Enhanced Campaigns: Google’s Grand Unification Theory

Early last century, Albert Einstein turned the world of established physics upside down when he introduced his theories of special and general relativity. Newton’s Laws, which had successfully driven the work of physicists for hundreds of years, were usurped by Einstein’s new theories.
At the heart of Einstein’s FIELD theories, which describe space-time, was his famous formula:

Okay, maybe you’ve never seen that before, but it is famous among theoretical physicists and cosmologists. The lambda, (Λ) is the cosmological constant, which we’ll touch on later in this article. Einstein’s most famous formula is, of course, E = mc2 which describes the conversion of mass to energy, as in that which happens in an atomic explosion.
It took the world of physics years to figure out what Einstein was even talking about, and then even more years for experts to work out whether he was right or wrong. As it turns out, Einstein was more right than wrong.

Google’s Grand Unification Theory Of Devices

In similar fashion, Google turned the world of paid search on its head last month when it unveiled Enhanced Campaigns, which I refer to as their Grand Unification Theory of Devices. Google’s stated purpose in pursuing the Grand Unification Theory is to create a new advertising universe where paid search campaigns are elegant and simplified, and where we can target all devices, bids, time and space from within a single campaign.
This theoretically perfect PPC universe is still young and unproven, but that has not stopped Google from creating it and implementing it before the end of the next fiscal quarter. Of course, they can do that; they’re Google. While Sir Isaac Newton and Dr. Albert Einstein had to content themselves with just describing the world around them, Google can change the way the PPC universe actually works.
Just as Einstein created his elegant equations to describe the grand workings of the cosmos, I thought it would be interesting to take a quick peek into some of the fundamental assumptions that Google must make in order for an Enhanced Campaigns universe to make sense, and express them as simple mathematical formulas.
This new universe operates differently than our current “Legacy” world, and I hope my math logic will help your understanding of what’s fundamentally changed. Making things simple isn’t always so simple, after all.

The Law Of Approximate Device Equivalence (LOAD)

To achieve simplicity and elegance in its new Enhanced campaigns, the first thing Google needed to do was get rid of all that pesky nonsense about campaign ROI performance being different on tablets than on desktop devices. Rubbish. How can anyone create simple campaigns if devices all perform differently?
Unless and until device performance could be proven to be equivalent, it would not be possible. This led to the necessity of inventing a new Law to describe device behavior in the new Enhanced Campaigns Universe, which I’ve named the big new Law of Approximate Device Equivalence, or I prefer to call it, the big LOAD.
Here is my equation that describes it:

According to the big LOAD equation, where rho (ρ), represents advertising performance, and ρ(t) represents performance of Tablets, and ρ(d) represents the performance of Desktop campaigns, Google has simplified the way things work by declaring that desktop and tablet advertising performance are equivalent, or at least close enough so that we need not concern ourselves with optimizing for them anymore.
Now, perhaps you are not a ‘math’ person, but you, as well as many advertisers, doubt that this can possibly be true. Perhaps you “just know” that tablets will perform differently than desktops. You see it for yourself in your everyday life. You see how tablets are replacing favorite magazines as something to browse through as you sit and watch the tele or enjoy a cocktail with your significant other. In the morning, whether traveling or at home, you see how tablets are starting to push newspapers off the breakfast table, and you ‘just know’ this can’t be true.
Or, maybe you are a data person, and claim to have “actual data” that confirms your suspicion about the veracity of Google’s big LOAD. Don’t fret, you are not alone. Even Google has data like this, and publishes it on its website like this:

Google’s own data shows significantly different usage profiles between Tablets and Desktops.

Hmmm, you ask. Shouldn’t Google use its own data to challenge a fundamental assumption of Enhanced Campaigns? Well, let me ask you something. When was the last time you tried to create an online ad system? What? Never? Then don’t question the wisdom of someone who has. And, besides, the big LOAD equation does not work in a Legacy Campaign world, so stop whining and start converting. And don’t laugh, either. After all, didn’t Isaac Newton have to create new math before he could prove his three Laws?
The second controversial, and even more mysterious, aspect of Google’s Grand Unification Theory of Devices is that individual keyword bids on mobile are no longer useful. Instead, mobile bids will now be calculated as a function of desktop keyword bids as explained in this equation:

The Law Of Bidding On Mobile & Desktop Devices (BMAD)

Translated, this equation states that your mobile keyword bid amounts will vary as a constant function of your desktop bids:

It no longer matters how your mobile keywords actually perform on mobile devices, what matters now is how your desktop keywords perform on desktop devices.
In olden days, advertisers only had one economic model to apply to AdWords bidding calculations. That model was based on the premise that your keyword bid should be a function of your conversion-rate-performance for that keyword. Now, with BMAD, we have two models. We can use that old model for our desktop device campaigns, and the new BMAD model for mobile keyword bids.
Now, I know you are saying to yourself, “how can it be simpler to employ two models rather than one?” As I said earlier, creating simplicity isn’t all that simple. Does that help? Good. Read on.
To make working under two economic models more simple than working with one, and to make the BMAD economics viable in the first place, Google simply invented the Mobile Bid Adjustment Factor, or BMAF, for short.
The BMAF is a constant, a percentage ranging from -100% to 300% that you can set yourself at the campaign level, which automatically creates your mobile keyword bid as a percentage of your desktop keyword bid. And, to make things even easier, any time you change any of your keyword bids, the BMAD BMAF instantly changes your mobile keyword bids, too. You’re welcome.
Still skeptical? Why, you ask, should mobile bids change every time we change a desktop bid? Why should mobile bids vary based on desktop bids in the first place? These are good questions. Let me get back to you on that.

Did Google Get It Right With Enhanced Campaigns?

Putting aside the shaky assumptions underpinning Google’s new Enhanced Campaigns that I satirized above, the question of the day is: will Enhanced Campaigns work and will advertisers be happy with it? Will Google be happy with it? Will Mobile CPCs rise and improve Google’s net profits?
There are certainly a lot of questions to be asked, and answers to be discovered, and the topic will certainly dominate the blogoshpere for months to come.
We’ve started modeling the expected impact of merging campaigns, and so far, we can find no significant gains or losses in the cutover, and so, we are starting the conversion process for our smaller customers.

Final Thoughts

A few final thoughts and questions about Enhanced Campaigns. Anyone who wants to weigh in, including Googlers, please leave your comments at the end of this article.
First, why didn’t Google first change the way it handles the time of day reporting and accounting for clicks?
I’d have thought this would have been the very first part of any AdWords reorganization. As it stands now, we still have to bid for clicks based on the time zone of the account, rather than the time zone where the click actually occurs. So, for example, If you want to reach people during their lunch hour, it would take 3-5 different campaigns for the US alone.
Some of the exciting new features in Enhanced Campaigns, like geographical bidding and site link scheduling would be much more useful if AdWords campaigns were based on click location.
Second, Google’s Product Managers have learned that handling PR surrounding new platform releases is probably as important as the release itself. I am sure that Google PR teams were embedded with the development teams, because the minute the story broke, there were industry pundits all lined up to say nice things about the changes.
Google strategically ‘leaked’ info to hundreds of major account reps, writers and bloggers so that within minutes of the announcement, the Internet was full of positive spin, which drowned out the negative voices. Well done, Google Product Development and PR teams. I sure hope there is as much steak in this new rollout as there is sizzle.
Well, that’s all that’s on my mind for Enhanced Campaigns this month. Want to give a big shout out to my brother, Bob, for his help with the physics and math stuff. Helps to have a physicist in the family! Please comment below with your own thoughts and ideas on Google’s latest efforts.

New ValueTrack parameters for enhanced campaigns: managing keyword level URLs by device

In a multi-screen world, it’s increasingly important for advertisers to show relevant ads based on a user’s context: location, time of day, and device. We launched enhanced campaigns to help advertisers take full advantage of user context, maximizing the effectiveness of their ad campaigns.

We’ve been listening to your feedback, and in the next few weeks we’ll be launching new ValueTrack features for advertisers using keyword level URLs.  These features will help advertisers achieve specific conversion and ROI goals, and make the upgrade to enhanced campaigns easier by:

1. Directing users to a device-specific landing page at the keyword level.
2. Enabling measurement of the effectiveness of campaigns by device.

What’s new

We’ve added a new parameter, {ifnotmobile:[value]}, where you can replace [value] with text that will then show up in your URL when the user clicks on your ad from a computer or tablet. We’re also changing the existing ValueTrack parameter {ifmobile:[value]}.  This parameter will now insert the specified value into the URL only if the user clicks from a mobile device.

In this post, we will discuss using the ifmobile and ifnotmobile parameters to direct users to a device-specific landing page.  We will also discuss performance tracking by device, and how the ifmobile and ifnotmobile parameters differ from the existing device parameter.

Example 1: Redirecting users to device-specific landing pages

Responsive web design is often a good fit for advertisers who provide device-optimized experiences to their users. If you must specify different landing pages depending on device, you have two options. If the landing page varies by creative, you can simply create mobile-optimized ads by setting the device preference to “Mobile.”  If the device-specific landing page varies for each keyword, then you can use the ifmobile and ifnotmobile parameters in the keyword-level destination URL.  It is important to remember that if you are using the ifmobile parameter today, it will no longer insert a value into the URL for tablet clicks.  The new parameter ifnotmobile will now insert a value into the URL for tablet and desktop/laptop.

Let’s say you want to send mobile users to "m.example.com/widgets," and desktop and tablet users to "www.example.com/widgets" for the keyword “widgets.”  In this scenario you could set the destination URL for this keyword to:

{ifmobile:m.example.com/widgets}{ifnotmobile:www.example.com/widgets}

Example 2: Tracking performance by device

If you want to track performance by device, the existing device parameter will work for most cases.  Using device inserts an “m”, “t”, or “c” into the destination URL, depending on whether the user clicked from a mobile device, tablet, or desktop/laptop computer. If your tracking system requires different internal ids for the same keyword on different devices, then you may need to use the ifmobile and ifnotmobile parameters.

For the keyword “widgets”, let’s say you have assigned an internal keyword id of “df32” for desktops and tablets and “df33” for mobile devices. You can set the keyword-level destination URL to:

www.example.com/widgets?kwid={ifnotmobile:df32}{ifmobile:df33}

Then, if the user clicks from a desktop or tablet, the landing page is:

  www.example.com/widgets?kwid=df32

and for a mobile click:

www.example.com/widgets?kwid=df33

Success in action

Advertisers are upgrading to enhanced campaigns and seeing strong results.  VivaStreet in France, the 4th largest free classified website in the world, upgraded all of their campaigns within the two weeks after launch.  When they upgraded, they increased their mobile bid adjustment to 125% and saw overall conversions increase by 34%.  After seeing the positive results, VivaStreet went on to increase their mobile bid adjustment to 140%.  By using ValueTrack parameters, you can also direct users to device-specific content and measure the effect it has on conversions.

Geographic Targeting In An Enhanced Campaign World

AdWords enhanced campaigns will force many advertisers to change their campaign structures. One of the benefits that have been touted for enhanced campaigns is that you will need fewer campaigns, thus making AdWords easier to manage.
For mobile targeting, this is true, as the ability to target mobile devices is now gone. However, for the targeting features that are left, such as location targeting, you might not want to consolidate your campaigns just for easier management.
In today’s column, we will examine how locations affect your campaign structure and if you should change your structure to match the new enhanced campaign benefits.

Location Bid Modifiers

Most accounts do not have the same conversion rates by geography. In some cases, the changes are small; but in other cases, the changes can be quite dramatic.

In this instance, the CPA of San Antonio is double that of Philadelphia. Therefore, we would not want to bid the same for each of these locations. Before enhanced campaigns, in order to bid separately by location, we would need to create a campaign for each location and set bids based upon the keyword CPA by region.
With enhanced campaigns, this will not always be necessary. One of the great new features is bid modifiers based upon locations. With bid modifiers, you can automatically adjust your bid for each location being targeted.
For instance, we can set our keyword bids as normal based upon some global CPA numbers, and then tell AdWords we would like to bid 32% higher for the Philadelphia region and 39% lower for the San Antonio region.

Before you can set a bid modifier for each location, you must add them to your campaign targeting section. If you don’t add each location to your campaign targeting, then you will not be able to set a bid modifier by location.

The good news is that this is very simple. You set bids as normal and then automatically adjust your bid by region.
The main limitation is that this is a campaign-only setting. If you have some keywords that do better in San Antonio than Philadelphia, but overall San Antonio is worse so you’d want to use a negative bid modifier, you cannot exclude keywords from the bid modifiers nor have bid modifiers at the keyword level. Of course, having that level of control would be incredibly difficult to manage by hand, so using campaign bid modifiers is a nice middle step.
The bad news is that these changes just affect the keyword bids for the entire campaign. They do not allow you to adjust the budget or ads for each region. In some cases, you still want to make different campaigns for some locations.
If you are a national company that has never tried to manage bids or budgets by locations, this is a great feature to get you started examining how various locations affect your CPAs so you can start to bid them separately or even target the users differently by location.
Please note, the geographic bid modifier only works with CPC bidding, either manual or enhanced. As with all bid modifiers, it is not compatible with CPA bidding or budget optimizer. The only exception is that you can bid –100% (setting your bid to $0) to not show if the auction uses that bid modifier.

Controlling Budgets

Several years ago, one of the main issues with splitting out your campaigns by region for bidding purposes was that you might have a single budget target, and you didn’t care which region received the click and spent your money, as long as the correct bid was used and you didn’t go over your total budget.
The shared budgets feature fixed this issue for advertisers and created the opportunity to easily use multiple campaigns without fretting over how to split the budget between campaigns.
Some companies have budgets by region. This is common in areas where there are co-op marketing budgets involved, multiple franchise locations, or physical store locations. If you want to maintain budgets by region, then you still want to maintain separate campaigns by region as you cannot split a budget between regions with enhanced campaigns.
If your regions are large, such as the northeast, southwest, and so forth, then you can use bid modifiers within those regions to tweak your CPCs; however, your overall structure of keeping your regions separate for budget reasons is still sound with enhanced campaigns.

Geographic-Specific Ads

One of the main reasons to separate locations into various campaigns is to ensure that the ads speak to that particular geography. The most common instance of this is adding the region to the ad’s headline. However, it is also done to match offline promotions or test responses to offers by region.
If you have split out your campaigns for the purpose of using different ads by region, you will not want to reconsolidate your campaigns as you will lose your ability to specify specific ads by geography. So, if your main reason to use multiple campaigns is for ad serving, you will want to leave your campaigns separated.

Ad Extensions

The last major reason campaigns were split up by region was for extension usage. You might have different sitelinks, offers, or location extensions you wanted to use by campaign. As none of the extensions have a geographic ad serving component (except for the location extension), if you want different offers or sitelinks by region, you still need separate campaigns.
With location extensions, you can decide to bid differently for someone who is within the reach of your location extension. If you first add your location extension as a location target, you can then set a bid adjustment for someone in that radius.

If you have physical locations where you want the customers to come to your business, this is a welcome change as someone who is within a mile of your restaurant is usually worth more than someone who is 30 miles from your location.

Wrap-Up

Enhanced campaign bid modifiers make it easier to manage location-based bids if all your keywords have similar CPAs by region. The ability to set a bid adjustment based upon the user’s proximity to your location is also a welcome change. If you want a simplistic AdWords account, and yet have the ability to set different bids by region, the new enhanced campaign features are a very welcome change.
If you are an advanced advertiser who wants to change budgets, ads, extensions, or individual keyword bids by region, when you upgrade to enhanced campaigns, you will not want to consolidate campaigns just for location targeting purposes. You will still need to consolidate campaigns based upon device types, but you won’t do it for location purposes.
If you have segmented your campaigns by location, you can still take advantage of bid modifiers within the campaigns as locations often have sub-locations (states have metros, metros have cities, etc.) that will commonly have different CPAs by each region which you can micro-manage with bid adjustments. If you are using location extensions, then please take advantage of bid modifiers by location extension reach.
The launch of enhanced campaigns is one of the biggest changes Google has ever implemented, and it will change how AdWords accounts are created, structured and managed. While enhanced campaigns gave additional features to location based bidding, this new campaign type should not force you to reorganize most account structures based solely upon location targeting considerations.

Reach smartphone users around the world with Google Shopping

People today are constantly connected, presenting a tremendous opportunity for retailers to deliver the right products to them across devices anytime, anywhere. Google recently announced the release of enhanced campaigns to  help advertisers reach customers in a multi-screen world.  Today they’re pleased to announce that Product Listing Ads are now eligible to appear on smartphones globally, extending the shopping experience already available on desktops and tablets. When a user enters a shopping-related search, a commercial format that displays products in a single unit may appear above organic search results. This ad unit is labeled as ‘Sponsored’ and displays rich product images, prices, retailers and more. This mobile shopping experience will be available in all markets currently serving Product Listing Ads.

Below are a couple of examples of what a shopper might see when searching for a product from their phone.

In the image on the left, a user searching for a plaid tie may see an ad unit displaying three options. He can click any of them to learn more and buy, or click ‘Shop on Google’ to continue browsing on Google Shopping, as shown in the image on the right. From there, the user can look at an even wider variety of options from different retailers. He can review and compare images, prices, reviews, shipping options and other information. Perhaps he’ll narrow his search down to plaid ties over $45, or filter to see just the selections available nearby. Finally, once the user has honed in on the perfect choice, he can easily complete his purchase on the retailer’s site.

Ensure your products are eligible to display in this new unit for smartphones

If you’ve already upgraded your Product Listing Ads to enhanced campaigns and made appropriate bid adjustments, your products will automatically be eligible to display in the new unit for smartphones.
If you haven’t yet upgraded your Product Listing Ads to enhanced campaigns, we recommend you upgrade to increase coverage of your products and easily manage bids across devices, locations, and time of day - all from a single campaign.

How to use Google Trends as a Keyword Selection Tool

When you are looking for a way to find your keywords for your SEO or for your PPC – you have a lot of free tools you can use for your research.

If you are searching for “used cars” you can get information about how many people are conducting a search for that special word or words. Use free tools like Google Keyword Tool. Or you can use WordTracker.
You will get the information about how many times a phrase is searched for, and  information about words or phrases that are very close to your target keyword. So in our example you will maybe get information about “blue cars” or “new cars”
But with Google Trends you can go much further. First of all it will show you how popular the keyword is over time, showing if your keywords popularity is rising, falling or staying steady.
So let’s say you are not sure if you want to do SEO for the term “blue cars” or “black cars”. Go to the search” and you will see this picture. Don’t write the quote marks, you just write the phrases with a comma between the search phrases. You can compare up to 5 different words or phrases.






 So the “black cars” phrase is very steady and the “blue cars” phrase is rising and falling but is always higher than the phrase black cars.
Google Trends is also a very quick way to get information about singular or plural version of your searched keyword or phrase. Here I will compare “blue car” or “blue cars”.







 Here you can see that there will be much more traffic for the word car than for the word cars.





 To the right you will see the volume of news stories related to your keyword. Below you can see the result from selected cities, selected world regions and by selected world languages.

Google Trend can’t tell you everything
Use Google Tend as a keyword tool. But you will need more research. Google Trend can’t tell you how many times a keyword has been searched. You can compare two or more graphs but not the actual number of searches.
Even though you found the most popular keyword or phrase it doesn’t tell you how competitive the market for that keyword is.
Maybe you will have no change at all to get into top10 for the phrase “Blue Cars” but you will have a great change for the phrase “Black cars” even though the popularity is much lower. And therefor you can get more traffic from that phrase.

Use Google Trend as an inspiration
Start using Google Trend and get inspired. And when you have found a word or two you will need to go to tools like Google Keyword Tool. But Google Trend is a great tool.
And yes.. It’s FREE.

Surviving Google AdWords’ New Enhanced Campaigns

In "Cheaper Clicks from AdWords Coming?,"From a article from Feb. 2012, Someone questioned whether the then unprecedented decline in cost-per-click rates would be a blip or a trend. One year later, Google apparently thinks it's a trend, as Google is requiring all advertisers to adopt its new Enhanced Campaigns.
This will likely reverse the decline in CPC rates that resulted from increased adoption of smartphones and tablets, when advertisers expected lower conversion rates from mobile traffic, and bid down their mobile campaigns. With the new rollout you will still be able to bid down mobile phone clicks, but the way you do that will be much different. If you don’t properly migrate, you’ll be automatically opted into mobile campaigns — paying higher rates — and that could significantly impact the profitability of your campaigns.
To be clear, Google’s transition to Enhanced Campaigns is an important evolution in AdWords, and confers many benefits. It’s important that you prepare for this transition, however, or it could jeopardize the profitability of your campaigns.
Five important changes you should prepare for are as follows.

1. No Segmenting for Tablets

In the past, you’ve been able to segment different campaigns for tablet users and traditional computer users. But now you will no longer be able to. The reason this matters is that many merchants bid their tablet CPCs lower or higher depending on their rate of conversion from tablet users. Since you won’t be able to target unique bids to tablet users, you’ll need to factor this conversion rate impact into your overall bid strategy, which may require you to make significant changes to your bids.

2. No Mobile-only Campaigns

In the past, you’ve been able to create mobile-only campaigns — i.e. smartphones — that target specific keywords, and you’ve been able to adjust bids for individual keywords based on performance. After Enhanced Campaigns rolls out, however, you will have less control. You will have to adjust your smartphone CPC rates, on the campaign rather than the keyword level, by creating “mobile bid adjustments.”
This screenshot shows how the campaign level bid adjustments looks for mobile devices. In this case we’re setting the mobile bid adjustment to 20 percent. In other words, if you are bidding $1 per click on desktops/tablets, your bid for smartphones will be reduced 20 percent to $0.80.

Campaign level bids will need to be adjusted for mobile devices.

3. Campaigns Automatically Opted-in to Mobile

This is perhaps the biggest reason to take control of your migration to Enhanced Campaigns, by following prompts Google will display inside your account, like the one below.

Campaigns will automatically be upgraded to Enhanced.
If Google automatically upgrades you to Enhanced Campaigns, than your campaigns will automatically be opted into Google's mobile network, and you will be paying higher rates for mobile clicks than might be profitable for you. This has the potential to hurt a lot of small businesses who don’t know any better.
The right time to migrate may not be now, however. Once you migrate you cannot revert. If your campaigns are already designated by device, you may want to wait a few months and migrate immediately before the forced upgrade takes place. Companies operating smaller campaigns that just target searches from traditional computers, however, can migrate to Enhanced Campaigns as soon as they’d like.

4. Sitelinks Now Available at the Ad Group Level

In the past, Sitelinks — i.e., additional links below the main body of the pay-per-click ad — could only be setup at the Campaign level. But now they can be setup at the Ad Group level. To understand why this is important, consider the example of an online retailer bidding on the phrase “baseball cleats.” In the screen shot below, you’ll see the advertiser has Sitelinks set up — advertising “Name Brands Up To 80% Off,” “Gift Cards,” “New Arrivals,” and “Baseball Bats.”

Sitelinks can now be set up at the Ad Group level. In this example, Sitelinks are "Name Brands Up To 80% Off Every Day - Gift Cards - New Arrivals - Baseball Bats."
The reason these Sitelinks are so unspecific is that you can only set Sitelinks up at the Campaign level, which means the advertisers had to select generic Sitelinks that applied not only to, say, baseball cleats, but myriad related concepts. Now that Sitelinks can be set at the Ad Group level, the Sitelinks could be more targeted to concepts like “Popular Cleats,” “Clearance Cleats,” or “Nike Cleats.” This will result in a more effective and more profitable ads.
The screen shot below shows the interface for creating a Sitelink, and how they can be automatically adjusted based on the time of day, or day of week. You can also set a mobile preference to target specific Sitelinks to mobile users.

Google's interface for managing Sitelinks.

5. Offer Extensions Now Available at the Ad Group Level

This screenshot details the offer extension interface, which allows you to highlight time-sensitive offers directly within your ads. For example, if your conversion rates on “Baseball cleats,” plummet over the weekend, you can schedule special sales for Saturday and Sunday that will automatically stop on Monday.

The offer extension interface.

Conclusion

I talk with many online retailers who spend thousands of dollars per month on AdWords, and less than two hours per month on the management of those campaigns. Enhanced Campaigns is likely only one of many major changes Google will make to AdWords this year. Retailers who do not continually optimize their campaigns — in light of the changes — will incur higher costs. In the case of Enhanced Campaigns, in particular, there is a big cost to ignoring the upgrade.

Tablet Growth Encouraging for Mobile Marketers

Looking at 2013, mobile ad network Jumptap expects tablets to make up nearly a third of mobile devices, and iOS and Android operating systems to completely overpower RIM.
In its February MobileSTAT report, Jumptap reported that in 2012, feature phones still made up 4% of the market share, while smartphones made up 78% share and tablets saw 18%. But looking to 2013, Jumptap forecasts that tablet market share will increase to 29%, with smartphones’s share dropping to 70%, and feature phones coming in at only 2% of devices.


“We think smartphones and tablets can both grow in parallel at the same time, because they perform different functions,” said Matt Duffy, VP of marketing at Jumptap, highlighting how consumers turn to tablets more at night and in lieu of their PCs. Marketers must include tablet advertising and outreach as part of their strategies, he emphasized, even as most tablet owners are more tech-savvy and already own smartphones.
“There is a lot of value with hitting a consumer with a message on their smartphone, but also sending the same message or a follow-up message on their tablet,” Duffy told AdExchanger. “There is a lot of value in at least knowing how much you’re reaching the same consumer on multiple devices.”
In the rest of the report, Jumptap also predicted that iOS and Android will account for 96% of operating system market share in 2013, leaving RIM at 2%.

Samsung continues to be the leader when it comes to Android devices, with its market share rising to 56% from 42% in 2011, and continuing to grow in 2013. Jumptap notes that advertisers hoping to make the most of mobile outreach should not only focus on both iOS and Android operating systems, but also expect that most Android users will be accessing their content via Samsung devices.

Enhanced campaigns: Improving online and offline results with location bid adjustments and offer extensions

With AdWords, you’ve been able to run campaigns in targeted geographic locations and attach your local business address to your search ads using location extensions. Now, new location-oriented features in enhanced campaigns are rolling out globally to help you achieve even better results with AdWords – online and offline. Read on to learn how to:

• Improve campaign results using location bid adjustments, whether your customers buy online or offline.
• More easily reach customers that are near your business locations. 
• Drive more offline purchases and measurable in-store traffic with search ads using offer extensions.

 Geotarget broadly with selective bid adjustments for improved results

Whether your business is online-only, offline-only, or multi-channel, you can improve your overall results by using a broad location target to cover your entire potential market while refining your bids in select areas. With legacy campaigns, you’d need to set up a new campaign for every location you wanted to bid differently on. Now, with enhanced campaigns, it’s simple to increase or lower your bids by a certain percent for any location target in your campaign.

In the AdWords interface, click Locations on the Settings tab, and then click on the bid adjustment column to the right of a location target to increase or decrease your bid. You can also make location bid adjustments with the latest version of AdWords Editor.

Setting a location bid adjustment (click to expand)

To optimize with selective bid adjustments using the AdWords interface:

1. Click on the “Location details” button and select “What triggered your ad.” 
2. Toggle the View button to slice your campaign performance data, including conversion data, by different geographic levels (example screen).
3. Sort or filter to focus on the locations you want to optimize. 
4.  Select one or more locations. 
5. Click the “Add targets and set bid adjustment” button.

For more advanced optimization, you might pair your AdWords reporting with your company’s data on customer value by geography to adjust bids for different locations.

Example 1: A commercial maintenance company targets a 20 mile radius around downtown Denver. The marketing director might know that it costs 20% less to sell to and service customers who are within 10 miles of downtown. He can improve his results by increasing his bids by 20% for customers within 10 miles of downtown Denver, since these leads are more profitable. 

Example 2: An online-only financial services company has modeled its average customer lifetime value by zip code. The company’s search specialist has been asked to achieve an average 8:1 return on ad spend (ROAS), which they define as average lifetime value divided by average cost per lead. The specialist downloads data from AdWords with cost per lead by zip code and pairs it with lifetime value for each matching zip code (example data). She looks for opportunities to improve her results by lowering bids in zip codes where ROAS is below the target and increasing bids in zip codes where ROAS is above the target. She makes her bid adjustment decisions in the spreadsheet and implements them in her enhanced campaign, re-checking the ROAS and volume impact for a few weeks and making changes as necessary. With legacy campaigns, she would have to set up a new campaign for every zip code with different bids, increasing the level of campaign management complexity and effort required.

Experienced search marketers know that bids are an important contributor to campaign results, along with ads, extensions, keywords, and landing pages, so they’re sure to measure periodically and make adjustments. Remember, targeting too narrowly can limit your reach, clicks and conversions, so consider using selective location bid adjustments while targeting broadly. More tips on optimizing your campaigns using location are available in the AdWords Help Center.

Reach customers near your offline business locations more easily

If you operate an offline or multi-channel business, you can use the new location extensions targeting to reach potential customers or increase your bids when they're near your locations with just a few clicks. It uses the location extensions you’ve already created and a radius that you specify to create targets around your businesses.

Setting a location extension target (click to expand)

You can then assign a bid adjustment to your location extension target to increase your ad’s visibility when customers are near your business, and potentially more likely to shop and buy from you (step-by-step directions).

Example 3: A national multi-channel retail business has been running AdWords campaigns to sell directly online and to drive people to its 400 local stores. The account has already set up location extensions, but it wants to improve its ad visibility even more when customers are searching within a short distance from its stores. With just a few clicks, its search agency adds a single “2.0 mile around each location extension” target and sets a +25% bid adjustment.

 Setting a bid adjustment for a location extension target (click to expand)

Drive measurable offline purchases and in-store traffic with offer extensions

Showing a potential customer the right offer at the right time can be the difference that brings them into a local business to buy from you. Offer extensions help you drive offline purchases and in-store traffic with a redeemable offer shown with your search ads across devices. You can use them whether you’re a retailer, manufacturer, or other type of business (currently shown to users in the U.S. only).

Desktop offer extension example

Mobile offer extension example

When customers click your offer, they'll see your offer details, business logo, and nearby stores (see example below). They can print your offer or save it to their Google Offers account for in-store redemption. At the point of sale, customers redeem the offer using either a text code or a bar code.

Offer details example on desktop (click to expand)

You pay for clicks on an offer just like a click on your ad headline – there are no fees for each redemption. We’ll also remind customers about unused offers through email to improve the redemption rate. Offer extensions are available at the campaign or ad group level.

Infographic: Google’s Mobile World, From Ads To Apps To Android

Mention Google and mobile together, and Google’s Android mobile operating system probably comes to mind. But Google’s mobile world is much larger than Android. It includes everything from ads, to offers, to apps like Google Now and yes, even Google Glass.

The folks at WordStream have put together an excellent infographic covering 20 different ways that Google has a mobile presence. Even if you might not agree with WordStream’s assessment of how effective particular areas are, it’s a great guide for navigating the mobile world of Google.
Here’s the infographic (you can click to enlarge it):