Google Adwords

Google Adwords is what people use to put text, image, or flash adverts on Google's Search network and Content network.

Account Structure

Account: Email & password | Billing information | Account preferences
Campaign: Start & end dates | Daily budget | Google Network preferences | Language and location targeting
Ad Group: One set of keywords or placements | Ads & variations | CPC or CPM bids

Trademark & Copyright

Trademark: word, phrase, logo, or symbol that distinguishes the product from others in the marketplace
Copyright: legal right to exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of a work

Trademark/Copyright investigations will start only when all information has been sent to Google. They require a signed letter on company stationery that is either mailed or faxed to Google Inc in the US.

The trademark owner is not required to be a Google AdWords advertiser in order to send a complaint.
Trademarks owned by Google are not allowed in any ad text: Google, Froogle, Gmail, Orkut, Keyhole and PageRank.

Keywords

Keywords for keyword targetting

Broad Match (default) - any term containing all the keywords in any order + with any other words inserted in
- example keyword: french fry
- correct: french man eats a fry, french food stir fry, fish fry like to eat french food
- wrong: potato chip
Phrase Match - exact phrase + any other words inserted before and after
- example keyword: "french fry"
- correct: tasty french fry, french fry squashed by dog
- wrong: french dressing drenched fry (because the phrase cannot be broken up)
Exact Match
- example keyword: [french fry]
- correct: french fry
- wrong: everything else

Dynamic Keyword Insertion

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=74996

Dynamic keyword insertion allows the search query to be shown dynamically in the title of the ad, thus improving the click-through rate.

- If you want the dynamic text to be all lower case, use {keyword:Default_text}.
- If you want the dynamic text to start with the first letter of the first word capitalized, use {Keyword:Default_text}.
- If you want the dynamic text to have the first letter in caps for each word, use {KeyWord:Default_text}.
- If you want the dynamic text to have the first word to all be in caps, use {KEYword:Default_text}.
- If you want the dynamic text to have the first word to all be in caps and the other words to start with the first letter in caps, use {KEYWord:Default_text}.
- If you want the dynamic text to all be in caps, use {KEYWORD:Default_text}

Invalid Clicks

Invalid Clicks refer to both the manual clicks intended to drive up your advertising costs or increase profit for the content website owner, and the automated robot clicks.
Clicks from same IP address might not be invalid: an Internet provider may assign identical IP addresses to multiple users by geographic area.
Clicks from same user might just be comparison shopping: individual users may legitimately click on your ad more than once while comparing different sites.

Search Targeting vs Contextual Targeting

Search Targeting: within search network only, text only, depends on keyword relevance, bid on CPC
Contextual Targeting: within content network, text/img/flash, depends on keyword themes, bid on CPC or CPM
Ranking of Search Targeted ads depends on: Cost-per-click (CPC) bid and Quality Score.

Types of Google Ads

Text Ads

Only one exclaimation point is allowed throughout the entire ad and it can't be in the title.
Prices/Free offers stated in ad text must always be supported within 1-2 clicks of landing page
No pop-ups allowed on landing page
The linked website must be working, it cannot be a website that is still under construction
Call to action phrases (eg: Buy now!) which do not describe product are not allowed
Do not use repetition or superlatives unless they can be justified by a legitimate third party
Do not use ALL CAPITAL LETTERS
Trademarks owned by Google are not allowed in ad text: Google, Froogle, Gmail, Orkut, Keyhole and PageRank.

EN Text ads (single-byte)

Title: 25 char
2nd line: 35 char
3rd line: 35 char
Display URL: 35 char including spaces
Destination URL: 1024 char

中文 Text ads (double-byte)

Title: 12 char
2nd line: 17 char
3rd line: 17 char
Display URL
(In asian character input, use single-byte characters for symbols, punctuations, currency, and numbers)

Expanded Text Ads

If you are lucky and the price is right, Google may increase your ad's font size until it fills the entire ad space on the website. No special arrangements required.

Image Ads

Standard Image/Flash Ad Sizes:
- 250 x 250 Square
- 200 x 200 Small Square
- 468 x 60 Banner
- 728 x 90 Leaderboard
- 300 x 250 Inline Rectangle
- 335 x 280 Large Rectangle
- 120 x 600 Skyscraper
- 160 x 600 Wide Skyscraper
Text in image & flash ads must adhere to Google's editorial policy guidelines.
Ads must be family safe only
Ads cannot exceed 50kb
Ads should not have the URL, user bar or image footer like the "Ads by Google" image footer. That footer is automatically appended to it.
When Google appends the image footer to your ads, they will resize your images vertically by 11 or 22 pixels. The images will not be cropped, only resized. If you don't want your ads to be squished up, image ads (but not flash ads!) are allowed to be uploaded in these sizes as well:
- Banner: 468 x 49
- Square: 250 x 239
- Small Square: 200 x 189
- Leaderboard: 728 x 79
- Medium rectangle: 300 x 239
- Large Rectangle: 336 x 269
- Skyscraper: 120 x 578
- Wide Skyscraper: 160 x 578

(shave off 11 vertical pixels off the small uns and 22 vertical pixels off the big ones.)

Flash Ads

Text in image & flash ads must adhere to Google's editorial policy guidelines.
Ads should be the exact size of the format, should not be sideways or upside down or anything.
Ads must be family safe only, no porn, no funny business, especially if its going to be in China.
Ads cannot exceed 50kb or 15 seconds in length. Should not loop infinitely or have fireworks shooting out of it. [If your ad has been disapproved, use this tool to find all your disapproved ads on one page and edit them from there.
If you use location targeting in China, it may take 1-2 weeks for your ad to be manually approved. Do not panic.
Flash banners on Google have to have clicktags which presumably allow the server to direct traffic through it. Make a big invisible movieclip that is exactly the size of the stage and position it at (0,0), then slap the actionscript on. If the piece of actionscript you paste in does not correspond exactly with Google's code, you will be subsequently voted off the island.

on (release) {
if (clickTAG.substr(0,5) == "http:") {
getURL(clickTAG, "_blank");
}
}

Compare this to the most basic clicktag that you might use for other banner ad services.

on (release) {
getURL(clickTAG, "_blank");
}

Local Business Ads

Local Business Ads are the little ads which pop up as they are associated with specific geographical locations. These ads appear in two places:

on Google Maps (maps.google.com)
on Google and other sites in the Google search network

They also come in two parts:

a highlighted listing in the search results column
a bouncy map marker that expands to show additional details

When not viewed in Maps, they also appear as regular text ads.

Mobile ads

must link to either the mobile webpage (formatted for mobile phone display) or your business telephone number.

two lines of text 12-18 char
third line : display url / call link

Traditional media ads

US advertiser only. manage it like all other google adwords.

print ads - choose newspaper and sections, bid for placement, and upload the ad.
- free 1-800 number which redirects to yoru business line. system will track and record timings of calls.
audio ads - ads on AM and FM stations. choose from auction and reserve campaigns:
- auction: set weekly budget and the frequency with which your ad will be broadcast depends on your budget/bid.
- reserve: choose date and time, cost depending on rate card of station.
  - also has the free 1-800 number service.

Adwords Targeting

Adword Targeting is determined by:

Google domain (.fr, .cn, .sg, .co.uk)
Query Parsing (eg: "Hostels in London")
IP address (region/city targeting)
Language preference (if not defined by user then the google domain defines the language)

Google does not translate ads, so if an ad is not translated, it will just be lost in translation.

countries and territories - to get a wide audience over a few countries
regions and cities - for businesses which are concentrated in specific regions (eg: restaurants, hotels, etc)
customised - referring to some specific geographical areas that is not demarcated by country lines
- circle around address - enter a physical address and choose a distance, forming a radius of the circle
- longitude and latitude
- multipoint targeting (three or more lat and longitude points to create a polygon; boundaries must not cross)

you should add location specific keywords on top of that to make sure that you will be found by people in your target area
seperate ad groups for each different language
for region targetting you are recommended to include the name of regions and cities so that people who arent interested in your area won't click on it as well
if you choose region and cities targeting, people will see your ad with the region targeted stated below your ad in light grey font

Troubleshooting Ads which do not show

Account level problems

did you check the partner network box? what have you opted in to? was the ad approved and did it reach the partner requirements?
email not verified - verify the email first
billing information must be entered - valid credit card
credit card declined - resubmit credit card info
- expiration date?
- credit limit reached for the month?
- correct number?
- correct billing address?
- if still in doubt, contact your bank.

Campaign level problems

is your campaign deleted, paused, or has it ended (end date has been reached)?
perhaps your budget has already been reached for the day, or your budget is lower than the recommended budget, so its run out earlier before it reaches full exposure.
have ads been targeted to the wrong language or geographic locations?
check your campaign negative keywords to make sure that they do not overlap with any words in any of your ad groups.

Ad group level problems

CPC must be higher than budget or ads will not run
have the ads/ ad groups been paused, deleted, or disapproved?
if you ads have been disapproved, the alert box will warn you of it, and then you can resubmit your ad for approval.
have you forgetten to upload any ads or keywords in the group?

Keyword level problems

make sure the max cpc of the keyword does not exceed the campaign's daily budget
status of the keyword - is it disapproved (check your email for details), paused (activate it), inactive for search (look for the recommended minimum bid), or deleted (add the keyword back to the ad group)

Google Adwords Editor

The Adwords Editor has two panels in its interface: Data View, Edit Panel
(Correct as of 13 May 2008) As CPC bids for Content targeted ads is a new feature, Adwords Editor hasn't quite caught up with it, so if you try to upload image/flash ads which are bidded for by CPC rather than CPM, IT WILL GO PEAR-SHAPED. You will also spend much time cleaning up after the pear hits the fan.
If you want to use Adwords Editor to write and edit keywords in Chinese then you should prepare to go completely BLIND. All the Chinese characters on it are nigh unreadable and resemble ants which have been squashed. There's no hope for us.

Reporting Abuse

Reporting other people's ads who abuse the TOS:

Adwords Report Centre