Google Audio Ads: Questions & Answers

Since the announcement of our relationship with Clear Channel Radio, we've been getting lots of questions from advertisers about our new beta offering. Here's Daniel Helmhold, from the Google™ Audio Ads team, to answer some of your questions:

Greetings! As a member of the Audio Ads support team, I spend a large part of my day answering advertisers' questions regarding Google Audio Ads. I thought it would be helpful to share with you answers to some of the more common inquiries.

1. What kind of radio adverting is this?
   This is traditional radio advertising, the kind of radio that our grandparents, parents and we ourselves have known throughout our lives. While you may hear ‘Google Audio Ads’ and immediately think it was created for use with online media such as internet radio or podcasting, Google Audio Ads are actually designed to facilitate advertising on traditional radio stations such as those you may listen to in the car, in the gym or anywhere else on your AM/FM radio. Our product aims to make the long standing process of buying radio advertising as simple and efficient as possible, while allowing you to manage it from your existing Google AdWords account.
   
   
2. Is this an auction like AdWords?
   For advertisers familiar with the traditional AdWords auction, fear not - one of the two options for booking a Google Audio Ads campaign uses an auction system very similar to that currently used in your AdWords campaigns. Additionally, for advertisers interested in securing ad space in advance, campaigns can also be booked using a Reserve Buy. This option allows advertisers to make advanced bookings of specific inventory so they can ensure their ads will play when and where they want them to.
   
   
3. Is this remnant inventory?
   No, Google Audio Ads is not remnant inventory. Remnant inventory (or leftover inventory) refers to unbooked advertising time that is sold by radio stations at the last minute to ensure all ad spots are filled. Google Audio Ads offers premium inventory throughout the entire week, including prime day parts such as morning and afternoon drive time. By offering inventory at all times and offering a Reserve Buy, Google Audio Ads ensures that you are able to effectively target who you want, when you want.
   
   
4. What if I don't have an ad or need help?
   We've created the Google Ad Creation Marketplace, accessible from within your AdWords account, to connect you with professionals who can create affordable ads customized for your radio campaign. This feature is especially helpful for first time radio advertisers. The Ad Creation Specialists in our marketplace are radio industry professionals who've been individually selected to work with advertisers who are new to radio. Through the marketplace, you're able to establish a direct relationship with these specialists to ensure they generate ads which combine your specifications with their experience and expertise to create the most effective audio ad for your budget.
   
   
5. I already use Google AdWords, why should I use Google Audio Ads as well?
   Combining your existing AdWords online campaigns with traditional radio advertising through Google Audio Ads can be more effective in increasing brand awareness than running online ads alone. In addition, radio and the Internet combined can reach over 83% of people aged 18-54, ensuring that your business is gaining the exposure needed to strengthen the value of its brand and drive users to seek out your products or services. You can learn more about the benefits of radio advertising here. [Source: The Radio Ad Effectiveness Lab (RAEL), 2007]

To sign up for the beta, please visit the Google Audio Ads site. It takes about one week to process your request, but once Audio Ads has been enabled for your AdWords account, you can start experimenting with building a campaign or find a specialist to create an ad.

We hope this helped shed a little more light on Google Audio Ads. To review additional frequently asked questions, please visit the Google Audio Ads Help Center.

Posted by Judy, Inside AdWords crew

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Protecting your security online

An incident this week served as an important reminder about what we as an online community need to do to ensure our security.

On Tuesday, April 24th, Google identified and canceled AdWords accounts displaying ads that re-directed users to malicious sites. These sites attempted to install malware onto users’ computers. This is an issue we’ve taken very seriously and will continue to monitor. We are also evaluating our systems to ensure that the appropriate measures are in place to block future attempts.

Google is committed to ensuring the safety and security of our users and our advertisers. We actively work to detect and remove sites that serve malware in both our ad network and in our search results. We have manual and automated processes in place to detect and enforce these policies, and products such as Google Toolbar that actively seek out and alert users when they access malicious or suspicious sites. We feel a responsibility to protect the security and safety of our users and advertisers, and recognize that secure products are instrumental in maintaining your trust.

We strongly encourage all of our users and advertisers to keep up-to-date antivirus protection on their computers and regularly run system scans. As a general rule of thumb, individuals should also take care to create complex passwords, change them frequently, and only use them on known or trusted (non-public) computers. Antivirus software (such as Norton Security Scan and Spyware Doctor) and instructions for use are available for free as part of Google Pack.

For more information on Google’s security philosophy, and how to report possible issues, please visit our security and product safety page. You can also find more information on our software principles here.

Posted by Judy, Inside AdWords crew

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AdWords Optimization Tips: Part 5 - Beyond Keyword Basics

Over the past few months, Stephanie Lim from the Optimization team has been offering tips on optimizing your AdWords account. In her most recent post about keyword optimization, Stephanie offered many insights on how to build and expand your keyword lists. In this installment, she addresses other strategies that can help you refine and target the keywords in your AdWords account for even more effective performance.

Keyword Length

Research indicates that the majority of users' keyword searches are between one and five words long and that most users search with multiple-word phrases rather than single-word phrases. (Source: OneStat.com) While it is important to include a variety of keywords to ensure both quality and quantity of traffic, keep in mind that single-word, general keywords such as 'car' or 'mortgages' will be very high traffic but may not be targeted enough, while seven-word keywords, like 'find ways to rejuvenate unhealthy looking skin' may be so specific that no one ever searches on them.

The keywords that perform best for you will depend on your specific products and services and how your customers search for them. People may search for mortgage refinancing with just a few words but may search for engagement rings with a longer search query. For example, a keyword targeting serious jewelry shoppers could be as detailed as 'three stone princess cut platinum diamond engagement ring'. As always, it's important to keep an open mind about keyword length and adjust your strategy based on your campaign results.

Negative Keywords

Negative keywords, one of the four types of AdWords keyword matching options, can help target your ads to potential customers and increase your ROI and conversion rates. Unlike broad, exact, and phrase match keywords, negative keywords are keywords on which you do not want your ads to run. You can use negative keywords at either the ad group or the campaign level. When constructing a negative keywords list, try to be as exhaustive as possible, but be careful that none of your negative keywords overlap with your broad, phrase, or exact match keywords, as they will cause your ad not to show. For instance, an advertiser for a financial institution that provides loans but does not offer actual rate quotes may want to include 'rate' and 'rates' as negative keywords. However, if he wanted to include 'fixed rate mortgage' in his keyword list, he should not include 'rate' among his campaign negative keywords list.

Just as you can use the Keyword Tool to find keyword variations and modifiers for your 'positive' keywords list, you can also use it to find keyword variations and modifiers for your negative keywords list. You may also want to try searching on some core keywords in Google Search and looking at the first page or two of organic search results to find possible irrelevant themes for which you would not want your ad to show.

You may want to employ negative keywords to filter out certain searches for a number of reasons:

• Filter out different products or services: A real estate agent who is focused on selling homes may wish to include not only the negative keywords of 'rent' and 'renting,' but also use the Keyword Tool to find variations such as 'rents,' 'rental' and 'rentals.'
• Filter out irrelevant searches: An advertiser selling herbal remedies may discover that the name of a particular remedy also happens to be the name of a musical group. In such a case, it would be wise to include negative keywords such as: 'music,' 'band,' 'concert,' 'ticket,' 'lyric,' 'album,' 'mp3,' and the pluralized versions of these words.
  
• Filter for serious buyers: A seller of digital cameras may want to filter out research-oriented keywords such as: 'review,' 'rate,' 'rating,' 'compare,' 'comparing,' 'comparison,' and the pluralized versions of these words.
  

Deleting Keywords

Most of the strategies we have discussed involve expanding keyword lists. If you are optimizing an existing account however, it may be equally valuable to delete keywords from your account, starting with identifying keywords that are performing poorly. Depending on what your advertising goals are, you may want to apply specific strategies to deleting keywords.

If you are CTR focused, you may want to identify and delete keywords with high impression counts but low numbers of clickthroughs. These keywords may be too general or not relevant enough and are garnering many impressions but very few clicks. If you are conversion focused, you may want to identify and delete keywords that garner high costs but very few conversions. These keywords may be too specific and accrue very few impressions over a long period of time because very few people are searching on them.

You can identify extremely specific or general keywords by running a report and either modifying or deleting these keywords.

As we have emphasized before, optimization is a dynamic process that involves testing, evaluating, and iterating -- adjusting your strategies to best fit your advertising goals and the changing demands of the market. We hope our tips on keyword optimization have given you a good start. And please keep an eye out for the next optimization topic we will cover -- ad text.

Posted by Feng, Inside AdWords crew

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AdWords Seminars: more cities added

Several weeks ago, we told you about the expansion of the AdWords Seminars program across the U.S.. Today, we're back with details on the seminar schedule from now through July 2007. Over the next three months, AdWords Seminar leaders will be teaching advertisers how to get more out of their AdWords accounts in the following cities: Phoenix (this coming Tuesday!), St. Louis, Orlando, Chicago, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Houston, Boston, Columbus, and Vancouver, Canada. You will find details for each of these sessions on the AdWords Seminars site. In the upcoming week, we'll also be adding seminar dates for Dallas and Toronto, Canada.

If you don't see your city listed, or would like to be informed by email the next time an AdWords Seminars visits a city near you, please be sure to fill out this form .

Posted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

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Introducing preferred cost bidding

Today, we are introducing a new bidding option called preferred cost bidding -- a feature designed to help you save time while achieving your advertising cost goals more consistently. Instead of setting a maximum cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) bid, you can set a preferred CPC or CPM bid that represents the average price you want to pay.

For example, suppose you want to pay an average CPC of $0.50. Currently, you need to regularly monitor and adjust your maximum CPC bids to keep your costs at or around $0.50 per click. Using preferred cost bidding, you can simply tell us that you want your average CPC to be $0.50, and we'll manage your bids to reach that goal.

This feature will be released to all advertisers over the next few days. You'll find it on the Edit Campaign Settings page. For more information on preferred cost bidding, please refer to the FAQs.

Posted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

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On the Radio: more on Audio Ads

In recent months, we've heard several interesting updates from the Google™ Audio Ads team, who have shared news regarding the development and beta testing of their product.

One of the things that keeps that team up at night is the reach -- or the number of different audience members listening to the radio -- available to advertisers through Google Audio Ads. Needless to say, the Audio Ads folks are very interested in ensuring that our advertisers are able to reach as many of those potential customers as possible.

That's why we're happy to share news of an important strategic relationship with Clear Channel Radio, the largest radio station group owner in the U.S. Here's Andrew Chang, from the Audio Ads team to fill us in on what this will mean for AdWords advertisers:

This relationship with Clear Channel Radio makes a portion of premium and guaranteed radio inventory available to advertisers in Google Audio Ads. These Clear Channel Radio stations, when combined with our existing radio station partners, give AdWords advertisers access to radio inventory that includes 'Top 10' stations in 24 of the top 25 U.S. markets -- providing coverage (i.e. people can tune into the station) to over 99% of the U.S. population aged 12 and older. (Source: ACT1 / Arbitron)

We are accepting additional advertisers to try Audio Ads each week, and would once again like to invite you to be considered as a beta tester. If you're uncertain whether Audio Ads would be a good fit for your business, and would like to learn more, please check out a new 10 minute demo that we've just added on our product site. We think it will help you make an informed decision.

Please note that, because of the large number of stations involved and the technical integrations with each station, it will take some time for us to fully connect Google Audio Ads with all of Clear Channel Radio's stations. Still, Audio Ads beta testers will have the exciting opportunity of hearing their ads on an ever-increasing number of radio stations, across markets, in addition to the hundreds available today.

If you think Audio Ads could be a good match for your business, do keep an eye out for future updates on Inside AdWords. As always, we'll keep you posted with the latest details.

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

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Google acquires DoubleClick

Today, we announced that we are acquiring DoubleClick, a company that has been working with buyers and sellers of Internet ads to help them plan, serve and measure their Internet campaigns since 1996. DoubleClick has two flagship products: DART for Advertisers is the platform that ad agencies use to traffic, serve and measure their online display campaigns; and DART for Publishers is the platform that publishers on the Internet use to manage their ad inventory.

We believe our combined efforts will give you more places to target your ads and more ways to help your online campaigns perform better. In the coming weeks, we'll continue to update you with more information about this acquisition here on the Inside AdWords blog. In the meantime, you can learn more at the Official Google Blog and in our press release.

Update: Corrected names of DoubleClick products -- DART for Advertisers; DART for Publishers

Posted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

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Improve your account performance with expert help

Recently, we've featured a series of posts on AdWords optimization tips for advertisers looking to tune-up their campaign on their own. For those of you who might prefer to receive customized help from one of our AdWords Optimization Specialists, we'd like to tell you about how you can request a free campaign optimization for your account.

An optimization is a complimentary service that we offer to help our advertisers get the most of out of their AdWords accounts. When you request an optimization, please begin by telling us what results you'd like to achieve, such as better ROI, more clickthroughs to your website, lower cost-per-clicks, or even a more organized account structure that's easier to manage. Our experts will then review your website, campaign structure, ad text, and keywords, and contact you with customized recommendations to help you reach your goals. Once you receive our recommendations, you'll have complete control over which ones to implement.

If you're interested in having a Specialist review your campaign, simply fill out this request form and our team will offer you recommendations within 10 business days. This service is currently available for advertisers in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. Our Optimization team thrives on challenge, so don't hesitate to give us your most difficult campaigns!

Posted by Feng, Inside AdWords crew

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AdWords system maintenance on April 14

Here's a quick heads up from our tech team:

On Saturday, April 14th, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT due to scheduled system maintenance. While you won't be able to log into your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Posted Judy, Inside AdWords crew

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A new case study on botnet-based click fraud

In the last year, you've probably read a lot about how Google not only manages the issue of click fraud, but also protects our advertisers against the many ways in which criminals attempt click fraud -- including clicking on ads themselves, hiring low-cost workers to click on ads all day, and "high-tech" approaches such as botnets (i.e. a collection of software robots, or bots, which run autonomously).

As part of our continuing efforts to provide greater transparency, Google's Click Quality and Security Teams have published a paper (available as a PDF) entitled "The Anatomy of Clickbot.A" for the HotBots 2007 workshop which took place earlier today in Boston, MA. Neil Daswani, a software engineer and contributing author of "The Anatomy of Clickbot.A," is here to tell us more:

Clickbot.A is the name of a botnet that Google's Click Quality and Security Teams investigated last year. Using our findings, we published "The Anatomy of Clickbot.A" - a detailed case study on botnet-based click fraud for the benefit of the technical research community.

Clickbot.A is an example of a botnet operator attempting a click fraud attack against syndicated search engines. Google was able to identify clicks on our advertisers' ads that exhibited Clickbot.A-like patterns and flagged them as invalid. While Clickbot.A is a specific example of a botnet application that conducted click fraud, botnets can also be used for keylogging, distributed denial of service (DDoS), and other types of attacks.

Due to the potential for misuse and the inherent loss of control that can result from having a machine participate in such a botnet, we hope "The Anatomy of Clickbot.A" will help facilitate further collaboration between search engines, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), anti-virus vendors, and other parties on the Internet in managing botnets and similar threats.

You can find the PDF version of "The Anatomy of Clickbot.A" in its entirety here. For more information on how Google detects and fights click fraud, visit the Invalid Clicks section of the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Judy, Inside AdWords crew

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AdWords Optimization Tips: Part 4 - Keyword Basics

In previous Optimization Tips posts, Stephanie Lim from the Optimization team shared her tips on assessing your industry and audience, knowing your website and goals, and setting up an AdWords account with a structure that is appropriate to your business and its needs. Today, in the first of two keyword related posts, she will discuss how to use keywords to target your audience and how to stay competitive with others who are advertising in the same space. Specifically, she'll cover general keyword advice and formatting, core keywords, and keyword variations and modifiers.

General Keyword Advice and Formatting

Before we discuss how to create and expand keyword lists, it's important to make a few points about keyword formatting.

• Keywords are not case-sensitive, so 'flights to new york city' is recognized as the same keyword as 'flights to New York City.'
• You do not have to include punctuation such as periods, commas, and hyphens. 'Eye-glasses' are the same as 'eye glasses,' but different from 'eyeglasses,' so do include two separate keywords when appropriate -- one with the space, and one without.
• Wherever appropriate, be sure to include both singular and plural variations of your keywords. Though the 'broad matching' feature in the Keyword Tool will generate other keywords to include potential synonyms, you can ensure that you are not missing out on relevant traffic by including both singular and plural variations.
• You may want to avoid including duplicate keywords across ad groups and campaigns in the same account. Your ad will only be shown once for a given search, and these duplicate keywords will be competing with each other to appear.

Once you've understood the basics of keywords, you can begin to think about your keywords in terms of what we will refer to as 'core keywords' and 'keyword variations and modifiers.'

Core Keywords

Core keywords are the foundational themes of your advertising campaign, the most basic keyword phrases that describe your products or services. Depending on your overall advertising objectives, you may or may not want to include these core keywords in your keyword list; but these core keywords can be helpful when you first begin to think about how to advertise what the product or service you are offering.

The account structure you outline will help you identify these basic keyword themes. You can also use the Keyword Tool with the 'Use synonyms' boxed checked to get a broader range of ideas, or browse other sites to see how similar businesses describe their products. Keep in mind that customers may use different terms to find your product or service than the terms you would normally use. An advertiser selling nutrition bars may think of his product as 'protein bars' for body builders, when a large portion of his customers are busy professionals looking for 'meal replacement bars.'

It's important to note that core keywords will often be very general, high-traffic, and highly competitive keywords. As we've mentioned in an earlier post about knowing your advertising goals, if you are focused on conversions or return-on-investment, you may choose not to run on such general keywords, but only on the more specific variations of those core keywords.

Keyword Variations and Modifiers

Once you've identified some core keywords, you can start expanding on variations of those core keywords. You can use the Keyword Tool, with the 'Use synonyms' box unchecked, to find keyword variations that will help you better understand how customers may search for your products or services. You may find that many of these variations are related to your business in some way and may wish to include these in your keyword list. An advertiser promoting laser skin treatment may find that variations on 'wrinkle,' such as 'wrinkle cream' or 'anti wrinkle products' are relevant and should be included. However, the advertiser will not want to include unrelated variations such as 'wrinkle free pants'. Instead, the advertiser may choose to include terms like 'pants' and 'shirts' in his negative keyword list. (Stay tuned for the second half of this topic for more on negative keywords.)

If core keywords are the basic themes that help you build your keyword lists, keyword modifiers will help you home in on a particular audience. If an advertiser is trying to reach the appropriate audience for a designer handbag line, for instance, he may find using general keywords like 'handbag' or 'purse' alone ineffective. Combining these core keywords with modifiers such as 'luxury,' 'high end,' and 'authentic' will help target an audience that is willing to pay top dollar for a high quality handbag, rather than a bargain hunter who is looking for a lower-end one.

Modifying keywords can also help you achieve the goals you defined for your advertising campaign. An advertiser selling electronics, for instance, may be focused more on sales and conversions rather than branding. Her goal, then, is to distinguish shoppers who are closer to buying from those in the research stage of the sale cycle. One way to do this is to use conversion-oriented modifiers such as: 'buy,' 'buying,' 'order,' 'ordering,' etc. She can also include specific brand names, product names, and even model numbers. Users searching on highly specific terms know exactly what they are looking for, and could be more likely to convert for you.

We hope these tips on keywords will help you understand how to use keywords and their variations to strategize, target specific audiences, and achieve your advertising goals. Keep an eye out for the second half of our tips on keywords, in which we will discuss keyword length, negative keywords, and deleting keywords. We wish you the best success on your keyword expansions!

Posted by Feng, Inside AdWords crew

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Reach and Frequency reporting now available

If you advertise using site-targeted campaigns, you know they're a great way to choose who sees your ads since you select the sites on which your ads appear. Now, with the Reach and Frequency Performance report, you can see how many users saw your site-targeted ad and how frequently they viewed them over a period of time.

The report's data is calculated by estimating the frequency of your ads from a sample group and then applying it to a full set of impressions to determine their estimated reach. Additionally, the report includes a new metric we call cost-per-head. The cost-per-head is the average cost for you to reach an individual user.

To run a Reach and Frequency Performance report, just head over to the Create Report page in the Report Center. One thing to note is that the report is currently only available for site-targeted campaigns created after January 1, 2007.

Posted by Judy, Inside AdWords crew

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Two changes to how top ads are displayed

Our product teams are constantly making adjustments to improve both the user and advertiser experience. As many of you may have already noticed, we've recently made two changes to the top AdWords ads that appear above search results on Google.com. Daniel Dulitz, Product Manager for the Google.com ads user interface, is here to tell us more:

Over the past few years, the sponsored links above the search results have been displayed in a box with a blue background that a user can click on in order to reach an advertiser's landing page. We've now made two changes to the way that we display these ads to improve the experience of our users and advertisers.

First, we thought it was time for a new look: after months of testing, we decided to switch the background color of the top ads from blue to yellow. Second, we've modified what counts as a click in this box to be consistent with what counts as a click for the ads on the right hand side. Instead of clicking anywhere in the box, users now need to click on the link in the top line of an ad in order to be taken to an advertiser's site. Together, these changes help decrease the likelihood that a user will unintentionally click on an ad, while making our highest quality ads more visible.

You may have already noticed these changes when Daniel and his team were testing the waters -- but starting today, you'll begin to see the new versions more often as we release these changes to all Google.com traffic over the next few days. If you have any feedback regarding this new display, please let us know so we can pass your comments on to Daniel and his team.

Posted by Judy, Inside AdWords crew

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Latest AdWords Retail newsletter

Now that the winter holidays and Valentine's Day are behind us, many retailers are gearing up for their next important sales season. Jennie Cohen from the AdWords Retail team is here to let you know about a useful resource:

We'd like to invite advertisers to check out the most recent issue of the AdWords Retail Newsletter. In this issue, you'll find a number of tips to get your AdWords campaigns ready for Mother's Day and Father's Day and a helpful recap of the winter holidays. According to the National Retail Federation, Mother's Day ties with Valentine's Day as the second-largest spending holiday in the U.S. We hope our newsletter will help you make the most of it!

To read previous issues of the AdWords Retail Newsletter, you can visit the News & Groups page of the Retail Knowledge Center.

Posted by Feng, Inside AdWords crew

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Website Optimizer now available to all

Last October, we put out the call for beta testers for Google's new website testing application, Website Optimizer. Today, Peter Harbison, Product Marketing Manager for Website Optimizer is here with some news many of you have been eagerly anticipating:

Since October, we've worked closely with our beta testers to improve the application and today, we're happy to offer the latest version to everyone who signs up through the Website Optimizer homepage. If you're not quite ready to sign up right away, don't worry -- Website Optimizer will be available in all AdWords accounts within the next few weeks.

If you're unfamiliar with Website Optimizer, it is a free multivariate testing application built into AdWords that helps online marketers increase visitor conversion rates and overall visitor satisfaction by enabling them to continually test different combinations of site content. Why guess what site content you think will work best, when Website Optimizer can save you time by telling you what worked best based on visitor data collected from experiments on your site?

We mentioned earlier that we've been working closely with our beta testers so we thought we'd share with you what they've been telling us:

'Multivariate testing used to be only accessible to the big internet companies. Now anyone can do it! Just throw your marketing ideas into the pot... and Google Website Optimizer picks the winners.' - Ben Jesson & Dr Karl Blanks, Founders of Conversion-Rate-Experts.com

'We've learned more than just what works on the Calyx Flowers site. We've learned a testing approach that is applicable to all our web properties. Website Optimizer provides the empirical results I need to make solid marketing decisions going forward.' - Irene Steiner, VP of Marketing for Calyx Flowers

If you'd like to review additional comments from our beta testers, you'll find them here. Or, if you prefer a more in-depth look at how Website Optimizer has worked for other advertisers, feel free to check out a few case studies.

To sign up or learn more about Website Optimizer, please visit the Website Optimizer homepage.

Posted by Trevor, Inside AdWords crew

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