content Network Placements to AdWords

We’ve heard from many of you that you’d like to be able to easily buy Google Content Network placements that you find through Ad Planner. With the newly launched Export to AdWords feature, you can now simply export Google Content Network placements from Ad Planner into AdWords. These exported placements will be set up as a new campaign or ad group within your AdWords account. If you’re running text ads or display ads on the Google Content Network, this is an easy way to build media plans of managed placements.

Creating Lists in Ad Planner

To help you create your own list of favorite sites to save and add to your media plans, we’ve also recently launched ‘Lists’ in Ad Planner. With ‘Lists’, you can store sites and placements in lists for future use in media plans. To get you started, we’ve made the Ad Planner 1,000 list available to all Ad Planner accounts as both an online reference and as a downloadable file.

Our goal with the AdPlanner 1000 and other recent updates is to offer you new tools that allow you to plan more efficiently, and more data so that you can make more informed advertising decisions.

Visit www.google.com/adplanner to check out the new features.

Posted by Rohit Kundaji, Software Engineer and Wayne Lin, Product Manager

Coradiant/Urchin Analytics In A Box Launched

Urchin analytics software has a long tradition of integrating with other software/hardware platforms, and today we are pleased to announce the latest such collaboration: Coradiant's new Analytics In A Box (AIB). AIB is an appliance that sits behind your firewall, passively collecting web traffic data via a packet-sniffing technique. This gives you the option of reducing your reliance on page tags, as Coradiant's system collects traffic data in an independent way. Log file headaches are also gone for good, which will be music to the ears of any sysadmin!

AIB uses a modified version of Urchin 6, in conjunction with Coradiant's complementary technologies to give you new ways to look at both your web traffic AND the performance of your site/server.

From Coradiant's press release:

"Analytics In A Box provides a comprehensive view into customer Web site interaction, and insights into online conversion outcomes. Analytics capabilities are substantially enhanced through access to a richer data model and customizable reporting solutions. A complete set of dashboards for executive consumption, as well as access to granular data allows deeper insights into marketing optimization, site performance, content optimization, conversion behavior and navigational analysis."

Please see Coradiant's site for more information.




Posted by Scott Crosby, Urchin Software Manager

Improvements to Google Ad Planner data

Do you use Google Ad Planner to find websites for your display ad campaigns? If so, you'll be glad to know we launched the Google Ad Planner Publisher Center, a new feature that improves the quality and accuracy of the site data you see in Google Ad Planner.

The Publisher Center enables publishers to contribute directly to the site data provided in Google Ad Planner. Website owners can specify their site descriptions, content categories, supported ad formats and sizes, and share their Google Analytics traffic data in Google Ad Planner. With shared Google Analytics data, we can supplement our traffic estimates with actual, site-measured data from the publishers themselves. In turn, you'll have access to more robust and accurate information in Google Ad Planner to make better-informed decisions about which sites to include in your media plans.

Here's an example of a site profile you will see when the site owner updates information through the Publisher Center:

(Click the image for a full-size version)

We hope you'll take advantage of this improved Google Ad Planner data for your media planning activities. To get started, please visit www.google.com/adplanner.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

New "Google for Advertisers" site has launched

We're excited to announce the launch of Google for Advertisers. Google for Advertisers is a place where we've brought together information about the broad range of our marketing solutions -- and where you can explore and discover the combination of tools that best meet your own objectives.

Here are four ways to dive in and get the most from the site:

1. Read up on our various media platforms. This site gives straightforward descriptions of each of Google's platforms (like search, TV, the Content Network or mobile) and all of the supporting tools. You'll learn how to reach your audience in relevant and useful ways across devices, locations and languages.
2. Take a ride on 'The Marketing Cycle.' We put Google solutions in the context of how they can be applied across all the stages of building an effective advertising campaign -- ways to sculpt your strategy, creative development, media deployment, measurement and optimization -- which together help you better plan campaigns that make an impact and deliver strong ROI.
3. Stick it to a marketing objective. Explore a [very fictional] marketing example that illustrates how Google tools could come together to solve for a particular goal. We hope it inspires you, and offers a chuckle or two.
4. Build your personal 'toolkit.' As you browse the site and find Google tools that pique your interest, you can add them to your online toolkit. This way you can easily hone in on the solutions that are right for you and share them with your colleagues.

We invite you to have a look around and afterward, we welcome your feedback.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

AdWords Editor 7.0 for Windows and Mac

This week, we released version 7.0 of AdWords Editor for Windows and Mac. The new version includes the long-awaited first page bid estimates and keyword Quality Score, along with several updates to the Keyword Opportunities tool. Version 7.0 also provides the option to enable usage tracking, which lets Google collect anonymous statistics to help us improve AdWords Editor. Learn more about these and other new features in the release notes.

If you're not already using AdWords Editor, you can visit our website and click 'Download AdWords Editor' to get started. If you're an existing user, you'll see a prompt to upgrade to version 7.0 the next time you run the application.

Important: Existing AdWords Editor users will need to download their accounts again after upgrading to version 7.0. We've discovered an issue with the automatic upgrade feature (the 'Backup then Update' option in the upgrade prompt), so please refer to these special instructions to save comments and uposted changes when you upgrade.

If you'd like to wait to upgrade, you can click 'Don't Update' in the automatic update prompt.

To learn more about the benefits of using AdWords Editor to manage your ad campaigns offline, please refer to these frequently asked questions. Also, comprehensive instructions and tips are available in our Help Center.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

Visit the Google Marketer's Playbook at ad:tech New York

The Google Marketer's Playbook is a series of educational talks where our experts discuss strategies for making the most of AdWords and other Google products such as Google Analytics and YouTube. You can attend the Google Marketer's Playbook and hear advice on topics such as optimization strategy, measurement and tracking, and increasing reach during the upcoming ad:tech digital marketing conferences.

The next session will be held at the 2008 ad:tech New York show November 3rd and 4th, and the talks are open to all exhibit hall pass holders. To obtain a free exhibit hall pass, visit www.ad-tech.com and click on the 'register' link next to the show you will be attending. Following the talks, attendees will be able to participate in live Q&A sessions with the experts.

The Google Marketer's Playbook at ad:tech San Francisco, Miami and Chicago have already passed, but you can watch recordings of the sessions in this YouTube playlist. These videos are also live on the Google Business Channel which also contains more presentations and webinars about Google's business products and advertising solutions.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

AdWords Editor service release for Windows and Mac

Today we released version 6.0.1 of AdWords Editor. In response to user feedback, it's now possible to download performance statistics for selected campaigns and ad groups, instead of always downloading statistics for the whole account. Once you've installed version 6.0.1, you'll be able to download selected statistics by following these instructions.

Unlike our last release, this update won't affect your comments or unposted changes. As a result:

- You don't need to export an archive of your account. In the auto-update prompt, choose the 'Update without Backup' option.
- After you upgrade, your account will already be in the new version. You won't need to download your account again.

If you're already using AdWords Editor, you'll be prompted to upgrade automatically. You can also visit our website and click 'Download AdWords Editor.'

For more information about AdWords Editor, visit our Help Center.

Posted by Christian Yee, Inside AdWords crew