Inside AdWords

AdWords Editor 12 offers a fresh look and new features to help simplify your workflow

2017-06-29T13:30:00.000-04:00

A new version of AdWords Editor, with a refreshed design, is now available for all advertisers globally. You'll find it even easier to manage your campaigns at scale with custom rules, faster account downloads and more.

Custom rules help you build high-performing campaigns

With AdWords Editor 12, you can now use custom rules to check for changes that don't align with your best practices. For example, our best practices suggest showing search ads with four or more sitelinks. When you use this rule, AdWords Editor will let you know which campaigns or ad groups don't meet this best practice before you post changes. You can get started by using our recommended rules, or create custom rules based on your own best practices.

Custom rule alerts in AdWords Editor 12

Faster account downloads for new AdWords Editor versions

To reduce the time you spend waiting for your accounts to download after you update AdWords Editor, we'll now transfer more of your data from previous versions.

A new look and feel

You'll also see a new design that better aligns with Google's commitment to material design. While the changes will be subtle and won't affect how you manage your accounts, you'll now have a more cohesive visual experience across AdWords Editor, the new AdWords experience, and other Google products.

and more ...

The new version of AdWords Editor also supports bidding to maximize conversions, uploading up to 20 images and videos for Universal App Campaigns, and using the new customization fields for responsive ads. You can learn more about all Version 12 updates in the AdWords Editor Help Center, or download AdWords Editor 12 here.

Posted by Blake Reese, Senior Product Manager, AdWords Editor

Building a better web for everyone

2017-06-01T18:46:00.001-04:00

The vast majority of online content creators fund their work with advertising. That means they want the ads that run on their sites to be compelling, useful and engaging--ones that people actually want to see and interact with. But the reality is, it’s far too common that people encounter annoying, intrusive ads on the web—like the kind that blare music unexpectedly, or force you to wait 10 seconds before you can see the content on the page. These frustrating experiences can lead some people to block all ads—taking a big toll on the content creators, journalists, web developers and videographers who depend on ads to fund their content creation.

We believe online ads should be better. That’s why we joined the Coalition for Better Ads, an industry group dedicated to improving online ads. The group’s recently announced Better Ads Standards provide clear, public, data-driven guidance for how the industry can improve ads for consumers, and today I’d like to share how we plan to support it.

New tools for publishers

The new Ad Experience Report helps publishers understand how the Better Ads Standards apply to their own websites. It provides screenshots and videos of annoying ad experiences we’ve identified to make it easy to find and fix the issues. For a full list of ads to use instead, publishers can visit our new best practices guide.

The Ad Experience Report

“We’ve always put our users first and support the Coalition’s Better Ads efforts and standards. The report’s videos and screenshots are incredibly helpful and make the Coalition’s research actionable for our teams. We’re impressed with the level of detail and transparency Google is providing and commend this initiative.” - Troy Young, President, Hearst Digital Media

As part of our efforts to maintain a sustainable web for everyone, we want to help publishers with good ad experiences get paid for their work. With Funding Choices, now in beta, publishers can show a customized message to visitors using an ad blocker, inviting them to either enable ads on their site, or pay for a pass that removes all ads on that site through the new Google Contributor.

“Looking at the past few years, we’ve come to realize that to the rise of ad blockers has negatively impacted potential revenue across all of our properties, particularly in Europe. Funding Choices allows us to have a conversation with visitors using ad blockers on how our business works, and provide them a choice to whitelist or contribute to our newsroom. We’ve found that people are generally open to whitelisting once they understand how content gets created.” - Marc Boswell, SVP, Sales Operations & Client Services, Business Insider

Funding Choices is available to publishers in North America, U.K., Germany, Australia and New Zealand and will be rolling out in other countries later this year. Publishers should visit our new best practices guide for tips on crafting the right message for their audience.

Chrome support for the Better Ads Standards

Chrome has always focused on giving you the best possible experience browsing the web. For example, it prevents pop-ups in new tabs based on the fact that they are annoying. In dialogue with the Coalition and other industry groups, we plan to have Chrome stop showing ads (including those owned or served by Google) on websites that are not compliant with the Better Ads Standards starting in early 2018.

Looking ahead

We believe these changes will ensure all content creators, big and small, can continue to have a sustainable way to fund their work with online advertising.

We look forward to working with the Coalition as they develop marketplace guidelines for supporting the Better Ads Standards, and are committed to working closely with the entire industry—including groups like the IAB, IAB Europe, the DCN, the WFA, the ANA and the 4A’s, advertisers, agencies and publishers—to roll out these changes in a way that makes sense for users and the broader ads ecosystem.

Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President, Ads and Commerce

Maximize conversions with Smart Bidding

2017-05-30T13:00:00.000-04:00

When your goal is to get the most conversions from your marketing budget, it can be challenging to set the right bid and bid adjustments. Where do you spend your next dollar to get your next customer? To help you make the most out of your budget, we’re introducing Maximize Conversions: a new Smart Bidding strategy that automatically sets the right bid for each auction to help get you the most conversions within your daily budget.

For example, if you’re a clothing retailer trying to quickly sell last season’s styles, Maximize Conversions will help you get you the most number of sales from your existing budget by factoring signals like remarketing lists, time of day, browser and operating system into bids. Smart Bidding uses Google’s machine learning technology to optimize for conversions across every ad auction—also known as “auction-time bidding”.

Trex, a luxury composite decking company, used Maximize Conversions to build brand awareness and saw a 73% increase in conversion volume:

“We wanted to increase the conversion volume of our high-priority campaigns without raising budgets. In our first test campaign, we saw a 73% increase in conversion volume, 59% increase in CVR , and 42% decrease in CPA, with no change in our spending.” - Chris LaRoche, PPC Team Lead at Seer Interactive

It’s easy to set up Maximize Conversions. Simply go to your campaign’s settings page, click “Change bid strategy” and select Maximize Conversions. You can test Maximize Conversions, get insights and monitor your bid strategies to understand their performance.

Set your bid strategy to “Maximize Conversions” to get the most out of your budget

Learn more about maximizing conversions with Smart Bidding in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Josh Moser, Product Manager, AdWords

Google Optimize and Google Surveys 360 Join Forces with AdWords

2017-05-24T15:00:00.000-04:00

AdWords users get two new ways to understand and better serve their customers

Here's good news for AdWords advertisers: as you heard yesterday at Google Marketing Next powerful new integrations with Google Optimize and Google Surveys 360 are coming soon to your accounts. The Surveys 360 integration is now live in the U.S. and Canada; the integration with Optimize will be available in the coming weeks.

Optimize is a A/B testing and personalization tool that makes it easy to see which changes to your web pages work best for your users and your business. Surveys 360 is a market research tool that helps enterprises gather fast, reliable insights from real people online and on mobile.

Both new integrations with AdWords are designed with a simple goal: to make it easier than ever to understand and serve your potential customers. Here's some detail on both.

Better landing pages, better results

Advertisers naturally spend a lot of time thinking about their ads. What gets people to click? Will the words "free shipping" sell more than "10% off"? AdWords has always made it easy to create many different ad campaigns to see which performs best. But the ad is only part of the experience.

The new integration between Optimize and AdWords makes it easier than ever to take the next step: to improve and personalize the landing pages those ads lead to. The integration gives marketers a fast way to create and test custom landing pages based on the keyword, ad group, or campaign associated with an ad – with no need to deal with destination URLs or messy query parameters.

It's worth it. 90% of organizations that invest in personalized consumer experiences agree that they contribute significantly to more business profitability.¹

Suppose a hotel wants to improve its landing page for the keyword family friendly hotels. Using Optimize, the hotel can create and test a new variation of the landing page, one that features an image of a family enjoying themselves at the hotel pool, instead of a generic image of the hotel exterior. If the new page leads to more reservations, they've got a win. Then it's easy to keep testing headlines and images that might also do well.

Target any combination of your AdWords account, campaign, ad group, and keywords directly in Optimize.

The AdWords integration will be available for both Optimize and Optimize 360 and will be available to start using in the coming weeks. If you haven’t tried Optimize, you can get started for free here.

Why not ask your customers?

We all need faster insights these days. That's one reason we added Surveys 360 to the Google Analytics 360 Suite last year. Surveys 360 lets you ask questions directly to a pool of 15 million real people as they browse the web or use their smartphone. The results arrive in days, or sometimes in just hours.

Now, what if you could combine that kind of speedy real-world feedback with the wealth of data that you already have in AdWords? Then you could understand both what users do and why they do it.

That's what we're announcing today: remarketing lists published in AdWords are now available in Surveys 360 for surveys targeting. That means you can survey the users on your remarketing lists to find out what worked best for them (or didn't).

Want to know why shoppers abandoned their shopping carts? Ask them! Curious about how many customers converted due to your new free shipping offer? Ask them!

Easily target your survey to remarketing audiences published in AdWords

Then change your marketing message on the spot to match what you learn. If your survey shows that the words "family friendly" are what brought customers to your hotel, you can build new ad groups to take advantage of this information. (You might even use Optimize to test new landing pages with that phrase!)

Here's an early report from the online shopping site Jet:

"Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs) have been an effective way for Jet.com to drive website traffic, but we needed to optimize for conversions. Surveys 360 connected us directly to our customers through remarketing audiences to determine which factors influence their purchase decisions most. The results were clear: customers care most about free, fast shipping and our free returns. We used this insight to revise our messaging in PLAs and across Jet.com which quickly improved performance."
- Ben Babcock, Director of UX Research at Jet.com

Getting started is easy: Just log into your Surveys 360 account with the same credentials used for your AdWords account. When you select "remarketing audience" for survey targeting, your AdWords remarketing lists will be automatically pulled into Surveys 360 and ready for use. Learn more.

All together now

These new integrations are one more way for Optimize and Surveys 360 users to make the most of their AdWords investments. We hope you'll find them a fast and simple way to understand what works for your customers and give them more of what they want.

Posted by Michael Cumberbatch, Product Manager, Surveys 360 and Rotimi Iziduh, Product Manager, Optimize

1. Econsultancy and Google, Marketing and Measurement Survey, March 2017

Introducing Ads Data Hub: Next generation insights and reporting

2017-05-24T12:00:00.000-04:00

Mobile has fundamentally changed how we live our lives. With our devices never more than an arm’s length away, people can find, watch or buy anything at anytime. That’s why earlier this year we shared that we’re developing a new, cloud-based measurement solution for YouTube, designed for a mobile world. Today, we’re announcing the beta for this solution, Ads Data Hub, to help advertisers get more detailed insights from their campaigns across screens while also protecting user privacy.

We are also announcing that Ads Data Hub is a solution not just for YouTube, but a tool that offers access to more data and helps unlock actionable insights across Google ad platforms, including the Google Display Network and DoubleClick. And with Ads Data Hub now in beta, we’re expanding who can use it.

Built on infrastructure from Google Cloud, including BigQuery, Ads Data Hub gives advertisers or their preferred measurement partners access to detailed, impression-level data about their media campaigns across devices in a secure, privacy-safe environment. Data from other sources, such as a CRM system or marketing database, can be incorporated as well. With this full view, advertisers or their partners can analyze the data and draw out insights specific to their business.

For example, if an e-commerce retailer wants to understand what the path to conversion looks like, they can bring additional online data about their customers into BigQuery, and Ads Data Hub will enable them to combine that data with their ads data so they can see what a typical journey is from first encountering a user until conversion.

Consistent with our commitment to privacy, no user-level data can be removed from the secure Cloud environment. Impression-level data is only accessible for the purposes of analysis and generating insights. In the future, advertisers will be able to act on the insights they get from Ads Data Hub and buy media with greater precision.

As an early alpha partner, Omnicom Media Group helped to define the solution and has seen significant value from both the amount of data available through Ads Data Hub and the broad set of analyses and custom queries that are possible.

"With the complexity of today's consumer journeys, we are seeing that marketers are looking to solve harder business challenges than ever before. Through our partnership with Google and our use of Ads Data Hub, we will be able to answer a broader range of questions and expand our analytical services." - Slavi Samardzija, Global CEO, Annalect, An Omnicom Media Group Company

With the shift to mobile, consumer behavior has changed for good. Marketers need tools to help them make sense of this new world, and Ads Data Hub is a key step forward.

Posted by Geoff Samek, Senior Product Manager, Ads Data and Privacy

Making marketing easier with new tools for productivity

2017-05-23T13:45:00.000-04:00

Mobile continues to raise the bar for marketers - as consumers increasingly reach for their smartphones to get things done, they expect fast and frictionless assistance. And to help them in these moments with more useful and personalized ads, you need scalable, easy-to-use tools that allow you to manage your marketing in smarter ways.

This morning at Google Marketing Next, we shared the next generation of AdWords, DoubleClick and Google Analytics tools, each of them shaped by your feedback and built to help you work as productively and efficiently as possible.

Below is a round-up!

The new AdWords experience will be available to all advertisers by the end of the year

The new AdWords experience marks the most powerful change we’ve made to how advertisers visualize and manage their campaigns in over 15 years. The redesign makes AdWords significantly easier to use to help you reach your unique marketing goals and get things done.

Earlier this year, we previewed a few of the new tools and features in the new AdWords experience. This includes the new Overview page, which automatically surfaces relevant insights about your performance so you can take action more quickly.

Here are some other new things to check out:

Campaign creation

Build campaigns designed around your marketing goals

Performance estimates

View performance estimates to help plan your display campaigns

Landing page report

See how your landing pages are affecting campaign performance

Since rolling out the new AdWords experience, we’ve seen some inspiring results. We see that pages load much faster -- on average, 20% faster. Customers like iProspect North also reported that the new design and layout saves them 30% more time when completing everyday tasks.

Starting today, we’re rolling out the new experience to millions of additional AdWords accounts and it will be available to all advertisers by the end of the year. Get started by reviewing our Best Practice guide.

Better together: Google Optimize and Google Surveys 360 integrate with AdWords

Your marketing workflows should be seamless and integrated, from managing media to optimizing your site and collecting performance insights. This allows you to easily apply learnings from one step to another and take action faster. With new integrations for Google Optimize and Google Surveys 360 with AdWords, you'll be able to test landing pages and gain insights about your ads more efficiently.

Available globally to all advertisers at no cost, Optimize helps marketers test and deliver custom site experiences to improve performance. With the Optimize and AdWords integration, you can quickly and easily create new versions of your landing pages and then apply them to any combination of AdWords campaigns, ad groups, and keywords – no coding or webmaster required. For example, on a summer beachwear campaign, test whether a landing page that features an image of beachgoers performs better than one that showcases your latest swimsuit styles. Optimize will figure out which variation works best for your business and help you get more value from your AdWords campaigns.

Surveys 360 makes it easy for anyone to create a survey, find a specific audience sample across the web, and generate results in just a few days. With the Surveys 360 and AdWords integration, you can easily target surveys to people in your remarketing audiences to help you understand the “why” behind how consumers react to your marketing. For example, ask customers what they thought was the most compelling part of your ad. Or, if you want to know what customers thought of the landing pages you tested on your summer beachwear campaign, quickly launch a survey and ask site visitors what stood out to them on the page.

Smarter planning in DoubleClick Bid Manager

The programmatic revolution has focused on combining data, machine learning and automation to drive better performance. However, few of these benefits have carried over to the world of media planning. To help save you time and improve performance, we’re bringing the power of machine learning to campaign planning with a new workflow in DoubleClick Bid Manager.

Bid Manager uses machine learning to analyze your past campaigns and understand what's performed well for you before. With these insights, it will recommend the right inventory and targeting to reach your audience based on your unique marketing goals. The result is an optimized media plan tailored to your business, which you can then tweak, approve and activate with one click.

"Planning in DoubleClick Bid Manager helps us find the right inventory and strategies in a matter of seconds. Now we can invest even more time in understanding our audience rather than how we should reach them.” - Louise Lévesque, Vice-President, Marketing & Sponsorship, National Bank of Canada

Unique Reach arrives for AdWords Display campaigns and DoubleClick

Once your ads are up and running, you want to know how many people are seeing them. Reach and frequency are hallmark metrics to measure the impact of display and video campaigns today. At the same time, you need to be thoughtful about how often you connect with a single user to avoid overloading them. 30% of people today use 5 or more devices¹ - that means if you reach someone three times on each screen, you could be showing them fifteen ads!

We launched Unique Reach for YouTube in AdWords earlier this year and are soon expanding availability to Display campaigns in AdWords. We’re also bringing Unique Reach to DoubleClick for all your video and display ads, no matter where they run. Unique Reach helps you measure the number of unique users and average impressions-per-user you get from video and display ads. Metrics are de-duplicated across devices, campaigns, inventory and formats so you can see how many people you reached and how often you reach them.

We can’t wait to get these new tools into your hands to hear what you think and help you work faster and smarter. To get the full replay of new innovations at Google Marketing Next, watch the keynote here. Until next year!

Posted by Paul Muret, Vice President of Display, Video and Analytics

1. Google / TNS Connected Consumer Survey, US population 18+, n=1000, Q1 2016

Bringing the speed of AMP to search & display ads

2017-05-23T12:15:00.000-04:00

Succeeding on mobile starts with getting the basics right. People choose brands that meet their needs instantly and seamlessly. That means no matter how great your site looks, if it loads slowly, users will leave and you’ll miss out.

The open source Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project launched 18 months ago to help make the web better with faster experiences. Since then, we’ve been expanding how we surface fast-loading AMP pages on Google Search — starting with the top stories carousel and extending to organic search listings.

Today we’re introducing two new ways to harness the speed of AMP to improve advertising performance. First, we’re launching a new AdWords beta that lets you use fast-loading AMP pages as the landing pages for your search ads. Second, we’re speeding up ads served across the Google Display Network by using the same technology that makes AMP pages so fast.

Improving campaign ROI with lightning-fast AMP landing pages

We’ve said before that the median page load time for an AMP page from Google Search is under one second. If that wasn’t already fast enough, last week we announced that these pages are now twice as fast. No wonder AMP has been so widely adopted – more than 2 billion AMP pages have been published from 900,000 domains. Advertisers like Johnson & Johnson, Toll Brothers and eBay have already seen increased engagement with their brand by directing people to AMP pages from organic search results.

The new AdWords beta brings the performance benefits of faster mobile pages to search campaigns. Now, when advertisers link their search ads to AMP landing pages, consumers will get the fast mobile web experiences they've come to expect from AMP pages on Google Search. If you’re interested in participating in the beta, sign up here.

“We understand the importance of speed in delivering effective advertising campaigns. That is why we're incredibly excited to apply the speed of AMP to our paid campaigns in AdWords," says ‎Aaron Cocks, Online Marketing Optimization Manager at Toll Brothers

“Johnson & Johnson has seen great results in testing AMP with our product information pages. For specific pages, we've seen page speeds improve by 10x and engagement rates improve by 20%. J&J is looking forward to expanding our application of AMP,” says Paul Ortmayer, Head of Digital Analytics - EMEA, Johnson & Johnson

Ensuring display ads are seen with AMP

When ads load fast, people are more likely to see them. That means media budgets work more effectively and messaging strategies realize their full potential. Fast-loading ads also create better experiences for users.

To make ad experiences on the web a lot better and faster, the AMP Project launched The AMP Ads Initiative last year. The Initiative applies the technology powering fast-loading AMP pages to ads.

As of today, a significant number of ads shown on AMP pages across the Google Display Network are automatically converted and served in the new AMP ad format. We’ve found these ads load up to 5 seconds faster than regular ads even though the creative looks exactly the same. Ultimately, this ensures that your messages are actually seen by your intended audience and that the experience users have with your brand is seamless.

Speed matters. To meet the needs of today’s customers, you have to be fast. Bringing the speed and performance of AMP to advertising will help you deliver more effective campaigns that keep up with accelerating consumer expectations.

Posted by Jerry Dischler, Vice President, Product Management

Google Ads, Analytics and DoubleClick Announcements Keynote

2017-05-23T11:00:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the Google Marketing Next live stream! Tune in live at 9:00 a.m. PT/12:00 p.m. ET to learn about Google’s latest marketing innovations, the moment they’re announced.

Join the conversation at #GoogleMarketingNext.

Powering ads and analytics innovations with machine learning

2017-05-23T09:00:00.000-04:00

Good morning, San Francisco! As the city starts to wake up, my team and I are gearing up to welcome over a thousand marketers from around the world to Google Marketing Next, our annual event where we unveil the latest innovations for ads, analytics and DoubleClick.

A big theme you’ll hear about today is machine learning. This technology is critical to helping marketers analyze countless signals in real time and reach consumers with more useful ads at the right moments. Machine learning is also key to measuring the consumer journeys that now span multiple devices and channels across both the digital and physical worlds.

It's a growing and important trend for marketers today, and will continue to shape how you build for success in the future.

Below is a sneak preview of a few of the announcements I’ll be making. There are many more that I can’t wait to share with you. Be sure to tune in at 9:00 a.m. PT/12:00 p.m. ET.

Hello Google Attribution, goodbye last-click

Today, we're announcing Google Attribution, a new product to answer the question that has challenged marketers for ages, “Is my marketing working?” For the first time, Google Attribution makes it possible for every marketer to measure the impact of their marketing across devices and across channels -- all in one place, and at no additional cost.

With today’s complex customer journey, your business might have a dozen interactions with a single person - across display, video, search, social, and on your site or app. And all these moments take place on multiple devices, making them even harder to measure.

Marketers have been trying to make attribution work for years, but existing solutions just don't cut it. Most attribution tools:

Are hard to set up
Lose track of the customer journey when people move between devices
Aren’t integrated with ad tools, making it difficult to take action

As a result, many marketers are stuck using last-click attribution, which misses the impact of most marketing touchpoints. With Google Attribution, we’ll help you understand how all of your marketing efforts work together and deliver the insights you need to make them work better.

Here’s how it works:

Integrations with AdWords, Google Analytics and DoubleClick Search make it easy to bring together data from all your marketing channels. The end result is a complete view of your performance.
Google Attribution also makes it easy to switch to data-driven attribution. Data-driven attribution uses machine learning to determine how much credit to assign to each step in the consumer journey -- from the first time they engage with your brand for early research down to the final click before purchase. It analyzes your account's unique conversion patterns, comparing the paths of customers who convert to those who don’t, so you get results that accurately represent your business.

Finally, you can take fast action to optimize your ads with Google Attribution because it integrates with ads tools like AdWords and DoubleClick Search. The results are immediately available for reporting, updating bids or moving budget between channels.

“Given today’s multi-device landscape, cross-channel measurement and attribution is indispensable for HelloFresh to have a 360º panorama of our customer journey and gives us the best data to make the best decisions.” - Karl Villanueva, Head of Paid Search & Display Google Attribution is now in beta and will roll out to more advertisers over the coming months.

Mobile-local innovations drive more consumers to stores

Mobile has blurred the line between the digital and physical worlds. While most purchases still happen in-store, people are increasingly turning to their smartphones to do research beforehand -- especially on Google.com and Google Maps.

To help consumers decide where to go, marketers are using innovations like Promoted Places and local inventory ads to showcase special offers and what’s in-stock at nearby stores. Now, you can also make it easy for them to find a store from your YouTube video ads using location extensions.

We introduced store visits measurement back in 2014 to help marketers gain more insight about consumer journeys that start online and end in a store. In under three years, advertisers globally have measured over 5 billion store visits using AdWords.

Only Google has the advanced machine learning and mapping technology to help you accurately measure store visits at scale and use these insights to deliver better local ad experiences. Our recent upgrade to deep learning models enables us to train on larger data sets and measure more store visits in challenging scenarios with greater confidence. This includes visits that happen in multi-story malls or dense cities like Tokyo, Japan and São Paulo, Brazil where many business locations are situated close together. Store visits measurement is already available for Search, Shopping and Display campaigns. And soon this technology will be available for YouTube TrueView campaigns to help you measure the impact of video ads on foot traffic to your stores.

Still, measuring store visits is just one part of the equation. You also need insights into how your online ads drive sales for your business. You need to know: are my online ads ringing my cash register? In the coming months, we’ll be rolling out store sales measurement at the device and campaign levels. This will allow you to measure in-store revenue in addition to the store visits delivered by your Search and Shopping ads.

If you collect email information at the point of sale for your loyalty program, you can import store transactions directly into AdWords yourself or through a third-party data partner. And even if your business doesn’t have a large loyalty program, you can still measure store sales by taking advantage of Google’s third-party partnerships, which capture approximately 70% of credit and debit card transactions in the United States. There is no time-consuming setup or costly integrations required on your end. You also don’t need to share any customer information. After you opt in, we can automatically report on your store sales in AdWords.

Both solutions match transactions back to Google ads in a secure and privacy-safe way, and only report on aggregated and anonymized store sales to protect your customer data.

Virgin Holidays discovered that when it factors in store sales, its search campaigns generate double the profit compared to looking at online KPIs alone. A customer purchasing in-store after clicking on a search ad is also three times more profitable than an online conversion. Says James Libor, Performance Marketing and Technology Manager, “Store sales measurement gives us a more accurate view of the impact our digital investment has on in-store results, especially through mobile. This has empowered us to invest more budget in Search to better support this critical part of the consumer journey.”

Machine learning delivers more powerful audience insights to search ads

People are often searching with the intent to buy. That’s why we’re bringing in-market audiences to Search to help you reach users who are ready to purchase the products and services you offer. For example, if you’re a car dealership, you can increase your reach among users who have already searched for “SUVs with best gas mileage” and “spacious SUVs”. In-market audiences uses the power of machine learning to better understand purchase intent. It analyzes trillions of search queries and activity across millions of websites to help figure out when people are close to buying and surface ads that will be more relevant and interesting to them.

This is an important moment for marketers. The convergence of mobile, data and machine learning will unlock new opportunities for marketers -- and I’m excited to be on this journey with all of you.
Please join us at 9:00 a.m. PT/12:00 p.m. ET to see the entire keynote at Google Marketing Next, and all the other innovations we’re planning to announce for ads, analytics and DoubleClick.

Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President of Ads & Commerce

Google I/O: New Ways to Put Customers at the Center of Your Apps and Payments

2017-05-17T16:59:00.000-04:00

I/O is a magical time at Google. Every year, thousands of developers gather in Google’s backyard to share new product ideas and learn about our latest innovations in computing.

We’re meeting at an exciting time for the developer community. It’s a time when consumers have more choices than ever before—like where to shop, what to watch, which games to play and how to communicate with friends and family. Your product needs to stand out. You need tools to help your business grow. And you need to make sure your users are happy.

We think we can help.

This afternoon, my team and I will share 3 new innovations for developers to make it easy for users to pay for your services, build profitable businesses and grow your user base. Check out our live stream here.

Enabling users to pay with Google

Starting today, our suite of payment solutions will be expanding. The Google Payment API enables merchants and developers to turbocharge checkout conversion by offering your users an easy way to pay with credit and debit cards saved to their Google Account. Users will have multiple Google payment options at their fingertips, like a credit or a debit card previously saved via Android Pay, a payment card used to transact on the Play Store or a form of payment stored via Chrome. And they’ll be able to use these saved payment options in third-party apps and mobile sites, as well as on Google Assistant when they are on-the-go.

Paying with Google for Panera Bread on Google Assistant

For users, this means faster checkout. Now they’ll never miss a deal because they’re stuck on a bus and don’t want to pull out their credit card in front of strangers. They'll no longer experience the pain of stumbling on a sale that ends at midnight when they’re tucked in bed with their credit card out of reach. Users can save time and headache by using credit and debit cards they’ve already saved to their Google Account whenever they see the option to pay with Google on supported apps or sites.

For developers, this API is a significant innovation that can enable faster checkout, drive more conversions, increase sales and reduce abandoned carts—all with a simple integration. Learn more about our Google Payment API here.

Earn more from your apps with the brand new AdMob

People turn to their mobile devices throughout the day to shop, communicate and stay entertained. For developers, in-app purchases are one way to monetize. Ads are another way.

AdMob was built to support the app ecosystem. With over 1 million apps across iOS and Android, AdMob has paid over $3.5 billion in ads revenue to developers. But there’s more we can do to help you succeed.

Today, we’re introducing a completely redesigned AdMob. Rebuilt from the ground up, AdMob is now simpler to use and delivers richer insights about your users’ in-app experiences.

Simpler to use: We’ve applied Material Design to all aspects of the AdMob look and feel to deliver an easy-to-use and intuitive experience across the entire platform—on mobile and desktop. You’ll get more done in less time. Below you can see how easy it is to pick an app that you’re monitoring, check out its key metrics and then quickly take action to fine-tune its performance.

Redesigned AdMob experience

Deeper insights: We’ve also integrated Google Analytics for Firebase into the core of the redesigned AdMob so you have quick access to the metrics that matter most for your business. Once you link your AdMob and Firebase accounts, you’ll have access to detailed ad revenue data and user insights like time spent in the app and in-app purchases—all in one place.

Google Analytics for Firebase dashboard in AdMob

Know your user, find your user with Universal App Campaigns

Earning money from your app is one piece of the puzzle. You also need to think about how to grow your user base.

Google’s app ad innovations have delivered over 5 billion installs from ads and we are now helping developers drive over 3 billion in-app events per quarter—like users adding something to their cart or reaching level 3 of a game. Developers have gravitated toward Universal App Campaigns (UAC) as the “one stop shop” campaign type that scales your reach and maximizes app installs across Google’s largest properties: Google Play, Search, YouTube, Gmail and the Display Network. UAC uses Google’s machine learning technology to evaluate numerous signals in real time, refining each ad to help you reach your most engaged users. We're continuing to double down on UAC, with all new innovations being built into UAC to make app promotion even more effective.

Engage users in key moments of discovery with new UAC placements in Google Play
Android reaches more than 2 billion active devices every month, with Google Play available in 190+ countries around the world. It’s the place users come to discover new apps and games. Beyond searching for apps to try, users are increasingly browsing the Play store and finding recommendations for new apps.

To help those users discover more of your apps, we are introducing new ad placements on the home and app listing pages in the Google Play Store. These new placements, available exclusively through UAC, help you reach users in "discovery mode" as they swipe, tap and scroll in search of their next favorite app.

New ad placements reach users browsing in Google Play

Discover more of your best users with new bidding options in UAC
Some users are more valuable to your business than others, like the players who level-up in your game or the loyal travelers who book several flights a month. That’s why we’re expanding Smart Bidding strategies in UAC to help you acquire more of these high-value users. Using Smart Bidding, you can tailor bids for your unique business goals - target cost per acquisition (tCPA) or target return on ad spend (tROAS). UAC delivers the right users based on your objectives: installs, events and, coming soon, value. This update starts rolling out to iOS and Android developers and advertisers in the coming months.

Introducing App Attribution Partners, a new measurement program
Many developers rely on third-party measurement providers to measure the impact of ads and gain valuable insights about how users engage with your app. To help you take action on these insights in a faster and more seamless way, we are introducing App Attribution Partners, a new program designed to integrate data from 7 global companies right into AdWords.

Welcome to adjust, Adways, AppsFlyer, Apsalar, CyberZ, Kochava and TUNE... we’re thrilled to have them on board!

AdWords’ integration with these partners ensures that you have consistent, reliable and more granular data where you review app metrics. Now you can take action with confidence and stay on top of your business performance.

As consumers live more of their lives online, it’s increasingly important for developers to build user-centric experiences in everything that you do—from the apps you design, to the experiences you deliver, to the ways you help people transact. We know it’s not always easy, so Google is here to help. We look forward to continuing on this journey with you.

Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President, Ads and Commerce

Gain deeper insights with improved Quality Score reporting

2017-05-15T10:00:00.000-04:00

Effective ads connect people with the content that’s most relevant to them, right when they’re looking for it. In AdWords, you can assess how relevant your keywords, ads, and landing pages are by evaluating Quality Score and its components: expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. Starting this week, we’re rolling out several improvements to Quality Score reporting that make it easier for you to get more visibility into these scores.

New status columns for Quality Score

We’ve heard from you that the three Quality Score components available today through the keyword status bubble are super helpful. However, you need a way to review them at scale and easily share them. To save you time and help you make more informed decisions, we’re adding three new optional status columns to the Keywords tab for “Exp. CTR,” “Ad Relevance” and “Landing Page Exper.” Simply add these columns to your keyword reports to get a comprehensive snapshot of your keywords’ current scores.

History lessons in keyword quality

To improve campaign performance, it’s important to understand how changes to your account, like ad optimization, impact Quality Score. Starting today, you can view historical Quality Score, and its components, for all of your keywords to understand how they’ve changed over time. This data will be available via four new columns: “Qual. Score (hist.),” “Landing page exper. (hist.),” “Ad relevance (hist.)” and “Exp. CTR (hist.).”

7 new columns for QS components are now available in keyword reporting

There are two important things to know about these columns:

They reflect the last known score for the date range you selected. Note that historical data won’t be available for dates earlier than January 22, 2016.
If you apply the "Day" segment to your Keyword reports, these columns will show daily values that reflect what your scores were at the end of each day.

Updated Keyword report with historical Quality Score segmented by day

To help you understand what this looks like, let’s take a look at the example report above, which is segmented by day. Let’s say it’s Feb. 10 and you want to see what the Quality Score was for your keyword “Oranges” from Feb. 3 to Feb. 8.

First, notice the current Quality Score in the “Qual. Score” column, 3/10. This column will always show the current Quality Score, regardless of the date you’re reporting on.
Next, you’ll see the new “Quality Scores (hist.)” column shows the last known Quality Score for the reporting period, 4/10, as well as the historical score for each day within that period.
When there aren’t enough impressions or clicks to accurately determine a keyword’s Quality Score, like on Feb. 7 and Feb. 8, you’ll see a null Quality Score (“—”).

Learn more

These new Quality Score columns are also available at the manager account level. For Quality Score tips and best practices, read our guide to ad quality or visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Jon Diorio, Group Product Manager, Search Ads

Find your next customer with new audience solutions for Search and Shopping

2017-05-01T13:00:00.000-04:00

Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) help you reconnect with people who’ve been to your website before, but engaging both new and loyal customers is just as important to your business. Starting today, we’re rolling out similar audiences for Search and Shopping along with Customer Match for Shopping to help you use your own data to reach the right customer with the right message.

Find similar customers

Similar audiences helps you find people who share similar interests with your best customers, right when they’re searching for products and services like yours. This makes it easy for you to expand your reach by connecting you with more people who want what you have to offer.

Imagine you’re marketing a hotel in Hawaii using RLSA, and you want to connect with summer travelers. The people in your “Recent Converters” list might be searching for things like ‘flights to Maui,’ ‘scuba classes,’ and ‘flip-flop sandals.’ Powered by Google’s machine learning, similar audiences uses these search trends to help you find people who are looking for the same things as your existing customers, even if they’re not on your remarketing lists.

By connecting you with more qualified customers, similar audiences can help unlock new opportunities to grow your business. For example, you may discover generic terms work better with a similar audience applied to them. You can also use it as a bid modifier to be more competitive in a crowded auction, tailoring your bids to reach people who are more likely to buy.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, a leading global auto company, used similar audiences for Search to increase conversions by 22%.

“Similar audiences for search has helped us reach auto shoppers more efficiently while improving our ability to connect with them in critical moments throughout their purchase journeys. In less than two months, similar audiences for search delivered an 11% increase in clickthrough rate and 22% more conversions across our test campaigns.” - Amy McNeil, Head of Digital Marketing at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles US
John Deere, a leader in farming machinery, used similar audiences for Search to drive a 300% increase in clickthrough rate.

“We’ve been really pleased with the outcome of similar audiences for search after witnessing a 300% increase in clickthrough rate and a 31% increase in conversion volume. It’s been a huge help in reaching brand new consumers throughout the research and purchase process.” - Jennifer Cox, Agriculture & Turf Segment Manager, Property Care at John Deere
And video game retailer GameStop used similar audiences for Shopping to find customers who were 30% more likely to buy.

“Similar Audiences helped us find new customers who are just as enthusiastic as the gamers who regularly visit our site. Since using Similar Audiences with our shopping ads, we’ve seen a 30% increase in conversion rate.” - Matthew Gordon, Multi-Channel Acquisition Manager at GameStop

You’ll now see Search list size estimates for your similar audiences, letting you know how many people they can reach. These audiences can be applied to both your Search and Shopping campaigns. Learn more about similar audiences.

Customer Match available for Shopping campaigns

Start connecting with your most valuable customers as they shop on Google.com with Customer Match for Shopping campaigns, rolling out globally. By using your email lists, Customer Match makes it easy for you to focus Shopping campaigns on your high-value customers–like previous purchasers, newsletter subscribers, rewards members and in-store shoppers.

Let’s say that you manage marketing for an online apparel retailer, and you’re interested in connecting with your rewards members. To make it easy for you to reach these customers when they’re shopping, you can now use your “Rewards Members” customer email list to show them relevant Shopping ads featuring your latest spring styles.

ULTA Beauty, a premier beauty retailer, used Customer Match for Shopping to improve engagement with online shoppers.

“We were excited for the chance to re-engage with our loyalty members on the web by highlighting top sellers from the wide range of brands we carry. With Customer Match for Shopping, we could connect with our high-value email list subscribers, resulting in a higher clickthrough and conversion rate with these shoppers.” - Dominic Manna, Senior Manager of Digital Marketing at ULTA Beauty

Posted by Cedric Dupont, Group Product Manager, AdWords

Say It in Six: Why marketers and creatives are embracing the newest video ad length

2017-04-26T17:17:00.001-04:00

Have you heard the good news about YouTube’s six-second bumper ads? These little wonders have swept the globe for three simple reasons: they provide wide reach, they drive brand results and they’re a great canvas for creativity.

And we’re ready to mark the one year anniversary of bumpers by giving them their star turn – for the 2017-2018 upfront season, we’re making bumpers available for Google Preferred buys. This format is a perfect match to the sought-after content included in Google Preferred and will help advertisers drive reach and build awareness during increasingly mobile viewing moments.

Let’s take a closer look at this little format that could, built to capture attention wherever and whenever it’s available.

Bumpers drive efficient reach
Sold on a simple CPM, bumpers aren’t just an easy way to get your brand in front of a lot of people – they also effectively drive upper funnel results. We looked across 122 bumpers campaigns in the US last year and found that 70% drove a significant lift in brand awareness, with an average lift of 9%.¹ On ad recall, they perform even better – over 9 in 10 drove ad recall globally, with an average lift of over 30%.² Given their high success rate and ease of use, bumpers can be a great building block for your YouTube campaigns.

Bumpers work for brands
Thanks to their efficiency and efficacy, many brands are weaving bumpers into their campaigns. For instance, Busch used bumpers to continue the story from their first-ever Super Bowl ad. Busch worked with their creative agency Deutsch to collect extra footage from their Super Bowl shoot and create bumpers with different themes. This approach resulted in a double-digit lift in both purchase consideration and brand awareness among viewers. Knowing how well its bumpers performed across various brand lift metrics, Busch was also able to optimize its campaign in real-time, tailoring its creatives to audience segments most likely to consider buying the beer after seeing a particular ad. As Anheuser-Busch's Senior Director, Digital Victoria Vaynberg points out, "Capturing consumers’ attention is always a challenge, so short and contextually-relevant content is key to getting over this hurdle. By using YouTube bumpers, we were able to tap into a great product that is built to address this challenge and successfully break through with consumers."

Under Armour also turned to bumpers for a recent product launch. They took a strategic hybrid approach for advertising on YouTube, leading with a TrueView ad, which helped to engage the audience through an emotional narrative, followed by bumpers that highlighted the innovation of the new product.

“Under Armour is committed to making all athletes better through performance and innovation, while inspiring the next generation of athletes with powerful storytelling,” said Jim Mollica, Vice President of Consumer Engagement at Under Armour. “Our forward-thinking strategy guided our athletes through a unique engagement funnel, which was evidenced by double the lift in product interest among people who saw our YouTube bumper ad and our TrueView ad combined, compared to those who only saw our TrueView ad."

We’ve also seen strong results in third party studies when using a comparable approach to Under Armour's – using bumpers to remarket to TrueView views produced a significantly higher lift in ad recall vs TrueView alone, with an average higher lift of 42% for the skipped views and 104% for the paid views.³ We’re excited to see other brands follow a similar playbook, orchestrating their storytelling across ad lengths to maximize results."

Bumpers offer a great canvas for creativity
It’s no surprise that some of bumpers’ earliest fans have come from the creative community. Part of the reason bumpers are such a fertile format for storytelling is that creativity thrives in constraint. At SXSW, we challenged artists, filmmakers and agency creatives to re-imagine classic works of literature in six seconds – effectively re-telling these stories in miniature. The results were by turns evocative, funny, poignant and beautiful, and they showed that six seconds is a natural and adaptable ad length. For more insights into how to build bumpers that work, check out our new article “Success in Six” on Think with Google.

For more information on bumpers, including how to set up a campaign, check out the Help Center and don’t forget to #bumpitup.

Posted by
Zach Lupei, Product Manager
Jim Habig, Product Marketing Manager

1. Google Bumper Ad Brand Lift Meta Analysis, 2016 [US]
2. Google Bumper Ad Brand Lift Meta Analysis, 2016 [Global]
3. Google/Eye Square Experiment 4 ads (n=4000 YouTube weekly users, 18-64 years old). March 2017, U.S.

Introducing Smart display campaigns

2017-04-20T09:05:00.000-04:00

There are now over 3 million apps and websites on the Google Display Network (GDN), from popular news websites to the latest gaming apps. No matter what your customers are doing to stay informed or entertained across the GDN, it’s important to reach them with timely and relevant messages. In order to do that, you need to find the right customers, tailor your creative to them and set optimal bids.

Starting today, Smart display campaigns begin rolling out to all advertisers, letting you reach more customers easily on the GDN. Smart display campaigns use the power of Google’s machine learning to automatically:

Connect your business to prospective customers who may be interested in your products, using insights from millions of apps and sites
Create beautiful image, native and text ads that fit anywhere across the GDN
Set the right bids to meet your performance goals

Only Google provides automation like this at scale, helping you deliver richer experiences to consumers and better results for your brand. In fact, advertisers who use Smart display campaigns are seeing an average 20% increase in conversions at the same CPA,1 compared to their other display campaigns.

trivago, a hotel search platform, is using Smart display campaigns to help travelers around the world find hotel rooms that meet all their travel needs—like a room large enough for a family of four, one with hi-speed Wi-Fi for a business trip, or one with an ocean-front view for that well-deserved beach vacation. The travel brand provided:

Creative assets: Headlines like “Find Great Hotel Deals,” descriptions of its hotel listings, beautiful images of destinations like Rome and London, and its logo
Business goals: A target CPA and daily budget

AdWords did the rest—creating over 25,000 tailored ads and showing them to travelers shopping for hotel deals. For instance, people browsing a travel blog might see a message with trivago’s “Find Great Hotel Deals” headline and a breathtaking image of the Coliseum. With Smart display campaigns, trivago drove 36% more conversions at the same CPA, compared to its other similar display campaigns. The brand now uses Smart display campaigns across markets in Europe, Asia and North America.

Smart display campaigns automatically created over 25,000 versions of trivago’s ad

and showed them to people across 55 countries shopping for hotel deals

Credit Karma, a free credit and financial management website, used Smart display campaigns to get more signups and drove 37% more conversions at a similar CPA.2 “Smart display campaigns help our team save time, engage new customers and scale our marketing efficiently,” says Andrew Tam, Senior Director of Marketing at Credit Karma.

Hulu Japan, a subscription video service, turned to Smart display campaigns to reach new subscribers and drove a 37% higher conversion rate.3 “Smart display campaigns make it simple to set up and manage our campaigns using the power of automation. They're a really effective way to promote our service to prospective customers,” says Mue Hasegawa, Online Communication Senior Manager of Hulu Japan.

Learn more about setting up your first Smart display campaign in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by David Margines, Product Manager, AdWords

1 Google internal data

2 Based on initial launch in 2016

3 Compared to other similar display campaigns

Data-driven attribution delivers better results than last-click

2017-04-17T16:49:00.000-04:00

There are more moments throughout the day for businesses to connect with consumers than ever before. It’s critical for marketers to know which moments matter, and which ones don’t.

The search process doesn’t start and end with “buy the exact product I already know I want.” People tend to click on multiple ads before converting. This process makes it challenging to assign the proper credit where it’s due. Last-click attribution, the default choice in AdWords, ignores everything except for the final, “buy the exact product I already know I want” ad click.

As marketers, it’s crucial to understand which of your clicks are the most impactful, whether or not they’re the last click before a conversion.

Data-driven attribution (DDA) uses Google’s machine learning technology to determine how much credit to assign to each click in the user journey. With DDA, you can understand how much credit should be assigned to the click on an ad for “features for product I think I want.” Even though it doesn’t convert immediately, you might see that people who click on that ad are much more likely to become customers later on.

DDA was introduced to AdWords back in May 2016, and since then, we’ve been studying how it affects performance. A recent analysis of hundreds of advertisers using DDA revealed that performance improved when compared to last-click attribution:

When compared to last-click attribution, DDA typically delivers more conversions at a similar cost-per-conversion

For Search, data-driven is now the recommended model for all eligible advertisers. It is a better way to measure and optimize performance.

How data-driven attribution works

DDA is different from rules-based attribution models. It uses your account’s conversion data to calculate the actual contribution of each search ad click along the conversion path. By comparing the paths of customers who convert to those who don’t, DDA determines what truly matters for each conversion path.

As long as your account has enough clicks and conversions, you’re eligible for DDA. We automatically train a model that’s unique to each of your conversion types. The model observes what your customers do before converting, and what they do when they don’t convert, to measure what’s important. Using Google’s machine learning, the models continue to improve over time. Read more about DDA.

The benefits of knowing which clicks matter

Here’s how DDA has already created value for other companies:

Select Home Warranty, which provides warranties to homeowners for household repair projects in the United States, saw a 36% increase in leads and a 20% decrease in cost-per-conversion after making the change to DDA.

“Switching to a data-driven attribution model unlocked growth for our business because it allowed us to give proper credit on mobile devices and non-brand keywords, resulting in a significant increase in overall conversions.” - Joseph Shrem, Founder, Select Home Warranty

Medpex is one of the largest mail-order pharmacies in Germany. Using Smart Bidding and data-driven attribution, they drove 29% more conversions while reducing cost-per-conversion by 28%.

“An algorithm is better equipped than any manual optimization to react to dynamic changes such as price changes of competitors or delivery bottlenecks.” - Frank Müller, Chief Marketing Officer, medpex

H.I.S., a travel agency with global presence in over one hundred cities worldwide, combined DDA with Smart Bidding and Dynamic Search Ads to grow conversions by 62% at a constant cost-per-conversion.

“Data-driven attribution helped us to acquire new users because we could strengthen our approach to users in the consideration phase.” - Ryoko Kume, Customer Communications, WEB Promotion , H.I.S. Head Office WEB Division

Updating your model

Making this change is straightforward. When you change your conversion action settings, use the dropdown in the Attribution Model section to select Data-driven as your attribution model:

Going forward, your “Conversions” column in AdWords will report your conversions based on the new DDA model. Smart Bidding will automatically adjust to this new way of measuring conversions. If you’re bidding manually, use the “current model” columns to make the initial set of adjustments. You can find these under the set of attribution columns.

Making the most of DDA

Updating your “Conversions” column is a big step, but there are a couple of other steps to ensure that your account sees the most potential improvement:

Adjust bids considering your new DDA-based conversions. Once you’ve updated your attribution model, your “Conversions” columns will begin to populate with stats that reflect your choice. From there it’s easy: Optimize your bids to account for the numbers in those columns. The recommended approach is to adopt an AdWords Smart Bidding strategy, like Target CPA or Target ROAS. Historical performance for that model can be found in the “current model” columns, which you should use as you make initial bid changes.
Give DDA some time. Those multiple clicks in a user’s conversion path take some time to happen. Give users a chance to convert or make a purchase before evaluating results. Once your account has settled into the new method, allow a couple of weeks to pass where you gather results.
Re-evaluate keywords that tend to be earlier in the click path. Last-click attribution could have favored some keywords at the expense of others. Now that you’re doing a better job measuring what matters, you may find that some campaigns make a big difference in the user journey. That difference may not have been measured appropriately in the past.
Stop reviewing assisted conversion metrics. In the coming months, we’ll be removing columns that reference assisted conversions from your statistics tables and reports.

Watch this video for more information about getting started with data-driven attribution. For more detailed guidance, including the steps to follow to properly test a new attribution model, check out our best practices for going beyond last-click attribution.

DDA is recommended for all Search ads, and we’re dedicated to improving DDA elsewhere. You can also take action on DDA if you use DoubleClick Search. In addition, DDA is also available in Google Analytics 360 and Attribution 360. We’ll continue to invest in DDA to make it even better across platforms.

Posted by

Joan Arensman, Product Manager, AdWords Attribution

Wilfred Yeung, Senior Product Manager, Bidding

Google Customer Reviews: receive and share customer feedback while earning seller ratings

2017-04-03T12:00:00.000-04:00

Thousands of merchants have long been using our Google Trusted Stores program to gain their customers' confidence. Today, we’re excited to introduce Google Customer Reviews, which will replace the Google Trusted Stores program.

Google Customer Reviews offers more ways to customize the Google badge and opt-in on your site, better account management tools that save your time, and new insights into your seller rating.

Google Customer Reviews Badge showing seller rating

With Google Customer Reviews, you can collect valuable reviews about your business for free. After you sign up and complete the brief setup process, customers who make a purchase on your site can opt-in to receiving an email survey to rate their buying experience. The reviews collected will contribute to your seller rating, which represents aggregated consumer reviews from multiple sources, including independent data providers and our own Google surveys. Your seller rating shows up on Google Shopping, AdWords text ads, and your website if you choose. Showing seller ratings on your text ads can boost your ads’ click through rate by up to 10%.

How to enable Google Customer Reviews

1) Sign in to your Merchant Center account (or sign up if you do not have an account).
2) Select “Merchant Center programs” from the dropdown in the upper right-hand corner.
3) Click “Get Started” in the Google Customer Reviews card and accept the Program Agreement.
4) Add the survey opt-in code to your website.
5) [Optional] Add the badge code to your site wherever you want. This will make the badge appear on your site, allowing you to display your seller rating and show customers that you’re integrated with Google Customer Reviews.

Learn more

Google Customer Reviews is now available in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Czechia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United States, and the United Kingdom. To learn more about the program, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Aaron Berger and Jorge Cueto, Product Managers for Google Shopping

New measurement innovations unlock more store visits data

2017-03-29T11:30:00.000-04:00

When people are deciding where to go—like where to shop, eat or have fun—they turn to their smartphones to explore and find nearby places. We introduced store visits measurement two years ago to help advertisers measure these consumer journeys that span the online and physical worlds. Since then, advertisers globally have measured over 4 billion store visits in AdWords.

Today, we’re excited to announce new innovations that will make store visits available to thousands more advertisers around the world. These innovations will also allow us to report more store visits for advertisers already using these insights to give a more complete view of performance.

Richer store visits data at the same high level of accuracy

We know measurement insights like store visits help you make business-critical decisions about how you manage and optimize your marketing campaigns. That’s why we uphold strict, conservative confidence thresholds for the data you see in AdWords and only report on store visits when we’re sure the data meets the highest standard of accuracy. This is also done in a secure, privacy-safe way without sharing any personal location information at an individual level. Store visits are calculated based on aggregated and anonymized data from users who opt in to activate Location History.

As we continue to evolve our measurement technology with new strides in machine learning, mapping technology and survey quality, we are able to increase the number of store visits we can report while still achieving that same high bar for accuracy you’ve come to expect.

Deep learning helps us better predict store visits in challenging scenarios

In the past month, we’ve upgraded to deep learning models to improve how we measure store visits. We’re now able to train on larger data sets and increase our accuracy in prioritizing which location signals are most predictive of true visits. This allows us to reliably measure more store visits in contexts that are typically tricky, such as in multi-story malls and dense geographies where many business locations are situated close to each other.

These are the innovative machine learning techniques at the core of powerful Google features that help people solve complex problems in their everyday lives -- they can help automatically curate images in Google Photos to create an album of your favorite college memories. Or process entire sentences at a time in Google Translate to give you translations that sound much closer to what a fluent speaker would say.

New mapping initiatives improve how we define location geometry

We’ve also scaled our efforts to map the precise geography and geometry of more business locations. We’ve refreshed imagery from Google Earth and Google Street View to get the most up-to-date, external views of where different buildings begin and end. Around the world, on-the-ground teams are also partnering with more businesses to scan Wi-Fi strength inside buildings to figure out their true boundaries.

Higher-quality survey data to verify store visits

When our systems detect that potential visits have occurred, we add an extra layer of verification by surveying select users about their store visits. We directly ask which locations they’ve visited, see how this checks out against our predictions, and then use this data to calibrate our machine learning models. We’ve continued increasing the reliability and quality of these surveys using real-life audits and location visits from our own teams. For example, we’re now verifying more visits that happen in areas with high store densities to give our models more data to learn from. This strengthens accuracy and allows us to report on more store visits that may have been previously excluded.

New innovations for measuring store visits will allow more AdWords advertisers to get these insights for the very first time, and deliver a richer and more complete data set to advertisers already using store visits. We’re excited to continue partnering with you to build better online-to-offline experiences for your customers and help you measure the direct impact to your business.

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

Dynamic Search Ads are now more effective than ever

2017-03-28T12:00:00.000-04:00

Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) help you reach people who are searching for your products and services—without the need for you to actively manage keywords or ads. Today we're introducing three improvements to DSA: page feeds, expanded ads and quality enhancements.

Control the products you advertise

Page feeds give you additional control over your DSA campaigns to ensure only relevant products and services are shown to your customers. Simply provide us with a feed of what you want to promote and select the landing pages that you want to include in your auto targets. We’ll use this information to determine when your ads will show, and where to direct your customers to on your website.

You can also apply custom labels in your page feeds to keep your ads organized. For example, create a label called “Holiday Promotion” and apply it to a group of products to easily activate and pause all ads within that promotion at the same time. Mark out of stock products with an “Unavailable” label to prevent driving traffic to them.

Hot Pepper Beauty, one of Japan's top salon booking services, uses page feeds and has reduced its time spent managing DSA campaigns by 90%:

“DSA with page feeds helps us expand our audience reach and dramatically reduces operational overhead while maintaining targeting control at the URL level.” - Tomoyuki Ishii, Manager of Digital Marketing at Recruit Lifestyle Co., Ltd.

Booking.com, the world leader in booking accommodations online, has also experienced positive results with page feeds:

“DSA Page Feeds has provided us with better ad performance through more relevant ads and allows us to reach more potential customers.” - Richard Gradwell, Director Marketing PPC Innovation at Booking.com

Expand your Dynamic Search Ads

Earlier this year, Search and Display campaigns fully transitioned to expanded text ads. Over the next month, we’re rolling out support within DSA campaigns for this expanded format. Longer headlines and description lines allow you to show more information about your business before people click your ad. When you create a new ad, use the expanded description field to provide deeper messaging that focuses on what consumers care about.

Show more relevant ads

It’s important that your ads only show when they’re most relevant to what people are searching for. For example, if you're a baker in Palm Springs, your ads should only show to people who are looking for baked goods in Palm Springs. That’s why we’re always improving the effectiveness of our DSA campaigns. With our latest updates, advertisers are seeing on average an increase in conversion rate and a decrease in CPA.

Posted by Walter Vulej, Product Manager, AdWords

Expanded safeguards for advertisers

2017-03-21T02:08:00.000-04:00

The web has opened a door for new communities and platforms that help people find diverse views and have a voice. Today, anyone with a smartphone can be a content creator, app developer or entrepreneur. And Google has enabled millions of content creators and publishers to be heard, find an audience, earn a living, or even build a business. Much of this is made possible through advertising. Thousands of sites are added every day to our ad network, and more than 400 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. We have a responsibility to protect this vibrant, creative world—from emerging creators to established publishers—even when we don’t always agree with the views being expressed.

But we also have a responsibility to our advertisers who help these publishers and creators thrive. We have strict policies that define where Google ads should appear, and in the vast majority of cases, our policies and tools work as intended. But at times we don’t get it right.

Recently, we had a number of cases where brands’ ads appeared on content that was not aligned with their values. For this, we deeply apologize. We know that this is unacceptable to the advertisers and agencies who put their trust in us. That’s why we've been conducting an extensive review of our advertising policies and tools, and why we made a public commitment last week to put in place changes that would give brands more control over where their ads appear.

I wanted to share that we've already begun ramping up changes around three areas: our ad policies, our enforcement of these policies and new controls for advertisers.

Raising the bar for our ad policies

We know advertisers don't want their ads next to content that doesn’t align with their values. So starting today, we’re taking a tougher stance on hateful, offensive and derogatory content. This includes removing ads more effectively from content that is attacking or harassing people based on their race, religion, gender or similar categories. This change will enable us to take action, where appropriate, on a larger set of ads and sites.

We’ll also tighten safeguards to ensure that ads show up only against legitimate creators in our YouTube Partner Program—as opposed to those who impersonate other channels or violate our community guidelines. Finally, we won’t stop at taking down ads. The YouTube team is taking a hard look at our existing community guidelines to determine what content is allowed on the platform—not just what content can be monetized.

Increased brand safety levels and controls for advertisers

Every company has brand guidelines that inform where and when they want their ads to appear. We already offer some controls for advertisers that respond to these needs. In the coming days and months, we’re introducing new tools for advertisers to more easily and consistently manage where their ads appear across YouTube and the web.

Safer default for brands. We’re changing the default settings for ads so that they show on content that meets a higher level of brand safety and excludes potentially objectionable content that advertisers may prefer not to advertise against. Brands can opt in to advertise on broader types of content if they choose.
Simplified management of exclusions. We’ll introduce new account-level controls to make it easier for advertisers to exclude specific sites and channels from all of their AdWords for Video and Google Display Network campaigns, and manage brand safety settings across all their campaigns with a push of a button.
More fine-tuned controls. In addition, we’ll introduce new controls to make it easier for brands to exclude higher risk content and fine-tune where they want their ads to appear.

Increasing resources, accelerating reviews and improving transparency

We’ll offer advertisers and agencies more transparency and visibility on where their ads are running, and in the coming months we’ll expand availability of video-level reporting to all advertisers.

We'll be hiring significant numbers of people and developing new tools powered by our latest advancements in AI and machine learning to increase our capacity to review questionable content for advertising. In cases where advertisers find their ads were served where they shouldn’t have been, we plan to offer a new escalation path to make it easier for them to raise issues. In addition, we’ll soon be able to resolve these cases in less than a few hours.

We believe the combination of these new policies and controls will significantly strengthen our ability to help advertisers reach audiences at scale, while respecting their values. We will continue to act swiftly to put these new policies and processes in place across our ad network and YouTube. But we also intend to act carefully, preserving the value we currently provide to advertisers, publishers and creators of all sizes. In the end, there’s nothing more important to Google than the trust we’ve built amongst our users, advertisers, creators and publishers. Brand safety is an ongoing commitment for us, and we’ll continue to listen to your feedback.

Posted by Philipp Schindler, Chief Business Officer, Google

Join us live on May 23, 2017 as we announce the latest Ads, Analytics and DoubleClick innovations

2017-03-20T11:03:00.000-04:00

What: Google Marketing Next keynote live stream
When: Tuesday, May 23 at 9:00 a.m. PT/12:00 p.m. ET.
Duration: 1 hour
Where: Here on the Inside AdWords Blog

Be the first to hear about Google’s latest marketing innovations, the moment they’re announced. Watch live as my team and I share new Ads, Analytics and DoubleClick innovations designed to improve your ability to reach consumers, simplify campaign measurement and increase your productivity. We’ll also give you a sneak peek at how brands are starting to use the Google Assistant to delight customers.

Register for the live stream here.

Until then, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and LinkedIn for previews of what’s to come.

Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President, Ads & Commerce

Attention, please: Supporting the ad industry to measure what matters

2017-03-20T08:00:00.000-04:00

If a million trees fall in the forest and nobody hears them, do they make a sound? What about a million impressions that are served but ignored?

It’s important for advertisers to ensure their video ads don’t just reach their audience, but also capture their attention -- at scale. Today, I’m excited to announce new research and reporting features to help advertisers do just that.

Reach is a critical measure of scale for advertisers. To help you know how many people you're connecting with, we are introducing Unique Reach in AdWords. This update allows you to see the number of unique users and average impressions-per-user across devices, screens and platforms.

But mere exposure to advertising isn’t enough. In order to have real impact, ads must capture attention. And to maximize attention, you need to know that your audience has seen, heard and spent time with your ad.

Globally, YouTube viewability grew to an industry leading 93% in 2016, up from 91% in 2015.¹ Across the web and apps, video viewability grew from 54% in 2015 to 66% in 2016.² Ads on YouTube are also 95% audible.³ And while viewability and audibility are each important on their own, together they pack a much more powerful punch: In analyzing data from over a thousand YouTube ads, we’ve learned that users who both see and hear ads experience higher brand awareness, higher ad recall and higher consideration than those who only see or only hear ads.⁴

Source: Google TrueView Brand Lift studies Aug-Sep 2016, Global, data for users with single impression. Data shows ratio of additive differences vs. control respondents for each group of viewers.

Finally, even with the assurance that your audience can see and hear your ad there still remains the lingering question of how much time they actually spent watching your content. To help provide advertisers with this critical layer of detail we’ll start reporting watch time for your in-stream and bumpers campaigns. Alongside viewability and audibility rates, watch time gives you another powerful signal for understanding how people view your ads.

Now, by looking at watch time across your YouTube campaigns, you can get closer to understanding which ads are holding the attention of your viewers, and are thus most likely to make an impact.

Driving business results in today’s media environment means prioritizing attention. On YouTube, advertisers are able to take that powerful combination of sight and sound, and scale it to over a billion users with the ability to better understand how many users you reached across screens and how much time they spent watching your ads. We’re excited to offer these metrics, which will be available shortly in AdWords. For more information, check out our Help Center articles on Unique Reach and watch time reporting.

Posted by Debbie Weinstein, Global Managing Director, YouTube & Video Solutions

1. Google and DoubleClick advertising platforms data, Q4 2015 over Q4 2014
2. Google and DoubleClick advertising platforms data, April 2016
3. Google Internal Data, Global, August 2016 (when volume is at least 10% for YouTube ads)
4. Google TrueView Brand Lift studies Aug-Sep 2016, Global

Close variants now connects more people with what they’re looking for

2017-03-17T16:58:00.000-04:00

From running shoes to cheap hotels to credit cards, and everything in between, people are searching for the products and services you offer. However, finding the right keywords to reach your customers can be difficult–and many advertisers agree.¹ Whether someone is searching for “running shoes” or “shoes for running,” what they want remains the same; they’re looking for running shoes. You shouldn’t have to build out exhaustive keyword lists to reach these customers, and now you don’t have to.

Close variants helps you connect with people who are looking for your business, despite slight variations in the way they search. To make it even easier for you to reach more of your customers, over the coming months we’re expanding close variant matching to include additional rewording and reordering for exact match keywords.² Early tests show advertisers may see up to 3% more exact match clicks on average while maintaining comparable clickthrough and conversion rates.³

Rewording and ignoring function words

Function words are prepositions (in, to), conjunctions (for, but), articles (a, the) and other words that often don’t impact the intent behind a query. With this change, exact match will ignore these function words to match with similar queries.

Function words are the only words that will be ignored. This should only happen when it won’t change the meaning of your keyword. For example, the “in” in “hotels in new york” can be safely ignored because it doesn’t affect the meaning. However, the “to” in “flights to new york” would not be ignored, because a “flight from new york” is not the same as a “flight to new york.”

Same meaning, different order

Two keywords can share the same meaning, even if the word order is slightly different. For example, “buy new cars” and “new cars buy.” Now, exact match will use that same logic to match with queries that are reordered variations of your keyword.

It’s important to note that word reordering won’t add any words to your keywords. Your keywords also won’t be reordered to match with a query when it changes the original meaning of those keywords. For example, the keyword [SFO to JFK] shouldn’t match to the query “JFK to SFO” because the destination is different.

Putting it all together

With this expansion of close variants, you’ll no longer have to build and maintain lists of reworded and reordered exact match keywords to get the coverage you want. If you already use reworded or reordered keyword variations, AdWords will still prefer to use those keywords identical to search queries. Phrase match keywords aren’t included in this update.

Going forward, use RLSA, Smart Bidding, the search terms report and negative keywords to help shape your traffic and reduce costs. To learn more about this and other strategies that can help you make the most of this change, check out our keyword best practices.

Posted by Miguel Villalobos, Product Manager, Search Keywords

1. Google internal data, global
2. This change will affect English and Spanish keywords only, with other languages to follow throughout 2017
3. Google internal data, aggregate traffic

A fast start to 2017 for click-to-call ads

2017-03-08T11:30:00.000-05:00

Living in a mobile-first world has made it easier than ever to pick up the phone and talk to a business directly. That’s why we've continued investing in calls innovations based on the great feedback we've heard from you. From call-only ads for marketers who prioritize calls to imported call conversions that allow you to upload your own call conversion data directly into AdWords, we’ve strived to drive more high-quality calls to your business in three main ways:

Simplified workflows so you can set up click-to-call ads faster
Better ad experiences that make it easier for people to call you
Detailed call reporting that shows which parts of your campaigns drive the most valuable calls

We have new updates coming soon across these areas to help you improve your calls performance.

Get your call extensions up and running more quickly

Account-level call extensions will begin rolling out this week to help you set up call extensions at scale. You can implement them once across your entire account rather than adding them multiple times to individual campaigns and ad groups.

In the coming months, we're also rolling out automated call extensions to more advertisers globally to help you set up call extensions more quickly. AdWords will identify landing pages that already feature a prominent phone number, and automatically set up a call extension and call reporting for this phone number to help you drive more calls to your business.

New year, new look for click-to-call ads

In addition to making call extensions quicker to set up, we’re improving the ad experience to help consumers call you more easily. For example, we started testing business names in the headlines of call-only ads last year to help advertisers maximize high-quality calls from people who intend to call them.

“Introducing business names to call-only ads has improved the quality of calls we drive from Google Search for clients across our agency. We’ve been able to showcase their brands more clearly and increase user trust, which has led to significantly higher clickthrough and call conversion rates."
-Kevin Quinlan, President of wommster.com

We’re now rolling this change out globally and will continue experimenting with other new features in click-to-call ads, including testing caller satisfaction ratings to show consumers which businesses are delivering a great user experience over the phone.

New reporting for keyword and ad-level call details

Measuring performance from your click-to-call ads is essential for making informed decisions about your spend and optimizations. AdWords call reporting is easy to set up and available in 23 countries around the world at no additional cost to show you useful insights and conversions from the calls you’re receiving. We’ll soon be adding new call details to your keyword and ad copy reports. Additional columns for “Phone impressions” and “Phone calls” will give you a more complete view of call performance and help you see where there are opportunities to improve. For example, consider using call-only ads on keywords with the highest phone-through rates, or decreasing wait times when you have customers on the phone to improve call conversion rates.

We hope these new updates to click-to-call setup, ad experiences and reporting will help you ring in 2017 with great calls performance. To learn more, visit the Help Center and read our best practices for driving phone calls to your business and optimizing the caller experience.

Posted by Manas Mittal, Product Manager, Mobile Search Ads

“Level up” your gaming business with new innovations for apps

2017-03-01T09:00:00.000-05:00

Mobile games mean more than just fun. They mean business. Big business. According to App Annie, game developers should capture almost half of the $189B global market for in-app purchases and advertising by 2020.¹

Later today, at the Games Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, I look forward to sharing a series of new innovations across ad formats, monetization tools and measurement insights for apps:

New playable and video ad formats to get more people into your game
Integrations to help you create better monetization experiences
Measurement tools that provide insights about how players are interacting with your game

Let more users try your game with a playable ad format

There’s no better way for a new user to experience your game than to actually play it. So today, we introduced playables, an interactive ad format in Universal App Campaigns that allows users to play a lightweight version of your game, right when they see it in any of the 1M+ apps in the Google Display Network.

Jam City's playable ad for Cookie Jam

Playables help you get more qualified installs from users who tried your game in the ad and made the choice to download it for more play time. By attracting already-engaged users into your app, playables help you drive the long-term outcomes you care about — rounds played, levels beat, trophies won, purchases made and more.

"Jam City wants to put our games in the hands of more potential players as quickly as possible. Playables get new users into the game right from the ad, which we've found drives more engagement and long-term customer value." Josh Yguado, President & COO Jam City, maker of Panda Pop and Cookie Jam

Playables will be available for developers through Universal App Campaigns in the coming months, and will be compatible with HTML5 creatives built through Google Web Designer or third-party agencies.

Improve the video experience with ads designed for mobile viewing

Most mobile video ad views on the Google Display Network are watched on devices held vertically.² This can create a poor experience when users encounter video ad creatives built for horizontal viewing.

Developers using Universal App Campaigns will soon be able to use an auto-flip feature that automatically orients your video ads to match the way users are holding their phones. If you upload a horizontal video creative in AdWords, we will automatically create a second, vertical version for you.

Jam City Cookie Jam horizontal video and vertical-optimized video created through auto-flip technology

The auto-flip feature uses Google's machine learning technology to identify the most important objects in every frame of your horizontal video creative. It then produces an optimized, vertical version of your video ad that highlights those important components of your original asset. Early tests show that click-through rates are about 20% higher on these dynamically-generated vertical videos than on horizontal video ads watched vertically.³

Unlock new business with rewarded video formats, and free, unlimited reporting

Developers have embraced AdMob's platform to mediate rewarded video ads as a way to let users watch ads in exchange for an in-app reward. Today, we are delighted to announce that we are bringing Google’s video app install advertising demand from AdWords to AdMob, significantly increasing rewarded demand available to developers. Advertisers that use Universal App Campaigns can seamlessly reach this engaged, game-playing audience using your existing video creatives.

We are also investing in better measurement tools for developers by bringing the power of Firebase Analytics to more game developers with a generally available C++ SDK and an SDK for Unity, a leading gaming engine.

C++ and Unity developers can now access Firebase Analytics for real-time player insights

With Firebase Analytics, C++ and Unity, developers can now capture billions of daily events — like level completes and play time — to get more nuanced player insights and gain a deeper understanding of metrics like daily active users, average revenue per user and player lifetime value.

This is an exciting time to be a game developer. It’s been a privilege to meet so many of you at GDC 2017 and learn about the amazing games that you’re all building. We hope the innovations we announced today help you grow long-term gaming businesses and we look forward to continuing on this journey with you.

Until next year, GDC!

Posted by Sissie Hsiao, Product Director, App Promotion Ads, Google
Last played Fire Emblem Heroes for Android

1. App Monetization Report, November 2016, App Annie
2. More than 80% of video ad views in mobile apps on the Google Display Network are from devices held vertically video, Google Internal Data
3. Google Internal Data

Google Manufacturer Center opens self-sign up, letting even more manufacturers elevate their brands online

2017-02-27T11:00:00.000-05:00

Many brands and manufacturers rely on individual retailers to showcase and sell their products; however, this can make distributing and monitoring manufacturer product information complicated, as those retailers may not always have the most accurate and up-to-date product details. In 2015, we launched Google Manufacturer Center to enable these brands to offer enhanced product images, descriptions and variants for a more consistent brand experience across Google. Since then, thousands of brands have taken advantage of the tool to best represent their products to shoppers, to access unique analytics and insights -- and ultimately -- to improve the performance of Shopping ads featuring their products.

Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of self-sign up for Manufacturer Center, which will allow even more brands to manage their product information across Google. Now, brands can set up their accounts in a matter of minutes and start submitting authoritative, detailed, and rich product information (including images, titles, descriptions, videos, and more) to help their products stand out in a crowded marketplace -- whether shoppers are looking for inspiration, to compare products, or to make a purchase.

Below, we’re highlighting two recent success stories from leading brands that are investing in rich product content to best showcase their products to shoppers on Google.

Johnson & Johnson drives a premium brand experience with high-quality product images

Johnson & Johnson, manufacturer of popular household brands such as Band-Aid, Neutrogena, and more, has been uploading rich product data to Manufacturer Center over the past year.

“Google Manufacturer Center provides us as brand manufacturers, the ability to influence product experiences, drive purchase decisions, and surface high quality and accurate product information, content, and product imagery,” said Faisal Rangwala, Senior Manager of eCommerce Strategy at Johnson & Johnson.

Johnson & Johnson is driving a premium search experience for products such as their light therapy acne treatment mask, by uploading more accurate and descriptive data.

As a result, when compared to category benchmarks, Johnson & Johnson realized:

A 22% increase in impressions, helping even more customers discover their brand through search results
A 27% increase in clicks, engaging more potential customers with their retailers’ Shopping ads.

Safavieh gains impressions and qualified clicks by uploading better product data

International home furnishings company Safavieh submitted data to Manufacturer Center to better showcase their collections through Shopping Ads. Prior to their participation in Manufacturer Center, they relied on retail partners to submit product information to Google. As a result, they often found that their products were displayed in Google Shopping search results without the most up-to-date images, product attributes, videos or detailed descriptions.

“Manufacturer Center has provided us with a great way of engaging our customers with more accurate, useful information. We can’t say enough about how being part of Google Manufacturer Center is helping to drive more traffic to our website, our retail partners’ websites, and ultimately greater sales for our products." said Arash Yaraghi, CEO at Safavieh.

With Manufacturer Center, Safavieh has captured consumer attention by providing more enhanced content, so when a consumer searches for “rugs”, Safavieh can showcase multiple high-resolution zoomable images, YouTube videos, and longer descriptions.

By uploading richer content and videos to improve their Shopping ads, when compared to category benchmarks, Safavieh achieved:

A 46% increase in impressions, improving product discoverability on Google
A 35% increase in clicks, with users spending more time on retailer’s sites

Getting started with Manufacturer Center

Once brands open their account, they can upload their product data directly to Manufacturer Center or work with a data partner that can streamline their product data submission to Google. A list of our approved Google Shopping data partners can be seen on our partner page. To learn more about Manufacturer Center or to sign up, visit our website.

Posted by Christian Santiago, Strategic Partner Development Lead, Google Shopping