What makes up the ideal creative for your client? We'll walk you through how you can answer this question using AdWords reporting and the Display Ad Builder , a tool that allows you to quickly and easily customize display ads and to run measurable experiments. Experimentation is not new to advertising, although the theories and ideas that inspired campaigns have evolved over time. For example, in the early 20th century, the prevailing sentiment in the ad industry was that information made a creative effective. The car ad below sums up the thinking of the time: National Motor Vehicle, Inc. advertisement (1907) retrieved on 21.1.2010 from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:National-advertisement_1907.jpg Theories eventually emerged suggesting that consumers weren't always need-oriented, but advertisers were baffled by how to measure seemingly subjective behavior. Mid century a study was released that put data to consumer responses. It showed that three factors - the size of the ad, the size of the illustration and the numbers of colors - together could help explain some of the readership difference between a magazine's ads. Today, you can find out the the factors that trigger the strongest response by using the data in Ad Performance Reports in AdWords, which provide relevant statistics for ad variations, such as text ads, image ads, video ads, and local business ads, and run experiments with Display Ad Builder . Here are two creatives developed with Display Ad Builder for a hypothetical online travel company: Ad creatives developed internally using Display Ad Builder: Image 1 & Image 2 When creating the ads, populate the "Ad Name" field in Display Ad Builder with the ad's elements. We'll call the first "day_scene_cta" and the second "night_people_question." Launch the ads on even rotation to ensure a good sample. Then you can construct a chart like the one below from your Ad Performance Report by adding up the clicks and impressions for each ad component: Sample data set from internal account independent of example creatives. In this example, the effectiveness measure is clickthrough rate (CTR), but this can be substituted for conversion rate or cost-per-acquisition (CPA). The chart shows the elements of the ad that had the greatest impact on CTR, benchmarked against the performance of the whole ad group. You can tweak the reporting to show the impact of relationships as well. Do people prefer images of scenery or people at night? With a well-designed ad experiment, you can use basic data-mining principles to find these results. However you choose to experiment, continue to measure your results so you can find the best creative. Posted by Eddie Higgins, Agency Team
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Display Ad Builder & Creative Generation
Research into consumer shopping habits has shown that consumers are shopping locally and are researching purchases online before heading to the store. A popular industry study reports that 80% of consumer spending occurs within 50 miles of home. A joint Nielsen and Webvisible study shows that 50% of consumers head to search engines first when researching local businesses 1 . Another study, carried out by TMP Directional Marketing and comScore, finds that nearly 4 in 10 consumers visit a store in person after researching it online 2 . Based on this data, it's easy to think that local advertising is just for local businesses. Local ads can also serve, though, as a powerful vehicle for national businesses to establish a local presence and to reach consumers where they're shopping. For clients who are interested in tapping into the local opportunity, we offer a feature in AdWords called location extensions . Location extensions work by allowing you to dynamically return relevant business addresses with your clients' text ads based on a user's location and search terms. There are a number of benefits to location extensions. With location extensions, you can offer more information about your business to customers who are close enough to visit your business, or who are already searching or browsing for information related to your business. Location extensions attract user attention by displaying an address as another line of text on Google.com and with a custom icon on Google Maps. Perhaps the most important benefit of location extensions for larger accounts and agencies is the ability to create and edit ads at scale. For each text ad you create, AdWords can automatically generate muliple ad variations by dynamically matching your ad with relevant business addresses you've uploaded to the Local Business Center. When you edit an ad, your addresses will be displayed with the new ad text immediately. There are three steps for getting started with location extensions and they all take place on the Settings tab in your account. 1. Use local targeting to select the locations you'd like to target 2. Select the option to "show relevant addresses with my ads" to enable location extensions 3. Sync your Local Business Center account with your AdWords account: If you update or add an address in your Local Business Center account, it will automatically update in AdWords If you don't have a Local Business Center account, you can sign up here . You can also manually enter addresses into AdWords, but with this option, there is a nine address limit per campaign. ( click to view image ) While the Local Business Center was designed for primary business owners, non-business owners, such as agencies, can still sync AdWords with Local Business Center as long as they are a representative for a given business. (Note: The Local Business Center is still not intended for aggregator use). If you are representing a business with more than ten locations, you can submit a bulk upload to the Local Business Center. While bulk uploaded data is not verified and may not show up on Google Maps, the addresses can be used for location extensions. Bulk uploading will not require verification by a phone call or postcard with a PIN. [1] 'Great Divide' separates small biz, online consumers, www.marketingcharts.com [2] Wave 3: Local Search Usage Study, TMP Directional Marketing and comScore, 10.8.2009 Posted by Alexandra Kenin, Product Marketing Manager
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Location Extensions - Understanding the Local Opportunity