The Google pay-per-click (PPC) advertising model as we know it is changing. Google has started working on a number of new ad models that are designed to offer inventive ways for advertisers to connect with Google users. The three new ad models aim to make it easier and more effective for businesses to communicate with potential customers.  All three models are currently in a limited release stage, but will debut for a wider audience soon. Watch more about the ads here and read on for a brief overview of the new models.

Comparison Ad
The AdWords Comparison Ads model lets users easily compare multiple relevant offers at once.  For businesses, it provides a new, sophisticated cost-per-lead format that is designed to deliver higher quality leads by allowing users to sort and compare a variety of offers. Mortgage loan and credit card industries in certain countries are the only sectors currently involved, but more viewers and advertisers will gain access as the program is developed.

Product Listing Ad
The new Product Listing Ads are search ads that include product and merchant information without needing extra keywords or ad text, allowing businesses to easily promote their entire product line.  Items relevant to the user’s search will be shown along with price, image and name, all pulled from the associated Google Merchant Center account. The fee will be on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis, which requires payment only when a user clicks on an ad and completes a purchase and involves a much lower risk than PPC payment options. Watch more here.

Media Ad
Finally, Media Ads are a truly unique way for a business to target and pay for video ads on Google. Targeting is entirely automated, eliminating the need to select keywords. Google’s algorithms determine when to display the ad when someone starts a search, at which point they will automatically display the most relevant Media Ad at the top of the page. When clicked on, the ad will expand and the rest of the screen will dim, ensuring the user’s full attention is on the video. Bidding is not required as payment is based on a flat rate, simplifying the budgeting process for businesses.

By Rosemary Dempsey, Senior Storyteller

Plan to target tablet users better than ever with your pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns.

Tablet targeting is now available to all Google AdWords advertisers. So, now you can better control how you reach the growing number of tablet users. (165 million tablets are expected to ship over the next two years!)

In your AdWords account, find the “Tablets with full browsers” option under the “Networks and devices” section of the Settings tab. In the past, advertisers found the Apple iPad option under “Mobile devices,” but now tablets have their own category with additional options. For example, to reach iPad users, you’d choose “Tablets with full browsers” and then select “iOS.” Other OS options include Android and webOS.

Be aware that with the launch, your ads will automatically start running on tablets. If you don’t want your ads to appear on tablets, you must change your settings.

Insider tip: our Google rep has recommended replicating campaigns to target tablets and manage budgets separately. We can expect to see higher click-through rates (CTRs) and generally lower cost-per-clicks (CPCs) from implementing this type of campaign.

We’ll be watching analytics accounts to note any rises in traffic percentages from tablet users!

Learn more from this Google blog.

By Susan Smith, Senior Account Coordinator

It seems as though Google introduces a new product, innovation, or organizational change every week. This past month is no exception.

We mentioned the new “+1” button in a previous post (March 31st) and now we have some updates:

• Google is working on adding the button directly to websites so that users will not have to return to the search homepage.
• Although Google stated that the “+1” button will not affect the quality score of advertisers, Google is aiming to provide the most relevant results to searchers and thus “+1” listings will be used to help determine organic rankings.
• According to Julie Batten, a writer for ClickZ, Google intends to add “+1” reporting to AdWords accounts as well.

On the Twitter front, Google has begun including tweets in search results. However, Tad Chef from SEOptimise, found that simply tweeting about a topic or a link, even from a power account, was not enough for the tweet to display in Google results. After the tweet was retweeted by multiple other parties, it was finally indexed.  Although the exact reason and algorithm used for indexing are unknown, it is likely that Google does not consider a tweet relevant until it is recognized by multiple parties. In addition, Twitter has an average posting rate of 600 tweets per second—if Google indexed every tweet posted, Twitter would take over the results page.

By Elyse Jarvis, Account Coordinator

Google announces it will no longer offer the Position Preference feature for its popular PPC advertising platform, AdWords.

Google announced this month that it will be discontinuing its Position Preference feature in AdWords. The search giant will replace Position Preference with an Automated Rules function that allows for automatic changes to a keyword’s bid, budget or status based on user specifications.

Position Preference has allowed users to designate desired placement for keywords and limits ads from appearing when bids were not high enough to secure the user’s preferred placement. For instance, if position one was selected as the intended placement, ads matching a user search query would only appear if the bid for the keyword was high enough to place it in position one.

While this capability was helpful for bid management, Google explained on its blog that it is important to understand that there are two processes effecting positioning, and that understanding these features is key to using positioning functions as success measurements for Google ads.

According to Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian on Google’s blog, the term page position refers to an ad’s location on the search results page. An ad’s auction position is its position in the auction for top positioning for a search query—which is essentially based on the bid for the keyword and the quality score. The average position AdWords reports is based on the auction position.

It is vital to understand the difference between the two. Although bidding high enough and maintaining a quality score high enough to secure auction position one will always mean your ad is the first shown on a search results page, the ad can be displayed in two different page positions on the page. The first position (shown in the top photo below) is the first ad above search results. The ad can also appear as the first ad on the right-hand side of results (shown in the lower photo). Ads appearing above search results typically encourage more user interaction.