The Full Value of Mobile: New calculator and resources to estimate mobile’s value for your business in the new, multi-screen world

We live in a world of constant connectivity, where mobility is bridging the digital and physical worlds. With smartphones in hand, people are taking a variety of online and offline actions, like calling a business, downloading an app, looking for directions to a store, or starting research that leads to a purchase on another device. We’re working hard to account for these new paths to purchase in AdWords, like the recent addition of calls as conversions to AdWords reporting. Still, with more work to be done to improve measurement tools, most marketers still account only for sales happening on a mobile site and aren’t seeing the full picture. Today we’re introducing the Full Value of Mobile initiative to help marketers begin this discussion and better understand mobile’s impact online and offline. 

This new consumer behavior is now the norm, with a recent study showing that nearly three of ten mobile searches result in visiting a store, calling a business, or making a purchase online. Some smart marketers are already investing in understanding how mobile drives sales through these new customer paths. For example, adidas, in partnership with their agency iProspect, felt that mobile was converting in ways beyond their mobile website, so they created a simple yet powerful attribution model to understand how mobile is driving customers into stores. As a result, adidas found that each click on their store locator button was worth $3.20, which has changed the way they view their digital investment. See their full case study here.  

While savvy marketers like adidas are already defining the full value of mobile, most marketers have struggled to get started. To help marketers better understand mobile attribution, we’re launching the Full Value of Mobile initiative, which includes:

• A calculator tool
• Videos that illustrate each mobile conversion path
• Case studies highlighting successful mobile strategies
• Tips for measurement

The Full Value of Mobile Calculator provides simple equations and benchmarks to help you estimate of the value that mobile drives for your business through calls, apps, in-store, mobile site and cross-device. In about 30 minutes, you can follow the step-by-step wizard to upload data from AdWords and your mobile website, and make some key assumptions to create your Full Value of Mobile estimate. Through the exercise, you’ll see the total value, value per click, and ROI that mobile is driving for your business across all mobile customer paths, not just your mobile website. You’ll also see how cost-effective your mobile CPAs are.

We hope the Full Value of Mobile Calculator helps marketers begin to investigate mobile’s impact online and offline, whether they use it as a directional estimate of mobile’s value or to spark ideas on how to build deeper and more customized models. To learn more about the Full Value of Mobile and how to use the calculator, please join us for a webinar on March 28 at 1pm EDT.  You can sign up here.

Mobility has forever changed the way consumers live and shop, giving rise to these new customer paths as the lines between digital and physical experiences blur. Understanding what each of these mobile pathways means for your business is a critical piece of the larger attribution challenge that every marketer needs to meet head-on. This requires thinking about the full customer journey and acknowledging the interplay between various devices, channels and media influences along the way. Only then can marketers give credit where it’s due – both between and within channels. In other words, rethinking conversion paths is not only key to unlocking the full value of mobile, but also to unlocking the full value of digital.

Posted by Johanna Werther, Head of Mobile Ads Marketing

ValueTrack parameters for enhanced campaigns are live: manage your keyword level URLs by device

Recently, based largely on your feedback, we announced the launch of new ValueTrack features to help advertisers using keyword level URLs achieve specific conversion and ROI goals. These features are now live and ready for you to apply to your campaigns. To recap:

1. We’re changing the existing parameter {ifmobile:[value]}. Previously, the ifmobile parameter would insert [value] when a user clicked your ad on either a tablet or a mobile device. Now, it will only trigger from an ad click on a mobile device.
2. We’ve added a new parameter, {ifnotmobile:[value]}, where you can replace [value] with text that will then show up in your URL when the user clicks on your ad from a computer or tablet.

These features will help you achieve your conversion and ROI goals, and make the upgrade to enhanced campaigns easier by:

1. Directing users to a device-specific landing page at the keyword level.
2. Aligning performance reporting with device groupings used in enhanced campaigns.

For more information about our new ValueTrack features, please check out our Google AdWords Enhanced Campaign Upgrade Guide - The URL Supplement.

Posted by Karen Yao, Senior Product Manager, AdWords

Large-scale keyword changes made easy with keyword bulk uploads

Monday, April 01, 2013 | 10:54 AM

Labels: Bulk Actions, Campaign management

With our launch of bulk editing back in November, large-scale changes across your entire AdWords account became much easier.  Today, we are launching keyword bulk uploads to help you add, edit and remove keywords at scale.

Have you ever downloaded a keyword report and wished you could make changes to your account directly, without having to upload the report into another tool or go back into the AdWords UI and search for the same keywords you already have in front of you?  Now you can. Right in your downloaded keyword reports, you can add, delete, edit, pause, and unpause keywords, and then upload these changes directly into your AdWords account.

This feature not only saves you time, but it also provides a new level of flexibility and automation by allowing you to use standard spreadsheet functions and logic to manage your keywords.  Here’s an example.  Imagine you want to create exact match versions of all your broad match keywords, and you want to set their MaxCPC bids to be 20% higher than their broad match counterparts.  You can quickly do this by copying the broad match rows, changing the match type column value, and creating a basic formula to multiply the existing bids by 1.20.  Then, you simply upload the entire sheet and AdWords will apply your changes.

Here’s a quick look at how it works:

On the same page where you’ve always been able to download keyword reports, click the box that says “Editable.”  This will download a special, editable version of the keyword performance report that you can modify and then upload.  In order to get the hang of this feature, check out the keyword bulk uploads article in the AdWords Help Center for some basic instructions.

Once you’ve finished making your edits, you are ready to save your changes and upload your report.  You can save your changes in CSV, TSV and Excel formats.  To upload this file, click “Reports and uploads” on the left navigation window, and then click the “Uploads” tab.

It’s important to know that once a bulk upload is submitted, there is no way to cancel or automatically reverse your changes.  Therefore, we recommend that you always save a copy of your original downloaded report in case you ever need to see what your settings were before you made changes and submitted a bulk upload.  You can also view your change history and reverse any unintended changes manually.

For more information on keyword bulk uploads, visit the keyword bulk uploads article or discuss in our AdWords Community.

Posted by Jon Diorio, Senior Product Manager, AdWords

Succeeding with enhanced campaigns

About two months ago, we launched enhanced campaigns to help you more simply and smartly manage your campaigns in today’s multi-device world. Recently we’ve been hearing some great stories about ways that advertisers have improved their performance and saved time with enhanced campaigns. While every advertiser’s business and potential gains may be unique, here are a few examples that highlight actual strategies and results achieved so far with enhanced campaigns. 

e-Travel has improved CTR and conversion rate with context-optimized ads, mobile app downloads, and upgraded sitelinks.

e-Travel is one of the leading online travel agents in Greece, Cyprus and Russia, and has presence in other markets in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. After upgrading to enhanced campaigns, Managing Director Nikos Goulis reported, “We can now show our ads according to people's context like location or time of day [... and] count app downloads as conversions in AdWords reports, which is very important for us because so many of our new customer leads come from our mobile app. These features along with the upgraded sitelinks helped us boost clickthrough rate by 43% and conversion rate by 88%."

---

American Apparel has doubled its volume of phone leads with enhanced campaigns, improving return on ad spend.

American Apparel, a multi-channel fashion retailer, upgraded all its campaigns to take advantage of new features like upgraded call extensions and sitelinks. By extending call extensions across all device types, and counting calls over 10 seconds in duration as a conversion, American Apparel has seen their conversion volume from phone calls double. Return on spend has improved significantly. 

---

A luxury online shopping brand has grown sales by 20% by tapping into secondary markets, thanks to the ease of optimizing bids in multiple locations in a single enhanced campaign.

A luxury online shopping destination had been focusing its search engine marketing efforts on optimizing bids in location-specific campaigns aimed at primary markets like New York City and Los Angeles. Since upgrading to enhanced campaigns, the company started using location bid adjustments to test and expand its AdWords presence in new geographies, including affluent areas of Delaware, South Carolina, and New Mexico. Already, the company has grown total conversion volume by 20% while achieving target return on ad spend. 

---

Hotwire’s SEM analysts are saving 5-10 hours per week with more efficient campaign management.

Hotwire.com, a leading discount travel website upgraded all of their paid search accounts to Enhanced Campaigns, both domestic and international, within the first month. Clay Schulenburg, Director of Search Engine Marketing at Hotwire shared that upgrading to Enhanced Campaigns really helped his team manage AdWords more efficiently because all the key adjustments for location, time of day and device are now managed in a single campaign: “Time saved per SEM analyst is somewhere in the range of 5 – 10 hours per work week that can now be reallocated to either new strategic SEM initiatives or more granular account/campaign optimizations.”
Get started in 3 steps 
If you’re among the 95% of advertisers whose legacy campaigns currently run across all device types, you can upgrade in just three steps to take advantage of enhanced campaigns: 

1. Click the “Get started” button when you log into the AdWords interface
2. Select a mobile bid adjustment
3. Click “Complete upgrade”

Here's a short video illustration. 

If you have questions about upgrading to enhanced campaigns, please contact AdWords support, ask for advice from your fellow advertisers in our AdWords community, or check out our comprehensive upgrade guide (.pdf download). 

Share your results and feedback 
Once you’ve started using enhanced campaigns, please let us know about your results and any suggested improvements using our feedback form. 

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Group Product Manager

4 days left for Google Shopping promotional credit

In December, we announced a promotional credit for all eligible merchants in Australia, Japan, Brazil, Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, France, Netherlands, U.K., Germany and Switzerland who create a Product Listing Ad campaign promoting all the products in their Merchant Center account before April 12, 2013. This credit is designed to help international merchants transition to Google Shopping's new commercial model, built on Product Listing Ads. This transition will be complete in June 2013.

With only 4 days left until the April 12th deadline, we encourage merchants in the countries below to learn more about the promotional credit and apply before it’s too late!

$100 AUD Australia	R$120 Brazil	1000 Kč Czech Republic
€ 75 France	€ 75 Germany	€ 75 Italy
7,500 JPY Japan	€ 75 Netherlands	€ 75 Spain
100 CHF Switzerland	￡75 United Kingdom

In addition to the promotional credit above, eligible merchants with a Product Listing Ad campaign promoting all products will receive a monthly credit for 10% of their total Product Listing Ad spend up to to June 30, 2013.

To get help setting up your Product Listing Ads, please visit this quick guide, email us through this form or call one of our specialists at your country’s number below.

Google Shopping global phone support:
Australia - 1800 087 124
Brazil - 0800 727 8947
Czech Republic - 800 500 353
France - 805 540 727
Germany - 0800 5894933
Italy - 800930819
Netherlands - 0800 2500026
Spain - 900 814 539
Switzerland - 0800 002539
United Kingdom - 0800 169 0711

You can also join  Google Engage for Agencies on April 10, 9:00AM PST/12:00PM EST to learn how you can help your clients use this beautifully simple experience to better promote their products and attract more customers.

We'll share an overview of Google Shopping, insights into new features, and optimization tips and best practices.

RSVP for the Hangout on Air here.

Posted by Erica Sievert, Product Marketing Manager, Google Shopping

Ad group mobile bid adjustments available soon in enhanced campaigns

People are constantly connected and moving between devices to communicate, shop and stay entertained. Their context – like location, time of day, and device – is an increasingly important signal for advertisers. In February, we launched enhanced campaigns to help you reach people with ads based on their context as well as their intent, all from a single campaign. In just a few short months since launch, we are already hearing enhanced campaigns success stories from businesses of all sizes. 

Ad group mobile bid adjustments
To provide more control and precision over bids in an enhanced campaign, advertisers will soon be able to set a mobile bid adjustment at the ad group level. This functionality will be available to all advertisers in mid-May. We think this may be useful if you’ve been operating large scale campaigns and found that your optimal bids for some keywords would require significantly different mobile bid adjustments within an enhanced campaign.

Example: A nationwide retail chain currently uses mobile-only campaigns to optimize bids for several hundred thousand keywords. They’ve found that 95% of their keywords in mobile-only campaigns have bids that are 10% lower than in the equivalent desktop campaigns. The remaining 5% of their keywords have very different bid ratios (ranging from 40% lower to 100% higher) based on differences in performance and competition on mobile and desktop. By using the new ad group bid adjustments for mobile, this retailer can better maintain their desired bids and ROI on different devices as they upgrade to enhanced campaigns.

The majority of advertisers will still see the most value in using the existing campaign level bid adjustments in enhanced campaigns, so we recommend that you upgrade now to access all the new features. Upgrading takes an easy 3 steps for most advertisers [video]:

1. Click the “Get started” button when you log into adwords.google.com
2. Select a mobile bid adjustment
3. Click “Complete upgrade”

Upcoming dates
We’ll share more details and tips here on the AdWords blog when ad group level mobile bid adjustments are generally available in mid-May. API access for this feature will be available in early May and announced on the developer blog.

We will begin automatically upgrading all AdWords campaigns to enhanced campaigns starting on July 22, 2013. 

Feedback
Thank you for your feedback on enhanced campaigns. Please continue to share your thoughts with us using this form so we can continue to improve the product.

Posted by Bhanu Narasimhan, Group Product Manager

A healthy advertising ecosystem

Online advertising helps to support the services we all enjoy and enables businesses to grow.  The vast majority of our online publishers are terrific partners we love working with.  But, as always in life, there are a few bad apples.

So, we invest a lot of time and effort in keeping them off our systems. 

1. Policies

Our publisher partners are required to adhere to strict policies, which we regularly update to deal with new issues.  These policies cover how how ads are displayed and how end users view them, as well as what site content is prohibited.  We also work to make sure publishers are treated fairly and know the rules.

2. Automated Technology

Our main line of defense against these bad apples is technology — which enables us to monitor the clicks and impressions we receive, and also to scan both our partners’ sites and downloadable software. These tools operate at the click- and page-levels, so we can pick up bad content and bad practices (like artificial traffic) at a very granular level. 

3. Human Review

We have hundreds of employees around the world who review web pages, test our partners’ downloadable software, and prevent ads from showing on sites that violate our policies. Depending on the severity and persistence of the offense, they may stop ad serving on that page or site, or across the publisher’s entire account.

4.  Advertiser Transparency and Controls

We believe that marketers should have transparency into where their ads are being placed, and control over where their ads appear.  Our clients regularly get reports that show what their ads looked like in the context of a given page. We offer tools such as DoubleClick Ad Verification and Active View, which enable marketers to check whether their ad was served and seen. We also offer granular control, such as the ability to buy various pre-vetted packages of inventory on high-quality sites, and tools to exclude particular sites or categories.  This transparency gives advertisers the power to have their ads appear on the websites that are most appropriate for them. 

Trends and recent developments

The numbers show we continue to make good headway.  We have doubled the rate at which we review publisher inventory — enabling us to deal with bad sites and practices more quickly.  In 2012, we found 17% fewer bad actors than in the previous year — even though we increased enforcement and tightened our policies.

Advertisers are recognizing that we offer a high-quality environment for their ads; this helps to support great experiences for everyone.

To illustrate one ongoing effort, I want to highlight our recent changes in the area of downloadable software.

Downloadable software, such as toolbars that operate in your browser, offers a wide variety of services to users.  Our Software Principles have long guided our approach.

In recent years there have been increased reports of software applications that:

• Unexpectedly change your default browser, search engine or homepage;
• Clutter up your browser and screen, or interfere with your web browsing experience — for example unexpectedly inserting ads into your browser;
• Make it very difficult to remove downloaded software from your device or to restore your defaults;
• Load additional unwanted software applications to your device; and
• Access personal information or infect your machine with malware.

For example, in the last 90 days, we have seen over 100,000 complaints about software that changed users’ browser settings or about toolbars that they couldn’t uninstall.  We want to avoid these kinds of bad user experiences.  So we recently updatedour policies and enforcement to ensure that software accessing our services complies with the following rules.  It must:

• Be pre-approved by Google;
• Offer one-click, complete uninstall;
• Provide clear, full disclosure and transparency to people about what is being installed and what changes are being made to their devices;
• Install itself on only one browser per download;
• Be bundled with and distributed by only reputable parties who comply with our policies.

It’s simple — we don’t want our programs or services abused in ways that can harm users. We believe that our ongoing efforts to fight abuse will ensure our advertising ecosystem continues to work in the best interests of users, publishers and advertisers.

Posted by Vinay Rao, Ad Traffic & Publisher Quality Operations