{"id":641639,"date":"2013-02-07T11:25:43","date_gmt":"2013-02-07T16:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.webpronews.com\/?p=215561"},"modified":"2013-02-07T11:25:43","modified_gmt":"2013-02-07T16:25:43","slug":"what-googles-enhanced-campaigns-mean-for-small-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/641639","title":{"rendered":"What Google\u2019s Enhanced Campaigns Mean For Small Businesses"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a huge week of news in the online maketing industry, particularly when it comes to Google. For one, Yahoo announced that it has signed a contextual ad agreement with Google<\/a>, which will see Google display ads appear on various Yahoo properties, and even some co-branded sites. Before that, Google announced the launch of enhanced campaigns for AdWords, which is a huge evolutionary step for Google’s ad product, and by default, that makes it a huge evolutionary step for online advertising. <\/p>\n

What impact do you see Google’s changes having on your online marketing efforts? Let us know in the comments<\/a><\/u>. <\/strong><\/p>\n

WordStream<\/a> was one of three companies outside of Google that worked with the company on the enhanced campaigns project over the last few months. Founder\/CTO Larry Kim reached out to WebProNews with some perspective about what the offering brings to the table for businesses. <\/p>\n

“Enhanced Campaigns represent the biggest single change to the basic structure of AdWords campaigns in the past 10 years,” he says. “The new campaign structure will greatly simplify targeting and bidding for different devices and locations. It’s a win-win for both Google and advertisers.”<\/p>\n

One key feature is bid adjustments to help advertisers manage bids across devices, locations, time of day, etc. from a single campaign. \u201cA breakfast cafe wants to reach people nearby searching for \u2018coffee\u2019 or \u2018breakfast\u2019 on a smartphone,\u201d explains<\/a> Google SVP of engineering, Sridhar Ramaswamy, giving an example. \u201cUsing bid adjustments, with three simple entries, they can bid 25% higher for people searching a half-mile away, 20% lower for searches after 11am, and 50% higher for searches on smartphones. These bid adjustments can apply to all ads and all keywords in one single campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enhanced campaigns will show ads across devices with the right ad text, sitelink, app or extension, without advertisers having to edit each campaign for every combination of devices, location and time of day. \u201cA national retailer with both physical locations and a website can show ads with click-to-call and location extensions for people searching on their smartphones, while showing an ad for their e-commerce website to people searching on a PC \u2014 all within a single campaign,\u201d explains Ramaswamy.<\/p>\n

The enhanced campaigns also come with advanced reports to measure new conversion types. For example, you can count calls and app downloads as conversions in your AdWords reports.<\/p>\n

“Mobile search has been growing incredibly quickly \u2013 it’s actually expected to outpace desktop search by next year,” says Kim. “But Google has had a big problem monetizing that traffic. For one, setting up mobile campaigns was too complicated. Making matters worse, mobile CPC’s tended to be much lower. Enhanced Campaigns are a strategic effort to solve both those problems.”<\/p>\n

“Enhanced Campaigns are great news for advertisers at small and medium-sized businesses,” he adds. “Previously, mobile campaign management was too complicated and time-consuming for all but the biggest-budget, most sophisticated advertisers. Now even small companies can take advantage of the exciting opportunities in mobile search.”<\/p>\n

“With Enhanced Campaigns, you not only have more bidding options, but your ads are actually much smarter,” he explains. “Google will be able to choose and adjust your ads and settings based on user context, so mobile users will get an optimized ad experience, without you having to build out separate campaigns.”<\/p>\n

“There has always been a big gap between the cost per click (CPC) on mobile versus desktop. For obvious reasons, Google wants to close that gap, and these changes will help it accomplish that. I believe that mobile CPCs will be similar to desktop CPCs by the time campaigns are auto-upgraded later this year.”<\/p>\n

Adobe’s Bill Mungovan explores<\/a> how Google’s changes will impact advertisers in terms of tablets being considered mobile devices.<\/p>\n

“A 2012 Google study showed that the most pop\u00adu\u00adlar places to use tablets are, in order, on the couch, in bed, in the home, at the table, and in the kitchen,” he writes<\/a>. “Indeed, the first out-of-home loca\u00adtion to make the list was the car, which occurred only 3% of the time. So tablets appear to be closer to lap\u00adtops than mobile phones, at least in terms of con\u00adsumer usage.” <\/p>\n

WIth Google’s offering, tablet users will be lumped in with desktop users, while smartphone users will be targeted through the enhanced campaign functionality. “Adver\u00adtis\u00aders can no longer cre\u00adate sep\u00ada\u00adrate cam\u00adpaigns for desk\u00adtop, smart\u00adphone and tablet tar\u00adget\u00ading, but will instead be able to add a mobile mod\u00adi\u00adfier at the cam\u00adpaign level to mod\u00adify bids on smart\u00adphone traf\u00adfic,” says Mungovan. “Google has made a clear state\u00adment to its adver\u00adtis\u00aders: tablets aren\u2019t mobile. But they\u2019ve taken it a step fur\u00adther and effec\u00adtively said that tablets are desktops.”<\/p>\n

“Cur\u00adrently, CPCs are lower for tablets given that com\u00adpe\u00adti\u00adtion for tablet traf\u00adfic is still rel\u00ada\u00adtively low (but increas\u00ading),” he says. “By lump\u00ading the higher per\u00adform\u00ading tablet traf\u00adfic in with desk\u00adtop traf\u00adfic, rev\u00adenue per search (RPS) will increase for Google as CPCs increase on the com\u00adbined desk\u00adtop and tablet traf\u00adfic. This, pre\u00adsum\u00adably, will address Google\u2019s mobile mon\u00ade\u00adti\u00adza\u00adtion gap as an increas\u00ading share of searches is com\u00ading from tablets and smartphones.”<\/p>\n

“The down\u00adside for adver\u00adtis\u00aders in the long run is they may see lower over\u00adall ROI as these CPCs creep up,” he adds. <\/p>\n

Either way, small businesses could be big winners with Google’s changes.<\/p>\n

“Small businesses in particular have never been able to fully take advantage of the potential ROI in mobile search,” says Kim. “Not only was the setup and maintenance process prohibitively complex, but conversion tracking was much more challenging, and the reporting costs were being offloaded onto the advertiser. All of these factors acted as disincentives. With Enhanced Campaigns, Google is making it much simpler and more attractive for even small businesses to get ROI from mobile advertising.”<\/p>\n

You can read more of Kim’s analysis here<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Apparently some advertisers aren’t thrilled<\/a> with the direction Google is taking, expressing concerns with a loss of control. <\/p>\n

Neil Sorenson, the head of PPC at ZAGG.com, says enhanced campaigns “aren’t really an upgrade or improvement’”. He writes, “What can we expect? Some advertisers might welcome Enhanced Campaigns with outstretched arms. It is entirely possible that these advertisers will see continued success using the new campaigns. That\u2019s fantastic for them! Search marketers who have noted varying conversion rates across devices and taken steps to reduce or eliminate unprofitable traffic sources are likely worried. At this point it is for good reason.”<\/p>\n

Enhanced campaigns will roll out to advertisers as an option over the coming weeks. All campaigns will be upgraded in mid-2013.<\/p>\n

What do you think about Google’s changes? Game changer? Good or bad for advertisers?Share your thoughts in the comments<\/a><\/u>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a huge week of news in the online maketing industry, particularly when it comes to Google. For one, Yahoo announced that it has signed a contextual ad agreement with Google, which will see Google display ads appear on various Yahoo properties, and even some co-branded sites. Before that, Google announced the launch of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-641639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}