At Search Scientist, we always try and keep on top of the latest developments within the world of Search Engine Marketing. We were very excited to tune into the Google Marketing Next live stream on May 23rd 2017.
I have summarised the main takeaways from the various speeches below:
AMP search and display ads
Google announced two new ways to use the speed of AMP to improve advertising performance. First, a new AdWords beta will be launched that lets you use fast-loading AMP pages as the landing pages for your search ads. Second, speeding up ads served across the Display Network by using the same technology as AMP.
- The new AdWords beta brings the performance benefits of faster mobile pages to search campaigns. Now, when advertisers link their search ads to AMP landing pages, consumers will get the fast mobile web experiences they’ve come to expect from AMP pages on Google Search. When creating ads in AdWords, advertisers will be able to assign an AMP-enabled landing page at the ad level.
- On the Google Display Network, Google will automatically convert display ads to AMP, these ads load up to 5 seconds faster than regular ads even though the creative looks exactly the same. Ultimately, this ensures that your messages are actually seen by your intended audience and that the experience users have with your brand is seamless.
New Features in AdWords
Mobile continues to raise the bar for marketers – as consumers increasingly reach for their smartphones to get things done, they expect fast and frictionless assistance. The following AdWords experience will be available to all advertisers by the end of the year. Here are some of the new features:
- Build campaigns designed around your marketing goals e.g. build awareness, influence consideration or drive action. AdWords will show you the type of audience you should reach to achieve your goal.
- View performance estimates to help plan your display campaign.
- See how your landing pages are affecting campaign performance with the landing page report
Audience Targeting
• In-market audience targeting for Search: This was previously only available on the Google Display Network. This feature allows advertisers to bid on individual searchers whose past activity and real-time behaviour indicate they are actively researching or comparing products or services.
• YouTube and Gmail ads can now target segments based on “Consumer Patterns” and “Life Events” including graduating, moving and marriage, leveraging Google’s audience data and intent rich signals.
Google Optimize integration with AdWords
You will be able to quickly create new versions of your landing pages and apply them to any combination of AdWords campaigns, ad groups and keywords – no coding or webmaster required. For example, on a summer beachwear campaign, test whether a landing page that features an image of beachgoers performs better than one that showcases your latest swimsuit styles. Optimize will figure out which variation works best for your business and help you get more value from your AdWords campaigns.
Store Sales Measurement
Later this year, Google will allow advertisers to import transaction data into AdWords to measure store sales and revenue at a device and campaign level across their Search and Shopping campaigns.
YouTube Ad Location Extensions
YouTube ads will allow viewers to find a store via location extensions. Google are also expanding local ads formats to video, now you can go directly from a TrueView video ad on YouTube, which will now show directions, store business hours and more. More importantly there will be store visit technology for the video ads so advertisers can measure all the way from a video view to store visits.
Smarter planning in DoubleClick Bid Manager
To help save time and improve performance Google has announced that they are bringing the power of machine learning to campaign planning with a new workflow in DoubleClick Bid Manager.
Bid Manager uses machine learning to analyse your past campaigns and understand what’s performed well for you before. With these insights, it will recommend the right inventory and targeting to reach your audience based on your unique marketing goals. The result is an optimized media plan tailored to your business, which you can then tweak, approve and activate with one click.
Unique Reach for AdWords Display campaigns and DoubleClick
30% of people use 5 or more devices so marketers need to ensure they don’t overload a consumer with ads. Unique Reach is already available for YouTube ads and will soon be expanded to display campaigns and DoubleClick. Unique Reach will help you measure the number of unique users and average impressions-per-user you get from video and display ads. Metrics are de-duplicated across devices, campaigns, inventory and formats so you can see how many people you reached and how often you reach them.
Google Attribution
Google announced a new tool – Google Attribution that will help you measure the impact of each marketing touch point across channels and devices. This new tool will no longer give all the credit to the last ad click, with data driven attribution there will be a value assigned to all ads and conversion data will be used to determine how much credit each touch point deserves.
If you have any questions about any of these new developments and how they might impact your business, please drop me a line at una@searchscientist.co.uk or call us on 02890683790.
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