Promoted Video pricing change: Focusing on the value of views

Promoted Videos have proven to be an effective and popular way for advertisers to drive traffic to video content on YouTube. This format allows you to promote videos on YouTube when users are searching for or watching videos. Until now, Promoted Videos have been priced on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis; similar to AdWords search ads, you were charged every time a user clicked on a Promoted Video ad.

Beginning on May 25th, we’re changing the pricing structure of this format to a cost-per-view (CPV) model, shifting the focus to actual viewership. This change means you’ll be charged only when a user clicks on a Promoted Video ad and starts to watch your video content. This pricing model ensures that your advertising costs are more closely connected to your goal of driving trackable video viewership.

How Bids Work

When you create your Promoted Video ad, you'll be asked to set a maximum CPV, which is the maximum amount you're willing to pay for a video view. Promoted Videos use the AdWords discounter to automatically reduce your costs. As always, we’ll only charge you one cent more than the next advertiser on the page competing for the same or similar keywords/placements, ensuring auction-driven efficiencies.

What You’ll See

As before, Promoted Video campaigns can be set up and managed right in AdWords or via ads.youtube.com. As of May 25th, billing terms from all Promoted Videos campaigns will officially convert from CPC to CPV and will be reflected in your advertising dashboards in both systems. If you’re using AdWords to purchase Promoted Videos on YouTube, you may continue to see mentions of CPCs in your campaign dashboard as we introduce additional CPV formats and adjust verbiage in the system.

Please visit the Help Center for more details and FAQs. Our hope is that this change in the pricing model aligns Promoted Videos more closely with your goals, driving the right results for your business.

Posted by Baljeet Singh, Senior Product Manager, YouTube

Comparison Ads now a part of the new Google Advisor

Back in late 2009, we launched our initial test of AdWords Comparison Ads for Mortgages. With Comparison Ads, we provided a way for you, our advertisers, to create more relevant and targeted offers for users searching on Google.com. For example, using Comparison Ads, a lender can enter offers for users with specific credit ratings, loan amounts, ZIP codes, and more.

Since our initial mortgages launch, we’ve expanded into a number of additional financial areas, including credit cards, checking and savings accounts, and certificates of deposit. We’ve also seen some great recognition of the value that Comparison Ads provides. For example, according to a study done by Leads360, an industry leader in lead management software, mortgage leads from AdWords Comparison Ads converted at a higher rate than from any other source.

Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Google Advisor, our new user-friendly interface for comparison offers, including AdWords Comparison Ads. Google Advisor is a consumer destination site that helps to guide users through various financial decisions by making it even easier to find and compare relevant offers from qualified financial institutions.

Google Advisor contains offers that come from our Comparison Ads advertisers as well as other sources across the web. By aggregating the most relevant offers and making it easy for users to filter and compare them side-by-side, Google Advisor aims to make financial research faster and easier.

To learn more about Google Advisor, you can read the Official Google Blog post or watch the video below.

At this time, AdWords Comparison Ads remains available only to a limited number of advertisers. Over time, we hope to increase the availability of Comparison Ads to additional advertisers. You can find more information about AdWords Comparison Ads in our Help Center.

Location targeting updates in AdWords

One of the main benefits of online advertising is the ability to target campaigns to specific locations, such as cities, regions, or countries. For example, to reach users looking for rental cars in San Francisco, a car rental company could target a campaign to San Francisco and include only San Francisco-specific discounts in the ads.

In February, we launched city targeting in an additional 17 countries, and our goal is to make location targeting more accurate, easier to use, and more flexible. As part of planning for future improvements, we’re making several changes to our AdWords location targeting capabilities. These changes will start occurring after July 8, 2011, and include:

Changes to existing available locations: Due to changes in real-world geography or the existence of duplicate or overlapping location targets, we’re removing certain location targets in countries such as Japan, Denmark, Spain, and the Netherlands, among others. For example, in 2010, six provinces were abolished in Finland, and while you’ll no longer be able to target these provinces, you can continue targeting cities in Finland. You won’t be able to target these provinces in AdWords, but you’ll be able to continue targeting cities in Finland. After the changes take effect, you won't be able to add the locations that are listed here to new campaigns. If you're currently targeting any of these locations in your existing campaigns, you should migrate them to the recommended targets in the list. Otherwise, we'll migrate them automatically. Please review the list carefully since some of these changes will result in migration to larger locations.

Sunset of custom shapes (multi-point or polygon targets): You’ll no longer be able to add multi-point targets in AdWords. You’ll still be able to view and delete existing shapes in your current campaigns, and we’ll continue to use them until the end of 2011. After that, all polygon targets that are still present in your AdWords campaigns will be migrated to available locations such as a nearby city or a map point with a radius. We encourage you to replace your polygon targets with these alternatives or we’ll migrate them automatically at end of 2011.

Removal of ‘Show address in the ad’ feature: In some countries, you currently have the option to show an address with your ads by checking the “Allow address to show in my ad” option for campaigns that target an area around a map point. This option will no longer be available. If you want to display your business address or phone number, you’ll need to use AdWords location extensions.

If you’re using these features with the AdWords API, check out the AdWords API Blog for more information on the changes being made.

These changes will take place after July 8, 2011. We recommend that you adjust the location targeting settings of your campaigns immediately with the available alternatives.