Google improves support for local targeting of mobile users with the new Adwords Enhanced campaigns

A briefing on the new Adwords Enhanced Campaigns

Value/Importance to AdWords advertisers: [rating=4] - But only if you have high levels of mobile traffic and/or physical store locations.

Recommended link: AdWords Enhanced Campaigns announcement - 06/02/2013

Our commentary on AdWords Enhanced Campaigns

Google’s mantra has always been Relevance, Relevance, Relevance! They’re now really putting it into practice for mobile marketing with this exciting new feature which means that soon you will be able to more easily target mobile users with ads based on their location, device and time of day. These options were already available to advertisers, but it will become much easier to implement and measure mobile-specific ads. However, I understand that tablets can't be easily targeted any longer. Google says this is due to a blurring of different tablet devices and desktops. Nevertheless, savvy advertisers were using this as a way to reach a perceived more valuable audience.

The key features of Enhanced Campaigns are:

• 1. Easier bid adjustments. Bid adjustments can be readily applied across devices, locations, time of day for a single campaign. Previously it was common practice to set up separate campaigns for mobile targeting so many didn’t have it covered. Google gives the example of a breakfast cafe wanting to reach people nearby searching for “coffee” or “breakfast” on a smartphone. Using bid adjustments, they can bid 25% higher for people searching a half-mile away, 20% lower for searches after 11am, and 50% higher for searches on smartphones.
  Wow! That’s powerful, but an analysis challenge and one that’s going to see many agency-client discussion about which bid adjustments to put in place and how they’re working.This example from Wordstreamshows how this works in practice.
• 2. Ad creative optimised with relevant ad text for desktop or mobile or for ad extensions like site links and click to call. As an example of how relevance for mobile users can be increased, Enhanced Campaigns will make it easier for retailers to set keyword bids and relevant creative to target Google searchers within a close radius of their stores – say a searcher in London is on Oxford Street, looking for a flower shop – local florists could place high bids to ensure these mobile searchers see their ads whilst in close proximity to their physical, high-street stores.
• 3. Improved reports to measure conversion types. Mobile-specific interactions such as calls, app downloads and site link clicks will now be able to be more easily compared to other conversion types.

Marketing implications of AdWords enhanced campaigns

As with many new AdWords features, on announcement the feature is currently available to larger advertisers. Google says that AdWords enhanced campaigns will become available to all Google advertisers during the next couple of weeks – before becoming a fully-fledged feature, implemented on all AdWords campaigns by the time mid–2013 arrives.

To find out more about the opportunities I asked Alison Booth, paid search manager at ClickThrough Marketing to explain the relevance of this new feature to marketer. She explains:

“The rise of tablets and mobiles has, until recently, presented headaches for the vigilant PPC manager – the traditional best practice approach was to split out devices, with separate campaigns for mobile, tablet and desktop searchers.

The move towards AdWords enhanced campaigns will greatly simplify set-up for PPC staff: and provide far more budget control options for multi-device campaigns."

Expanding on this, Alison says:

“One thing which will need careful management, however, will be grouped budgets: AdWords will put tablets and desktop ads together, for instance, with separate bidding adjustments for mobile. The benefit of this approach in AdWords is that device spending will be calculated on a percentage of your overall bids: so you can quickly push budget towards the devices which are converting.

That said, it also means staff will have to learn to manage the relationship between devices, to properly optimise their synergistic budgets across desktop, tablet and mobile.

Two more things to note: one is the ability to show ads to users within a certain radius of high-street stores. This option allows retailers to bid for visibility on key search terms when users search nearby to their stores. For instance, a user in London W1 searches Google for ‘fast food’ and an ad from a local pizza restaurant could be shown".

I’m also wondering whether there could creative use of targeting people at events like festivals or sporting events?

Sitelinks improvements

For team members working on pay-per click there is an added bonus of scheduling and improved scheduling for site links. Alison explains:

“To really round-out this new offering, Google is also adding scheduling for sitelinks – a hugely beneficial change which will allow PPC staff to schedule updates to sitelinks without being in the office. For instance, Boxing Day sales which go live at midnight on Boxing Day used to require PPC staff to log in and push the extension live at that time – this new scheduling options means it can all be set up and scheduled for launch prior to the Christmas break".

“Behind the scenes, sitelink-level reporting will provide much greater insight into the sitelinks that work for your campaigns – something previously down to guesswork and deep landing page analysis as much as anything else. This will really help PPC managers to ascertain which sitelinks work, and perform far more meaningful optimisation of these ad extensions to boost their conversions.”

Google also has these additional help resources for upgrading to AdWords Enhanced Campaigns.