A key component of developing a search ads strategy is understanding what other advertisers are doing, and using this intelligence to optimize campaigns for top performance. To empower advertisers to make better informed optimization decisions, Google are launching the Auction insights report.

Google already provide Impression share columns within campaign and ad group reports that show the percentage of impressions received, compared to the estimated number of impressions for which they were eligible. While this report gives valuable insight into missed opportunities in aggregate, it also raises additional questions -- who competes in the same auctions, and can performance data be made available at a more detailed level?

When Google first created custom alerts, they wanted to provide advertisers with a way to be notified when certain behaviours or changes occurred in their AdWords account. Over time, they observed that most advertisers wanted to take action when such triggers occurred within their accounts. Many of these actions can now be done by creating automated rules - a tool within AdWords that enables you to schedule automatic changes to specific parts of your account based on the criteria that you specify.

Based on automated rules adoption, Google have decided to sunset custom alerts. Starting June 15, they will disable creation of new alerts and by the end of June, they will stop triggering existing alerts. This means that on June 30, you will not see custom alerts in your AdWords account. If you selected email as your notification method, this means you will no longer receive alert emails.

Google are actively working to bring an email-only option in automated rules so you can be notified when a rule requirements are met without taking any action. In the meantime, contact your Red Wasp account manager for some of the common ways you can use automated rules to save you time in managing your account.

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When Google launched bid simulator in 2009, they wanted to make it easy for us to understand the impact of bids on our advertising results. Until now, we’ve been able to access bid simulator at the keyword and ad group level.

To allow us to more easily simulate and apply bid changes at scale, Google have announced the launch of campaign bid simulator.

Google have been listening closely to the suggestions put forward by adwords users on how to reduce the guesswork involved with building new campaigns. To help improve the campaign building process, they’re rolling out improvements to the Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator.

Improvements to the Keyword Tool

• See keyword ideas grouped by themes: With the updated Keyword Tool, you can easily view suggestions for new ad group themes and quickly choose to add ad groups directly to your account.

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On 26th May 2012 all UK web sites must offer users opt-in consent tools to allow cookies (used by Google and other web analytics) that pass information about your browsing activities to 3rd parties.

We have canvassed opinion from all of the major browsers and Google themselves and there seems to be a 'wait and see' attitude. The industries opinion is that the Law makers have over legislated and that the legislation will be changed or withdrawn. That may be true but for now the legislation stands and with 17 days left before it comes into effect it's decision time....

Option 1 - Do Nothing

As this effects 90% of websites in Europe it is going to be impossible for the legislators to enforce this on mass. The most likely outcome is that they will target some high profile companies and fine them in the hope that word will spread. The maximum fine is £500,000 so although the chances of it effecting you are slim, doing nothing is risky.

5 mistakes to avoid when using...

Google Adwords remains one of the most powerful web marketing tools out there and PPC is at the forefront of many companies' digital marketing campaigns. However, with more advertisers than ever before using Adwords, it can be tough to to ensure your campaign is as successful as it should be, especially when you are competing against so many others for keywords. By avoiding the mistakes below, you should be on the right track for a successful PPC campaign.

So what is 'Modified Broad Match'?

Modified broad match is an AdWords, pay per click, targeting feature that lets you create keywords which have greater reach than phrase match, and more control than broad match.

To use this match type put a +(plus) sign in front of the words in your keyword to ensure they feature in the search. For example