Constant connectivity through mobile has created five new paths to purchase that start on customers’ smartphones. As a marketer, it is key that you account for these new types of conversions and understand the full return on investment you’re getting from your mobile efforts. That’s why earlier this week we introduced The Full Value of Mobile, an initiative to help marketers understand mobile’s impact on offline and online conversions.

Join us on Thursday, March 28th (10am PT/1pm ET) for our first Full Value of Mobile webinar. We will highlight the full range of conversions that mobile can drive and walk you through our new Full Value of Mobile calculator tool.

Sign up for our webinar today by registering here.

We look forward to seeing you tomorrow!

Posted by: Julie Pottier, Product Marketing Manager, Google Mobile Ads

Today, we’re giving AdMob developers more control over the value of ad impressions served to their apps. The AdMob eCPM Floor beta allows developers to set a minimum CPM they’d like to receive for each ad. The beta is available to AdMob developers who are using AdMob Mediation.

How does this work? Advertisers bid to show their ads on apps in the AdMob network, and an auction is run for every impression to determine the winner. We predict what the ‘expected CPM’ (eCPM) of that ad impression will be. The developer sets a minimum eCPM and we will only serve ads to their app that meet or exceed that level. For example, if a floor of $1.25 is set, we’ll only show ads with an eCPM of $1.25 or more. When choosing a floor value it’s important for developers to look at their own reporting and determine a value that’s relevant to them.

Here are a few details to know when taking part in the beta:

• Make sure the eCPMs that are set for other ad networks are accurate.
• We don’t guarantee the final value of the eCPM, since we don’t know if a user will click on the ad.

Developers who use the beta have the option of setting just one network line item in their mediation stack which uses the eCPM floor. Or, they can have two network line items, one that uses the eCPM floor and one without, so they can continue to fill impressions at their current fill rate. Setting the eCPM floor at a very high value will likely lead to a decrease in the fill rate.

Find setup instructions in the AdMob Help Center here under the article titled ‘Allocate traffic by eCPM’.

Posted by: Vishay Nihalani, Product Manager, Google

We live in a world of constant connectivity, where mobility is bridging the digital and physical worlds. With smartphones in hand, people are taking a variety of online and offline actions, like calling a business, downloading an app, looking for directions to a store, or starting research that leads to a purchase on another device. We’re working hard to account for these new paths to purchase in AdWords, like the recent addition of calls as conversions to AdWords reporting. Still, with more work to be done to improve measurement tools, most marketers still account only for sales happening on a mobile site and aren’t seeing the full picture. Today we’re introducing the Full Value of Mobile initiative to help marketers begin this discussion and better understand mobile’s impact online and offline. 

This new consumer behavior is now the norm, with a recent study showing that nearly three of ten mobile searches result in visiting a store, calling a business, or making a purchase online. Some smart marketers are already investing in understanding how mobile drives sales through these new customer paths. For example, adidas, in partnership with their agency iProspect, felt that mobile was converting in ways beyond their mobile website, so they created a simple yet powerful attribution model to understand how mobile is driving customers into stores. As a result, adidas found that each click on their store locator button was worth $3.20, which has changed the way they view their digital investment. See their full case study here.  

While savvy marketers like adidas are already defining the full value of mobile, most marketers have struggled to get started. To help marketers better understand mobile attribution, we’re launching the Full Value of Mobile initiative, which includes:

• A calculator tool
• Videos that illustrate each mobile conversion path
• Case studies highlighting successful mobile strategies
• Tips for measurement

The Full Value of Mobile Calculator provides simple equations and benchmarks to help you estimate of the value that mobile drives for your business through calls, apps, in-store, mobile site and cross-device. In about 30 minutes, you can follow the step-by-step wizard to upload data from AdWords and your mobile website, and make some key assumptions to create your Full Value of Mobile estimate. Through the exercise, you’ll see the total value, value per click, and ROI that mobile is driving for your business across all mobile customer paths, not just your mobile website. You’ll also see how cost-effective your mobile CPAs are.

We hope the Full Value of Mobile Calculator helps marketers begin to investigate mobile’s impact online and offline, whether they use it as a directional estimate of mobile’s value or to spark ideas on how to build deeper and more customized models. To learn more about the Full Value of Mobile and how to use the calculator, please join us for a webinar on March 28 at 1pm EDT.  You can sign up here.

Mobility has forever changed the way consumers live and shop, giving rise to these new customer paths as the lines between digital and physical experiences blur. Understanding what each of these mobile pathways means for your business is a critical piece of the larger attribution challenge that every marketer needs to meet head-on. This requires thinking about the full customer journey and acknowledging the interplay between various devices, channels and media influences along the way. Only then can marketers give credit where it’s due – both between and within channels. In other words, rethinking conversion paths is not only key to unlocking the full value of mobile, but also to unlocking the full value of digital.

Posted by: Johanna Werther, Head of Mobile Ads Marketing

A typical consumer today uses multiple devices to surf the web and interact in many ways with your business. For most large businesses, already swimming in many sources of data, it’s an enormous challenge, but also an incredible opportunity. 

Back in October, we announced the limited beta release of Universal Analytics as a way for businesses to understand the changing, multi-device customer journey. Today, we’re excited to welcome and invite all Google Analytics customers to try Universal Analytics.

The benefits of using Universal Analytics to businesses are: 

• Understanding how customers interact with your businesses across many devices and touch-points, 
• Insights into the performance of your mobile apps, 
• Improvements of lead generation and ROI by incorporating offline and online interactions so you can understand which channels drive the best results,
• Improved latency on your site by reducing client-side demands.

Testimonials from the initial beta release

Our initial beta customers using Universal Analytics and are pleased with their results. Rojeh Avanesian, VP of Marketing at PriceGrabber.com reports:

"At PriceGrabber, we know it’s important to understand consumer shopping behavior so we can provide a more customized experience to our users. Google’s Universal Analytics will solve this problem for us and many sites that are facing this challenge and help us serve our users better by providing them with more relevant content and shopping results. We can use Google Analytics’ metrics to segment our users in a way that improves and simplifies the shopping experience for consumers. That’s what we strive for at PriceGrabber, to make shopping and saving money as easy as possible."

How to get started using Universal Analytics

If you’re new to Google Analytics, you can choose Universal Analytics when you setup your account. Already using Google Analytics? Create a new web property in your Google Analytics account to set up Universal Analytics and explore the new features. 

Here’s what you’ll see when you create a new web property. Select the Universal Analytics column to get the new analytics.js code snippet you can implement on your website:

You can implement Universal Analytics with the new analytics.js JavaScript for websites, our iOS and Android SDKs for apps, and the new Measurement Protocol for all other platforms. 

Find more details on how to set up using our help center or developer guide. (Migration guides for properties using ga.js coming soon. Until then, set up a new property in your account for Universal Analytics).

To tag in the most flexible way possible, you can also take advantage of the Universal Analytics template available in Google Tag Manager, which allows you to make additional changes and enable new features to your analytics setup without changing the hard-coded tags on your website. Learn more about how to implement Universal Analytics through Google Tag Manager. 

For more information on Universal Analytics, visit our help center and developer guides. 

Happy analyzing - in the new and innovative ways you can with Universal Analytics!

Posted by: JiaJing Wang, Product Manager, Google Analytics

SES New York is coming up next week, and we hope you’ll join us in the Big Apple!

During day 1 of SES New York, we'll be on the expo floor with a custom-built Google classroom. Join us for a full day of learning about the latest solutions from AdWords, Mobile, Google Display Network, and DoubleClick Search to help you win in a constantly connected world.

Where: SES NY Expo Hall, 5th Floor Marriott Marquee
When: Day 1 - Tuesday, March 26th
Sessions:

• 10:30-11:30am Reaching customers whenever, wherever, across any device. Surojit Chatterjee, Lead Product Manager for enhanced campaigns
• 11:45-12:45pm Understanding the Full Value of Mobile. Brendon Kraham, Director, Global Mobile Solutions
• 2:00-3:00pm Engaging with your audience in a multi-screen world. Speaker TBD
• 3:30-4:30pm Using DoubleClick Search to manage campaigns across channels and devices. Anthony Chavez, Product Manager for DoubleClick Search

Don’t have a pass yet? Don’t worry! Expo Only passes are free and get you access to our Google classroom. You can also use the code NYGOOGLE which is redeemable for up to $700.00 off a full conference pass!

Posted by: Derrick Djang, Product Marketing Manager, AdWords

Last month we announced enhanced campaigns to help advertisers more simply and scalably reach their customers in a multi-screen world.  Today, we’ll look more closely at how enhanced campaigns work with your display campaigns.

Why Enhanced Campaigns For Display
In this constantly connected world, our customers are accessing information across multiple devices, and might look at 10 different sources - online reviews, newspaper and magazine articles, recommendations from friends and more - before making a purchase. Display advertising captures these signals and is an important part of connecting with consumers in this multi-screen world.  But determining the best way to reach the right person with the right ad is more complex than ever. Enhanced campaigns for display help you reach people with the right ads, based on people’s context like their location, time of day and device type -- all from a single campaign.

Key Features
Search and display use very different signals. In search, we use keywords to capture users’ intent. For instance, a travel booking website knows that a user searching for ‘Rome Vacation Packages’ is looking for a vacation in Rome. In Display campaigns, advertisers use a variety of other signals to reach their target customers with the right ad. In this example, a travel website may use:

• Interest Categories: to reach customers interested in “Rome”
• Demographics: to reach people 35-44, who have historically spent 3x the average
• Topic Targeting: to reach people browsing travel websites
• Remarketing: to reach customers who booked a vacation with them last year

In today’s constantly connected world, someone's intent and the actions they're looking to take may differ depending on their context, signals such as time of day, location and device:

• Time of day: Travelers typically book between 9am and 6pm
• Location: “People in the US” who may convert more often than people in Italy
• Device: Mobile users tend to browse on their smartphones, then book on their desktop

With enhanced campaigns, instead of having to create multiple campaigns, this travel website can easily manage all of this in one place. In a single campaign they can adjust bids across these various signals to reach the right people with the right ads.

Learn More
More tips on how to use enhanced campaigns for display are available in the AdWords Help Center. To learn more on how you can take advantage of Enhanced Campaigns for Display, register for our upcoming webinar this Thursday March 21st, at 10am PST.

Posted by: Christian Oestlien, Product Management Director for the Google Display Network

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.

We appreciate the feedback we have received on enhanced campaigns and encourage you to continue helping us understand how to make a great product.  Please join us on March 21st at 10:00AM PST (1:00PM EST) for the latest in our enhanced campaigns webinar series, EC 205, covering enhanced campaigns and the Google Display Network.

Posted by: Karen Yao, Senior Product Manager, AdWords

This month at Mobile World Congress we unveiled some new research insights at the session Mobile Entertainment: Rise of the Digital Global Event.  

We all know that we now live in a multi-screen world and the device that people choose in a particular moment is largely based on their context: a person's location, the time of day and day of week as well as the device’s capabilities.  We were interested to see what this meant when people were attending, watching or just following a major event.  

Working with YouGov, Sparkler and Ipsos, we conducted three separate studies during the London 2012 Olympics using a combination of online diaries, surveys and network usage. This was the first Olympics where smartphones were mainstream and of course tablets were not even invented for Beijing 2008. We wanted to understand how various devices would be used by ticket-holders and armchair fans alike. Would there be any new behaviors and how would multi-screening, including TV, smartphones, tablets and computers, play-out? 

The research highlights included:

1 in 3 people followed the Olympics on multiple screensIn a typical day, 33% of people following the Olympics in the UK were doing so on more than one screen. Multi-screeners also spent more time following the Olympics: a single screen follower averaging 203 minutes per day, while the ultra-connected four screener averaged 435 minutes - typically enjoying the games at home, work and out-and-about.

Smartphones extend event engagement – in home and out of homePeople were devouring information on the Olympics across devices with 40% looking online for event results, 20% for information on athlete backgrounds and 31% for event times. When actually watching an event - whether in-person at the games or on a device elsewhere - people were hooked to their smartphones. 11% of people were following the same event - if you were watching cycling, for example, you could be checking your phone for other competitor times. 14% followed a different event, so if you were at the cycling you could be checking on the rowing results. And 10% of people were multi-tasking and looking at non-Olympics related info such as news, emails, weather or a restaurant to head to. We’ve seen how the walls in shops are now “porous” with people using their mobiles to compare prices, research products. The same can also be said of stadiums and this opens up a whole new world of opportunity for sponsors and advertisers.

The Olympics has caused people to try new things, will it leave a legacy?

50% of people watched catch-up TV online for the first time or more during the Olympics, 47% for live video. 18% visited a sponsor’s website for the first time or more often. In fact only 17% of people didn’t try anything new online.  These new behaviours may act as a catalyst for more everyday use.

The Olympics may well be seen as a unique once-in-a-lifetime experience for the UK.  But the extended and enhanced use of multiple-screens is certainly no phenomenon but a natural and continuing trend.  A trend that offers countless multi-screen opportunities for advertisers and sponsors to engage with their customers at live events - whether that’s the next football World Cup in Rio or a music festival in Glastonbury, England.

See all of our findings by downloading the full report here.

Posted By: Matt Brocklehurst, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

Today marks the debut of the new Think Insights, Google’s hub for marketing insights and inspiration for advertisers and agencies. On google.com/think, you can learn about the latest research in digital marketing, be inspired by creative brand campaigns, and find useful products and tools. You’ll also find industry-leading case studies and Google’s latest research, strategic perspectives, interviews with innovators and experts and more — all to help you make the most of the web.

In the headlining mobile story, Understanding the Full Value of Mobile, read about how sporting goods industry leader adidas worked with digital performance agency iProspect to understand how mobile drives value beyond mobile commerce, particularly in-store sales. The campaign proved that mobile brought a 680% incremental increase in ROI. While you’re visiting, scroll down to view the video case study.

Also, check out Mobile Search Moments: Understanding How Mobile Drives Conversions, in which Nielsen and Google analyzed over 6000 mobile searches and the actions that resulted, drawing connections between mobile searches and the conversions that they drive.

For mobile marketers, you can explore the Mobile Ad Types section for mobile-specific research, case studies, articles and more. Start by viewing our featured story, The Mobile Playbook, The Busy Executive's Guide to Winning with Mobile by Jason Spero, Google's Head of Global Mobile Sales & Strategy.

While you’re visiting, don’t miss the Mobile Ads product page, which contains the latest in mobile solutions to help grow your business and build brand momentum with mobile.

For those mobile marketers who want to turn “light bulb” ideas into lightning or just want to check out the best in digital marketing -- we hope that you visit often. To stay up-to-date on the latest content added to the site, please subscribe to our monthly Think Letter.

Posted by: The Think Insights Team

In this era of mobility, our smartphones are always with us, keeping us connected anytime and anywhere. With this constant connectivity, we’ve come to expect information (literally) right at our fingertips just a search away - whether it’s locating the nearest sushi restaurant or booking flights for your upcoming trip. In “Mobile Search Moments: Understanding How Mobile Drives Conversions”, we set out to understand when and why people turn to mobile search, the actions they take as a result, and how marketers can capitalize on every mobile search moment. We found that there’s an immediacy effect of mobile search, with more than half of the resulting conversions (going into a store, calling a business, or making a purchase) happening within just one hour.

Working with Nielsen, we also wanted to push the standard of mobile research. It’s traditionally been difficult to quantify mobile’s full impact on driving conversions, particularly since consumer surveys are often constrained to broad recall questions. Instead, we asked participants to log their mobile searches over two weeks in a diary smartphone app - logging more than 6,000 mobile searches in total. We followed up to ask them what actions resulted from those searches, helping us draw more precise, measurable connections between mobile searches and the conversions that they drive online and offline.

click to expand

Here are the highlights of the research:

Mobile search is both always-on and on-the-go
Mobile has traditionally been considered an out-and-about or on-the-go context, used on the bus or while in a store. While that’s certainly true, the research showed that mobile’s role is also much more than that. People turn to mobile devices throughout the day to find information because of its speed and convenience, with 77% of mobile searches happening at home or at work. What does this mean for marketers? Mobile is always-on for consumers, so marketers should make sure their mobile search strategies are reaching people in these different customer contexts.

Mobile searchers take a variety of actions... and they act quickly
We also found that three of four mobile searches trigger additional actions. These range from open-ended actions like additional research (36%) or a website visit (25%), to more concrete conversions like a store visit (17%), a purchase (17%), or a phone call (7%). On average, each mobile search triggers nearly two actions, so in order to understand the full value of mobile, marketers must evaluate the different ways that their customers convert, both online and offline, and measure accordingly.

Most interestingly, not only do mobile searchers take action - they act fast. In fact, 55% of conversions from mobile searches happen within one hour. We see this immediacy effect with mobile because not only are people potentially closer in physical proximity to a purchase, but they’re also closer to the crucial decision moments. Forty-five percent of mobile searches are conducted to help make a decision, and that number jumps to two-thirds when happening in a store. And when people use mobile search to help make a decision, they’re more likely to convert. So it’s important for marketers to be present during those searches, while also creating ads and experiences that are relevant to this immediacy.

Context is key to mobile searches
The research also showed that the types of searches people conduct on mobile are strongly tied to their specific context, like location and time of day. For instance, shopping searches are twice as likely to be done in-store. Mobile searches made in stores are a key opportunity for marketers to reach someone who’s looking to take action. And since searchers are also 55% more likely to notice ads when they’re in a store, there’s a huge opportunity for marketers to capitalize on these mobile-led moments.

Mobility continues to change the way that we search, explore and shop, and as consumer behavior comes further into focus, there are clear opportunities for marketers to take advantage. Check out all of our findings by downloading the full report here.
 
Posted by: Ben Chung, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

People today are constantly connected, presenting a tremendous opportunity for retailers to deliver the right products to them across devices anytime, anywhere. We recently announced the release of enhanced campaigns to  help advertisers reach customers in a multi-screen world.  Today we’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.

Learn more in our upcoming mobile shopping webinar

Google Shopping and Enhanced Campaigns

March 14, 2013 at 10 a.m PT (1 p.m. ET)

During this webinar, attendees will learn about how Google Shopping and Product Listing Ads work in concert with features that are part of enhanced campaigns. We will also discuss the latest Google Shopping user experience on smartphones and cover new multi-screen opportunities for retail advertisers.

Posted by: Erica Sievert, Product Marketing Manager, Google Shopping

April 11 update: Offer extensions are now available and can be shown in the UK. 

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.

For a guided walkthrough, tips and Q&A on using these new location-based features and offer extensions, please register and join us at this week’s Learn with Google webinar on enhanced campaigns this Thursday, March 7, at 10am PST.

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 third column 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. Check out more details and tips on offer extensions usage and reporting in the Help Center.

Please stay tuned for more details on the availability of offer extensions in other countries and improvements with offer redemption reporting. We welcome your feedback on these features and others in enhanced campaigns using this form.

Posted by Smita Hashim, Group Product Manager