Welcome to our "Go Mobile!" Series

This is an exciting time for mobile. Over the past year, consumers have increasingly turned to their mobile devices to access the internet. They're performing searches, browsing content, watching videos, and interacting with mobile applications. Looking ahead, analysts expect internet usage on mobile devices to continue to ramp up even faster than it did on desktop computers.

Even more exciting, is our new approach to buying a mobile phone. The Nexus One is a convergence point for mobile technology, apps, and the Internet. It's a great example of how users are able to access information wherever they are, and whenever they need it -- all from a device that fits in your pocket.

For the next few months, we'll be devoting a weekly post to mobile advertising. The series will highlight insights, new features, best practices, and tips for how to optimize your mobile ad campaigns.

As you begin to think about how mobile advertising fits into your plans, we hope the Go Mobile! series will be a helpful resource to stay informed and be inspired.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Thursday, January 07, 2010 at 11:06 AM

AdWords system maintenance on January 9th

On Saturday, January 9th, 2010 the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10AM to 2PM PST, for maintenance. While you won't be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual.

AdWords system maintenance typically occurs on the second Saturday of each month from 10AM to 2PM.

We'll continue to update you via the blog as we always have, but please make note of the January 9th date and of our scheduled maintenance further down the road.

Posted by Emily Williams, Inside AdWords crew

New ways to optimize Content Network campaigns

We're often asked, "How can I maximize the ROI from Content Network campaigns?"

As part of our new Optimization University initiative, we've developed a Getting Started Guide and a series of 6 videos to help answer this question for you. The guide and videos provide a conceptual walk-through and demo of the major steps involved in executing a Content Network campaign. These include:

• Campaign setup best practices
• Creating appropriate ad groups
• Selecting effective keywords
• Developing high impact ad creative
• Bidding strategies
• Conversion tracking and tweaking for ROI

Along with simple tips and tricks to improve ROI, we also go over several tools, such as the Wonder Wheel, the Keyword Tool and Conversion Tracking, that can help you be more efficient. These recommendations are based on our analysis of thousands of campaigns to understand what works and what doesn't. We hope you can start applying them to your campaigns today.

If you're starting a new Content Network campaign, watch the first video below; you may find it to be particularly valuable.

(click here to view video)

You can also always bookmark the playlist or find all the latest videos on our YouTube channel.

[Note: this post is reprinted from the Google Agency Ad Solutions Blog.]

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

Wednesday, January 06, 2010 at 4:31 PM

Think2010: Series recap

We kicked off the Think2010 blog series 14 weeks ago with the idea of helping you prepare for the coming year by devoting one post each week to big-picture, forward-looking themes supported by actionable tips. Over the course of the series we've covered topics such as relevance, speed, experimentation and innovation. We've discussed the multiple roles that search can play, how to use data to better connect with customers, and the importance of staying focused on the fundamentals. We've also deliberately infused the series with perspectives from thought leaders both inside and outside of Google in order to give you a range of insights on the changing face of marketing. You can find a more in-depth version of this same conversation taking place on our Fast.Forward. YouTube channel.

As our series comes to a close this week and we prepare to usher in 2010, we'd like to thank you for reading and leave you with some parting thoughts. Here's what a diverse group of industry leaders have to say about the new marketing landscape and the vast opportunity that they believe lies ahead for 2010:

(click here to view video)

From the Think2010 team -- best wishes for a prosperous and successful 2010.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

Monday, December 28, 2009 at 12:49 PM

Search Based Keyword Tool: 1 Minute Guide

As the end of the year approaches, you may be thinking about how to drive more traffic to your AdWords campaigns and in turn, to your website.

Millions of people use Google each day to find products and services by searching on various keywords. This means that by including all keywords that are relevant to your product or service in your campaigns, you can ensure you can ensure that you will reach a greater set of potential customers. To help you do this, you can use the Search-based Keyword Tool to quickly identify relevant keywords which aren't yet included in your AdWords campaigns.



Our 1 minute guide will show you how the tool works, as well as how it's already helped one AdWords advertiser to increase sales.

Watch the video today, and you'll be ready to start using the Search-based Keyword Tool right away.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Friday, December 18, 2009 at 1:09 PM

New resource for display advertisers on the Content Network

Over the last year and a half, we've made significant changes to the Google Content Network to deliver better performance for your campaigns and to simplify the process of serving ads across a range of websites. As we roll out more features, we want to make it easy for you to discover what best fits your needs. To this effect, we've just launched a new Content Network brand channel on YouTube.

The site is stockpiled with videos, links and downloads about the full suite of features and solutions on the Content Network. Structured into four key sections, you can learn about a number of different products we offer and how they can help you achieve your various advertising goals. You can also find case studies and research papers from various industries so that you can see what some of the most successful advertisers on the Content Network are doing.

Last but not the least, we've also introduced a new creative direction for our videos, adding a bit more color and fun. Enjoy the first 5 videos below, and let us know what you think by sharing your comments on YouTube.

(click here to view videos)

If you'd like to see more, you can always bookmark the playlist. Hope you find the new channel informative and fun!

[Note: this post is reprinted from the Google Agency Ad Solutions Blog]

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 4:40 PM

Think2010: Personalization and accountability

As part of our Fast.Forward. program, we've asked numerous industry leaders - from Google and beyond - about the online marketing trends they think will be significant in the year ahead. This week we'll talk about making your campaigns more personal by targeting mobile devices and increasing the accountability and sophistication of the metrics you use to evaluate your campaigns.

Penry Price, Google's VP of Global Agency and Industry Development, offers his thoughts on these topics.

To increase the personalization of your campaigns through mobile advertising, visit www.google.com/advertisers/mobile, and learn how to plan, target, create, and measure mobile ad campaigns with AdWords.

Whether it's robust reporting for media buys across platforms, or sophisticated-but-simple measurement tools like Google Analytics, Website Optimizer, and YouTube Insight, you can commit in 2010 to "being greater with data." Get more information about these measurement and optimization tools here.

Visit www.youtube.com/fastforward, to stay engaged with the industry dialog and keep up with additional perspectives on successful marketing in 2010 and beyond.


Posted by Emily Williams, Inside AdWords crew

Monday, December 14, 2009 at 5:54 PM

Optimize your campaigns for mobile in time for the holidays

Shoppers increasingly use their smartphones to search the internet, and we typically see an increase in shopping-related queries on Android, iPhone and Palm WebOS devices during the holiday season.

(click for full size image)

Ensure that your online campaigns perform well on mobile devices with full internet browsers by viewing device statistics on your Campaign Summary, Ad Groups, or Keyword reports within AdWords. Just select the "Device" segment option under the “Filter and Views” drop down.

(click for full size image)

You can now compare clicks, impressions, CTR and other performance metrics for desktop vs. high-end mobile devices. Note that this data only dates back to June 3, 2009.

(click for full size image)

Now is the perfect time to optimize how you target consumers on-the-go. Here are a few best practices we think you'll find helpful:

• Create separate campaigns and ad groups for your ads that appear on mobile devices. This makes it easier to customize ads, keywords and bids to optimize performance.
• Put your call to action in a spot on your landing page that's easy to find. Keep in mind that it's a bit more difficult to navigate websites on a mobile device, so consider shortening your checkout process.
• Most mobile phones don't support flash, so make sure your landing page is written in HTML and contains little or no Flash.
  

We hope these tips help you create great campaigns both for desktops and mobile devices this holiday season.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 4:35 PM

Update your skills - take the Google Advertising Fundamentals exam

As part of our ongoing efforts to improve training materials and the Google Advertising Professionals program we have updated the certification exam and learning center.

We've created a new Google Advertising Fundamentals exam designed to be more rigorous and strategy-oriented. Our teams have developed the new curriculum and exam to equip you with useful, relevant training to manage AdWords campaigns.

We've noted some questions since we introduced the new exam so we wanted to tell you a little bit more:

• We're testing a wider range of knowledge and the passing score is higher than the previous exam - 85% vs 75% on the previous test.
• You can access the new exam through your Google Advertising Professionals account. Navigate to the My Exams tab where you can pick up your candidate ID to use on the testing site and follow the links to either the Learning Center or the Exam Testing Site.
• The new exam is currently only available in English, but will be released in 20 additional languages in January.

Our goal was to bring the materials and exam up to date to ensure they cover all current products and best practices to help run and manage AdWords campaigns. We'll be introducing new advanced exams in 2010, so you may hear about some of them being tested now. At this time, however, you only need to hold a valid passing score in the previous exam or, if you're new to the program, the new Advertising Fundamentals exam.

Congratulations to those of you who've taken and passed the new exams and good luck to all test takers.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Tuesday, December 08, 2009 at 1:09 PM

Think2010: The need for speed

In our Think2010 post a couple weeks ago, we noted how important experimentation will be in the coming year to help you optimize your campaign for the best possible ROI. A very closely-related tenet is the commitment to speed. There is great access to information and insights, and that information is now available faster than ever. This means that marketers who are nimble, work quickly, and iterate as they go will often be the ones who succeed.

A few ways to commit to speed in 2010:

* Set up custom Google Alerts to monitor news, blogs, videos and other coverage of topics related to your brand and its marketplace.
* Regularly mine Insights for Search to see trends as they're emerging for your brand or category -- and quickly create a plan to act on the opportunities you discover.
* Use Display Ad Builder to create display, rich media, and video ads in minutes by incorporating your own text, images, and logo into one of our professionally designed templates.
* Use Website Optimizer to quickly test variations of your landing page to see which works best -- then implement the winning version to maximize performance.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew

Monday, December 07, 2009 at 5:26 PM