Google Display Network: How to Improve Campaign Performance !

According to Google, Google’s Display Network (GDN) has more than 2 million publisher websites and has reached 90% of Internet users. With that said, it’s no surprise that GDN can be great for brand awareness, but what about driving conversions? How you can increase the conversion on GDN. After doing a lot of research on this and talking with several google folks and experts, I’ve concluded these six tips that will definitely help you to improve conversion and performance of your GDN (Google Display Network) campaign performance. 

1. Exclude Mobile and Tablet In-App Traffic

It is most likely happen that people unilkely click on an add running withthin an APP call In App ads and it increases clicks on our ads and we end with low conversion with high CTR, to resovle this I would suggest to Exclude Mobile and Tablet In-App advertising completely, by using the three steps given below:

First, add a – 100% bid adjustment to ‘Mobile devices with full browsers.’

Second, in your Site category options, exclude ‘GMob mobile app non-interstitial.’

Third, add a Campaign placement exclusion for ‘adsenseformobileapps.com.’

2. Layer on Targeting Options

Using a google contextual targeting is like taking risk as  no one knows how Google actually determines what websites might be relevant, so it’s also great to make your targeting more specific with additional targeting options.

Layer on demographic targeting such as age, gender and/or parental status.

If there is an ‘In-Marketing Audience’ category that works well for the industry you’re in, layer that on as well. With the ‘In-Market Audience’ targeting, Google looks at a user’s recent browsing history to determine what they are in the market for.

3. Include Text Ads Also

While users may think that Google Display Network is all about targeting users with compelling imagery and branding, I’ve actually seen great performance with text ads, too (sometimes even better!)

4. Adjust Ad Delivery Settings

Instead of evenly rotating your ads or continuously slowing the ads that receive the most clicks, use the option: ‘Optimize for conversions’ once you have sufficient conversion data.

Also, set ad impression frequency caps. No one wants to see the same ad over and over again while they browse online. Set a frequency cap on your ad impressions so a user doesn’t see your ad continuously throughout the day. Having a cap on impressions should help improve your click through rate (CTR) and help the overall quality of your campaign (I would suggest setting a frequency cap of 3-5 impressions per day).

5. Exclude Unwanted Site-Categories and Placements

Do you want your ads being displayed on error pages on bizarre websites? I didn’t think so. Making sure to exclude all site category options where you wouldn’t want your ads appearing.

While there is no way to determine what websites your ads will be displayed on (unless you are only using Placement targeting), you should be excluding website placements as your campaign runs. Are your ads appearing on irrelevant websites? Are there website placements where your ads are receiving a ton of traffic but no conversions? Exclude these website placements from your campaign.

6. Shorten Membership Duration of Remarketing Lists

Did you extend the membership duration of your remarketing list thinking it would be a good idea to remarket to this audience for a longer period of time? I’ve tried that too and it turns out, it’s not the best strategy. It’s great to remarket to users right away, but after a few weeks if a user hasn’t pulled the trigger and converted, it’s most likely that they never will.

Image and content reference: http://www.acquisio.com/blog/

Try the above recommendation and I hope you will see the improvement in your GDN campaign as well as in conversion and do share your feedback.

Happy Advertising!!!!

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Quality Score basics in Google Adwords and how it affects your Ad Position

QUALITY SCORE PLAYS A VERY IMPORTANT ROLE IN DECIDING THE POSITION OF YOUR AD ON GOOGLE ADWORDS PLATFORM. BETTER QUALITY SCORES MEANS HIGHER POSITION ON THE GOOGLE SEARCH RESULT PAGE (SERPs)/or lower cpc (cost per click). in both the cases it is very BENEFICIAL for the advertiser. 

WHAT IS QUALITY SCORE?

In Google Adwords Quality Score is a rating of 1 to 10 provided by GOOGLE on the basis of how relevant your Ads Google feels for a particular search term. 

They user Click Through Rate (CTR), Ad Relevance, and Landing Page (LP) relevance to determine the Quality Score of your Ad. In simple term, I'll say you would get better Quality score for your Ad if it is Relevant and the Landing Page of your Ad is also relevant.

Quality Score is Extremely important to decide the position of your Ad on Google Adwords Platform. This determines how often you're shown and what would be the CPC (Cost per click) for your Ad.

HOW QUALITY SCORE AFFECTS AD RANK

In Google Adwords, if you think that only the highest bidder wins the better position, you need to re-think and change your opinion. Here, the winning position is decided by the Quality Score of your Ad. So, if your Ad has a low Quality Score, you would not win the better position no matter how much you pay and how frequently your Ads are being shown on Google. 

The below info-graphics will help you to know how the Quality Score is important to get a better Ad Position.

                                      

HOW QUALITY SCORE AFFECTS COST-PER-CLICK

If an Ad has low Quality Score then Advertiser will have to pay several times for per click as compare to another advertiser with an Ad with a very good Quality Score. Thus, Quality Score is a great factor to decide your ROI (Return On Investment) and decides how beneficial your Ad is.

The following infographichs will illustrate how Quality Score affects the CPC (Cost Per Click) for an Ad.

So what you say.....................? who rules Quality Score or Bidding/CPC (Cost Per Click)? 

Do share your opinion or any tricks or suggestion to improve the Quality Score of Ad. 

Thanks!

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Learning Google Adwords and how to be an expert in the Google Adwords

Besides getting great results from your own advertising campaigns, you can also participate in the Google certification program and receive a globally recognized stamp of approval certifying essential AdWords knowledge, and earn from consultancy fees and campaign management services.

Before setting up your first account, it’s important to prepare yourself with a few days of reading, after that it’s all a matter of practice and staying informed.

The three things you need to become an AdWords expert are:

1. Knowledge
2. Practice
3. A Google Qualification

Knowledge

AdWords functionality

In addition to our own articles, you can learn everything you need to know about AdWords from the AdWords Beginner’s Guide and after this you should progress on to the AdWords Learning Center.

There is additional information available from the Google Business Channel on Youtube, which has some indepth videos on AdWords and related Google products.

How to Stay Informed

After you’ve made the first steps in your AdWords learning process, you need to make sure to keep track of the changes that occur to AdWords (Google regularly updates the features).

The following blogs are a great start to keep track of AdWords updates and gets hints/tips on your campaigns:

• Inside Adwords – the Official Google AdWords blog.
• Google Conversion Room Blog – Tips on tracking and improving conversions online.
• Search Engine Land – A news and information site covering search engine marketing, searching issues and the search engine industry.

As well as the above blog you can also subscribe to our own RedFly Internet Marketing Blog.

Practice

Once you’ve learned the basics of setting up and running an AdWords account the next step is to manage several campaigns yourself for at least a few months, then you will move on to expanding your account and using tracking to optimise your account.

As they say, practice makes perfect and if you keep track of your accounts you will learn all you need to know about AdWords, but if you want to do more than just that you can start by increasing your knowledge, keeping up to date on new features, and taking the Adwords exams.

Getting Recognized by Google

Individual qualification is a way of demonstrating your knowledge of AdWords, you can only achieve this by studying for and passing the Google certification exams. To become a Qualified Individual,you must pass a basic Adwords exam called the Fundamentals exam and also one of three advanced exams. You can choose from three advanced topics – Search Advertising, Reporting and Analysis, and Display Advertising.

If you’re interested in obtaining this kind of acknowledgement, you must sign up for the Google AdWords Certification Program.

The good news is there is no minimum spend requirement to be Individually Qualified. So if you study hard you can get your qualification and start marketing yourself as an Adwords professional.

Or, you could hire a qualified professional to run your AdWords account for you.

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Ads approved (limited)

Approved (limited)

A status given to ads that comply with our policies but that are limited in where and when they can show.

• An ad can be marked "Approved (limited)" based on the specifications of our advertising policies, such as allowing certain types of ad to show only in certain countries or only on certain devices.

  Tip

  To find out why your ad is marked "Approved (limited)," enable the Policy details column on your Campaigns tab. You'll see which policy is causing your "Approved (limited)" status. 
• Mobile rendering issues
  If your site doesn't display properly on mobile web browsers (for example, because it uses excessive amounts of Flash), your ad will be marked "Approved (limited)" and won't show your ad to users on a mobile device. However, your ad can still appear as usual to non-mobile users. To fix these issues, remove any Flash, large images, or other rendering issues from your website or create a mobile-specific website. Make sure to configure your website correctlyso that it's visible when AdWords attempts to visit the mobile version of your site.


• Trademarks
  Your ad and its landing page comply with our policy on resellers and informational sites. Therefore, your ad is eligible to use the trademark for which we have a complaint on file, and your ad can appear within the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and/or Ireland. However, in all other regions where the trademark complaint applies, your ad will not run. If you want your ad to appear in other regions, you can remove the trademark term from your ad text, or contact the trademark owner to request authorization.


• Alcohol
  Gambling
  Prescription drugs and related content
  When these types of ads meet our policy requirements, they can be shown only in countries that allow ads for that specific product or service. For example, a certain alcohol-related ad might be able to appear to people in the U.S. but not to people in China. Where your ad can appear will vary, so read the policy to see what restrictions there are for the countries that your ad campaign targets.


• Consumer advisories
  If a consumer advisory is issued about a certain product in one country, Google may change how ads about that product are shown. For example, a consumer advisory has been issued about payday loans, so AdWords will only show payday loan ads if the phrase "payday loan" (or similar terms) are included in the user's search query. On the Google Display Network, these ads will be shown only on sites related to payday loans.


• Human form and contact
  Image ads showing exposed skin or tight clothing will be marked "Approved (limited)." Affected ads include ones that show real people or cartoons/animations with exposed skin or tight clothing that give an indication of breasts, buttocks, or genitalia, and ads in which adult human forms are in bodily contact. These ads won't show on certain Display Network sites if publishers opt out of showing such ads.

Answers from other AdWords users

• approved limited
  Posted by yalda
• Ads Approved Limited status
  Posted by Cyber I
• Approved (Limited)
  Posted by Amjad

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AdWords Policy Center

Welcome to the AdWords Policy Center. Here you'll find the requirements for advertising with Google AdWords. Our advertising requirements can be summed up by Google's Advertising Principles shown below. To promote a safe and positive experience for our users, each ad is reviewed based on these advertising principles.

	User Experience Advertising should provide a positive experience to users.
	Safety and Security Advertising should be safe for all users.
	Accurate Ads Advertising should be accurate and truthful.
	Transparency and Privacy Advertising shouldn't violate users' trust or privacy.
	Restricted Products and Services Advertised products and services should be legal and safe for all users.
	Trademark, Copyright, and Counterfeit Advertising should comply with laws and regulations.
	Google's Brand Advertising should be compatible with Google's brand decisions.

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Google Adwords Ads Status

Ad status

A description of whether an ad is able to run, and if so, whether there are any policy restrictions on how or when it can run.

• See your ad's status listed in the Status column on your account's Ads tab. Hover over the speech bubble icon  to see more about that status and what it means for your ad.
  
• Ad statuses that you set
  • Paused or Deleted -- The ad can't run because you stopped it or its ad group or campaign. You can resume it anytime you like.
  • Pending -- The ad hasn't started to run yet because its campaign has a start date in the future.
  • Ended -- The ad stopped running because its campaign's end date passed.
  If your ad campaign or ad group has a certain status, that status will be used for your ad rather than any of the ad statuses below. For example, if your campaign is paused, your ad status will be "Campaign paused." See the list of campaign statuses.
• Approval status
  After you create or edit an ad, it goes through a review where we check if it follows our advertising policies. Your ad has one of several approval statuses during and after our review:
  • Your ad is still being reviewed (usually takes 1 business day):
    • Under review
    • Eligible
    • Not yet serving (video ads)
  • Your ad has been reviewed and can run:
    • Approved
    • Approved (non-family)
    • Approved (adult)
    • Approved (limited)
    • Serving (video ads)
  • Your ad or site doesn't follow our policies and can't run:
    • Disapproved
    • Site suspended
    • Not serving (video ads)
    • With issues (video ads)

  Tip

  If you can't see your approval status because another status is showing (like "Campaign paused"), enable thePolicy details column. Then you'll always be able to see the ad's approval status. 

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Campaign status

A status for your ad campaign that describes whether or not its ads can run at the moment.

• For each of your ad campaigns, you'll see information about its current state listed in the "Status" column in the "Campaigns" tab of your Campaigns page.
• A campaign's status affects all ad groups and ads within it. For example, when you pause a campaign, all ads within the campaign stop showing.
• Here are the campaign statuses that you might see:
• Eligible -- The campaign is running and able to show its ads.
• Paused -- The campaign and its ads aren't running because you have paused it. You can resume the campaign whenever you'd like to run its ads.
• Deleted -- The campaign and its ads aren't running because you have deleted it. You can resume the campaign whenever you'd like to run its ads.
• Ended -- The campaign has passed its end date, so its ads are no longer running. You can change the end date any time.
• Pending -- The campaign has a start date in the future, so its ads have not started running yet. You can change the start date any time before it's reached.
• Limited by budget -- The campaign is active and can show ads, but not as often as it could due to budget constraints. You can place your mouse over the bubble next to this status to see your recommended budget.

Campaign status	What it means	Next step
Eligible	Active and can show ads.	If your campaign is marked "Eligible" but you’re still not seeing your ad, find out why and fix it.
Paused	Inactive because you paused it. Pausing a campaign means that your ads don't show or accumulate new costs until resumed.	Find out how to resume your campaign.
Deleted	Inactive because you deleted it. Deleting a campaign means that ads don't show or accumulate new costs until re-enabled.	Find out how to re-enable your campaign.
Pending	Inactive but scheduled to begin at a future date.	Find out how to change your campaign’s start date.
Ended	Inactive because it's past its scheduled end date.	Find out how to change your campaign’s end date.
Suspended	Inactive because your prepaid account balance has run out. Suspended accounts don't show ads or accumulate new costs until additional funds are added under "Billing."	Find out how to add funds to your pre-paid account balance.
Limited by budget	Active, but showing ads only occasionally due to budget constraints. You can place your mouse over the bubble next to this status to see your "Recommended budget."	Learn more about budget recommendations, then adjust your campaign's budget.

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Ads Policies for approval or disapproval

Google has defined several policies for posting an Ad. It depends upon the format of the ad that you want to post for your product and for every kind of the ad a separate policy has been defined by the Google AdWords. Here, I am trying to include all the basics of the Ad policies defined by Google for each kind of Ads. 

Ad Text Editorial Policy

• Be clear and concise
• Be relevant and targeted to users' interests
• Reflect Google values and aesthetics
• Be accurate and honest
• No hidden surprises
• Cannot offer prizes for clicks
• Use correct spelling
• Punctuation cannot be repeated two or more times in a row (no !!)
• No exclamation point in the title of the ad
• No substituting words with symbols, numbers or letters
• Use correct spacing. For example, no "c-h-e-a-p" or "shop,buy,sell").
• No extra punctuation
• Use proper grammar
• Capitalization only allowed for the first letter of each word
• Cannot repeat the same word three or more times in a row
• No offensive or inappropriate language
• No call to action (for example, "click here")
• No use of Google trademarks
• Superlatives (best, #1) are only allowed if verification by a valid third party is clearly displayed on your site
• Competitive claims (better, easier, stronger) must be supported on landing page
• Prices, discounts, and free offers advertised on the ad must be supported within 1-2 clicks of landing page

Image and Animated Ads Policy

• High quality, clear video and images
• Text must be clear and legible
• No deceptive tactics (mimicking computer functions, dialogue boxes, error messages, features)
• Cannot mimic a text ad
• Must completely fill the area of the image size choosen
• Cannot be segmented, contain multiple copies of itself within the ad, or otherwise appear to be more than one ad
• No rotated, inverted, sideways, or upside down images
• Be family safe (appropriate for minors) -- no alcohol, adult, sexual themes or inappropriate language
• No strobe, flashing, or distracting effects
• Ads cannot expand beyond the frame

Display and Destination URL Policies

Google's sophisticated and robust technology detects very slight variances in any ads run in their network, so adhering to their policies to the letter is the only way to have a smooth running campaign. For the most up to date policies, sign in to your AdWords account and refer to the Google AdWords Terms and Conditions section. You can also find help at AdWords Help Center and AdWords Learning Center.

Display and Destination URL Policy

When you create an ad, you have the option to use a display URL (the one that will actually be shown on the ad) that is different from the destination URL (the page that users would actually go to when they click on your ad, also known as the "landing page"). However, there are clear rules regarding the display URL and landing page.

Display URL

• Must give users a clear idea of where they will go when they click
• Must indicate who owns the destination URL
• Must include the .dot extension (.com, .net, etc)
• www. and http:// are not required
• Cannot be an email address
• Must comply with Google's editorial policy

Example of incorrect use:

• Display URL: bigbookstore.com
• Destination URL: amazon.com/1245-43543

Landing page

• Must link to an actual website
• Must link to a working site
• Must not link to a site that's under construction
• Link cannot be broken
• Must be an HTML page -- the page must not require a program other than a browser to view (for example, it cannot link to a PDF file)
• Page cannot manipulate the functionality of the browser's back button so that the user cannot get back to the page your ad was displayed within one click
• No pop ups or pop unders when users enter or leave the landing page

Mobile Ads

Mobile ads are a shorter version of the text ad, allowing less characters and only appears when users search Google from their mobile device. You can choose to send users who clickon your ad to your website (must be designed a mobile webpage) or connect them to your business phone.

Specs

• Headline: 18 characters max
• Description: 18 characters max
• Display URL: 20 characters max
• Mobile Destination URL (your destination URL must be specifically designed for mobile phones): 200 characters max

Video Ads

Video ads will show a static image and will play only if the user clicks to activate it. If the video ad is a part of a CPC campaign, you will only be charged if the user clicks on the ad again, when the video is playing, and is taken to your landing page. An opening image must be included since your video ad does not automatically play.

Video Specs

• Sizes: 160x600, 120x600, 728x90, 200x200, 250x250, 300x250, 336x280
• Max file size: 75MB
• Formats: AVI, ASF, Quicktime, Windows Media, MP4, MPEG
• Maximum duration: 2 minutes, min 14 frames-per-second
• Audio: encoded at volume less than or equal to -12db

Opening Image Specs

• Max file size: 50k
• Formats: .jpg, .png, .gif

Image / Banner Ads (static or animated)

Image ads can run in either the keyword or placement-targeted campaigns to appear in the Google Content Network. Keep in mind that content sites can choose to not display image ads, so it's useful to have text ads as a backup for those sites.

Specs

• Sizes: 468x60, 728x90, 200x200, 250x250, 300x250, 336x280, 120x600, 160x600
• Max file size: 50k
• Formats: .gif, .jpg, .png, .swf

Text Ads

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Text ads on search results page

Text ads describe the product or service you are advertising, and usually contain action-oriented copy to drive traffic and clickthrough. The search results pages on Google and in theGoogle Search Network will disply text ads. Sites in the Google Content Network can run text, image, and video ads.

Specs

• Headline: 25 characters max
• Line 1: 35 characters max
• Line 2: 35 characters max
• Display URL: 35 characters max
• Destination URL: 1024 characters max

Google Content Network

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Although the sites in the Google Search Network only support text ads, the Google Content Network allow a variety of ad units.

The Google Content Network consists of websites that are part of the AdSense program.

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