Google has come up with a new metric for their display ads, called “The Mouse Over Rate”. The Mouse over rate is defined by Google in the below snapshot which we have captured from one of our running accounts, where we could find a column of this new metric.

In a way, the mouse over rate is a measure of how interesting your ad is to the viewers.

Though this cannot be a sure shot means to derive at a conclusion regarding the quality of your ad (as people do not track where they are looking with their mouse), it would certainly give some insight into how people react to your ads. The ads which they find more interesting, & might want to click have the likelihood of showing a higher mouseover rate.

It may or may not have a value because it isn’t a perfect window into the searcher’s mind. However, we cannot even consider it useless as it might give advertisers some useful data about the interestingness of their ads.

The decision to retain or scrap this metric, will have to await certain case studies from advertisers who do or do not derive benefits from it in future. We shall have to wait & watch!

The Adwords team has decided to stop investing its time & resources in the Print Ads domain for the simple reason that not many advertisers have benefited from this product. Google came up with the concept of running Print Ads for its US based customers in November, 2006 with the aim of diversifying its gamut of advertising platforms further. However, not many customers tried it. Out of the ones who did, just a handful could derive some benefit.

As per Google official blog, below is what the team has to say about doing away with this product:

“It is clear that the current Print Ads product is not the right solution, so we are freeing up those resources to try to come up with new and innovative online solutions that will have a meaningful impact for users, advertisers and publishers

They clarified that they will stop offering Print Ads from February 28. For advertisers who have already booked their campaigns, Google will place their ads through March 31, 2009.

After making it mandatory to have same top level domains in display & destination URL, Google is now about to ensure that advertisers do not use more than one domain name in ad copies of the same ad group.

Advertisers today are allowed to have an ad group with multiple domain names in each ad which include multiple display and destination URLs.

An example of the same as per PPC Hero is mentioned below:

Ad Group: Shoes

Ad text #1:
Title: Lot’s of shoes
Description: Nike shoes for sale.
Display URL: www.nike.com/womens
Destination URL: www.nike.com

Ad text #2:
Title: Lot’s of shoes
Description: Puma shoes for sale.
Display URL: www.puma.com/womens
Destination URL: www.puma.com

However, starting February 24th, 2009, Google Adwords will re-review all ads and disapprove any ads that contain multiple domain names like in the above example.

This is what Google has to say about the new change:

Starting February 24, 2009 each ad group in an AdWords account will only be allowed to contain ads that have the same display URL. It won’t be possible to create ads that have two or more different display URLs within a single ad group

Google also says that they would apply this policy to existing ad groups that contain multiple display URLs starting around April, 2009. So they are encouraging advertisers to update any accounts they might have that contain such ad groups and separate the ads into their own ad groups as soon as possible.

Since 2006, AdWords local business ads have been connecting your business with local customers. Today, Google Adwords team is excited to announce some new features for local business ads, making it faster and easier for potential customers to find your business.

Before the details, please note that while local business ads can appear in several countries and on a number of web properties, the changes described here will only affect local business ads that appear on Google Maps.

Info Window Features

Beginning today, your ad’s information window in Google Maps will feature new interactive links that are designed to connect users to your business quickly. The info window is the window that opens when a user clicks on an organic search listing or a sponsored result on Google Maps.

Previously, a click on your ad’s info window could only take the user to your website. Now, users will be able to interact with the info window to get the information they’re looking for about your business, right away. The new links include “Get Directions,” “Street View” (where available), and “Save to My Maps.” Shortly after these links will be implemented, it will also have a “Send” link, allowing the user to send your business info to their phone or email. Users will still be able to click through to your site if they wish — the info window simply offers additional free functionality.

Reporting Capabilities

Google says that they also heard the requests for a local business ad report so, starting in a few weeks, a new interaction report for local business ads will be available through your account’s Report Center. The report will help you accurately assess your return on investment with local business ads by detailing how many users opened your info window and clicked on each of the new interactive links.

Often, Maps users are looking for different information than Search users. The new interactive links and the interaction reports should not only help customers connect with you faster but should also help you understand how to better target Maps users versus Search users.

With these changes, Google says they are excited about providing users with more information about your business and providing you, their advertisers, with more features for your ads. If you’re not already advertising with local business ads, this might be a good time to experiment. If you’re interested in learning more about this format, check out the AdWords Help Center’s section on local business ads.

Source URL : http://adwords.blogspot.com/

Comment : As always, Google has provide this feature which will really help not only the advertiser, but the user searching for their offerings. Moreover, getting Local Business Ads Reports will reflect your return on the local business ad spend.

Google has announced a new service that will be adding magazines to its Google Book Search service. As posted by Dave Foulser, Software Engineer on Officaial Google Blog:

We’re announcing an initiative to help bring more magazine archives and current magazines online, partnering with publishers to begin digitizing millions of articles from titles as diverse as New York Magazine, Popular Mechanics, and Ebony.

This is another step by Google to capture information market. Various rare archives would be made available to public which were not available before thus opening new dimension for the users.

Google have now updated their ad policy for hard alcohol and liquer targeting the U.S. The UK will follow suit in the coming weeks.

Google had already quietly changed their policy at the end of October allowing PPC ads for beer. However according to the Inside Adwords blog the new rules are for promotion and branding rather than direct sale which are still not allowed -

“To comply with the updated hard alcohol and liqueurs policy, advertisers must promote the information about hard alcohol and liqueurs that their websites contain, such as recipes and brand messages. Ads that directly promote the sale of hard alcohol and liqueurs are still not permissible through our program. In contrast, advertisements for beer may directly promote its sale.“

The news comes after Google firstly removed their keyword trademark policy in the UK and then permitted advertising for online gambling in the UK, Italy, France and Spain.

Google have finally given advertisers the ability to assign different levels of access to users of their Adwords accounts. The new Roles and Permissions Beta being introduced across all countries and languages, allows advertisers to offer three levels of access to users - Administrative, Standard, and Reports. Google explain the Beta in the below paragraph :

Roles and Permissions Beta

We are excited to test a new Beta Feature for the Google AdWords Program that helps you manage your AdWords account security and privacy.(this update is a little old - it has now passed the pilot & is a permanent feature).With this test, advertisers and agencies have the ability to assign three different user access levels for each AdWords account - Administrative, standard, and reports. These new access levels increase security by allowing you to assign or remove the level of access from anyone you want. Also, these new access levels maintain privacy by ensuring recipients get email appropriate to the user’s access level.

* Reports Access is the most important feature for agencies like us as it grants ‘read-only’ access of an account to us. As we generally require an account’s access to analyze it & make a proposal, this would help us in case a prospective client is skeptical about we making changes in his account before he hands over the management to us.

This is a positive move by Google, although it’s not before time. Yahoo, who have traditionally been the slower of the two engines to offer innovative features to advertisers, included this feature in their new Panama interface. Google have been quite slow in offering a feature that many advertisers, particularly agencies whose clients often request access to their accounts, feel is vital to the smooth running of a campaign (and harmony between clients / account managers!!). Still, Adwords now has read-only account access, and this can only be a good thing.

One can follow this link to read more:

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=70619

Google Adwords has changed the way the Campaign Summary and Ad Group Summary pages in an account present statistics. This is in order to give additional level of detail into a campaign’s performance. Previously, these pages divided statistics into two categories: search, which included Google and search partners, and the content network.

Now, they show one set of statistics for Google and another set aggregating search partner performance. Search partners include AOL, Ask.com, and many other search sites around the web. One can view ad group or campaign performance at a summary level, or broken down by different combinations of Google, their search partners, and their content network. Additionally, separate Google and aggregate search partner statistics will soon be available in the Report Center.

Earlier this year, Google Suggest finally made it to the Google home page. The feature suggests queries as you begin typing in the search box. Now Google is testing providing links to web sites, direct answers and even ads that appear within the Google Suggest list.

Not everyone will see these changes. Google’s showing them to a small, randomly selected group of people in the US. The experiment might end at any time and not necessarily become a permanent feature.

The most dramatic change is the inclusion of AdWords ads in this box. Here are some of the ones that have been spotted:
In the one above, typing the characters [new...] gave an ad for Newsweek. On continueing on, doing [new york t...], rather than seeing a link to the New York Times as with the example shown earlier, this ad from the New York Times itself was shown.
And here’s yet another ad that appeared on typing [up...]:

For one thing, it’s way too easy for people to click on an ad to reach a web site where Google should be sending them to for free. So, this is yet another means the giant has worked out to pocket dollars !

This update relates to images being included in a normal PPC ad displayed on SERPs. Till date, we used to have the option of running image/banner PPC ads on Google’s Content Network. However, this is something different Google has come up with.

Some AdWords ads on Google are now showing associated images — and getting much larger in the space they take up — through a “Show products from” Plus Box implementation that some are seeing now when searching at Google.

For instance, trying to search for bluenile, brings up a Blue Nile ad. Under the usual ad title and description is a plus symbol (called a Plus Box), followed by the words, “Show products from Blue Nile for bluenile.” If one clicks on the box, it opens up three product listings from Blue Nile, each listing with an associated image.

The most striking part of this ad is that how much room it takes up. Below is how the ad looks when it is closed:

When one clicks to open up the product results, the whole visible part of the page is consumed with this one ad. Here is an image of just the ad, that measures about 370 pixels tall :

The ad also shows on the right hand side. This implementation is better for some because it does not change how the natural/free results are shown but rather only pushes down other ads on the right hand side.

Images associated with search ads are not too surprising. We have seen implementations of video ads in Adwords several times. It just seems that Google is willing to try anything now when it comes to ads, from video to images to multimedia and who knows what.

Source URL : http://searchengineland.com/google-adwords-now-with-images-15242

Comments: Though this would give a good reason for advertisers to go in for sponsored ads, the downside it could have is that such ads on the right hand side might shift other sponsored ads on the 2nd or subsequent pages. This could increase the competitiveness of keywords further as advertisers will have to bid higher to sustain their ads on the first page even after such ads are opened up & viewed. This could be a killer in this sense!