Here’s what Google had to say:

We’re currently testing a feature with a small number of advertisers in which a phone number can be included within the ad to help them more effectively engage with customers who prefer to connect over the phone.

Obviously this makes the ad stand out just a little bit more – and because it’s placed above the actual text of the ad it affords more room to get your message across unlike the ad below it which had to take up valuable advertising space in order to add their phone number.

It will be interesting to see where this leads in the future.

This past Wednesday Google announced Product Listing Ads.  And rather tell you what they are, let me show you.

This first image is your typical search results page with the ads and organic listings highlighted.  This search was for “snow boots”.

Google Product Ads Example 1

This second image is another search results page but this time, this one has the Google Product Listing ads included within it.  This search was for “bed in a bag”.

Google Product Listing Ads Example 2

Notice the difference?

The new Google Product Listing ads now allow advertisers to show images next to their advertisements.

This new feature is open to those AdWords advertisers who have products in the Google Merchant Center (formerly Google Base) which was rolled out at the end of September 2009.

Unlike traditional AdWords advertisements where you pay every time someone clicks on one of your ads, you only pay whenever someone actually purchases a product from your site.

Additionally, again unlike AdWords, you don’t have to worry about keywords or any additional advertising text.  If a user searches on a keyword phrase that is relevant to a product that you offer and that product is listed in the Google Merchant Center, Google will show the most relevant products for that user along with the image, price and the product name.  As Google states:

“Product Listing Ads makes it easy for you to promote your entire product inventory on Google.com.”

It’s currently only available to certain advertisers and is still in beta.

What I find interesting is that not too long ago, some AdSense publishers realized that if you put images next to AdSense ads on your website those AdSense ads received more clicks.  This seemed to work very well for a lot of publishers until Google caught onto what was happening and made it “illegal”.

Ironically enough, they’re doing the same exact thing on their search results pages; one can only assume that it actually worked very well and so much so that Google has decided to incorporate the same strategy into their own websites.

All that said, what does this mean to you?

1. Once Google rolls this out to the public in general, it will be interesting to see if these images also show up in your AdSense ads on your website.  If they do and your website refers to say, “bed in a bag”, and Google shows ads in AdSense that also advertise “beds in a bag”, you’ll have to make some decisions as to whether or not you want competitors ads showing up on your site for the same or similar products.  I could see a lot of websites opting out of AdSense for this reason.
2. If you do have products in the Google Merchant Center, because Google will know what converts to a sale and what doesn’t, they’ll now have access to your sales data.
3. If these images begin to show at the top of the page where current AdWords text ads show, this will push down the organic search results; and in some cases “below the fold”.  Which means that web searchers will have to scroll down to view the organic search results.

The bottom line is, if you have a product and it’s listed in the Merchant Center, this could mean higher profits for you.

On the flip side, if you’re simply trying to get your website seen in the organic search results for a product search, you might have to rethink your optimization strategy.

I can’t possibly be the only one.

See, here’s the thing…

When you use AdWords to advertise, you have three ways of adding your keywords to advertise on.

Broad match

“Phrase Match” and

[Exact Match]

I’m not going to get into all of the details on what each of these are but the differences are vitally important and I’ll cover that in an upcoming video, but suffice it to say, if you want all of your keywords to be in phrase match or broad match they NEED those characters around the keyword.

The problem is, Google doesn’t make it easy to add these characters unless you use their keyword tool.

But sometimes I don’t use their keyword tool, actually, I only use it when comparing keywords – I get a vast majority of my keyword data from Wordtracker.

And it’s a pain in the butt to add each of these characters to my keywords so that they show up how I want them to in AdWords.

Well, I’ve found this handy little tool that will do it for you at http://www.formatclick.com/index.php.  Just follow the instructions, paste in your keywords and just like that you’ll have all of your keywords ready with the phrase match option or the exact match option included.

Oh, and in the event that you’re in need of some misspelled keywords, head on over to http://www.selfseo.com/keyword_typo_generator.php which lets you enter in a keyword or keyword phrase and get multiple ways that keyword or phrase could be misspelled.

Now, in case you’re totally clueless as to what AdWords is and how it works, here’s a quick video from Google (not mine obviously) that should help clear things up for you:

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In the session “Facebook Ads: Reaching Prospects Earlier In The Decision Cycle,” Sarah Smith, Manager of Online Sales Operations, Facebook, offered tips on targeting your audience, creating compelling ads and getting a solid return on investment.

Coverage of the SES San Jose conference continues at WebProNews Videos.  Stay with WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.

Sarah Smith

Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open. Facebook has over 250 million users globally and has open registration.

Facebook allows you to target your exact audience. With other ad options you are not able to target your exact audience.

Targeting capabilities structured and unstructured. Structured includes: location, age/birthday, gender, education, workplace, relationship and language.

Unstructured (keywords): activities, interests, music, TV, movies, and books.

Keywords are generated because users actually put these words in their profile.

Tips to top ROI on Facebook ads:

- Experiment with multiple ads
- Target relevant audiences
- Design and refresh compelling creative
- Create and optimize socially enabled landing pages
- Use Facebook reporting
- Become a fan of Facebook Ad page

Users can decide what they think of Facebook ads by giving them thumbs up or thumbs down. This can help advertisers refine their approach.

Consumers can become fans of your page via Facebook ads using links to the page.

Best practices to boost CTR:

1. Keep ads short and simple
2. Ask questions in ad text
3. Avoid overcapitalization
4. Strong call to action “ACT NOW!”
5. Mention offers or discount code

Design ads that demand attention
-target the right people and find success

Refresh creative with simple changes
-color of the image…

Exploit pockets of opportunity
Adjust landing pages for engagement
Build a fan base to connect with customers
Optimize with Facebook ad manager
Dig into Facebook reports
Report type
Set up a test with Facebook ads
Use unique tracking links to measure ROI
Experiment
Mix targeting

Question & Answer:
Are ads currently being approved only in English?

Ad approval process is being built out in Facebook to cater to other languages.

How do we use CTR versus thumbs up/thumbs down? What’s the correlation?

Not sure. Both the CTR and thumbs up/thumbs down both weigh equally.

How do you know what clickthrough rate to expect?

Advised that you bid on the high end and adjust later on. Facebook doesn’t have any benchmark right now but says that you shouldn’t expect same CTR on Google AdWords on Facebook Ads. Seen ads with high ROI and be successful with a .04 CTR.

Why do I want to target those people who are already of my page?

May not necessarily be customers yet.

What is the definition of a fan in the sense of the sales funnel?

Example is Maria Smith (?) – you get more exposure by that free exposure. A fan is a potential customer or evangelist of your business. Can also be influencers. Companies can also use it as a CRM tool to get feedback on their products.

Will Facebook be implementing tracking codes to monitor conversions?

They are looking at it – it’s a huge value for advertisers but it’s difficult for Facebook right now.

Your Display URL is the URL that individuals see on your ad when it’s displayed in Google AdWords.
Your Destination URL is the URL where visitors go when they click on your ad.

Google’s policy now states that these must be the same URL.

To make this clear since the direct explanation from Google can be a little obscure, this means that within the same Ad Group you cannot use two different root URLs.  This means that you cannot use:

• http://www.SomeSite.com and
• http://www.SomeOtherSite.com

within the same Ad Group.
But,  you can use subdomains within that same Ad Group.  So for example, you could display http://www.SomeSite.com and have the ad land on a page at http://info.SomeSite.com.  You could also use http://www.SomeSite.com/folder/.

Google will begin to deactivate those Ad Groups that are using more than one root domain.  Again, this will start to happen on April 1st, 2009 if it hasn’t already begun.  If you want to know more about how to fix your Ad Groups so that they comply with the new policies, visit the information provided by Google.

Google has rolled out the ability to advertise your videos on YouTube as a way to help your video get seen the same way that your ads get seen on a Google search results page.

Google is narrowing its focus more and more on segments of its audience and advertising via YouTube is another method of many that I’m sure we’re going to see in the future.

Not a whole lot of people are aware that they can advertise their videos much like they advertise text ads on AdWords and so the chances of you getting seen for a highly competitive keyword or phrase is much better and logic would have it, much cheaper than AdWords text-based advertising itself (at least for now).

Here’s an example, if I am at YouTube and I simply type in the keyword “baby” I get a list of about three sponsored videos on the right (highlighted in red).

YouTube Video Advertising

I haven’t yet noticed the typical “More Sponsored Links” that you usually see at the bottom of a typical Google search results page, like this (highlighted in red):

A screenshot of More Sponsored Links

So this leads me to believe that you’ve still got a window of time in which to get your video seen for your product or service, at least for a lower cost.

Google’s Video sponsored listings run much the same way as an AdWords advertisement would, you choose the keywords you want your video to rank for, set a price per click, and so on.  So if you’re already familiar with AdWords then the YouTube sponsored listings might be just what you’re looking for to ramp up your sales.

Some statistics say that 51% of Internet users spend time viewing videos online.  So why not take advantage of this while you can?