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Now you can make it even easier for potential customers to reach you by adding a location-specific business phone number in ads that appear on mobile devices with full internet browsers. Users can click the number to call you just as easily as clicking to visit your website. And, since ads can be served based on user location, a potential customer will see -- and can click to call -- the phone number of your store location that's nearest to them, not one that's across town.

This new feature also makes it easier for you to fully measure the results of your ads by allowing you to track how many calls you actually receive.

Advertisers who participated in the beta trial have seen improved click-through rates. Plus, many advertisers received more visits to their websites in addition to incremental phone calls.

To show a click-to-call business phone number in ads on mobile devices with full Internet browsers, follow these two steps:

1. Set up location extensions and add your business phone number. Customers will be able to click to call your business location nearest to them.


2. Check that you've chosen to show your ads on iPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers in your campaign settings.


That's it. Customers can now click to call you from your ads. If your campaigns are already set up this way, your phone numbers will start showing as click-to-call on mobile devices with full browsers automatically. The cost of a click to call your business will be the same as the cost of a click to visit your website.

To find out how many calls you've received from your ads, go to the Campaign Summary tab in your AdWords account. Click the "Filter and views" dropdown (step 1 in the screenshot below) and select "Segment by", then "Click Type" (steps 2, 3). The report shows how many clicks and how many calls you received (step 4). You can view calls received at the campaign, ad group or keyword level.


If your campaigns are already set up with phone numbers in location extensions and opted in to mobile devices with full browsers, but you'd prefer to opt-out out of click-to-call, simply remove the phone number from your location extensions in AdWords.

Check out how click-to-call works in our latest Mobile (Ad)itude video below, or visit the AdWords Help Center to learn more.


Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew
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This feature makes it easier for you to reach the right users if you have a carrier- or device-specific message. This includes landing pages that have been optimized for a specific device, billing relationships with certain carriers, or mobile apps developed for a specific platform. For example, if you sell iPhone cases, you can use device targeting to ensure that users with Android phones won't see your ads.



Starting today, we're also making sure that ads linking to mobile app downloads will automatically appear only on devices that offer those apps. Plus, the ad will display a 'Download' link instead of a URL. Simply include 'itunes.apple.com/' or 'market.android.com/' followed by the app name in the ad's visible URL, and it will automatically display as 'Download iPhone App' or 'Download Android App.'




We hope these new features will deliver a better, more relevant user experience.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew
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AdWords system maintenance typically occurs on the second Saturday of each month from 10AM to 2PM.

We'll continue to update you via the blog as we always have, but please make note of the January 9th date and of our scheduled maintenance further down the road.

Posted by Emily Williams, Inside AdWords crew
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As part of our new Optimization University initiative, we've developed a Getting Started Guide and a series of 6 videos to help answer this question for you. The guide and videos provide a conceptual walk-through and demo of the major steps involved in executing a Content Network campaign. These include:
Along with simple tips and tricks to improve ROI, we also go over several tools, such as the Wonder Wheel, the Keyword Tool and Conversion Tracking, that can help you be more efficient. These recommendations are based on our analysis of thousands of campaigns to understand what works and what doesn't. We hope you can start applying them to your campaigns today.

If you're starting a new Content Network campaign, watch the first video below; you may find it to be particularly valuable.

(click here to view video)

You can also always bookmark the playlist or find all the latest videos on our YouTube channel.

[Note: this post is reprinted from the Google Agency Ad Solutions Blog.]

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew
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