Post August 15 Reg E Strategy Provides Opportunity

For the past several months, every bank I visit has been working tirelessly to educate and encourage customers to opt-in for OD coverage in response to Reg E. Multi-channel communications, including direct mail, email, outbound phone, statement inserts, online banners and in-branch literature have all been focused on helping customers understand the potential impact of the regulation while hopefully limiting the lost fee revenue associated with the regulation.

While the regulation took effect on July 1 for new customers opening accounts, banks realize that the real impact will be felt after August 15, when transactions are denied and overdraft fees can no longer be collected from current customers who have not opted-in. So what are your post August 15 strategies for customers who have not opted-in?

First of all, realize that despite your best efforts to reach out to customers using all available channels, the majority of customers at your bank who have not opted-in will not understand the real life impact of a denied transaction at an ATM or merchant until it occurs. This will lead to a noticeable increase in customer complaints that will require proactive communication and the preparation of all customer facing employees.

When a transaction is declined, speed of follow-up communication will be key. If you have a valid email address of the customer impacted, it is best to use this channel to explain why the denial occurred and how it can be avoided in the future. An electronic link to your opt-in jump page will be a requisite. In addition, many banks will be reaching out to the impacted household with a phone call and even a letter with an opt-in form (or link) included. Other options to cover overdrafts should be communicated through these channels as well.

All front line employees also need to be prepared for irate customers who have had transactions denied. This preparation should at a minimum include:

• 
  
  A reinforcement of the basics of Regulation E
• 
  
  A series of anticipated complaints and questions that they will confront
• 
  
  Samples of all customer communications that were used during your opt-in campaign
• 
  
  Tools to facilitate the opting-in of the customer

In communicating with a complaining customer, it would be helpful if employees have access to approximate dates the customer may have received the communication and whether the customer opted-out (or if there was simply no response to the communication). There should also be additional FAQ brochures available to assist the customer in either changing their opt-in status or better understanding the impact of opting-out.

A customer who has a transaction denied poses a significant threat of attrition to your bank. Alternatively, this customer also provides a great opportunity to more fully explain that the regulation is universal with all banks and that there are alternatives going forward. This full disclosure can result in a 'saved' customer as well as significant retained fee income or even a cross-sell opportunity.

I would love to hear from you regarding your bank's post August 15 communication strategy. Are you going to use multiple channels to communicate? Is any bank going to have a strategy for households that reach a low balance threshold other than an overdraft?

Conversion Champion Challenge: Get those entries in!

In early June, we announced the Conversion Champion Challenge, a contest challenging you to use free AdWords conversion products to increase your ROI, then submit a mini-case study telling us about your experience. The grand prize winner will receive an AdWords voucher as well as an all-expenses paid trip to Google Mountain View or Google Zurich, where the Google Conversions team will meet with you to review your account and provide customized recommendations.

For those of you who took us up on the challenge, final entries are due tomorrow, July 31 and can be submitted here. So get those entries in soon!

Posted by Jason Shafton, Inside AdWords crew

The Hispanic Population Numbers Surprising Marketers Again!

We are all waiting for the Census numbers. According to the official schedule we will not know the official number of US Hispanics until April of 2011. Nevertheless I took the time to look at some sources of data to figure out what the growth of US Latinos is likely to be in the next few years.

First I consulted the Geoscape projections for all the US population and Hispanics in 2015. These projections are based on Census data. The projection is that the total population of the US will be close to 323 million people and that of US Hispanics will of about 56 million people then. Well, I was expecting something like that. Then I looked at the Geoscape total population projection for 2010, which I found to be very close to the current count of the US population according to the http://www.census.gov population clock. Both sources said that there are about 310 million people in the US now. I looked at the latest Census data again and found that the US Census Bureau projection for Hispanics in 2009 was 48.4 million. Geoscape projection for 2010 is of close to 50 million people.

I started doing some simple arithmetic and rounded up numbers for simplicity. Let's assume there are 50 million Hispanics in the US now, and there will be 56 million in 2015. The difference is 6 million. Then I substracted 310 million from 323 million for the entire population in 2015. That means that the total projected growth of the US population by 2015 will of about 13 million. If these numbers are anywhere close to accurate, the growth of the US Hispanic population will account for almost half of the total growth of the population of the United States.

These numbers left me thinking about how important Hispanics are to US marketers. A cultural group that accounts for half the growth of the population should make an important part of strategic planning. This is a cultural group that can be addressed by connecting via common denominators in a common culture. Numbers can have some interesting implications.

Google Display Network series: Your toolbox for creative display ads

In last week’s installment of our Google Display Network series, we showed how DoubleClick Ad Planner can help you effectively plan your display ad campaigns and reach the right audience. Today we’ll talk about creating compelling display ads and the options available on the Google Display Network (GDN). Let’s look at each category of options you have today:

Great impact through Rich Media and Video. Rich media and video formats engage users at a whole new level, drawing them in and encouraging interactivity in a way not possible with other ad formats.

Example of a great rich media ad run by Volvo and the agencies Euro RSCG New York and Media Contacts:

(Click here to view ad)

If you use rich media and video formats to engage your customers, here’s what we offer through our DoubleClick Rich Media and Video solutions:

• Choice of a variety of rich Media formats, based on your campaign objective.
• Access to DoubleClick Studio, a free rich media production and workflow tool.
• Analyze data on more than 100 unique interactions in every creative unit with Audience Interaction Metrics.
• Integration with DoubleClick for Advertisers, a robust ad management, serving, and reporting solution that simplifies trafficking, reporting and billing of your Rich Media campaigns.
• If you’re already working with another rich media vendor, we have many approved vendors we work with.

Build display ads in minutes. Creating display ads can be resource-intensive, and for many marketers, it may not be in the budget. So we introduced Display Ad Builder in 2008, a free tool for creating professional-looking display ads in minutes. Here’s what you can do with Display Ad Builder:

• Create image, video (InVideo, Click-To-Play), Flash and rich media (including expandable) ads using hundreds of fully customizable templates or templates tailored for specific industries.
• Stay true to your brand with your own images, text, videos and logos.
• Automatically convert the ads you design into most standard IAB ad sizes.

(click for full size image)

Display Ad Builder is also great for testing different messages and creative elements, or to get insights for more complex display campaigns managed by your in-house team or agency.

Stand out by blending in. Text ads are a versatile ad format that are easy to create and edit. They’re especially effective as an extension of your existing search campaigns. Simply opt your search campaign into the GDN and your ads will show to users as they surf relevant web pages via our contextual targeting technology. Text ads also complement display campaigns by engaging users who ignore display ads (i.e. banner blindness). Further, they give your campaign wider reach since not every publisher may accept display ads, or may only accept a limited number of display ad formats and sizes on their site.

(click for full size image)

Whether your goal is to drive awareness or generate immediate sales, the robust creative toolbox available on the Google Display Network can help. We’ll see you next week when we talk about how you can reach your audience with the targeting technologies available on the GDN.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Marketing Manager, Google Display Network

Introducing a new ad format for mobile devices: location extensions with map features

Earlier this year we launched click-to-call location extensions for search ads appearing on mobile devices with full Internet browsers. Today we’re excited to announce more ways location extensions can be used to connect with local users on the go, whether they’re using their phones to browse the mobile web or engage with their favorite mobile apps.

Many mobile consumers use maps to locate a business and get directions on their phones. With AdWords location extensions, you can now feature your business location and phone number on an expandable map ad that can appear on mobile websites and apps across the Google Display Network. The ad appears as a banner text ad with a business icon that expands to show your business location on a Google map along with your ad creative, click-to-call phone number and option to get directions. Since ads can be served based on the user’s location, a potential customer will see the phone number and map of the store location that’s nearest to them. By providing mobile consumers more options to connect with your business, you can drive more traffic to your store, visits to your website and calls to your business.

(click to view full size image)

This new ad format is available on mobile devices with full Internet browsers and allows you to expand your advertising campaigns to reach highly engaged mobile users with relevant local information as they use their favorite apps or websites. Advertising with location extensions on mobile devices is also a great value because you’re only charged when a user clicks to call your business or clicks to visit your website. You’re not charged when users click to expand the map or get directions. The cost of a click to call your business is the same as the cost of a click to visit your website.

To get started using location extensions with the expandable map feature for mobile apps and websites, follow these three easy steps within your AdWords account:

1. Ensure your campaigns are opted into the Google Display Network.

(click to view full size image)

2. Set up location extensions and add your business phone number and address. Be sure to also upload your business logo or icon, or choose from the set of icons available. Your ad will display a default icon if none is chosen.

(click to view full size image)

3. Check that you've chosen to show your ads on iPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers.

(click to view full size image)

That’s it! You don’t need any special programming skills to create the map, we’ll automatically generate it for you based on your business location.

We hope that you’ll take advantage of this new ad format and the power of location extensions to create mobile-specific, locally relevant ads to reach mobile users on the go!

Posted by Dai Pham, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team

Bank 2.0 is a Bank Marketer Must Read

There are not many books (or anything else for that matter) that I find compelling enough to pre-order. Sure, there may have been a Cleveland Indians or Cavaliers championship jersey I jumped the gun on, but I have never stood in line for an Apple product or pre-ordered a movie to be the first on my block to own it.

I made an exception a few weeks back with the book Bank 2.0 - How Customer Behavior and Technology Will Change the Future of Financial Services by Brett King not only because I was intrigued by the title, but because I have been following Brett's Banking4Tomorrow blog for a couple months and I find his take on the changes in our industry both enlightening and spot on. King is also an international speaker and is an industry advisor on Huffington Post (Business News).

This evening, Brett King’s book Bank 2.0 begins US distribution with a NYC launch (I actually ordered one from overseas a couple weeks ago and several more for some of my colleagues and clients from a U.S. distributor). While I am definitely not done with the close to 400 page book, it is a great business read for anyone involved in marketing, channels, distribution, innovation or the product area in a financial institution.

The book begins by discussing the significant changes that have occurred and will occur in customer behavior as a result of the advent of the Internet and smart phone and the expectations associated with these channel shifts. King discusses the impact of the shift in control from the bank to the customer and the choices that have resulted and will result in the future. These changes are illustrated in his book's video presentation.

While there is a bit of an international bias in the book due to Brett's background, his observations are all valid and well documented with statistics even though the banks and consumers in the states may be a bit behind their counterparts overseas. He illustrates the three stages of consumer behavioral disruption as shown below.

Part 2 of the book is all about the channels that customers use and the ways banks will need to reconfigure these channels in the future to win. Individual chapters focus on the branches, call centers, online banking/web, mobile and even ATMs. What I found both surprising and different about this section compared to many business books is that King is not shy about providing both opinions on how to address the changes that are occurring (with facts to support his recommendations) as well as a vast number of real life examples of both the good and bad in the industry. There is definitely a continuous ROI focus on all of his thoughts based on his vast experience in the industry. 

In the third section of the book, there is a look into the future of banking. Brett digs much deeper into the customer experience and channel impact of the changes that have already taken place and what bankers can expect in the future. As can be expected, there are discussions around social networking, new technologies, the future of payments and what the banks role may be in the P2P world as well as a good analysis of the impact on bank sales, marketing and advertising.

Throughout the book, King challenges banks with regard to their response to the massive customer changes in the past decade. In fact, he has even developed an inforgraphic around the lack of true innovation banks have done and whether the innovation has been done in the areas that matter.

This book is both thought provoking and fact-based, and is definitely a must-read for any banker (or industry supplier) who wants to stay current with the massive changes in our industry and wants a glimpse as to what is right around the corner.

AdWords Policy Change Log to Announce Policy Changes

In order to help you stay up to date with changes to our AdWords policies, we’ve launched the AdWords Policy Change Log. This new site makes it easier to stay informed about upcoming AdWords policy changes by posting a short summary, including the affected region, for each policy change going into effect.

While the AdWords Policy Change log will have the most comprehensive listing of changes to AdWords policies, if we anticipate that your account will be directly affected by an upcoming policy change, we’ll still email you a service announcement, as necessary, to make sure you’re aware of the change.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Introducing the Google Mobile Ads Blog

As many of you know, we started the Go Mobile! series of posts on the Inside AdWords blog to give you an easy way to keep up with the world of mobile advertising.

The mobile industry has really evolved since the start of the series: mobile is becoming a core part of many marketing campaigns and publishers are developing mobile-specific content across the web and in applications across mobile operating systems. We’re even more excited about the prospects for driving further innovation in mobile now that AdMob has joined the Google Mobile Ads team.

With this in mind, we created a dedicated blog for those of you specifically interested in mobile advertising and mobile monetization. The Google Mobile Ads Blog is a place where advertisers and publishers can find the latest news, product updates, tips, and account management resources from the Google Mobile Ads team.

Of course we'll continue to post major Google Mobile Ads announcements on the Inside AdWords blog, but be sure to visit the official Google Mobile Ads Blog for all of your mobile-specific updates.

Mobile has come a long way in a short period of time and we can’t wait to see what’s next.

Posted by Anna Khesed, Product Marketing Manager, Google AdMob

Can Banks Find Ways to Make Deposits Work Harder?

As was mentioned in yesterday's American Banker article, In Cash Glut, Banks Try to Discourage New Deposits, many banks are currently in a somewhat disadvantageous position of having an abundance of deposits at a time of depressed loan demand. With loan to deposit ratios dropping from a median of more than 105% to less than 95% in less than two years for the 15 largest banks, the excess liquidity is costing banks money.

This inability to earn adequate interest on these deposits, combined with lower overdraft fees and the potential for lower interchange income has banks that I am working with scurrying for ways to make up the revenue shortfall.

Some banks are reconfiguring their checking account pricing either by adding fees for enhanced services such as privacy protection or rewards program participation or are reducing costs by offering new streamlined products that have limited service structures (like Bank of America's new online checking test).

And there is no end in sight to the inflow of deposits, as the confidence level of both consumers and businesses is weak enough to encourage a heavier savings mentality and with the equity markets too risky for many investors. Many banks are seeing inflows even with historically low interest rates being paid on deposits.

While loan demand will eventually pick up and banks will most likely find ways to recoup some of the lost fee income through new products or pricing structures, the best long-term solution is to change from a transaction support mentality to a customer relationship perspective. This holistic view encourages the acquisition of accounts with a greater long term potential, a stronger emphasis on engagement of these accounts to increase fee income and reduce attrition, and a focused effort on increasing share of wallet through needs based cross-selling.

At a time when margins are razor this, loan/deposit ratios are anemic and traditional fee income is being attacked by new regulations, it is imperative that we maximize the value of relationships at every step of the customer lifecycle. Historically, too much revenue has been 'left on the table' and we have been accepting of people who open new accounts simply for a premium (gamers), customers with dormant or low activity accounts, and single service customers. Going forward, we need to refocus our efforts on increasing our value proposition at the same time we reduce delivery costs and maximize relationship value.

Has your bank stopped their deposit acquisition efforts? Has there been an increased focus on the engagement and cross-sell processes at your bank? I would love to hear about your bank's strategy for dealing with the abundance of deposits that currently exists.

Updates to how our partners work with advertisers

In order to provide the best online marketing experience, we want to make sure that you understand how each dollar you invest in AdWords is performing.

Today, we’re announcing some upcoming changes to the way our third party partners provide reports and information about AdWords to their clients. If you work with another company to manage your AdWords campaigns, you should be able to find out how much of your advertising budget (cost) was spent on AdWords, how many times your ads appeared (impressions) and how many times users clicked on your ads (clicks). We’ll include these requirements in our legal terms and agreements starting in February 2011.

Almost all of our third party partners are already providing advertisers with this basic information today, but for those who will need to make changes to their systems, we’re offering six months so that there’s plenty of time to prepare to meet these new requirements. We’ll be working with our partners and sharing more details about the requirements in the coming months.

To learn more about these changes, you can visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Jason Shafton, Inside AdWords crew

Responding to the Self-Directed Bank Customer

According to a soon to be published Accenture survey of senior banking executives from major banks across the world, there has been a significant power shift between banks and their customers that has resulted a lowering of customer profitability levels. The research entitled, Customer 2012: Time for a New Contract Between Banks and Their Customers?, found that nearly half of the executives have seen their average customer profitability decline by 5-15 percent since the beginning of the financial crisis.

According to Noel Gordon, global managing director of Accenture's banking practice and co-author of the research, “Consumers have emerged more confident in making financial decisions for themselves, more skeptical of their bank brands, more price-conscious and more willing to move away from institutions that provide poor service.
For the banks, traditional profit-recovery strategies – rate and fee increases, conventional cross-selling and organic growth – will not readily fix the problem because broader customer expectations and service demands have risen in the wake of the financial crisis.”

The vast majority of bank executives surveyed (83 percent) reported increased demand for “direct” services – online, telephone, and mobile – since the financial crisis, and nearly two-thirds (63 percent) believe that meeting those demands will be a major challenge for their companies in the next three years. What is interesting about the research is that nearly half of the bankers also cited that customers want more personalized services.

These traditionally conflicting customer desires of alternative channel access and increased personalization can only be addressed through the collection and application of enhanced customer insight including data from third parties, payment behavior, channel use tracking, customer preferences and survey data integrated across all lines of business and available to front-line employees. This insight needs to drive more sophisticated segmentation and intelligent interactions with the goal to 'pull customers' as opposed to 'pushing product'.

Accenture believes there are six strategies banks can use to foster stronger relationships:

• Identify and understand customer behaviors and trends to continually evolve marketing and distribution strategy.
• Provide interactive, targeted customer service while decreasing costs.
• Leverage IT to provide personalized interactions.
• Apply retailization tactics to foster experience-based loyalty.
• Use transformative efficiency to reduce unit cost for customers, partners and suppliers.
• Support the rapid evolution of business and operating models.

With decreased loyalty, increased price sensitivity and online capabilities that make switching financial providers easier than ever, only banks that can fully leverage customer data and enhanced analytics to deliver needs-based solutions will be in a position to reverse recent customer profitability declines.

How is your bank positioning itself to respond to the self-directed customer? What strategies are you using to capture and use transactional, behavioral and social insights? Are your marketing communication strategies changing? I would love to hear from you.

Newly Acquired Bank Customers Need to be Onboarded

Regulators closed six more banks last Friday, bringing the failure total this year to more than 100. As each of these banks failed, or as others have been acquired through mergers, healthier banks are expanding their geographies and gaining new customers along the way trying to benefit from efficiencies and economies of scale. Unfortunately, too much focus on cost savings and a lack of focus on the newly acquired customers can have unintended consequences.

This was found in a study done earlier this year by the Deloitte Center for Banking Solutions entitled, Beyond Day One: Minimizing Customer Attrition During Bank Mergers and Acquisitions. According to the study, 17 percent of respondents who had gone through a merger or acquisition had switched at least one of their accounts to another institution after their bank was acquired, while an additional 31 percent said they were at least somewhat likely to switch over the next year. The study further found that that those who had switched had more financial products and more investable assets than those who had not, making the potential revenue impact of lost relationships even greater.

The challenge for the acquiring bank is that the recently acquired customer is more aware than ever of service flaws, system inefficiencies, changes in account structure, fees and even competitive offers that are in abundance after a merger or acquisition is announced. This awareness occurs quickly after a merger is announced as well. In fact, almost two-thirds of the Deloitte survey respondents who had switched an account to another bank did so within the first month after the deal was announced.

Much like I recommend to clients that they implement a multi-channel, multi-touch onboarding process with customers that open new accounts, the same process should be done with customers who are acquired in a merger or acquisition. Not only can onboarding a new household reduce customer attrition, an acquiring bank also has an opportunity to drive relationship engagement and cross-sales by introducing the bank’s brand and taking a proactive interest in the newly acquired customer's needs.

In their special report entitled, Bank Consolidation Through the Eyes of the Customer, J.D. Power found that constant, proactive communication is the key to success. In fact, only a small percentage of customers believed they received too much communication, yet they are quick to react when they don't receive enough communication. That is why banks should implement an integrated communication process that not only includes what is required by the regulators, but has additional components that deal with what your bank stands for, the best products based on customer account ownership and behavior, and FAQs related to the acquisition.

As J.D. Power states, "While every bank diligently fulfills regulatory notification requirements when it merges, that bare minimum isn’t sufficient for maintaining customer satisfaction. In today’s environment of uncertainty and fear, customers need to feel that they are informed every step of the way during a merger so there are no surprises. Banks that focus on the communications aspect of the customer satisfaction equation will reap the dividends of customer and deposit growth".

If you have recently acquired or merged with another financial organization, tell me how you have gone beyond the basic regulatory communication and the results you have achieved.

Tracking clicks from mobile devices

The ValueTrack parameter has long allowed you to track the clicks that you get via search and the Google Display Network separately. We know that many of you would like to be able to see the clicks you get from mobile ads separately as well. That’s why we’re pleased to introduce Mobile ValueTrack, a new way for you to do just that.

Mobile ValueTrack works the same way it does for search and content: by automatically adding a tag to your website URL. To use this feature, you just need to add the Mobile ValueTrack parameter: {ifmobile:NewTagName} to the “Destination URL” field when you create a text ad.

There are two ways to take advantage of this feature:

Automatic re-directs to mobile optimized sites
By adding the MobileTrack parameter to your landing page URL, you can automatically redirect people using mobile devices to a mobile-optimized version of your site. In the example below, you can create a mobile site at www.travelingdog.net/mobile and ensure that mobile clicks get re-directed to this site by adding the Mobile ValueTrack parameter, {ifmobile:mobile}. Note that non-Google-ads traffic to your site won’t have the ValueTrack parameter, so it’s still a good idea to send all users to your mobile-optimized site.

click to view full size

Third party tracking tags
Additionally, If you use third party tracking to identify how many of your visitors clicked through to your site from your AdWords ads, you can use Mobile ValueTrack to track clicks coming from mobile devices. Just insert a tag into your destination URL. Let’s say that you’re Travel Dog Company and want to distinguish clicks coming from mobile devices. By adding the Mobile ValueTrack parameter to your landing page URL, www.travelingdog.net?type={ifmobile:hello}, the tag “hello” will be inserted into the destination URL allowing you to see which clicks are coming from mobile devices.

Mobile ValueTrack works for both WAP mobile ads and regular text and image ads on iPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers. Keep in mind that any change that you make to your URLs will need to be reviewed and approved before they go live.  You can also get more stats for mobile devices with full browsers by selecting “Segment By: Device” within Campaign Management.

We hope that this feature will allow you to better track your mobile performance and ensure that users get the best experience on mobile.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

Google Display Network series: Effectively planning your online display campaigns

Cross posted from the Google Agency Ad Solutions Blog

We recently introduced a new umbrella name for our online display media offerings, the Google Display Network (GDN), to make our advertising solutions clear. You also heard from us about the investments we’re making in display advertising and the promise it holds to drive great marketing results. In this series of posts, we’ll cover what you can do today on the GDN.

We’ve been busy working to improve every step of your display campaigns: from media planning and developing creative to choosing targeting, measuring results and improving your campaign. Each week over the next month, we’ll talk about the solutions available to you in each area, starting with campaign planning.

With millions of sites on the web, how do you find the exact people who’ll respond to your message? We introduced DoubleClick Ad Planner to help. It’s a free research and media planning tool to help identify web sites most likely to attract your audience. The insights provided by Ad Planner continue to get deeper and more robust. Let’s take a look:

Research sites by those you know your audience visits, or by defining your audience based on what you know about them. This can include geography, demographics, interests, sites they visit or keywords they search. Recently, we released more features to help you research more effectively:

• Pre-defined audiences: select from commonly used audiences like Baby Boomers to save time or if you don’t know how to define your audience.
• Ad Planner 1000: quickly reference and target the web’s largest sites.
• Subdomain and ad placementdata: do more granular media planning.
• Lists: create lists of your favorite sites and placements for future use.

Manage your site results by applying a variety of site ranking methods:

• See sites that are most likely to attract your target audience, as well as larger, mass-media sites to ensure campaign scale. Or, see a balance between the two.
• Filter to see just sites in the Google Display Network, or all sites that accept advertising.
• Apply other filters to see sites accepting certain ad formats, sites in specific categories like Video Games or sites with a particular domain suffix like .edu.

View robust site details. For each site, you can see detailed information and audience visitation patterns. The Site Overview shows general site information like a site thumbnail, description and site categories. Traffic Statistics and Demographics show unique visitor metrics and demographic information. Online Activity shows what other sites your audience visits or keywords they search. Finally, Ad Specifications show placement type, impressions/day and accepted ad formats and sizes. Most recently, we introduced audience interest information, showing the aggregate interests of a site’s visitors. It complements the demographic data available in Ad Planner, providing a deeper view into a site’s audience.

Build, analyze and export your media plan. After researching, you can select sites and add them to your media plan. As you do, you’ll see unique users, reach, and page view statistics. You can then analyze your media plan by reviewing its aggregate demographic statistics. When you’re ready, you can export sites directly into your AdWords account or into CSV format to import into MediaVisor.

Beyond robust features like these, Ad Planner provides true scale for your campaigns. With it, you can go beyond the most common sites, tapping into millions of others in over 40 countries and 20 languages. Web site owners can also claim, manage and share their data on Ad Planner, providing another level of up-to-date and accurate information for your media planning.

You can stay on top of new enhancements in our Ad Planner release notes. Stay tuned for our next post about developing effective ads and the solutions available on the Google Display Network.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Marketing Manager, Google Display Network

Summer Excuses?

Google Analytics workshops and seminars are happening everywhere this summer! If you've had excuses in the past, there's now no excuse not to take a day of training to become an expert and get a leg up. Chances are there's one happening near you when you're available -- just take a look at the Google Analytics seminars offered on the Seminars For Success portal. These are one day seminars, either beginner or advanced, where you'll ramp up into a high proficiency or fine tune your knowledge with fantastic instructors. Over the next 3 months, they are happening in:

• Berkeley, CA
• Austin, TX
• Washington, DC
• Los Angeles, CA
• San Diego, CA
• Boston, MA
• Dallas, TX

And internationally, you can attend seminars in Glasgow, Manchester, London, Melbourne or Sydney. They're inexpensive, and you'll get a lot of bang for your buck, including hands on instruction, an AdWords credit, educational materials and some more good stuff. Take a look and register!

And then, after the Summer ends, there will be more opportunities to learn about Google Analytics, and here's one we want to highlight. The SMX East conference is a fantastic place to bone up on the latest in the world of SEM, SEO, social media marketing, analytics and more. In partnership with SMX East, Feras Alhlou, Principal Marketing Consultant @ E-Nor (a Google Analytics Certified Partner) will be conducting a full day workshop on Google Analytics at the conference. When registering at this page, you'll see a workshops option, including Google Analytics - that's the one you want.

Whether you are a marketer or a webmaster, this workshop will help you help give you more clarity and help you take the right action. I've attended Feras' workshops before, and they're insightful, practical, inspiring and helpful.

Here's the workshop agenda:

Morning Session – Marketer/Business Focus – Strategy & Planning

• Web Analytics Strategy – approach, opportunities and limitations
• How It Works – overview, accuracy and privacy implications, integrating with other data
• Practical – understanding the user interface
• Advanced Features Overview – clever stuff you can do with Google Analytics

Afternoon Session – Webmaster/Technical Focus – Implementation

• Accounts & Profiles, Filters & Goals – structure your data properly
• External Campaign Tracking – measure performance of search, email & banner campaigns
• Reporting – dashboards & insights
• Advanced Segmentation & Custom Reports – powerful ways to find insights

Need more incentive? Register before July 30 and save money on the Super Early Bird Special. That's not enough? Here is a discount code for $100 discount: smx100gaw (case sensitive) or simply you can use this URL: https://www.eiseverywhere.com/east10?discountcode=smx100gaw

Get your analytics expertise in shape and you'll be ahead of the curve in no time, building practical skills in a tool near and dear to our hearts.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Know Your Audience Better

Our July 16th Brown Bag Lunch session on One-to-One Marketing talked about how useful certain tools like MCIF and CRM are. It also talked about the power of Claritas P$ycle data to better segment and understand who your target audience is, what they do, what media they use, and where they live.

Click here to learn more about our FREE Brown Bag sessions.

More importantly, we talked about how you can still have a robust one-to-one culture even without the tools in-house. That caused me to think, about how you can still have the power of P$ycle-style data on a more conservative budget. It is possible!

Though not as robust as P$ycle data and not as efficient to complete multiple segments, if you can identify a key strategic segment or two, you can collect your own lifestyle information through research. The key is to create a brief survey that touches on your target's hobbies, entertainment preferences, preferred media and financial goals.

Click Here For a Sample Survey.

You have several choices to collect this data. Since this does not, necessarily, have to be a blind survey, you can expect a better than average response rate from a phone survey. Of course, an email (like the above sample) would be faster and cheaper. You can also conduct branch intercepts or have a focus group to dig deeper into each question.

With this data, you can better create lifestyle or life stage marketing, or create a mirror modeling strategy to acquire more customers that resemble your best customer. You can be more strategic in your media buys and more targeted in your grassroots efforts. You'll also have relevant data on a strategic segment to have more intelligent one-to-one conversations about products and services that match their immediate financial goals.

MarketMatch has already made the investment into the Claritas ConsumerPoint system so that you can tap into the valuable data and also benefit from the expertise of our strategic team driving the process.

Of course, MarketMatch can be your resource for all of this. To learn more, email us at egagliano@marketmatch.com, or call 866-501-2233, ext 106.

AdWords Myths – separating the truth from the fiction

There's lots of misinformation floating around the web about the way AdWords works, and our AdWords support teams get to hear most of it. Since many of the same issues seem to keep popping up again and again, we thought we’d run a blog series to help you separate the myths from the facts. We’ve tried to capture the most persistent of them here, but remember, if you ever have any AdWords questions, you can always pop over to the AdWords Help Center or AdWords Help Forum for an answer.

Myth # 1: Spending money on Google AdWords will influence my website’s ranking in Google's free search results.

Fact: Google AdWords and Google’s free search results are entirely independent of one another. Spending money on AdWords won’t impact your ranking in Google's free search results. Similarly, cancelling your AdWords account won’t lead to your website being banned from Google’s search results. If you’d like to learn more about what does go into ranking your website in Google search results, check out Google Webmaster Central.

Myth # 2: Google AdWords has declined my credit card.

Fact: Google itself doesn’t actually decline credit cards. The decline usually takes place at your bank, your card-issuing institution, or its payment processor.

If your credit card gets declined, your first step should be to check and make sure you’ve filled out the Billing Preferences page correctly. Some common mistakes include:

• Missing or invalid credit card number or security code
• Missing or invalid expiration date
• Missing or invalid billing address and/or telephone number

Once you’ve gotten that squared away, make sure that there aren’t any problems with your card itself. Be on the lookout for issues with your:

• Credit limit
• Maximum amount per debit
• Number of possible debits within a certain period

If any of these are too low for your AdWords account, contact your bank or card-issuing institution. You should also be sure that your card allows for online debits and automatic debits.

Next week we’ll be discussing AdWords clicks and keywords myths, so stay tuned!

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

Learn about remarketing with a live online course

This Wednesday, July 21st, we'll be hosting a live online course on remarketing. This interactive presentation will be delivered by a Display Network specialist and will take place from 15:00 to 16:00 GMT, including time for Q&A.

During this session we'll take you through the benefits of using remarketing, who it's best for and how to set it up in your account. If you advertise with AdWords and get a large number of visitors to your website, then we encourage you to attend.

If you're interested, be sure to sign up now.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

YouTube Is Not Just for Funny Videos – It Can Grow Your Business

Of course, you’re well aware that people post all kinds of videos on YouTube – from funny animal videos to other crazy stuff. But, have you thought about how creating a YouTube channel (the term for a YouTube page) can help your business? According to industry experts, people send more videos than emails, so you should consider adding YouTube videos to your marketing mix.

Let’s take Coca-Cola, one of the world’s best-known brands. On its YouTube channel, Coca-Cola provides basic company history, a list of its many brands, and links to other social media sites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Bebo). But most importantly, Coke’s YouTube page represents another online location for its consumers to come together and share content and feedback. When Coke sponsors a major event, such as the Olympics or the World Cup, its TV commercials appear on its YouTube channel. Consumers comment, and the audience grows. And, those same consumers share the videos on Facebook, Twitter, via email, etc., and in the process, continue the conversation about the brand. What beverage will these consumers remember when at the supermarket or ball park?

Now, let’s take Apple, another well-known brand. On its YouTube channel, it provides company and product updates. Due to the recent “antennae-gate” issue with the newly-launched iPhone 4, this past week’s press conference appears as the featured video. While there are many other video ads on the page, oddly, Apple disabled the ability to add comments to its videos.

According to YouTube’s “most viewed channels” this month, other companies who place a high value on their YouTube channels include Geico, Verizon Wireless, BMW, Blackberry, Universal Pictures, Adidas, Chevrolet, Ford Fiesta, Nike, Xbox, and Disney.

So, as you evaluate the “must-have” components of your marketing plan for the rest of 2010 and beyond, consider the basic tenets of social media and how you can best showcase your product or service to create more conversations with your customers. A YouTube channel may be a cost-effective option.

My YouTube channel is a marketing resource. Check it out here.