Display creative checklist: building direct response ads

If you’re designing display ads and have direct response goals, your ads need to catch the user’s eye, convey key information, and encourage them to click and explore your website. To get you started, we’ve put together the top ten tips learned through the collective experience of hundreds of Google AdWords account teams. These ten tips will help drive effective direct response marketing campaigns.

1. Call-to-Action
A call-to-action phrase or button encourages users to click on your ad and clearly lets them know what is coming next. While direct call-to-actions such as “Buy Now!“ may be common, they can also be too insistent. Using indirect call-to-actions like “Explore Now“ or short phrases such as “Travel Your Dream“ help encourage action without demanding a strong commitment.

2. Call-to-Action in Every Frame

Include a call-to-action & key message in every frame of your ad – especially the final frame. This ensures that you get across these two very important points no matter when the user’s attention is drawn to your ad. When your animation stops, your ad will continue to compel action from users.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Company or Brand logo
Keep your brand or product logo in front of users in all frames. This will highlight your brand and can heighten credibility and increase your click-through rate. If this isn’t possible, include your logo in the final frame of animated ads to ensure your brand shows after animation has ended.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Pricing and Promotion
The more information on pricing that a user can gain from your display ad, the better. Consider providing promotional pricing to the audiences your ad is reaching. Discount offers supported by discount codes can help attract attention. If users don’t like the price or terms of your offer, they won’t click on your ad. Pre-qualifying users can save you the cost of that click.

5. Clear Value Proposition
Include a clear, compelling message highlighting the benefit of your product or service. If your ad is animated,

consider presenting a value proposition in each frame. Users should feel as though they are missing out on something by not clicking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Sense of Urgency
Create a sense of urgency in your ad. Referring to deadlines or limits in quantity and availability can persuade users to give your message consideration right away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7. Coordinate Colors & Images
Customize the color scheme of your ad to match your image or logo, and use easy-to-view colors for backgrounds and fonts. Extremely bright colors can be unpleasant and difficult to read. Using transparent PNG-format images can greatly improve aesthetics within your ad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8. Balance Text & Images
Take advantage of both text and images to convey your message. Text and images are processed by different parts of the brain. Integrating both into your ad – harmoniously – can help you influence viewers cognitively and emotionally. Complementary text and images may help viewers remember your ad long after they have seen it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9. Relevant Landing Page
Direct users to the most relevant landing page where the product or service is described in detail. The message on the page should match the message or promotion in your ad. This can have a positive impact on your users, conversion rate, and quality score. Remember to match the look & feel of your ad to the landing page.

Display Ad

Landing Page

10. Cast a Wide Net

Create your ad in every standard size or format to ensure that it reaches all of the highest performing corners of the Google Display Network. Some sites only accommodate specific formats and ad sizes. A full suite of ad sizes will improve your ad’s chances of appearing on those sites.

Top of page bid estimates

We’re excited to announce a new metric in AdWords, top of page bid estimates, to provide additional assistance in optimizing your ads to show above the search results. Analogous to first page bid estimates, this metric approximates the cost-per-click (CPC) bid needed for your ad to appear regularly in the top positions above the search results.

This feature complements the new “Top vs. side” report segment, which allows you to see how your ads perform above and to the side of Google search results. This information helps you better optimize your search campaigns by more deeply examining the relationship between your ads’ locations and their clicks and conversions. On average, ads that appear above the search results tend to get substantially more clicks than ads that appear on the side. Using this information in conjunction with the new top of page bid estimates can give you greater insight with which to plan your bidding strategy.

Note: While the top of page bid estimates can help guide your bid planning, bidding higher than the top of page bid estimate will not guarantee a top ad position. Ad position will still depend on Quality Score, your CPC bid, your budget and account settings, and user and competing advertiser behavior.

Here’s how you can view your top of page bid estimates:

• Go to the Keywords tab.
• Click the Columns button.
• Select Customize columns from the drop-down menu.
• Check the Est. top of page bid box and click Save.

(click for full-size image)

Visit the AdWords Help Center to learn more about top of page bid estimates.

AdWords Editor Version 9.5 for Windows and Mac now available

Today, we’re excited to announce Ad-words Editor 9.5! This version supports Campaign Experiments, Location Extensions, and plenty of other features to boost your productivity while managing your Ad-Words campaigns. We’ve highlighted the key changes below, and you can see the complete list of feature updates in the Ad-words Editor Version 9.5 release notes.

Ad-words Editor Version 9.5 highlights:

Campaign Experiments
You can now do the following to maintain your campaign experiments:

Apply and edit an experiment status (e.g. “control only”, “experiment only”, “control and experiment”) at the ad group, ad, or keyword level.
Apply and edit a Default Max. CPC, Display Network Max. CPC, or Max. CPM bid multiplier at the ad group level.
Apply and edit a Max. CPC bid multiplier at the keyword level.
Import and export experiment status and bid multipliers in both CSV and XML formats.

Location Extensions
Version 9.5 supports new and existing location extensions. You can create new manual location extensions for any address, modify existing locations, and download/upload location extensions in CSV and XML formats.

Background Download
If you’re working on several large accounts, you can now download them in the background while you’re working on another open account. This can be a great time saver by allowing you to continue working rather than waiting for the download to finish.

We also listened to your feedback and made several usability improvements, including improved revert functionality and streamlined Add Multiple Items workflow.

The next time you log into your Ad-words Editor account, you will be prompted to upgrade. You may also download Version 9.5 from the Ad-words Editor website. After you install the new version of Ad-words Editor, you will need to download your accounts again. To preserve your comments and un posted changes, select the Backup then Upgrade option in the automatic upgrade prompt and save the backup file to your computer. Then, re-download your account and import the backup file to Ad-words Editor. A small portion of users may need to manually uninstall the previous version of Ad-words Editor.

Linking all of your AdWords accounts to Google Analytics

This week, Gavin Doolan, an Analytics specialist shares some of improvements to AdWords linking in Google Analytics v5.

We are happy to announce a new feature that will allow you to use multiple AdWords accounts with Google Analytics more effectively.

Previously it was only possible to link a single AdWords account to a single Google Analytics account. This made it more challenging to use auto-tagging and the AdWords reports inside of Google Analytics.

Starting today, you can now link multiple AdWords accounts to your Google Analytics account. The new data sources section in the Google Analytics account settings area makes it easy to use auto-tagging with multiple AdWords accounts and import your AdWords data into Google Analytics.

Let’s take a look at how to set this up:

Before you start, make sure that you’re using a Google account that has access to both your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts, and is an Administrator for the Analytics account.

If you want to link multiple AdWords accounts to a single Analytics account, you need to set the new version of Analytics as your default:

1. Sign into Google Analytics at http://www.google.com/analytics.

2. Click New Version at the top right of the page.

3. Click Make this version default.

If you skip this step, you won’t see the new linking interface when you sign into AdWords.

Linking your accounts

1. Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com.

2. Click the Reporting and Tools tab, then click Google Analytics.

3. Click the gear icon at the top right.

4. Click All Accounts at the top left of the page.

5. Click the account to which you want to link the AdWords account.

6. Click the Data Sources tab.

7. Click the AdWords tab.

8. Click Link Accounts button.

If you are linking from a My Client Center child account the process is very similar. You can more in this article: Linking Analytics Accounts to My Client Center (MCC) Accounts.

Improvements to applying AdWords account data to multiple profiles

Now that you can link multiple AdWords accounts to Google Analytics, we’ve also made it easier import your AdWords data into multiple profiles in Google Analytics. We have put together a quick video demonstrating how to do this:

If you’re less of a visual learner, you can always find instructions on how to link accounts in the Google Analytics Help Center.