Google Adwords

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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

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 Content Targeting

  • Search Targeting: within search network only, text only, depends on keyword relevance, bid on CPC
  • Content 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.

It isn't possible to opt out of displaying expanded text ads, as its all automatically decided. Why would you, anyway?

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.
  • PUT STOP CODES ON THE LAST FRAME OF ALL MOVING SYMBOLS. Google is being confusing and it seems some specialists will approve ads which have tiny jiggling (main timeline stopped before 15 seconds but small symbols within which move a little) but some specialists will not. It really depends. So to be on the safe side...
  • 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 fail.
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.
  • Before setting up a Local Business Ad, you must make a local business listing in the Local Business Center

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
  • pricing model: either Pay per click (when users click through to the website) or pay per call (when users click the '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

By Geographical Location (IP and domain) and Language

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
  • if you choose region and cities targeting, people will see your ad with the region targeted stated below your ad in light grey font (if you specify it) so for region targetting you are recommended to include the name of regions and cities you want to target

By Google Network or Placement

Adwords can be displayed either through:

  • Google Network
    • Search (on Google's search pages): defined by keyword, CPC bid
    • Content/Contextual (inserted into the content of pages on Google's network): defined by keyword, CPC bid (for keyword-defined ads, you can bid seperately for different CPC bids on search and content on the Edit Campaign Settings page, such as, if the content ads are converting better than search ads)
  • Placement
    • Content (inserted into specific placement in content of pages): defined by placement, CPM bid (but now also open to CPC bids)

Keyword targeted ads

Preferred Cost Bidding: Keyword targetted ads can be be bidded for using Preferred Cost Bidding, which is a specific average amount you want to pay per click (rather than maximum CPC). Your ad may be placed in a range of positions as a result of that. In other words, you're sorta telling Google to have a field day on your wallet... if you can make a choice on your CPC you oughta set your own max CPC.

Placement targeted ads

Placement ads can be chosen in 4 options:

  • Browse Topics
  • Describe Topics
  • List URLs
  • Select Demographics

ROI & Optimisation

Optimising your page and campaigns

  • Shape up your About Us page, and Products page.
  • Look at your competitors - Google wants you to see where you differ from them and to emphasise those points (no, they are not asking you to mimic the ad campaigns of your competiors)
  • Review the performance of keywords and rewrite ad text.
  • It may be easier to create new campaigns rather than to improve poorly performing campaigns.

Optimising your Landing page

  • Relevance: Link to the most useful and accurate (not too broad, not too specific) information related to your advert
  • Originality: Make sure it is original and unique
  • Transparency: Honestly and clearly define what your business does on the landing page
  • Navigation: Have easy navigation which makes it clear as to which button you want them to click next.
  • Speed: Page should load quickly - under 4 seconds if possible

Conversion Rate

From your conversion rate, you can calculate how exactly your investment reaps a tangible return (Return On Investment).

Some common sorts of Conversions which you might want to measure:

  • Purchase/Sale
  • Lead
  • Signup
  • Pageview

You can also define your own conversion criteria.

  • Others?

Setting up Conversion Tracking

Google Sites Stats - send feedback link will be present when adwords users have converted and are now shown the conversion page. This is because Google says it wants people to know that its tracking them.

Cross-channel conversion tracking means that you can use Analytics to simultaneously track other PPC campaigns as well, such as:

  • Yahoo! Search Marketing
  • FindWhat
  • Looksmart
  • Lycos
  • Other PPC channels

Cost Control & Billing

  • My Account tab > Billing Preferences link > Enter Card information
    • You must enter valid Credit Card details before Google will start adverts
    • Redeem promotional credits here
    • Billing address must match Credit Card address
  • My Account tab > Billing Summary link > All invoices issued by Google
    • > Invoice Details: Invoice number, amount and tax assessed
    • > Account Adjustments and Fees: Account Activation/Reactivation, Promotional Credits, Credits for invalid clicks
    • > Billable Activity as defined by campaigns and petiod

Budget

  • Optimise: Optimised campaigns will cost you less so you should optimise as much as you can.
  • Recommended Budget: Google will recommend you a budget which will show your ads evenly throughout the entire day.

Delivery Method

Two methods of serving ads:

  • Standard - spaced out over the course of the day
  • Accelerated - as many as early as possible till budget runs out

Overdelivery

  • Google may overserve your ad by 20% (to make up for low traffic days), and if it does over the course of the month (30 days), you won't pay more than your budget. You will be issued overdelivery credits on your bill (appears as a minus value).

Discounter and Smart Pricing

  • Adwords Discounter: Something like CORS bidding - you pay just as high as you need to win the bid. So if you bidded £1.00, but your next competitor bidded £0.50, you just pay $0.51 in order to win him, not £1.00.
  • Smart Pricing: Google knows that certain sites bring about lower clickthrough rate and lower conversion rates, so Google makes you pay less for those sites.

Adwords Billing Cycle

  • Acccount activation is a one time US$5 - you will not be charged for this till end of first billing period
  • Billing periods are defined as when you accrue US$50, US$200, US$350 , US$500 / or one month. which ever is nearest.
  • Post-pay: Outside of the US, you can use credit cards Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and JCB (Japan), or debit cards with Visa and Mastercard/Eurocard, for the UK you can use Switch/Solo. All these are for Post-pay.
  • Pre-pay: Outside of the US, in certain cases you can use bank transfer. This is for Pre-pay. Google willl send you emails to warn you if your pre-pay is low. You are advised to top up in advance (before you run out of credit) as it may take days for payments by bank transfer to be processed.
  • For more details on currency conversion on your payment options, check the Account Fees and Payment Options
  • Once you select a method of payment and currency, it will not be possible to switch to a different one. Meaning you cannot change from prepay to postpay, and you cannot change your currency.
  • Oh ho ho - it might be interesting to see where it is cheapest to run Google Adwords considering how the activation charge and minimum bid varies across countries....
    • Japan
      • Activation Fee: ¥500 (S$6.53)
      • Min CPC: ¥1 + (S$0.01)
      • Min CPM: ¥25 (S$0.32)
    • UK
      • Activation Fee: £5.00 (S$13.35)
      • Min CPC: £0.01 (S$0.05)
      • Min CPM: £0.15 (S$0.40)
    • Singapore
      • Activation Fee: S$10.00
      • Min CPC: S$0.02
      • Min CPM: S$0.50

Invoicing and Taxes

VAT

If you have a billing address in the EU, you will have to deal with the infernal thing that is VAT. And what's up with Google's legal disclaimer on their multimedia lessons? Showing us the link to more tax related information for only ONE second? Naughty naughty.

Advertisers are advised to provide their VAT registration number so that they will be taxed at their own EU country VAT rate, rather than Ireland's VAT rate. This can be done in My Account > Billing Preferences.

Billing Address Inside Ireland

  • Advertisers with Irish billing address who DO PROVIDE a valid VAT registration number do not need to self-assess VAT charges. Google will automatically charge at the Irish rate.
  • Advertisers with Irish billing address who DO NOT PROVIDE a valid VAT registration number will also be charged at the current prevailing Irish VAT rate (subject to change per discretion of Irish Govt)

Billing Address Outside Ireland

  • Advertisers within EU but outside if Ireland who DO PROVIDE a valid VAT registration number will not be charged for VAT but the advertiser must self-assess for VAT at the EU member country rate where the billing address is located.
  • Advertisers within EU but outside if Ireland who DO NOT PROVIDE a valid VAT registration number will be billed at the current Irish VAT rate instead of the advertiser's country's VAT rate because Google's Head Office in Europe is in Ireland and Google is billing from Ireland.

Invoicing

Normal biling cycle:

  • based on credit limits which advertisers pay when the limits of US$50, 200, 350 and 500 are reached
  • if a card is declined then ads are immediately suspended until a valid credit card can be charged.

BUT there is also Invoicing! Monthly Invoicing can be arranged for advertisers who meet Google's requirements. the benefits are:

  • no credit limit
  • ads are not paused if credit card is declined
  • payment is only required when monthly invoice is received
  • monthly payment by check, wire, or credit card

(non payment within 15 business days of receiving invoicing may result in termination of account)

Prerequisites for Invoicing

  • Established credit history with adwords
  • Minimum spending level of US$1500 per month

Submit Credit Application form for review by Google's Finance team - may have to include Balance sheet, income statement, cash flow, references, etc.

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.

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. check Recommended Budget. (no, there's no fancy ad scheduler, also dont say that you have to increase your budget more, thats not what google wants to say/hear you say)
  • 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. see https://adwords.google.com/select/DisapprovedAds
  • 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)

Reporting Abuse

Reporting other people's ads who abuse the TOS:

Adwords Exam

This page was made while I attempted to study for the Adwords Exam.

  • Google Analytics, Adwords Editor, and Google API is usually not tested.
  • The exam is 1 hour 30 minutes long.
  • Once the clock starts it doesn't stop. Power failures are not good.

And because Google is Amerikaan, there is no UK english version of the multimedia lessons, just text lessons. Oh lawdy will we have to listen to them Yankees go on and on?...

See Also

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