Hot on the heels of Google IO’s Android keynote presentation, Google AdWords has enabled a new setting in their interface which makes a distinction between targeting ads to tablet devices and smartphones.
The settings tab of your AdWords account now has a new targeting option called “Tablets with full browsers”, which appears under targeting “Mobile devices with full browsers”.
The provision has been made to distinguishing between iOS and Android tablet devices, but initially the new tablet setting only allows you to target iPads only, but Google AdWords promises that new tablets will be available over the coming months. You can also target by mobile network operator. The full range of settings can be seen below:
Google AdWords has alerted advertisers using call metrics of an added $1 charge whenever a desktop or laptop user manually dials one of the unique numbers Google automatically inserts into your ad. There is no change to the charges for clicks from high-end mobile devices.
Also noteworthy is news that “calls to your Google forwarding number will be factored into Ad Rank calculations, which determine an ad’s position and cost per click. You’ll be able to influence your ad position by specifying a bid per call greater than $1.00 USD — similar to increasing your max CPC bid today.”
Yesterday’s post on Google’s Inside AdWords blog gave a heavy pitch for offline sales from the impact of AdWords – the short video seems more like a ‘get rich quick’ infomercial than an informed case study.
The information is impelling but without further access to the numbers any of the results could be insignificant or circumstantial. And merely repeating potential returns of $10 for every AdWords dollar spent is sensational at best, misleading at worst.
I want to think Google, but haven’t drank the Kool-Aid yet.
As of now the Google AdWords API does not support Position Preference and the option will be retired completely by early May, Inside Adwords reported. And Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, said people are too focused on position when they should be tracking conversion.
“What matters is how the keyword performs in terms of clicks and cost, not where it ends up on the page,” he noted, and that most people thought the position reported was on page position when in fact it was auction position and bid amount influenced if it was at top or to the left.
The Google AdWords team has responded to requests from users to provide phone support to it’s advertisers, in addition to the online and email support already available.
AdWords Phone Support details below:
“To speak to one of our specialists, give us a call at 1-866-2Google between Monday-Friday, 9am-8pm Eastern Time. This number is for current AdWords advertisers only, so please make sure you have your customer ID ready.”
This is great news for new users, more elderly users or less tech-savvy users and all those polite executives who report difficulties to upper management, only to get the frustrating response, “can’t you just call Google and get them to sort it out?”
Google is constantly testing out new features in search, advertising, and products. Here’s a quick rundown of four of their latest tests involving Twitter profile integration, AdWords display URL spacing, a revamped News layout, and AdSense ad variations.
Link Twitter Profile to Google Profile
Is more Twitter integration coming to Google’s social search results? This screenshot shows Google asking: “Want to see which results your friends are talking about? Are you xxxx?”
Presumably, if you say “Yes, this is me,” you could then connect Twitter to your Google Profile, which will then further integrate more Twitter results and personalize your search results based on your social circle.
Google AdWords now shows more detailed reports on every call your campaign has received with call metrics enabled. This includes the call’s start time, end time, duration, status (missed or received), and area code.
AdWords call metrics, introduced in November, allows advertisers to track the number of phone calls an AdWords campaign generates.
To see the reports, enable the Dimensions tab, click “View,” and select “Call metrics calls.” You can still view number of calls, received calls, missed calls, total call duration, and average call duration by campaign under the Campaigns tab.
A new ad rotation setting in AdWords lets you choose to show ads you expect to provide the highest conversion rate, rather than receive the highest click-through rate, Google announced via its Inside AdWords blog.
To use the new “optimize for conversions” setting, you must have Conversion Tracking in your account, because Google uses data from that tool “to determine which ad is the most likely to receive conversions.” If Google doesn’t have enough data to make a decision, AdWords will show an ad most likely to receive clicks.
Looks like Google is once again tinkering with their AdWords background colors. Have a look at the new background color:
Google introduced the pale yellow AdWords background in 2007, which was replaced last July by a light purple background:
It’s not yet clear if this is a permanent change or one of Google’s tests to see if it results in higher click-through rates. Also seems like this could be another change meant to blur the lines between paid and organic results.
AdWords top placement ads will get longer headlines, a move Google says will increase click-through rates (CTRs) for advertisers. But has this change, combined with two other recent changes (the lowercasing of URL display names and renaming Sponsored Links to Ads) begun to blur the lines between paid and organic too much?
Here’s what Google announced:
Google will change the placement of the first description line for certain ads that appear over Google’s organic search results.
