Google AdWords Ramps Up Their Push to Get All of Your Ad Money I don’t know if it’s just the new year or something more pressing but I’ve never noticed this level of push from Google AdWords before. They’ve always done a good job of keeping their blog updated with helpful information but in the last few weeks, it’s been overflowing with news. It started on January 15 with a post about upcoming features and improvements including – well. . . the title says insights for 2014 but it sounds more like a list of 2013 improvements. . . .So last February, we introduced enhanced campaigns for AdWords. With enhanced campaigns, it became much simpler to manage campaigns across multiple devices while optimizing for your customers’ intent and context — like their location and time of day. . . . .So in addition to the manual bid adjustments in enhanced campaigns (see our “Bid Like a Pro” guide), we launched new, more flexible automated bidding strategies.” . . . . So in June, we introduced a valuable new audience-based capability to search ads: The ability to tailor your bids, ads or even keywords based on a user’s previous visits to your website.” We also introduced a new metric, estimated cross-device conversions, to help you better measure conversions that start with an ad click on one device and end with an online conversion on a different device. Finally, looking forward to 2014. . . . . . So you can expect substantial improvements around workflow efficiency, campaign planning, analysis and reporting, opportunity identification, and testing. So. . . what they’re really trying to do is make AdWords easy to use and less intimidating. I like that. The next step is a series of Google Hangout training classes. In February they’ll be discussing location targeting, mobile targeting and real bidding with audience targeting. These are excellent sessions for beginners and they’re totally free. Learn more about the Hangouts here. About a week ago, Google demonstrated their commitment to stopping bad ads and they released a series of ad mute surveys which will help advertisers understand why their ads aren’t working. mute Last week Google rolled out a new, easier to read interface for AdWords then posted “The Performance Marketer’s Field Guide to AdWords Ad Extensions.” Today, they want to remind you to use your six available deep linked sitelinks on your ads. sitelinks Personally, I rarely click anything but a home page button on these ads but I can see how they might improve conversions. The most interesting thing I saw today was an email solicitation offering me a $100 credit toward mobile app promotion. I’ve seen these credits for general AdWords ads but never for mobile. What’s with the push? Are AdWord dollars slipping? Are people switching over to Bing? AdWords is still the biggest game in town but I guess even Google can’t rest on it’s laurels (which sounds extremely uncomfortable.) It feels like they’re trying to pull in a fresh, young audience. Yes, it’s all aimed at putting money in their own pockets, but if it helps you put more money in yours then it’s a win-win.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 04:48:59 +0000