Author Archives: Rob Newton

Google Hotel Ads makes it easier for more hotels to participate

Over the past several months we’ve made improvements to hotel search across Google, to help travelers find information more quickly and to enable hotels to generate more qualified leads. As a continuation of these efforts, we’re announcing a few more changes to Hotel Ads on Google: broader availability for the Google Hotel Ads Commission program, an expansion of the Book on Google feature to more partners, and the inclusion of more amenity information within Google search. With these changes, we’ll be retiring the dedicated site for Hotel Finder this week, as users are now able to access the hotel information they need right from Google search.

Making it easier for more hotels to generate qualified leads from Google 
Earlier this year we started testing the Google Hotel Ads Commission Program with a small set of independent hotels. With this program, these hotels are charged on the industry-standard commission basis rather than cost-per-click, making it easier for smaller, independent hotels to use Google Hotel Ads. Today, we’re announcing that more hotels can participate in this program now that we’ve partnered with leading hotel technology solutions providers.

Seekda, one of the participating hotel technology solutions providers, helps us offer hotels a risk-free way to reach a massive audience efficiently. “Google Hotel Ads allows hotels to be there when a traveler is ready to book, and pay only when a booking is made or consumed,” says Klaus Niederacher, General Manager and COO at Seekda. “This new commission model gives smaller chains and independent hotels the option to participate in the highly effective Google Hotel Ads, without having to manage CPC bids and budgets.”

So far, the program has proven to be successful at driving bookings for hoteliers. According to Scott Koehler, Senior Vice President, Product & Operations of TravelClick: “Since March, hotels enrolled in TravelClick’s Demand Services program have seen, on average, a 56 percent year-over-year increase in revenue driven by Google Hotel Ads. The evolution from a pay-per-click to commission model has increased hotel revenue.”

We currently work with DerbySoft, Fastbooking, Sabre Hospitality Solutions, Seekda, TravelClick, and Trust International and will be integrating additional hospitality technology providers in the future.

Making bookings easier for hoteliers and consumers
In 2013, we launched Book on Google on mobile devices to make it easier for users to book hotel rooms directly from their phone. Now, we’re expanding the availability of Book on Google, bringing it to desktop and tablet devices and making it easier for more hotels to participate.
With Book on Google, Google facilitates the booking payment transaction. The hotel partner owns the guest relationship, including sending the confirmation email, answering post-booking questions, and handling changes to the reservation or cancellations.

“Given the successes that our hotel clients have experienced with Google Hotel Ads, we look forward to offering additional Hotel Ads features to our hotel clients globally, including Book on Google,” said Scott Koehler, Senior Vice President, Product & Operations of TravelClick.

Book on Google is available to all Hotel Ads partners and works for users in the U.S.
Bringing more hotel information to search

Earlier this year we announced improvements to hotel search across Google so users can find information like availability, prices, and reviews right in the search results and in Google Maps.

This month, we’re adding information about hotel amenities for locations in the U.S. and we’re working to add this information for 24 more countries through next year. This means that users will now see whether a hotel has things like free WiFi, free breakfast, parking availability, a pool, or a business center, right in search.
We’re focused on helping travelers find information and choices about hotels, while making it easier for them to select and book the hotel that’s right for them. We’re also committed to helping partners connect with travelers when they are ready to book, across devices and Google platforms. We hope the changes announced today will make planning that next trip an even easier click away.

Tom Mulders, Senior Program Manager, Travel

Source: Inside AdWords


Google forwarding numbers arrive in Canada

The ability to call a business is often critical in helping potential customers complete a purchase. In fact, 61% of mobile searchers say it's extremely important to be able to call a business during the purchase phase of the shopping process.1 Measuring these phone calls to your business is essential for understanding the full value of Google search ads and making informed decisions for acquiring new customers. That’s why we’re excited to announce the launch of Google forwarding numbers in Canada.
A "Call" button in a search ad on a mobile device
Canada, say hello to Google forwarding numbers

Google forwarding numbers are an important step toward measuring the phone calls you receive through Google search ads. When you use Google forwarding numbers with your call extensions and call-only campaigns, we’ll dynamically assign a unique phone number to your ad. When a customer calls that number, AdWords will route the call to your business phone number while providing you with useful information about the caller’s area code, call duration, and whether the call was answered.

Many people who search for local businesses prefer to call a phone number with a recognizable area code, which is why Google forwarding numbers will show a local Google forwarding number, where available. For example, if your business is based in Vancouver, your ads are eligible to use a “604” area code with your Google forwarding number.

Canadian advertisers like belairdirect and 1-800-Got-Junk are already using Google forwarding numbers to improve performance on their call ads:
"As marketers, we are always looking for new ways to leverage technology in order to be more efficient and measure the full value of our ad campaigns. Now, with Google forwarding numbers, we're able to gain valuable insights into the consumer behavior behind calls to make our campaigns and call centers more useful for current and future customers. Furthermore, we've identified that calls that last over 10 minutes are more likely to result in someone signing up for an insurance policy. We can now count these as call conversions to optimize for higher-quality calls." Anne Fortin, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Strategic Relationships, belairdirect
“Call extensions and call-only campaigns help customers reach our service representatives more quickly to schedule a junk pick-up. So far, we’ve been able to generate thousands of leads and now with insights from Google forwarding numbers in Canada, we can monitor call details and filter calls by duration. This gives us vital information on which campaigns are driving the right calls and how we can better invest our advertising spend." Keegan Morrison, PPC Account Manager, 1-800-Got-Junk
Clicks that lead to calls from your website

While call extensions and call-only ads are very effective, many customers also call your business after clicking through a Google ad and learning more about the products and services you offer on your website. Website call conversions is a powerful tool that dynamically inserts a Google forwarding number on your website to identify and measure the calls that occur after a Google ad click. When someone clicks on your website’s phone number or dials it directly from their phone, you can attribute the call and call value back to the keyword and ad that drove the customer.

Advertisers like Blinds.com are already using website call conversions to gain a more holistic picture of their AdWords performance:
“It’s a great idea to implement Google’s website call conversions, particularly if you have a call center that handles over 15% of sales or if you’re faced with the challenge of attributing offline calls to online spend. With website call conversions, we’ve attributed 56% more revenue to mobile ads and measured 173% higher average order value. With these insights, we’ve been able to increase and optimize spend towards keywords that are generating the most call conversions. We’re looking forward to rolling this out to Blinds.ca in Canada.” Michael Nicholas, SEM Specialist
Maximize call value

In addition to measuring call conversions, Google forwarding numbers also allow you to assign a conversion value. For example, a business might assign a revenue value to calls that last over 5 minutes. By measuring these calls, you can automatically optimize your keyword bids to drive more valuable calls using Target ROAS. This flexible bid strategy factors in signals like device, location, and time of day to make auction-time bid adjustments that maximize call conversion value, while reaching your business goals.

Learn more

With the launch of Google forwarding numbers, you can now report on call metrics and conversions, measure website call conversions, and optimize your bids to drive more valuable phone calls. You can learn more about each of these products in the AdWords Help Center and read our best practices for maximizing performance with calls.

Posted by Amit Agarwal, Product Manager, AdWords
1 Think with Google, The Role of Click to Call in the Path to Purchase, September 2013
*In some cases, a local Google forwarding number may not be available. When this happens, your ad will show a toll-free Google forwarding number instead

Source: Inside AdWords


New reporting columns for multi-channel advertisers

In April, we introduced improvements that help multi-channel advertisers more easily manage reporting for specific campaign types. For example, if you want to see performance columns for Display, you can quickly filter your view to see only your Display campaigns. Today, we introduced another important enhancement to AdWords - TrueView is joining Search, Shopping and Display campaigns within the core AdWords interface. Now we are adding three new reporting columns to make it easier to report across all of these campaign types.

Introducing new ad interaction columns

As we add more campaign types into AdWords, we want to help you surface key insights across all of the campaigns you manage. That’s why we’re rolling out three new reporting columns to help you quickly report on some of the most important ad interactions that occur across all of your campaign types.

Starting this week, you’ll notice the following new columns:
  • Interactions - An interaction is the main action people take with your ad format— such as clicks for text and shopping ads, views for video ads, and engagements for Lightbox ads.
  • Interaction Rate - Interaction rate is used to measure how often people interact with your ad after it’s shown to them—for example, clicks divided by impressions for text ads, or views divided by impressions for video ads.
  • Avg Cost - Average cost is the average amount you've paid for your ads divided by total interactions—clicks divided by cost, or views divided by total cost.
screen shot of new interaction columns
New interaction columns help you measure metrics across your campaign types

When viewing multiple campaign types, these columns give you a more uniform and quick way to view key metrics for your campaign types in a single column. For example, for search, the primary metric you might want to view is clicks. And for video, your primary metric is views. Now, you can use the Interactions column to quickly see a combined metric for clicks and views for each of these campaign types within a single column.

Additionally, to make reporting by specific campaign type easier, you’ll now see your Total rows broken out by campaign type, instead of by network. And you will also see total rows for only the campaign types you manage.
Screen Shot 2015-09-01 at 4.57.54 PM.png
Total rows are now broken out by campaign type

Getting started

Over time, you may start seeing these columns in other areas of AdWords. To learn how to start using the new ad interactions columns in your AdWords reporting, check out our Help Center.

Posted by Pallavi Naresh, Product Manager, AdWords

Source: Inside AdWords


The power of video meets the capabilities of AdWords – all TrueView campaigns now in AdWords

You know how you have to go to a special section within AdWords to create and manage your TrueView video campaigns? And jump back and forth when you want to report and optimize across all your campaigns? And you still can’t take advantage of AdWords bulk tools for your video campaigns? Well, good news, friends: those days are now over. TrueView is joining Search, Display, and Shopping campaigns within the core AdWords interface.

With the simplicity of a single interface and a more consistent experience, AdWords makes it easier for you to optimize across campaign types. Plus, you can take advantage of powerful bulk management tools to save time and effort when working on multiple TrueView campaigns. And now that all campaign types share the same structure, we can bring you new features for video, faster than ever before.

Now if you’ll follow us, we’d love to show you around…

In the top left corner, you can find the campaign type selector. This is useful to see only campaigns of a certain type. For instance, selecting “Video” gives you a view of your campaigns that looks similar to AdWords for video – meaning you’ll see only the tabs and columns that are most relevant for managing video campaigns. And best of all, we remember your column preferences whenever you switch among views, so you don’t need to change them around each time you toggle campaign types.

Campaign type selector

We’re also replacing targeting groups with ad groups, the basic building blocks for Search, Display, and Shopping campaigns. Now every ad group will have a single TrueView format, either in-stream or in-display. Though each ad group has only one format, campaigns can have multiple ad groups so you can still run both in-stream and in-display ads in the same campaign. To create a new campaign, just click the +CAMPAIGN button, click the new Video campaign type, and then create new ad groups within each campaign by clicking +AD GROUP.
Ad group creation

Now that TrueView has joined the party in AdWords, you’ll have access to a trove of goodies designed to help you manage, optimize, and report on accounts with lots of campaigns. For instance, bulk UI editing lets you modify information for multiple campaigns at once – directly from the UI, and bulk uploads let you download a snapshot of your campaigns, make changes en masse, and upload the changes live to your account. And report scheduling gives you the ability to set up a schedule for reports to run automatically, and have them emailed regularly to account users.
Bulk edits

Reporting for video campaigns is getting more powerful as well, as you’ll now have the ability to filter your results to isolate things like campaign name, label, cost, and conversions.
Filters

You’ll also see popular video features in familiar places in AdWords. For example, video remarketing is now in the AdWords shared library and YouTube account linking is in the Linked accounts section. Plus you’ll be able to see analytics for your video ads within the new "Videos" tab, and manage your targeting within the "Video targeting" tab.

Creating remarketing lists

Linking YouTube channels
Customers who’ve previewed the new interface found it saves them time and offers more powerful reporting. "As avid users of TrueView, we were eager to beta test the new TrueView in AdWords, and see how the change impacted our most complex campaign setups," said Pixability CTO Andreas Goeldi. "The increased functionality allows for improved workflow, better reporting, and significant time saved."

Whether your goals are to drive direct response or to build your brand, you now have a single, unified tool to address your full range of marketing goals. Starting today, you’ll be able to upgrade your campaigns to the new ad group structure, and say goodbye to those days of going to “All Video Campaigns” to get to your TrueView campaigns. To upgrade, just head to AdWords for video by clicking All video campaigns (once more, for old time’s sake) and click into the Upgrade Center to easily switch over all your campaigns in one fell swoop. And don’t worry – all your historical stats and targeting will carry over (just drill down to the campaign level to see them). If you’d rather not upgrade your campaigns yourself, no problem – we’ll automatically upgrade your campaigns, starting in six weeks.

And if you’re a video type of person (we certainly are!), check out all the content of this blog post in video form here.

For more information, check out the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by the fka AdWords for video team
Lane Shackleton, Group Product Manager
Ammar Ibrahim, Product Manager
Avi Fein, Product Manager

Source: Inside AdWords