A presentation from Ann Stanley at SMX London on Google AdWords. This includes tips on how to set-up Product Listing ads for ecommerce websites and a review of the new Enhanced ads features.

1. @annstanley
Amazing Paid Search Tactics & Tools -
Product Listing ads & Enhanced ads
By Ann Stanley

2. @annstanley
1) Product Listing Ads & Shopping results

3. @annstanley
Summary of different shopping results in Google
Keywords =
Samsonite luggage
Organic shopping
results
(Merchant Centre)
AdWords Products
ad extension
Product Listing ads
Map and
Local listings

4. @annstanley
1. Live Merchant Centre Account with active product feed or upload from
your product/website database – manual CSV good for small number
of products
2. Add your AdWords ID into Merchant Centre
3. Within AdWords link each campaign to Merchant Centre using Product
extensions section of Ad Extensions tab
4. Create a campaign just for PLA
5. Create ad groups for each product category or brand
6. Create the ad by selecting the ad type “product listing ad” (but you do
not need to add any keyphrases)
7. For each ad group create a target or filter in the Autotarget tab, this
must relate to the content of your original database or CSV file
uploaded to Merchant Centre (press “Verify” to check)
8. Product Listing Ads are now available for mobile
Setting up Product Listing ads

5. @annstanley
Product listing ads - Autotargets

6. @annstanley
See search terms that triggered PLA
Add negatives to improve targeting

7. @annstanley
Comparing search and PLA campaigns
• The PLA ads had a lower impression share, when the sector was more
competitive, (this was associated with higher CPC often when there are lots of
Amazon and eBay ads)
• Surprisingly - PLA do not always have a higher click through rate
• The PLA conversion rate was higher in 3 out of 5 accounts
• The PLA cost per conversion was lower in 3 out of 5 accounts, but in one case this
was because the CPC was so much lower. However 4 out of 5 were acceptable ie.
below the target CPA
• The ROI was better in 3 out of 5 accounts and 4 of these accounts were above the
target of 4:1
• Only way to find out if PLA will work for you is to test and run both!

8. @annstanley
Tips with PLA
• Use one campaign and many ad groups – each ad group targeted to one
product or brand
• Use “All products” targeting in one ad group to catch the rest but bid lower
• PLA are useful for doing research prior to setting up search campaigns
• Use See search terms to check what you are found for – add negative
keywords or check the quality of the data in your feed
• If you have a limited number of products you can manually create a CSV
with the correct data
• Use additional AdWords fields in your feed to exclude or target specific
products
• You may have to bid much higher in competitive sectors to get shown ie.
when eBay/Amazon or other high street brands are bidding
• Check your search ads CTR as they may be relegated to below the organic
results for position 4!
• You can use tracking URLS to distinguish from text ads

9. @annstanley
2) New Enhanced Ads

10. @annstanley
What are new enhanced ads?
• Designed by Google to help better manage campaigns and budgets for a multi-
device world. Note: Universal Analytics will be able to track across these devices
• Allow you to manage bids across devices, locations, and time of day - all from a
single campaign
• Count Phone calls and App downloads as conversions in AdWords
• Google will automatically be upgrading all AdWords campaigns to enhanced
campaigns starting on July 22, 2013.
• There is now an upgrade centre to make upgrading to enhanced campaigns
easier http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/upgrade-to-enhanced-campaigns-
more.html

11. @annstanley
Legacy Enhanced
Devices Separate campaigns for each
device - with separate budgets,
bids, ads, URLs and keyphrases
Combined campaign – use bid modifiers to turn
mobile bids up or down (-100 % to +300%)
You can’t have a separate mobile campaign and
there is no control over desktops and Tablets
(combined campaign only).
Difficult to manage bids at keyphrase level for
each device, as mobile modifier is at ad group
level - so Bid inflation expected!
You can use campaign optimiser as bids will be
automatically adjusted for mobile, but it’s either
on or off!
Geo-targeting Separate campaigns for each
target area
You can still can have separate campaigns for each
location, but It is easy to use bid modifier for each
location, eg for towns within a national campaign
Scheduling Turn campaign on and off (15
mins) with bid modifiers
Combines results with time and bid adjustment
Keyword
Destination URL
and tracking
Destination URL could be
targeted at keyword level
Destination URL can now only be targeted at ad
group level – is this a problem for 3rd party
software that used URL tracking at keyword level?
What has changed?

12. @annstanley
Legacy Enhanced
Sitelinks Simple to set-up at campaign level
Data lost when links changed
Additional control – e.g. ad groups and
mobiles
Additional and saved reports (data
retained)
Offer ad extension Not available Create offer extension for use in store
Call extension Free call extension (Click to call -
Mobile only)
Google Call forwarding $1 in
desktops/tablets
Click to call data was shown in segment
Google forwarding numbers are now
free on all devices
You control when a call is a classed as a
conversion
Better reporting - Call conversion is now
an extra column
Social extensions Social extension were set-up manually,
for each campaign.
Campaigns will include social extensions
automatically
App extension Basic targeting – contextual, managed
placements, by operating system.
Advanced targeting of users; based on
people’s context like location, time of day
and specific device.
What has changed - extensions

13. @annstanley
Bidding by device and results

14. @annstanley
Bids by location (on settings tab)

15. @annstanley
Scheduling – new format

16. @annstanley
Sitelinks
• Flexibility: can be added at ad group level
• More detailed reporting: Find out the number of clicks that occurred on any
part of your ad, every time an individual Sitelink appeared. Break down the
statistics by campaign, ad group or ad.
• Data retention: Edit your Sitelink extension without resetting its performance
statistics.
• Customised Sitelinks for mobile
• Scheduling with start and end dates
• Matt Van Wagner reported improved results with ad group Sitelinks

17. @annstanley
Customise Sitelinks for mobile devices
and Google Call Forwarding
Customise mobile specific Sitelinks at
the ad group level, in addition to
campaign level!
Display phone numbers using call extensions.
Now available on desktop and tablets with
call forwarding free of charge (previously $1)

18. @annstanley
New Offer extension

19. @annstanley
The controversy - Mobile campaigns
• Simpler to set-up but:
– Can’t have separate campaigns for each device -
what about mobile only campaigns for mobile sites?
– Bid modifier only for mobiles (-100 to +300%)
– Lack of control e.g. tablet specific campaigns, bid
modification at ad group not keyword level
– Expected to lead to bid inflation, as everyone is
forced to use mobile
– You can have preferred ad for mobile, but you have
to manually select ad in each ad group

20. @annstanley
• Some features really liked – eg. Sitelinks (ad group level and
retention of data), bid modification for geo-targeting
• Everyone is unhappy with the loss of control over devices
• Optimisation is confusing at the keyphrase level when each
device performs differently
• You can choose to use conversion optimiser bidding strategy, as
this adjust the bid by device and overcomes some of these issues
• Recommend -25% on your mobile modifier for now, this may
change when everyone is forced to switch
• Many advise sticking it out until Google has made all the changes
• Will Google relent and give us on bid modifiers for Tablets and
desktops? They did U-turn on ad rotation!
What the bloggers say!

21. @annstanley
Thank You
Ann Stanley
@annstanley
ann@anicca.co.uk
www.anicca.co.uk