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Google is expanding its “Shared endorsements” program. Starting in November, your name, photo, comments, and ratings or +1's you’ve given to a brand or local business can show up in both organic search results and in advertisements for that brand or businesss.
"This only happens when you take an action (things like +1’ing, commenting or following) – and the only people who see it are the people you’ve chosen to share that content with," Google explained in its announcement.
Google reminded users with its updated terms that users control how their endorsements are displayed in ads through their settings.
On November 11, Google+ will update its terms of service agreement to clarify how your profile name and photo might be used in Google products, including in reviews and advertising.
“This update to our Terms of Service doesn’t change in any way who you’ve shared things with in the past or your ability to control who you want to share things with in the future,” Google said in its announcement.
If you'd like to check your settings, here’s a couple simple steps:
- Sign into your Google account. Go to the "Shared Endorsements" settings page.
- You can enable or disable the setting that allows people to see your name and photo in shared endorsements on ads by checking or unchecking the box shown in the following screenshot:
Google reminded users that "unchecking the box means that Google won’t be able to share your recommendations with your friends in some cases where they might otherwise see and benefit from them."
Original Article Post by
Jessica Lee @
Search Engine Watch
Does your marketing department tend to function as a silo? Has your online media become a silo within a silo?
Often times as marketers we tend to focus on the strategy and implementation of our tactics so intently that we forget they should act together as a harmonious online family. There are not only efficiencies in this approach, but also great opportunities to leverage the strengths to complement and drive results.
That's not to say that one should not have specializations that drive their individual directions, but this is about specialists coming together for a mind meld and working together on the common goals.
Integrating PPC With Other Marketing Efforts: How to Get Started
Begin by creating a grid of the core marketing tactics across the top and the same list, or specialties, going down. Where the two intersect is an opportunity:
The opportunities may be ongoing as in collecting audience lists or specific promotional targeting. Many of the ways to integrate PPC will include retargeting because the ad copy and landing pages can be so personalized to our lists. The lists themselves can be build from virtually any website visitor, but let's explore a few ideas and examples.
PPC & Video
Retargeting on YouTube allows advertisers with a video presence on YouTube to jump platforms and then retarget a list off YouTube. Target people across the Google Display Network who watched a specific video or subscribed to your YouTube channel.
It works the other direction as well. If someone visited your site already, you can target that person as they browse on YouTube.
PPC & Email
Email utilizes your customer list to keep connecting with them in the inbox. Whether you're using basic or advanced email marketing tactics, take advantage of every opportunity to grow your list from PPC.
Consider using “join the email list” as one of the calls to action in your ad and on the landing page. Or consider running email list only acquisition campaigns.
Email blasts can be a good way to drive customers back again and again.
Another way to integrate PPC with email is to tag the email landing page with a retargeting pixel from your AdWords account.
If you can continue to build on this list, it can be used for Remarketing Lists For Search Ads. Try retargeting past customers doing searches comparing products in your category or on "sale" or "deals" keywords to drive them back.
PPC & Print Ads
Complement your print ads by placing display network banners on the same website property or similar content sites. Using the Display Planner Tool in AdWords, I can run a plan showing websites, mobile apps, and videos related to, and including, “cooklight.com” to layer on top of my print ads in the magazine.
PPC & Mobile
We live in a mobile world where people are constantly searching on smaller screens for the same information as desktop. PPC and mobile are the wave of the future – just ask the millions of advertisers who just upgraded to Adwords enhanced campaigns.
Unfortunately, many advertisers have simply set a bid adjustment and called it a day. We can do better.
Think of mobile as the second screen so other marketing tactics likely to touch PPC will also touch mobile. In addition, the basics need to be covered to integrate mobile:
- A mobile-friendly website or landing page.
- Mobile ad copy versions.
- A clear way to convert.
These customers won't be able to convert the same as from desktop PPC or other media, so a few options may be:
- Click to call.
- Ability to email themselves the products they browse.
- Map and directions in local maps or on site.
- Multiple options to find what they need, for example by including sitelinks.
Summary
Incorporating PPC into other media to reach organizational goals is becoming an expectation among savvy online marketers. What ways have you found to mind meld with the team and kill it with conversions? Tell us how!
Article Post @
Search Engine Watch
Product Listing Ads (PLAs) can be daunting for small advertisers, but you don't need lots of technology to take advantage of the high quality traffic. Since Google launched Product Listing Ads we've seen many success stories, and most ecommerce advertisers have learned how this ad format can help get them additional qualified traffic.
Sound's great, right? It is.
The downside is that the barrier to entry is higher than for the rest of AdWords. Instead of choosing a set of keywords and writing ads, you need to create a feed of all the products in your inventory and send a daily update to Google.
If your CMS or ecommerce database supports it then the process can be easy: check the box, give it the address to upload to... done. You can get more clever by starting to give items specific markup just for your AdWords account to really optimize.
If your system doesn't allow you to do this, then you've got a difficulty. Typical reasons might be that the technology is outdated, or there will be a significant charge to add that feature, or that you sell a very limited range of products and don't use an ecommerce platform.
How Google Spreadsheets Can Help You
Google Spreadsheets is a simple spreadsheet that's well integrated into the Merchant Center. When you create a merchant center account you don't need to provide a feed that you upload daily, you are instead given the option to create a Google Spreadsheet that the system can take the data from. You still need all the same fields, but you can now manually create a system that will get your data into Merchant Center, and from there into Google Shopping via AdWords.
The one big limitation is that this is all done manually. You need to build out all of your items and you need to keep your prices up to date. Consider that an additional part of the cost of doing business with PLAs.
Google Spreadsheets are easy to share, so you can have multiple people work in the same document at the same time. If you need to share the load, go for it.
My recommendation is to choose your best 10-30 products and start with those. Getting them into PLAs when you previously couldn't can make all the difference.
Google Spreadsheets and AdWords Scripts
There's more. Google Spreadsheets is available as a data source for AdWords Scripts.
AdWords Scripts allow you to write little JavaScript-based functions to run in your AdWords account. They integrate with most features of AdWords, but the one of interest here is ad parameters.
You may not have come across ad parameters before, they're an API-only feature of AdWords. Every keyword can be associated with up to two ad parameters. These can then be inserted dynamically into ad texts, just like dynamic keyword insertion.
The Result?
By writing your ads to contain these parameters, and writing a script to pull the values from your PLA-specific Google Spreadsheets document, you can force your regular text ads (i.e. non-PLA) to pull through prices, discounts, previous prices... you name it.
By setting up Google Spreadsheets correctly and keeping them up to date, you can transform your AdWords activity from a static text ads campaign to one that includes dynamic content in your ads and PLAs on the same searches. That's worth it.
Article Post @
Search Engine Watch
Google transformed the face of retargeting for online businesses this June with the release of Google Dynamic Remarketing, making retargeting specific to user search available to retailers of all sizes.
What is Google Dynamic Remarketing?
Merchants who sell online often use retargeting as it displays ads to shoppers who are more likely to make a purchase since they've already been to the retailers website.
Imagine if you went to Target, then they paid someone to follow you around for the rest of the day showing you things from Target you looked at. Shoes while you get coffee, sneakers at the gym, flats as you drop off your Redbox movie rental.
Target knows you're more likely to buy shoes than the guy next to you since you've already been to their store. Moreover, Target can show you specific shoes you looked at, and items that relate to those shoes (shoe categories, related shoes, etc.) to increase the likelihood of you being interested in checking out those products.
Remarketing: Then and Now
Prior to Google Dynamic Remarketing, smaller online marketers were often unable to retarget using solutions such as Adroll due to spend limits. These merchants could retarget using Google, but were more limited with retargeting options (where to retarget, who to retarget, when to retarget).
Google Dynamic Remarketing overhauled Google's retargeting functionality, making it more accessible and functional to retailers of all sizes.
Google Dynamic Remarketing Features
- Google Auto Optimized Layout Feature: Merchants can choose from a pre-made list of ad templates and A/B test based on ad performance.
- Google Product Recommendation Engine: Chooses ads for product ads based on what shoppers have viewed.
- Google Real Time Bidding Algorithm: Determines bids for each impression.
Google Dynamic Remarketing Visitor Segmentation
Another large change for Google Dynamic Remarketing is who marketers are able to remarket to. Google Dynamic Remarketing allows online retailers to retarget to:
- Everyone: All site visitors
- General Visitors: Shoppers who visited your site but didn't look at any product pages.
- Product Viewers: Online shoppers who have looked at particular product pages.
- Shopping Cart Abandoners: People who have visited your site, added a product to their shopping cart, and then decided to leave the site without completing the purchase.
- Past Buyers: Online customers who have purchased items from your site in the past.
Retarget Using Google Dynamic Remarketing
You can liken remarketing with Google to using Product Listing Ads. A little up front leg work, definite maintenance and testing, but proven return on investment.
If you want to remarket with Google Dynamic Remarketing, you can get started here:
- Send a data feed to the Google Merchant Center Login: You're already doing this if your listing on Product Listing Ads or AdWords. If you are sending a data feed, be sure it's up to date and follows Google's data feed rules.
- Install a Google remarketing tag on your site: You can test and validate your tag using Google's remarketing validation tools.
- Build Google Remarketing Campaigns And Ad Groups: Google's remarketing webinar is a great place to get started with Google Dynamic Retargeting.
Google Dynamic Retargeting Best Practices
- Include images in your ads: Product Listing Ads convert more and have a better ROI than text ads. Remarketing ads with images reflect the same trend.
- Bid more on shopping cart abandoners: There are a whole host of things which can lead an online shopper to abandon the shopping cart. Regardless of the cause, these shoppers had intended to purchase from you at one point. The likelihood of these shoppers converting compared to all visitors or general visitors is much higher.
- Bid less on visitors who didn't view products: If an online shopper browsed on your site and didn't look at any products they are less likely to ultimately purchase something. You should still retarget to these customers, just don't spend as much here.
- Adjust bids based on visitor variables such as gender, age and website: Since Google Dynamic Remarketing is feed based, you can change make feed changes and add labels to target different variables of visitor groups.
- Consider Member Duration and Google Dynamic Remarketing Ads Frequency Capping Times: How long Google retargets to someone and how often visitors see ads are important variables which impact conversion.
- Google Remarketing Member Duration (or how long a Google cookie follows someone) can last up to 180 days – you'll likely want to retarget for 30 days.
- Google Remarketing Frequency Capping can be tailored by day week or month for impressions. Best practice for how many ads you serve varies for different merchants, but AdWords and Analytics should help you identify which time periods are best for your website.
Article Post @ Search Engine Watch
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