Mountain View, California — Relentlessly striving to embellish its declining ad business with new strategy, Google Inc., operator of the world’s most popular search engine, on Wednesday made colossal changes to its AdWords program, the core product that fuels its search business, that could help advertisers customize their placements on mobile by such factors as type of device, time of day and geographic proximity, ultimately transforming mobile clicks into a bigger cash cow.
The latest move comes as people increasingly turn to mobile devices for their Web consumption, also income from mobile advertising is predicted to rise after the search engine leader made broad changes to the way advertisers buy sponsored links in search results.
The upgrade, dubbed as Enhanced Campaigns, actually a huge change in the way search advertisers set up their campaigns. Instead of needing to create distinct campaigns to target users according to the device they use, will let business owners build a campaign while taking those factors into consideration.
This means Google’s AdWords Enhanced Campaign aims to make it easier for advertisers to manage bids for ads across a variety of device platforms, locations, and times, the Web giant announced in a company blog post today.
AdWords allows advertisers to bid on a given keyword and win premium placement with search results, which is crucial as users drop their PCs in favor of tablets and mobile phones. However, Google promises that you will be able to manage it all in a single place.
Google’s goal in retooling AdWords — a principal money maker for the company — is aiming to boost its mobile revenue at a time when the Web giant has seen its cost per click dwindled for five consecutive quarters after two years of gains. Like Facebook before it, Google too is grappling with how to get users to keep clicking on ads as most people increasingly rely on smartphones and tablets for their computing and communication needs.
Elaborating on the upgrade, the company executive said, “This is a first step to help you more simply and smartly manage your ad campaigns in today’s multi-device world,” Sridhar Ramaswamy, senior vice president of engineering, wrote in the blog post.
He further said, “People are constantly connected and moving from one device to another to communicate, shop and stay entertained.” “Enhanced campaigns help you reach people with the right ads, based on their context like location, time of day and device type.”
Google gave the following example of how it envisions the new campaigns working: A breakfast cafe wants to reach people nearby searching for “coffee” or “breakfast” on a smartphone. Now, employing bid adjustments, with three simple entries, they can bid 25% higher for people searching a half-mile away, 20% lower for searches after 11am, and 50% higher for searches on smartphones. These bid adjustments can apply to all ads and all keywords in one single campaign.
The overhaul will also let companies track the performance of their advertising campaigns, with tools that measure what happens after users see ads. Besides, the enhanced campaigns will also feature ads that are optimized for devices, complete with appropriate ad copy, links, and app or extension, Google said.
Nevertheless, the move may certainly appease some Google investors’ lingering concerns about a squeeze on ad revenues as consumers shift their attention from PCs to smartphones, which has put pressure on ad pricing across the industry in the past year.
The new tools are expected to roll out to advertisers during the next few weeks.