Google has added geographic performance information to a new report available to help marketers using the  Internet giant's popular online ad management program AdWords refine their marketing campaigns, the Mountain View, California-based search leader announced Thursday. The new Google reports have added information showing where AdWords ad campaigns have had the most and least success with Web users, from locations as small as the city level all the way up to a breakdown by country. Location Data Stretching Back More Than A Year To Help AdWords Users AdWords is Google's popular online ad management program. The large majority of Google's 2007 $16.6 billion ad sale revenue came from sales of the small text-based ads shown alongside search results and on its ad networks, managed by advertisers who bid for keywords through the AdWords program. The rapidly-growing online advertising market is expected to see spending increase toward the $50 billion mark during 2008, a 22 percent increase from last year according to research company eMarketer. The new geographic performance report was created to help AdWords users fine tune their marketing campaigns, Google said. "This report provides you with an understanding of the geographic distribution of your impressions, clicks, and conversions down to the ad group level," said Google Inside AdWords engineer Trevor Claiborne writing in a message announcing the new report Thursday on the company's AdWords blog. The reports, which analyze AdWords information dating back to May 27, 2007, are aimed at helping marketers using the Google program increase the effectiveness of their online ad campaigns. "By specifically targeting those locations where your ads perform best you can maximize your campaign's performance," Claiborne noted in the Thursday announcement. By combining the information from the new report showing where campaigns are performing the best with AdWords' existing ability to target ads based on location, AdWords users will have a better way to create more successful ads for their products and services, Google said. "You can use location targeting with any campaign to only show ads to users in certain geographic locations," Claiborne said. Popular City, Metro And Country Information Available Google users can use the new report to see which cities have proven the most successful for their AdWords campaigns, the top United States "metros", which Google based on Nielsen Media Research's 210 Designated Marketing Areas (DMAs), in addition to region and country popularity information. "The Geographic Performance report gathers approximated Country, Region, Metro, and City data and calculates them on a daily basis at the account, campaign, and ad group levels," Google said. In July Google began giving AdWords users popularity information for the keywords users of its leading search engine look for. That search volume data included the approximate number of times keywords were entered using the Google search engine or on the company's network of partner Web sites. "In June, we updated Google Trends with numbers and the ability to download results to a spreadsheet," said Claiborne at the time. "We received a lot of great feedback from agencies and advertisers on how they're using the new version; from identifying new growth markets to optimizing their Google AdWords campaigns," Claiborne added. Thursday's new AdWords report, available as a part of the programs existing online report center, displays geographic campaign success metrics for a single day, which can be as recent as the previous day, Google said. "To see the most accurate recent data for your account, wait until after 3:00 p.m. PST and run a Geographic Performance report for Yesterday," Google noted in the online help for the new report. Aggregate Data For Multiple Days Not Yet Automated "We are only offering 'daily' views in order to preserve the accuracy and precision of the impression counts and CTRs [Click Through Rates] in your Geographic Performance report," Google said, while recommending users manually add figures daily if they want to see "aggregate geographic data across multiple days." Some industry analysts saw room for future improvement in the new geographic performance reports should Google choose to offer the information automatically for multiple days, weeks, months and years. "Due to a threshold on impressions for our reporting calculations, doing aggregations of geographical data across multiple days will provide the correct number of clicks -- although it may report fewer impressions," Google said of its decision to offer the new reports for one day, noting that "a lower number of impressions results in inflated CTRs." Last month Google updated two free tools used for tracking how people find and use Web sites - including new features to weed out poorly performing Web site configurations and analyze Web pages before placing them online. Last month also saw Google broaden the type of research advertisers and consumers in general can perform on how people use its leading search engine, with a new tool called Google Insights for Search that has expanded on data analysis features introduced over the past two months in its Trends and AdWords services. Google Gives AdWords Users Geographic Marketing Data The addition of the geographic metrics data launched Thursday will help AdWords users see how campaigns  have performed either for an entire account or over specific campaigns or ad groups, including information on ad distribution, budgeting, CTR and average cost per click, Google said. The new location reporting features come as the latest in a string of upgrades Google has rolled out for the AdWords program over the year. In May Google gave U.S. AdWords users a service for advertising on television, ending a private invitation-only test begun in June 2007. Google AdWords team member Christian Yee called the company's television advertising program a "flexible, all-digital system for easily and efficiently buying more accountable and measurable TV advertising." In April Google expanded the reach of AdWords on mobile devices, allowing online publishers to display four sizes of banner ads tailored to fit on the small screens normally found in mobile phones, in addition to the the text-based ads Google's mobile AdWords network has offered since 2006. "For publishers, mobile image ads provide added flexibility. They can now choose to show text ads, image ads, or a mix of both and Google will dynamically return the ad that we expect will perform best at the time the ad is shown," said Google Mobile Ads product marketing manager Alexandra Kenin. Related Links:
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8:23 pm on Sep. 4, 2008 (utc 0)