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SoothWare Tutorials 3 Replies

Started by Jessie Sotomayor. Last reply by Tim Ogilvie Feb 29.

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Started by Tim Ogilvie. Last reply by Tim Ogilvie Sep. 13, 2007.

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Soothware will be exhibiting at SMX Advanced in Seattle, WA from Tuesday, June 3rd through Wednesday, June 4th. Please stop by if you'll be at the show! We'd also be happy to schedule a time to meet or demo the Soothware platform.

Posted by Jessica Ogilvie on May 5th, 2008 at 11:30am — No Comments (Add)

Video tutorials

We've added a number of video tutorials around the site. There are two on the homepage (www.soothware.com) that provide a little more detail on the Soothware service and how to get started. We've also added a number of videos in key areas of the site that provide additional detail on how to take advantage of our conversion tracking, our bid management tools, our reporting, and our campaign management section. We plan to add new tutorials for all key areas of the site - stay tuned.

Posted by Tim Ogilvie on April 5th, 2008 at 6:30pm — No Comments (Add)

Soothware at AdTech San Francisco

A few of members of the Soothware team will be in San Francisco for the Adtech conference (Tuesday the 14th and Wednesday the 15th). If you're in the area, or in town for the conference, let us know and we'd love to meet up.

Posted by Tim Ogilvie on April 3rd, 2008 at 6:37pm — No Comments (Add)

Search marketing expo (SMX)

The Soothware team is currently exhibiting at the SMX Expo hall for the next two days (Feb 27 & 28). We'd love to meet you if you're in the area and would like to stop by! We'll also have a booth at Search Engine Strategies in NY (March 17-20). If you like to meet up at either location, please drop us a line!

Posted by Tim Ogilvie on February 27th, 2008 at 12:33pm — 2 Comments (Add)

Tracking display advertising & email

We've recently added the option to track your display advertising, email advertising and other online marketing placements through Soothware. This allows you to track the performance of external placements alongside your SEM spend and understand what is working best for you.

We don't currently offer optimization services against this spend, but it's a solution that we're outlining right now. Expect a solution sometime in 2008 that will likely include the Right Media Exchange and other… Continue

Posted by Tim Ogilvie on January 3rd, 2008 at 9:53am — No Comments (Add)

Inside AdWords

(Ad)Word of the Day: Conversion

We all know the importance of measuring the impact of your ad campaigns. That's why, today, we're discussing the term conversion from the AdWords Glossary, which is defined as follows:

When a user completes an action on your site, such as buying something or requesting more information.

In AdWords, a conversion occurs when a user clicks on your ad, then proceeds to complete an action on your web site that you deem valuable, like a purchase, registration, or sign-up. You can track actions like this on your web site by using one (or both) of the tools we offer:

Conversion tracking: A tool for measuring conversion metrics for your campaigns.
Google Analytics: A more robust tool that tracks not just conversions, but also gives insight into how your web site visitors found your site, how they navigated through it and how you can improve their user experience -- all things that ultimately help you improve the ROI of your web site.

Both conversion tracking and Google Analytics are free tools and are great ways of ensuring advertising accountability and making smarter online advertising decisions.

Learn more about setting up conversion tracking for your AdWords ads, and signing up for Google Analytics.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

Summer school's in session with Google AdWords

This summer, we're offering a number of webinars covering a broad range of topics -- if you're interested in learning inside tips about Google AdWords, check out our webinar calendar. Topics range from getting started with AdWords and improving ROI, to learning how to track the effectiveness of your campaigns, so there's truly something for everyone. You can register using the links provided on the AdWords Events Calendar page.

We're also offering a special webinar on July 30 and July 31, 2008 to help retailers prepare for this fall's back-to-school rush. This special session will highlight industry trends, profile key demographics of your target audience, and provide tips to reach top influencers so you can make the most of this busy shopping season. Our back-to-school webinar will begin at 10AM PDT on both days, and will last an hour. The same material is covered both days, so pick the time that's most convenient for you.

July 30, 10:00AM PDT: Register
July 31, 10:00AM PDT: Register

Space in all our webinars is limited, so register today! We look forward to seeing you in class.

Posted by Heather Lane, Inside AdWords crew

AdWords Editor service release for Windows and Mac

Today we released version 6.0.1 of AdWords Editor. In response to user feedback, it's now possible to download performance statistics for selected campaigns and ad groups, instead of always downloading statistics for the whole account. Once you've installed version 6.0.1, you'll be able to download selected statistics by following these instructions.

Unlike our last release, this update won't affect your comments or unposted changes. As a result:

- You don't need to export an archive of your account. In the auto-update prompt, choose the 'Update without Backup' option.
- After you upgrade, your account will already be in the new version. You won't need to download your account again.

If you're already using AdWords Editor, you'll be prompted to upgrade automatically. You can also visit our website and click 'Download AdWords Editor.'

For more information about AdWords Editor, visit our Help Center.

Posted by Christian Yee, Inside AdWords crew

Use keywords and placements together on the content network

When you use keywords in your ad groups to contextually target your ads, we match them to relevant pages across the hundreds of thousands of sites on the Google content network. But have you ever wanted to bid more (or less) for a specific content network site you're contextually targeting? Or write customized ad text for a precise group of pages, such as news articles or relevant discussions on social networks? Now you can.

We've combined keyword-targeted and placement-targeted campaigns into a single online campaign type. Starting today, you can target keywords and placements together in the same ad group. By doing so, you combine the benefits of contextual targeting with placement targeting: use keywords to show your ads only on contextually relevant pages, then use placements to set specific bids for, or restrict your targeting to, sites you value differently from the rest of the content network.

Here are two ways you might use these new content network controls:

Set custom bids for specific placements. Let's say you're selling laptops, and you're using the content network to advertise on pages relevant to the keywords 'laptops,' 'laptop computers,' and 'laptop accessories.' After checking your Placement Performance report, you see that you're getting sales at a great ROI from three technology review sites. You also see a few sites where you're getting sales, but your costs are too high to advertise effectively on them.

If you currently have a $1.00 bid for the content network as a whole in this ad group, you can now add the high- and low-performing sites as placements into your ad group with custom bids. For example, you might set a $2.00 Max CPC for the three high-performing sites, and a $0.50 Max CPC for the low-performing ones. Meanwhile, you're still using the keywords in your ad group to target relevant pages across the content network, but now you've adjusting bids for the sites in the network that perform better or worse than average.
Show your ad only when both keywords and placements match. Suppose you check your Placement Performance report again and see that your laptop ads are showing often on sites that discuss how to make laptops more energy efficient. You know that you sell some of the most energy efficient laptops available, and you'd like to write an ad that highlights the power-saving benefits of your products. But you don't want to show this ad on pages whose readers aren't as concerned about energy conservation.

Now you can create an ad group containing the same 'laptop' keywords you've been using and add each of the energy efficiency sites as placements. Next, change your campaign settings so that your ads show only on the sites you've added, and only when their pages are relevant to your keywords. This gives you the freedom to write an ad highlighting the energy-saving benefits of your laptops to this unique audience, since you know that your ad will appear only on relevant pages on the placements you've selected.

This new feature affects your ads on the content network only, and it's entirely optional. You can do nothing and your existing campaigns will continue running just as they have. But by using keywords and placements together, you can get better control over ad placement and pricing on the content network to help you meet your ROI objectives.

To learn the ins and outs of the feature and and get started, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

Content network video series on the Google Business YouTube channel

Earlier this year, we launched the Google Business Channel, a YouTube channel that brings you the latest on AdWords and Google's other business solutions, in video format.

And as part of the Advertiser Education Series on the channel, we've just added three videos that cover various aspects of the Google content network. This series is meant to help our advertisers learn about, and succeed with, advertising on this platform:

Part I: Introduction to the content network - Learn about the benefits of advertising on the content network, including an overview of key tools and features to help you succeed.

Part II: Optimizing campaigns for the content network - Learn strategies to optimize your content campaigns for maximum performance.

Part III: Demographic bidding on the content network - Learn how you can reach an audience based on their gender and age on social networking sites in the content network.

We hope you'll find these video lessons to be engaging and helpful with your advertising efforts on the content network. You can learn more about the content network on our microsite.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew