DoubleClick, Google Content Network and YouTube at OMMA Global

This week OMMA Global takes over the San Francisco Marriott Marquis, and Google will be there. Here's an overview of what's in store.

On March 17th, get a complete view of the art and science of rich media advertising from Google's resident rich media experts, Peter Crofut and Chip Scovic.

Next day listen to Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management, deliver his keynote presentation on opportunities in online display advertising. He'll cover changes in the display ecosystem, and how everyone can embrace these changes and achieve their goals. If you miss his keynote, be sure to catch the panel right after on Online Advertising - Rapid Recovery or Recession 2.0?, or the late morning session Connect with the Google Content Network with Jason Miller, Group Product Manager, Google Content Network.

Later in the day, Baljeet Singh, Senior Product Manager, Video Monetization will participate in the panel Can Online Video Reach Scale for Clients Budgets in 2010? Hear what he, and other experts, have to say about definition, scale and measurement when it comes to online video.

Our DoubleClick, YouTube and Google Content Network teams will also be at the Trade Show to let you know what's new and to answer your product questions.

Interested in attending? Register here, and if you’re a MediaPost member, your full-conference pass is FREE. You can also sign up for private networking sessions here. Use the code OGSF20 for a 20% discount.

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SES Takes Manhattan

The Search Engine Strategies conference will come to Manhattan later this month, from March 22-26, 2010, and Google will be there.

We'll be on panels and will be delivering trainings on topics ranging from AdWords and Analytics to Online Video, B2B search marketing and innovations in search. In addition, Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik will be the keynote speaker, on March 24th, presenting new approaches to search analytics.

Our booth will be staffed with experts on products including Google AdWords and Analytics, DoubleClick and Webmaster Tools. We'll also be delivering a mobile ads presentation at the Expo Hall theater, which is free for all SES attendees.

Still need to buy a pass? Use 20GOOG and save 20%.

See you in the Big Apple!

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v2009 Hack Day Videos and Webinar

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We recently finished the last of our AdWords API Hack Days in Europe, and it was great to see so many AdWords API developers come out for these events. We realize that not everyone could attend one of the Hack Days in person, so we've been working on new ways to get this information out to a wider audience. First, more of the presentations are now available on YouTube:

• Migrating from v13 to v2009
• The BulkMutateJobService
• Local Ads in v2009
• Ad Parameters in v2009

Second, we'll be holding a webinar that will include a condensed version of the topics covered in the Hack Days. This webinar is for developers, so please register only if you work with code and the API.

Migrating to the New AdWords API
Monday, March 1, 2010, 11am ET / 8am PT
Register here.
Post your questions here.

Space is limited so please register now if you plan on attending.

- Eric Koleda, AdWords API Team

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Experience Data

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For many, data can be daunting, involving endless number crunching and analysis. As confusing or overwhelming as data may be, it can also be powerful.

At Google, we get pretty excited about data and are always thinking of new ways to present it. Data can read simply, like the year-end roll-up presented in our Zeitgeist 2009 report or it can be geographical, such as the information presented via Google Flu Trends.

Recently, we developed a series of videos to illustrate several Google products, including search, DoubleClick for Advertisers and the Google Content Network. The dynamic visuals in the videos use light, colors, and movement to present data as experience.

• To create the search video, a bunch of Googlers sifted through Google Trends on a Friday afternoon to aggregate the top queries over a year-long period. Try it one day. We promise you'll be amused and surprised.
• To measure the success of a display campaign, a marketer needs benchmarks to compare campaign results against. Using data from our ad serving tool, DoubleClick for Advertisers, the DoubleClick video illustrates the relationship between click-through-rate (CTR) and creative size. The colorful blocks help bring the comparisons to life, illustrating the click-through-rate (CTR) by height and depth.
• For the Google Content Network visualization, we highlight the always-on nature of U.S. impressions. As the sun rises and sets over the country, the mesmerizing imagery conveys performance at scale.

You can view all of the videos here:

(Click to view video)

Sit back, relax and experience the data.

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Going Mobile in 2010 - Part One, Optimizing Mobile Campaigns

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With more high end phones hitting the market and marketers
wondering how to best connect with consumers on their phones, we wanted
to give you a few best practices for targeting high end mobile devices.
Today we'll be giving you a few tips for optimizing mobile campaigns.

While
both mobile and desktop search campaigns use similar best practices,
the way we search and browse the web on our mobile phones is slightly
different than on our computers. Separating mobile and desktop
campaigns and optimizing for performance on each platform will drive
greater success for your clients intigrated marketing strategies.

1. Reporting & Tracking

Use
Device and Click Type reporting to figure out exactly what is and is
not working in your mobile search campaigns. Just like with desktop
search, you can (and should) bid according to what is sending traffic
to your site and what converts best. Pulling out high performing
keywords and placing them into a separate mobile campaign can help
drive additional traffic in a growing market.

(Example data. Click here to view image)

This
holds true for placements and the mobile content network as well. When
running a Placement Performance Report for mobile phones, take special
note of the Ad Sense for Mobile Apps category of placements (they will
show up as adsenseformobileapps.com in the report). You can drill down
to the specific URL and gain insight into what apps you should continue
to target and which ones you should exclude.

2. Keywords & Ad Text

Searches
on high-end mobile devices average around 2.9 words (and only 2.4 on
WAP phones). When expanding desktop search campaigns to mobile and/or
adding new keywords to your mobile campaigns, keep in mind how people
search on their phones. While desktop campaigns may benefit from "long
tail", 4- to 5- word keyword phrases, you may want to consider shorter,
more general, and location specific searches for mobile phones.

For
example, a college student in Boston may search for "Pizza near Union
Square in Boston" from their dorm room, but would only search "Boston
Pizza" from their mobile phones.

3. Take advantage of what's mobile

In
the past few months we've launched several mobile specific ad formats
like click-to-download, click-to-call, and mobile coupons in the Local
Business Center. Think about what unique advantages and messaging a
mobile campaign allows and reach your customers at every point of their
day.

For more mobile tips and resources, visit the Google Mobile Ads site.

In addition, check back next week for the next installment of 'Going Mobile in 2010.'

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80 days until major AdWords API v13 sunset

This is an important reminder for those of you who use the AdWords API. On April 22, most v13 services will be turned off. To make sure that your application continues to work after this date, we recommend migrating to v200909 as soon as possible.

If you're an API user, you might want to follow the AdWords API Blog. It's a great place to learn about what's changing with the product and find migration resources.

If you're not an API user, but would like to learn more about it, visit the Google Code website.

Winter 2010 Seminars for Success schedule

This winter we will be offering Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer Seminars for Success in 11 cities in the US, UK, Ireland and Australia. If you're new to Seminars for Success, here's a little background.

Analytics Seminars (we offer introductory and advanced sessions) will help you better use the insights found in your Analytics report by covering topics such as setup tips, best practices, and analysis techniques. The Website Optimizer Seminar will show you how to turn more of your website's visitors into customers by teaching you how to use Google Website Optimizer to run landing page experiments.

Seminar leaders, who are independent search marketing professionals certified as Google Analytics Authorized Consultants, will use in-depth course materials, hands-on exercises and valuable tips from their years of managing Analytics accounts as well as managing landing pages to teach you how to achieve your goals.

The next sessions will be in the following cities:

• Los Angeles, CA - January 27-29, 2010
• London, UK - January 28-29, 2010 (Analytics only)
• Orlando, FL - February 10-11, 2010 (Analytics only)

A complete schedule, as well as registration information, is available here.

v2009 Hack Days Coming to Europe

Thank you to everyone who attended our San Francisco and New York hack days. The response was very enthusiastic and we got a tremendous amount of valuable feedback.

Next up on the schedule are three events in Europe:

London: February 3rd

Paris: February 5th

Hamburg: February 9th

All events will be held in the local Google office and will follow the same format as the US events: an introduction to v2009, technical discussions of the BulkMutateJobService, LocationExtensions, and AdParameters, followed by a chance to migrate some v13 code with Google engineers on hand to help.

Note that these are engineer-only events. The presentations will be highly technical and there will be no activities for attendees who don't plan to write code.

Space is very limited, so sign up now! Get more information and register at: http://sites.google.com/site/v2009hackdays.

Policy adjustment for display URLs

The display URL (the URL that appears within the ad itself) shows potential visitors to a site where they'll land when they click on an ad. For sites that sit on shared or hosted domains (such as blogspot.com), we're adjusting our display URL policy to make this more clear.

Beginning this week, all ads leading to sites on hosted domains will need to have display URLs that accurately reflect their destinations.

Let's say I wanted to create an ad linking to this blog: http://adwords.blogspot.com. In the past, blogspot.com would have been an acceptable display URL. Because there are so many independent blogs hosted on http://blogspot.com however, we now require the display URL to reflect the specific blog reached upon clicking the ad– in this case: adwords.blogspot.com.

Incorrect:

Destination URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com
Display URL: blogspot.com

Correct:

Destination URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com
Display URL: adwords.blogspot.com

Going forward, ads that don't include this additional information in their display URLs will be disapproved. A suggested display URL will be provided in the disapproval email notification, but we encourage you to proactively adjust any ads that you think might be affected by this change.

If you'd like to learn about this policy in greater detail, please visit the AdWords Help Center.

Thanks for your understanding, and for helping us to continue to improve the AdWords experience.

100 days until major v13 sunset

In October of last year we launched the v200909 API and shared with you that the majority of v13 services would be turned off on April 22 of this year. This is a reminder to our developers that less than 100 days are left before most v13 services will be turned off.

As of April 22, 2010, the following v13 services will no longer be accessible:
CampaignService
AdGroupService
CriterionService
AdService
InfoService
KeywordToolService
SiteSuggestionService

The AccountService, TrafficEstimatorService, and ReportService v13 services will continue to be accessible because they are not yet available in the v2009 API. In the coming months, we'll announce the launch dates for these services in the v2009 API and corresponding sunset dates for the v13 services.

Want to learn more about migrating your application to the v2009 API? Review the side-by-side differences between v13 and v2009. Try out the code examples in these client libraries: Java, .NET, Python, Ruby, and PHP. You can also learn more from our Discover v2009 series of blog posts.

As we go into the last 100 days before migration to v2009, please continue to ask us your questions and share your feedback on the AdWords API Developer Forum.

Kick off 2010 training with ThinkTravel webinar

To kick off the New Year, we're pleased to bring you the next installment in the Think[Industry] webinar series; this webinar will highlight new Google and Compete research on the role the online channel plays in cruise bookers' shopping processes.

On Tuesday, January 19, 2010, Google and Compete will present results from their study into how shoppers research and book cruises, as well as when and how cruisers use search as part of their online travel research, using in-depth online behavioral analysis and data from a recent survey of online cruise shoppers.

The webinar will cover:

• Which offline and online resources shoppers use in their cruise research process
• How much online content cruise shoppers consume before booking
• How search impacts likelihood to book
• How queries evolve as shoppers move closer to booking
• How search engine usage intensifies when shoppers are ready to book

New Year, New Look for Google for Advertisers

The New Year festivities have come and gone, and it's now time to return to the daily grind. To add a little color to the January doldroms, we're pleased to share the newly redesigned Google for Advertisers - the central destination for advertisers and their agency partners to understand what it is Google does for advertising.

So what has changed? One big change is the homepage where we now illustrate how Google's tools work together to support the entire value chain of marketing, from insights to creative to media to measurement and optimization. We've been calling these areas of focus the "marketing cycle" and we hope it's a clear and lasting way to help advertisers and agencies make sense of how everything they're working on fits with everything we're working on.

Beyond the new homepage, we added fresh content like our video overview of the Google Content Network and ways to stay up-to-date through twitter, trainings and quick videos. Because we work with partners from around the globe, we're working hard to translate the site into additional languages and create locally-relevant content in other parts of the world. To kick off this effort, we're pleased to introduce our first localized site - Google for Advertisers UK.

To check out the new sites, please visit Google.com/advertisers or Google.co.uk/advertisers.