Among the interface updates are a redesigned dashboard to show an at-a-glance look at ad views (impressions), clicks and calls generated as well as a pie chart that tracks monthly budget expenditures.  A new performance graph allows advertisers to compare results over time.

A real-time ad creator tool now lets users see how their ad will look as they write their copy. Hovering over the icons at the bottom of the window allows advertisers to see a preview of the ad in the different ad formats available.

Google also reduced the account sign-up process to three steps: select your audience (geographic targeting), create your ad, and select your budget.

It’s not clear how many small businesses Google has been able to bring on to AdWords Express, but the simplified account sign-up suggests the company may be challanged in bringing more small businesses onto the platform. The company ran a free month of advertising promotion toward the end of last year to try to lure new customers, and in January Google began promoting Google Express to SMBs on Google+.

Photo credit: Danny Sullivan

Reminders is an interactive feature that can be set using voice commands.  Johanna Wright, VP of Search and Assist, gave a live demonstration of a Google Now “Voice Action Reminder”. Using simple voice commands, users can set reminders that then show up and activate in the Google Now interface. Reminders work on times, dates and locations, including home and work.

The cards underscore the integration of Google products that has been a running theme of I/O. Connections to Google voice, maps, Google Play and Google+ are all starting to pop-up in this new refresh of Google Now.

Knowledge Graph is already supported English and eight other languages: French, Italian, Spanish, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Korean. Now, Polish, Turkish, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese are the latest languages to be supported in the Knowledge Graph. Here is an example of Knowledge Graph in search in Traditional Chinese.

The Knowledge Graph is also going to start “anticipating your next question.” As an example, Singhal said, “While you can already find out the population of India with Knowledge Graph, starting today, you can find related statistics like how India’s population relates to other countries.” As you can see from the screenshot below, the new relational data includes both stats and trendlines.

Singhal said, “Last year when we launched the Knowledge Graph, it was a huge advance in search technology. Knowledge graph enabled Google to move beyond keywords and understand real world entities … and the relationships between them.”

Singhal also revealed that there are now over five hundred and seventy million entities in the Knowledge Graph.

For more from Google I/O, see the live blog on our sister site MarketingLand.com.

Results From Early Adopters

Based on positive case studies from clothing retailer American Apparel, financial services provider Woodbridge Structured Funding, and an unnamed luxury shopping brand among others, Ramaswamy says early adopters of enhanced campaigns are seeing better conversion rates and lower costs-per-click, while saving time on management.

Ramaswamy was also keen to point out that several companies that had not bothered with mobile targeting in the past are now driving calls and conversions from mobile ads. The new phone call conversion metric now available in the AdWords UI allows companies to capture call conversions. Ramaswamy says that, on average, total conversions reported in AdWords have risen 150% for those advertisers tracking click-to-call conversions.

A classifieds website in France now sees one-third of its traffic and conversions coming from mobile. With the mobile bid adjustment set at 125%, CPA has remained steady. Woodbridge Structured Funding, also with a 125% mobile bid adjustment, has doubled leads from smartphone calls.

No More Big Feature Updates Before July 22

Given the recent introductions of Upgrade Center and ad group level mobile bid adjustments, several companies have been waiting to transition to enhanced campaigns in the event other new features are announced. I asked Ramaswamy if other changes are coming and if those companies should continue to wait.

Not surprisingly, his answer was, “No,” companies should transition now and not wait until the last minute. “I’m pretty confident that the feature set that we have now will fully support the migration,” he stated, and continued saying it’s unlikely there will be any other large features introduced before the July 22nd migration date.  His advice: “Migrate now instead of waiting to fight for time later.”

The Great Tablet Debate

One of the biggest objections to enhanced campaigns from advertisers has been the loss of tablet targeting. Tablets and desktops are now combined, and only smartphones can be bid on separately. Ramaswamy said Google does not have any case studies on companies that had been running legacy tablet-only campaigns and have now transitioned to enhanced campaigns, but would look into getting some.

As Google has maintained since February, he says the need for tablet targeting is “as much a matter of perception as it is a kind of reality,”  and most advertisers did not split out tablets, in part because it was too complicated to set up and manage separate campaigns. His replies won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has been following this issue and asking Google to revert back to device targeting available in legacy campaigns.

Google has consistently said that while savvy marketers did see tablets as a predictor of demographics in the early days of the iPad, tablets are now a mainstream device, and those differentiators between tablet and desktop activity have largely disappeared. Nothing has changed, publicly at least, on that position.

Advertisers Of All Sizes Have Been Migrating

Ramaswamy says advertisers across the board have been transitioning to enhanced. Many large advertisers who rely on the API exclusively were among the earliest adopters. Google is also seeing mid- and small-level advertisers transition quickly, as well. Ramaswamy said they track the migration data by advertiser type internally, but would not be making that information publicly available.

Has your company made the transition yet? If so, what kind of results are you seeing?

Correction: This article originally stated that total conversions have risen 150% with the inclusion of click-to-call conversions and has been corrected to state that the increase is an average seen in AdWords reporting by those advertisers tracking phone call conversions.

In his post, Pann writes,

We are pleased with our partnership with Yahoo! and very encouraged by the momentum we are seeing in terms of revenue per thousand searches (RPM), ad relevance and the growth trajectory of Bing Ads.

Among the recent search alliance highlights Pann points out are the 1,000 plus platform updates to Bing Ads, the expansion of Bing Ads into 15 new markets last year and another 13 this year, including New Zealand and Australia and a 25% increase in click volume year-over-year. Also noted are the new ad formats – Long Ad Titles, Sitelink Extensions and Local Ad Extensions – that Pann states are “each contributing double digit RPM improvements”.

First quarter reports this year from several agencies, including both RKG and The Search Agency, showed increased advertiser spending on Bing Ads. RKG reported a 53 percent increase in client spending on Bing Ads year-over-year increase, and The Search Agency saw a 42 percent rise in Bing Ads spending.

Still, despite these improvements, Microsoft has never been able to meet the revenue per search goals promised to Yahoo when they formed the Search Alliance in 2009, the terms of which Yahoo just extended last month. Of Yahoo’s Search Alliance extension, Pann writes, it “will further stabilize our partnership and instill confidence in the continued success and growth of the Yahoo! Bing Network. From the beginning, we have remained committed to providing advertisers a viable alternative to Google in the search market.”

Among other updates, Bing Ads plans to launch Product Ads in the U.S. this summer, modeled on Google’s successful roll-out of Product Listing Ads.

The people autosuggest also works for colleagues that have public LinkedIn profiles.

Bing says that they’ll be adding autosuggest enhancements for places and things to Snapshot.

Among the changes to the terms is the accommodation of new advertising products and services, including third-party ad serving. AdWords has added new policies around resolving ad serving issues.

Advertisers will have 45 days to review and accept the new T&C. Your ads will be paused if you fail to accept them within the time period. Affected advertisers will see the new terms and conditions when signing in and can accept the new terms from that page.  A full list of countries is here.

Like the elusive Keyword Planner that is rolling out now, ad group mobile bid adjustments are only available in a small number of accounts today. So, be patient and remember it could take two weeks or so to be active in your account.

Google made the announcement along with the introduction of the ‘Set bid adjustment’ button to make bulk edits to location and daypart bid adjustments.

The button is available when you are in the “All online campaigns” view, as well; so, you can make bulk changes across multiple campaigns.

]]> http://searchengineland.com/adwords-enhanced-campaigns-new-set-bid-adjustment-button-for-bulk-edit-158805/feed 0 http://searchengineland.com/attention-merchants-new-changes-to-google-shopping-feedspecifications-158773 http://searchengineland.com/attention-merchants-new-changes-to-google-shopping-feedspecifications-158773#comments Wed, 08 May 2013 16:50:18 +0000 Ginny Marvin http://searchengineland.com/?p=158773 Google announced changes to the Google Shopping Feed Specification today. Here is a review of the updates and deadlines to be aware of:

Products Without Unique Identifiers

In the biggest change, Google has added the ’identifier exists’ attribute for merchants selling custom goods and other products that don’t have unique identifiers like brand names or MPN codes. In categories where unique product identifiers are required but don’t exist for an item, you enter FALSE for the ‘identifier exists’ attribute.

Important deadlines: U.S. merchants currently exempted from using unique product identifiers need to update their feeds with the ‘identifier exists’ attribute by July 15, 2013. Merchants in all other countries need to update their feeds by September 16, 2013. Account level exemptions will not be supported after these dates.

Multipacks

For products sold in custom multipacks — like 2-for-1 packs of toothpaste, for example — there is a new ‘multipack’ attribute to indicate the number of identical products in a merchant-defined multipack or bundle.

Higher-Resolution Images

Google now recommends using images with at least 800 pixels in height and width to ensure your images look good on high-res displays.

Description & Color

You’ll also want to review the guidance for the Description and Color attributes, which Google has updated “to make them more precise and actionable”. For example, under Description, Google advises, “Also include details about the item’s most visual attributes, such as shape, pattern, texture, and design, since we may use this text for finding your item.”

Google has also updated their unique product identifier requirements beyond adding the ‘identifier exists’ attribute, so all merchants should review those carefully. Here’s a link to the handy Summary of Attribute Requirements which also links to the detailed product feed specifications.

There is now dedicated support for energy efficiency labels and unit pricing for merchants targeting countries in the European Union and Switzerland. And merchants promoting non-family safe items on family-safe websites can now tag individual items as non-family safe.