Tag Archives: Search Ads

Drive better results: An insider’s look at the latest Google Ads innovations

With the busy holiday season ahead, we're investing in new ways to help you work smarter and exceed your omnichannel goals. Check out the innovations we unveiled today at SMX East.

Easier ways to manage your messages

Automatic reply

It’s no surprise that messaging has become a big part of our modern lives. If you’re inviting a friend to “Friendsgiving” dinner, you’re probably sending a quick text message. In the coming weeks, we’re rolling out two improvements to click-to-message ads:

  • Email forwarding sends text messages to your email, so you don’t need to provide a phone number to use message extensions. Responding to the email will automatically send a text reply back to your customer.
  • Automatic reply sends a preset message back to customers as soon as they message you. For example, you can automatically reply with, “Thanks for your message. We’ll get back to you within the hour.”

To help measure the success of your click-to-message ads, we’re expanding message reporting to include message conversions. You’ll be able to define the number of user-initiated exchanges needed to count as a conversion. For example, if it typically takes two or more exchanges before a customer orders holiday dinner from your restaurant, you can set that as your conversion threshold.

“Using message extensions, we can offer fast assistance when our busy customers are looking for a style recommendation or opinion on fit, and can easily share images and links. Now, message reporting will help us analyze which parts of our campaigns are driving the most in-depth, valuable conversations with stylists, and where we can improve performance.” - Michaella Kurdziel, Director of Experience Excellence & Learning at MM.LaFleur


Take action on your data across online and offline channels

Most customer journeys still end in store, and 61% of shoppers would rather shop with brands that have a physical location than ones that are online only.1 Businesses need to measure the offline impact of digital advertising in order to take action on omnichannel behavior: store visits measurement is one way to do that. As a reminder, store visits are estimates based on data from users that have turned on Location History. Only aggregated and anonymized data is reported to advertisers, and they aren’t able to see any store visits from individual website visits, ad clicks, viewable impressions, or people.

To help you take action on store visits, we're bringing these insights to data-driven attribution and Smart Bidding which use machine learning to help you improve performance. Data-driven attribution helps you understand which keywords, ads, ad groups, and campaigns have the greatest effect on your business goals. You can use this information to drive more conversions using Smart Bidding.

We’re also adding more ways to measure the full value of your marketing. In the coming weeks, Store Visits in Google Analytics will start rolling out to eligible advertisers to connect store visits to other marketing efforts that bring customers to your website and then to your store.

One example of a business measuring the online to offline impact of its marketing is department store JCPenney. JCPenney had long recognized that digital campaigns led to store visits but wasn’t able to attribute those visits to specific channels. With Store Visits in Google Analytics, JCPenney was able to look at store visits and visit rate by channel to understand which online marketing channels were most effective in driving in-store visits, and efficiently scale investment in those channels.

We hope these new products can simplify your day-to-day and improve performance across your Google Ads campaigns during the holiday season and beyond.

1.  Google/Ipsos, “Shopping Tracker,” April - June 2018, Online survey, US, n=2703 adults 18+ who shopped in the past two days. Response based on top 3 box 7 pt scale.

Source: Google Ads


Helping shoppers buy effortlessly from Best Buy, Nike, and Sephora over the holidays

Today, 76% of U.S. holiday shoppers over 18 use three or more channels.1 At the same time, they expect their experiences to be fast, frictionless, and personalized wherever they are, on whatever device they use. A recent study shows that Google is the first place US shoppers go to discover or find a new brand or product. With Shopping Actions, they can move seamlessly from browsing to buying with a universal cart that works across Search, the Google Assistant, and Google Express whether they’re on mobile, desktop or even a Google Home device.


Today, we’re announcing new Shopping Actions partnerships with Nike, Best Buy, and Sephora, enabling shoppers to search and shop effortlessly for tens of thousands of products ahead of this holiday season.

Best Buy gives customers even more ways to shop

Best Buy knows that when it comes to buying tech, it’s important that customers can shop how, when and where they want. With Shopping Actions, Best Buy’s products are now available on Google Express. Shoppers can use their voice to ask the Google Assistant to check store hours, order status, or even place an order. 

"We’re committed to enriching lives with technology, and part of that means giving people the tools they need to research and buy in stores, online and at home. This partnership let’s our customers explore the latest tech in a whole new way."

-Allison Peterson, President of E-commerce, Best Buy


Nike serves athletes wherever they shop

As the first brand from the Footwear and Apparel industry to join Shopping Actions, Nike makes it easy for shoppers to discover and buy from a rich online assortment. Whether they are shopping through Search or with their voice on the Google Assistant, later this month shoppers will be able to find and buy Nike products directly on Google’s platforms.

"We’re excited to partner with Google and together deliver premium Nike content and inspiring experiences to consumers. We’ll enable frictionless discovery and purchase of Nike products across Google’s ecosystem and elevate the consumer experience with direct access to Nike products and additional benefits when they add their NikePlus membership at checkout."

- Eric Wood, VP of Digital Partnerships, Nike


Sephora leads the way in seamless omnichannel experiences

Sephora is passionate about seamless shopping. Across their award-winning App, website, and 400+ stores, Sephora constantly innovates to offer a connected, smart and fast shopping experience. With 1 out of 3 last-minute shoppers saying they choose where to buy gifts based on how soon they can get them, Sephora saw a perfect fit with Shopping Actions.2 Sephora clients can now buy across Google’s properties and earn valuable Beauty Insider points with each purchase as part of Sephora’s robust loyalty program -- with overnight delivery to almost anywhere in the US.

Get started

Nike, Best Buy, and Sephora join hundreds of other merchants already taking part in the program, a 7x increase since we first launched the program. It's easier than ever to join Google Shopping Actions, thanks to integrations with e-commerce solution partners including ChannelAdvisor, CommerceHub, Feedonomics, and Zentail. Even more are coming soon.

However big or small your business, Shopping Actions can help you reach more customers faster and easier. Learn more: fill out our interest form.


1. Google/Ipsos, U.S., Omnichannel Holiday Study, Holiday shoppers 18+ who shopped in previous 48 hours, n=5944, Nov. 2017–Jan. 2018.

2. Google/Ipsos, U.S., Omnichannel Holiday Study, Holiday shoppers 18+ who were last minute shoppers n=1121, Nov. 2017–Jan. 2018.


How to help shoppers looking for inspiration this holiday

Gone are the days where shoppers had one specific gift in mind. Today, they’re asking brands to help inspire them. Our research also shows that 61 percent of shoppers are open to buying from new retailers during the holiday season—and in the 2017 holiday season 46 percent of them actually did.

That’s a huge number of consumers looking to uncover new brands and products or re-discover old favorites. But with so much choice at their fingertips, shoppers need help cutting through the clutter and feeling confident in their choices.

A recent study shows that Google is the first place US shoppers go to discover or find a new brand or product. That’s why we’re continuing to invest in solutions to drive inspiration and discovery, capture intent, and amplify your message to customers, wherever they’re shopping across Google and the web. So lean back, grab an eggnog (it’s never too early), and learn about how consumers plan to shop this holiday—and how Google can help.

Helping shoppers discover with video in Showcase Shopping Ads

When it comes to finding new products and narrowing down their choices, nearly two-thirds of shoppers say online video has given them ideas for their next purchases, and over 90 percent of these folks say that they’ve discovered new products and brands via YouTube.

Video to Showcase Shopping ads helps shoppers more deeply engage with your products. This is our first retail search ad unit to feature video, designed to help you provide a more immersive, contextual experience for shoppers.  

Video in Showcase Shopping ads is the next addition to the Showcase Shopping ads we launched last year, which let you upload multiple images to a single ad and promote your products through beautiful imagery, descriptions, products, and relevant promotions. Since launch, we’ve seen that the top Showcase slot drives 3.6X higher than average CTR, and Showcase receives 20 percent more conversion credit with first-click attribution. And retailers like Venus Fashion are seeing success with acquiring new customers: 68% of purchases from shoppers who engage with Venus Showcase ads are new.

Wayfair Video Showcase Shopping

This format is available to advertisers already running Showcase Shopping ads.

Inspire undecided shoppers with Shoppable Image ads

Curious consumers aren’t just finding inspiration through video. Did you know that more than one-third of holiday shoppers said they searched for images before they went in store to shop? The growth of “street style” and online influencers all show the movement towards looking at lifestyle images for visual inspiration.

Shoppable Images enable you to highlight your shopping ads on curated, published content from our publisher partners. For publishers, it’s a chance for shoppers to be able to purchase seamlessly. For example, a shopper might visit her favorite blog like This Time Tomorrow, and see a selection of visually similar offers after clicking the tag icon in the image. Over the next year, we will continue to roll out this experience to more publishers, as well as pilot new surfaces like Google Image Search, where we also know shoppers go to look for inspiration. 

Shoppable Images

Left: Shoppable Images publisher experience

Right: Image Search experience mock

We hope these updates help you stand out from the crowd and capture undecided shoppers' attention with inspirational imagery and video. For a look into more consumer trends this season, check out our Think With Google article on holiday 2018 insights.



1 Google/Ipsos, “Shopping Tracker”, April - June 2018, Online survey, US, n=2703 adults 18+ who shopped in the past two days

2 Google internal data, 2018

Source: Google Ads


Create more effective ads for today’s consumer

Consumers are more curious and more demanding than ever before. They expect to get things done faster–engaging with ads that are uniquely relevant to them. In fact, 91 percent of mobile users bought or plan to buy something after seeing an ad they described as relevant.1 That means it’s critical for marketers to create a wider variety of ads that are diverse.

By creating more diverse ads and utilizing Google’s machine learning, your ads will be more helpful, more personalized, and relevant to more people. This means your ads can show more often, reaching potential customers when they're looking for what you have to offer. We know this kind of optimization works: On average, advertisers that combine Google’s machine learning with multiple creatives see up to 15 percent more clicks.2

Creating relevant ads at scale can be a challenge, and products like responsive search ads, responsive display ads, and Universal App campaigns can help. That’s why we’re introducing new insights to make it easy for you to create the ad experiences your customers expect.

Get more out of your responsive search ads

Responsive search ads combine your creativity with the power of Google’s machine learning to help you deliver relevant, valuable ads.

  • To make it easier for you to create more effective responsive search ads, you’ll now be able to preview ad combinations as you build them. This shows you what your ads might look like, and you can even browse through them to double-check your work.
  • You can also view reporting for headlines, descriptions, and top combinations to help you see what’s showing up most often on the search results page.

RSA Best Practice

New best practices for Search ad groups

Apartments.com is a leading online resource for home and apartment rentals. Using responsive search ads, the brand was able to create ads that were more relevant to people at key moments in the rental process. As a result, Apartments.com saw a 10 percent lift in clicks. ForRent.com, another brand in the Apartments.com network of sites, saw a 16 percent lift in clicks with a similar strategy.

Measure the strength of your ads

Innovations like responsive search ads can help you create relevant, personalized ads at scale. However, it can be a challenge to know when these ads have the right amount of information. That’s why we’re introducing ad strength.

You’ll see ad strength both when you write a responsive search ad and as a column in Google Ads. Ranging from “Poor” to “Excellent,” this metric measures the relevance, quantity, and diversity of your ad copy. Combined with actionable feedback, ad strength makes it easy for you to improve the effectiveness of your ads.

Ad Strength UI

Use ad strength to create more effective responsive search ads

Ad strength will be available as a column starting in early September, and in the responsive search ad creation interface over the next several weeks. Support for responsive display ads will follow in the coming months.

To get started with ad strength, we recommend providing as many distinct headlines, descriptions, and other assets as possible. This will help Google's machine learning generate a larger number of relevant, effective ad combinations.

  • For a responsive search ad, provide as many headlines and descriptions as makes sense for your business. If you’re having trouble getting started, we recommend focusing on creating at least five headlines.
  • For a responsive display ad, provide up to 15 images and five logos, headlines, and descriptions per ad.

Promote your app at scale

App marketers are also making the shift to more diverse creative. With Universal App campaigns, Google’s machine learning automatically combines your creative assets with content from your app store page to create personalized, relevant ads at scale.

We recommend providing at least four to five text, video and image assets in varying lengths and sizes. If you’re looking for more guidance, we have an online course to help you design and optimize your creative for a Universal App campaign. If you want to learn more about promoting your mobile app in Google Ads, you can view the other courses at g.co/learnappads.

1. Google / Purchased, April 2017

2. Google internal data

Source: Google Ads


A fast start to 2017 for click-to-call ads

Living in a mobile-first world has made it easier than ever to pick up the phone and talk to a business directly. That’s why we've continued investing in calls innovations based on the great feedback we've heard from you. From call-only ads for marketers who prioritize calls to imported call conversions that allow you to upload your own call conversion data directly into AdWords, we’ve strived to drive more high-quality calls to your business in three main ways:

  1. Simplified workflows so you can set up click-to-call ads faster
  2. Better ad experiences that make it easier for people to call you
  3. Detailed call reporting that shows which parts of your campaigns drive the most valuable calls 
We have new updates coming soon across these areas to help you improve your calls performance.

Get your call extensions up and running more quickly

Account-level call extensions will begin rolling out this week to help you set up call extensions at scale. You can implement them once across your entire account rather than adding them multiple times to individual campaigns and ad groups.

In the coming months, we're also rolling out automated call extensions to more advertisers globally to help you set up call extensions more quickly. AdWords will identify landing pages that already feature a prominent phone number, and automatically set up a call extension and call reporting for this phone number to help you drive more calls to your business

New year, new look for click-to-call ads

In addition to making call extensions quicker to set up, we’re improving the ad experience to help consumers call you more easily. For example, we started testing business names in the headlines of call-only ads last year to help advertisers maximize high-quality calls from people who intend to call them.

“Introducing business names to call-only ads has improved the quality of calls we drive from Google Search for clients across our agency. We’ve been able to showcase their brands more clearly and increase user trust, which has led to significantly higher clickthrough and call conversion rates."
-Kevin Quinlan, President of wommster.com

wommster logo

We’re now rolling this change out globally and will continue experimenting with other new features in click-to-call ads, including testing caller satisfaction ratings to show consumers which businesses are delivering a great user experience over the phone.

Updated CTC ad - caller ratings

New reporting for keyword and ad-level call details

Measuring performance from your click-to-call ads is essential for making informed decisions about your spend and optimizations. AdWords call reporting is easy to set up and available in 23 countries around the world at no additional cost to show you useful insights and conversions from the calls you’re receiving. We’ll soon be adding new call details to your keyword and ad copy reports. Additional columns for “Phone impressions” and “Phone calls” will give you a more complete view of call performance and help you see where there are opportunities to improve. For example, consider using call-only ads on keywords with the highest phone-through rates, or decreasing wait times when you have customers on the phone to improve call conversion rates.


We hope these new updates to click-to-call setup, ad experiences and reporting will help you ring in 2017 with great calls performance. To learn more, visit the Help Center and read our best practices for driving phone calls to your business and optimizing the caller experience.

Source: Google Ads


AdWords is fully switching to the new experience

We introduced AdWords 17 years ago to help businesses, large and small, get online and connect with customers around the world. Although a lot has changed since then, our mission remains the same. We want AdWords to work for everyone, whether you’re a coffee shop or a global agency.

The new AdWords provides a faster and more intuitive experience that's focused on helping you reach your goals, like creating campaigns based on your business goals or using keyboard shortcuts to navigate your account faster. Now, all the features you rely on to run your business are available in the new experience—from remarketing lists for search ads to Google Analytics columns to the Keyword Planner.
New Keyword Planner 850 by 480 (1).gif

                                                    The new Keyword Planner 

We’ve also made lots of improvements based on your feedback. Just to name a few: find features faster with more intuitive icons, hide and unhide paused or removed items, and see more of your performance data by expanding the statistics table.


Switching to the new AdWords

Now that you have everything you need, the new AdWords will become the exclusive way to manage your accounts by the end of the year, and access to the previous experience will no longer be available. Prior to the switch, you’ll get an email with the information and resources you need to prepare, so we encourage you to update your contact information. Note that we won’t switch accounts during the busy holiday months of November and December.

To help make this switch as easy as possible, your reports, filters and automated rules will be automatically moved from the previous experience to the new one.* In the meantime, feel free to familiarize yourself with the new experience using the resources below.



Getting ready

To help you hit the ground running once you make the switch to the new experience, check out this toolbox of useful information:
  • Take the guided tour. This should be the first thing you see when you switch to the new experience.
  • Review the quick reference map to quickly find the most commonly used features in the new experience.
  • Bookmark the ‘new AdWords experience’ section of the Help Center, which has been updated to help you navigate all the new features.


Thank you

Whether you’ve been advertising for 17 years or 17 days, thank you for helping us make AdWords what it is today. Please share your feedback so we can continue to build products to help you grow your business.
* Some features and reports won’t be available in the new AdWords experience. You’ll receive notifications and helpful resources a few weeks before any features and reports are moved.




Source: Google Ads