Google testing a new feature in Adwords where they automatically create new ads and ad groups without you knowing about it? Color me suspicious about this. This is the same Google that continues to shrink organic SEO real estate so they can make more money. Seems like having the wolf be in charge of the hen house.

http://searchengineland.com/google-launches-ads-added-adwords-pilot-know-far-268432

Interesting new way of doing remarketing with facebook banner ads. You can now try and poach your competitors potential customers. It’ll be interesting to see if Google copies this for it’s much bigger banner ad network.

http://marketingland.com/facebooks-retargeted-ads-broadened-include-rivals-site-page-audiences-203045

Google claims they’re doing this so that call data is consistent across all channels. But I’m suspicious and think that what Google really wants to do is get rid of call tracking if they can. Because call tracking can possibly show that customers paying for clicks are not getting customers and making money. Which is bad for Google.

http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/01/06/google-adwords-location-extension-changes

Looks like Google found a way to get advertisers to try native banner ads without them knowing. Google has new responsive banner ads. Makes sense. Make sure you have banner ads that can change size depending on which device someone uses. But when i went to preview the ad, it looks one of the templates is for native ads haha. For those that dont know, native ads are sneaky in that they try and look like part of the website you’re on, but it’s actually an ad. Like you go to ESPN and click on one of the news headlines, but it’s actually an ad. These ads are controversial because you’re almost tricking people to click on an ad and I’ve questioned the effectiveness of the tactic since it came out a couple years ago. Click ads are most effective when people click on them on purpose. I might look for a way to try and use the responsive banner ads without the native feature.

Ad blocking on cell phones is rare, whereas ad blocking on desktop computers continues to grow. Why? Because desktop websites that have advertising have way too many ads on 1 page. Even worse are the websites that have video ads automatically play, which slow down some computers. Hopefully publishers pay attention to this when deciding how many ads to cram into their mobile websites. The future of banner ads depends on publishers not getting too greedy with having too many ads on the same page.

https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Glimmer-of-Hope-Ad-Blocking-Battle/1014766

When I read people say that Google’s call only ads are the best thing ever, I think to myself, here is someone that doesn’t track actual results. In theory, call only ads are a good idea and when Google first launched them, I was pretty excited about it. But there are 2 major holes in the ad product. #1: not every push on the call button turns into a phone call. In other words, people push the call button, the dial pad pops up, but people don’t always follow through by pushing the call button on their dial pad that causes their phone to start dialing the number. Statistically at Customwave, we’ve seen on average 1 out of 3 pushes on the call button not convert to an actual call. The bigger problem is #2. Which is that with call only ads, the client gets a bunch of wrong # calls. Most calls from call only ads happen because the ad is at the very top. Let’s say someone is looking for Joe’s Auto Repair. Under Google’s broad match (which most advertisers use), ABC Auto Repair would be advertised for the “joe’s auto repair” search. And we’ve found that lots of searchers don’t pay too close attention to the ads and just assume that Google is going to have Joe’s Auto Repair at the very top, not realizing that the ads will sometimes pop up at the very top. So someone calls the client ABC Auto Repair, but they think they’re calling Joe’s Auto Repair. We’ve seen that anywhere between 33%-50% of calls we’ve gotten from call only have been wrong # calls. Then add in the negatives such as these pushes on the call button being close to double the price of website clicks and the fact that you can’t use remarketing and you can quickly realize that call only, as of now, performs worse than traditional website clicks.

http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/11/17/lawyer-marketing-strategies-adwords