Getting Started with Automated Rules

Earlier this year, we launched Automated Rules, a feature that lets you save time by scheduling automatic changes to your account based on criteria that you specify. Since then, tens of thousands of advertisers have created rules to manage their accounts more effectively and even deploy more advanced strategies.

Whether you're new to Automated Rules or already an expert, we wanted to share with you some of the most popular examples of rules that AdWords users have created. We hope that these examples can help you take better advantage of the feature.

Click here for details on how to set up these types of rules. You'll need to adjust them to meet your business needs and goals. Let us know what you think of these examples, and send us your favorite rules.

Scheduling ads

• Turning on/off special ads for a promotional event
• Turning on/off certain ads on a repeating basis (e.g., every weekend)
• Turning on/off a special ad campaign for a promotional event

Pausing low-performing ads or keywords

• Pausing low-performing keywords based on success metrics (e.g., high cost per conversion)
• Pausing low-performing ads based on success metrics (e.g., low CTR)

Bids and bid scheduling

• Adjusting bids for keywords based on cost per conversion
• Changing bids to reach a desired average position
• Raising bids to ensure ads show on the first page
• Bid scheduling (e.g., a higher bid during certain hours of the day)

Controlling budgets and cost

• Increasing budget for campaigns that convert well (using cost per conversion)
• Budget scheduling (e.g., higher budget on certain days of the week)
• Pausing campaigns that have spent a certain amount partway through the month
• Pausing campaigns that have received a certain number of clicks partway through the day

General examples

• Understanding how to make a rule work on one, several or all campaigns
• Excluding keywords from a rule

To learn more about Automated Rules, please visit Ad Innovations. Happy automating!

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

New Google Analytics: Improvements in Mobile Reporting

This is part of our series of posts highlighting the new Google Analytics. The new version of Google Analytics is currently available in beta to all Analytics users. And follow Google Analytics on Twitter for the latest updates. This week, we’ll discuss some recent improvements to mobile reporting in Google Analytics.

Internet traffic from mobile devices is growing rapidly with smartphones and tablets expected to outsell computers this year. Google Analytics already provides a number of ways to track this growing mobile Internet usage from standard tracking on smartphones to SDKs for embedding Google Analytics into applications in iOS and Android. We’re hard at work at delivering more.

Today you'll see small first step along our path to improve mobile reporting inside Google Analytics: a new Mobile section in Visitors reporting.

Inside the Mobile section you’ll find two new reports. The first is a Mobile Overview report, which shows the simple breakdown between mobile traffic and non-mobile traffic.

The second report is the Devices report, which provides information about the various mobile devices that visit your site. As part of this report, we’ve added three new dimensions: Mobile Device Info, Mobile Device Branding, and Mobile Input Selector. Data for all these dimensions is available starting from June 6, 2011.

Mobile Device Info is the actual hardware that visited your site. One of the nice benefits of this report is you can quickly see a picture of any device. While you’ve probably seen an iPhone in person and have an idea about how your site will look on one, that might not be the case for less common devices like for example, the Nokia E63. Click the camera icon next to any device to see pictures of it.

Mobile Device Branding lets you see the brand associated with the phone. Depending on the device this might be the manufacturer or the carrier. Mobile Input Selector shows the primary input method for the device, whether it’s a touch screen, a clickwheel (like you’ll find on a Blackberry), or even a stylus.

And if you haven’t tried out the improvements to map overlay reports that we talked about last week, give them a try in the Mobile reports to visualize where your mobile traffic is coming from.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

I'll Be Hosting a Webinar Today at 3 pm with @EtiquetteExpert

Etiquette Expert Jacqueline Whitmore

I met the lovely and talented "Etiquette Expert" Jacqueline Whitmore during an etiquette tweetup last summer.  Today (Thursday, June 23) I have the honor of leading a webinar with Jacqueline on Social Media. The topic is "10 Tips To Developing Your Brand Online".   If you're reading this post by email, I'm happy to share that the audio from the call will be available for purchase after the webinar.  Details below.

10 Tips To Developing Your Brand Online with Laura Otero:
If you've entered (or are entering) the world of social media, this conference call is for you! Have you watched as others soar in their social media efforts, while your social media presence isn't experiencing such growth? Or, are you just getting started with marketing your business online and not sure where to go or which profile to create next? Laura Otero will teach you the tips and tricks to branding yourself and your business online.

Participants will learn:
* How create and name your Facebook business page for success
* How to grow your Facebook fanbase significantly in a matter of days
* How to get started on Twitter
* Twitter basics for growing your networks
* Blogging basics and growing your community online
* How to create a YouTube channel
* Time-saving tips on maximizing your time in the social space

Date: Thursday, June 23, 2011
Time: 3:00pm - 4:15pm Eastern Time
Investment: $60.00 (includes the downloadable recording)
Buy Now (downloadable recording included for those who cannot make the call)
All expenses for continuing education taken to maintain and improve professional skills are tax deductible. Contact your accountant for details.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Laura Catherine Otero is a marketing professional and blogger in Charleston, SC who has been active in social media since 2005.  If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to this blog via Email or  RSS. Laura can also be found on Twitter (@LauraCatherineO), Facebook, and LinkedIn.

 

Reach your audience with interest categories

Whether the goal is to generate awareness or drive sales, marketers share a common objective: reach people likely to be interested in their product or service. With contextual targeting on the Google Display Network, you can find people the very moment they express interest by browsing relevant content. But what happens if someone who has been browsing for cameras then goes on to read a separate news site or favorite blog? A marketer for a camera company would like to show that interested user an ad, but they can't use contextual targeting to reach them, since the site is unrelated.

Over a year ago, we announced a beta of interest categories on the Google Display Network. We've been slowly expanding the availability of this feature, and as of today, interest categories are now available to all AdWords advertisers. It works like this: our system looks at the types of pages a user visits, taking into account how recently and frequently those pages have been visited, and then associates their browser with relevant interest categories. Using these categories, you can show ads to the people most likely to purchase your products or services, and you can reach them across all types of sites in the Google Display Network in addition to contextually relevant sites.

With over 1,000 interest categories from ecotourism to mobile phones, we’re confident you'll find a category that fits your business. And with over 500 million users interested in these categories who visit the Display Network every day, you’ll be able to reach a huge number of potential customers. You pay only for clicks or impressions at auction prices, as always. Our beta advertisers have used interest categories to successfully meet all kinds of goals, from an advertiser increasing brand lift by 40% to a shoe retailer driving 400% more conversions at a lower advertising cost per sale.

As we’ve made interest categories available to more advertisers, we’ve remained committed to providing users with the highest level of control and transparency. Users may, at any time, view and edit interest categories or permanently opt out of receiving interest-based ads entirely with the Ads Preferences Manager. Also, we label our ads with the AdChoices logo to give users notice and choice about the ads they see.

We hope you'll use these interest categories to enhance your advertiser campaigns. We think you'll find them an effective way to reach more interested users, increase awareness of your products and services, and ultimately drive more sales. You can visit our Help Center to learn more.

-Jon Krafcik, Product Manager, Google Display Network

Posted by Lauren Barbato, Inside AdWords crew

Learn more about AdWords with our new YouTube channel

Recently we made all the AdWords Online Classroom videos available on YouTube. Now you can easily watch videos on new and simple ways to improve your ads.

For example, boost your performance by including a strong and compelling call-to-action in your ads like "Buy Online Now." Here’s one of our favorite videos for improving your AdWords results:



Here are a few other videos you can watch to learn more about AdWords:

• Getting started
• How to measure success
• Beyond the basics

Happy learning from the AdWords Online Classroom team.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Think with Google: "Word of Mouth" study shows Google directly informs 146 million brand conversations a day

There are more than 2.4 billion conversations about brands every day, according to our latest "Word of Mouth" study with Keller Fay. More than half of consumers involved in these conversations say they’re likely to make a purchase based on what they talk about. We wanted to know more about how media and the Internet play into all this conversation, so we took a look at what effect the Internet and search have on word of mouth. The study shows how media and marketing channels provided content before, during, and after consumer conversations by surveying 3,000 adults across 12 categories.

It turns out that while most people still talk about brands face to face, their conversations are informed by the Internet more than any other media source. And when they’re online, users go to search sites more than any other. This is even more true after conversations, especially those sparked by TV. People follow up by searching for more information and prices more than any other online activity, including social media.

Check out this video or see here on Think Insights for more information on the full study!

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

Editor's note (Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 2:45 pm): The post originally said that there are 2.4 million brand conversations happening every day. The correct number is in fact 2.4 billion, so the post has been updated to reflect this.

Web Analytics TV #19 - The Most Productive Episode

Welcome to one of our most productive episodes of Web Analytics TV yet! We had so much fun doing this one, you are going to have a blast as well.

Web Analytics TV, as you well know by now, is powered by your questions. In this episode we had questions from Australia, Brazil, India, Denmark, England, Netherlands and so many other places. Y’all rock!

If you’re new to this show, our process for this show is simple.

Step 1: You ask, or vote on, your favorite web analytics questions. Vote on next week’s questions using this Web Analytics TV Google Moderator site.

Step 2: From a secret undisclosed location at the Googleplex Avinash Kaushik & Nick Mihailovski answer them. : )

In this episode we bring back the “Ninja of the Episode” and award it to Aaron from Tasmania, Australia. Really great questions Aaron. Just email us and we’ll send you a signed copy of Web analytics 2.0.

Here is the list of last weeks questions.

In this action packed episode we discuss:

• (1:36) Cookies and laws (and milk)
• (2:28) Setting multiple conditions for goals via Advanced Segments
• (4:45) Using event tracking and custom reports to track calendars
• (6:45) Getting site link data in Google Analytics
• (7:37) Tracking conversions for individual products
• (9:25) Best practices for setting up Google Analytics for different clients
• (10:35) Tracking shopping carts on different domains
• (11:54) Tracking internal site search on AJAX-type site search
• (13:50) Combining referrals from different sites
• (15:30) Implementing cross domain tracking with the async-tracking code
• (17:05) How to determine when data is sampled
• (19:42) Browser support for page speed reports
• (22:08) Getting the name of each configured goal via the API
• (23:16) When the GAIQ test will include version 5 content
• (24:08) Getting hourly overview metrics in Google Analytics
• (25:11) Differences between webmaster tools clicks and visits in GA
• (26:18) How much income should you have to employee a web analyst
• (30:06) Goal completions by different landing pages
• (31:19) Visit duration calculation in Google Analytics
• (32:53) Where to find e-commerce city and region data in Google Analytics
• (34:02) Stopping other sites from sending fake traffic
• (34:55) Virtual page views showing up in custom reports

Here are the links to the topics we discuss:

• Tracking SEO rankings and sitelinks with Google Analytics by André Scholten
• Using setDomainName to set GA cookies to a root domain
• Cross domain tracking with async tracking
• Goal configuration data in the Management API
• Hourly traffic pattern reports in Excel from the API by Next Analytics
• How analytics tools calculate Time on Site by Avinash Kaushik
• Using a hostname filter to reduce spam by Jason Green

As always, if you need help setting up Google Analytics or leveraging the advanced configuration options, we recommend hiring a Google Analytics Certified Partner.

If you found this post or video helpful, we'd love to hear your comments. Please share them via the comment form below.

This series would not be possible without your awesome questions. Please submit them on our public Google Moderator site, and while you are there don’t forget to vote for your favourite questions. Avinash and I will answer them in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team