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Every week we’ll be providing a brief update on the latest Google product and feature updates relevant to our agency partners. To see past updates, look for the “ This Week in Product Updates ” label. If you were in New York City last week, it was hard not to feel the buzz around Ad Week, including Google’s innovative use of video within ad units to broadcast the keynote address, “Display 2015: Smart and Sexy,” for the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX Conference. In case you missed it, we’ve shared a recording below, along with other sexy new updates, such as Google New, updates to Google Instant, and the winners of Project 10^100. Tip of the week: Something new... Google New . The one place to find everything new from Google. Search: Goodbye Google Adverting Professional program. Hello Google Certification Program: As previously announced , the grace period for agencies to meet the new Google Certification Partner (GCP) criteria will end on Oct. 31st. Come Nov. 1st, any Google Advertising Professional agency not GCP-certified will lose its certification and thus cannot use the badge within marketing collateral and will no longer show up in Partner Search . To attain certified partner status, companies must meet eligibility criteria , including one team member passing a minimum of two certification exams , illustrating practical expertise in managing accounts, and agreement to the terms and conditions of representing AdWords. Learn more about membership criteria and refer to our blog post for all of the details. New Keyword Tool Tip: If you’ve used both the previous and updated versions of the Keyword Tool to search for keywords, you may notice differences between the tools for statistics on Global Monthly Searches and Local Monthly Searches. This is because the previous version of the Keyword Tool provided search statistics based on Google.com search traffic and traffic from search partners, while the updated version of the Keyword Tool provides search statistics based on Google.com traffic only. We've updated these statistics based on user feedback, and hope you find them helpful for keyword selection. Updates to Google Instant - new domains, keyboard nav, new modes: This week Google Instant rolled out to additional domains. In addition, we've introduced keyboard navigation to help you explore your Instant search results using just your keyboard, with no need for a mouse or touchpad. We’re also making Instant available within many of the search features in the left panel of the results page including Videos, News, Books, Blogs, Updates and Discussions. Check out the Official Google Blog post to learn more about these new features. Display: Another reason to WATCH THIS SPACE: As you know, Google is investing significantly to make display advertising better for users, advertisers and publishers, and we have a number of resources to help you learn more about our predictions for the future of display advertising. Visit the Official Google Blog for a recap of the keynote address delivered at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX Conference in New York, entitled “Display 2015: Smart and Sexy," and watch a recording of the address (which was originally broadcast through ad units). Event recap: How to run a successful social campaign: Last month, YouTube and SEMPO hosted a social marketing panel, "How to run a successful social campaign," for SEMPO's San Francisco and Los Angeles working groups. The panel featured speakers from YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Athena East, and highlighted the unique products available to marketers, and best practices for executing measurable, impactful social advertising strategies. Derek Gordon of Yield Software shared what he learned for MediaPost Search Insider. Click here for his complete update. TV: Fall line-up for Google TV Ads. Episode 2: Driving Response: For the next 4 weeks, the TV ads team will be sharing tips and resources on AgencyLand and in the Agency Weekly Update. In this week's episode -- with the ability to target only the programs, networks, and dayparts you want, Google TV Ads is the ideal platform to run direct response campaigns. Call Reports and Google Analytics gives you the opportunity to identify sweet spots within your programming so that you can more aggressively go after what’s performing well and eliminate what’s not working. See how Oregon Mint Company went from $1,000 to $5,000 in daily sales. Reporting & Analysis: This Week in Report Center Migration: As we embark on the final major phase of Report Center migration, the ad, search query, placement performance, geographic, and demographic performance reports can now all be found directly within the UI. In addition, we've rolled out several enhancements based on your feedback, including the ability for My Client Center users to drill down to the Control Panel & Library to see all available report templates for the account (regardless of who created them). Over the next few months, we’ll continue to add more metrics so stay tuned for future updates. In the meantime, check out the detailed PDF and refer to the Help Center for progress updates. Did you know? Project 10^100 winners announced: Two years ago we began Project 10^100 by asking you to share your ideas for changing the world by helping as many people as possible. People from more than 170 countries submitted more than 150,000 ideas, which were narrowed down to 16 big ideas . The five ideas that received the most votes are the winners of Project 10^100. We're giving a total of $10 million across them to solve global challenges ranging from free education content to government transparency to innovative public transportation. See the Official Google Blog for the complete announcement. Fresh Fonts Come to Google Docs: Feeling limited by the same old stale font? Spice up your Google Docs with one of our 6 new fonts . And the best part is, there’s no need to install the new typefaces since Google Docs uses web fonts - just load your document and the latest set of fonts will be there, ready to use. How easy is that?! Posted by Katie Wasilenko, Agency Team

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This Week in Product Updates, October 7, 2010

As the Google Enterprise Search team just announced , today we’re releasing the second generation Google Commerce Search , a hosted website solution designed specifically for online retailers. In addition to the proven speed, Google-quality search relevancy, and intuitive user experience of the first version, Google Commerce Search 2.0 includes a number of innovative features for both merchants and shoppers: More merchant customization: Today we’re launching a full merchandising dashboard, giving merchants more control over promotions, ranking rules and filtering - with no custom code so marketers and product merchandisers can do all of this themselves. Time-based promotions, full left-hand panel facet control and simple product ranking rules make retailers’ jobs simpler and easier. Unparalleled shopper experience: With query autocompletion, retailers can offer common queries to shoppers in real time, as they type, without any custom coding. Search quality improvements make GCS faster and more relevant than before. Because it’s hosted in the Google cloud, search results are returned to shoppers in less than a second. Spelling and stemming dictionaries and new custom synonyms mean that shopping on a retail site can be as easy and accurate as searching on Google.com. Better browsing and navigation: Though more and more shoppers are turning directly to the search bar on retail sites when they’re looking to make a purchase, some people will always prefer to navigate through different categories and discover new products. Now, Google Commerce Search allows visitors to shop by browsing around your site as well as searching directly for products. Click here to watch video To hear more about these new features, be sure to sign up for an upcoming webinar on June 23rd at 10amPST / 12pmCST / 1pmEST. If you're unable to make it, you can learn more or request a demo at google.com/commercesearch . Posted by Anna Bishop and Abdul Salem, Google Commerce Search team

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Google Commerce Search grows up

Yesterday, we announced a new tool called AdWords Campaign Experiments, or ACE, that will help you optimize your account by letting you accurately test and measure changes to your keywords, bids, ad groups and placements. We're testing this new tool and inviting U.S. advertisers to participate in the beta. For more information and to sign up for the ACE beta, please visit the AdWords Campaign Experiments page on Google Ad Innovations . Posted by Courtney Lischke, Product Marketing Manager

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AdWords Campaign Experiments Beta: Split testing tool for your campaigns

If you're a regular reader of the blog, in the last year you've seen Google's advertising tools move in some exciting directions. We've introduced more data-driven and efficient campaign management with the new AdWords interface , easier account optimization with the Opportunities tab , and new ad formats like Ad Sitelinks and Product Extensions , to name a few. But where is advertising with Google headed next? Which new tools, formats and features will make it possible for you to communicate with your customers in more meaningful, creative ways? We've started a new project, Google Ad Innovations , to answer that very question. Google Ad Innovations is a website where you can explore Google's latest advertising technologies, watch short video demos to learn more, and try out select new tools. The technologies we'll highlight on Google Ad Innovations are at various stages of development, from early tests to fully released features. Here are a few of the new releases you'll find on Ad Innovations right now: Remarketing -- a way to show your ads to users who have previously visited your website as they browse sites across the Google Content Network AdWords Search Funnels -- a set of reports that help you understand the Google.com search ad click and impression behavior leading up to a conversion Location Extensions with multiple addresses -- an ad format which displays a list of nearby store locations when your customers are performing local searches Click-to-Call Extensions -- an ad format that let mobile phone users call you directly from your ads Analytics Intelligence -- a Google Analytics feature that automatically identifies significant changes in your site traffic Although there's a lot to look at on Ad Innovations, we want it to be more than a show and tell site. Every Ad Innovations page will have a feedback link: if you see a feature that can be improved, or if you think we've hit on a valuable new idea, let us know! The comments and suggestions you leave while using Google Ad Innovations will go directly to the Google team working on the feature. So, if you want to stay on the cutting edge of advertising products, visit Google Ad Innovations — we’ll regularly add new tools and features to the site, and we can't wait to hear what you think! Posted by Devin Sandoz, Product Marketing Manager

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Google Ad Innovations: Where ads are going next

Imagine your client is a travel company, and they're trying to excite users about deals to tropical Caribbean destinations. Users may come to the website, browse the offers and think about booking a trip, but decide that the deal is still not cheap enough. Then, they continue to browse the web. If your client later decides to offer discounted deals to the Carribean, how do they reach users who have already expressed interest in traveling there? To help you to do this, this week we're rolling out a new feature called remarketing. Any AdWords advertiser can use remarketing to reach users as they’re browsing the web on sites within the Google Content Network. Remarketing is a simple way to connect with users, based on their past interactions with your clients' websites. We began trialing remarketing last March as part of our interest-based advertising beta . We’ve received a tremendous response from the hundreds of advertisers who’ve been using it in recent months, across all industries - including automotive, retail, local and finance. We’ve seen that remarketing has worked well for many different kinds of advertisers - whether they’re looking to boost brand awareness, or drive clicks and sales, and whether they use display or text ads. For example, if you support search advertising clients, you can use remarketing to create an integrated campaign strategy for them. After driving traffic to their sites with search ads, you can then remarket to the users who reach their sites by showing them tailored ads on sites throughout the Google Content Network. You can easily set up and create a remarketing campaign for clients through the new “Audiences” tab in AdWords. A remarketing campaign allows you to take advantage of the same features and reports you can use today in AdWords - it’s really just a new way to reach the best audience for your clients' ads. (click for full size image) Here’s an example of how it works. Let’s say your client is a basketball team with tickets to sell. You can put a piece of code on the tickets page on the client's website, which will let you later show relevant ticket ads (such as last minute discounts) to everyone who has visited that page, as they subsequently browse sites in the Google Content Network. In addition to your own site, you can also remarket to users who visited your YouTube brand channel or clicked your YouTube homepage ad. You can also run a number of remarketing campaigns at the same time. For example, you could promote discount game tickets to users who’ve previously visited your client's tickets page, advertise VIP hospitality packages to users who clicked on his “How to get to the arena” page, and advertise a sale on team merchandise to users who’ve previously visited his YouTube brand channel. Remarketing is a great way for businesses to reach users who are likely to be highly receptive to their ads and special offers. For example, Intercontinental Hotels Group has used remarketing to reach potential customers who have visited one of their hotel websites: Ad by InterContinental Hotels Group using remarketing to offer incentive to users (click for full size image) It helps advertisers and websites get higher returns. It also means more relevant and useful ads for users, and more opportunities to receive special offers and discounts that may be of interest. As we announced when we launched interest-based advertising, we want to put users in control of the ads they see, so anyone can opt out of remarketing by using the Ads Preferences Manager . Our remarketing product complies with industry standards developed by self-regulatory groups such as the NAI and IAB and IAB UK. To get started with a remarketing campaign, visit the AdWords Help Center . Posted by Aitan Weinberg, Product Manager

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Now available: Reach the right audience through remarketing