Analytics Expert Blog

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, CEO Anil Valbh 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%.”

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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.

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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.

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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 are 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

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

Here are a few details to know when taking part in the beta:

• Make sure the eCPMs that are set for other ad networks are accurate.
• We don’t guarantee the final value of the eCPM, since we don’t know if a user will click on the ad.

Developers who use the beta have the option of setting just one network line item in their mediation stack which uses the eCPM floor. Or, they can have two network line items, one that uses the eCPM floor and one without, so they can continue to fill impressions at their current fill rate. Setting the eCPM floor at a very high value will likely lead to a decrease in the fill rate.

Find setup instructions in the AdMob Help Center here under the article titled ‘Allocate traffic by eCPM’.

Constant connectivity through mobile has created five new paths to purchase that start on customers’ smartphones. As a marketer, it is key that you account for these new types of conversions and understand the full return on investment you’re getting from your mobile efforts. That’s why earlier this week we introduced The Full Value of Mobile, an initiative to help marketers understand mobile’s impact on offline and online conversions.

We look forward to seeing you tomorrow!

Posted by: Julie Pottier, Product Marketing Manager, Google Mobile Ads

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 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.

A typical consumer today uses multiple devices to surf the web and interact in many ways with your business. For most large businesses, already swimming in many sources of data, it’s an enormous challenge, but also an incredible opportunity. 

• Understanding how customers interact with your businesses across many devices and touch-points, 
• Insights into the performance of your mobile apps, 
• Improvements of lead generation and ROI by incorporating offline and online interactions so you can understand which channels drive the best results,
• Improved latency on your site by reducing client-side demands.

SES New York is coming up next week, and we hope you’ll join us in the Big Apple!

During day 1 of SES New York, we’ll be on the expo floor with a custom-built Google classroom. Join us for a full day of learning about the latest solutions from AdWords, Mobile, Google Display Network, and DoubleClick Search to help you win in a constantly connected world.

Where: SES NY Expo Hall, 5th Floor Marriott Marquee
When: Day 1 – Tuesday, March 26th
Sessions:

• 10:30-11:30am Reaching customers whenever, wherever, across any device. Surojit Chatterjee, Lead Product Manager for enhanced campaigns
• 11:45-12:45pm Understanding the Full Value of Mobile. Brendon Kraham, Director, Global Mobile Solutions
• 2:00-3:00pm Engaging with your audience in a multi-screen world. Speaker TBD
• 3:30-4:30pm Using DoubleClick Search to manage campaigns across channels and devices. Anthony Chavez, Product Manager for DoubleClick Search

Don’t have a pass yet? Don’t worry! Expo Only passes are free and get you access to our Google classroom. You can also use the code NYGOOGLE which is redeemable for up to $700.00 off a full conference pass!

Posted by: Derrick Djang, Product Marketing Manager, AdWords

Last month we announced enhanced campaigns to help advertisers more simply and scalably reach their customers in a multi-screen world.  Today, we’ll look more closely at how enhanced campaigns work with your display campaigns.

Why Enhanced Campaigns For Display
In this constantly connected world, our customers are accessing information across multiple devices, and might look at 10 different sources – online reviews, newspaper and magazine articles, recommendations from friends and more – before making a purchase. Display advertising captures these signals and is an important part of connecting with consumers in this multi-screen world.  But determining the best way to reach the right person with the right ad is more complex than ever. Enhanced campaigns for display help you reach people with the right ads, based on people’s context like their location, time of day and device type — all from a single campaign.

Key Features
Search and display use very different signals. In search, we use keywords to capture users’ intent. For instance, a travel booking website knows that a user searching for ‘Rome Vacation Packages’ is looking for a vacation in Rome. In Display campaigns, advertisers use a variety of other signals to reach their target customers with the right ad. In this example, a travel website may use:

• Interest Categories: to reach customers interested in “Rome”
• Demographics: to reach people 35-44, who have historically spent 3x the average
• Topic Targeting: to reach people browsing travel websites
• Remarketing: to reach customers who booked a vacation with them last year

In today’s constantly connected world, someone’s intent and the actions they’re looking to take may differ depending on their context, signals such as time of day, location and device:

• Time of day: Travelers typically book between 9am and 6pm
• Location: “People in the US” who may convert more often than people in Italy
• Device: Mobile users tend to browse on their smartphones, then book on their desktop

With enhanced campaigns, instead of having to create multiple campaigns, this travel website can easily manage all of this in one place. In a single campaign they can adjust bids across these various signals to reach the right people with the right ads.

Learn More
More tips on how to use enhanced campaigns for display are available in the AdWords Help Center. To learn more on how you can take advantage of Enhanced Campaigns for Display, register for our upcoming webinar this Thursday March 21st, at 10am PST.

Posted by: Christian Oestlien, Product Management Director for the Google Display Network

In a multi-screen world, it’s increasingly important for advertisers to show relevant ads based on a user’s context: location, time of day, and device. We launched enhanced campaigns to help advertisers take full advantage of user context, maximizing the effectiveness of their ad campaigns.

We’ve been listening to your feedback, and in the next few weeks we’ll be launching new ValueTrack features for advertisers using keyword level URLs.  These features will help advertisers achieve specific 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. Enabling measurement of the effectiveness of campaigns by device.

What’s new

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. We’re also changing the existing ValueTrack parameter {ifmobile:[value]}.  This parameter will now insert the specified value into the URL only if the user clicks from a mobile device.

In this post, we will discuss using the ifmobile and ifnotmobile parameters to direct users to a device-specific landing page.  We will also discuss performance tracking by device, and how the ifmobile and ifnotmobile parameters differ from the existing device parameter.

Example 1: Redirecting users to device-specific landing pages

Responsive web design is often a good fit for advertisers who provide device-optimized experiences to their users. If you must specify different landing pages depending on device, you have two options. If the landing page varies by creative, you can simply create mobile-optimized ads by setting the device preference to “Mobile.”  If the device-specific landing page varies for each keyword, then you can use the ifmobile and ifnotmobile parameters in the keyword-level destination URL.  It is important to remember that if you are using the ifmobile parameter today, it will no longer insert a value into the URL for tablet clicks.  The new parameter ifnotmobile will now insert a value into the URL for tablet and desktop/laptop.

Let’s say you want to send mobile users to “m.example.com/widgets,” and desktop and tablet users to “www.example.com/widgets” for the keyword “widgets.”  In this scenario you could set the destination URL for this keyword to:

{ifmobile:m.example.com/widgets}{ifnotmobile:www.example.com/widgets}

Example 2: Tracking performance by device

If you want to track performance by device, the existing device parameter will work for most cases.  Using device inserts an “m”, “t”, or “c” into the destination URL, depending on whether the user clicked from a mobile device, tablet, or desktop/laptop computer. If your tracking system requires different internal ids for the same keyword on different devices, then you may need to use the ifmobile and ifnotmobile parameters.

For the keyword “widgets”, let’s say you have assigned an internal keyword id of “df32” for desktops and tablets and “df33” for mobile devices. You can set the keyword-level destination URL to:

www.example.com/widgets?kwid={ifnotmobile:df32}{ifmobile:df33}

Then, if the user clicks from a desktop or tablet, the landing page is:

www.example.com/widgets?kwid=df32

and for a mobile click:

www.example.com/widgets?kwid=df33

Success in action

Advertisers are upgrading to enhanced campaigns and seeing strong results.  VivaStreet in France, the 4th largest free classified website in the world, upgraded all of their campaigns within the two weeks after launch.  When they upgraded, they increased their mobile bid adjustment to 125% and saw overall conversions increase by 34%.  After seeing the positive results, VivaStreet went on to increase their mobile bid adjustment to 140%.  By using ValueTrack parameters, you can also direct users to device-specific content and measure the effect it has on conversions.

We appreciate the feedback we have received on enhanced campaigns and encourage you to continue helping us understand how to make a great product.  Please join us on March 21st at 10:00AM PST (1:00PM EST) for the latest in our enhanced campaigns webinar series, EC 205, covering enhanced campaigns and the Google Display Network.

Posted by: Karen Yao, Senior Product Manager, AdWords