AdWords Conversion Optimization

Link Your Analytics Goals and Transactions to AdWords

AdWords advertisers can now import Google Analytics Goals and Transactions into their AdWords accounts to use as conversion actions. This allows users to track campaign return-on-investment (ROI), and optimize their accounts for conversions within the AdWords interface, and the new one is now avaliable.

Previously, users would have had to install AdWords Conversion Tracking separately to use the feature, now they can just follow these steps:
1. Sign in to your Google Analytics account.

2. Click "Edit Account and Data Sharing Settings."

3. Make sure you've selected at least the "With other Google products only" options under "Share my Google Analytics data."

4. Click "Save Changes" to finish.

5. Go to your AdWords account

6. Navigate to the "Conversion Tracking" page from within your AdWords account.

7. Click "Link your Analytics goals and transactions" from the Conversion Tracking table.

8. Select the Goals or Transactions you want from the list.

9. Edit the action name so you can identify the goals in your AdWords reports.

10. Select "Link" from the bottom of the table to finish.

"The big benefit of importing your Google Analytics Goals and Transactions into AdWords is that you can use them with theConversion Optimizer, an AdWords CPA bidding tool that has been shown to help advertisers get more conversions from AdWords," saysEmel Mutlu of Google's Inside AdWordsCrew. "Conversion Optimizer makes it a lot easier to manage your AdWords bidding and maximize results."

More tips form Google.

Google is testing new AdWords budget option

Google have been offering selected clients a new AdWords budgeting option called "Timeframe". This allows advertisers to choose a monthly budgeting option which allocates budgets across a calendar month according to traffic demands. The monthly budgeting option has only been made available to selected advertisers during a beta testing period.

Most advertisers would be familiar with how daily budgets work, where a set spending limit is applied each day. One of the shortfalls of this approach means that on lower traffic days, you might have some unused budget leftover that could have been used on higher traffic days.

Monthly budgeting eliminates this issue by automatically adjusting your budget each day to match traffic demands. From the AdWords Help Center:

With a monthly budget, Google will adjust your budget automatically each day to meet traffic demand while still respecting your budget for the calendar month. If you've seen this on your AdWords account, let us know what you think!

Google AdWords Quality Score Changes

The Google 'Inside AdWords' blog has announced changes to how they calculate quality score and rank ads. The changes will remove the bias of ad.

Quality Score Update: Google have confirmed that click-through rate (CTR) remains the most significant component of the quality score, because it directly indicates which ads are the most relevant to their users, but they have now removed the influence of ad position on this calculation.

This is because ads higher on the page are more visible and usually get more clicks over those in lower positions for this reason alone, not necessarily because it's a more relevant ad. In an effort to show the most relevant ads, Google will adjust its calculations to remove the influence "position has on the CTR.

Ads Above Search Results: Google have also tweaked for formula to determine which ads are displayed in the yellow section above search results. Previously, ads displayed in this area had to meet a certain quality threshold, and if the first listing didn't have a high enough AdRank (quality score x CPC), no ads were displayed in this section.

Now, Google are allowing ads in position 2 and 3 to leapfrog over position 1 and appear in the yellow section if they have a high enough quality score.

The changes appear to be placing less importance on how much your bidding, but rather what your quality score is.

For those of you who are unsure, quality score is Google's version of PageRank for AdWords. It takes into account a range of factors to rate the quality of each keyword in your ad group/s.

These enhancements will be released shortly by Google, so keep an eye on your ad position, spend and performance over the next few weeks!

Included link: Inside AdWords

Google Analytics Upgrade:

AdSense Reporting, Visualization Tools,.....More

Google Analytics is rolling out what it calls a “significant upgrade” to its feature set. The new tools include AdSense integration, Motion Charts, advanced segmentation, an API, custom reports, and an updated user interface to highlight these new tools better.

Online publishers may be most interested in the AdSense integration tools coming to Google Analytics. After linking an AdSense and Analytics account, you’ll be able to see AdSense data including:
• total revenue, impressions, clicks, and click-through ratio
• revenue per day, per hour, etc.
• revenue per page (what pages are most profitable)
• revenue per referral (what other sites bring you profitable traffic)
The Google Analytics API, which is currently in private beta, will open up analytics data for developers to export and use however they want. Advanced segmentation allows users to dig deeper into subsets of traffic, such as “visits with conversions,” or create their own segment types. Custom reporting lets users create their own comparisons of metrics.
Google has created a series of videos showing how some of these new tools work.

Google Allows Publishers to Block Ads on Websites

Google is in the process of releasing the Ad Review Center, which allows you to easily control what Google Ads show up on your website. It allows publishers to manually approve or block ads that show on their site, so that only the most relevant ads appear. This means no more advertisements which are offensive or poorly targeted or even ads from your competitors.

The default setting in this feature will be "auto-allow" so ads will run unless you block them. Inside the Ad Review Center you can review all your ads at one time. Alternatively, you can manually review ads before they appear on your site; you'll then have 24 hours to review ads before they are automatically allowed to run on your site.

If you decide to block an ad you'll be asked for a reason and Google will give the feedback to advertisers, so they can use it to improve the quality and relevance of future ad campaigns.

The Ad Review Center will gradually be released to all publishers over the next few months. You'll know you have the feature when you see a green box at the top of your 'Competitive Ad Filter' page, which is located under the 'AdSense Setup' tab.

This new feature is no doubt going to be a great benefit to all website owners who are sick of having those irrelevant ads appearing on their sites. Let us know what you think of this new Google feature by leaving a comment below.

From Internet Marketing and Online Annonsering

NEW - Google AdWords Offering Targeted Placement

According to the Inside AdWords blog, Google has introduced two new enhancements to site targeting on their content network.

The changes allow for specific placement targeting on sites and the service now offers a CPC (cost per click) pricing model.

Until now, Google advertisers have been restricted to simply selecting the site they want theirs ads to appear on through the site targeting option. The renamed "Placement Targeting" service now allows advertisers to specify areas within a website for their ad placement and which types of AdWords ad to use.

Now, advertisers can target not only websites but also precise subsections of sites, such as the football pages of a news site, the show times section of a movie site, and even a specific ad unit (a block of Google ads) on a particular webpage.

The new Cost per Click (CPC) pricing model will also be a welcome enhancement to the service, with advertisers better able to control their spending on the content network.

Where the content network has often been a great way to target immense amounts of traffic, the new changes will hopefully allow advertisers to get more qualified traffic and better ROI on their online advertising.

From Internet Marketing and Online Annonsering