Google Adwords Mastery » Display Network

Google Display Network – Audience Solutions Webinar now available on demand

Geoff Alexander — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:00:00 +0000

Our recent webinar on Tuesday, Finding Your Target Audience with Google Display Network, was a huge success. With Audience Solutions on GDN, we are helping to get the right message to the right target customer, at the right time. Ads can no longer be generic in nature – they have to truly resonate to make any impact. In this webinar, we talked about how you can use Audience Solutions such as remarketing and interest categories today to optimize your campaigns, tailor creative, and improve conversions. We then talked about the revolutionary new targeting strategies launching soon, including Demographics, Similar Users, Share of Users, and Dynamic Remarketing and how they will help you reach and scale your audiences more effectively.

If you missed this webinar, you can watch the recording here!

There was a live Q&A during the broadcast, but you can can continue the conversation on your own time on Twitter; just mention @GoogleDisplay and/or use the hashtag #GDN.

Posted by Desiree Motamedi, Product Marketing Manager, Google Display Network

Find your audience with the Google Display Network

Geoff Alexander — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:35:00 +0000

Advertising is about getting your message in front of the right people. Whether you need to increase brand awareness or maximize ROI on direct response campaigns, your challenge continues to be about delivering the right message to the right person at the right time.

How can you do this intelligently, and at scale? Audience Solutions on the Google Display Network (GDN) provides the insight you need, connecting potential customers by with exactly what they are looking for -- when they are ready to buy.

Please join Google in our upcoming webinar to learn more about audience targeting strategies for your campaigns using Audience Solutions on the Google Display Network. We’ll discuss the following topics:

Enhance search: Making the most of your search investment through Remarketing
Deeper insights: Gaining insights about your current customers to expand your audience
Extend reach: Reaching new audiences based on their interests and purchase intent
ROI Optimization: Taking advantage of transparency and controls to optimize your campaigns

Register here for the webinar to be held on November 1st, 2011 at 10:00am PST / 12:00pm CST / 1:00pm EST. You can also preview a video of this invite here.

Posted by Lauren Barbato, Inside AdWords crew

A look at how display builds brands for marketers today

Geoff Alexander — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 18:52:00 +0000

Last week, we shared examples of how direct response marketers are driving strong results with display advertising. But you’ve heard it before -- beyond driving immediate clicks and conversions, display builds brands. And as digital budgets accelerate, for an increasingly growing number of brands, display advertising has become an important part of their strategy. In fact, in the recently conducted Advertiser Intelligence Reports study, by Advertiser Perceptions, advertisers are planning on spending more digital display dollars in the next 12 months for brand goals than direct response.1

So this week, we’re turning our attention to pioneering brands who used display advertising as a critical component in their overall marketing mix to connect with their audience, engage them emotionally, and as a result, drive meaningful results. Let’s take a closer look.

Animal Planet attracted 1.6MM viewers for the season premiere of River Monsters, putting it in the #1 spot among its target audience, by running an integrated video and rich media campaign across YouTube, AdMob, and the Google Display Network. (read case study)

Volvo drove an 88% lift in purchase intent for its new S60 sedan by leveraging the YouTube homepage and masthead unit, interactive video ads on AdMob, and standard IAB ads on the Google Display Network. (read case study)

Sealy reinvented its Posturepedic brand using YouTube promoted video ads and in-stream video ads, which drove 46% of its website traffic during the first week of the campaign. (read case study)

At OMMA Global this week, we shared a simple framework for brand building that we developed after analyzing the campaigns of our most successful brand advertisers. These “better practices” focus on three key areas: connecting with the right consumer at the right moment, delivering an engaging message, and measuring the metrics that matter.

Connecting with the right consumer at the right moment. As consumers continue to access the internet more frequently throughout the day, from a multitude of devices, it’s increasingly important for brand marketers to create device-inclusive, rather than device-specific, campaigns. And by targeting a combination of audience and contextual signals, it’s now easier than ever to reach the right person, at the right time, on the right device through the Google Display Network or DoubleClick AdExchange.

Engaging them emotionally. The best display ads don’t just leverage sight, sound, and motion, but also harness display’s interactive capabilities that drive deep engagement with a brand. Our research shows that rich media ads drive significantly better brand performance than standard Flash ads--1.7X for brand awareness, 2.7X in purchase intent, and 5X increase in brand favorability.2 We also see that newer ad formats, like mobile display and in-stream video, are even more effective at moving consumers down the brand funnel. Lastly, we’ve seen masthead ads on the YouTube homepage garner an 11% interaction rate and drive a 4X lift in engagement compared to standard ads.3

Measuring more robustly. Looking beyond simple clicks and conversions, brand marketers use Campaign Insights to measure increased awareness and interest through the lift in search queries and website visits. Paired with Google Analytics and Multi-Channel Funnels, advertisers can see a complete picture of the chain of online and offline media that drives brand engagement. And to close the loop, many of our brands match geo-targeted display campaigns to offline sales to measure the true impact of a display ad campaign.

More and more studies show that brand marketers who focus on these three levers see the the greatest return on their display ad investment. With display’s ability to connect more precisely with your target consumer, engage more emotionally with interactive messages, and measure robust metrics along all parts of the purchase funnel, it’s no wonder that display builds brands.

Watch this space.
google.com/watchthisspace

(1) Advertiser Intelligence Reports (AIR) study, Advertiser Perceptions, August 2011
(2) The Brand Value of Video and Rich Media Ads, DoubleClick, September 2011
(3) YouTube Homepage Impact Study, Compete, December 2010

Posted by Brian Zeug, National Sales Director, Display and Video

A look at how display drives performance for marketers today

Geoff Alexander — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 16:00:00 +0000

(Cross-posted from the AdWords Agency Blog)

Few would argue that online display advertising is playing an increasingly important role in the marketing mix. While we frequently talk about how the vast majority of our top advertisers have run a Google display campaign in the last year while continuing to increase their investment, today we’re shining a light on some specific examples.

For each brand we’re highlighting today, display was an integral part of their broader marketing strategy. To make it work, they tapped into a robust display advertising toolbox and applied targeting, creative, measurement and optimization solutions that made the most sense for their campaign objective. Let’s take a look at the results.

Airbnb increased the number of nights booked from 800,000 to 2 million with help from remarketing on the Google Display Network and TrueView video ads on YouTube. (Read case study)

Groupon acquired millions of subscribers with the help of contextual targeting and auto-optimization on the Google Display Network. (Read case study)

ShoeDazzle got 45% of their conversions from the Google Display Network by applying a variety of targeting and optimization tools. (Read case study)

At the heart of each success lies a common theme: Great display advertising happens when smart strategies are applied in three key areas: Finding the right customer, showing them the perfect ad, and measuring and optimizing effectively.

Find the right customer. Reaching just the right audience is at the crux of any successful campaign. In fact, marketers are saying the biggest driver of increased display budgets is the availability of better targeting technologies. (1) From remarketing strategies that reach 84% of users on a typical list, to interest categories that show interested users your message while respecting user privacy, we’re constantly innovating to precisely connect your message with your audience. And just last month, we shared strategies for applying the right targeting mix to extract the most out of direct response campaigns on the GDN.

Show them the perfect ad. You can find the right audience, but what do you tell them? With display, marketers have a wide-open canvas to connect with consumers to drive the results they care about. And an effective ad can come in any format. In fact, many of the brands we’re highlighting today used Standard IAB display ad units but with compelling messaging and beautiful creative that really resonated with their audience.

Measure and optimize based on real-time insights. Advertisers have always benefited from transparency into exactly where ads run, their costs, and the right metrics to measure campaign performance, providing actionable insights to optimize their campaigns. Our recent investments in measurement and optimization take this further. Marketers can now see a complete picture of the chain of impressions and clicks that drives campaign performance with Multi-Channel Funnels. And applying Google’s 10 years of experience in developing optimization algorithms, we’ve launched tools like Display Campaign Optimizer, which can be used to do fully automated bidding and targeting to boost conversions and ROI.

So today, while we’re celebrating these successes, more than that, there is a valuable insight here. The display toolbox is a rich one. It’s the agencies and marketers who tap into that toolbox and apply it in ways that make sense for their campaigns, who will greatly benefit from display as a medium. So.. will your campaign be the next one we shine a light on?

Watch this space.

google.com/watchthisspace

(1) Effective Audience Targeting Leads To Bigger Display Budgets, eMarketer, May 2011

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Product Marketing Manager, Google Display, Client Communications

Webinar: Display targeting strategies for direct response

Geoff Alexander — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 17:00:00 +0000

On Thursday, August 4, we held a webinar about how to use today’s powerful targeting technologies to run effective display advertising campaigns for direct response goals. Specifically, we covered:

The "targeting toolbox" for direct response campaigns on the Google Display Network
Strategies for prioritizing and applying the available targeting options to maximize campaign performance and efficiency
Tools, tips and best practices for maximizing ROI

For those of you who missed the webinar, a recording is now available, which you can watch below. You can also download the materials we covered here.

After watching the webinar, share your thoughts and engage with us by following us at @GoogleDisplay. We’d love to hear from you!

Posted by Lauren Barbato, Inside AdWords crew

Upcoming Webinar: Display targeting strategies for direct response

Geoff Alexander — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:20:00 +0000

Contextual. Audience. Remarketing. Demographic. Marketers have many options when it comes to targeting their display campaigns. The emergence of these technologies has transformed display into a powerful direct response medium, delivering measurable performance at scale for marketers. But with the plethora of options to choose from, where do advertisers and agencies begin?

Please join Google for an upcoming webinar to learn more about how to approach targeting strategies for your campaigns on the Google Display Network. Specifically we’ll cover:

The "targeting toolbox" for direct response campaigns
Strategies for prioritizing and applying the available targeting options to maximize campaign performance and efficiency
Tools, tips and best practices for maximizing ROI for your campaigns

Posted by Lauren Barbato, Inside AdWords crew

Reach your audience with interest categories

Geoff Alexander — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 15:27:00 +0000

Whether the goal is to generate awareness or drive sales, marketers share a common objective: reach people likely to be interested in their product or service. With contextual targeting on the Google Display Network, you can find people the very moment they express interest by browsing relevant content. But what happens if someone who has been browsing for cameras then goes on to read a separate news site or favorite blog? A marketer for a camera company would like to show that interested user an ad, but they can't use contextual targeting to reach them, since the site is unrelated.

Over a year ago, we announced a beta of interest categories on the Google Display Network. We've been slowly expanding the availability of this feature, and as of today, interest categories are now available to all AdWords advertisers. It works like this: our system looks at the types of pages a user visits, taking into account how recently and frequently those pages have been visited, and then associates their browser with relevant interest categories. Using these categories, you can show ads to the people most likely to purchase your products or services, and you can reach them across all types of sites in the Google Display Network in addition to contextually relevant sites.

With over 1,000 interest categories from ecotourism to mobile phones, we’re confident you'll find a category that fits your business. And with over 500 million users interested in these categories who visit the Display Network every day, you’ll be able to reach a huge number of potential customers. You pay only for clicks or impressions at auction prices, as always. Our beta advertisers have used interest categories to successfully meet all kinds of goals, from an advertiser increasing brand lift by 40% to a shoe retailer driving 400% more conversions at a lower advertising cost per sale.

As we’ve made interest categories available to more advertisers, we’ve remained committed to providing users with the highest level of control and transparency. Users may, at any time, view and edit interest categories or permanently opt out of receiving interest-based ads entirely with the Ads Preferences Manager. Also, we label our ads with the AdChoices logo to give users notice and choice about the ads they see.

We hope you'll use these interest categories to enhance your advertiser campaigns. We think you'll find them an effective way to reach more interested users, increase awareness of your products and services, and ultimately drive more sales. You can visit our Help Center to learn more.

-Jon Krafcik, Product Manager, Google Display Network

Posted by Lauren Barbato, Inside AdWords crew

Google Display Network introduces new performance bundle

Geoff Alexander — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Today, innovations in targeting, optimization, and measurement can help you achieve greater performance with your Display Network campaigns. We’re investing heavily in these areas, and we’re pleased to announce several tools that give you better measurement, transparency and value for your display advertising campaigns.

Better measurement

1. Relative CTR: User behavior on web pages varies depending on the type of page users are on. For example, users may interact with ads on a product review page differently than with ads on a blog. Clickthrough rate (CTR) tells you how often users click on your ads, but CTR can’t tell you how your ads perform compared to other ads on the same page.

To better gauge the performance of your Display Network campaigns, Relative CTR shows you how your ads perform relative to other ads running in the same places on the GDN, letting you benchmark your performance across the Display Network. For example, if your display ads have a CTR of 0.04%, while other ads in the same places on the GDN have a CTR of 0.02%, your Relative CTR is (0.04)/(0.02) = 2x.

The screenshot below shows how Relative CTR looks in AdWords:

(click for full size image)

Why does Relative CTR matter?

At first glance, a CTR of 0.04% may seem low. But knowing that this is two times the CTR of competing ads tells you that your ads are actually performing, on a CTR basis, better than ads on the same page. This means that your ad creative matches the websites your ads are appearing on and that your audience is responding to your message.

Alternatively, you may see that your Relative CTR is 0.5x, meaning that your ads are only getting half of the average clickthrough rate. This means that your ads may not be resonating with the users you’d like to reach and that you may be able to improve performance by refining your ad creatives.

To view relative CTR within your AdWords account, go to the "Ad groups" tab, select "Customize columns" from the "Columns" drop-down menu, and select "Relative CTR.” Relative CTR will appear at the campaign or ad group level.

2. Impression Share (IS): With the auction model, multiple advertisers compete for the same ad spots on a web page. To help measure your online presence, we’ve created impression share, which represents the percentage of times that your ads were shown out of the total available impressions for which your ads were eligible to appear on the GDN. In other words, impression share provides you with your online share of voice.

Based on IS data, you can increase your share of voice by adjusting your budget or improving your Ad Rank. The Lost IS (budget) metric tells you how many impressions you're losing due to your budget, while Lost IS (rank) tells you how many impressions you’re losing due to Ad Rank.

For example, you may see that you're losing 25% of impression share due to budget restrictions and must increase this campaign’s daily budget to get more impressions. Or you might see that you're losing 35% of impression share due to Ad Rank and may need to raise bids or improve your creatives.

Greater transparency

With your ads running across millions of sites on the GDN, it can be difficult to keep track of where your ads are and aren’t running. The Content Ads Diagnostic Tool (CADT) tells you why your ads aren’t showing on the Display Network. For example, you may see that your placement-targeted ad groups are not running because they lost the auction:

(click for full size image)

You can also see when your ad is running, and on what specific placements:

(click for full size image)

We'll start releasing CADT to a small number of advertisers in mid-June and will launch a full release in early July.

Better value for your online display dollars

Users often need to scroll to see your ads on a webpage. When a user does not scroll far enough to view your ad, these unseen impressions hurt your advertising effectiveness and result in wasted spend. We recently launched a feature called the Unseen Impression Filter that ensures that CPM advertisers are not charged for impressions that users have a low probability of viewing.

For example, say that a user lands on a publisher site where your ad serves below the fold:

(click for full size image)

You'll only be charged when we predict that a user will actually scroll to see your ad:

(click for full size image)

Note that this feature is automatically enabled and does not require any controls or set-up.

Wrapping up

All four of these tools and features -- Relative CTR, Impression Share, Content Ads Diagnostic Tool, and Unseen Impression Filter -- are available in all AdWords languages. For more information, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

There’s a perfect ad for everyone

Geoff Alexander — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 04:01:00 +0000

On Thursday, June 9th, Neal Mohan, Google's VP of Display Advertising, delivered a keynote at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Innovation Days @ Internet Week. The talk is entitled “There’s a perfect ad for everyone,” and during it Neal made six predictions about how display advertising will change for the better by 2015.

You can view the recording at google.com/watchthisspace.

The talk was about the new technologies in display advertising that are resulting in better user experiences, better advertiser results and incredible growth for the industry. We’re investing significantly to help improve display advertising for advertisers, publishers and users. But we’re poised to make even greater advances in the years ahead. We’re at the beginning of a user-focused revolution, where people connect and respond to display ads in ways we’ve never seen before.

If you watch the talk, let us know what you think by following us and sending us a note.

Posted by Lauren Barbato, Inside AdWords crew

Year in review: Remarketing delivers better ads, better performance

Geoff Alexander — Mon, 02 May 2011 16:00:00 +0000

Today we have a post from Aitan Weinberg, product manager for AdWords remarketing:

We’ve always believed that display advertising has the potential to be smarter, better performing and more measurable. Today we’d like to shine a light on one of the quiet stars of the display world that is enabling this transformation: remarketing. Remarketing allows you to reach your website visitors with a relevant message as they browse other sites across the web. We rolled it out one year ago across the Google Display Network, and we think we have a hit on our hands. In 2010, the total number of advertisers using remarketing grew an average of 113% every quarter after launch. A few examples of how some of you have used remarketing to great effect:
Yankee Candle Company used remarketing to re-engage shoppers and increased conversion rates by 600% while cutting cost-per-conversion in half.
Lenovo PC manufacturers increased sales by 20% and lowered their overall expense-to-revenue ratio by 14% in a campaign that included remarketing and display across multiple networks.
etrailer.com, an online towing parts retailer, saw twice the click-through-rate at a 75% lower cost-per-click with remarketing compared to their typical display advertising campaigns.
In the year since launch, we’ve boosted performance and scale with three key enhancements to make remarketing even more powerful for the largest to the smallest of advertisers. First, we now enable you to show a relevant ad right after a potential customer leaves your site, when our internal analysis shows they’re most likely to click. Second, we’ve improved the algorithm that helps determine, in real time, how much you should pay for each impression in order to maximize the possibility that a user will click on your ad. Finally, the growing reach of the Google Display Network means you can reach your customers on more and more sites across the web. On average, we reach 84% of the people on a typical remarketing list and we serve hundreds of billions of advertising impressions every month to over 500 million Internet users worldwide.

As we continue to show more relevant ads across more sites, this means more users and publishers benefit as well as advertisers.
Publishers are seeing significant revenue lift from serving remarketing ads on their sites. Our studies have shown that a remarketing ad brings in nearly 2X the revenue as other display ads.
Users have told us that they like the more targeted ad experience that remarketing provides. Marie DeOrio, Founder of Vintage Fashion Directory, calls remarketing ads “fascinating and fabulous. It’s that experience where ads don’t feel like ads. If they’re correctly targeted and it’s something you’re interested in, it’s valuable information.” Marie notes that she serves remarketing ads on her own website, vintagefashiondirectory.com as she believes that they "provide a better experience for users."
We’re not finished, either. In the coming months, we have plans to introduce a suite of new features that will make remarketing even smarter, faster, and more dynamic. We anticipate that interest in remarketing will only continue to grow, as advertisers, publishers and users continue to see the benefits, and as we continue to find new technologies that help satisfy the ultimate goal: showing the right ad to the right person at the right time.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew