Tag Archives: Google Ads

Building the future of marketing together

Technology is powering more business growth around the world than ever before. And new consumer behaviors are redefining the role technology plays in everyday life. We see this in the surge of video watch time, the rise of browsing behavior on Search and the growth in online shopping. There is opportunity in all of this.

With the right tools, you can meet your customers where they are today while building resilience for tomorrow — and Google is here to be your partner. Your insights and feedback are helping shape every investment we’re making across Google Ads.

Throughout Google Marketing Live, you’ll see the many ways we’re working to help you unlock growth for your business and navigate today’s rapidly shifting advertising landscape. Join us at 9:00 a.m. PT (12:00 p.m. ET) to hear about Google’s latest product innovations across Ads and Commerce. Here’s a preview of some of those announcements.

Reimagining the future of marketing across Search and YouTube

Consumers are turning to Google Search and YouTube more than ever for help with purchase decisions. In fact, we see over one billion shopping journeys happen across Google every day.[5bfc42]

When it comes to shopping on Google Search, we’ve made the experience more natural and intuitive. Categories like apparel have seen tremendous success as consumers explore information in more visual and browsable ways. Later this year, advertisers will be eligible to show new, highly visual Shopping ads to U.S. customers. These will be clearly labeled as ads and will be eligible to appear in dedicated ad slots throughout the page.

Reimagining Shopping ads in new, visually engaging search results (U.S.-only search results)

However, nothing can quite replace seeing a product in person or bringing it home to try out. Augmented reality (AR) on cameras gets us close, and shoppers are ready for it. More than 90% of Americans currently use, or would consider using, AR for shopping.[3396f7]Soon, merchants will be able to have 3D models of their products appear directly on Google Search, allowing shoppers to easily see them in their spaces.

Augmented reality in Search provides a fully immersive shopping experience

In the coming months, you’ll also be able to promote your loyalty benefits to potential customers in the U.S. when they’re shopping across Google. Loyalty programs represent a meaningful relationship between you and your customers, and soon you’ll be able to easily integrate them with Google Ads.

A mobile phone screen showing the search query “hair blow dryer brush.” One of the results shows a tag that says “Get free shipping and earn points.”

Showcase your loyalty benefits across Google to consumers in the U.S.

Using Performance Max campaigns — along with a product feed — you’ll be able to drive more online loyalty sign-ups across YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Maps.

Starting today, your Video action campaigns and App campaigns will automatically scale to YouTube Shorts. YouTube Shorts now averages over 30 billion daily views — four times as many as a year ago — and we want to help you reach people immersed in this short-form content.[4cc29a]Later this year, you’ll also be able to connect your product feed to your campaigns and make your video ads on YouTube Shorts more shoppable. We've been experimenting with ads in YouTube Shorts since last year, and we’re now gradually rolling that out to all advertisers around the world. This is an exciting milestone for advertisers, and a key step on our road to developing a long-term YouTube Shorts monetization solution for our creators, which we'll share more about soon.

Product feeds on Video action campaigns will roll out to YouTube Shorts later this year

Delivering better results with automation and insights

The best way to unlock growth for your business is combining your data and marketing expertise with Google’s machine learning. This means building automated products that meet your objectives and are simple to use.

Performance Max campaigns are a powerful tool for helping you meet consumers where they are across Google channels. In fact, advertisers that use Performance Max campaigns in their account see an average increase of 13% total incremental conversions at a similar cost per action.[ee87c8][3b5bb4]Today, we’re announcing six upcoming additions:

1. More tools for experimentation, like A/B tests to see how Performance Max is driving incremental conversions.
2. Expanded campaign management support in Search Ads 360 and the Google Ads mobile app.
3. Support for store sales goals to optimize for in-store sales, in addition to store visits and local actions.
4. Maximize impact with burst campaigns for a set time period to help meet in-store goals during seasonal events.
5. New insights and explanations, including attribution, audience and auction insights so you know what’s driving performance.
6. Optimization score and recommendations so you can see how to improve your campaign.

Rothy’s, a sustainable brand known for its iconic shoes and accessories, turned to Performance Max to connect with customers across channels. As a result, they increased conversions by 60% and grew revenue by 59%.

Case study video where Rothy’s discusses their experience with Performance Max
10:25

Insights page uses machine learning to identify new pockets of consumer demand and provide personalized trend data. Only Google can surface these types of insights, based on the billions of searches we see every day and the millions of signals we analyze for every ad auction. Today, we’re introducing three new reports that will roll out over the coming months:

1. Attribution insights show how your ads work together across Google surfaces — like Search, Display and YouTube — to drive conversions.
2. Budget insights find new opportunities for budget optimization and show how your spend is pacing against your budget goals.
3. Audience insights for first-party data show how your customer segments, like those created with Customer Match, are driving campaign performance.

  • Screenshot of the attribution insights report with a bar graph titled “multi-touch conversion paths”

    Attribution insights show how your ads work together to deliver results

  • Screenshot of the budget insights report that highlights insights for a campaign

    Budget insights show how your budgets are pacing and identify optimization opportunities

  • Screenshot of audience insights report that highlights top performing audience segments

    Audience insights show which customer lists are driving performance

Building resilience in a shifting landscape

At Google we’re driven by a shared goal: to be the most helpful company in the world. But we know that our products can only be as helpful as they are safe. That's why we’re launching innovations like My Ad Center later this year to keep users in control of their privacy and online experience. People will be able to pick the types of ads they want to see more or less of, and control how their data informs ads they see across YouTube, Search and Discover.

Control your ads experience in My Ad Center

And these solutions can and should still work for advertisers. We can both advance privacy and continue supporting the ecosystem.

Join us at Google Marketing Live

What an extraordinary time to be in this industry — my team and I are humbled to be on this journey with you. It’s a big moment for all of us, and I know that we can meet it by working together.

Join us today at Google Marketing Live at 9:00 a.m. PT (12:00 p.m. ET) to learn more about these and other ads innovations and commerce announcements. We hope to see you there!

YouTube receives brand safety distinction for second year

At YouTube, we’re committed to protecting our viewers, creators and advertisers. Last year, we became the first digital platform to receive content-level brand safety accreditation from the Media Rating Council (MRC). Today, the MRC has given us that accreditation again, making YouTube the only platform to hold this distinction.[ceb9d8]This is a testament to the investments we’ve made in responsibility, YouTube's top priority.

“We congratulate Google for this noteworthy achievement,” says George W. Ivie, Executive Director and CEO of the MRC. “Brand safety and suitability are critical issues in today’s digital ad environment, and MRC’s accreditation of YouTube, first granted last year and continued today, remains a landmark achievement in providing marketers with strong assurances that their advertising investments on the YouTube platform are being well protected.”

As part of this accreditation, the MRC extensively audited our content review systems, including the machine learning technology that analyzes content uploaded to our platform and the policies that determine which videos on YouTube are eligible to run ads. The MRC auditors also met with our brand safety personnel on site to review our processes and dug into how we protect our global community — including our procedures for evaluating content across different languages. The accreditation also recognized YouTube’s advertiser safety error rate, a metric authorized by the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) which evaluates the total percentage of ad impressions that run across violative content.

“We’re thrilled to see YouTube take another industry-leading step in their continued accreditation with MRC this year,” says Robert Rakowitz, Initiative Lead, GARM. “With this latest certification, YouTube fulfills a key request from advertisers and agencies in having an audit oversight body approve a core metric on the safety of their monetization practices. This is a step to celebrate and a further demonstration of YouTube’s commitment to GARM’s mission.”

Our continued accreditation confirms that our strategy and systems are keeping pace with the current environment. And it builds on our commitment to remaining at least 99% effective at ensuring brand safety of advertising placements on YouTube, in accordance with industry standards.

In addition to working with the MRC and GARM to raise the bar on brand safety, we’re also improving brand suitability. Over the past two years, we’ve worked directly with advertisers and agencies to better understand their needs and develop a set of best practices, such as anchoring on YouTube’s inventory modes and reassessing whether they should exclude certain types of content. When advertisers knew how to better navigate our suitability controls, they experienced performance benefits ranging from increased reach and view-through rates to decreased cost-per-view.

We’re now using these best practices and customer feedback to evolve our suitability offering. This will include intuitive controls, more consistency across all Google inventory and clarity on how controls may impact ad campaigns. We’ll share more details in the coming months.

“Better suitability controls allow advertisers to access and support more diverse content and audiences in a brand-safe way,” says Luis Di Como, EVP, Global Media, Unilever. “Unilever has long championed a responsible and safe online environment, and we are encouraged by YouTube’s commitment to create a positive digital ecosystem that is safe and inclusive for all.”

By extending the rigor of our brand safety systems to our suitability solutions, we hope to continue to help advertisers tap into the full scale and potential of YouTube.

Our 2021 Ads Safety Report

User safety is at the top of our list when we make decisions about ads and monetized content on our platforms. In fact, thousands of Googlers work around the clock to prevent malicious use of our advertising services and help make them safer for people, businesses and publishers. We do this important work because an ad-supported internet means everyone can access essential information.

And as the digital world evolves, our policy development and enforcement strategies evolve with it — helping to prevent abuse while allowing businesses to reach new customers and grow. We’ve continued to invest in our policies, teams of experts and enforcement technology to stay ahead of potential threats. In 2021, we introduced a multi-strike system for repeat policy violations. We added or updated over 30 policies for advertisers and publishers including a policy prohibiting claims that promote climate change denial and a certification for U.S.-based health insurance providers to only allow ads from government exchanges, first-party providers and licensed third-party brokers.

In 2021, we removed over 3.4 billion ads, restricted over 5.7 billion ads and suspended over 5.6 million advertiser accounts. We also blocked or restricted ads from serving on 1.7 billion publisher pages, and took broader site-level enforcement action on approximately 63,000 publisher sites.

Gif with the text "3.4B bad ads stopped in 2021"

Check out the entire 2021 Ads Safety Report for enforcement data, and read on for a few of the highlights.

Responding to the war in Ukraine

Though the report only covers 2021, we also wanted to share an update on our response to the war in Ukraine — given it’s top of mind for so many around the world, including our enforcement teams. We acted quickly to institute a sensitive event, prohibiting ads from profiting from or exploiting the situation. This is in addition to our longstanding policies prohibiting content that incites violence or denies the occurrence of tragic events to run as ads or monetize using our services.

We’ve also taken several other steps to pause the majority of our commercial activities in Russia across our products — including pausing ads from showing in Russia and ads from Russian-based advertisers, and pausing monetization of Russian state-funded media across our platforms.

So far, we’ve blocked over eight million ads related to the war in Ukraine under our sensitive event policy and separately removed ads from more than 60 state-funded media sites across our platforms.

Suspending triple the number of advertiser accounts

As we shared in our 2020 report, we’ve seen an increase in fraudulent activity during the pandemic. In 2021, we continued to see bad actors operate with more sophistication and at a greater scale, using a variety of tactics to evade our detection. This included creating thousands of accounts simultaneously and using techniques like cloaking and text manipulation to show our reviewers and systems different ad content than they’d show a user — making that content more difficult to detect and enforce against.

We’re continuing to take a multi-pronged approach to combat this behavior, like verifying advertisers’ identities and identifying coordinated activity between accounts using signals in our network. We are actively verifying advertisers in over 180 countries. And if an advertiser fails to complete our verification program when prompted, the account is automatically suspended.

This combination of efforts has allowed us to match the scale of our adversaries and more efficiently remove multiple accounts associated with a single bad actor at once. As a result, between 2020 and 2021, we tripled the number of account-level suspensions for advertisers.

Preventing unreliable claims from monetizing and serving in ads

In 2021, we doubled down on our enforcement of unreliable content. We blocked ads from running on more than 500,000 pages that violated our policies against harmful health claims related to COVID-19 and demonstrably false claims that could undermine trust and participation in elections. Late last year, we also launched a new Unreliable Claims policy on climate change, which prohibits content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around its existence and causes.

We’ve stayed focused on preventing abuse in ads related to COVID-19, which was especially important in 2021 for claims related to vaccines, testing and price-gouging for critical supplies like masks. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve blocked over 106 million ads related to COVID-19. And we supported local NGOs and governments with $250 million in Ad Grants to help connect people to accurate vaccine information.

Introducing new brand safety tools and resources for advertisers and publishers

Maintaining advertiser brand safety remains a top priority. Last year, we added a new feature to our advertiser controls that allows brands to upload dynamic exclusion lists that can be automatically updated and maintained by trusted third parties. This helps advertisers get access to the resources and expertise of trusted organizations to better protect their brands and strengthen their campaigns.

We know that advertisers care about all the content on a page where their ads may run, including user-generated content (UGC) like comment sections. That’s why we hold publishers responsible for moderating these features. We’ve released several resources in the past year to help them do that — including an infographic and blog post, troubleshooters to solve UGC issues and a video tutorial.

In addition to these resources, we made targeted improvements to the publisher approval process that helped us better detect and block bad actors before they could even create accounts. As a result, we reduced the number of sites that needed site-level action compared to previous years.

Looking ahead to 2022

A trustworthy advertising experience is critical to getting helpful and useful information to people around the world. And this year, we’ll continue to address areas of abuse across our platforms and network to protect users and help credible advertisers and publishers. Providing more transparency and control over the ads people see is a big part of that goal. Our new “About this ad” feature is rolling out globally to help people understand why an ad was shown and which advertiser ran it. They can also report an ad if they believe it violates one of our policies or block an ad they aren’t interested in.

We believe this combination of work will help to create a safer experience for users everywhere. You can find ongoing updates to our policies and controls in our Help Center.

New features to grow your business with Performance Max

As people move quickly between channels and devices, today’s consumer journey is always-on and rarely straightforward. Automation is helping businesses meet their customers at the right moment along this complex journey. Whether you’re looking to stay ahead of shifting consumer behavior or unlock incremental conversions from new places, Performance Max finds the optimal mix of Google Ads inventory and formats to help you drive better results.[3a6511]

In the coming weeks, we’re introducing new features to help you acquire new customers, better understand performance and start upgrading your Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max in just one click.

Focus on new customers

Performance Max optimizes results based on your conversion goals and looks for the highest-ROI conversion opportunities — regardless of channel. The new customer acquisition goal in Performance Max is rolling out over the next few weeks for all advertisers looking to generate leads or increase online sales. This was previously available for retailers using Smart Shopping campaigns and is now expanding to more advertiser goals in Performance Max.

This goal will allow you to either bid more for new customers compared to existing customers, or focus your optimizations on new customers only while maintaining your cost efficiency. You’ll also have more flexible ways to identify new customers, like providing your own first-party data through Customer Match lists, setting up conversion tags and using Google’s autodetection method.

Guide your campaigns with helpful insights

The Insights page helps you understand decisions guided by automation and find levers to improve results in your campaigns. In the coming weeks, we’re rolling out consumer interest insights to all advertisers to help you uncover search themes that are delivering conversions. Two new types of insights are also arriving for Performance Max.

With asset audience insights, you’ll be able to better understand how your text, image and video assets resonate with specific customer segments. For instance, if you’re an outdoor retailer running a campaign for bikes, you may find that exercise enthusiasts engage more with images of people mountain biking rather than product images of the bike itself. Using these insights, you can tailor your creative and influence your broader marketing strategy.

After you create your Performance Max campaigns, diagnostic insights will provide a snapshot of outstanding setup issues preventing your ads from showing. Each issue will include suggestions to resolve them, so you can easily and quickly get your campaign up and running. For example, if your creative assets are disapproved, you’ll be prompted to fix them so you can start serving your ads and avoid missing out on conversion opportunities.

  • The Insights page in Google Ads. The top header says “Discover top audiences responding to your assets” and the main section shows ad images of bikes and people riding bikes. Underneath each ad image are audience segments that engaged with the ad.

    Asset audience insights will show how your creative assets resonate with specific customer segments.

  • The Insights page in Google Ads. The main section says “Your campaign can’t run ads” and “Review issues that are preventing people from seeing your ads.” There is a blue button labeled “Fix it” on the page.

    Diagnostic insights will help you easily identify and fix campaign setup issues.

  • The Insights page in Google Ads. The page reads “Consumer spotlight” with search query themes that are related to an advertiser’s campaigns.

    Consumer interest insights will surface top-performing search query themes that are relevant to your campaigns.

Start upgrading your Smart Shopping campaigns

In January, we shared a preview of how to upgrade your Smart Shopping and Local campaigns to Performance Max to access additional inventory and formats across YouTube, Search text ads and Discover.[235f18]Over the coming weeks, you’ll see a notification in your Google Ads account when the “one-click” upgrade tool is ready for your Smart Shopping campaigns. You’ll also be able to access the tool from the Recommendations page and the Campaigns page. You can start upgrading your Local campaigns in June.

When you upgrade your Smart Shopping or Local campaign, it will become a new, separate Performance Max campaign that keeps the learnings from your previous campaign to maintain consistent performance. The campaign budget and settings from your previous campaign will also be carried over. Visit our Help Center for more details on the upgrade experience.

Retailers across the globe are seeing continued success with Performance Max. In fact, advertisers who upgrade Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max see an average increase of 12% in conversion value at the same or better ROAS.[bd1e6d]

Upgrading your existing Smart Shopping and Local campaigns helps ensure you can take advantage of expanded inventory and get your campaigns ready for the holiday season. You’ll be able to choose when to upgrade your campaigns until the automatic upgrade process begins. Smart Shopping campaigns will be automatically upgraded from July through September, and Local campaigns will be automatically upgraded from August through September. You’ll also be able to create new Performance Max campaigns through Google Ads, the Google Ads API, or starting in early summer, through e-commerce partners like WooCommerce and BigCommerce.

Check out our upgrade video tutorial and best practices to set up your Performance Max campaigns, and follow @AdsLiasion to stay informed throughout the upgrade process. On May 24, join us at Google Marketing Live where we’ll share what’s ahead for Performance Max.

Register for Google Marketing Live: May 24, 2022

"Register now" button with copy that says "Tuesday, May 24 at 9:00 a.m. PT"

It’s almost time for Google Marketing Live, our annual event showcasing the latest product innovations to help your business thrive. This year’s virtual event will take place on Tuesday, May 24 — starting with a keynote from 9:00 - 10:30 a.m. PT that will be livestreamed across the globe.

After the keynote, you’ll be able to join a variety of on-demand breakout sessions designed to help you meet your business goals. Here’s a sample of what’s in store:

  • Supercharge your full funnel video strategy on YouTube
  • Be ready for the future of commerce
  • Achieve better business results today with measurement that prioritizes privacy

And here’s a sneak peek into our speaker lineup:

Headshots of Philipp Schindler, SVP, Chief Business Officer, Google; Jerry Dischler, VP/GM, Ads, Google; Vidhya Srinivasan, VP/GM, Ads Buying Platforms, Measurement & Ads on Google Properties; Andraéa LaVant, Founder & President, LaVant Consulting; Bill Ready, President, Commerce, Payments & NBU, Google; Tina Edmundson, Global Brand & Marketing Officer, Marriott International

Register now to reserve your (virtual) front-row seat. And keep up with the conversation on social media at #GML2022. See you on May 24th!

Helping advertisers make the most of connected TV

Connected TV (CTV) has become the go-to spot for people to kick back and enjoy their favorite content. According to Nielsen, over 50% of ad-supported streaming watch time happens on YouTube CTV for people ages 18 and up.[879425]

It’s also helped advertisers reach their audiences in smarter and more efficient ways. But we know there are challenges — like the ability to effectively plan and measure cross media, from creator shows to live TV. So we've been focused on bringing better digital ad capabilities to CTVs to allow for consistent planning and measurement across platforms, while improving the viewer experience. And today, we’re sharing some of our newest solutions.

We’re partnering with Nielsen to help advertisers understand how their YouTube CTV and YouTube TV reach delivers in comparison to other services. New tools will also help advertisers measure their total audience reached by YouTube CTV and deliver an even stronger CTV viewing experience.

Invest with confidence

Last year, we launched Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings (DAR) and Comscore Campaign Ratings (CCR) to help you more easily measure your YouTube CTV campaigns alongside other media. Later this year, YouTube CTV and YouTube TV will be available in Nielsen Total Ad Ratings (TAR) in the U.S. This release will include deduplication of YouTube inventory across all platforms — CTV, computer, mobile and linear TV — to better compare YouTube reach to linear TV.

Later this year, YouTube CTV and YouTube TV will be available in Nielsen Total Ad Ratings (TAR) in the U.S.

You’ll also see CTV device metrics within your media mix model (MMM) data feed, which can help measure sales outcomes and share insights on the impact of your YouTube CTV investment. To make the data analysis process faster for clients and easier for our measurement partners, we’ve launched a new data platform for MMM providers and advertisers to request data, track the status of those requests and ingest data directly.

We know MMMs provide one of the most important litmus tests for any video platform — does it actually work? On the most important metrics, YouTube is driving strong business results for customers. According to an MMM meta-analysis Google commissioned with Nielsen, on average, YouTube CTV was 3.1 times more effective than TV across U.S. consumer packaged goods (CPG) MMMs that measured YouTube CTV and TV (2021).[32b28f]

A graphic that shows a bar graph comparing YouTube CTV to linear TV effectiveness. The text reads “In an MMM meta-analysis Google commissioned with Nielsen, on average YouTube CTV was 3.1x more effective than TV across US CPG MMMs that measured YouTube CTV and YT (2021).”

Account for everyone

Just like the decades-old tradition of gathering around the TV set, people are watching YouTube with their friends and family. In a study with Nielsen, we found that 26% of the time, multiple 18+ viewers are watching YouTube together on the TV screen, compared to 22% on linear TV.[9e1744]Across the industry, this is often referred to as “co-viewing.”

Accounting for multiple people, or “co-viewers,” has been a core part of TV measurement for years. To help you measure the same behavior with YouTube CTV and get an accurate picture of the total audience you’re reaching, co-viewing will be included in Nielsen's DAR guarantees ad reporting in the U.S. Advertisers will also have access to co-viewing metrics across Google’s planning and measurement solutions globally.

To help you measure the same behavior with YouTube CTV and get an accurate picture of the total audience you’re reaching, co-viewing will be included in Nielsen's DAR guarantees ad reporting in the U.S.

Whether you’re forecasting an upcoming campaign or reviewing post-campaign reports, you’ll soon see reach, frequency and an additional impression metric that accounts for all viewers on CTV. This means more accurate reach forecasts and campaign reports with an apples-to-apples comparison between YouTube and the rest of your linear and connected TV buy — ultimately helping you make smarter investment decisions. Our methodology is designed to meet the industry standard of co-viewing measurement. Learn more about how it works.

Co-viewing metrics will roll out globally across Google Ads and Display & Video 360 planning and measurement tools by the end of Q2 2022.

Reach the right audience, at the right frequency

We know it’s not all about reach. You also want to reach the right audience at the right frequency. Last month, we announced a new CTV frequency solution that allows for a better viewer experience and more efficient use of your CTV media dollars.

For the first time with Display & Video 360, you can manage CTV ad frequency across YouTube, YouTube TV and other connected TV apps. This lowers your risk of triggering ad fatigue for viewers, while adding more reach for the same ad budget. Early results show that this new functionality also significantly improves media performance for advertisers.

For the first time with Display & Video 360, you can manage CTV ad frequency across YouTube, YouTube TV and other connected TV apps.
A visualization of a data point that reads “Brands see a 5% increase in reach per dollar on average when managing CTV ad frequency across YouTube and other CTV apps rather than separately.”

In addition to frequency management, you can use other Google audience solutions with YouTube CTV to help boost performance and reach the most relevant viewers for your brand.

Drive results with leading CTV capabilities

Top brands are taking advantage of these digital-first capabilities to grow their business.

In 2021, DoorDash, alongside its agency Kepler Group, ran a six-week CTV campaign on YouTube to reach a large audience quickly, which ultimately drove a 50% incremental uplift in DoorDash driver sign-ups.

While viewers are watching the content they love on YouTube CTV, brands are driving real results. Reach out to your Google sales team to learn about YouTube CTV ads and these new planning and measurement solutions.

New tools for hotels to reconnect with travelers

The travel industry has faced steep challenges since the pandemic began two years ago. But now, there are signs of real recovery. Search interest in “spring vacation” and “flights to hawaii,” for example, is close to what it was in 2019.

As travel interest rebounds, businesses need easy ways to connect with potential customers. So today, we’re announcing new tools to help hoteliers find people who are ready to book their next trip.

Drive more bookings on Google for free

Launched last year on google.com/travel, free hotel booking links will now show up on the Search results page and Google Maps — helping travel partners extend their reach, and giving consumers a more comprehensive set of options. After clicking on these links, travelers can complete their booking directly on the partner’s website.

Since the introduction of free booking links, partners of all kinds have seen the benefits of increased user engagement, from individual hotels to large online travel agencies. For example, the booking engine myhotelshop used free booking links to drive 30% incremental bookings for their hotel clients during the summer of 2021.

Free booking links for various hotels and booking engines that appear under “All Options” on the Google Search page

Now, new click reporting in Hotel Center shows partners how many people clicked on their free booking links. We will expand the report to include other insights, like free booking link impressions and booking value, in the coming weeks.

Hotels interested in using free booking links can visit our website for more information, including a list of our integration partners and how to extend your reach even further with Hotel Ads.

Laptop showing reporting for free booking links in Hotel Center, including performance metrics like 27,000 impressions, 100 clicks and $23K booking value.

Easily onboard to reach new customers

We’re also making it easier for hoteliers to share their rates and availability on Google — without complex technical requirements. Beginning next month, individual hotels that meet eligibility requirements can manually input their rates through their Google Business Profile to participate in free hotel booking links.

Complete our interest form if you'd like to learn more about adding your rates and availability directly to your Google Business Profile.

A desktop view showing multiple ways to manage rates through Google Business Profile, including an “Edit profile” link on the top left and a “Manage your rates” link on the lower right.

Highlight your unique hotel offerings

Health concerns, flexibility and availability are top of mind for today’s travelers. It’s important for hoteliers to pay attention to new signals and remain agile. Local Posts for Google Business Profile allow owners to share timely updates about their hotels, such as:

  • Changes due to COVID-19, including whether the hotel is open or closed, and updates made to amenities or policies
  • Descriptions of special features that are uniquely available at the hotel
  • Compelling images and videos
Desktop version of Local Posts for Google Business Profile popping up over the Search page, showing an image of food and beverages by the pool

The world looks different than it did a few years ago, but our mission to be a trusted source of travel information hasn’t changed. To learn more about our solutions for hotels and to keep up with our latest news, visit our website.

Level up your gaming business with new ad features

With more people playing games on their mobile devices than ever before, developers have a huge opportunity to grow their gaming business. This week at the Google for Games Developer Summit, we’re announcing new ways to help you reach more players and increase your app revenue for the long term.

Attract valuable players quickly and effectively

Finding players is critical when you launch a game — and you only get one shot at a strong first impression. An effective user acquisition strategy can help boost your game's success.

With App campaigns for pre-registration, you can attract players and build excitement for your game early. Previously, you had to wait for your app to launch before creating App campaigns for installs. In the next few months, you’ll be able to set up App campaigns for apps that are in pre-registration state in the Google Play store — helping you prepare your app for a smooth launch.

You’ll then need to engage your high-value players and develop a monetization strategy. Last year, we introduced target return on ad spend (tROAS) for ad revenue, which allows you to earn more from ads shown in-app. Soon, you can improve your tROAS campaign performance by sending all AdMob revenue, including mediated revenue, to Google Analytics for bidding — with just a click of a button in the AdMob user interface. Third-party ad revenue in Google Analytics also allows you to import revenue from any monetization platform into Google Analytics for tROAS bidding. tROAS for ad revenue is currently in closed beta.

Earn more from your games

Players are spending more time in-game — in fact, our recent study shows that existing players increased their playtime by 42% in 2021. AdMob’s monetization solutions can help you make the most of this surge.

Most publishers aren’t able to fully measure user revenue from their ads strategy without building their own internal systems. With AdMob’s impression-level lifetime value (LTV), you can estimate the average LTV of user segments and identify user acquisition strategies with the highest return on investment (ROI). To make this even easier to activate, impression-level LTV has been integrated into top app attribution platforms Adjust, AppsFlyer and Singular.

Screengrab of strategy board mobile game Ludo SuperStar, featuring the button for players to watch ads to earn free coins

BlackLight Games boosts ROI with AdMob iLTV feature

For example, BlackLight Studio Games, the creator behind the popular strategy board game Ludo SuperStar, wanted to expand into new markets and boost their ROI. The team used AdMob’s impression-level LTV to measure ads revenue and identify markets with the highest ROI based on user acquisition cost. The team then increased App campaign spend in select markets and achieved a 45% increase in overall revenue.

In addition to AdMob’s impression-level LTV, we’re announcing even more features to help you grow your app revenue for the long term:

  • Firebase Remote Config personalization (beta): Using machine learning, automatically find the optimal experience for each user. Learn how Halfbrick used personalization to increase revenue by 16%.
  • AdMob rewarded optimizations: Benefit from more impressions and revenue with display ads in rewarded ads. Display ads will run alongside videos or other playables for a lightweight user experience.
  • More demand sources with AdMob: Get access to a diverse range of more than 200 demand sources available for real-time bidding, with Vungle and Snap in beta and more onboarding soon.

To hear more about how these solutions can help you drive growth for your games business, watch the Google for Games Developer Summit keynote and check out other sessions.

How to integrate your web app with Google Ads

TL;DR: You can now have a web application integrated with Google Ads in just a few minutes!

Google Ads
Google Ads is an online advertising platform where advertisers can create and manage their Google marketing campaigns. The Google Ads API is the modern programmatic interface to Google Ads and the next generation of the AdWords API. It enables developers to interact directly with the Google Ads platform, vastly increasing the efficiency of managing large or complex Google Ads accounts and campaigns.

A typical use case is when a company wants to offer Google ads natively on their platform to their users. For example, customers who have an online store with Shopify can promote their business using Google ads, with just a few clicks and without needing to go to the Google Ads platform. They’re able to do it directly on Shopify’s platform—the Google Ads API makes this possible.

Demo App
Francisco Blasco, Strategic Technical Solutions Manager at Google, designed and built an open source web application that is integrated with Google Ads and Business Profile (aka Google My Business).

Anyone can use the app, called Fran Ads, to save significant time on product development. Just follow the simple installation steps in the README files (frontend README file and backend README file) on the GitHub repo! The app uses React for the frontend, and Django for the backend; two of the most popular web frameworks.

App's Logo


Check out a product demo here! You can have this app running in your local machine in a few minutes. To learn how, check out the video tutorial.

Blasco acts as an external Product Manager for Google’s strategic partners, driving the entire product development lifecycle. He created this project to help Google’s partners and businesses seeking to offer Google Ads to their users.

The goal is to accelerate the Google Ads integration process and decrease associated development costs. Some companies are using Fran Ads to see what an integration looks like, while others are using the technical guide to learn how to start using the Google Ads API.

In general, companies can use Fran Ads as an SDK to begin working with elements within the Google Ads API, and serve as a guidance system for integrating with Google. This project will minimize the number of times the wheel needs to be reinvented, accelerating innovation and facilitating adoption. Developers can clone the code repositories, follow the steps, and have a web app integrated with Google Ads in just a few minutes. They can adapt and build on top of this project, or they can just use the functions they need for the features they want to develop. 



App Architecture

Furthermore, you will learn how to create credentials to consume Google APIs; specifically, the README files show how to create a project on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and how to set it up correctly so a web app can consume Google Ads API and Business Profile APIs.

Also, you will learn how refresh tokens work for Google APIs, and how to manage them for your web application.

Francisco wrote a detailed technical guide explaining how to build every feature of the app. Some of the most important features are:
        1. Create a new Google Ads account
        2. Link an existing Google Ads account
        3. OAuth authentication & authorization
        4. Refresh token management
        5. List of Google Ads accounts associated with Google account
        6. Reporting on performance for all campaign types
        7. Create Smart Campaign (automated ads on Google and across the web)
        8. Edit Smart Campaign settings

As you can see from the list above, the app will create Smart Campaigns — a simplified, automated campaign designed for new advertisers and SMBs

Google made public the suggestion services through the Google Ads API. Fran Ads uses those services to recommend keyword themes, headlines & descriptions for the ad, and budget. These recommendations are specific for each advertiser, depending on several factors such as type of business, location, and keyword themes.



An example of three Google recommendations for an advertiser.


The image above shows the final step of creating a Smart Campaign on Fran Ads. In this step, users have to set a daily budget for the campaign. Not only will you receive recommendations for the budget, but an estimate of how many ad clicks you will get per month. This is a great feature for users who are new to digital marketing and aren’t aware of their spending needs.

You can also see an alert message that the budget can be changed anytime, so users can pause spending on the campaign. This is important because many new users, especially SMBs, have doubts about spending on something new. Therefore, it is important to communicate to them that the decision they are making at that moment is not set in stone.

When you start using Fran Ads, you will see there is guidance so users complete the tasks they want.


Guidance on how to complete tasks based on Google’s best practices.


Furthermore, the app is designed based on Google’s best practices. For example, when users are creating a Smart Campaign, in step three (see the above image) they need to select keyword themes (group of keywords). If you choose “bakery” as the keyword theme, your ad is eligible to show when people search for “bakery near me”, “local bakery”, and “cake shop”.

Google’s best practices suggest that advertisers use between seven and ten keyword themes per campaign. Therefore, Fran Ads is designed for users to select up to seven keyword themes. Refer to the image of step three when creating a Smart Campaign on Fran Ads. However, you can set it to ten if you like.

The technical guide also provides:

        1. Production-ready code for both the frontend and backend
        2. Engineering flow diagrams
        3. Best practices
        4. High-fidelity mockups
        5. App architecture and structure diagrams
        6. Workarounds to current bugs on Google Ads API v9
        7. Important information on how to handle important tasks necessary for integrating your platform with Google Ads
        8. Help with the design strategy for the UX and design elements of the UI.

Important resources

See below the list summarizing the important resources that will help you integrate with Google Ads easier, faster, and better.
        1. Frontend repo: all the code for the frontend of Fran Ads.
        2. Backend repo: all the code for the backend of Fran Ads.
        3. Technical guide: 3 sections: ‘Before Starting’, ‘Configurations & Installation’, and ‘Build web              app’. In section 3, you have explanations on how to build all the features of the app.
        4. Product demo: 15-minute demo of Fran Ads showing many core features.
        5. Video tutorial: 17-minute tutorial on how to set up and run Fran Ads.


By Francisco Blasco – Launch, Channel Partners

Get into gear with vehicle ads on Google

More people are turning to the web to find their next car. In fact, 89% of new car buyers researched their new vehicle online.[7fb54a]And shoppers aren't just looking up information online — they’re purchasing there, too. In 2021, 16% of new car buyers purchased their car online, up from only 1% three years prior.[ea5e48]

Shoppers today expect an easy and helpful experience when they search for what to buy. It’s important for auto advertisers to get in front of car shoppers with the right information and inventory.

Introducing vehicle ads

Today at the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Show we announced vehicle ads, a new ad format on Search that shows nearby cars for sale. Currently available in the U.S. and coming to more countries soon, vehicle ads can help you easily reach customers looking for a new ride.

For example, if someone searches for a 2019 SUV, they’ll see several vehicle options they can either purchase nearby or get delivered — along with pictures and inventory information like location, make, model, price and mileage. Once they select a car, the ad will direct them to the vehicle description page on your website where they can fill out a lead form or get your dealership’s contact information. You can then select which actions you’d like to measure, like leads and store visits, and assign a value to them.

Smartphone shows Search results for “2019 suvs for sale.” There are two ads, each showing a picture of a car and its details. The ad on the left shows a white SUV and the ad text below the image says “2019 Honda Passport Sport, $32,773, Used - 8k mi, Park Place Motors” and has a location icon to indicate the car is in Fort Worth, Texas. The ad on the right shows a dark blue SUV and the ad text below the image says “2019 Toyota RAV4 Limited, $35,286, Used - 16k mi, Big Star Honda” and has a location icon to indicate that the car is in Houston, Texas.

New vehicle ads on Search spotlight available cars to shoppers.

To get started, you’ll need to create a vehicle inventory data feed and connect it to Google Merchant Center. This feed contains all the details about your vehicle inventory, like make, model, price, mileage and condition. Google uses those details to match shoppers with the most relevant cars as they’re searching. Plus, by using Merchant Center, you can keep track of key inventory and ad performance insights.

Advertisers who complemented their existing Search campaigns with vehicle ads saw a +25% average increase in conversions during beta testing.[83f78c]Let’s take a closer look at some businesses who recently gave vehicle ads a spin.

The results from the pilot far exceeded our expectations. With vehicle ads, we can help customers by bringing them right to the car they’re interested in. This helps us maximize traffic and conversions to vehicle pages and increase efficiency. Miran Maric, CMO and SVP, Strategy and Innovation
Asbury Automotive Group
Our main goal is to drive customers to view our inventory. Vehicle ads allow us to get our inventory in front of customers with better efficiency. They also drove more store visits than other campaign types. Nathan Sato, Director of Digital Marketing
Ken Garff

Want to try vehicle ads yourself? Check out more information and get started today.

To learn more about auto retail trends and vehicle ads, register for Google’s “Auto On Air: Delighting Customers in a Digital World” session on Wednesday, March 30 at 10:00 a.m. PT / 1:00 p.m. ET.