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Over the next four weeks, we will be sharing tips and tricks for positioning Google products to your clients in the Google Media Solutions Series . We are excited to share the benefits of our solutions, debunk common myths and pass on easy implementation tips to help your accounts reach their full potential. So, let's get started with Google’s search marketing product, Google AdWords . Using Google AdWords, you can target Google.com and the Google Search Network . This is a great solution to connect with potential customers who are searching for your clients’ products and services. It is flexible, measurable, and accountable. With AdWords, you can easily manage the spend of the account and control costs by setting a daily budget and maximum cost-per-click (CPC). Another benefit is that it’s easy to make changes to your clients’ ad text, as changes to ads take affect almost instantaneously. Lastly, as an added benefit, you can track the return on investment (ROI) of your account by using Conversion Tracking or Google Analytics . There are some common myths that your clients may have heard regarding search and we want to make sure that we clarify these misconceptions: My website shows organically, so I don’t need to advertise: It is great to have a highly ranked organic listing; however you can’t control the message to your potential customers with organic listings in the same way that you can control it with search marketing campaigns. By advertising on Google.com and the search network, you can control the message that you share with all potential customers and determine the landing page to which you direct your potential customers after they click on the ad. These features can lead to increased sales. In addition, organic results are likely only capturing a very small portion of the relevant traffic on Google. For example, a consumer electronics advertiser might appear high in the search results for their brand terms, or specific trademarks relevant to their company, but AdWords can expose their message on a wide variety of related terms like 'digital cameras' 'netbooks' and 'HD TVs'. Competitors can click on my ads maliciously: We take the security of AdWords accounts very seriously and have many resources in place to prevent your account from accruing invalid clicks. While invalid clicks occur less often than commonly perceived, we have three filters in place to protect your account: detection and filtering techniques, advanced monitoring techniques and manual reviews from our team. Stay tuned for next week’s post on the Google Display Network, remarketing and great tips for reaching your customers while they browse the web! Posted by Laura Salzberg, Agency Team

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Google Media Solutions Series: Part 1, Back-to-Basics with Google AdWords and Search Marketing

In part 4 of our " Coffee break " series, we caught up with Kaylyn Miller, Associate Search Director at MEC , who shared with us how her team incorporated click-to-play video ads into a recipe campaign for Swanson® Chicken, a division of Campbell Soup Company. The video campaign was established to distribute a new cooking video during two key dipping occasions - New Year's and Super Bowl. The campaign ran for six weeks, starting in mid-December and concluding at the end of January. During our interview, Kaylyn shared the following: What were the goals of using click-to-play video ads? We were tasked with distributing the Frank's® Red Hot® Buffalo Chicken Dip recipe, made with Swanson® Premium Chunk Chicken. We were already successfully directing users to print the recipe using paid search. However, we knew that keyword targeting could be a powerful tool for video distribution as well. Our goal was to use contextual targeting on the Google Content Network for cost efficient video views. Knowing that this strategy worked well for clients in the entertainment industry, we were striving to keep playback rate and cost per view in line with Google’s entertainment benchmarks. How did you set up and execute the campaign? We began by looking at the most relevant ad groups from our paid search campaign, including buffalo chicken dip, appetizer and dip, chicken recipes, New Year's recipes and Super Bowl recipes. The ad groups were then modified to include broader keywords to effectively target the Google Content Network. From there, additional ad groups were created, such as hot wings, cooking videos, easy recipes and general recipe words to obtain greater reach. Three distinct starter images were created for the video - Everyday, New Year’s and Super Bowl (images below) - based on the events of a given week. We used the best practice of making the starter image a YouTube-like still, instead of a display ad, to increase consumer engagement. Click to view images - Everyday , New Year's , Super Bowl How did the click-to-play video campaigns perform? The campaign's performance exceeded our expectations. In the 6 weeks it ran, the click-to-play video campaign received more than 34,000 video views with 42% of the videos viewed to completion. In addition, this was a good test for us to see how CPG would perform since there aren’t many benchmarks for this category to-date. We saw a lower cost per view and higher play rate than Entertainment industry benchmarks, a space where we assumed users would be more engaged. In addition to success found through video viewing, we also found success in on-site engagement. While recipe prints are the main goal of the paid search campaign, they were secondary for the video campaign. We were pleased to find that the consumers who were engaged in the video carried that engagement over to the site. The download rate associated with video plays was 203% higher than the stand-alone paid search campaign, keeping the cost per recipe print in line with the search averages, despite the more premium CPCs found in the video campaign. What did you learn from this campaign? This campaign validates that click-to-play videos can supplement paid search to expand reach while maintaining consumer engagement for a client. If you did not use this Google solution, how would things have been different? We may have used a portion of the search budget to drive traffic to sites where the video was being distributed by our Social Media and Display teams, but most likely the video wouldn’t have been promoted through keyword targeting. For more information on click-to-play video ads, visit the AdWords Help Center . For more information on how to prepare this recipe for your next dipping occasion, visit buffalochickendip.com. Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

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Coffee break with clients: Swanson® Chicken dips into click-to-play video

Today, we are 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 while offering advertisers access to better data for more informed media planning decisions. Ad Planner Top 1,000 Most Visited Sites The Ad Planner 1,000 list is a list of the top 1,000 global sites on the web by unique users as measured by Ad Planner. Published monthly, this list details the number of unique visitors, page views and reach for each site for the top 1,000 sites globally. It’s a great way to quickly reference the most popular sites on the web. This latest resource represents yet another step in the evolution of Ad Planner in providing reliable traffic and audience information for websites. In conjunction with our Ad Planner 1,000 list, the Google Content just released an Ad Planner 1,000 targeting feature . These two features combined provide an example of how Google is working to provide more actionable data for online display advertisers. Exporting Google Content Network Placements to AdWords Many Ad Planner users are also AdWords users, and one of the top requested features is to provide a simple and easy way to buy Google Content Network placements advertisers find through Ad Planner. The newly launched Export to AdWords feature enables advertisers to simply export Google Content Network placements from Ad Planner into AdWords. These exported placements will be set up as a new campaign or ad group within AdWords. For advertisers running text ads or display ads on the Google Content Network, this provides an easy way to build media plans of managed placements. Now translating the great audience research data in Ad Planner into your AdWords campaigns is easier than ever. Creating Lists in Ad Planner To help you create your own list of favorite sites to save and add your media plans, we also recently launched “Lists” in Ad Planner. With “Lists”, you can store sites and placements in lists for future use in media plans. To get you started, we’ve made the Ad Planner 1,000 list available to all Ad Planner user accounts for use as a handy reference or for download. Our goal with the Top 1000 Sites and other recent updates is to deliver new tools for greater planning efficiency and data to make more informed advertising decisions. Visit www.google.com/adplanner to check out our new features. Posted by Rohit Kundaji, Software Engineer and Wayne Lin, Product Manager

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Announcing the Ad Planner 1,000 and Greater Integration with AdWords

Jordan Brand, a division of Nike, has one of the most recognizable logos in the sporting goods industry. A silhouette of Michael Jordan mid-jump graces the footwear, apparel, and equipment that make Jordan one of the most coveted basketball brands in the US. Building energy Although his likeness still appears on merchandise, Michael Jordan retired from his legendary role in the game in 1999, posing a challenge for Jordan Brand-- keeping Michael Jordan top of mind for younger consumers. Looking for new ways to excite and engage youth within basketball culture, Jordan Brand turned to its agency partner, Wieden+Kennedy , New York (W+K, NY). Together, they hatched an idea for a campaign that veered from the TV campaigns they traditionally ran. As expected, they built an inventive, unique campaign around a basketball player. But the player was neither Michael Jordan nor another NBA star. It was Leroy Smith. The man, the campaign “Sophomore year of high school, Leroy Smith took Michael’s spot on the junior varsity team,” explains Jason Clement, Director of Findability and Search for W+K NY, of the true story that inspired the campaign. “Michael points to that as the moment when he realized he needed to work and train harder to become really good.” With the campaign’s central character chosen (and the real Leroy Smith on board), the Jordan and Wieden+Kennedy teams crafted a narrative that would pull in their audience. Played by actor Charlie Murphy, the campaign’s Leroy sells motivational DVDs, promising to teach viewers the same skills he used to dominate Michael Jordan. The DVDs, along with posters, an iPhone app, and music videos can be found on his site, www.getyourbasketballon.com . And of course the campaign’s Leroy also has a YouTube Channel, a Facebook profile, and a Twitter feed to communicate with his fans. But to create buzz and hype, Wieden and Kennedy and Jordan chose not to brand the campaign. Leroy Smith Banner ad that ran on the Google Content Network The ultimate forum And it was the discovery of this content that was key to the campaign’s success. The campaign’s six-week run opened with “Leroy” himself pitching his motivational DVDs in infomercial-style television ads during the NBA playoffs. Google AdWords search ads sent interested users to Leroy’s site. To reach additional basketball fans where they were actively spending their time, the Jordan and W+K NY teams used the Google Content Network to place a wide array of display and text ads on blogs and fan sites. By using keyword targeting to automatically place their ads on relevant sites on the Google Content Network, the team was able to find the right locations for their creative more efficiently. The strategy proved effective. They found a lot of niche basketball blogs where he could reach their target with very, very little waste and get them excited about the campaign. Once their ads were running, the reporting and optimization controls within the Content Network enabled the W+K NY team to see which sites were working best and adjust their targeting appropriately. As excitement over the Leroy Smith campaign grew, it was clear that it was striking a chord with its audience. A number of blogs had double-digit click through rates. People were taking screenshots of the ad on their blogs and then writing posts about how much they liked having the ad on their site. When all that enthusiasm was translated into numbers, the Leroy Smith campaign had generated 188 million impressions and 296,000 clicks over the six weeks it ran. And users were highly engaged with the content, showing very low abandonment rates once on site. Video proved compelling as well, with 27,000 YouTube channel views and 229,000 views for Leroy Smith’s “Get Your Basketball On” infomercial video . Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

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Jordan's Get Your Basketball On campaign on the Google Content Network

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 Date: Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 11:00am PST / 1:00pm CST / 2:00pm EST Register here Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

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Upcoming webinar: Uncovering opportunities with display advertising