As part of our ongoing effort to improve our advertising program, we’re testing an updated AdWords billing interface that’s designed to make the payment process easier and more flexible.We’ve just started the testing process with a small group of U.S. advertisers, and we’re inviting eligible advertisers to participate so we can incorporate your feedback into the changes we’re working on. Although your billing method and form of payment won’t change, you’ll have access to some snazzy new features…

Today, we’re introducing several new features that integrate DoubleClick Ad Planner data with other Google advertising solutions. These features help streamline the process of planning and building online ad campaigns and give you useful data for making more informed media planning decisions.
Ad Planner Top 1,000 Most Visited SitesOne of these new key releases is the Ad Planner 1000 list, a list of the top 1,000 global sites on the web by unique users as measured by Ad Planner…

Over the past year, we’ve focused on building new solutions on the Google Content Network for campaigns focused on branding. Last year we introduced frequency capping to help you manage how often your Content Network campaigns reach the right people. We then launched an “above the fold” filter to allow you to show ads only in places that appear on potential customers’ screens when the page loads…

This week, we’re making two new feature enhancements to our view-through conversion reporting to help you more effectively measure the ROI of your display campaigns on the Google Content Network. View-through conversion reporting, which we launched last year, helps you measure the conversions that result from users who have seen but not clicked on your display ads. The enhancements we’re making will allow you to customize this reporting to better fit your needs…

Each year since 1963, the President of the United States has set aside a week to celebrate the contributions of American small businesses: National Small Business Week. Taking place in Washington D.C. from May 23rd – 25th this year, the event salutes the estimated 27.2 million small businesses in America.

At Google, we feel it’s especially important to show our appreciation, admiration and respect for small business owners and employees during this time…

Over the last year we’ve launched a number of ad extensions in AdWords to help you make your ads more useful and relevant to people searching for information on Google. Ad extensions expand your standard text ad with one or more lines of additional information like an address and phone number (location extensions and phone extensions), more page links (ad sitelinks), and product images (product extensions)…

Today at Google I/O, we announced that we’ll begin extending click-to-call advertising to mobile content and apps on the Google Content Network in the coming weeks. Click-to-call ads for mobile content and apps work with phone extensions and appear as animated  banner text ads with a call button on mobile devices with full Internet browsers. Now, whether your potential customers are reading the latest news, checking sports scores, or playing a downloaded game on their phones, you can reach them with relevant ads that let them easily click, call and connect with your business…

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We previously highlighted a campaign that American Apparel ran on YouTube in which they targeted pet videos — including one of the most famous videos on the site. Part of the secret of American Apparel’s success was their use of Video Targeting, a tool that helps advertisers find and target relevant partner videos on YouTube. As with other products we’ve recently launched, the Video Targeting Tool is integrated with Google AdWords and makes it easier than ever for you to run integrated, targeted, and measurable campaigns across the Web…

Last year, we unveiled a new feature called location extensions for those of you who use online advertising to drive traffic to your brick and mortar locations. This feature allows you to include information such as your business name, address and phone number in your existing text ads. When a potential customer performs a search, their location or search terms are dynamically matched to your business locations, and your most relevant location appears within your ad on Google…

On Thursday, May 13th, 2010 the AdWords system will undergo maintenance from approximately 6:00PM to 6:30PM PDT. While you may not be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual.While, AdWords system maintenance typically occurs on the second Saturday of each month, this update was delayed due to the Mother’s Day holiday in the U.S. last weekend…

Today we’re introducing the broad match modifier, a new AdWords targeting feature that lets you create keywords that have greater reach than phrase match and more control than broad match. Adding modified broad match keywords to your campaign can help you get more clicks and conversions at an attractive ROI, especially if you mainly use exact and phrase match keywords today.

To implement the modifier, just put a plus symbol (+) directly in front of one or more words in a broad match keyword…

The AdWords system maintenance, previously scheduled for May 8th, has been cancelled.  If you saw a message in your AdWords account alerting you about the scheduled maintenance, please disregard it. 

Post Posted by Daniel Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

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Display advertising is changing rapidly with the emergence of audience data, engaging new ad formats, dynamic creatives, and new technologies. We’d like to invite you to a webinar about our recent innovations in display advertising and how marketers are incorporating it into their strategy. Specifically, we’ll discuss:

• Google’s vision and recent innovations in display advertising
• How to best take advantage of our offerings, from planning to optimizing your campaigns
• How advertisers are incorporating the Google Content Network into their marketing strategy

Register here for the webinar to be held on May 20, 2010 at 11:00am PST / 1:00pm CST / 2:00pm EST…

AdWords provides several ways for you to track the performance of your ads– most of which focus on clicks. Sometimes, however, understanding what happens after people click on your ads is just as important for measuring your AdWords performance. Today at the eMetrics conference in San Jose, we announced a new set of AdWords reports in Google Analytics to help you do exactly that.

The new AdWords reports in Google Analytics give you more insight into what happens after the click…

Today we’re announcing a new enhancement to Conversion Optimizer: Target CPA Bidding. With Target CPA Bidding, you can set a bid that reflects the average amount you’d like to pay for a conversion rather than the maximum you’re willing to pay for it.We launched the Conversion Optimizer in 2007 as a tool to improve your campaign ROI. Conversion Optimizer studies your conversion tracking data and automatically adjusts your bids for each auction…

A few weeks ago, we introduced you to AdWords for mobile, our new mobile interface for Android, iPhone, and Palm Pre devices. Now, when you log into AdWords from one of these devices, you’ll be directed to AdWords for mobile automatically (currently only available for accounts managed in US, UK or Australian English).

AdWords for mobile gives you a quick overview of how your account is performing and allows you to easily make select changes to your keywords and campaigns…

In late September, we launched a beta version of the updated Keyword Tool. This tool is a new, streamlined way for you to identify additional keywords and add them to your account. Previously, we offered two distinct tools to expand your keyword list. The Keyword Tool generated keywords based on the content of the URL, words or phrases you entered into the tool. The Search-based Keyword Tool gave you insight into keywords that you may have been missing out on by identifying actual Google searches that were relevant to your site’s landing pages…

Cross posted from the Official Google Blog:

As the advertising industry has grown and evolved, so too has our relationship with advertising agencies. These companies, from SEMs to the largest traditional agencies, play a critical role in the continued success of Google, our advertisers and our industry — so we spend a lot of time talking to agencies about how we can make it easier for them to work with us and our advertisers…

Over the past few weeks, we’ve posted 4 videos that suggested small changes you can make to your AdWords account to help you improve your performance. This week, we’ll provide you with some guidance for measuring the results of these changes.With AdWords, you can see how successful your advertising is by monitoring the statistics in your account. Understanding these statistics allows you to assess your results and further tweak your campaigns for even better performance…

Late last year we introduced you to the AdWords New Ad Formats Initiative. At the time, we explained that new formats would be a major focus for us in 2010 and gave you a sneak peak into the types of new ad formats heading your way.With the introduction of our new Ad Innovations site, there’s now an easier way to stay up to date with all the latest formats we’re working on. Using Ad Innovations, you can learn about high level themes like ad extensions and new ad models…

Cross posted from the Google Agency Ad Solutions Blog.

ad:tech San Francisco is this week, from April 19th to April 22nd, and we’ll be there. Our product experts will be on hand at the Google booth Tuesday and Wednesday to answer questions and provide updates on AdWords, Analytics, DoubleClick, YouTube, AdSense and the Google Content Network. In addition, we’re holding the workshops “Insights Lickety Split in AdWords Search Funnels and Google Analytics” and “Google Ad Innovations @ ad:tech,” as well as speaking at the session “Marketing Masters – The Bleeding Edge of Advertising Innovation…

Potential customers choose your website over your competitors’ based solely on what they see in your ads. If your ads don’t distinguish your site or really sell your message, then you’re probably missing out on valuable sales.To help you think about your ads from your customer’s perspective we’ve put together a quick video covering some best practices for improving the performance of your AdWords advertising…

As we announced earlier this month, we’ve included the iPad in our list of mobile devices with full internet browsers, making it easy for you to run your campaigns on it.Now that we’ve finished our rigorous iPad testing, we feel confident adding the iPad to the list of mobile devices that you can target specifically. To do this, simply edit the “Devices” section in your Campaign Settings, and select the iPad under ‘Advanced device and carrier options:(click for full size image)A few things to keep in mind:

• If your device settings are set for desktop and laptop computers only, your ads won’t show on the iPad…

The keywords you’ve chosen in your AdWords account are critical to your advertising success. Potential customers won’t be able to find your ad unless you’ve chosen the right keywords, which could lead you to miss out on valuable sales.Check out the video below to see the three simple steps you can take to improve your keywords and make sure you’re effectively reaching your potential customers…

Our mobile phones are with us for a large part of the day. When you’re on the go and there’s no time to turn on a laptop or computer, it’s natural to reach for your phone when you need to conduct a search, especially now that many phones have the capability to access the Internet. According to the Kelsey Group, there are currently 54.5 million mobile Internet users in the United States, representing 25% of online users…

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog:
Small businesses are especially close to my heart. When he retired from teaching, my father ran a small art company in Maine, and I saw firsthand how fulfilling — and how difficult — it was for him to realize his dream of running his own business. Unfortunately, his business closed its doors after just a few years. His key challenge: attracting qualified customers…

As an AdWords advertiser, you’re in complete control of your advertising costs. Today, we’d like to highlight some tools and strategies that you can use to make sure that you’re spending effectively.For example, you can focus your budget on what gets you the best results by raising the CPC bid for your most successful keywords and lowering it for less successful terms. What’s more, there are simple, free tools in your account with the information you need to make these decisions…

Like many of you, we’re excited about the upcoming release of Apple’s iPad and the promise of tablet computers. Innovative products like the iPad are on the cutting edge of a whole new class of devices that promise to make accessing information and content easier and more fun.Over the past year, we’ve been working to make sure that our advertising products work well on a different class of exciting new devices – mobile phones with full Internet browsers like the iPhone and those running Android…

In the past year, Google’s advertising tools have moved in some exciting directions. We’ve introduced more data-driven and efficient campaign management with the new AdWords interface, easier account optimization with the Opportunities tab, and new ad formats like Ad Sitelinks and Product Extensions that provide more context and value to those who see them, to name a few.But where is advertising with Google headed next? Which new tools, formats and features will make it possible for you to communicate with your customers in more meaningful, creative ways?We’ve started a new project, Google Ad Innovations, to answer that very question…