More and more people are accessing the internet on their mobile devices. Take advantage of this trend by making sure that your ad campaigns are opted in to show on mobile devices with full internet browsers. If you’d like to take things to the next level, create separate mobile-focused campaigns so that you can optimize your keywords, ad text and landing pages for people using mobile devices.To help you understand what mobile optimization looks like, we thought we’d share the approach that Razorfish, a global digital advertising agency, took for one of their retail clients:

• The Razorfish team started by duplicating the existing desktop campaigns and switching the settings to target mobile devices with full internet browsers…

Two types of advertisers run campaigns across the Google Content Network. The first group, direct response advertisers, measures the success of their campaigns by looking for clicks, traffic to their sites, and sales. In contrast, brand advertisers typically use display ads to raise awareness and purchase consideration for a product or service a person might buy down the road. Other advertisers are looking to achieve a combination of these goals…

Recently, we announced new click-to-call phone numbers for local ads that appear on mobile devices with full internet browsers, like iPhone, Android or Palm Pre. This week, we’re bringing the same click-to-call benefits to national advertisers through phone extensions. Phone extensions allow you to add a phone number that will be displayed whenever your ad is triggered, regardless of the user’s location…

Every day, thousands of AdWords advertisers use Google Ad Planner to research websites and select where to advertise online. We’re continuing to improve this tool in order to provide the deepest, most accurate insight into online audiences possible. To that end, we’ve improved how Ad Planner calculates site traffic by over 10%, and we’ve changed its name to DoubleClick Ad Planner. Visit the DoubleClick blog to read more about the traffic improvements and the new name…

The Internet is going mobile. Every week, tens of millions of people search on Google from their mobile phones and generate hundreds of millions of searches. Using mobile ads, you can reach these consumers while they’re on-the-go.Please join us for an upcoming webinar about what we’re seeing in the mobile ad space and how you can incorporate mobile advertising into your marketing strategy.Specifically, we’ll cover how you can:* Understand mobile trends and what they mean for your business* Drive consumer action online and in the store* Optimize your strategy for the mobile platformRegister here for the webinar to be held on March 2, 2010 at 11:00am PST / 1:00pm CST / 2:00pm EST…

We want to let you know that the changes to our pharmacy policy in the U.S. and Canada will start to go into effect today.As we explained a couple weeks ago, this update means that Google AdWords will only accept advertisements from VIPPS and CIPA certified pharmacies, and that these pharmacies can only target ads within the countries where they are accredited.To ensure that users see the most relevant and useful ads possible, pharmaceutical manufacturers and VIPPS and CIPA certified pharmacies will be allowed to run on prescription drug and pharmaceutical-related keywords…

You may recall that towards the end of 2009, we began testing a new feature called AdWords Comparison Ads. This feature lets users compare multiple relevant offers with ease, and it provides advertisers with a new sophisticated and flexible cost per lead format. Speed is of the essence for many users, so we’ve made sure that Comparison Ads shows targeted offers in less than a second. The initial test covered mortgage-related queries in the US…

Last week, we showed you how to use Google Analytics to understand how mobile visitors interact with your website. We also showed you how to use that information to optimize your AdWords campaigns. This week, we’ll show you how you can tailor your campaigns to reach the most relevant mobile audience.What mobile device are they using?Ensure that your ad is only displayed to the right mobile audience…

On Saturday, January 20th, 2010 the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10AM to 2PM PST, for maintenance. While you won’t be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual. AdWords system maintenance typically occurs on the second Saturday of each month from 10AM to 2PM.We’ll continue to update you via the blog as we always have, but please make note of the January 20th date and of our scheduled maintenance further down the road…

Over the last several months, we’ve been introducing new ways to analyze and segment your campaign data. As we continue to introduce more data types, we want to make sure that it’s easy for you to access these reporting controls. That’s why we’ve introduced a new analysis toolbar in the Campaigns tab of your account. This toolbar consolidates key functionality from the “Filter and views” and “More actions” menus, and appears at the top of each of your data tables:(click for full size image) You can use the toolbar to quickly apply a filter to the data you’re viewing or customize the columns on each tab…

Over the past few months, you may have visited the Opportunities tab to get customized keyword and budget ideas for optimizing your account. Now we’re adding more functionality to the Opportunities tab with the introduction of bid ideas. Bid ideas, based on bid simulator data, will help you raise or lower your bids on specific keywords to improve your AdWords ROI. Whether you wish to decrease overall costs or increase traffic to your website, customized bid ideas can help you determine exactly which bids to adjust to make the most of your advertising budget…

Understanding who visits your website is important when developing your AdWords campaigns. In this post, we’ll show you how you can use Google Analytics to analyze your website traffic and optimize your AdWords campaigns.Who’s coming to your site?More and more users are accessing regular websites through mobile phones with full internet browsers. These users may be looking for different information or want to take a specific action more quickly than those who visit from a desktop computer…

We understand how important it is for users to be able to purchase pharmaceuticals online for themselves or for loved ones, and we’ve decided to update our Google AdWords online pharmacy policy to ensure that the experience purchasing these products through our ads is a positive one. The change will go into effect towards the end of this month.There are two main aspects to this change:Only VIPPS and CIPA certified pharmacies will be allowed to advertiseWe’ve made the decision to further restrict the ads we accept for online pharmacy sites in the U…

We’re excited to announce our latest and most interactive online training for advertisers: the AdWords Online Classroom.You can get free, hands-on online training on key AdWords topics, delivered by our own AdWords & Industry specialists.We’re offering a great selection of live and recorded courses, including:* Improving your AdWords performance with key tips* Reaching more potential customers* Getting the most from your website with Website Optimizer* Using Google Analytics reports to improve your AdWords return-on-investmentTo view all upcoming live and recorded courses for North America, please visit our North America Online Classroom site…

This is an important reminder for those of you who use the AdWords API. On April 22, most v13 services will be turned off. To make sure that your application continues to work after this date, we recommend migrating to v200909 as soon as possible.If you’re an API user, you might want to follow the AdWords API Blog. It’s a great place to learn about what’s changing with the product and find migration resources…

When people search for goods or services using their mobile phones, they often prefer to call a store rather than visit that store’s website. Whether they’re placing a direct order, making a reservation, or inquiring about services, the ability for prospective customers to easily call your business is a key distinguishing feature of searches made on mobile phones versus computers.Now you can make it even easier for potential customers to reach you by adding a location-specific business phone number in ads that appear on mobile devices with full internet browsers…

If you’ve chosen to show ads on iPhones and other mobile devices with full internet browsers, you can now target specific mobile devices or carriers. This feature makes it easier for you to reach the right users if you have a carrier- or device-specific message. This includes landing pages that have been optimized for a specific device, billing relationships with certain carriers, or mobile apps developed for a specific platform…

The display URL (the URL that appears within the ad itself) shows potential visitors to a site where they’ll land when they click on an ad. For sites that sit on shared or hosted domains (such as blogspot.com), we’re adjusting our display URL policy to make this more clear.Beginning this week, all ads leading to sites on hosted domains will need to have display URLs that accurately reflect their destinations…

This is an exciting time for mobile. Over the past year, consumers have increasingly turned to their mobile devices to access the internet. They’re performing searches, browsing content, watching videos, and interacting with mobile applications. Looking ahead, analysts expect internet usage on mobile devices to continue to ramp up even faster than it did on desktop computers.Even more exciting, is our new approach to buying a mobile phone…

On Saturday, January 9th, 2010 the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10AM to 2PM PST, for maintenance. While you won’t be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual. AdWords system maintenance typically occurs on the second Saturday of each month from 10AM to 2PM.We’ll continue to update you via the blog as we always have, but please make note of the January 9th date and of our scheduled maintenance further down the road…

We’re often asked, “How can I maximize the ROI from Content Network campaigns?”As part of our new Optimization University initiative, we’ve developed a Getting Started Guide and a series of 6 videos to help answer this question for you. The guide and videos provide a conceptual walk-through and demo of the major steps involved in executing a Content Network campaign. These include:

• Campaign setup best practices
• Creating appropriate ad groups
• Selecting effective keywords
• Developing high impact ad creative
• Bidding strategies
• Conversion tracking and tweaking for ROI

Along with simple tips and tricks to improve ROI, we also go over several tools, such as the Wonder Wheel, the Keyword Tool and Conversion Tracking, that can help you be more efficient…

We kicked off the Think2010 blog series 14 weeks ago with the idea of helping you prepare for the coming year by devoting one post each week to big-picture, forward-looking themes supported by actionable tips. Over the course of the series we’ve covered topics such as relevance, speed, experimentation and innovation. We’ve discussed the multiple roles that search can play, how to use data to better connect with customers, and the importance of staying focused on the fundamentals…

As the end of the year approaches, you may be thinking about how to drive more traffic to your AdWords campaigns and in turn, to your website.Millions of people use Google each day to find products and services by searching on various keywords. This means that by including all keywords that are relevant to your product or service in your campaigns, you can ensure you can ensure that you will reach a greater set of potential customers…

Over the last year and a half, we’ve made significant changes to the Google Content Network to deliver better performance for your campaigns and to simplify the process of serving ads across a range of websites. As we roll out more features, we want to make it easy for you to discover what best fits your needs. To this effect, we’ve just launched a new Content Network brand channel on YouTube.The site is stockpiled with videos, links and downloads about the full suite of features and solutions on the Content Network…

As part of our Fast.Forward. program, we’ve asked numerous industry leaders – from Google and beyond – about the online marketing trends they think will be significant in the year ahead. This week we’ll talk about making your campaigns more personal by targeting mobile devices and increasing the accountability and sophistication of the metrics you use to evaluate your campaigns.Penry Price, Google’s VP of Global Agency and Industry Development, offers his thoughts on these topics…

Shoppers increasingly use their smartphones to search the internet, and we typically see an increase in shopping-related queries on Android, iPhone and Palm WebOS devices during the holiday season.(click for full size image)Ensure that your online campaigns perform well on mobile devices with full internet browsers by viewing device statistics on your Campaign Summary, Ad Groups, or Ads reports within AdWords…

As part of our ongoing efforts to improve training materials and the Google Advertising Professionals program we have updated the certification exam and learning center.We’ve created a new Google Advertising Fundamentals exam designed to be more rigorous and strategy-oriented. Our teams have developed the new curriculum and exam to equip you with useful, relevant training to manage AdWords campaigns…

In our Think2010 post a couple weeks ago, we noted how important experimentation will be in the coming year to help you optimize your campaign for the best possible ROI. A very closely-related tenet is the commitment to speed. There is great access to information and insights, and that information is now available faster than ever. This means that marketers who are nimble, work quickly, and iterate as they go will often be the ones who succeed…

Next week on December 7th and 8th, you can catch presentations by the Google AdWords team at SES Chicago. We’ll be offering practical tips on how to quickly improve your search and display ads performance in the following sessions:

• What’s New and Exciting with Google Analytics: the latest tools and reports from our Analytics platform.

• Getting the Most Out of AdWords Optimization Tools: improve your campaigns with recently added AdWords features like the Opportunities tab, new data segmentation options, and custom alerts…

As you plan your marketing approach for 2010, think of ‘innovation’ in a broad sense. You don’t need to be the first to venture into uncharted territory or the one to make the biggest splash. You just need to think openly and differently about your customer connections. Strive to be nimble, current, and ever-more relevant as you create them.In today’s marketing world, this often means making use of insights and Analytics tools to continually tweak your approach…