For those who manage PPC campaigns on a daily basis, one of the biggest frustrations is a campaign that is underspending. Recognizing this pain point, Google AdWords debuted a new “Shared Budgets” function on Sept. 17th allowing marketers to group campaigns together under a shared daily budget. This automates adjustments across campaigns, meaning marketers don’t have to constantly monitor and change individual campaign budgets on their own. Best of all, Shared Budgets ensures that underperforming campaigns’ unspent money is automatically allocated toward campaigns that are seeing success – thereby maximizing ROI.

Image Source: http://adwords.blogspot.com/

If you’ve interacted with the Google AdWords interface recently, you’ve likely noticed its design change, which Google calls “simpler and more beautiful.” The new interface is lighter in color and contains a major functionality change: the option to designate your campaign according to campaign type.

Image Credit: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2012/06/adwords-new-look-rolling-out-globally.html

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.