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If you live in the New York area, you may have heard or seen the so-called "Google surge," or Google Content Network blast that NY Mayor Bloomberg used to impact voters' decisions in the final hours of the mayor's reelection race. An increasing number of advertisers across industries, including auto, retail, and entertainment, have also used Google Content Network blasts to drive awareness of a new vehicle launch, viewer tune-in for a show, or traffic to an online contest with great success. The Google Content Network blast entails serving up an advertiser's ads on multiple Google Content Network sites over a specific period of time, blanketing a particular geographic region, audience segment, or high traffic sites, depending on the advertiser's goal. On average, blasts can deliver 100 million ad impressions in 24-48 hours. But you're probably wondering what is special about Google Content Network blasts versus your typical portal homepage buy? Google Content Network blasts deliver your message on a larger universe of sites than a single portal homepage, thereby reaching more of your customers. In a recent Google and TNS Compete study for a large automaker 1 , we found that Google Content Network blasts reach 58% of online auto buyers, which is 20% more than a top portal homepage 2 , and 23% of buyers were reached exclusively on sites available only on the Google Content Network 2 . In addition, 30% of auto buyers never went to one of the major portal homepages 6 to 9 months prior to purchasing their vehicle 3 . And the best part of all is Google Content Network blasts require no advance booking and deliver relevant ads at a much lower CPM than portal takeovers. So, as we enter the peak holiday shopping season, consider how you're getting the word out on your merchandise and holiday offerings. Want to make a last minute big impression? Visit The Google Content Network site to learn more, and try out a Google Content Network blast for yourself. 1 Google, Inc. and TNS Compete study for large automaker, May 2009 2 Reach is based on a custom GCN site pack using a parameter of 2% buyer composition mix per site 3 Based on observed clickstream behavior of buyers Posted by Keiko Tokuda, Google Content Network Marketing Team

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Google Content Network Blast delivers a big bang for your buck

The latest enhancements to Google Ad Planner and DoubleClick's DART for Advertisers (DFA) bring new ways to help streamline your online display advertising workflow. With the newly launched DFA Analytics beta and beta integration of Google Ad Planner into the DFA platform, you'll now have a singular, seamless portal for planning, executing, and measuring campaigns -- with just one login. This unified set of tools, all accessible through the DFA platform, bring more efficiency to the campaign management process, saving valuable time and resources. Beyond access enhancements, both DFA Analytics and Ad Planner also provide you with more data and more ways to analyze it. We've summarized the changes to each product for quick reference below, but be sure to check out the official DoubleClick and Ad Planner blog posts for full details. The new DFA Analytics beta helps you: Gain insights quickly. Interactive reports mean easier navigation through your accounts and data. You can model data in charts and graphs, as well as drill up and down through criteria such as advertiser, campaign, or targeting settings. Get your reports faster. Reports update frequently - every few hours - and the new user interface enables you to access your data quickly. Use new types of reports. Pull geographic delivery data. Additional reports show delivery data by bandwidth, browser, and operating system. And Ad Planner's new capabilities now enable you to: View subdomain data. See data including traffic estimates and demographics for the largest ten subdomains of any top-level domain. Once you identify subdomains to add, you can do so easily in Ad Planner. See available ad placements while researching sites. You'll also be able to search for ad placements alongside domains on the "Search by audience" tab and see traffic and demographic estimates for each placement Visualize audience data easily. Quickly compare reach and relevancy of sites you select with a new interactive graph. Access more granular publisher data. With publishers now able to opt-in their Analytics data, you'll receive more accurate and specific information about their sites. Use Ad Planner within DoubleClick DFA. Log in to your DoubleClick DFA account to access Ad Planner and have one tool for campaign planning, trafficking, and measurement. (Note: This feature is rolling out to all users over the next couple weeks) If you haven't yet tried Ad Planner, give it a go at www.google.com/adplanner . And for more information on DART for Advertisers, visit DoubleClick.com and fill out an inquiry form . Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

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Google Ad Planner and DFA updates provide more data, more ways

You may remember that earlier this fall we announced the launch of Place Pages for Google Maps, which are web pages for every place in the world. Interested users can find relevant information, photos, directions, and reviews for their favorite places. Users will also see contextually targeted ads, and with the inclusion of Place Pages in Placement Performance reports , you'll now have insight into whether your clients' ads appeared on a Place Page and how they performed. With this update, you can more closely monitor and optimize your clients' campaigns. While placement targeting is not available for Google Maps, you can increase the likelihood of appearing on Place Pages by increasing bids on high-performing keywords or by creating ad groups with highly specific keywords to target Place Pages relevant to your clients' products or businesses. Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

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Place Pages now in Placement Performance reports

If you work with clients in the automotive industry, join us for our upcoming webinar, Driving International Success: Reaching Auto Consumers Globally. We've partnered with NetPop to share new research for 17 key markets around the world. We'll explore the trends shaping auto buyer behavior across the globe to help inform and guide your marketing decisions. Register below for one of the upcoming dates. Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 9:00 am PST Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 7:30 pm PST Posted by: Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

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Upcoming webinar: Reaching auto consumers

The snow showers which dusted the Northeast last week were a great (albeit chilly) reminder that the holidays will be here before we know it. To help keep your spirits warm, the fifth installment in our Holiday Campaign Countdown series brings you a gift that keeps on giving - daily holiday posts on the Google Retail blog , which will run through the end of 2009. These posts will provide you with useful data to better understand consumer intentions and purchase trends so that you may refine your clients' marketing plans accordingly. For a little taste of what's to come, check out the posts on holiday purchase trends to date and early bird vs. last minute shoppers data . Interested in having these posts delivered right to your inbox? Subscribe to the Retail blog here . Posted by Katie Wasilenko, Agency Marketing

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Retail blog: the gift that keeps on giving

As we've previously said , one of our aims is to improve display advertising on the web and, as a result, grow the display advertising pie for everyone. Three simple principles guide our approach: simplify the system for buying and selling display ads; deliver better performance that advertisers and agencies can measure; open up the ecosystem by making it accessible to more participants. One question on the mind of every advertiser and agency is: how can I better measure the impact of my display ad campaign? We hear you. A growing number of advertisers and agencies are running display ad campaigns across the Google Content Network, so we're investing substantially in creating better measurement tools for our clients. At the moment, an advertiser can measure how many clicks its display ads achieve, measure conversions that result from those clicks, compare results with industry benchmark data , and use View-through conversion reporting to measure visits to its website from users who saw its display ad in the past. Today, we're pleased to announce the launch of a brand new tool to measure the impact of your display ads - Google Campaign Insights. As of today, Google Campaign Insights is available for larger display ad campaigns across the Google Content Network in the US and UK. Over time, we hope to roll it out more widely to assist even more advertisers and agencies in different parts of the world. Google Campaign Insights is a unique measurement tool that can give reliable data about how a campaign has raised brand awareness, or active user interest, in a particular product or service. It looks beyond the traditional measures of clicks and conversions to calculate the incremental lift in both online search activity and website visits that result from a display ad campaign. How does this all work? In short, we use the same expertise we use to improve our own services -- our ability to analyze large quantities of data. Google Campaign Insights compares two anonymized and aggregated data sets: a large group of users (many thousands, minimum) who saw a particular ad, with an equivalent, large group that did not see the ad. It then measures whether there is any significant difference in searches and visits to the advertiser's website between the two groups. Doing this, Google Campaign Insights can determine the incremental change that is directly attributable to the display ad campaign. With this insight, advertisers can establish how well their display ad campaign is working. ( Click for full size image ) ( Click for full size image ) Google Campaign Insights provides highly reliable results to marketers because of the statistical methodology our computer algorithms use to combine and analyze large volumes of data from several sources -- the advertiser's own campaign information, ad serving logs and sampled data from Google Toolbar installs that have opted in to enhanced features. All of the results reported to advertisers are anonymized and aggregated over thousands of users. Advertisers or agencies who run wide-scale display ad campaigns on the Google Content Network and who want to take Google Campaign Insights for a spin should check with their Google representative. We're excited about the contribution that Google Campaign Insights can make to our clients' campaigns on the Google Content Network and to display advertising generally. Posted by Paul Todd, Product Management Director [Note: This post has been reprinted from the Inside AdWords Blog ]

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Google Campaign Insights: Better measurement for display advertising

With smartphone shipments set to outpace PCs shipments in 2009 1 , a staggering number of people are accessing the Internet on mobile web browsers. With audiences increasingly going mobile, reaching consumers on their mobile phones is a growing and important media channel for many marketers. This unique platform offers many opportunities for your clients to engage with their audience because mobile devices are nearly always within their reach. AdWords helps you go mobile with ease by extending your clients' search and display campaigns to mobile platforms. Whether you're new to mobile or have been using it since day one, we want to share with you a new resource that will help you incorporate mobile into your marketing campaigns: Go Mobile ! Designed to help you and your clients reach audiences, the Go Mobile ! site has tips that help you think about how to incorporate mobile into your clients' marketing campaigns - from ensuring that their site is mobile-friendly to how you can leverage location-based technologies to interact with your audience. We hope you'll find it useful in helping to connect your clients to their ever-growing base of mobile consumers. [1] Source: Gartner and IDC Posted by the Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

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Helping your clients "Go Mobile"