Topic targeting used all by itself can also be very powerful, especially for branding, new product launches or to get on a wide variety of sites relevant to your topic. With topic targeting, if you were releasing a new book on computer programming, you could easily target the topic for “programming” or, if your book is about scripting languages, you could tell Google to only show your ads on sites and pages that had content about scripting languages.

Keywords Vs. Targeting

In Google’s Display Network, with keyword targeted AdGroups, Google goes out onto the ad network and uses your keywords (along with your text ad copy and landing page) to reach the audience you are trying to target.

If you use the keyword [tennis] or a set of keywords that targets tennis, Google will show your ad on sites that have content relevant to tennis. What many people don’t realize is that through topic targeting, you can also set up AdGroups that target Tennis.

How It Works

There are multiple ways to add Topic Targeting to your AdGroups or to create a new Topic Targeted AdGroup.

To create an AdGroup for Topic Targeting:

To add Topic Targeting to an existing AdGroup:

You can also use AdWords Editor to add topics. The AdWords Help section has a great walk through and lists all the available categories here. In AdWords Editor, just go to placements, add placements and then add the topics directly using this format: category::Sports>Individual Sports>Racquet Sports>Tennis

To monitor how your Topics are performing, login to AdWords where there is a tab for Display Network and then a sub-tab for Topic Targeting.

Combinations

And now let me tell you about how Topics can work as part of a team. Topics are very efficient and effective when you combine them with other AdWords strategies like keywords and placements.

Keyword Example: If I were to go after banking (category::Finance>Banking), I might have one AdGroup with a keyword or set of keywords targeting ATM locations with an ad for free ATM withdrawals. I might set up another AdGroup with the same topic for banking but use a keyword or set of keywords targeting online bill paying with ads for free online bill paying when I set up a checking or savings account.

Placement Example: About.com and Ehow.com are both content-rich sites that cover a variety of topics. If I were a company that sold children’s over-the-counter cold medicine, I could use About.com and Ehow.com as placements and combine them with a topic such as Pediatrics (category::Health>Pediatrics) to get in front of a large audience of mostly mothers with small children.

Combining your remarketing audience with topic targeting can eliminate some of the more random traffic associated with standard remarketing strategies. If you want to refine your remarketing strategy to only show your ads when your potential customer is in the right mindset, using topics is a great way to accomplish that goal.

Tips, Tricks & Challenges

Topic targeting works better if you limit your topics to one per AdGroup. If you really need to combine topics, keep the list small and try to group them together so that they are all similar (like all news related).

Too many combinations can kill your AdGroups. If you try to use topics with keywords with placements and then throw some audiences in the mix, you may find that you are not getting many impressions or clicks at all. It takes a little bit of experimentation to find the right combinations with topic targeting, so keep tweaking.

Exclusions

Topics work great as exclusions. If you had a website aimed at recipes using dates, topic exclusions could keep your ads from showing for dating and relationship websites.

Regardless of how you integrate topics into your AdGroups, you are adding power and refinement to your AdWords strategies that very few people are using.

Campaign Code Filter

Coming Up With Code Names In The AdWords UI & AdWords Editor

Codes may be your secret power against time. There are so many options now for setting up your Google Display campaigns that you really need a way to stay organized when you are managing your display campaigns and reporting for them. Code names are not just for display. Since they apply to paid search also, you will see several tips sprinkled in for PPC, too.

To get started, you will want to use codes in the names for your AdWords campaigns and for your AdGroups. The campaign codes are the most important. Coding AdGroups are helpful, but it can be fairly time consuming to go back and code/rename all your AdGroups.

Ideas For Code Names

• Network = GS (Google Search), GP (Google Search plus Partners), DP (Display), OV (Online Video)
• Device = Comp (Computer), Mob (Mobile), Tab (Tablet)
• Geographical = US (USA), CAN (Canada), UK (United Kingdom), AUS (Australia)
• Languages = ENG (English), FR (French), SP (Spanish)
• Ad Scheduling = AS (Ad Scheduling) or MF85 (Monday through Friday 8 to 5)
• Company or individual who created the campaign = CP (Cardinal Path) or SE (Shelley Ellis)
• Types of display campaigns = KW (Keyword), TP (Topic), IN (Interest), RM (Remarketing), YT (YouTube), MP (Managed Placements)
• Bidding Strategies = CPM, CPC, CO or CPA (Conversion Optimizer), DCO (Display Campaign Optimizer)
• Combinations = KW+TP (Keywords + Topics), etc.
• Ad testing = AT (easily filter campaigns using the AdWords interface for ad testing)
• Other ideas = Codes for categories of products, sales and promotions, date triggers

Tips For Coding

• Use a hash or period between your codes to make it easier to filter. Otherwise, you end up filtering parts of the actual campaign name, too.
  • Example #1: GS.MO.US.CPA.KW+TP.SE.ThisCampaignName
  • Example #2: GS-MO-US-CPA-KW+TP-SE-ThisCampaignName
  • Be consistent. There are times when you need to filter all Google Search campaigns in the US and it will be much easier to do that with one filter rather than custom filters.

Using Filters In The AdWords UI, AdWords Editor & Analytics

• In the AdWords UI, start by using your codes to filter your Campaign view.
• In the AdWords UI, use filtering with the AdGroup tab, the Keyword tab or other tabs; you can use a custom filter to see only the data for a specific set of campaigns. For example: under the keyword tab, I could filter for –RM- to see all remarketing campaigns.
  

  Keyword Filter

• In AdWords and AdWords Editor, save custom filters for the search results you need to see daily or weekly.
• In Adwords Editor, codes can make it easy to find campaign sets through the regular filter or through the advanced filter.
  

  AdWords Editor Filter

• Analytics offers a similar opportunity for you to quickly use filtering to narrow your view of data and reporting.

Using Excel Filters With Placement Performance Reports (Full URL)

Domains and URL’s often use a variety of keywords in their formatting. Filtering allows for you to create very targeted managed placement campaigns and AdGroups with keyword targeting pulled from the domain or URL name.

1. I start by pulling a placement performance report for ALL URLs (it can be across one campaign or multiple campaigns).
2. The first tab in your Excel worksheet will be for ALL keywords.
3. Using a custom or keyword filter allows me to start breaking my placement URL list down into very targeted groups of managed placements with each new tab representing a new filter. If I were an online gift store, I might do filters for words like birthday, graduation, anniversary or new baby, and then create AdGroups and new ad copy to target those placements specifically.
   

   Excel Filter

4. Use filtering for impressions, clicks and conversions to find new audiences. I never cease to be amazed as I review placement reports and discover audiences that no one in my company or my client’s company had considered before.

What types of codes do you use in your AdWords campaigns and AdGroups? Do you combine AdWords labels with codes or just use one or the other? What lessons have you learned or tips do you have for using codes?

This exercise should give you clarification about your remarketing objectives, show you where you may be overlapping audiences across campaigns and show you where you may be missing exclusions. It may open up some creative thoughts that lead to additional audiences, tags and campaigns.

Remarketing Review Objectives

Using a spreadsheet, make a list of your all your current and/or potential remarketing audiences. Here is a list of columns to get started:

• Objective
• Site pages (to tag)
• Tag or rule name
• Audience (positive list)
• Exclude (negative list)
• Cookie duration
• Maximum exposures (frequency)
• Landing page for remarketing campaign
• Ad strategy (incentives, sequence, call to action)
• Active / inactive
• Audience size (if active)
• Notes

Make sure you are listing all remarketing tags including other media buys and ad networks outside of Google. Google offers a free tag manager that allows you to manage all your of your Google and non-Google tags and rules from one location.

Remarketing Action Items

Once your spreadsheet has been created, start another spreadsheet or a document called “Remarketing Action Items.” As you do your remarketing review, you will want to outline your action items by priority. Here is an example for how that list and outline might look:

1. Remarketing Audiences (tags, lists) to be created:
   1. Conversion – Contact Form
   2. Conversion – Order
   3. Conversion – PDF download
   4. All site visitors (these audiences are based on length of sales cycle)
      • i. Days 1-3
      • ii. Days 30-60
      • i. Days 1-3 (aggressive campaign and frequency)
      • ii. Days 30-60 (light frequency, special incentives)

5. Form Abandons
6. Category and/or Topic targeting
7. Gender targeting (example: men’s or women’s clothes)
8. State campaigns as audiences become large enough to target states individually.
1. Google AdWords campaigns to be created:

1. All site visitors who have not converted.
2. Form Abandons
3. Topic targeting
4. Gender targeting (ad design, incentives, wording on landing page)
5. State campaigns as audiences become large enough to target states individually
6. Conversion upsells and promotions

2. Image Ads to be created:
   1. All site visitors. Days 1-3 days. Free shipping. Similar images/colors to match our site
   2. All site visitors. Days 30-60. Similar images/colors to match our site
   3. Form Abandon, Topic, Gender, State images ordered as needed
   4. Conversion upsells and promotions
3. Landing Pages to be created:

1. All site visitors. Days 1-3 days. Free shipping
2. All site visitors. Days 30-60
3. Form Abandon, Topic, Gender, State images ordered as needed
4. Conversion upsells and promotions

Remarketing Campaign Review

Now that you have outlined your new remarketing strategy or refined your existing strategy, I would like to challenge you to take the next step and do an additional review of your current remarketing campaigns.

Evaluate which campaigns, AdGroups and ad copy are working for you and make notes for ways to improve those. Run placement performance reports and look for the types of sites and URLs that are converting. It may be time to move away from the “cast a wide net” remarketing strategy with virtually no restrictions on where your remarketing ads show to more of a refined remarketing strategy.

For example, I just did an audit where the placement URLs showed that most of the conversions were coming from business-related sites (this is not the same as micro-targeting like we do in a traditional display campaign). In other words, weather and social sites were not converting, but any website that had anything to do with business was.

Tell me about what you have learned from your remarketing experiences. What mistakes did you make and how did you resolve them. What is your system for managing, reporting on and optimizing your remarketing campaign?

As a local business, you may recognize some of the most common recommendations for a local marketing strategy:

1. Website (for marketing landing pages, local SEO, directions, etc.)

2. Social Marketing (Facebook Page, Twitter, Instagram, etc.)

3. Video Marketing (YouTube — where you host videos for your other online pages)

4. Optimized Local Directory Listings (Yelp, Google Places/Plus, etc.)

So, let’s say that you followed the common path of recommendations and now have a website, a Facebook page, a few YouTube videos and a presence on several of the highest traffic, online directories. Now what?

What I’d like to do is show you how you can take some of your foundational marketing pieces and easily add display advertising to your current marketing strategy.

Integrating Display Advertising Into A Local Marketing Strategy

In traditional search marketing (search engine optimization or pay-per-click), when your potential customer types in the keywords for [Manhattan pizza], they get local search results for pizza restaurants.

Display is very different. Your potential customer is browsing the Internet but probably isn’t looking specifically for pizza in or around Manhattan at this moment. Oh, but they have been looking in the very recent past, so display networks are smart enough to capture that interest in pizza along with the time frame around the content they consumed, as well as the searcher’s geographic location.

Now, getting your coupon, ad, promotion or banner in front of a potential customer may be as simple as getting in front of them while they are checking the weather, reading a news article or watching YouTube videos.

Using YouTube for local advertising

Here are some strategies where combining your existing online marketing with display advertising could reach potential local customers:

1. When Customers Are Reading Relevant Content Online

Concept: your potential customer may be reading restaurant reviews on Yelp or Zagat, or they could be reading a blog post that is raving about a new item on your competitor’s menu.

How to Implement: through media buys or using keywords for targeting in Google’s Display Network or Bing’s Content Network. With keyword targeting, you will want to use a good number of conversational words (not the same words people use for SEO or finding you in a search engine) that are relevant to your business. For example: [new hairstyle] would be a good keyword for a local hair salon or [how to change a tire] would be a good keyword for a tire shop.

Cost: usually inexpensive when done in-house, but it can also be risky if you don’t know what you are doing or how to track where your ads are being shown. Google has some great, free resources on how to set up your Google display campaigns.

Tips: you can start with a very small budget when you are geo-targeting one or two ZIP codes or targeting a small local radius around your business. If you are trying to build your social presence, consider an ad campaign that directs searchers to follow you on Facebook or Twitter for Facebook or Twitter “only” discounts and specials.

Using a review site with local marketing

2. Targeting Specific Sites & Landing Pages

Concept: you choose the specific sites and/or landing pages on a site (example: travel.cnn.com) where you want your ads to show. For B2B (such as a cost-per-acquisition) targeting, a good managed placement would be Manta.com, but for a restaurant a good managed placement might be Zagat.com. Many online directories and review sites are available in the Google Display Network and in other ad networks for ad placement.

How to Implement: a campaign for targeting specific URLs (managed placements) can be easily set up in the Google Display Network. If you are working with another ad network, ask them about this type of targeting. They may call it something different (like white list targeting) but many ad networks do offer this type of targeting. You will need at least one, but preferably two or three, sets of banner ads in the most common sizes for this strategy.

Cost: the cost will be a little more than keyword targeting, but banner ads normally outperform text ads (which are commonly used in keyword targeted campaigns).

Tip: this is a great strategy for targeting YouTube channels that match your audience (example: auto stores might target do-it-yourself mechanic’s YouTube channels). Another tip is to possibly use your profile page for the managed placement you are targeting as your landing page (such as your Manta profile if you are using managed placements on Manta, or to your YouTube channel if you are placing ads in YouTube videos or channel pages).

Managed placements and local advertising

3. Using Interest-Based & Behavioral Targeting

Concept: display networks have kept a historical log on your potential client, and they know their general location (even down to a ZIP code), as well as their interests (such as pizza, gardening or sports). Most searchers do not realize you can see and change your interests in Google, but if you are curious about what you may be personally targeted for advertising from Google, it is under your Ads Preference page.

How to change or update your Google ad preferences

How to Implement: media buys based on interests or behavioral targeting and interest-based targeting in Google’s Display Network.

How to set up interest targeting in Google’s Display Network

Cost: these clicks will cost more in the Google Display network because of the micro targeting, but you will also see less traffic for interest targeting when you target a small geographic area.

Tips: this traffic is very focused and would be very low for small geographic areas; so, get the most out of your ads by using very targeted ad copy that includes the geographical information in the ad (example: Fort Worth barber shop. 20 years of happy customers. Click here for 50% coupon for your first visit)

Do you use any of these strategies already? What other display advertising strategies does your local business use?

Image via Shutterstock used under license.

Google is constantly upgrading Analytics and adding new features for AdWords. Some of most recent upgrades include a new feature that now allows AdWords advertisers to add columns to their campaigns for Bounce Rates, Pages Per Visit and Average Duration. Remarketing lists can also now be created in Analytics and then added into your AdWords campaigns.

Along with the more recent changes, I wanted to share  a few of my favorite analytics reports for managing and optimizing Google Display campaigns.

(Almost) Real Time Clicks & Conversions By URL

Relevant ad distribution is important, and this report in Google Analytics lets you see the relevancy of placements where your ad is being shown. You may be getting clicks for game sites or weather sites that might not be converting for the ads and landing pages in  your campaigns.

Filtering (topic and/or category exclusions) may be needed to improve the quality of your traffic and to lower your conversion costs.

Here is a walk-through on how to see your Google Display Campaign URLs for today’s clicks.

This screen shot shows some potential problems with our targeting — showing high clicks and no conversions across a handful of non-relevant URLs

Compare Stats For Automatic Placements Vs. Manual Placements

The quality and variety of automatic placements is very different from managed placements. This section in Google Analytics gives you a breakdown for performance and could open the door for additional managed placement opportunities.

How often should you check for and add managed placements to your AdGroups? I usually run full managed placement reports when I audit an an older account and monthly for newer accounts. While this Analytics report will certainly allow you to see potential problems, please allow your placements enough time to prove their performance.

For example, if you paused a placement URL after getting ten (10) clicks without a conversion,  your expectation was for a 10% conversion rate from that placement. A 10% conversion rate is probably unrealistic and pausing that placement may actually hurt your conversion opportunities in the future.

Conversion Paths

Conversion paths are confirmation that visitors really don’t always convert on the first visit. The screen shot shows various paths visitors take before they take action and by using secondary dimensions, you can break down your display campaign conversion path data even further.

Assisted Conversions

Similar to conversion paths, the assisted conversions report shows how your Google Display campaigns assist other site traffic toward conversions. For some industries, this number may be higher than others. This number is also a good way to look at branded advertising campaigns.

Time Lag

Some conversions happen quickly. Others trickle in over several days or even months. The time-lag report is helpful to look at before you set up durations for your remarketing audiences and campaigns.

If most of your conversions take place in the first 7 to 15 days, you might consider testing a more aggressive remarketing campaign that targets that time frame after their first visit.

Your Feedback

Please share how you have used Google Analytics with your Google Display Campaigns. Do you have other tracking and reporting software that you prefer for heavy Google Display strategies?

What I learned can save you a lot of time, money and frustration.

What Are Keyword-Driven Campaigns? 

Keywords are the most common method for targeting in the Google Display Network. In a keyword-driven display campaign, the main factor in determining which landing pages appear for your ads is your choice of keywords inside each AdGroup.

Keywords can be combined with managed placements, topic targeting and audience targeting to refine the targeting for those types of campaigns. For my experiments, I focused on AdGroups that only use one or more keywords and no other methods of targeting.

Experiments, Challenges And Results 

Google’s display network has changed a great deal over the years and only continues to change and improve. I started by setting up my keyword (only) driven display network campaigns and AdGroups like I have in the past, using small groups of keywords.

• Challenge #1: Relevant Traffic. Google was doing a very good job at sending me relevant traffic, so at the beginning, I only had to add a couple of topic exclusions to refine the traffic. It didn’t seem to matter to Google if I used one keyword or multiple keywords in an AdGroup, the traffic was still very relevant.
•  Challenge #2: Optimizing Bids. Google has only recently allowed advertisers the option for keyword-level bidding in the display network. Since this was a new toy to play with, I started my bid optimizations by using the AdWords User Interface (UI) to do bid changes at the keyword level. *Currently, that is the only way you can see performance at the keyword level for display advertising. If you go to AdWords Editor, your only view for performance in keyword-driven campaigns is at the AdGroup level. Even though you can change bids at the keyword level in AdWords Editor, you just can’t see impressions, clicks, cost or conversion data.
• Challenge #3: Reporting Delay. Google initially reports some data, but not all data, at the keyword level in your UI. You have to wait about 48 hours before you get the complete picture. I have talked to other advertisers who are also seeing keyword-driven campaigns that have some reporting (impressions, clicks, cost, conversions) that can only be attributed to the AdGroup theme and not to any specific keyword. The reporting delay complicates determining if cost and/or conversions were attributed to a specific keyword or to the AdGroup as a whole.

Keyword Bids May Not Work Like You Think They Do 

As an experiment, I set up new campaigns with AdGroups that only contained one keyword each. My thought was that I could now optimize at the AdGroup bid level. As I was setting up the new campaigns, I made a very big mistake.

I set up the new bids at the keyword level so the old (much higher) bids at the AdGroup level were still set. When I checked in on my new campaigns, I quickly noticed that my cost-per-click was much higher than the keyword level bids that I remembered setting.  

What I learned from my bidding mistake was that in my case, Google defaulted to the higher AdGroup level bid even though there was only one keyword in my AdGroup and that keyword level bid was lower than the AdGroup bid.

• Challenge #4: Optimizing Conversions. Although it originally appeared as if I could optimize for conversions at the keyword level, the delay in reporting left me with a dilemma. Because of the volume and spend, I wanted to optimize within hours, not days. I knew I could use a combination of data from Google Analytics and the UI to make quick adjustments to my AdGroups, but if I wanted to leave the AdGroups themed using multiple keywords per AdGroup, it would be a minimum of 48 hours before I could make any adjustments.
•  Challenge #5: Keyword Cannibalization. I inherited a very old display network campaign that performed well in spite of how it was originally set up. I quickly saw the traffic and conversions drop when I created new AdGroups that contained the same keywords used in the original campaign. As soon as I deleted those keywords from my new AdGroups, the traffic volume and conversions went right back up.

Disclaimer: After discovering the cannibalization issue, I knew there were more experiments to run, but I still haven’t had the opportunity to experiment with fresh campaigns that use AdGroup-level bids and keyword themes where keywords overlap across multiple AdGroups.

Themes Or Individual Keyword AdGroups? The Answer

Unfortunately, the answer to the question is not which strategy is best. It seems to be more like: how much time do you have to spend trying to find the right balance between keyword bids and AdGroup bids? It also may depend on how much money you are willing to spend and how much patience you have with the delay in reporting for themed AdGroups.

Because of the competitive nature of my industry and sheer volume of keywords I was working with, for right now, I have chosen to move toward the one keyword AdGroups strategy. My choice was based more on efficiency. I get volume and relevant traffic and I can now focus my optimizations on the AdGroup bid and not worry about themes or keyword-level bids.

Share Your Experience. Please share your own experience with the Google display network’s keyword bidding options, with one keyword AdGroups and with themed AdGroup strategies.

I have a terrible confession to make. I have never worked with any agency, company or individual that wasn’t using too many placement exclusions. There, I said it.

But after today, there will be no more excuses and Google Display Network campaigns all over the world will perform so much better with the right strategies in place for how and when to exclude a placement!

Some of the most common side effects of overkill include drastic drops in impressions and conversions. If you have ever worked on a Google display campaign that started off looking promising but seemed to perform worse and worse the more you optimized, you will be happy with the improvement in your future display campaigns with just a few changes to your strategy for placement exclusions.

The Quick And Dirty Placement Report Sort

It is okay to sort your Google Display campaigns by cost at the domain level shortly after you turn on your campaign or after making changes. Just do a quick check to see if there are problem domains that need to be flagged and possibly excluded because they are out of control. (It usually takes about two days before you can pull your first report.)

Right after a campaign goes live, or after certain account changes, sometimes a few domains will see very high impressions and clicks. At this point, we just want to exclude domains (placements) based on high cost and no conversions. In this first sort, you may also see high conversion costs or even what appears to be targeting to the wrong audience. We’ll check those issues as we pull more detailed reports later.

Timing Is Everything

A domain or URL may only convert once every few weeks. If I looked at my overall data for one domain or URL using a longer time frame (all time, for 30 days, for the last quarter, etc.) it is possible that I would consider that placement as a good placement based on the quality and cost of the conversions.

I don’t want to do my placement reports for short time frames because it is possible to exclude a good placement that just happens to get sporadic conversions.

Deeper Evaluation Of Your Google AdWords Placements

With the quick and dirty sort, we were taking a look at the domain level. The next, more in-depth review will be at the URL level. This is the report that separates the GDN rookies and the veterans.  This report is so important that we are going to run it twice (for different time frames) and download it to Excel.

The first report will be for the time frame that you need to report on and review. The second placement report will be for a longer time frame to make sure you are not excluding those good placement URLs that only convert sporadically.

Before you exclude an entire domain, especially at the campaign level, do a sort for all the URLs for the domain you are evaluating.

Sort your URLs again in alphabetical order (there may be duplicates across multiple AdGroups). Sum the total cost for all of the URLs across the domain and sum the total number of conversions for this one domain. Divide the total cost by the number of conversions to get your Cost-Per-Conversion across the full set of URLs.

Placement Report Formatting Tip: Use A Simple Macro

Proceed with the following:

• Delete the first row
• (Optional) Format the top row (use black fill, white text, bold)
• Freeze the top row and the left column (at minimum, just to the right side of the URL)
• Resize columns
• Turn on Data Filtering
• (Optional) Set up Conditional Formatting (conditions vary based on goals, costs)

To Exclude Or Not To Exclude Placements – Campaign Or AdGroup

I prefer category exclusions over placement exclusions. If I do exclude a top-level domain, it is because Google is still categorizing that domain as relevant, and I disagree with the relevancy based on the quality of the conversions or the cost of the conversions.

I will have more placement URL exclusions at the AdGroup level where specific URLs are not performing based on the ads and targeting options.

Your Feedback And Personal Experience On Placement Exclusions

Do you have placement performance report tips you would like to share? Please comment and share your own experience.

Flash back to the 90s to a time when interactive Flash ads were fairly fresh. Do you remember those “shoot the duck” leaderboard banner ads that, for a time, converted no matter what the message?  Not only did those Flash banners integrate movement but they gave you the ability to interact when you put your mouse over the ad.

As advertisers pushed Flash ads to the edge of annoyance, most ad networks began outlawing all ads that shivered, blinked, had flashing backgrounds or tricked you into clicking the ad. These truly tricky banners made us believe that the ad was interactive but it really wasn’t. The public was grateful for the new rules.

Interactive Widget Ads

Widget ads followed not long after interactive Flash ads. Some of the most successful widgets were on MySpace for musicians.

Those early music widget ads had downloadable singles, a little background on the new release and picture galleries of the singer or band. In the beginning, widget ads weren’t much more than just a miniature website that fit into a 250×250 or 300×250 square ad.

A lot has changed since the early widget ads with companies like Jivox adding more interactive options and opportunities to share your interactive widgets. The new generation of widgets have more visibility and can more easily embed into a customer’s website, blog and social profiles.

Interactive Mobile Ads

Mobile advancements brought interactive creativity into the mobile advertising space with the world’s first Shakable Ad™ by Medialets. One of my favorite rich media ads by Medialets was for the Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers series where the banner expands, launches a tornado that takes over the screen and speakers and then wipes away everything in its on-screen path while cracking the screen. Your phone even vibrates, adding to the whole interactive tornado experience.

Interactive Video Ads

Google’s interactive video ad options still seem to be a well-kept secret, as the search giant has only recently started catching up with other video advertising networks like BrightRoll. Even companies like Yahoo have been offering robust options for interactive video ads a little longer.

Regardless of which video ad network you work with, interactive video ads are hot right now in the fashion and car industries where they incorporate product hot-spotting, social sharing, Twitter feeds and so much more to make the ads compelling and engaging.

Interactive Captcha

 If I was going to give an award for the most creative use of interactive advertising, it would go to companies like Solve Media and NuCaptcha for taking something dull and boring (like captchas) and turning it into one of the most creative ad formats and branding strategies in our industry.

Solve Media partnered with comScore to do some studies on the effectiveness of  interactive captcha ads and the results showed significant lifts in brand awareness, especially in the the CPG category.

Getting Started With Interactive Ads

For those of you who are ready to test interactive advertising yourselves, companies like Spongecell (and others mentioned above) would like to make it simple for you to get started.

For retail, you might try the interactive map and coupon features. Finance or insurance might try the data capture and PDF options. If you are a non-profit or celebrity trying to build a fan base, the calendar, social and video options might appeal to you.

There are so many interactive options to choose from these days that whatever your industry, you have lots of choices for integrating interaction into your ads.

Your Feedback

• Have you found other, simple, web-based tools to build your interactive ads?
• What ad networks are your favorites for running your interactive ads?
• Which interactive ads have worked best for your industry for branding or for conversions?

Just go ahead and admit it. We’ve all had a fascination with spies since we were kids. That’s why we flock to spy movies like Mission Impossible and secretly pretend we could live a life as adventurous as Jason Bourne and James Bond.

So maybe that’s why we look for marketing software that gives us the feeling that we are spying on our competitors. Well, that and the competitive advantage we can gain.

SEO And PPC Spy Programs

For SEO and PPC, there are software programs with cool spy names like SpyFu and SEO Spy Glass along with many more tools that may not have cool spy names but still allow you to watch your competitor’s every move as if you were wearing night vision goggles.

SEO and PPC tools are great for gleaning information about which keywords your competitors are using and which ads are working for them in the search engines.

You can even see some of the sites that are linking back to your competitor’s landing pages. Most people don’t realize that all that information can be very applicable to a display advertising campaign or media buy.

Just think – if you had a list of sites that were linking back to your competitor’s website. How many of those sites have not only the audience you want to reach but also opportunities to advertise!

Spy Training Mission – Display Advertising

One of the biggest challenges with competitive research has always been figuring out where your competitors buy display advertising, how their ad language differs by audience and, most importantly, which banner ads work for them. Some of you may feel more like Austin Powers or Johnny English, rather than James Bond, when it comes to spying in the land of display advertising and media buying.

Stop playing “I spy” games with your teams where you share screen captures, URLs and notes as you run across your competition’s banner ads either accidentally or during tedious research. The alternatives to your inner office version of “I spy” are much faster, more effective and fun.

Before I hand over some cool new spy tools for you to experiment with, I need to brief you on your next covert mission…if you are willing to accept it. These new tools will give you the ability to:

• Type in a keyword and see which text ads and image ads perform the best for those keywords and phrases
• Type in a specific URL and know which advertiser’s ads perform the best on that landing page
• Discover new traffic sources and create a list of specific placements that have already been uncovered by your competitors and are currently being used to reach your target audience
• Track ad testing patterns of your competitors

Competitive Intelligence Programs For Display Ad Networks

I found three programs that dig deep into the competitive landscape for text and image ads on display networks. Each program has a very unique spin on how it presents competitive information. I have used them all and there are things that I like about each program, so please research each of them carefully to decide which features fit the needs of your agency, clients or company.

What Runs Where

What Runs Where supports over 40 ad networks across several countries and will allow you to track a list of competitive advertisers, alerting you when they launch new text or banner ads.

AdBeat

AdBeat supports all the major networks plus a few more (between 25 and 30 ad networks). AdBeat recently announced a new feature called Top Phrases that shows the most important keywords the advertiser is using in their creative.

AdGooroo

AdGooroo supports 14 advertising networks worldwide and offers robust reporting including historical trending charts.

Your Next Mission

Now that you have several new marketing gadgets to play with, please let me know if there are other tools out there that have some of the same capabilities as these three. Let me know what you like or don’t like about each of these tools!

“Get out of my (beta) dreams and into my car(t)…”  – all

With a nod to Billy Ocean, this line just might be what “all” will be singing when they realize how easy the new interface is, even for those who have never tried video advertising before.

Getting Started With AdWords For Video

Baljeet has a nice way with words…

“With a global audience of 800 million monthly visitors to YouTube, every day can feel like you’re advertising in the Super Bowl, and one video can launch a business. To help even more businesses play big with video, today we’re introducing a number of new products, resources, and tools…”

Even the smallest company can reach thousands, hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions of viewers with just one video and a few simple AdWords video campaigns. The new interface is easy, more intuitive and leaves no excuses for even the novice AdWords user.

Your first step is to name your campaign. Then, next, you will set your budget. If you are new to AdWords, just leave the default setting for your delivery method.

Then choose your location and language. If you are running a short campaign, the advanced settings allow you to set a start and stop date. Scheduling options will also let you choose to run ads only during business hours. Frequency capping just keeps the same person from seeing your ad over and over again so you might want to test this setting.

You have lots of options for choosing a video for your ad. Choose videos from your own channel or if a friend, or an ad agency, created the video for you, you can go out to YouTube and find those videos on YouTube to use in your campaigns.

Once you have selected your video, take a look at “Ad formats & networks.” Depending on your marketing strategy, you may want to choose the networks where your ads will show. For example, if you want to do a YouTube only campaign, you will want to un-select the “Google Display Network”.

One of the new features that I really do like is the preview for each ad format. If you are not sure what “in-slate” means, just click on the words and AdWords will show you a preview with an explanation for where your ads may show.

Most advertisers send searchers to their “watch” page but if you are interested in branding or have other marketing goals, you may want to have viewers watch your video on your channel page.

Companion banners for in-stream ads are optional. Start with a few simple image ads and test this feature to see if you get higher conversions.

Graphs are a quick way to visually size up the performance and reach of your campaigns. The graph below tells me that my ads are being shown heavily on the Google Display network but are not getting much traffic on YouTube search. I may want to review my video title, description, tags and category settings to see if I can improve my reach.

The AdWords for Video dashboard will allow businesses to see how many people stayed to watch the entire video, visited the company website, stayed on the channel to watch another video and if they shared the video or subscribed to the channel after viewing an ad.

If budget is an issue, the TrueView video ads will help control spending while guaranteeing that money is only “going out” if eyeballs are “looking in” –  and you won’t even be charged unless the eyeballs keep looking for a certain amount of seconds and don’t “skip” the ad.

What Does All This Announcement Really Mean For “ALL” ?

That remains to be seen, but I think Google’s willingness to listen to their advertisers and to use their feedback to create an easier interface — not only for setting up video ads but also for managing those ads — is a big step forward for Google and for advertisers.

Have you already found success with YouTube advertising for your business? Do you have any video marketing tips to share? What do you think about the new AdWords for Video interface?