AdAttack

By Helen Brown

We are all so busy, life can be a never ending list of things to do……… running your own business can be very rewarding but it can also be tough to stay on top of. Keeping your ads current with your website and in stock/out of stock items is no exception. Think about it, how often does the information and products on your site differ due to stock changes, new lines, discontinued lines etc in comparison to your AdWords ads?

Currently in Beta, Google have created Dynamic Search Ads. This is a new way of targeting relevant searches and is designed to run in addition to (not replace) your existing keyword targeted ads and campaigns. The idea behind this is that your ads would be dynamically generated based on a combination of your sites current content and also the users search query, making the resulting ad highly relevant to the user, and giving you the visibility you want with less effort required.

How This Works: Google’s organic web crawling technology is used to keep your site/pages freshly indexed. When a user submits a search query, an ad is automatically generated. The headline of the ad would be based on the search query that the user entered, and the ad text would consist of what is deemed the most appropriate content/information on your landing page.

Dynamically generated ads should not interfere with any pre-existing keyword targeted campaigns and ads that are running in your AdWords account. A dynamic search ad would enter the ad auction as normal and uses the same ranking system as your normal keyword targeted ads. BUT! if Google see that you have a keyword targeted ad that is appropriate to the users search query, they will allow that keyword targeted ad to perform rather than a dynamically generated ad.

Targeting can be aimed at the whole site, specific categories of your products, pages that contain certain words etc. It’s also possible to use the controls for keyword negatives.

As usual with AdWords, there are a variety of reporting metrics that can be viewed and analyzed.

This new feature has been created with advertisers/businesses in mind who are managing large product lines, and websites must have over 50 web pages with unique items or listings to promote. There are also other specific account requirements for joining the test, such as ensuring that your conversion tracking system is compatible with dynamic search ads. Anyone wishing to sign up will need to complete an on line registration form.

Good luck!

By Helen Brown

Anyone working with AdWords will be no stranger to Google reviewing and rolling out changes/improvements to various aspects of AdWords features, and recently they have addressed the issue of usability with mobile ads in mind.

Whether you have a phone number in your ad text or not, this is worth knowing about!
Previous to this update from Google, any advertisers who had a click to call extension set up on their ads would have the ability to present ads to their users with the option of either choosing to click through to their site from the ad or using the click to call link in the ad for directly phoning the advertisers business. Unless this function was set up in an advertisers account as a click to call function, a click to call link would not be featured in the ad. Google have addressed this with the concern that it was not a good experience for mobile users as it could be considered confusing. Think about it……………..a mobile user may see a business telephone number displayed in an ad, but not be able to click it in some circumstances if the advertiser does not have click to call set up, and they may see another ad and be able to click through. Why not have all telephone numbers that appear in ads set up as click to call, it would certainly be less confusing for users, and it would require less work in the AdWords interface for advertisers.
So, this is what has happened.
From now on, anyone who features a telephone number in their ad text will have the feature of click to call automatically active for the ad. BUT! something to consider here………………..if you already use the click to call extension and display a telephone number in your ad, the new feature will only show the telephone number in your ad and not show the click to call extension to prevent confusion over more than one telephone number displaying should the numbers be different. Google advise that if you want your click to call extension to take precedence you will need to delete the telephone number from your ad text to allow the click to call extension to work again.
As for pricing, the advertiser is charged when the user clicks the headline to go through to the site, or when they click the call link. The same rules also apply with regard to AdWords policies, and you are not allowed to feature a telephone number in your ad headline.
You will also be able to view the campaigns tab in your account to see information about how many calls you received per campaign, ad group, keyword and ad by selecting the ‘click type’ option under the ‘segment’ drop down on your reports. If you want to review reporting metrics for the ‘traditional’ click to call extension feature, you can still view these reports via the extensions tab.

Although Google have introduced this new feature, they do still advise that the click to call extension is the best way to feature a telephone number because when you use a click to call extension the number will display as an additional line, this gives more space in your ad text to write additional wording to mention more about a particular promotion etc you may be offering, or give more detail about your products or services. Also,  when you use click to call extensions you can use other features such as vanity numbers, the call only feature and reporting metrics are more detailed.

With more people than ever using mobile Internet, this has to be a good move forward for gaining attention.  This will no doubt make it easier than ever for Internet users to connect with businesses and for advertisers to get more conversions. Good luck!

By Helen Brown

This week I have watched the ‘Getting your business on Google+’ webinar. I know I have already written about Google+, but further to my post “Google+, the grown up social network” and also “the +1 button webinar from Google” I would like to discuss a little of what I have learned today.  Google+ can be beneficial to advertising your business, as well as for the social function previously discussed. The features within Google+ can lend themselves well to a business focus.

First topic of discussion within the webinar: The power of Google+. Within 100 days of Google+ existing, there were over 40 million users! All of these people settled into using the platform very quickly and now, billions of posts and articles etc are shared every single day. Were all human, and we all at some point or another need to connect with one another. Social networking is more popular than ever now, and it’s a perfect opportunity to get yourself and your business or brand noticed. A lot of big top brand companies are now using this and it is working for them, but it can work well for smaller businesses too. Also, there are also now over 1 million sites that have integrated the +1 button, so with all of this endorsement and also the ability to connect, this looks like another great way to put your business out there and gain some attention. Hooray!

So, how do we get started with this? It’s very simple, the first thing that you will need is a Google account log in. It is necessary to create an identity for yourself via a Gmail log in, and once you have logged in you will see +(your name) in the top right corner of the screen. e.g I see +Helen.
Click the +(your name) and you will then have the opportunity to create a page for your business via the ‘create a page button’ found on the right hand side of the page. From here you can choose your categories such as local business or place, product or brand, company/institution/organization, arts/entertainment/sports, other etc.
Next you can fill in all of the information that you want to give about your business, you can link to your website, decide on a best suited category for your business, and select who will be able to see your page. Then click create! You will see a prompt that will encourage you to tell your friends and family about the page. Next, you will see a congratulations page and this is where you can start to give your page its own identity by adding photos and videos. At the top of the profile page, you can add your profile picture and you have the opportunity to add five additional photos that will display in a banner fashion on your page (there’s a great tool for slicing photos and making a real display out of this!) Now you can also add your introduction, contact information and your website details etc. To successfully connect your website and your page to each other, you will need to add code to your site. Click the ‘Get the badge’ button, and then you can use the ‘widget configurator’ to customize the badge and get the code which can be copied and pasted into your site for it to display there.
You can also get the +1 button on your site, widgets can come in many shapes and sizes, there are a variety of buttons and once installed on your site a user can +1 your business directly from your site without having to go to your +page. Another great way of driving traffic.

One thing that should be kept in mind is that the page you have created is a representation of your business identity, it needs to follow your branding, message and style and should be visually appealing for the best results. Also, Google were keen to point out that it is important not only to link your page to your site, but also to your AdWords campaign so you can measure your results.

As I briefly mentioned earlier, there is a great tool for slicing images for your banner photos, go to http://gpluspic.com/banner and you can really give your page some extra appeal with a sliced banner photo of your choosing, which could be much more eye catching than displaying smaller, separate images.

In terms of your business, circles within Google+ can be very powerful. You can begin to segment your audience as when people find you and add you, you can then add these people to your own circles and you can use the circles to ensure that the specific message that you want delivered to the specific group of people is seen by that group e.g messages for a circle of customers, or maybe a supplier or buyers and also your staff! You can also use the circles to deliver specific messages or offers at you mat choose to run at certain times of day. The example used in the webinar was a coffee shop, to further demonstrate how circles can be used you could have a specific circle for early risers offering a free pastry with the coffee before 8 am, and another for study groups offering a meal deal of sandwiches and cookies at a reduced price etc.
You can allow users to opt into their own circles on your page too, by asking them what they want to hear about. Do they want to receive updates? Are they interested in job opportunities? if so, they can join the appropriate circle, this is a great way to split your audience into the appropriate categories and ensure that they receive the most appropriate message.
Now for me, this is the best bit! How about creating a ‘hangout’, where you can add a human element to your message and communicate face to face with your audience? You could use this to teach your viewers more about your products and services, you could give lessons on specific subjects within your business topic, there are so many ways in which this could be beneficial. All you need to do is click to ‘start a hangout’ and your profile picture and business name will appear in the news stream of your followers. They will see a button and clicking this will enable them to join in with your hangout.

When delivering your messages to your different circles, its also important to remember that you have complete control over the level of information that is displayed. You can disable comments and also disable re-sharing before sharing a message or a promotion etc.

Linking your page with your AdWords campaign will give you the ability to measure the performance with statistics such as clicks, impressions, CTR etc. You can use webmaster tools if you wish to know demographic information about the people who are using the +1 button.
And finally, two new features: the first called connect direct is an experiment by Google which allows a user to directly connect with your business page by typing +(business name) into search. The second called ‘Ripples’ has been released and this allows you to see the social ripples from the post you share and thus how it is re shared and its spread pattern. From this you can establish the most effective content for achieving good reach and you can learn about the fans of your brand. Good luck!

By Helen Brown

When setting bids within our AdWords accounts,  we have the option to choose cost-per-click (CPC) bidding, cost-per-thousand impression (CPM) bidding and also cost per acquisition bidding (CPA). Whilst we are all familiar with CPC and CPM bidding, CPA bidding can also be a very useful way to increase profits and get the best from your AdWords account. So here is a little of what is involved and how it is used.

When using CPA bidding, you bid with a maximum cost per acquisition instead of maximum cost per click. Bidding with CPA however will still involve paying per click, and using it will lessen the need to adjust your bids manually. It is easy to activate, and also deactivate should you wish to do so. Upon deactivation, your campaigns will revert back to the old bids before you used conversion optimizer. There are no additional charges for using conversion optimizer, and also you wont need to learn how to navigate a new interface etc to use it. Conversion optimizer will allow you to specify the maximum amount (max CPA) that you are prepared to bid per acquisition, whether the desired conversion is a purchase or sign up for each ad group in your campaign. Google have also advised that a lot of advertisers who have used conversion optimizer have achieved double-digit percentage increases in conversions, whilst paying either the same or less for the conversion. When you use conversion optimizer, the system analyses your historical conversion tracking data in order to make predictions about your conversion rate in the future, this will get your conversions at a lower cost.

Conversion optimizer will give what Google call ‘multi dimensional’ bid management, where bids are varied depending on a number of factors so that the value of the click can be better predicted. This type of bid management is capable of considering a number of factors such as broad match versus exact match and search partner sites for the search targeting. For display targeting, it takes factors such as whether the ad and site content are well suited, and also the sites topics too. It will also consider the users attributes such as location, the browser and operating system they are using, and their language settings. Clever!

You can use conversion optimizer when conversion tracking is enabled on your account, but conversion optimizer can only be used with existing campaigns that have received at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days, as your past conversion data is required in order for the system to be able to place bids appropriately. Also it is important that your campaigns conversions have been occurring at a similar rate for the previous few days before activation.

You can enable conversion optimizer on your selected campaigns from the settings tab of your campaign, go to bidding options and click edit and you can choose ‘focus on conversions’ (conversion optimizer). You will be asked to set your maximum cost per acquisition. After completing this action and when looking at your ad groups tab you can edit the max CPA from there should you wish to do so, as your max CPC column will now show as your max CPA column. It is good practice when using conversion optimizer to compare your CPA and conversions before and after using the conversion optimizer to track your success. An important thing to remember is that your maximum CPA bid is not what you are targeting to spend, but more the maximum that you are prepared to spend to get the conversion, your average CPA should generally speaking always be less than your bid BUT Google do clearly advise that it is possible for your actual CPA to exceed your specified maximum CPA figure as there are factors outside of Google’s control at play. However, you can change your CPA bids as often as you like.

When you start using conversion optimizer, you will see that there is a recommended ad group bid amount suggested. This will help to keep your costs steady and under control whilst changing from your previous bidding method to the new one. When you have been running with conversion optimizer for a little while, you can decide if you want to adjust your bids after analyzing your account statistics.

This bidding option sounds like a great way of taking the stress out of campaign/bid management. I’m sure that it will be beneficial to anyone looking to make it a part of their advertising and account management strategy! Good luck

By Helen Brown

This week I have attended the “YouTube and Video Advertising” webinar. I found this webinar very informative and clear in explaining how it all works and I would like to share my findings with you.

The first topic covered in this webinar – the progression of advertising. How over the years, advertisements have developed from static and black and white images to coloured moving images, analogue has become digital and how online video consumption is on the constant increase. In fact, one third of consumer activity online is video activity. This has been recognised by advertisers and thus online advertising has become very prominent. After all, if you were to see a text ad versus watching a video ad, what would you remember most vividly? I know for me, it would be the video ad! I’m sure we could all agree that a video ad would be far more engaging. Whilst we all know that through TV we have been seeing this for years (nothing new there), but when this happens online it allows advertisers access to other areas that TV does not e.g social networking sites. This is a huge audience and a massive opportunity to air your advertising message.
Advertisements do gain peoples attention, and featured in the webinar were some interesting statistics about how advertising influences the viewer. Around 59% of people have looked for a TV ad or a featured song online after viewing the ad (I have done this myself!) and 22% of viewers have sent a TV ad or a link to an ad to someone else. That’s incredible!
Bringing all of this back to YouTube, it has 17.5 million unique UK visitors per month with more than 3 billion daily video views. YouTube call themselves ‘the home of online video’ and I think this is pretty accurate when you consider that YouTube is the third largest site on the Internet and around 48hours of video is uploaded every minute.
Often people incorporate social media into their advertising plan in the form of Twitter or Facebook, but YouTube is so easily accessible and very powerful that it should really be important to make sure that it gets included too. So many people of all ages these days are searching for the information they want in a video format. YouTube isn’t just for teenagers, it reaches both men and women of a broad age range with 47% of users being aged between 35 – 64.

Thinking of this broad audience in terms of advertising on YouTube, there are a couple of choices.
First of all there is the ‘YouTube channel’. If you have a YouTube account you have a channel. This channel can be used to create a ‘home’ for your videos and thus your company/business. A user can click to watch the video which should contain the necessary call to action. The advertiser will only be charged when the video is watched. Users will know that they can find information on your channel about your business and it is important to keep your content up to date so you can keep your users interested and appropriately informed. In turn this will help to attract more users and keep driving traffic. There are many ways that you can assess the performance of a your channel with metrics such as channel views, giving detail of how many users have watched your content/seen your messaging specifically on your channel. Video views will give you statistics on how many users saw your video whether it was on your channel or whether it was embedded on another site such as Facebook. You can find out how many people have signed up when you view subscriptions, and also comments are a good way of finding out what users think.

The second method of advertising is through banner ads, in video ads and, In stream pre-roll ads.
There are two types of content that YouTube allow ads to be shown against.
The first is called ‘approved partner content’ and an example given of this was the BBC or Warner Brothers. This content is trusted.
The second is ‘content where the copyright has been claimed’. A quick explanation of how this works -
A user uploads content that they do not own the right to (video, music,images etc) and the YouTube system scans it and determines that it is not owned by the user. The owner of the content can then choose to either get the content removed or make money from it by getting ads run on the video. The money made goes to the content owner, not the user.
Videos that support ads will always be vetted first before ads are allowed to run. Any material that is found to be copyright violated and also content generated by users that is not belonging to a partner will not be used for ads.

Advertising on YouTube can be carried out either via AdWords with no fixed contract necessary and no minimum spend requirement, or through a reservation basis via DART (Double clicks platform) although when using this option it is necessary to have a Google account manager to make the advertising reservations for you and there is a minimum spend requirement of around £7000, also a fixed contract is required.
Your choice of ad format will depend on which option you have chosen as some types of ad format cannot be achieved through AdWords but can through DART and vice-versa. There are a vast variety of ad formats available, I am including  links in this blog post that will give further information about ad formats in detail with images, as I think this will be a good way for readers to get understanding of the variety of formats available.

Targeting options include keyword contextual targeting, placement targeting and audience targeting. It’s also possible to combine targeting options to get the best results for your campaigns.

The following ad types and formats below were discussed -

YouTube Home page has massive advertising impact. There are a variety of advertising options available through DART for the homepage from a standard masthead, expandable masthead, tandem masthead, standard click to play ad, expandable click to play, (standard and expandable are available in auto play also).

Standard display ads can run on browse and watch pages, and are available in 300 x 250 format. These can be image ads, flash and also click to play. These ads can be created within your AdWords account by navigating to the ads tab and selecting ‘new ad’ and ‘image ad’. You will be prompted to select the appropriate ad group before creating your ad. You can also use the display ad builder to create image ads with the selection of ready made templates which cover a variety of designs and uses.

Promoted video ads can aid an advertiser in drawing attention to the video they want to promote. This type of ad will be made up of an image thumb nail combined with a standard text ad. The ad must connect with a video on a YouTube channel or watch page (Promoted videos are classed as search ads, so one thing to keep in mind when using this is to make sure you opt your campaign into the Display network as well as search so that your ad will show up on the related videos section on a watch page.) When a user clicks it, it cannot connect to any other URL. For this reason, it should only be used when the goal is to drive traffic to your video. To create a promoted video ad, you will need to use the display ad builder and select the ‘video and audio’ category and then select ‘YouTube promoted video template’. Again you should select the appropriate ad group for the ad and you will need to keep in mind that the guidelines for promoted video ads are the same as for search ads e.g character rules, keyword insertion etc. After selecting a video from YouTube (the video must already be uploaded to YouTube) the system will generate a choice of 4 thumbnails and you can select the best thumbnail image. From there you can choose to send users to a watch page or channel page. You will need to save all of your selections. You can choose to add a call to action overlay after your uploaded video has a promoted video ad only, and this can link though to your website when a user clicks the call to action. Call to action overlays are created from the advertisers YouTube account and not the AdWords account.

In-video ad format contains a few different elements. This ad format comprises of an overlay banner, with an optional companion banner and also an optional in stream video. These are image only ads, these ads can only appear on YouTube watch pages. To create these ads, again you will need to go to the ads tab and select display ad builder. Next, you will need to select ‘video and audio’ and then select the ‘in video static image’ template. From there you can upload your banner, add your destination URL and you will need to click save.

In-stream ads are available in pre-roll, mid-roll and post roll format (but for the purposes of AdWords they are available in pre-roll only if you are based in Europe, the middle East or Africa!). These ads run pre-roll as in, when a user starts to watch a video the ad will play before the video starts. They can run on watch pages are available on all videos over 15 minutes in length and most videos under 15 minutes in length (or as YouTube calls it ‘long form’ and ‘short form’ content. If using a pre-roll ad through AdWords, the ad can be up to 15 seconds long and the format can also include a 300 x 60 companion banner too. To create these ads, again you will need to go to the ads tab and select display ad builder. Next, you will need to select ‘video and audio’ and then select the ‘in stream video ad’ template. From there you can upload a video or choose to add a video from YouTube, upload your companion banner, add your display and destination URL’s and you will need to click to save your information.

True view in-stream ads are only available from AdWords and ads are charged on a cost per view basis, people can choose whether they want to watch the ad or not, as the video ad can be skipped after 5 seconds. Advertisers only pay if people watch the ad for over 30 seconds, or until the ad finishes if the ad is less than 30 seconds. There is not a time limit for these type of ads although it is recommended that they are around 15-30 seconds long.

Finally, replacing YouTube insights is YouTube analytics, and this can be viewed by visiting youtube.com/analytics. From here, any one who has a YouTube account can find out statistics about their uploaded videos. It gives lots of information about who is watching the video, where in the world they are based and how these people are finding your videos etc.

I know that this is a lot of information to take in! but I hope that it is useful to anyone seeking to better understand how advertising on YouTube through AdWords can be quite easily achievable.
Good luck!

By Helen Brown

An essential part of the learning process when studying for your exam is application of the learning material. As discussed in previous posts, it is the true way of comprehending how it all works, from budgets to campaign settings……….and reporting.
I know that I am not going to be on my own when I confess that I initially found reporting tough to understand, I felt so confused by all of the different report types and completely overwhelmed just by looking at the reporting section of my account. I didn’t know where to start, but after thoroughly reading the learning material and taking all that I had learned back to my account for practical application, I began to understand how these valuable account functions worked. Anyone who is studying to sit the Fundamentals exam for the first time should be prepared to answer questions on AdWords reporting functions (as well as many other account topics) but the purpose of this post today is to discuss basic reporting, including running, downloading and analysing reports. I hope you find it useful!

Why use reporting?

Quite simply, it is a full and comprehensive way of understanding your performance. From maintaining a cost effective ad spend to gauging how successful your advertising message is, reporting will give full and detailed information. It is flexible and can be taken to the level you need from account, campaign, ad group, ad and keyword level. Upon viewing this information, you can make better informed decisions about how you can improve and further refine your advertising.
There are various report types, lets take a look at a few -

Campaign report: Use this report to monitor the performance of your account.
In order to create a campaign report, you will need to be within the campaigns tab of your account and select the appropriate campaign (or you can view statistics for all of the campaigns in your account if you don’t select a specific campaign). Just above the graph section of the page, you will see that you have the options to customize the level of information that appears on your table by using the columns (click to customize your columns, you can add columns to your table giving detailed information on performance, conversions, and attribute information etc), filters (helping you to filter information by click, Impression, cost etc) and segments (helping you to break down the information by network, device, top v’s other, daily, weekly and monthly performance etc).

Keyword report: Use this report to view statistics on how your keywords are performing for all of your online campaigns and ad groups or for a specific campaign.To create this report, you need to click the keywords tab within the campaigns tab of your account. As above, you can use filters and segments to include the necessary level of information in your report and schedule, email and generate the report. After customizing to your liking, you can view information such as if a particular keyword is converting well for you, also you can see if you have a good CTR and your average position per keyword. It is recommended to leave your keywords run for at least 10 days to 2 weeks before deciding to pause or delete them so you can make a well informed decision based on a reasonable amount of data that has been gathered in your account. If you see a large number of CTR of under 1% then you may wish to consider pausing or deleting the keyword, as this would not be classed as a well performing keyword. Another statistic to analyze in this report is seeing high impressions but low CTR, this is another indication of poor keyword performance that you may want to consider pausing.

Ad Performance report: Use this report to see how the variations of ads you have created are performing. To create this report, you will need to click the ads tab within the campaigns tab of your account. Again, use the filters and segments to customize to your liking. Google recommend having at least 3 ads in an ad group when using this report. Look at your CTR and you will see which of your ads are the best performers with the most enticing text. You can consider pausing or deleting poor performers from viewing this information too. You can also see your ads approval status.

See search terms report: Use this report to see the real actual search terms that have been used to trigger your ads on the search network. This is incredibly useful! To create this report, you will need to click the keywords tab within the campaigns tab of your account, and then ‘see search terms’ and select all. You will be presented with a list of keywords that users have searched on. Don’t worry about trying to remember if you are already using these keywords within your campaigns, as a green ‘added’ note will be with the keyword if it is already present in your account so you will know not to re add it. After studying the statistics you will be able to see new keywords with high performance rates and you can add these to your campaigns by marking the appropriate check boxes by the side of the desired keywords and selecting ‘add as keyword’. Also, you can choose to apply negatives if you find search terms that are irrelevant by the same method, again by marking the check boxes and then clicking ‘add as negative keyword’.

Geographic report: Use this report to view statistics for your ads which will be organized by the users location. To create this report, you will need to click the dimensions tab within the campaigns tab of your account (if you cannot see this tab, click the drop down arrow next to the last tab and check the box next to dimensions). Then, click the view menu in the tool bar and select geographic. You will see statistics listed based on your country targeting, and if you are targeting in the UK you will see regions and cities too. You can customize your columns, and you will be able to see in which countries your ads are best performing.

After generating and studying these reports you can choose to select a format from the drop down, select to email recipients, and finally you will need to click to download the report.
To open the download panel, click the download icon. At this point you can choose to email and schedule the report. It is important to remember to set your appropriate date range at the top right of the page before generating your report. A few things to keep in mind when thinking about downloading and emailing reports………………. You can select the format of the report from the drop down, but if you want to download and print the report, a PDF format is the best format to choose. Also, in the interest of account security, you can only email a report to someone if they have account access. The best way to give access to a person is to add them as an email only user from ‘My account’ > ‘Access’.

I hope this helps to give a clear understanding of some of the reporting features. Good luck!

By Helen Brown

As I’m sure that all of our users are aware, there is a feedback function on our site so our customers can give responses to the questions as they are answering them. Good or bad, we take this feedback seriously and all of the information sent to us whether questioning the sentence construction to the accuracy of the information is thoroughly reviewed by our team. We always notify our users when we apply a change that they have suggested, and we also get in touch to give help and guidance if we feel that the feedback is not accurate or relevant to the question. We do our best to give an appropriate level of support within our feedback system, and we are grateful that our users take the time to message us with their thoughts.

Recently when reviewing feedback there have been a few queries addressing the validity of certain questions, specifically within our Fundamentals and Search resources. I would like to take this opportunity to explain a little further how we sort through the feedback, and why we apply certain changes quickly and ‘hold out’ on others.

First of all, it is important to know a few things about the exam that you will be taking. Whether Fundamentals, Search, Display or Reporting and Analysis, all of the learning material can be found in the Google learning centre. It’s a valuable resource which is very easily accessed and extensively detailed. Our practice resource and the real Google exams are based on the material that you will find in the learning centre.  BUT! some of the information in the learning centre details certain features of the AdWords interface that are now retired. Whilst we all know that these features have been retired, it still remains. Whilst this information is still held in the learning centre by Google, it can still appear within an exam and therefore we feel that it is still important to feature in our practice resource. When we receive a piece of feedback of this nature from a user within the AdWords community, we always check with the learning centre to see if the information can still be found on the specific subject matter, and remove/edit the question (or not) dependent on our findings.

We do take note of the changes and in the interest of keeping our resources as relevant to the exam as possible we do regularly check for the changes and edit/remove questions as necessary (we regularly write and add new questions to replace the questions that become irrelevant with AdWords progress too!) Also, our team do regularly sit (and pass!) the exams ensuring that we are up to date with any exam changes and also with our knowledge. I hope that this helps to address any concern over the learning material and exam.

I would also like to take this opportunity on behalf of team iPass to express our gratitude to our users for their kind messages of thanks and for the high standard of reviews that have been submitted in recognition of the quality of the resource and the support that they have received whilst using the website. We really like to receive this positive feedback, we all work hard to maintain the standard of the site from our tech/design team who keep the servers fit and well and continue to boost new functionality to the site, to our question authors/reviewers who are working hard to keep the resources up to date and our email support team who are always at hand to help too.

By Helen Brown

When using the Display network to advertise it is very important to think about how to best reach your audience, and decide the most appropriate way you can get the attention of these valuable Internet users. The Display network features some comprehensive and in depth targeting options and earlier on in the year Google launched topic targeting on the display network. Using this targeting feature will further aid us in gaining the attention of users, by means of selecting topics and sub topics for targeting our ads. Using topic targeting will enable you to show your ads to a broader audience and get your advertising message across more quickly, compared to keyword contextual targeting alone, where the serving of your ads is based on your list of chosen keywords. It allows your ad to be matched to the subject matter of a page and not just specific wording . However, as this will most probably cause an increase in your ads delivery and traffic to your site, it is important to take this into consideration in terms of your campaigns budget. You can also choose to exclude certain topics if you want to ensure that your ads are not served on pages with certain topics, or if you find that some of your chosen topics are not performing well.
The topic of a web page is determined by a ‘crawler’ analysing the keywords and the frequency in which they are used, where on the page the words are placed and the font sizes, and also the language of the page plays a part too! As the crawler searches a page, targeting will be at the page level and not at the site level. An important thing to remember is that some topics can be quite diverse on a page, as pages can contain multiple topics. This is where you will need to think about topic exclusions, so that you can ensure that your ads are appearing for only the most relevant pages. To get an idea of where to start with topic exclusions, you can view your reporting section of your account.
There are a wide variety of topics to target (or exclude should you wish) with over 1750 topics and sub topics to choose from.
In terms of setting up contextual targeting by topic, its very simple. Within your campaigns tab, you will see a sub tab ‘Topics’. (If you don’t see this, click the menu drop down at the end of this row and select ‘Topics: Display network only’ and click apply.) After clicking the ‘Topics’ sub tab, you will need to click the box ‘add topics’. You will then be presented with a list of topics and sub topics to choose from by clicking ‘add’, or you can search in the search box located at the top of the list. Google advise to remember that if you click the top level topic, this will add all of the sub level topics too. If you wish to remove a topic, you can do so by clicking ‘remove’ or ‘remove all’ as appropriate. Some of the advised best practices when starting with topic targeting are to start a separate campaign for your topics in order to allow ease of control over your budget. If you wish to have in depth reporting it is a good idea to include sub topics within the topics, and also ensure that your topics and sub-topics are relevant to your ads. If you want precision with your targeting, use topics and keywords together. Always remember to save your chosen topics.
If you wish to exclude topics that are not performing well after analysing your reporting statistics, or if they are unsuitable for your advertising needs, this action can be taken at the campaign and the ad group level. There is a button beneath the ‘add topics’ section in your account labelled ‘exclusions’, click this and then ‘add exclusions’. You will be presented with two boxes, one for ad group level and one for campaign level, where you can exclude your chosen topics and sub topics as necessary.

During the webinar it was discussed that ad planner is considered a good way of getting inspiration for choosing topics, as it is great way of learning about your target audience. Go to http://google.com/adplanner and you can start to search a wealth of valuable information. There are two tabs available after opening the tool -
Search by site: There is so much to be learned from this page from traffic statistics to demographic information just from entering your sites URL, but of particular interest will be the ‘sites also visited’ and the ‘audiences interests’ sections of this page, as they can be used to detail your audiences online activity and this could be a great help in terms of thinking about choosing topics.
Search by audience: This is a good way of defining your audience by means of selecting the geographical area in which they are located, their language, different demographics from age, gender and household income etc. Also you can enter sites that your audience is likely to visit and keywords that you think they are likely to use search as this online behaviour is useful to better understand your audience. Its also possible to filter the site results you will get as ad planner does show statistics for any site on the Internet. Therefore you can choose to select ‘In Google Display Network’ under Add Items > Site Characteristics. You can also filter the results to show for sites that are related to a specific topic.
When the site results are returned to you, there will be a lot of information to consider and digest, from placements to page views and reach % etc. As the focus of the webinar was topics, Google advised to focus on the category column for the site theme as this is a good way of getting ideas for topics for your chosen audience.

However you choose to target your campaigns there are extensive options available, I hope this post is useful to anyone who wants to try topic targeting on the Google Display Network. Good luck!

By Helen Brown

We are all familiar with the quality score metric in our accounts, but how well do we all understand what this means for us? How does a well (or low) performing quality score affect an account? This week I have viewed the AdWords webinar “Understanding Quality Score” and I am going to dedicate this post to discussing the importance of paying attention to this metric, and also how to start addressing the issue of a low quality score.

The basic idea behind the quality score metric is for it to be a measurement of a keywords relevance in comparison to its ad text and also to the given search query. Keywords play an important part within your account as they can effect the ability of an ad to display and also the ads position.
There are two types of quality scores to think about within your account.
Although you will not actually be able to view the first type as an actual statistic, your auction quality score is calculated every time your keyword matches a search query. The score is a unique score and it is given for each query.
The second is your keyword quality score. This is based on a figure ranging between 1 – 10 and is designed to be a guide of how a keyword would be expected to perform in an ad auction. Google advise the following figures as a guideline when considering your keyword quality score-

A score of 1 – 4 is classed as poor performing
5 – 6 is classed as well performing
7 – 10 is classed as very well performing

The clear purpose to quality score is to keep the equilibrium with regard to relevance between the users, us (the advertisers) and also Google. They want their users to keep using their search engine, we the advertisers want the most relevant traffic to visit our websites and the people searching want the most appropriate results returned when they enter their search queries. Makes sense!
A user who searches for the product or service that they want will be happy and have a positive experience when they get what they required from their search quickly.
From our point of view, we need to think of maintaining a high quality score in a few different ways, as quality score is responsible for deciding whether or not the ad is in the running for the ad auction. It also decides where on the results page your the ad will appear in relation to other ads. When you think in terms of your costs, having a high quality score will enable you to maintain a good position and the amount you need to bid should be less. If you have a low quality score, you can expect to see a high first page bid.
There are many components that contribute to quality score, but there are a few in particular that we need to be mindful of. Click through rate is considered the most important factor contributing to your quality score. Relevance of keywords to ads in an ad group, and search queries are very important, and also the quality of your landing page needs to be high. Your site content must be relevant to your ads, it must be easy for users to navigate and considered ‘transparent’. Be clear about what you are doing and selling, and what you do with any personal information collected and how it will be used etc.

If you find that you have a low quality score, it is important to identify and understand why this has happened and also to work towards rectifying the issue. There can be a number of reasons as to why you can have a low score. During the webinar, a list of reasons were suggested and discussed as to why an account can have low quality scores, and that around 99% of the time that a low quality score could be attributed to one of the following reasons-

Poor landing page quality,
Low CTR,
Poor historical performance,
Recent changes that have been made to the campaign,
The ads not receiving enough impressions or clicks.

An efficient way of finding out about this is by hovering over the speech bubble next to your keyword(s) within the keywords tab of your account. This will give you a diagnosis with quality score and landing page information. From there, you can decide your best course of action and start to rectify the issue.
You may find that you need to review policies and guidelines to make sure you are compliant, or that you need to start assessing your keyword relevancy and use for example keyword insertion, or maybe even delete under performing keywords in order to increase your CTR. A search term report is a good place to start when refining your keywords (you can find this from within the keywords tab > see search terms).
Assess the changes you have made to your account, do not be afraid to revert your changes if you find that they are not working.

In summary, evaluation of your keywords and statistics is key to maintaining a good quality score. However, Google advised at the end of this webinar that sometimes, even when you have done everything correctly, you may still not see a perfect quality score. Don’t be disheartened with a quality score of 6 – 7 because this is perfectly acceptable. I hope this helps to give a better understanding of the subject and also helps anyone striving to improve their quality scores. Good luck!

By Helen Brown

Whilst we all know that AdWords is an extremely effective way to get our advertising message across, wouldn’t we all like more visibility? Of course we would!

So, Google created ad extensions. A great way of increasing online visibility, giving the ability to display ads along with other formats such as maps, pictures, telephone numbers and also allowing us  to highlight their specific pages of relevance on our sites. This should generate and boost interest in the products and services we offer, by means of highlighting our most valued unique selling points.
Ad extensions literally work as an extension of our existing ads, enabling users to gather more information at first glance. This will in turn make our clicks more valuable and hopefully increase conversion rates too………….. and all of this at no extra cost!
BUT it is essential to have high quality scores if you want to use ad extensions, in order for this feature to work for you, you will need for the quality of your ads to be significantly higher than other ads in the ad auction.

Ad extensions come in a variety of different formats. In this post I am going to feature site links, location extensions, phone extensions and product extensions. All extremely useful, all performing a valuable action within our advertising campaigns.

Site links are additional links to your content. You will see site links displayed with search based ads, and using them will allow for an additional 4 links per ad, this will give your ad more visibility. It allows you to target multiple relevant landing pages, which will help your users in finding the relevant landing page quickly with less clicks. They can be seen with two formats; a one line site link with 1 – 4 additional links; a two line site link, although this is not as common as these are used for only the very best ads. You can also get 1 – 4 additional links with this too.
Site links give a user more landing page options and are more likely to direct a user to specific information such as a promotion that they are interested in. They also allow you to ‘segment’ your users before they enter your site, and will shorten the users route to making a purchase.
To enable site links, you will need to first enable the ad extensions tab. Within campaigns, go to the sub tabs and you will see a drop down. Click ad extensions. Select “View = site links” from the drop down menu and select new site link. Select “+ New extension”. Select the campaign that you would like to add the site links to. You can specify up yo 10 site links, you should add them in order of appearance. From the 10 site links that you provide, a maximum of 4 will be shown based on priority you enter them in and also the character length of the links, a maximum of 35 characters. Google advise to keep the text short as this will get better results with users. When thinking in terms of links, it is always best to use your most valuable pages.

Location extensions allow you to give additional business information with your text ads such as an address or telephone number. The ad will appear as normal, the extension appears on google.com, the search network and other properties such as google maps (a text ad will show, or an enhanced ad with a business icon and map marker that will expand to show a business image. If a user clicks on the map marker, a information window will expand to give additional information about the business). If used on display the ads will appear as sponsored links and can contain 2 – 4 lines of text. They can also show on mobile devices if they have full Internet browsers. They allow you to combine your business name, address information, and phone number with your text ad, and is a great way to promote your business brand, products and services that you provide. You can associate your business with a specific location or multiple locations should you wish.
You can use location extensions at the campaign level and the ad level-
Ad the campaign level: Under ad extensions, go to locations and check the box next to “extend my ads with location information”. Then, select one or both of these options-
1. Use addresses from an existing Google places account
(select this option to link your Google places account to your campaign. The addresses from your places account will be shown with your ad when relevant to do so)
2. Manually enter addresses.
(You can add up to 100,000 addresses and they too will be shown when relevant to do so)
At the ad level: this is for one address and one specific ad. You should first navigate to the ad group that you want to edit, click the ads tab and then the edit icon next to the ad that you want to edit. Next, click “always show with one address”, and select an address from the list. Click close. Google advise to remember that an ad level Location extension will over ride a campaign level location extension, and that it will only show for a relevant ad.

Phone extensions allow your potential customers to click your ad and call your business when your ad appears on a mobile device, it allows you to create an ad extension and add a telephone number to your ad text. This type of extension comes in two ways dependant on the circumstances of your business:
If you are a large business with a national telephone number or your calls go through a contact centre, you should use phone extensions, as this makes it easy for a user to call your number directly from the ad itself.
If you are a business with an actual location and address such as a retail shop, you should use location extensions, as this allows the user to click on the ad and go to your website OR they will also be able to click the call link and call your business directly. No more searching for a pen and paper or trying to remember a telephone number, just one click, its very convenient and it’s very easy!
If you wish to use phone extensions, first you will need to choose the appropriate campaign and check from the settings tab that you have selected “mobile devices with full Internet browsers” which you will find under the devices section of the settings tab. This will allow the number that you are going to add to be click-able. Next, navigate to the extensions tab. From there you will need to select “phone extensions” and click “new extension”. From there you can add your business telephone number and also the country where the telephone number is based. Google advise that you will need to make sure that you check the box that states “call only format” to make sure that only the telephone number is click-able.

To use Product extensions, you will need to have and be familiar with a merchant centre account. You will also need to link your merchant centre account with your AdWords account. To do this: from within your merchant account click settings > AdWords, and then enter your 10 digit customer I.D which you will find at the top of your AdWords account, and click “add”. Next, from within the AdWords interface select “product extensions” within the ad extensions tab. When you select new extension you will see that the merchant centre account will appear in the drop down menu. Product extensions will then allow you to display your products in Google Search. You can set up to 10 filters per campaign to make sure that specific products are showing with specific ads.
There are two formats for product extensions, the first is a + box format. This expands a + box which will enable a user to learn more about the products featured with pictures and prices. There is a 30 character limit on this format. This instantly gives the user more information about the products and will make clicks more valuable as the user is much better informed before they click through to your website. I feel that this is a really exciting ad format, I feel that images get a good response, people can see exactly what to expect for their money.
The second format is text only, this tends to show less often than the picture format discussed above, it only shows for the highest performing ads and has a 50 character limit.
All of this can be managed from your merchant centre after the link with your AdWords account takes place, and products will update automatically in your ads as this feature will choose the most relevant products to display. Also, product extensions will only show when the users query directly matches the products that you have to offer.

In terms of reporting, you will be able to see all of your statistics from the ad extensions tab. You can choose to segment the information displayed and find out what part of the ad received the click e.g was it the actual ad extension or was it the heading?

These are some really great ways to get your website and business some extra visibility and valuable traffic, I hope that we all have great success with implementing them! Good luck!