AdWords Plus! 4 Google+ Features in AdWords

The Google development team is on a role with tons of great additions to the platform. Last week Google released Google+ Business Pages and with the release came a torrent of really good stuff including the ability to connect your Google+ Page to your AdWords account using social extensions and a whole new set of data on how your ads are performing socially.

Here’s a snapshot of four of the new and really cool developments in regards to AdWords and Google+.

Social Extensions

Connect your website to your campaigns using social extensions so that all your +1s from your Page, your website, your ads, and your search results get tallied together and appear as a single total displayed to users. If your Google+ Business Page is not connected to your campaign via social extensions your ad will show to users with the +1 count resulting from users who have +1’d the landing page for that ad.

Connecting your page aggregates your +1’s from all sources, increasing the likelihood of showing your ad with a +1 from within your user’s social graph. This ad is now more relevant to the user who is searching for your brand, product, or service.

+1 Annotation Data

Social annotation data has also started to roll out in accounts showing the performance of ads that display with general +1’s and performance of ads that display with +1’s from within a user’s social graph.

You can view this social annotation data within your account by segmenting campaigns by ‘+1 Annotation Data’ in the segmentation drop down.

Your campaign data will be segmented out into three line items per campaign, personal, basic, and none. Personal +1 annotations are similar to Facebook’s social reach, the performance of an ad that displayed with the +1 from within a personal social graph. Basic +1 annotations reveal the performance of an ad that included a general count of +1’s but not from within a personal social graph, not +1’s that the user searching is connected to socially. The last category of none, is a baseline performance of an ad that had no +1’s at all.

These categories are available for all the metrics located in the columns drop down of the user interface.

+1 Button in Display Ads

Google has also started to display the +1 button in ads running on the Display Network. Advertisers are given a choice as to whether or not they would like to display the +1 button on their ads on the Display Network; you can find this setting in the advanced section of the settings tab under social settings.

Display Targeting Via +1 Data

There is a pretty significant reason for allowing advertisers the ability to run off +1’s in their Display ads. They will effect targeting of the ads. As Google moves more toward audience and behavioral targeting on their Display Network, targeting has become more about the user and less about the content.

The +1 button will now factor in to whether or not a user browsing content on the web will see your ad when you are targeting contextually on the GDN. If your campaign is set to show ads on pages that match the broadest targeting method Google may show your ad to connections and contacts of users who have +1’d your ad.

If your campaign settings are set to target specific audiences or placements the additional signal will not alter your targeting, but it’s definitely good reason to keep an eye on the segments discussed above.

What about Quality Score?

Social signals from Google+ do not influence keyword quality score, in that they are not included in the quality score algorithm. However, CTR does increase due to user’s recognition of someone from their social graph and that person’s endorsement the ad.

AdWords is evolving rapidly and the integration with Google+ is exciting and very interesting. We hope to see much more accurate and relevant targeting options based on the information gathered from the Google+ Project in the future. Until then, happy advertising!