Mobile | Google New Update - “Expanded Text Ads” (ETA)

Google has made a historic change to its creative format with the introduction of a mobile optimized format called “Expanded Text Ads” (ETA)

What Are Expanded Text Ads?

Expanded Text Ads are a mobile-optimized ad-format designed to maximize an advertiser’s performance in mobile search results. This is accomplished by providing the advertiser significantly more ad copy to highlight their product or service. Expanded Text Ads also apply to desktop search results.

This change is a big deal because it’s a fundamental shift away from the legacy AdWords text ad format that’s existed for well over a decade. As such, this change will require every AdWords advertiser to rewrite their ads to be ETA-compatible. To learn how to automatically do this, skip ahead to the end of this post.

What’s Changing, Exactly?


Advertisers now have two headlines instead of one, and these headlines are joined with a hyphen. The good news – this copy expansion allows ads to occupy 50% more space on the search results page. Early results indicate that this increased presence improves CTR, which makes sense when you compare the old format (left) to the new format (right):

Here are the nitty-gritty details:

• Headline 1 and headline 2 are 30 characters each. This is a 240% increase over legacy text ads, which historically had just one headline and a 25-character maximum.
• 
  
• For the description line, the character count is also increasing. Instead of two 35-character description lines, there’s just one that’s 80 characters.
• 
  
• The display URL will now be automatically extracted from your destination URL. You can set up to two path fields like “golf” and “shoes” 

A Positive Change, for Multiple Reasons

Why is this change a net-positive for advertisers?

• You gain a new, second headline.
• More characters for longer messaging increase the odds of connecting with your target audience.
• We’re seeing better overall performance in our early results.

Why is Google Making This Change?

A couple of obvious questions are: Why is Google making this change? And why now?

The short answer: Consumers have shifted to mobile as their primary method of accessing the Internet. And, advertising dollars are following in rapid succession. eMarketer estimates that in 2016, over 60% of all digital advertising spend will go to mobile. It’s also expected that mobile will continue to gobble up market share through 2020.

Google is staying ahead of this trend by shifting to mobile-optimized ads, which is consistent with the elimination of right-hand ads back in February. In the next 12-24 months, we should see more mobile-centric changes from all major publishers, as they train their attention on perfecting mobile monetization.

Marin Software has Boot Media that automatically rewrite your ads to be ETA-compatible. Clients on the original beta were able to see improvements of +100% CTR and +70% reduction in CPC.  Only early movers to ETA's will be able to ride this wave,

*Info taken from Marin and Google

OLD NOTES - Yahoo Work Shop SEM Campaign Optimization Action Plan

Allan Chuate, Search Strategy/optimization

Keyword

Keyword expansion:  search query report

Singular, plural and misspell should be bid separately

Negative keywords – 

• -help optimize broach & phrase, 
• -works different from Google, 
• -when set at lower leverls, overrides those at higher levels within a campaign
• Are limited at 10k at ad groups & campaign levels
• Are no longer normalized (Education: Negative keyword “Bachelor” – is linked to “Bachelors”.  Education vertical wants “Bachelor” but not “bachelors”).
• Negative keywords are applied as “negative phrase match” – same order/next to each other.  Bid keyword = stock quote  ; Negative keyword = free quote time.  Free quote time – is served, stock quote free quote time – is not served

Ad serving:

CTR threshold

Min_bid = 0.05

Landing page: adcenter crawls LP’s to determine relevance

Best practice:  

1. Monitor QS and correct low performing components
2. Incr min_bid
3. Ensure landing page is directly relevant to user query and keyword

Content Match:

Site Targeting – new – include Yahoo properties (Y! Answers, Astrology, Auto, Groups, Health, Movies), Microsoft: Hotmail, MSNBC.com

Use website placement performance report in ad center to track by site

Use site that convert well for Display

Use other targeting /bid boosting layers to reach more specific audience

JOE STEPHENS:

Insights: 

Quality Score – competitiveness in overall market,  landing page relevance, user experience  - accesses at account level for sites using excessive links.  Displayed at KW level to better indicate and address the specific KW.  Same keyword/Different match type = different QS

Exact Match –

Explicit vs. Implicit bidding - 

Ad copy optimization -

Targeting -

OLD NOTES - SEM reporting channels' PRO v.s. CON - MSN Adcenter, Google Adwords, Marin

Reporting:

Here is a list of the different reporting systems we use on a day to day basis and some of the pros/cons (what they can provide and can’t).  Happy to review this today or tomorrow.

1. Hourly Report and IntraDay Report in LDS
1. Pros:  
1. Hourly by channel (SEM, Media, etc)
2. Shows landing page flow: GC -> rEC – rlead -> ulead -> umlead.  Another way to say it is: click from google (GC) -> user gives zip (rEC) -> user fills lead (ulead) -> lead gets sold (umlead).
3. Intraday is same.  Breaks out account level.
4. First indicator something isn’t right.
2. Cons: 
1. No revenue.
2. Account/channel level only.
3. No costs.
2. CMP Report in LDS
1. Pros:
1. Revenue for any date range. All sources, accounts, and adids.
2. Adds bounce rate and multiplier added.
3. Overall and Marketplace Margin.
4. Good for identifying tracking issues.
2. Cons:
1. Account/adid level only.
2. By day only.
3. Delayed Costs (1 day).
3. Publishers (Google Adwords and MSN Adcenter)
1. Pros:
1. Keyword level.
2. Sometimes has Conversions.
3. Hourly breakouts (with 2-4 hour delays)
4. True traffic (won’t see bots).
2. Cons:
1. Can’t see revenue
2. Slow to look at all sources or isolate drops.
4. Marin
1. Pros:
1. Cost and Revenue
2. Keyword Level
3. Any Time Frame
4. Makes Bid Recommendations
2. Cons:
1. 1 Day Delay in Data
2. Can’t do intraday or hourly

OLD NOTES - PRD Template | Product Requirements Document Yahoo Search Marketing Network Quality Team

SEM campaign builder

Product Requirements 

Version 4.0 

Last Saved on 09-30-2011              

Author: Ruth Shen

Status: In Progress 

  

Page 1 of 22 

  

1       Document Background 

1.1     Document Owner & Scope 

This document defines the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Campaign builder for MerchantCircle.com ARB/SMB project, a too that will build and populate SEM campaign with multiple categories and cities. This structure can used to create a baseline for future SEM initiative and forecast. 

1.2     Document Approvers List with Due Date 

1.3     Document Reviewers List 

  

  1.4     Revision History 

2       Table of Contents 

1              Document Background              2 

1.1              Document Owner & Scope              2 

1.2              Document Approvers List with Due Date              2 

1.3              Document Reviewers List              2 

1.4              Revision History              3 

2              Table of Contents              4 

3              Overview              5 

3.1              Executive Summary              5 

3.2              Key Concepts, Terms & Definitions              5 

3.3              Product Objective              5 

3.4              Key Value Proposition              5 

3.5              Problem Assessment              5 

3.6              Competitive Space Assessment (Recommended)              6 

3.7              Business Cost Benefit Analysis (Optional)              6 

4              Summary of Systems Impacted (Optional)              7 

5              Functional Requirements              8 

6              Technical Requirements              10 

7              Security & Privacy Requirements              11 

8              Data Requirements              12 

9              International / Globalization Requirements              13 

10              Other Applicable Requirements (Optional)              14 

11              Legal and Contractual Issues              15 

12              Use Cases              16 

12.1              Use Case 1: Inconsistent Date Ranges              16 

12.2              Use Case 2: Random External Event              16 

12.3              Use Case 3: Incomplete Picture              16https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ATGnxOx82NLdZGQ1a2RmY3pfMTJ4OTVxajRmag&hl=en 

12.4              Use Case 4: Analysis Error              17 

12.5              Use Case 5: One Bad Subdomain Spoils the Whole Bunch?              17 

13              Key Dependencies              18 

14              Risks and Mitigation Plan (Recommended)              19 

15              Future Considerations              20 

16              Open Issues              21 

17              Appendix (Optional)              22 

17.1              Research/Prototyping Data              22 

17.2              References / Links              22 

OLD NOTES - Yahoo! Quality score