google

Google has re-branded the Google Content Network and launched a new site to promote the Google Display Network.

If you’re new to the Google Display Network, in a nutshell it is the network of websites owned by Google and sites owned by third party publishers that show Google text and banner ads to their visitors.

Before the re-brand, Google had been placing more emphasis on the Content Network with the launch of multiple new features like ad re-targeting or re-marketing as Google calls it, and a push to get advertisers to try banner ads using its display ad builder.

When you do a search in Google, you’re seeing ads on the search network. When you see an ad on your favorite website and you see the “Ads by Google” image at the bottom of the ad, the website you are viewing is part of the Display Network (Formerly the Google Content Network. The launch of the Display Network website and renaming the content network is really just a PR play to make something that already existed look new again: a classic marketing tactic.)

Here’s a quote from Google that summarizes where you can show your ads using the Display Network:

The Google Display Network will comprise all of the sites (apart from search sites), where you can buy ads through Google, including YouTube, Google properties such as Google Finance, Gmail, Google Maps, Blogger as well as over one million Web, video, gaming, and mobile display partners (our display partners include all of our AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange partner sites that allow text and/or display ads). The Google Display Network offers all ad formats –  text, image, rich media, and video ads – enabling you to unleash your creativity and engage potential customers across the Web.

A few of the benefits of the Display Network include:

• Clicks and Conversions can be much cheaper than the Google search network
• You can target the websites you want your ads to show on
• You can use re-targeting to show your ads to people who have visited your site in the past
• You can often generate far more traffic than is possible on the search network, even for niche terms
• You don’t need to use keywords to show your ads if you choose
• You can show image ads, text, ads, video ads, interactive flash ads, and mobile ads

Our clients have known about the content network for quite some time and some have been taking advantage of the power of image ads for a while now to drive traffic and conversions at a lower cost than traditional search traffic.

If you’d like to learn more or want to test driving and conversions using the Display Network, get in touch or give me a call 778.899.4523.

PS: I almost forgot. Google released a study on

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Google Adwords continues to be one of the most targeted and highly effective advertising platforms in the world. It’s been estimated that 95% of Google’s revenue comes from Adwords and that being the case, it’s not surprising they continue to innovate and release new features on a continual basis.

In 2010 so far we’ve seen some great new feature editions. Here’s a snapshot of a few that you should take note of.

Video Targeting on YouTube

Google recently introduced a new tool called the Youtube Video Targeting Tool to help advertisers target and display ads within popular videos. The idea behind this tool is that it helps you find popular videos in categories related to your products or services and then export a list of these videos. You can then upload the list into Google Adwords in order to show your ads within the video as it’s playing.

Here’s a quick 1:01 minute video explanation from Google.

Here’s a screen shot of the new tool (click to enlarge):

American Apparel’s recent YouTube campaign is an interesting example of how an advertiser might take advantage of this new feature. In this example, American Apparel’s in-video overlay ads run on videos such as the Skateboarding Dog, and other equally catchy, quirky clips.

The idea of cute puppies wearing American Apparel jumpers and hoodies displaying below cute pet videos caught on at American Apparel. The result was a cute and memorable advertising campaign that targeted viewers with ads that were visually relevant to the videos they were watching.

Upcoming Webinars

Google has recently made some new developments in display advertising, and is hosting a webinar May 20th at 11am to show off the benefits to advertisers – and how real companies are using the new developments to their advantage. Want to learn more? Sign up for the webinar here.

Local Business Ads and Location Extensions

Google is transitioning its local business ads feature and to be known as “location extension ads”. Local business ads have been used by all sorts of businesses to get under the nose of people searching in a given area. If you typed in ‘coffee shop’, for example, Google would determine your location and return a selection of coffee shops nearby. If you are a company with multiple locations, setting up and running individual ads targeted at each location quickly becomes a pain, and a waste of time. Enter Google’s location extensions.

Location extensions makes the location in your ad dynamic. This means that your business’ address and phone number will change, based on which of your locations is closest to where the customer is while searching. Local extensions has been around for awhile (Google introduced it in July 2009), but now all local business ads will be switched over to be compatible with the service. For those who don’t update their own ads, Google will automatically switch them over in coming weeks.

A New Way To Target Keywords

Several days ago, Google released a new keyword match modifier in the UK and Canada. The “+”, also known as “modified broad match”, is a way to match a given keyword to its most closely-related variants. Such variants could be alternate spellings, typos, or pluralizations/singularizations of the keyword. This is a good modifier to use if you’re targeting a campaign very specifically. This way, your ads display only for this keyword – plus similar variants that you now won’t have to brainstorm and add to your target list (especially typos – not fun or easy to brainstorm).

*click here to see a larger view of the image

Honorable Mentions

• Google Adwords for Mobiles
• New Adwords reports in Google Analytics
• iPad targeting now available

Google Adwords is an ideal channel for businesses looking quickly generate leads and sales online or who need to directly target a specific audience. It looks like it’s going to be maintaining its momentum as Google continually finds new ways to bring advertisers closer to their potential customers.

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Google has come out with a new, beta version of their keyword research tool that allows users to do keyword research on mobile and local based searches.

To access the new tool, visit the old keyword research tool (located at https://adwords.google.ca/select/KeywordToolExternal) and click the link at the top of the page, shown here:

The new tool has a cleaner interface than the old keyword tool and comes with some added benefits:

1. You can now easily do research on mobile searches only. Before this option as a nicely kept “secret” only available with the internal Adwords keyword tool. This means you can tell what people are searching for using mobile phones in your area. As you may or may not be aware, the number of people on the planet who use mobile phones is in the range of 50% of the world’s population- far, far larger than the number of people who access the web right now from desktop computers. In time, mobile use of the web will likely dwarf all other forms of web access so getting a handle on what terms and phrases your customers are searching for on their mobiles is going to be a necessity as a web marketer/business owner.

To conduct a mobile keyword search only, click Advanced options and then check off the mobile box as seen below.

*click to enlarge

2. You can more accurately target your own country or a specific country from a list of countries Google provides data for. This is helpful for a number of reasons and the most obvious one to me is that using the old tool, Google told us the difference between local searches and global monthly searches but it never specified what local meant! It was impossible to tell if local meant Vancouver, or North America etc. Now, we can hone in on one of several different countries and get more targeted results. This is important for local and national advertisers alike.

Here’s a snapshot of the new tool’s interface with some keyword data populated:

*click to enlarge.

3. The final benefit I can see to this tool at first glance is your ability to add in useful metrics like approximate cost per click, competition levels, and your ad share or the percentage of time your ads are shown compared to total number of ads being shown (available if you’re logged into Adwords).

So all in all I like the new look.

There is one serious drawback that I didn’t see a resolution for at first glance, the old keyword tool separates keywords into groups for you which is very handy when setting up Adwords accounts or analyzing a site to see what Google understands it is all about. If that feature’s available in this version I missed it at first glance. If not, I’ll continue using the old tool for now.

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It’s been confirmed. Bing outdid Google today by updating it’s background to a shot of Science World in Vancouver and outplayed Google in the race to have the coolest Olympics Logo…..or so the chatter on Twitter suggested this morning.

What’s your pick?

Also: if you need a laugh, check out Arnold carrying the Olympic torch today in Stanley Park.

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