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Ads Quality is important for you, our advertisers, as it directly affects your ads' position on the page and how much you pay for your ads.
Over the past few months we've made some big changes to improve how we calculate Quality Score and how your Quality Scores are displayed in your account. One of these changes was the transition from minimum bids to first page bids. To help explain Ads Quality and these changes, we've just released two instructional videos that walk through the basics of Ads Quality and the transition to first page bids. The first video, Ads Quality Basics, provides a general introduction to Ads Quality, including an overview of Quality Score and answers to some common questions about Ads Quality. If you don't know how Quality Score works, this is a good video to watch. The second video, Ads Quality Updates, goes beyond the basics and gives more detail on the recent changes made to Ads Quality. If you want to know more about how the change from inactive keywords to first page bids affects your campaigns, we recommend this video. 
 Last week, we posted about recent improvements we've made to the display ad builder. Now we'd like to share some best practices for using the tool. Hopefully these tips will help you get off to a running start with your new display campaigns:
Customize your ads to make them stand out. Here are some ways you can do that:
Consider separating your display ads into their own ad group. This will allow you to:
 You may not know it, but the busiest shopping day of the year, Black Friday, is shortly followed by the biggest online shopping day of the year, Cyber Monday. This year Cyber Monday falls on December 1st, and a little preparation can help you make the most of the day. Here's a few tips to help you prepare:
The holiday shopping season continues beyond Cyber Monday, and we hope all these tips can help you attract more customers this winter.
 Today, we announced new improvements to the Google TV ads program targeting feature. With program targeting, you can reach more customers when your message is most relevant, which means you're more likely to see better results. Simply enter a keyword related to your product or service, and we'll provide you with a list of relevant TV programs to choose from. You can access this feature during the 'Target Campaign' step when setting up a TV campaign. To learn more about how this works and to watch a demo video, check out the blog post on the Traditional Media Blog.
 We recently announced the launch of AdWords display ad builder, and now we've made it more widely available and easier to use. Display ad builder is a tool that lets you create and customize display ads, allowing you to easily expand your AdWords campaigns beyond text advertising. We've had an overwhelmingly positive response from our advertisers so far, so we're happy to announce that the tool is now available to advertisers in the UK, Ireland, and a number of other countries.
In addition, based on your feedback, we made improvements to the display ad builder to enable greater customization and make building display ads even easier: Image picker: You can now choose from previously uploaded images when creating your ads.We think these improvements will help you more easily and efficiently create engaging display ads. As always, we welcome your suggestions on how we can improve the display ad builder. Next week, we'll post best practices to help you build effective ads with the display ad builder. In the meantime, you can view our tutorial video or visit the display ad builder site to learn more.
 We've just asked a small group of US advertisers to start testing an updated web interface for AdWords. (If you're in the test pool, you'll see an alert when you sign in to your account.)
We're testing changes to the ways that AdWords advertisers see and manage the data in their accounts. These changes should make it easier to tackle common tasks, like navigating between campaigns and editing keywords across several ad groups. We hope the updates will give advertisers clearer insights into their ad campaigns and simpler ways to act on those insights. To answer a common question: The updates we're testing won't affect how ads run. Bidding, ranking, Quality Score, and the other key AdWords performance fundamentals are not changing with these updates. We've started advertiser testing very early, while we're still working on changes to the updated interface, so that we can make adjustments based on comments from our testers. That's one reason why this test group is pretty small. We'll gradually increase the number of advertisers testing the updated interface (and make it available to international testers) in the coming months. We'll be sharing more details about key features along the way. In the meantime, if you'd like to be considered for the test, please submit your AdWords account information on our beta sign-up page and we'll contact you when we're ready to add you as a tester.
 Keyword targeting can sometimes feel like a guessing game. Potential customers are performing hundreds of millions of searches on Google, most of which you don't even know about. With so many searches, you have to guess which ones might be relevant for each of your landing pages, and hope you find the right audience for your AdWords campaigns. That's where the Search-based Keyword Tool (beta) comes in. With this new tool you can get a better sense of what your potential customers are searching for and which keywords you should advertise on. Here's the scoop: you know that the Google search engine starts with searches conducted by users and helps them find relevant pages. But for keyword targeting, what you want is a tool that goes in the opposite direction by starting with your pages and identifying keywords that potential customers are searching on to find your products or services. The Search-based Keyword Tool does exactly this, leveraging search query data relevant to your website's content. In other words, this new tool gives you keywords that are highly relevant to your site but are not part of your AdWords campaigns. This helps you take advantage of missed opportunities. The tool is also useful if you don't currently advertise on AdWords. For example, a shoe store could discover which footwear styles users are searching for, or a digital camera blog could decide which cameras to review by looking at which camera models attract the most queries. The Search-based Keyword Tool is now available to all advertisers in the US and UK. We'll be expanding to additional languages and more countries in the near future. We'll also continue to develop the tool based on your feedback. Try it out at http://www.google.com/sktool, and let us know what you think.
 The Seminars for Success program continues to grow and we're happy to announce a new addition to the program: Website Optimizer Seminars for Success.
For those not familiar with Seminars for Success, they are full day, in-person seminars providing hands-on training on Google products. Seminars are currently offered for AdWords, Analytics, and now Website Optimizer. Seminars for Success are led by industry experts using a curriculum designed in conjunction with Google. The first Website Optimizer Seminars will be held in the following cities: December 4 - Alexandria, VA December 10 - Seattle, WA January 23 - Las Vegas, NV February 11 - San Jose, CA Sign up for Seminars at least 7 days in advance and we'll even throw in a $50 AdWords credit (View the terms and conditions of advertising credits). We'll be adding more Website Optimizer Seminars in the near future, so if you want to hear when seminars are happening near you, you can fill out this contact form. For more information about Seminars for Success, including registration details, course outlines, and past attendees' comments, please visit www.google.com/awseminars.
 Did you know that 20% of the queries Google receives each day are ones we haven’t seen in at least 90 days, if at all? With that kind of unpredictable search behavior, it's extremely difficult to create a keyword list that covers all relevant queries using only exact match.
Broad match is a great way to capitalize on those unexpected, but relevant queries. When you include a keyword as a broad match, your corresponding ad is not only eligible to appear alongside queries with that exact spelling, but it can also capture keyword expansions that include synonyms, singular/plural forms, relevant variants of your keywords, and phrases containing your keywords. Matching your ads against all these relevant query variations can have a big impact on the success of your online search campaigns. In fact, broad match currently accounts for over 1/3 of all clicks and conversions for advertisers, worldwide. To make the most of broad match, you can run search query reports to monitor your expansions. If you discover a query that's performing exceptionally well, consider adding it to your ad group as a broad match keyword and setting an appropriate bid. Conversely, if you see that one of your keywords has been matched to a search query that doesn't fit with your campaign, include that search query as a negative keyword in the appropriate campaign or ad group. We recently improved the search query report to provide more granular detail on which queries are triggering ads for your broad match keywords. This means less of your traffic may be reported under the "other unique queries" heading. We also recommend trying the Conversion Optimizer, a bidding feature that uses your conversion tracking data to get you more conversions at a lower cost. Conversion Optimizer helps you by automatically finding the clicks from broad match terms that convert the best. With so much traffic on Google each day, finding the queries that are most relevant for your business can be a challenge. With broad matches accounting for 1/3 of all clicks and conversions, using broad match keywords can help you capture relevant clicks and conversions that you never knew existed. For more information, check out our frequently asked questions on broad match in the AdWords Help Center.
 Since we launched Google Ad Planner a few months ago, you've suggested more ways we could help improve your media planning process. First, we're excited to announce that Ad Planner is now accessible to anyone with a Google account. Second, we've released a number of new features that we built based on your direct input.
Define your audience by keywords and geography In response to your requests for more audience definition options, we've enhanced Google Ad Planner to support search queries and geo-targeting. For example, now you can find video game enthusiasts based on their likeliness to search for keywords such as "video games" or "video game codes." You can also drill-down to specific states or metros (region or cities in geographies outside the US). Manage your site results With three new site ranking methods, you can decide how you want your site results ranked and displayed. You can choose between sites most likely to attract your target audience, larger known sites to increase your campaign scale, or a balance between the two. By applying other site filters, you can narrow your search to only sites that accept ads, sites in specific categories like "Video Games," or sites that end with a particular domain suffix like ".edu."  (Click the image for a full-size version)Analyze your media plan With Google Ad Planner's new interactive bubble chart, you can compare sites in your media plan by demographics, frequency, traffic, and unique visitors. In the example below, the red bubble shows a site heavily skewed towards females under 35, which is inconsistent with other sites in the media plan. By discovering such outliers, you can easily refine your media plan targeting.  (Click the image for a full-size version)International demographic data We've expanded demographic audience data to include France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK. We look forward to continuing to expand the number of countries Ad Planner covers. Sign in today to see the latest improvements, maybe check out a training video or two, and let us know what you think.
 On Saturday, November 8th, 2008 the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10AM to 2PM PST, for maintenance. While you won't be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual. AdWords system maintenance typically occurs on the second Saturday of each month from 10AM to 2PM PST. We'll continue to update you via the blog as we always have, but please make note of the November 8th date and our scheduled maintenance further down the road.
 Today, we have been experiencing delays in the reporting of your AdWords account statistics. This delay is temporary and does not affect the serving of your ads as per your campaign settings.
We have been working hard to get this fixed, and at this time, click and cost statistics have been updated and show the correct numbers. Correct impression counts will follow soon. As a result of these reporting delays, your clickthrough rate (CTR) may show a higher than actual number until the impression counts are also updated. This delay in reporting is unrelated to the ads quality improvements that we wrote about on Monday. We regret any inconvenience that this may cause you and appreciate your patience as we work toward a resolution.
 We're pleased to let you know that the improvements to Ads Quality that we announced last week have recently launched. As we explained last week, these improvements better evaluate the precise quality of your ads and improve the way we determine which ads show in the yellow region above the search results.
We also wanted to emphasize that AdWords has always accounted for the influence of ad position on CTR and removed it from the Quality Score. This specific improvement updates this system to make it fresher and more accurate. Again, while we don't believe that any immediate changes are needed on your part, we encourage you as always to watch your key metrics and to make adjustments as appropriate.
 We know that many advertisers set up seasonal campaigns for specific holidays and occasions. Well, if you didn't set an end date for your Halloween campaign yet, here's a quick reminder to log in to your account and pause it. (You can always use it again next year.)
And of course, Happy Halloween from the Inside AdWords crew! 
 We're always working on improvements that will help us show the most relevant ads to our searchers, and we're excited to tell you that we'll soon introduce two changes designed to enhance how we calculate Quality Score and rank ads. The first change helps better evaluate the precise quality of your ad - regardless of its position on the page. The second change improves how we promote ads to positions above the search results. Let's take a look at both of these changes in more detail.
More precise Quality Score calculation Clickthrough rate (CTR) is the most significant component of Quality Score because it directly indicates which ads are most relevant to our searchers. As you probably have observed, ads in high positions typically earn better CTR than those in low positions, because ads in high positions are more visible to searchers. To calculate the most accurate Quality Scores, it's important that the influence of ad position on CTR be taken into account and removed from the Quality Score. In the coming days, we'll update the portion of the Quality Score algorithm that accounts for ad position. This will result in more accurate Quality Scores, ensure that ads compete fairly for position based on their quality and bid, and enable Google to show the most relevant ads to searchers by rewarding high-quality advertisers with better ad positions. Higher quality ads above the search results We're also improving the way we determine which ads show in the yellow region above the search results. These positions are particularly valuable to advertisers because they are prominently positioned on the page. Given their prominence, it's especially important that these ads be high quality; we therefore place extra emphasis on quality when determining which ads to show in this location. To appear above the search results, ads must meet a certain quality threshold. In the past, if the ad with the highest Ad Rank did not meet the quality threshold, we may not have shown any ads above the search results. With this update, we'll allow an ad that meets the quality threshold to appear above the search results even if it has to jump over other ads to do so. For instance, suppose the ad in position 1 on the right side of the page doesn't have a high enough Quality Score to appear above the search results, but the ad in position 2 does. It's now possible for the number 2 ad to jump over the number 1 ad and appear above the search results. This change ensures that quality plays an even more important role in determining the ads that show in those prominent positions. Keep in mind that these enhancements may cause changes to your ad position, spend, and performance. We're launching these updates soon so that you'll have enough time to review your accounts and prepare for your holiday season advertising. While we don't believe that any immediate changes are needed on your part, we encourage you, as always, to watch your key metrics and to make adjustments as appropriate. We'll post again once these changes are live.
 Want to attend an in-person training for AdWords or Analytics? Seminars for Success offers day-long trainings on AdWords and Analytics for all skill levels from Beginner to Advanced. If you want to get started next week, you can check out an AdWords seminar in Seattle and Adwords and Analytics seminars in Los Angeles.
And if you won't be in Seattle or Los Angeles next week, don't worry. In the coming months we'll also be offering Seminars for Success in the following cities: AdWords November 3: Los Angeles, CA - AdWords 301: Advanced November 5: Seattle, WA - AdWords 301: Advanced November 13-14: Philadelphia, PA - AdWords 101: Beginner, AdWords 201: Intermediate November 17: Las Vegas, NV - AdWords 301: Advanced December 1-2: Honolulu, HI - AdWords 101: Beginner, AdWords 201: Intermediate December 2: Washington DC - AdWords 301: Advanced December 4: Houston, TX - AdWords 301: Advanced Analytics November 5-6: Los Angeles, CA - Analytics: Introduction, Analytics: Advanced December 8-9: Seattle, WA - Analytics: Introduction, Analytics: Advanced December 8-9: Montreal, QC - Analytics: Introduction, Analytics: Advanced Sign up for Seminars at least 7 days in advance and we'll even throw in a $50 AdWords credit (View the terms and conditions of advertising credits). For more information about Seminars for Success, including registration details, course outlines, and past attendees' comments, please visit http://www.google.com/awseminars.
 One of our favorite and most useful posts from last year was an in-depth look at cost-per-click behavior during the 2006 holiday season by none other than Google's Chief Economist, Hal Varian. In the post Hal explained how CPC's and CPA's (cost-per-actions) vary over time to affect advertisers' ROI.
This year we have two new posts about CPC's and holiday trends over at the newly launched Google Retail Advertising Blog, a great source of information tailored to the needs of retail advertisers. The first post is Hal's updated look at the new data from the 2007 holiday season. The second has some tips regarding scheduling and consumer behavior specifically for your campaigns this winter. Remember, it's never too early to start your holiday planning.
 The Google Marketer's Playbook is a series of educational talks where our experts discuss strategies for making the most of AdWords and other Google products such as Google Analytics and YouTube. You can attend the Google Marketer's Playbook and hear advice on topics such as optimization strategy, measurement and tracking, and increasing reach during the upcoming ad:tech digital marketing conferences.
The next session will be held at the 2008 ad:tech New York show November 3rd and 4th, and the talks are open to all exhibit hall pass holders. To obtain a free exhibit hall pass, visit www.ad-tech.com and click on the 'register' link next to the show you will be attending. Following the talks, attendees will be able to participate in live Q&A sessions with the experts. The Google Marketer's Playbook at ad:tech San Francisco, Miami and Chicago have already passed, but you can watch recordings of the sessions in this YouTube playlist. These videos are also live on the Google Business Channel which also contains more presentations and webinars about Google's business products and advertising solutions.
 Recently, the AdWords Help Forum started posting weekly tips to help advertisers improve their campaigns. This got us thinking... why not share the love with our blog readers? In this spirit, we'll periodically share some of these tips and tricks with you, covering everything from new tools to optimization strategies. Today, we'll start with unlocking the mystery behind why certain campaigns have low search traffic. First, it's helpful to understand the impression share of your ads. Impression share is a metric that represents the percentage of impressions your ad received out of the total available impressions in the market you're targeting. The Impression Share report, available through the Report Center, gives you insight into how you stack up against others in your industry, helping you make more effective changes to your campaigns and boost traffic. With insight into potential traffic, you can make more informed decisions and get answers to question like:
Once you have an understanding of where you're missing out on potential traffic, the next step is improving your ads' impression share. So, before you start restructuring your whole account to increase traffic, get clued in by running an Impression Share report.
 We're happy to let you know that we've changed the way your Campaign Summary and Ad Group Summary pages present statistics in order to give you additional level of detail into your campaign performance. Previously, these pages divided statistics into two categories: search, which included Google and search partners, and the content network.
Now, we show one set of statistics for Google and another set aggregating search partner performance. Search partners include AOL, Ask.com, and many other search sites around the web. You can view ad group or campaign performance at a summary level, or broken down by different combinations of Google, our search partners, and our content network. Additionally, separate Google and aggregate search partner statistics will soon be available in the Report Center.  (Click the image for a full-size version)We hope that this additional level of detail will help you better achieve your advertising goals. For more information, please visit this entry in the AdWords Help Center.
 Today, we announced two strategic partnerships that will make it easier for advertisers to manage their Google TV Ads media buys within their existing systems.
For advertisers who use CoreDirect, our partnership with COREMedia Systems will allow you to view your Google TV Ads sales and response data next to your other media buys and results within CoreDirect. In addition, our partnership with Harris Corporation will help make more inventory available to Google TV Ads advertisers, helping them expand their reach to more potential customers. For the latest news from Google TV Ads, please see the announcements on our Traditional Media blog.
 Today we released the AdWords display ad builder, which lets you create professional-looking display ads in AdWords without needing to hire a designer or start from scratch. If you've wanted to expand beyond your text ad campaigns, or if you've been looking for an easier way to build display ads, this tool can help. This new tool lets you create customized display ads with your own text, images, and logo. You can also change colors and backgrounds. The tool can create ads to fit all possible placements across the Google content network, including video and game placements. The display ad builder is available now to all advertisers in the U.S. and Canada. We've also put together a short video demonstrating how to create your first ad: And for a more detailed look you can watch a longer tutorial. To start creating your ads, click Display Ad Builder on the Create an ad page within a new or existing campaign in your AdWords account. If you want to learn more about creating and running display ads, visit the new Display Ads 101 tutorial. As we continue adding new templates and features to the tool, we're want your feedback. Please let us know what would make the display ad builder better for you. Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew
 On Saturday, October 18th, 2008 the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10AM to 2PM PDT, for maintenance. While you won't be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual. AdWords system maintenance typically occurs on the second Saturday of each month from 10AM to 2PM PDT with this week's maintenance being an exception. We'll continue to update you via the blog as we always have, but please make note of the October 18th date and our scheduled maintenance further down the road.
 We're excited to announce that the Conversion Optimizer is now available to many more campaigns. Any campaign using AdWords Conversion Tracking with at least 50 conversions in the last 30 days is now eligible to use the Conversion Optimizer. Additionally, thanks to improved technology, the Conversion Optimizer now delivers better performance overall.
The Conversion Optimizer uses your conversion tracking data to get you more conversions at a lower cost. It achieves this by optimizing your placement in each ad auction to avoid unprofitable clicks and get you as many profitable clicks as possible. You might already follow a similar strategy by bidding higher for keywords that convert more often and lower for keywords that convert less often. But the Conversion Optimizer can adjust your ad's placement based on many other factors, including the keyword's broad match query, the user's location, and the conversion rates of Google's search and content partner sites. These extra adjustments enable many advertisers to achieve double-digit percentage increases in conversions, while paying the same price or less for each conversion. Check out the AdWords Conversion Optimizer page to get started or to learn more about the Conversion Optimizer.
 On Saturday, October 11th, 2008 the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT, for maintenance. While you won't be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual. AdWords system maintenance typically occurs on the second Saturday of each month from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT. We'll continue to update you via the blog as we always have, but please make note of the October 11th date and our scheduled maintenance further down the road.
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