San Francisco — In an attempt to simplify the way advertisers buy and display their ads through its popular cash-cow, the AdWords, search engine giant Google over the weekend announced a new display tab to its AdWords interface, the new tab is dubbed as the “Display Network.”
Describing the sophistication the company stated, “For nine years, AdWords customers have been buying display campaigns through an interface designed for search,” says Google’s AdWords team in a blog post. This is like trying to run in glass slippers — it might work, but it would be a lot more effective with the right running shoes. So we are giving display its own tab within AdWords.
The refurbished Google AdWords interface, which will be rolled out gradually over the next few weeks, which would contain a new Display Network Tab that enables advertisers to bid, target and optimize display campaigns in one screen.
Going forward the company mentioned–“AdWords was originally developed for search advertising, and display capabilities were built on top of that platform. Display evolved with a whole range of formats available, including rich media, video and mobile, and also a number of ways of choosing where your ads will show. But the interface had not changed,” says Brad Bender, director of product management for display at Google.
However, “For the moment, we have been talking about making display buying much easier. We have overhauled AdWords to make that possible,” Bender added.
Its goal is to help marketers determine how combining multiple targeting types — such as keywords, placements, topics, interests or remarketing — impacts the reach of the campaign. This new tab is intended to make it easier and more granular for management of your display network campaigns within the AdWords interface.
Here is a picture of the latest display tab:
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Click to enlarge… Source: (Google)
Click the image to see the different Display Network Tab targeting options.
Apart from improving the tab, Google also unfurled a new contextual engine that matches ads to pages based on keywords, as well, which the company calls the ‘biggest enhancement ever’.
“Part of the advantage is tracking people who are deeply involved with content that is relevant, and figuring out what pages to run on,” Bender says. “The contextual engine enables you to do that.” The Google network contains more than 1 billion users categorized with more than 1,000 interests, he added. Advertisers can overlay that targeting within the Display Network Tab.
Google says the update give the engine the ability to combine the reach of display with the “precision” of search adopting the so-called “Next-Gen Keyword Contextual Targeting” that allows marketers visualize the performance of display campaigns at the individual keyword level, instead of having to use themed ad groups, as previously.
According to Google, the feature will more effectively and efficiently extend search campaigns to display, as well as increase the return on investment by targeting higher-performing keywords.
Meanwhile the company noted, “It is empowering advertisers who previously had to organize campaigns for search and display differently to take all the keywords they have learned perform well on the search side–and have spent hours optimizing–to lift up that set of keywords and use that to start your display campaign as well,” Bender says.
For instance, marketers are a bit skeptical, but can obviously comprehend how the changes will impact strategies. According to Kenshoo CMO Aaron Goldman, noted that marketers can already do that through the Google Display Network. In fact, you choose keywords you want to target, submit a cost-per-click bid, load up your image or text ads, and Google will deliver across its network of publishers, he said.
However, there is a lot of detail on these major changes to the AdWords interface at this help document and the company also released the following video from Director of Product Management for Display, Brad Bender, talking about both the tab and the updated engine:
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