3 New PPC Tool Updates You May Have Missed
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3 New PPC Tool Updates You May Have Missed

28th May 2013

With the Penguin update and reviewing your link profile taking up all the news recently, you may have missed some major PPC announcements this month.

New enhanced campaign features, new tools, and some updates to existing campaign settings mean that enhanced campaigns are shaping up to be even better than before.

Some of the tools are available in beta but will be available to view in most enhanced campaigns in the next few weeks.

1.     New Flexible Bid Strategies

Flexible bid strategies will be rolled out in the next few weeks allowing advertisers to apply both automated and manual bidding to the same campaign.

Only available in enhanced campaigns and located in the Shared Library, flexible bid strategies contain the following:

  • Maximise Clicks – setting bids to get the most clicks – great for when you want site visits or to maximise traffic on long tail terms
  • Target CPA – sets bids to get the most conversions
  • Enhanced CPC – adjusts manual bids based on the likelihood of a conversion
  • Target search page location – essentially  this strategy enables you to bid for the top location at times when you need it most

ppc-flexible-bid-strategies

All campaigns will be automatically updated to ‘enhanced’ on July 22nd so make sure you are ready for the switch.

2. New Keyword Planner Tool

The Adwords keyword planner is a cross between the keyword tool and the traffic estimator.

It’s looking like a complicated tool, that will allow you to brainstorm by keyword, by landing page or by product category.

adwords-keyword-planner-toolWays to filter keywords:

  • Average CPC
  • Search volume
  • Keyword competition
  • Exclude Keywords you are already targeting
  • Setting targeting parameters
  • View by list or group

The keyword tool has changed in that you can add your ideas to an overall plan which means you stay in session and can build your plan before getting estimates for all of your ideas.

adwords-keyword-planner-groups

Performance estimates are now shown in a graph where you can select bids and budgets, update targets, change keywords and keyword matches to see in detail how this may affect your bid.

adwords-keyword-planner-statistics

I am not able to see the keyword planner yet, but it is also due to be rolled out in the next few weeks. For a more detailed look at the keyword planner tool – view the very helpful article How to Use The Keyword Planner on Search Engine Land.

3. The New Display Benchmarks Tool

Not part of the Google Adwords interface as such, but part of the DoubleClick toolset, the display benchmark tool has been launched to help advertisers compare how their display campaigns compare to the rest of the industry and how different Ad formats are performing.

Choosing from the following settings by various dates (dropdown menu), advertisers can filter in or out various criteria to compare to their own campaigns. It is early days for data as many of the choices came up as ‘no data currently available’, but this will become more detailed as time goes on.

display-benchmark-tool

I chose UK Shopping over all Ad sizes and all formats to bring up the following information:

Snapshot Report:

snapshot-report

View by Map: (I chose all countries to illustrate the map view)

map-view

View by Trend:

The Google Insights blog, identifies some interesting trends based around user engagement including:

  • User choice leads to more engagement
  • Richer ads lead to more engagement
  • Optimize your campaigns for engagement

Trend #3: Optimize your campaigns for engagement:

Essentially a trends tool for display Ads, this is going to be a useful addition to help optimise campaigns, but some of the findings above are not a complete surprise which leads me to conclude that at the moment it is best used as a guide. The most effective tool is still going to be using your brain to analyse your own accounts, marketplace, Ads and website so that you can make the most of your own trends data.

To test the tool – sign in to the Doubleclick Rich Media Gallery using your Google login.

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Written By
Jackie Hole is an Award Winning Search Marketing consultant specialising in Paid Search, Conversion Improvement and Organic Search / SEO for the USA, Canada and European markets. Starting out in Multimedia & Interface Design, Jackie has over 15 years experience in online marketing and was recently awarded European Search Personality...
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