Google AdWords – Video Ads on Google Display Network (GDN) & YouTube

Filed under Display Ad Network on 13 Oct, 2011 at 6:41 pm by Melody Goh

It has been awhile since we touched on Online Display Advertising, with the previous topic on the Display Ad Network – How to target by Topic Targeting. Today, let’s retain our focus on yet another area of display advertising, Video Ads. Our discussion would be specific to Google Video Ads, and its latest innovations.

We all know that online viewership is growing. It was reported on YouTube that “over 3 billion videos are viewed every day by over 800 million visitors every month” and “more than 48 hours of video is uploaded every minute”.  This leads us to the question – So how can we then effectively target and engage these online users?

The answer? Google Adwords Video Advertising. The platform not only enables you to reach out to your customers via the Google Display Network, but also on YouTube, as well as on TV with Google TV Ads.

Click-to-Play Video Ads (via Google Display Network)

Unlike pop-ups or video ads that play immediately upon mouseovers, Click-to-Play ads are non-intrusive as users are able to choose whether or not they would like to view the ad by clicking on them.

Here are some tips provided by Google, and we do strongly advocate as well, that you can follow when creating an effective Video Ad:

  1. Similar to text ads, it is important to attract users first with a clear and strong call-to-action. As these are click-to-play ads, the ad will display a static opening image before it starts playing upon being clicked on. It is important to impress and entice your audience with a clear and high-quality image accompanied with a simple and strong message.
  2. Draggy and long-winded messages tend to put viewers to sleep after 45 seconds. Hence, it is vital to capture their attention within the first 30-45 seconds with an interesting storyline/message.
  3. Use colours, animations and images that are pleasing to the eye. In other words, using bright colours may attract (or distract) your audience, but it may also cause them to find the ad blinding or annoying. Thus, choose them appropriately and ensure that these points are taken into consideration while creating the video ad.

Above is an example of a Click-to-Play Video Ad being targeted on the Google Display Network for a 2010 City Chain Singapore campaign that Clickr had previously managed.

 

For DIY/self-serve purposes, Google Adwords has a “Display Ad Builder” tool, which allows marketers to create professional-looking image and video ads to showcase their businesses online. View the following video on an Introduction to the Display Ad Builder tool:

YouTube Preview Image

You can also follow the Online Tutorial on how to create ads within minutes:

YouTube Preview Image

Promoted Video Ads (via YouTube)

Apart from being able to target on the Google Display Network, you can also choose to target YouTube by leveraging on the pool of users and viewers that stream in to view videos every day.

Google’s new YouTube Video Advertising enables marketers to grab customer’s attention with Promoted Video Ads and this can be done in 3 simple steps:

  1. Upload a video, choose a thumbnail picture and write a clear description/message.
  2. Target your specified audience by keywords and categories. Similar to Google Search campaigns, set a budget and bid for your targeting options.
  3. View results and optimize the campaign.
YouTube Preview Image

To better target your video ads on YouTube, Google also has a YouTube Video Targeting Tool to help find the right channels, videos and categories for your campaign. Only 2 steps are required:

1. Select the geographic region to target and format of the ads

Image courtesy of Google AdWords

2. View the various categories, videos and channels available on YouTube or filter your search by Audience/Keywords and choose the placements to target. Save these placements to your AdWords campaign.

Image courtesy of Google AdWords

Full length video tutorial as follows:

YouTube Preview Image

The benefits of Promoted Video ads are that they are well targeted, relevant to what users are searching for and that you only have to pay when someone clicks on your promoted video link, not by impressions. By setting a comfortable budget and bid, you are not only in control of where your ads will be seen on YouTube, but also how often they can be displayed daily.

To find out more about how Clickr Media would be able to help create and manage your Google Video Campaigns, contact us now!

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Google Adwords Express for Business

Filed under Pay-Per-Click Search Marketing on 18 Aug, 2011 at 6:44 pm by Jeff Shi

In July 2011, Google created Google Adwords Express which allowed small business owners to create basic text ads to run on Google’s search engine. This simplified adwords system would allow small time business owners to be able to advertise online and compete with their larger competitors, with less trouble and hassle for these business to manage their online advertising. Curious to find out more about this, I did a quick test to run through on the Adwords Express interface.

To start with, the adwords express ties in closely with your business location, so it allows you to create your business listing on Google places at the same time. In addition, the setup process is kept as simple as possible.

Looks not too bad so far. However, upon further exploration, there appears to be some really major issues using this as an advertising platform:

1) No selection of keywords

According to Adwords Express – “When you sign up for AdWords Express, we suggest category options for your AdWords Express ad. These categories are selected for your listing based on the categories that you chose when you signed up for your free Places listing.

Once you select a category, a list of keywords associated with that category is added to your account.”

In layman terms, Google would determine on the keywords that your ad would appear in, depending on which category your business fits into. However, these keyword categories remain broadly targeted. For example, for Clickr Media’s online marketing business, we can only select topics relating to “Marketing Services” within Google’s topics for selection. We would not be able to target specifically on Internet marketing or online marketing related keywords, but only on marketing services related terms as a whole. There is no option available to select which type of keywords you would be appearing in.

2) No Bidding Management

Besides no selection of keywords, Adwords Express provides users with the “convenience” of no bidding needed for their keywords and ads. In this case, there is no control for users to choose the cost which they would be paying for each click incurred. This makes the campaign setup vague and not transparent in terms of how much clicks you would be targeting to achieve for your campaign, as well as the cost which you are spending for clicks to your ads.

3) No Landing Page Targeting

Another major disadvantage of Adwords Express is that there is no option to select specific landing pages within your website to target your keywords to. For example, if you business is selling on digital cameras, you should sell your ads on digital cameras to the specific page on your website which features on these products. However, this would not be possible for Adwords Express, which only targets your ads to the main page of your website.

 

Overall, Adwords Express offers smaller businesses such as kiosks and traditional brick-and-mortar shops with the ability to feature their ads and their store location on Google’s search results.

However, Adwords Express remains unsuitable for businesses which need to feature on their products and services online, and does not provide businesses with the ability to monitor and improve on their campaigns. For such businesses, it is important to understand, track and improve on the performance of your campaign. For Clickr Media, we would be able to help you out on your pay-per-click search engine marketing campaigns, from campaign text and keyword setup, to managing its advertising performance and maximizing your ROI.

To find out more about how Clickr Media would be able to help your business, contact us now!

 

 

 

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Google Search – The Google +1 button

Filed under Pay-Per-Click Search Marketing on 28 Jul, 2011 at 10:53 am by Melody Goh

The Google +1 button has officially made it to Singapore. As you would have noticed, the button has started to appear on Google Search results, Google Ads & other Google +1 partnering sites.

Here’s just a short and simple description of its purpose, explained by Google: “The +1 button is shorthand for “this is pretty cool” or “you should check this out” and it puts the right recommendations right when you want them – in your Search Results”.

Watch how easy it is to recommend something – all you have to do is click +1 on a webpage or ad you find useful.

Google +1 Button

It takes just 1 easy step to getting Google +1 appear on your Google Search:

  1. Make sure that you already have your public Google Profile. With it being public, your profile is visible to everyone & whoever who has connections to your email address, including:
  • People in your Gmail (or Google Talk) chat list.
  • People in your Google Contacts
  • People that you’re following in Google Reader & Google Buz

However, you have the flexibility of controlling who sees your +1’s on your profile by adding or removing them from the groups in which they’re included.

Another exciting feature of Google +1 is the fact that it allows advertisers to enable the +1 button on Google ads too. Google emphasized that this does not change the way Quality Score is calculated, though it may affect the calculation of an Organic Search Ranking.

Apart from that, Google is also working on a +1 button that can be placed on pages too to ease recommendations of your site on Google Search. Do check out the +1 Webmaster site for more details & updates on how to include the Google +1 button into your website!

So, what do you think of +1? Feel free to comment, or contact us to find out more about pay-per-click advertising!

 

 

 

 

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Google Display Network – Topic Targeting

Filed under Display Ad Network, Pay-Per-Click Search Marketing on 7 Jun, 2011 at 12:23 pm by Jeff Shi

Having worked on Google Adwords for awhile now, its been quite interesting looking at how much Adwords has changed from the past. For this blog post, I’ll be sharing more about content targeting by Topics, a new targeting option from Google Adwords.

Content targeting started simply enough – by allowing users to have their ads appearing in websites in Google’s advertising network. Users can then select the websites which their ads appear in by targeting specific keywords relating to their products as well as relating to the websites which they wish to appear in.

Google has launched Display Network targeting by topics, allowing advertisers to target websites relating to topics which your ads can be featured in. This form of “topic targeting” allows you select interests, themes as well as subjects which your target audience likes, and Google would then target your ads to websites related to these topics.

 

Doing a quick test using Topic targeting, and I have noticed that depending on the products which you are advertising on, the topics which are related to your product may be rather limited. In addition, it is important not to just limit your topics to those directly related to your business or ads, but select other topics which may be relevant to the users whom you are trying to target.

 

The following are some best practices recommended by Google for using Topic Targeting:

  1. Implement conversion tracking. Before you implement your campaigns, ensure that you’re tracking performance. We recommend you rely on conversion data to guide you. This will help you understand how individual topics or pages are converting (leading to a purchase or sign-up, for example). We offer two free tools for advertising accountability: Google conversion tracking and Google Analytics.
  2. Use AdPlanner to see examples of the types of sites where your ads may appear for specific topics
  3. Create a separate campaign for topics, which will allow you to set a separate budget for your campaign. This best practice also applies to your Display Network campaigns overall.
  4. Choose sub-topics that are relevant. Add relevant sub-topics to your ad groups, rather than more general, top-level topics. Note: adding top-level topics will add all sub-topics.
  5. When targeting a top-level topic, target its sub-topics, too. This will give you more specific reporting.
  6. Use topics and keywords together for more precise targeting. Topics and keywords can work together to find the best places on the Display Network for your ad. For example, a hotel in Paris might target the Travel topic, while using more specific keywords, such as “paris hotels”.
    • To refine topics, select “Relevant pages only on the placements that I manage” in campaign settings and add keywords to further refine targeting. Note: Refining with keywords can limit traffic.
    • Bid modification: Select “Relevant pages across the entire network” in campaign settings and add topics to your keyword campaign to set specific bids for your topics.

 

We will review and share more on Topic Targeting’s performance once further review and optimisation on its performance is in. ;)

By the way, want to know how Pay-Per-Click Advertising can help your business? Feel free to drop us a note for a free consultation.

Cheers and have a good week ahead!

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