Google AdWords Blog
adwords.blogspot.com · Company blog · on HN since 2008
Google's official AdWords blog announces ad product changes, such as new ad formats, Quality Score updates, and mobile search data.
What HN saysHN links it for claims about ad position and conversion rates, which a commenter managing $5M in spend says he never saw hold.
39HN people shared it
16linked it in comments
24stories submitted
233story points
10 years agolast shared
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Most-shared posts
- 1More Google searches take place on mobile than on computers in 10 countries3 people · 1 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 2AdWords: Conversion doesn't vary by position2 people · 16 points · first shared 2009 · 5 comments on HN
- 3Quality Score improvements to go live in coming days2 people · 3 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
- 4Third Party Tools To Help Manage Your Google+ Page2 people · 2 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 5Attract new customers with local ads on the Google Maps app2 people · 1 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 6Introducing adwords comparison ads2 people · first shared 2010
- 7Launching search ads on play2 people · first shared 2015
- 8Google introduces 'Customer Match' – target web ads to email addresses1 people · 153 points · first shared 2015 · 84 comments on HN
- 9Google now giving priority to fast ads1 people · 19 points · first shared 2008 · 7 comments on HN
- 10Introducing Google Compare for U.S. car insurance1 people · 8 points · first shared 2015 · 2 comments on HN
- 117 deadly sins of landing page design1 people · 4 points · first shared 2011 · 1 comments on HN
- 12Google Ad Planner: Planner/Manager for Large Ad Buys1 people · 3 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
- 13Google Remarketing lets you stalk customers across the web1 people · 3 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 14Google Ads Take a Step Towards “HTTPS Everywhere”1 people · 3 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 15Google AdWords Lightbox ads now available across all screens1 people · 2 points · first shared 2014 · 1 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
manigandham · 2015-09-02
Best to read this twitter thread: https://twitter.com/mdudas/status/638792939842469893
This only applies to page covering ads for app installs. Not other interstitials. In fact Google recently did a study showing how 69% of people leave the page when faced with an interstitial [1], yet they also recently released an updated format for their own Google overlay ad [2] (although this is for apps). They don't want to lose web/search traffic to apps, but they make plenty of money running these formats themselves. A good summary of the various conflicts of interest is here [3].
1. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/07/google-case-study-o…
2. http://adwords.blogspot.com/2015/08/beautiful-new-designs-for-full-scr…
3. http://searchengineland.com/google-goes-app-interstitial-protecting-co…
ezl · 2013-11-19
Google's 2009 internal research indicates this isn't true:
http://adwords.blogspot.com.au/2009/08/conversion-rates-dont-vary-much…
"...on average, there is very little variation in conversion rates by position for the same ad. For example, for pages where 11 ads are shown the conversion rate varies by less than 5% across positions. In other words, an ad that had a 1.0% conversion rate in the best position, would have about a 0.95% conversion rate in the worst position, on average."
davemel37 · 2013-11-18
In over $5,000,000 of paid search spend managed, I have never seen this to be true.
The perception of this is universal to all clients, but the numbers never backed this up. Would love to see a case study that shows it's true.
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2009/08/conversion-rates-dont-vary-much-wi…
gjm11 · 2013-08-09
I don't personally care about Latitude, but it does seem recently that Google have been on a crusade to ruin Google Maps on mobile devices. The two most noteworthy instances: (1) screwing up the offline-maps feature (http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/Ck_Pd6UgZCU -- but they've slightly walked this back: see https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3246076) and (2) adding advertisements to the Android version of Maps: http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/attract-new-customers-with-local… (I don't mind this at all on the web version of Maps, where I'm usually on a display with plenty of pixels, but on a mobile device that's a whole lot of space being taken up by advertisements instead of actually useful information).
golfer · 2016-05-11
This article is from 2014. A few things have changed since then. For example, Google now does offer ads in the Play Store: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2015/07/launching-search-ads-on-play.html
thrownaway2424 · 2015-11-23
Article link is useless wrapper around http://adwords.blogspot.com/2015/11/introducing-google-compare-for-us.…
jchewitt · 2015-11-05
Steam implemented tags (and, appropriately enough, a personalized 'discover' queue) and it helps.
On Amazon's non-app store, you can also buy search ads. Apple could implement something similar and take a larger cut of the paid install market. There are search ads on Google Play (see: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2015/07/launching-search-ads-on-play.html)…
justinmaurer · 2015-10-21
Veratyr · 2015-07-25
https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/en-GB/statistics.html
Half of YouTube's watch time is on mobile and trends show it growing faster: http://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-video-watch-time-grew-60-2015-7
Ad blockers might be concerning but I don't believe they're currently widespread on mobile and with one mobile OS developer being hostile to 'advanced' apps like ad blockers and filesystem browsers and the other being an ad company, I don't think that's likely to change significantly.
It's easy to forget when your job has you on a desktop all day but mobile is now the 'default' way many (most?) people access the internet. Google receives more search queries on mobile than on desktop in many countries: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2015/05/building-for-next-moment.html
GameTheory8 · 2015-05-06
Announcement: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2015/05/building-for-next-moment.html
So was the tipping point somewhere around Feb 26, 2015 when they announced their algorithm update? http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/02/finding-more-mobile…
Quick way to check: Is your site mobile friendly?
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
confluence · 2012-10-16
Ads were the work of engineers who thought that they'd work better than corporate search that Google first started to monetize. So were Adsense, the ad auction mechanics and the Dutch auction for the IPO.
http://adwords.blogspot.com.au/2005/08/adwords-history-lesson.html?m=1
http://publishing2.com/2008/05/27/google-adwords-a-brief-history-of-on…
That's most of the revenue.
hugorodgerbrown · 2012-04-18
They have already allowed certain product vendors access to the write API - more details here - http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/third-party-tools-to-help-manage…
flueedo · 2011-12-19
They have it. But only for few selected partners.
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/11/third-party-tools-to-help-manage-y…
melvinram · 2011-02-27
Selling adverts on a quality site is under utilizing a site in many scenarios, IMHO.
If your ad space will be profitable for the advertiser, become your own advertiser. Pivot to generate more direct revenue. I'm doing that on a number of sites of mine and it's working well.
Example: Google is getting into the loan lead generation business (http://adwords.blogspot.com/2009/10/introducing-adwords-comparison-ads… and the airlines business (http://www.google.com/press/ita/) because they know that by letting advertisers get access to their audience, they are leaving a lot of money on the table.
I see their trend towards trying to get more of the pie continuing over time to expand into banking, movie tickets, car rentals and a gazillion other industries until they start coming close to the antitrust lines because it's a huge source of revenue.
qhoxie · 2008-09-15
The official blog post: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/09/quality-score-improvements-to-go-l…
gyardley · 2010-09-28
Google 'getting into the payday loan business' is likely just Google continuing to test its Comparison Ads feature:
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2009/10/introducing-adwords-comparison-ads…
Not surprising that they're there - the industry throws off a boatload of money, but only a portion currently goes to Google, since there's an established lead gen industry acting as intermediaries between Google and the actual payday loan providers.
Same situation as with mortgage leads - and in fact Google's used the same 'bringing transparency to a shady and inefficient industry' rhetoric when they've talked about mortgage lead generation.
Like with mortgage leads, this initiative is probably doomed, since the big advertisers in the space have absolutely no desire to efficiently compete for consumers via directly-comparable financial terms. When an industry's confusing and opaque, it's usually for a reason.