Article - Google Adds New Features to Adwords By Seth Rand, Rand Marketing Group

Google Adds New Features to Adwords

Seth Rand , Rand Marketing Group - Internet Marketing 1 Comments | Add Yours

About The Author:

Seth Rand is the President and CEO of Rand Marketing Group, which includes Rand Internet Marketing. In addition to his executive roles, Seth personally manages all of Rand Internet Marketing's search engine marketing services, including search engine optimization, pay-per-click campaign management, and local map marketing. Over his career, Seth has managed the development of over 400 website's, along with over $3 million in pay per click marketing, and has achieved over 80,000 Top 10 organic search engine rankings for his clients. Seth is a licensed Google Advertising Professional and a Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassador, as well as a member of SEMPO and the eMarketing Association. For more info, please visit http://www.RandSEO.com or http://www.SethRand.com.

Over the past year, Google has been focused on investing in new ways to generate revenue through their popular Adwords platform. This has included expanding their display advertising, where there has been a measurable increase in the number of companies running display ad campaigns through Google Adwords. To provide more places for companies to run display ads, they've added more publisher sites through Google AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange to their ad network, which now totals over one million sites, in addition to YouTube and Google's own sites. To make their display media offerings, they’ve created a new umbrella name for all these properties called the Google Display Network.

The Google Display Network will comprise all of the sites (apart from search sites), where you can buy ads through Google, including YouTube, Google properties such as Google Finance, Gmail, Google Maps, Blogger as well as over one million Web, video, gaming, and mobile display partners, including partner sites that allow text and/or display ads. The Google Display Network offers all ad formats - text, image, rich media, and video ads - enabling you to unleash your creativity and engage potential customers across the Web.

For all of you who have ever built or managed your own pay per click marketing campaign, there has already been one major thing missing... Phone Call Tracking! We know how many clicks, impressions, and online conversions we receive, but what if most of the leads generated from the campaign come in as inbound calls? We may have finally received the answer to our prayers. Google has launched the Beta version of a system providing their Adwords advertisers with a unique toll free number, and then tracking how many inbound calls are generated from that campaign using that number.

The keywords below are examples of phrases that when searched in Google.com, a toll free phone number is being listed next to the headline of the Google Adwords ad text after searching. This toll free number does not reduce the amount of characters used in the traditional ad text variation, so for those who were using their own phone number in their ad text, they can now utilize that ad space for a different call to action. When searching in Southeast Florida, example keyword phrases include "extended auto warranty" and "Florida home improvement".

The phone number displayed is not related to one of Google’s click-to-call features and is not related to a browser extension. Google confirmed that this is indeed something they are testing. A Google spokesperson said: "We’re currently testing a feature with a small number of advertisers in which a phone number can be included within the ad to help them more effectively engage with customers who prefer to connect over the phone."

Additionally, these unique phone numbers provided by Google can be used on the advertiser's landing page, using a Javascript code, and will only appear if the visitor to that page comes from clicking on a Google Adwords Sponsored Link. This phone number will allow Adwords advertisers to track how many phone calls they are receiving from each of their Google Adwords campaigns, to better determine the effectiveness of their pay per click marketing campaign, including their cost per lead, and of course their return on investment.

Best of all, at least for now while Beta testing, IT IS COMPLETELY FREE! In addition to no per call or per minute fees, Google is not charging any fees for supplying the toll free number, regardless of how many calls you receive or how many minutes are used.

With a steady growth in the volume of companies choosing to do advertising on the internet, I believe that the investment that Google has made and continues to make in adding new features to Adwords will give Google an advantage over its competition, and will allow their advertisers to have more profitable marketing campaigns.