Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Even More Reasons to Join the Sitelinks Party

Posted: 13 Oct 2010 03:50 AM PDT

Inside AdWords: Even More Reasons to Join the Sitelinks Party

Since launching Ad Sitelinks last November, more than 100,000 of our advertisers have made use of the format to provide deeper access to their sites' relevant content directly from ads on Google.

If you're still on the fence about using Sitelinks, or haven't looked into it yet, here's even more reason to add them to your campaigns: on average, campaigns that have used one-line Sitelinks have seen an increase in CTR of more than 10 percent, and those with two-line Sitelinks continue to see the bump of more than 30 percent that we noted back in June.

Others are seeing even larger performance boosts. After implementing Sitelinks on their branded campaigns, Nationwide Insurance saw their CTR rise by 73 percent and conversions increase 60 percent over a 90-day period. Check out their full case study here.

Sitelinks offer a great way to give users a variety of paths to take based on their interests. For instance, if you search for "engagement rings", Blue Nile gives you three different additional links that they think will help meet your needs. Maybe you're trying to get ideas for what's popular right now in engagement rings, or already have something in mind that you're ready to craft. In either case, this ad directs you the appropriate way.



If you're looking for more information on how to implement and get the most out of Sitelinks, check out our new online course on the feature and read the FAQ in the Help Center.


Post Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/10/since-launching-ad-sitelinks-last.html

[G] Tips & Tricks: Making the most of your sidebar in Google Sites

Posted: 13 Oct 2010 12:11 AM PDT

Official Google Docs Blog: Tips & Tricks: Making the most of your sidebar in Google Sites

The sidebar on a Google site helps site visitors find what they are looking for and stays with the user as they navigate the site. Let's take a look at how you can take advantage of this space.

For example, let's say you've gone on a few trips this summer, and you want to create a site to organize and document your travels. You want each destination linked on the sidebar of your travelogue site.

To access the sidebar menu, go to More actions > Manage site > Site layout (you can also click the Edit sidebar link under your sidebar).

Rearranging order of the links
By default, Google Sites organizes links in alphabetical order, but you can also arrange the pages in the order you visited them.

Click the Edit link within the Navigation box. In the Configure Navigation window, uncheck the box next to 'Automatically organize my navigation.' Next, add your pages manually (with the Add page link) and rearrange them with the arrows on the right. The up-down arrows change the order of the pages, and the left-right arrows allow you "indent" a page within another, making it a subpage.


Resizing the sidebar
You can also control the width of the sidebar via Site layout > Change site layout and entering in a new width.

Changing the color of the font
There's also flexibility when it comes to changing the colors of the text in the sidebar. To find these settings, go to More actions > Manage site > Colors and Fonts.

Adding email addresses or links to other sites
If your travel buddies have their own websites, and you'd like to link to them from yours, you could add external links to your sidebar. Go to Site layout and edit the Navigation box. In the Configure Navigation window, select Add URL and enter in a URL and text to display.


Adding text and images
After you've reordered and added external links to your sidebar, you may decide that you'd like to add some information about yourself to your site. Since you can add and format text to the sidebar, as well as insert images and links, it's easy to create a bio profile. Simply go to Site layout > Add a new sidebar item > Text.


Horizontal navigation
After adding the bio, you notice that the sidebar area got a little crowded. Luckily, there's a new feature called horizontal navigation that allows you to move your navigation links to across the top of the site.

Go to Site layout > Change site layout and check the box next to Horizontal navigation bar. A new section on the site layout preview will pop up, called "Horizontal navigation bar." You can customize the horizontal navigation bar the same way you reorganized the links earlier.

Let's take a look at the result:

The Google Sites team will be adding some new functionality to horizontal navigation soon, so look out for that announcement on this blog.

Posted by: Lisa Ding, Consumer Operations Associate
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/10/tips-tricks-making-most-of-your-sidebar.html

[G] Google at USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI ‘10)

Posted: 12 Oct 2010 11:11 PM PDT

Official Google Research Blog: Google at USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI '10)

Posted by Murray Stokely, Software Engineer

The 9th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI '10) was recently held in Vancouver, B.C. This biennial conference is one of the premiere forums for presenting innovative research in distributed systems from both academia and industry, and we were glad to be a part of it.

In addition to sponsoring this conference since 2002, Googlers contributed to the exchange of scientific ideas through authoring or co-authoring 3 published papers, organizing workshops, and serving on the program committee. A short summary of the contributions:

  • Large-scale Incremental Processing Using Distributed Transactions and Notifications.
    Google replaced its batch-oriented indexing system with an incremental system, Percolator. Rather than running a series of high-latency map-reduces over large batches of documents, we now index individual documents at very low latency. The result is a 50% reduction in search result age; our paper discusses this project and the implications of the result.
  • Availability in Globally Distributed Storage Systems.
    Reliable and efficient storage systems are a key component of cloud-based services. In this paper we characterize the availability properties of cloud storage systems based on extensive monitoring of Google's main storage infrastructure and present statistical models that enable further insight into the impact of multiple design choices, such as data placement and replication strategies. We demonstrate the utility of these models by computing data availability under a variety of replication schemes given the real patterns of failures observed in our fleet.
  • Onix: A Distributed Control Platform for Large-scale Production Networks.
    There has been recent interest in a new networking paradigm called Software-Defined Networking (SDN). The crucial enabler for SDN is distributed control platform that shields developers from the details of the underlying physical infrastructure and allows them to write sophisticated control logic against a high-level API. Onix provides such a control platform for large-scale production networks.

In addition to the papers presented by current Googlers, we were also happy to see that the recipient of the 2009 Google Ph.D. Fellowship in Cloud Computing, Roxana Geambasu, presented her work on Comet: An active distributed key-value store.

Videos of all of the talks from OSDI are available on the conference website for attendees and current USENIX members. There is also a USENIX YouTube channel with a growing subset of the conference videos open to everyone.

Google is making substantial progress on many of the grand challenge problems in computer science and artificial intelligence as part of its mission to organize the worlds information and make it useful. Given the continuing increase in the scale of our distributed systems it's fair to say we'll have some other exciting new work to share at the next OSDI. Hope to see you in 2012.

URL: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2010/10/google-at-usenix-symposium-on-operating.html

[G] The YouTube Symphony Orchestra returns!

Posted: 12 Oct 2010 04:59 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: The YouTube Symphony Orchestra returns!

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)

The world's first online collaborative orchestra is back, and this time a new round of performers will be playing their part onstage at the iconic Sydney Opera House.

It seems like just yesterday that Carnegie Hall was abuzz with a sold-out performance that made headlines around the globe. Ninety-six musicians arrived in New York City, from over 30 countries, to perform together after uploading an audition video and then being chosen by the YouTube community to be a part of the exciting event. We are thrilled to invite you to audition for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011.


In addition to the new locale, this "second act" includes another new element: "Mothership," a musical work from composer Mason Bates. Right now, it's still missing something: an improvisation provided by you. Take a listen to it here and start planning your contribution.



This time there are two ways to audition, for the classical audition perform the pieces listed on the channel according to instrument. For the opportunity to contribute your own creation, choose the solo improviser—it doesn't matter if you play trumpet, viola or didgeridoo. If you proceed to the final stages, you will join musicians from around the world in a week-long music summit with Grammy-award-winning conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, who returns to guide the orchestra.

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011 is a collaboration with partners the Sydney Symphony, the London Symphony Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker and many other leading institutions of the classical music world. This event is being made possible by Hyundai.

Posted by Michele Flannery, Music Manager, YouTube
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/youtube-symphony-orchestra-returns.html

[G] Be the next Gone Google ad

Posted: 12 Oct 2010 04:59 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Be the next Gone Google ad

A little over a year ago, we began the "Go Google" campaign with just a single billboard in four U.S. cities. In the past year, we've grown from two to three million businesses and more than 30 million users on Google Apps; through the campaign, thousands have shared their Gone Google stories via tweets, photos and submissions to our community map. We've heard from companies across the country and around the world; from large enterprises such as Konica Minolta and leading global food retailer Ahold, to small businesses like Bowery Lane Bicycles in New York and Luna & Larry's Coconut Bliss in Oregon, we're excited to hear how Google Apps has helped your business increase productivity, reduce costs and innovate.

As we kick off the next wave of our global campaign this week in airports and train stations in 11 major cities in nine countries around the globe, we want to use this opportunity to invite the millions of companies and schools using Google Apps to tell us why your organization would like to be featured in our next global Gone Google ad campaign. For this contest, we'll pick up to five companies/schools in each of the following regions: the Americas, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and Asia Pacific. The winners will be featured in an upcoming outdoor ad campaign in each region early next year.

To participate, tell us your organization's Gone Google story, and create a "sample ad" using our template:


We encourage you to be creative and have fun with your ad! (You may want to check out some of our previous ads for some inspiration.) Once you create your ad, be sure to publish and share it with us. (Bonus points for tweeting it with the #gonegoogle hashtag.) For complete rules and details, visit our contest site. We can't wait to see your ads, and look forwarding to putting your organization's name in lights!

And if you are still thinking about going Google, we encourage you to check out the Go Google cloud calculator to learn more about the benefits of switching to Google Apps.

Posted by Vivian Leung, Google Apps Team
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/be-next-gone-google-ad.html

[G] App Tuesday welcomes apps from around the world to the Google Apps Marketplace

Posted: 12 Oct 2010 04:59 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: App Tuesday welcomes apps from around the world to the Google Apps Marketplace

Since our Google Apps Marketplace has been around, we've been working hard to bring you apps from all around the world. This App Tuesday, four apps launching in the Apps Marketplace are from companies that are not solely in the United States. Brightpearl joins us from the U.K., SprinxCRM is headquartered in the Czech Republic, and Clio calls Canada home. And even though Producteev is based out of New York, their founders are all from France. These apps join other international apps in our Marketplace, including apps from Australia, Bulgaria, Japan, Germany and 17 other countries.

We're also excited to welcome our second education-focused app, PlanbookEdu, as well as our first legal-focused app, Clio. The apps launching this App Tuesday sport a number of advanced integrations that will make your business run much more smoothly. For example, Producteev, offers a Gmail contextual gadget that allows users to use its features right from the Gmail inbox.

Check out the Google Enterprise Blog for more information or go shop the Google Apps Marketplace.

Posted by Harrison Shih, Associate Product Marketing Manager, Google Apps Marketplace Team
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/app-tuesday-welcomes-apps-from-around.html

[G] The wind cries transmission

Posted: 12 Oct 2010 04:59 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: The wind cries transmission

We just signed an agreement to invest in the development of a backbone transmission project off the Mid-Atlantic coast that offers a solid financial return while helping to accelerate offshore wind development—so it's both good business and good for the environment. The new project can enable the creation of thousands of jobs, improve consumer access to clean energy sources and increase the reliability of the Mid-Atlantic region's existing power grid.

When built out, the Atlantic Wind Connection (AWC) backbone will stretch 350 miles off the coast from New Jersey to Virginia and will be able to connect 6,000MW of offshore wind turbines. That's equivalent to 60% of the wind energy that was installed in the entire country last year and enough to serve approximately 1.9 million households.


The AWC backbone will be built around offshore power hubs that will collect the power from multiple offshore wind farms and deliver it efficiently via sub-sea cables to the strongest, highest capacity parts of the land-based transmission system. This system will act as a superhighway for clean energy. By putting strong, secure transmission in place, the project removes a major barrier to scaling up offshore wind, an industry that despite its potential, only had its first federal lease signed last week and still has no operating projects in the U.S.

Why offshore wind and why the Mid-Atlantic? Many coastal areas in the United States have large population centers on an overstretched grid but limited access to a high-quality land-based wind resource. These coastal states can take advantage of their most promising renewable resource by using larger wind farms with larger turbines that can take advantage of stronger and steadier winds offshore.

The Mid-Atlantic region is ideally suited for offshore wind. It offers more than 60,000 MW of offshore wind potential in relatively shallow waters that extend miles out to sea. These shallow waters make it easier to install turbines 10-15 miles offshore, meaning wind projects can take advantage of stronger winds and are virtually out-of-sight from land. With few other renewable energy options ideally suited for the Atlantic coast, the AWC backbone helps states meet their renewable energy goals and standards (PDF) by enabling a local offshore wind industry to deploy thousands of megawatts of clean, cost-effective wind energy.

The AWC backbone is critical to more rapidly scaling up offshore wind because without it, offshore wind developers would be forced to build individual radial transmission lines from each offshore wind project to the shore, requiring additional time consuming permitting and environmental studies and making balancing the grid more difficult. As those in the Northeast remember from the 2003 blackout, transmission is severely overstretched on the east coast. The AWC project relieves grid congestion in one of two National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors which were deemed to have significant network congestion and need speedy creation of transmission capacity.

The AWC project is led by independent transmission company Trans-Elect and is financed by Google, Good Energies and Marubeni Corporation. We are investing 37.5% of the equity in this initial development stage, with the goal of obtaining all the necessary approvals to finance and begin constructing the line. Although the development stage requires only a small part of the total estimated project budget, it represents a critical stage for the project.

We believe in investing in projects that make good business sense and further the development of renewable energy. We're willing to take calculated risks on early stage ideas and projects that can have dramatic impacts while offering attractive returns. This willingness to be ahead of the industry and invest in large scale innovative projects is core to our success as a company.

From the Great Plains to the waters off the coast of Northern Europe, windmills churn out clean power that lights our homes and powers our economies. We are pleased to support this investment that will ultimately enable the Mid Atlantic to benefit from the tremendous wind resource off its coast.

Posted by Rick Needham, Green Business Operations Director
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/wind-cries-transmission.html

[G] The YouTube Symphony Orchestra returns!

Posted: 12 Oct 2010 03:11 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: The YouTube Symphony Orchestra returns!

The world's first online collaborative orchestra is back, and this time a new round of performers will be playing their part onstage at the iconic Sydney Opera House.

It seems like just yesterday that Carnegie Hall was abuzz with a sold-out performance that made headlines around the globe. Ninety-six musicians arrived in New York City, from over 30 countries, to perform together after uploading an audition video and then being chosen by the YouTube community to be a part of the exciting event. We are thrilled to invite you to audition for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011.


In addition to the new locale, this "second act" includes another new element: "Mothership," a musical work from composer Mason Bates. Right now, it's still missing something: an improvisation provided by you. Take a listen to it here and start planning your contribution.


This time there are two ways to audition, for the classical audition perform the pieces listed on the channel according to instrument. For the opportunity to contribute your own creation, choose the solo improviser—it doesn't matter if you play trumpet, viola or didgeridoo. If you proceed to the final stages, you will join musicians from around the world in a week-long music summit with Grammy-award-winning conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, who returns to guide the orchestra.

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011 is a collaboration with partners the Sydney Symphony, the London Symphony Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker and many other leading institutions of the classical music world. This event is being made possible by Hyundai.

Michele Flannery, Music Manager, recently watched "Eucalyptus Didgeridoo Solo"


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/jMVcLMd8VOs/youtube-symphony-orchestra-returns.html

[G] ‘Tis the season for placement targeting: Market your site with DoubleClick Ad Planner

Posted: 12 Oct 2010 03:06 PM PDT

Inside AdSense: 'Tis the season for placement targeting: Market your site with DoubleClick Ad Planner

Last week, we introduced you to placement targeting as a great way to capitalize on the increase in advertiser spend during the holiday season. This week, we're kicking off our three-part optimization series to help you maximize your earnings by taking advantage of DoubleClick Ad Planner. Ad Planner can help you market your site, make it easier for advertisers to search for you, and improve the data that these advertisers can see.

As you may recall from last week's post, the first step to enabling placement-targeted ads to appear on your pages is to set up your custom channels as ad placements. Ad placements are specific groups of ad units where an advertiser can choose to place their ads using placement targeting. This enables advertisers to better identify websites that reach their target audiences based on the descriptions publishers provide about their sites, describing the content of their pages or the type of users who visit them. Turning custom channels into ad placements is simple. To learn more, check out our YouTube video and visit our Help Center.

Once you've set up your ad placements, we encourage you to try out DoubleClick Ad Planner, a free media planning tool that helps advertisers find the sites their audiences are likely to visit and helps publishers make their sites easier to target.

In Ad Planner, you can claim the sites you own and customize their descriptions. For each site, you can also add up to five categories that describe your site's content, and the types, sizes, and formats of ads that your site supports. Doing this allows advertisers to easily find ad placement descriptions that match the interests of their target audiences. More targeted ads leads to a better user experience on your site and a greater opportunity to increase your earnings. For more information on how to get started, watch this brief introduction to DoubleClick Ad Planner and sign up today.

Check back next week for more 'tis the season for placement targeting tips!

Posted by Meredith Blackwell - Inside AdSense team
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/10/tis-season-for-placement-targeting_12.html

[G] Be the Next Gone Google Ad

Posted: 12 Oct 2010 11:34 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Be the Next Gone Google Ad

[cross-posted from the Official Google Blog]

A little over a year ago, we began the "Go Google" campaign with just a single billboard in four US cities. In the past year, we've grown from 2 to 3 million businesses and over 30 millions users on Google Apps; through the campaign, thousands have shared their Gone Google stories via tweets, photos, and submissions to our community map. We've heard from companies across the country and around the world; from large enterprises such as Konica Minolta and leading global food retailer Ahold, to small businesses like Bowery Lane Bicycles in New York to Luna & Larry's Coconut Bliss in Oregon, we're excited to hear how Google Apps has helped your business increase productivity, reduce costs, and innovate.

As we kick-off the next wave of our global campaign this week in airports and train stations in 11 major cities in 9 countries around the globe, we want to use this opportunity to invite the millions of companies and schools using Google Apps to tell us why your organization would like to be featured in our next global Gone Google ad campaign. For this contest, we'll pick up to five companies/schools in each of the following regions: the Americas, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), and Asia Pacific. The winners will be featured in an upcoming outdoor ad campaign in each region early next year.

To participate, tell us your organization's Gone Google story, and create a "sample ad" using our provided template:



We encourage you to be creative and have fun with your ad! (You may want to check out some of our previous ads for some inspiration.) Once you create your ad, be sure to publish and share it with us. (Bonus points for tweeting it with the #gonegoogle hashtag.) For complete rules and details, visit our contest site. We can't wait to see your ads, and look forwarding to putting your organization's name in lights!

And if you are still thinking about going Google, we encourage you to check out the Go Google cloud calculator to learn more about the benefits of switching to Google Apps.

Posted by Vivian Leung, Google Apps Team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/10/be-next-gone-google-ad.html

[G] App Tuesday brings Marketplace apps from around the world to your business

Posted: 12 Oct 2010 11:34 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: App Tuesday brings Marketplace apps from around the world to your business

At Google, we welcome apps developed from all over the world to help businesses find the perfect apps to move their business productivity to the cloud. This App Tuesday, four of the apps launching are from companies that have deep roots outside of the United States. Brightpearl joins us from the United Kingdom, SprinxCRM is headquartered in the Czech Republic, and Clio calls Canada home. And even though Producteev is based out of New York, their founders are all originally from France. These apps join a Marketplace full of other international apps, including apps from Australia, Bulgaria, Japan, Germany and 17 other countries.

The Apps Marketplace offers businesses cloud-based solutions in a wide range of functions, including customer management, project management, productivity, accounting and more. This App Tuesday we are excited to welcome our second education app, PlanbookEdu, as well as our first legal focused app, Clio. As always, all apps offer single sign-on convenience that give users hassle-free access through the universal navigation bar, but many go deeper. Producteev's Gmail contextual gadget, for example, allows users to access many of its features right from the Gmail inbox and Clio's two-way sync with Google Calendar and Contacts ensures consistent data across Clio and Google Apps. Here is the list of apps joining the Apps Marketplace this App Tuesday.

  • myBrainshark - Businesses can easily make sales, marketing, or e-learning presentations and easily distribute the presentations by sharing links or embedding videos, while tracking views and usage.
  • Brightpearl - All of your business' administrative needs, including customer management, accounting, and purchase orders, can now be tackled in one central location, working seamlessly with Calendar, Contacts, and Gmail.
  • EasyBib - Students and professionals alike can easily create and manage bibliographies for their academic research, and seamlessly navigate between Google Apps through single sign-on.
  • Sprinx - Tracking, managing, and evaluating customer relationships, opportunities, and campaigns can be done seamlessly through single sign-on and calendar and contact sync.
  • PlanbookEdu - Teachers of all grade levels using Google Apps for Education can jump straight from their email into creating and sharing lesson plans with fellow educators without having to sign into another program.
  • Clio - Lawyers and other legal professionals can now easily manage client information, matters, contacts, time-keeping, bills, documents and other aspects of their law offices via Google Calendar and Contacts.
  • Producteev - Google Apps Gmail users can manage complex tasks and projects in-line with their email with Producteev's Gmail contextual gadget by quickly transforming emails into action items.

Check out the Google Apps Marketplace to explore one of these new apps or try one of the other over 200 apps. If you've #gonegoogle and tried the #appsmarketplace, let other users know what you recommend via Twitter or submit your suggestions for additional apps.

Posted by Harrison Shih, Associate Product Marketing Manager, Google Apps Marketplace Team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/10/app-tuesday-brings-marketplace-apps.html

[G] Shopping with a buddy

Posted: 12 Oct 2010 10:44 AM PDT

Official Google Checkout Blog: Shopping with a buddy

We know that savvy online shoppers are always looking for a deal, but sometimes it can be difficult to get the right service with the right price. A handy update to Shopping Buddy (previously featured on our blog under the name Google Checkout Promo Notifier) brings discounts plus ratings right to your Google Chrome browser. The extension now displays merchant ratings and reviews, so you can find promotions and learn more about a merchant all without leaving the site you're shopping on.


The seller rating will display as a star with score from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) in the URL bar. To read detailed reviews and see the distribution of ratings, just click on the star.

To get more useful information while shopping online, download Shopping Buddy from the Chrome extensions page and be sure to let us know what you think.

Posted by Nicolas Garnier and Peng Ying, Developer Programs Engineers
URL: http://googlecheckout.blogspot.com/2010/10/shopping-with-buddy.html

[G] Performance at Scale on the Google Display Network

Posted: 12 Oct 2010 10:34 AM PDT

Inside AdWords: Performance at Scale on the Google Display Network

One of our key goals is to help you drive better performance with your display advertising campaigns.

As users increasingly spend time across a growing number of sites, however, display advertising is becoming more challenging. Last year alone there were 47 million new web sites created*. Contextual targeting can help by automatically showing your ad to users on web pages related to your products on the millions of sites in the Google Display Network (GDN). But building and managing your campaigns can still be time-consuming. So how do you reach your target audience easily and efficiently while meeting your business goals?

Today, we're launching two tools -- the Display Campaign Optimizer and the Contextual Targeting Tool -- to help you maximize your performance on the GDN, while saving you valuable time and resources.

Display Campaign Optimizer. This new tool automatically manages targeting and bidding for your Display Network campaigns with the goal of increasing your conversions while meeting your advertising objectives. You simply provide us with your target cost-per-acquisition (CPA), creatives and budget, and the Display Campaign Optimizer goes to work, showing your ads in all the right places, automatically. It monitors your campaign performance and, in real time, adjusts your campaign accordingly. Your campaigns stay optimized, as it "learns" and does more of what's working and less of what isn't. For example, Seventh Generation, a company that sells eco-friendly household cleaning, baby care and personal care products, was looking to connect with more "green" consumers across the web and get them to download coupons from their site for use in-store. After implementing the Display Campaign Optimizer, the tool delivered 60% of the coupons downloaded from their site, with a CPA 20% below their target. Further, analysis of our beta testers showed that on average, campaign using Display Campaign Optimizer were likely responsible for almost one-third of the accounts' total conversion volume with CPAs within 6% of their peer group CPA.**

The Display Campaign Optimizer is now available globally for larger campaigns running on the Google Display Network.



Contextual Targeting Tool. While the Display Campaign Optimizer is an automated solution that does all the heavy lifting on your behalf, the Contextual Targeting Tool helps you more efficiently build your own display campaigns. This tool is ideal for those of you who prefer transparency and control over your campaigns' targeting and bidding. The Contextual Targeting Tool builds tightly themed keyword lists for your display campaigns, which are used to contextually target your ads. Tightly themed keyword lists are the basis of effective contextual targeting. With this tool, you can build dozens, even hundreds, of ad groups in minutes, quickly scaling your campaign performance while ensuring accurate targeting and control over your campaign.

For example, if you sell yoga gear, normally, you might take the time to build out separate ad groups around each of your product lines, such as yoga mats, yoga clothing, yoga gear, etc. Inputting each product category into the Contextual Targeting Tool will generate even more tightly themed keyword lists. For example, inputting 'yoga mats' into the tool generates more specific ad groups, such as designer yoga mats, thick yoga mats, yoga mats with designs, etc. These are all separate ad groups that can help you generate additional traffic and sales, that you wouldn't necessarily think of creating when manually building out your campaigns.

This week, we're beginning a phased launch of the Contextual Targeting Tool, and it will become available to more advertisers over the coming weeks and months.

Whether you're looking for easier ways of building out your display campaigns or looking for a more robust, automated solution that continually optimizes bids and targeting, we think these tools will help you easily and efficiently achieve performance at scale with your display campaigns.

Posted by Woojin Kim, Product Manager and Shaun Seo, Product Manager


* Source: Netcraft Web Server Survey, Dec. 2009
** Source: Internal analysis of active beta testers, in comparison with peer group advertisers. Oct. 2010
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/10/performance-at-scale-on-google-display.html

[G] Tips for partners: Gimme content (and then analyze it!)

Posted: 12 Oct 2010 09:27 AM PDT

YouTube Blog: Tips for partners: Gimme content (and then analyze it!)

As promised, we're excited to feature a series of blog posts with advice and actionable suggestions regarding what has helped partners be successful on YouTube. By now, all your videos should have lots of metadata, and you should have added annotations to at least one video, or grouped a series of videos through a playlist. Up next, our third post is on the importance of finding a niche with your videos and then analyzing data to determine how viewers are finding your content.



As always, we want your feedback. If there are things we are missing, or other optimization tips you want us to cover, let us know via the comments section in this post.



Find Your Mojo

It is easy for us to say, "make great content!" We know that is ultimately what you are are trying to do with your videos. When you first start out, experiment with different approaches and topics until you find your niche. It could be vlogging, beauty tutorials, a character sketch...really wherever your passion takes you. YouTube gets over 100 million views a day, so the world truly is your oyster. Find your mojo and then cultivate your content.



Once you create and publish your great content, are you paying attention to your Hot Spots? Are you maintaining a schedule so viewers know when to check back for more? There is actionable data you can use in your account to tweak your videos to keep your audience coming back.



To do:



  • Use Insight Hotspots to see if your video is hot or not. Do you see a full red thermometer in the top red corner of your Hot Spot video report? If so, great! If not and your video hovers on or below the "Average" line on the graph, you are not keeping your viewers' attention.

  • Edit your videos to keep your audience engaged. See where viewers are leaving your video, and determine why (and consider using annotations to keep users engaged).

  • Use Insight to figure out how people are finding your content. Is it through search or related videos? To find out, go to 'My Videos' and click on 'Insight' for one video. Then click on 'Discovery' and under 'Links Followed to this video,' you'll see top referrals. You can click on 'YouTube Search' to find tags viewers queried to get to your video, and then add these tags to your video to boost your ranking in the search index. 

How to find more tags through the 'Insight' tool:



More tags to add:




  • Review YouTube charts to check out the most viewed videos, and how you stack up.

  • Use Google Analytics to understand the source of your YouTube traffic. The better you understand your audience and how they find you, the better you will be able to produce new content, promote the discovery of your videos, engage with your audience and build your brand.

  • Keeping a video upload schedule is important, and we encourage you to upload consistently. When you are starting out, a technique that has worked well for many successful partners is maintaining a schedule that your subscribers will remember.



Now is a great time to log into your account and analyze your data to make sure your tags are fully updated, and your top referrals are either increasing or changing for the better. Tune in this Thursday to hear from one of our partners who found his niche, and will discuss first-hand how he uses 'Insight' to make smart decisions.





Julie Kikla and Mahin Ibrahim, Account Managers, YouTube Partnerships recently watched "The Unseen Sea."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/UC-6iCte2JE/tips-for-partners-gimme-content-and.html

[G] YouTube political commentators join National Economic Advisers in Reuters debate

Posted: 12 Oct 2010 05:22 AM PDT

YouTube Blog: YouTube political commentators join National Economic Advisers in Reuters debate

On YouTube they go by The Young Turk and How the World Works, but this Tuesday Cenk Uyger and Lee Doran will be taking their political commentary beyond YouTube to a special forum on Reuters.com focused on fixing the global economy.

Reuters Editor-at-Large Chrystia Freeland will host the forum, which will feature a debate between Laura Tyson, former Chairman of President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, and Glenn Hubbard, who held that same position under President George W. Bush. Tyson is a candidate to replace Larry Summers as President Obama's top economic advisor and also to head the new federal Office of Financial Information.

Afterward, Freeland will host a live video debate between the progressive Uyger and the conservative Doran. This won't be the first time that Uyger and Doran, who each boast tens of thousands of subscribers on YouTube, have faced off: Each of them has a strong following on YouTube and a regular audience of comentators who take the debate over the future of our country very seriously. Within the context of the Reuters forum between Tyson and Hubbard, their discussion promises to be lively and full of controversy.

The Forum, entitled "Conflicting Visions: Fixing the Global Economy," will be hosted on Reuters and YouTube. Check out youtube.com/news around midday Tuesday, when we'll post the clip.

Steve Grove, Head of News and Politics, recently watched "Health Care, Economic Policy, and Political Polarization in America"


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/ON5uN5i1CBY/youtube-political-commentators-join.html
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