Digital Marketing Agency | Barracuda Digital

In a throwback to banner advertising of the 90s, Google have just started testing leaderboard image ads appearing above the Search Engine Results on Google images. This is what they look like:

Currently just appearing on a small fraction of queries in the US and UK, Google say that this give advertisers “a great opportunity to reach users with engaging ads, whether your goal is to build brand awareness, or to drive clicks and conversions”.

These leaderboards are triggered by the category of the search term that the user enters. Let’s say you want your ad to appear for auto-related searches, it will be triggered by searches for images of particular vehicles, racing tracks, or even car parts.

To advertise on Google images you just add Google images as a placement to your campaign. Pricing is in either CPM or CPC.

Innovation or Monetization?

Google claim to want to introduce ‘new, innovative placements and formats on the Google Display Network to help you reach your advertising goals’, but this seems like a backwards move. We learned 10 years ago that image ads above the SERPs didn’t really work, and although this matches images with image ads the concept is still flawed.

A cynic might point to the huge number of image searches that Google is failing to monetize, and find this new idea has roots there. As ever with AdWords it’s easy to try out new things, and the cost of testing is low, so the proof will definitely be in the pudding.

If you want find out more about this format, or want Barracuda Digital to help expand your Display campaign, get in touch.

The Display Campaign Optimizer is a display advertising tool that’s been in Beta for about the last two months. As an agency on Google’s Beta list we’ve been one of the first to try out this exciting new system – initially called the ‘explorer’. And this week Google announced that it had removed the Beta label and made it available to all advertisers.

What is it?

This tool tests out placements, demographics, geo-targeting, and interest group combinations to try to find new sources of leads for your campaigns.

It automatically manages both bidding and targeting with a view to increasing conversions.

Advertisers supply creative, budget and CPA goals and to start with the system does the rest. It chooses placements for the campaign and monitors performance in real time, adjusting the campaign accordingly. The longer the campaign runs the more the optimizer learns what works and what doesn’t, and the better it gets at finding new placements likely to convert.

How many conversions?

Beta tests have shown that where advertisers already have a CPA of less than £10 and more than 10 conversions a day, the Explorer beta can expand the number of conversions to the point where they make up 30% of all conversions for the campaign.

And that’s it?

Not exactly. As an advertiser you can work in conjunction with the beta by removing poorly performing creative and adding new creative more likely to convert. You can also test out the receptiveness of offers by testing offer creatives within the Explorer Beta.

From a placement performance report you can identify the best performing placements and choose the manage them manually by adding them to your placement targeted campaigns and bidding up.

And of course if you already have lots of data about specific sites or categories in which you don’t want to appear, then these are good to add in as negatives.

Here’s a video that shows you a bit more about the Campaign Optimizer:

If you want Barracuda Digital to use the campaign optimizer to boost conversions from your display campaigns, please get in touch.