The depth and sophistication of the Google AdWords network has made the advertising platform one of the most useful options for business owners. In fact, according to a 2014 study by Flurry, Google accounts for 49 percent of mobile advertising revenue, compared to just 18 percent for Facebook. AdWords recently announced some new innovations that will make the platform even more useful for mobile advertisers and traditional internet advertisers. This post will explain what these new features are and how they’ll benefit business owners.
The changes announced at the end of April were highly anticipated by internet marketers. Back in March, the AdWords team wrote that they were working on several major innovations this year.
“We’ve designed new tools so you can increase awareness and engagement everywhere your customers are online – from the web, to the mobile web, to mobile apps,” the team wrote in a blog post. “And when it’s time to manage your campaigns and measure performance, we want to help you do so efficiently in AdWords with new functionality designed for the multi-screen world.”
Google’s most recent announcement deals with new features for developers trying to get mobile users to download their app, the enhancement of metric tools, and new features to boost customer acquisition. This fits with the announcement they made in April, stating that new updates would promote multi-channel marketing, more contextually relevant ads, and tools that connect businesses with their target client.
The biggest changes are to the Google AdMob platform which is sometimes used to promote apps. The newest generation of app ads from Google will help developers in several ways. First, in the area of discovery, Google will be able to market apps to users based on the apps they are already using. The company gives the example of a running mileage app user getting an ad for an app that counts calories in foods. The ads will also be seen on YouTube, meaning people who watch videos with content related to a particular app can have their install ad shown on the video.
According to a 2013 study from Digital Trends, more than 80 percent of apps will be deleted after one use. Google believes they have a way to encourage people to re-engage with apps they have already downloaded. Advertisers will now be able to run ads that link directly to a specific page on their app. Hulu, for example, could run an ad for a show that would take the user directly to a particular episode just by clicking the ad. This feature would be especially useful for retailers whose apps contain a large catalog of products. Not making customer search an app for items they saw on an ad will most likely boost conversion rates.
The final improvement on the mobile side is better conversion measurements. Google says it will be able to track conversion related actions through the entire user experience for the app. This data will make it much easier for business owners to identify what works best for their app and what things need to be modified.
In the end, features that enhance Google’s ability to market products for mobile is more of a good thing. Becoming the best place to get apps downloaded, used, and measured will boosts Google’s profitability as a mobile advertising platform.
The news wasn’t all about mobile in the recent AdWords announcement. Google has some new features that will help traditional display ad users. Google has introduced “enterprise-class workflow, reporting, and optimization tools to AdWords”.
One change is that Google is allowing more bulk actions for users. With the new bulk capabilities for extensions and settings, users can set up campaign settings like location targeting and ad rotation across all of their campaigns at once. This can be useful for making changes to season promotions or promotions that switch by geography. Additionally, there are new automated bidding tools that are supposed to help business owners maximize certain kinds conversions. Google gives the example of a car dealer maximizing their bidding to bring people to their site to use a particular feature.
The final two features mentioned in the most recent AdWords update will make it easier for business owners and marketers to work and analyze their ads on their own. New multi-dimensional data analysis and visualization tools will make it easier understand the data that comes from AdWords reports and to create graphs and such that can be shared with others. They’ve even added a test lab where users can try all kinds of things before deploying them.
“We’ve built a lab inside AdWords for you to prepare ideas for your campaigns, see what they’ll look like, and then run tests with live traffic as an experimental trial,” wrote Jerry Dischler the Vice President of Product Management for AdWords. “You can experiment with almost anything in your campaign, including bid changes, new keywords, different campaign settings, special bids for times and locations, different kinds of ad formats, and more. We think you’ll like it.”
Winston Churchill once said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” The success of the Google AdWords platform is not assured and the company knows it. These newest innovations show that Google has the courage to continue and will continue to be a dominating force for internet advertising for years to come. Learn about another recent Google improvement in this article about the Google+.