Google gained Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation for Active View!

Google gained Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation for its viewability measurement solution, Active View, which it introduced last year.

With Active View, advertisers will be charged only for impressions that meet the IAB’s proposed viewability standard of at least 50% on screen for one second or longer.

Google says it will be building the viewability standard into products for both advertisers and publishers. Active View reporting will be available on the Google Display Network (GDN) and in DoubleClick for Advertisers and DoubleClick for Publishers this year.

Marketers intuitively believe that consumers will more likely click on a viewable ad, but Google now has the data to back up the assertion by comparing ads by the number of seconds they appeared on screen and found on the Google Display Network (GDN).

Google Adwords support launched Screensharing to assist you more efficiently!

Google Adwords Support Forum announced the launch of Google Screensharing to help you reveal your display screen with the Google AdWords help staff.  This way the AdWords support rep can show you things on your screen and help you with your issues.

 

Google Analytics introduced “Customer Journey to Online Purchase!”

Google Analytics has launched a new tool, the Customer Journey to Online Purchase.

The analytics is assumed to be a new benchmarking tool that will provide marketers insight into different elements that impact a single campaign. 

According to Google’s announcement, the benchmark report identifies how the purchase path differs between industries. Google encourages analytics users to compare their data with relevant industry benchmark data to determine how different channels influence conversions and to see what their industry’s average path to purchase looks like.

Google introduced new tools for display ads!

Display planner is a tool in your account that provides targeting ideas and estimates to help you plan a Display campaign that you can later add to your AdWords account.

Display Planner is part of AdWords, so with one click you can add your plan directly to your account, or download to share it. Display Planner will be available in the Tools & Analysis menu, and will be rolling out to the US over the course of this week, and globally in the next few weeks.  

New upgrade center for upgrading AdWords accounts to Enhanced Campaigns!

Google announced the launch of a new upgrade center for upgrading AdWords accounts to Enhanced Campaigns.  Accessible from the left-hand navigation bar on the Campaigns tab, the upgrade center lets advertisers managing several campaigns perform bulk upgrades to multiple campaigns simultaneously and merge selected campaigns in a few simple steps. The center lets advertisers upgrade several campaigns at once and merge them together.

In a blog post, Google explains how to use the tool:

The upgrade center will roll-out to advertisers over the next few weeks.

Google added functionality for social annotations and in-app ad targeting to enhanced campaigns!

From now on AdWords advertisers can easily highlight their Google+ follower counts in their enhanced campaigns. On average, Google says, ads with these follower counts have “a 5-10% higher click-through rate” than regular ads.

Also, Advertisers targeting app users can set in-app ad bids based on user context, including location, time of day and device, with enhanced campaigns. 

Google bringing Google-wide identities to YouTube!

Google is going to introduce a long requesting feature that will enable users to link their Google+ page identity to YouTube channel.

Linking a Google+ page with YouTube channel has several benefits:

• It will enable page owners to add multiple managers to their channel
• Owners can choose or rename their channel & page
• The Hangouts On Air will be properly linked
• It will result in an improved video sharing to YouTube, Google+, and more
• Owners will have a YouTube tab on their page

Google+ profiles and pages are two types of Google identities and users have to choose the one which they think is right for their YouTube channel.

The feature is still in beta phase.  YouTube Creator Blog is sharing a tutorial to get started with the process.

Google site speed study: Is the web getting faster?

Google has always given importance to speed. In 2011, they launched the Page Speed reports and tools to help site owner’s speed up their pages load time.

The latest Google site speed study has revealed that the web is getting faster.  Google has determined that the web is getting fasters because of the improving technology and more powerful servers. The continuous deployment of 4G/LET towers has also contributed to the increased speed. Speed and processing powers of mobile devices are also some other factors.

The study also disclosed that average size of web pages has increased 56 percent since 2012. 

Google has published an entire set of webmaster help documentation centered around site speed. From how Google measures site speed to practical advice on what it means for you as a site owner.

Google experimenting with a new quick view badge!

Google is experimenting with a new “Quick View” badge that will appear next to select results when a searcher uses Google Mobile search from their smartphone.  Much like the standard Web site preview pop-up window, this quick view feature will pull into the results page a view of common target location. For instance, the blog uses for the sample search for “poker hands” for that will pop up a quick view of a Wikipedia page listing for that has a common poker hands.

Google is calling this the Quick View experimental project, and it is beginning with mobile-friendly versions of relevant Wikipedia pages for English-language searches. The offering will extend to webmasters' participation in the program over time as well.

Google introduces new “x-default hreflang” annotation for International Landing Pages!

Google have released details on a new annotation which allows webmasters, who own multinational and multilingual sites, to specify when a page doesn’t target any specific language or location.

The tag helps Google to understand multinational or multilingual sites which redirect or change their pages content for their users. The annotation is supported by Google and Yandex.

The webmaster team has also shared an example to further explain the action.