People are constantly connected, using multiple devices throughout the day to shop, communicate and stay entertained. A September 2013 study of multi-device consumers found that over 90% move sequentially between several screens for everyday activities like booking a hotel or shopping for electronics.

As consumers are increasingly on the go and switching between devices, marketers are telling us they want to see a more complete and accurate picture of how their online advertising drives conversions. Conversions can come in many forms: visits to stores, phone calls, app downloads, website sales or purchases made after consulting various devices. Getting better insight into these complex purchase paths can help you optimize your online advertising and allocate budget more effectively.

Introducing Estimated Total Conversions

Today, we are introducing Estimated Total Conversions for search ads on Google.com. This is an exciting first step to give marketers more insight into how AdWords drives conversions for your business by showing you both the conversions you see today, like online sales, as well as an estimate of conversions that take multiple devices to complete. Over time, we’ll be adding other conversion types like phone calls and store visits as well as conversions from ads on our search and display network.

Estimated Total Conversions will provide you with a holistic view of all of the conversions driven by your Google search advertising that can be used to make important decisions like how much to bid and how to assign budget across your various marketing channels. For the last few years, many sophisticated advertisers have been using their own analysis to get to these insights. Today, we are beginning to bring this level of insight and measurement to all advertisers.

Estimated cross-device conversions

Estimated cross-device conversions is the first new conversion type to launch as part of Estimated Total Conversions. Cross-device conversions start as a click on a search ad on Google.com on one device and end as a conversion on another device (or in a different web browser on the same device).

For example, say someone shops for “blue jeans” on her mobile phone while waiting for the morning train. She clicks on a mobile ad for ABC Blue Jeans. When she gets to her office, she goes directly to the ABC website to make a purchase. This is an example of a cross-device conversion. We calculate cross-device conversions using a sample of data from users who signed into multiple devices. Learn more about how this works.

Estimated cross-device conversions will begin rolling out globally to all AdWords advertisers starting today and continuing over the next few weeks. To see these new statistics, you’ll need AdWords conversion tracking and a sufficient volume of conversions on which to base a reliable estimate.

In the last few months, we’ve analyzed data across thousands of AdWords advertisers to learn more about cross-device conversion patterns.

When advertisers in the travel industry use AdWords estimated cross-device conversions, they are able to measure 8% more conversions, on average, than they did before. In addition, they can now measure 33% more conversions that originated on a mobile phone and later converted on different device. This helps them attribute all those sales -- from customers who searched for flights and hotels on their mobile phones and then made a purchase from another device -- to the right ad.

Similarly, other verticals, like entertainment and retail are also seeing positive results. Businesses in these industries are now able to measure 12% and 7% more conversions, respectively, than they could before using Estimated Total Conversions.

Sean Singleton, Marketing Manager at American Apparel noted that, "We always knew our online ad investment was influencing conversions across devices, but we didn't know how to begin estimating these numbers. Once we saw that 5.3% more conversions could be attributed to cross-device conversions in AdWords, we knew we could more accurately calculate the value we were receiving from each ad click. We also learned that mobile ads are driving 16% more conversions than we thought, so we are now investing more into this channel to gain more sales.”

More results from other verticals can be seen below.

Paving the way for marketers to measure the full value of their online advertising

We are committed to helping you gain insight into the new conversion types that are part of a constantly connected, multi-screen world so that you can make the best advertising decisions possible. In addition to cross-device conversions, both phone calls and store visits will be included as part of Estimated Total Conversions in the coming months. These are important conversions to consider — people make more than 40M calls to businesses each month directly from Google ads and are often looking for physical store locations when they search on Google, particularly on the go.

We look forward to your feedback on estimated cross-device conversions and are working hard to add new features. Over the coming weeks we’ll dive into the new features with tips and best practices on the Inside AdWords blog and on the new Think Insights page for conversions. We hope you will join us.

In many ways, Google Analytics and AdWords were made for each other. AdWords helps advertisers reach an audience and reports on advertising performance, and Google Analytics can tell you what actions your users take when they actually get to your site. You may have a high clickthrough rate (CTR) in AdWords, but what if you could see that 70% of those users left immediately after arriving on your landing page? While understanding the conversion rate of AdWords ads is critical, it’s also important to understand what happened to the users that did not convert or complete the action you wanted them to. For example, did users ‘bounce’ after landing on your site or did they view a few other pages and then leave? How much time did they spend on your site? Which keywords drive the majority of your Ecommerce revenue?

Thanks to built-in Google product integrations that provide unique insights into your data, you can view reporting and data in Google Analytics that directly relates back to your advertising in AdWords. Understanding how to use both of them together will help you refine your AdWords campaigns and improve the performance of your business.

Next Tuesday, join Rachel Witalec and Simon Rosen, Global Sales Strategy Leads, for a detailed look at how to use Google Analytics and AdWords together. In this webinar, we'll show you why it's important to link your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts, how to see both Google Analytics data in AdWords and AdWords data in Google Analytics, and walk through a live demo of the reports and how to use them. You'll learn how to make your marketing more effective by analyzing Google Analytics data, such as bounce rate, pages per visit, conversion rate, and Ecommerce revenue in conjunction with AdWords factors, such as keyword performance, ad copy, ad groups, and more. The webinar will also include a live Q&A section.

Search Funnels show you how users search for products before converting, allowing you to make better informed decisions in AdWords. Now, we're making it easier than ever to incorporate Search Funnels data into your everyday optimizations by introducing new Search Funnels columns that you can simply add to your campaign, ad group, keyword and ads tabs. You should see this feature available in your account within the next couple of days.

If you’ve enabled conversion tracking, you’ll be able to see a new section within the column customizer for Search Funnels. This section will allow you to add columns for many common Search Funnels metrics, such as assist clicks, click assisted conversions, and assist impressions.

If you’ve already enabled AdWords conversion tracking and are ready to get started, you can try some of our favorite optimization techniques:

Find keywords that are best at assisting conversions - Look for keywords with low conversion rates and a high click-assisted conversions / last-click conversion ratio. These keywords contribute significant conversion assists, meaning they are important early in the buying cycle as they drive visitors who are still researching your site. Consider setting up automated rules to increase your bids when conversion assists cross a certain threshold. Also, try creating a separate ad group for these keywords with ads that are geared more towards research than immediate purchase.

Pay your assist keywords their fair share - Make sure you’re not underbidding for keywords with assist clicks. You could be missing conversions if your bid management strategy only accounts for last-click conversions. Keywords with assist clicks are in the click path of users who eventually convert, so it’s important to assign value to these keywords.

Update your underperforming ads - Consider revising ads that have impression-assisted conversions and have a strong average position. These ads were shown to users who eventually converted but who did not click. Entice potential customers to visit your site with stronger call-to-action phrases in your ad creative. You may also want to consider raising your bids on these keywords if your average position is low to ensure that people see your ads.

Success in action

Jimdo, an international Internet company helping people build their own websites, talked to us about their success using Search Funnels columns:

Using the Search Funnels columns in AdWords has allowed us to both improve the volume of sales and efficiency that AdWords delivers.

By using these columns, and in particular the ratio of assisted conversions to last click conversions, we are able to identify and value keywords that play an important role in the upper funnel. Now knowing their importance, we improved our bids for these keywords, and have seen overall conversions increase by 30% and our ROI increase by 16%.

For more details on how to enable Search Funnels columns in your core reports, visit our help center.

Today we’re upgrading AdWords, by rolling out enhanced campaigns. This is a first step to help you more simply and smartly manage your ad campaigns in today’s multi-device world.

Why enhanced campaigns?People are constantly connected and moving from one device to another to communicate, shop and stay entertained. In fact, a recent study of multi-device consumers found that 90% move sequentially between several screens to accomplish a task. There’s also a proliferation of new devices — PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, hybrid devices, mini-tablets, televisions, and more. And there are many more digital screens and devices to come, with the lines between them continuing to blur. For example, as devices converge, consumer behaviors on tablets and desktops are becoming very similar.

This creates great opportunities for businesses, but can also make marketing more complex and time-consuming. For example, a pizza restaurant probably wants to show one ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 1pm on their PC at work (perhaps a link to an online order form or menu), and a different ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 8pm on a smartphone a half-mile from the restaurant (perhaps a click-to-call phone number and restaurant locator). Signals like location, time of day, and the capabilities of the device people are using have become increasingly important in showing them the right ad.

With enhanced campaigns, instead of having to cobble together and compare several separate campaigns, reports and ad extensions to do this, the pizza restaurant can easily manage all of this in one single place. Enhanced campaigns help you reach people with the right ads, based on their context like location, time of day and device type, across all devices without having to set up and manage several separate campaigns.

Key featuresHere’s an overview of some key features.

Powerful marketing tools for the multi-device worldPeople want search results that are relevant for the context they are in — their device, location and the time of day. Enhanced campaigns help you better manage your campaigns and budgets for this multi-device world. With bid adjustments, you can manage bids for your ads across devices, locations, time of day and more — all from a single campaign.

Example: A breakfast cafe wants to reach people nearby searching for "coffee" or "breakfast" on a smartphone. Using bid adjustments, with three simple entries, they can bid 25% higher for people searching a half-mile away, 20% lower for searches after 11am, and 50% higher for searches on smartphones. These bid adjustments can apply to all ads and all keywords in one single campaign.

Smarter ads optimized for varying user contextsPeople on the go or near your store may be looking for different things than someone sitting at their desk. With enhanced campaigns, you’ll show ads across devices with the right ad text, sitelink, app or extension, without having to edit each campaign for every possible combination of devices, location and time of day.

Example: A national retailer with both physical locations and a website can show ads with click-to-call and location extensions for people searching on their smartphones, while showing an ad for their e-commerce website to people searching on a PC — all within a single campaign.

Advanced reports to measure new conversion typesTechnology is enabling people to take action on your ads in new ways. Potential customers may see your ad and download your app, or they may call you. It’s been hard for marketers to easily measure and compare these interactions. To help you measure the full value of your campaigns, enhanced campaigns enables you to easily count calls and app downloads as conversions in your AdWords reports.

Example: You can count phone calls of 60 seconds or longer that result from a click-to-call ad as a conversion in your AdWords reports, and compare them to other conversions like leads, sales and downloads.

Upgrading to enhanced campaignsEnhanced campaigns will roll out to advertisers as an option over the next few weeks, and we plan to upgrade all campaigns in mid-2013.

Enhanced campaigns are designed to help you succeed in a multi-screen world, but we know that transitioning may involve some initial changes. Here are some resources to help you:

On Wednesday November 24th we’re hosting a free, live, online course about Goals in Google Analytics. Goals help you measure conversions or successful actions on your website, such as visits to a 'thank you' page after a customer makes a purchase on your site.

In this live course you’ll learn how to set up Goals and how they can benefit you. We'll clarify the difference between conversions in AdWords and Goals in Analytics, as well as discuss the reports the Goals section offers. After completing the course you'll know how to use Analytics Goals to measure the effectiveness of your AdWords traffic, then make more informed business decisions as a result.

This interactive course will be delivered by two Analytics Specialists and will last approximately 1 hour, including time for Q&A. It will take place on Wednesday, November 24 from 3-4PM GMT (7-8AM PST) and is suitable for anyone who’d like to learn more about Analytics Goals.

Hot on the heels of the new Search Funnels features that were recently launched, here’s another new feature: The Top Paths (Query Paths) report.

Broad match keywords in your AdWords account may be matched to a variety of keywords your users are searching for. You bid on certain keywords, but what about the actual queries that these keywords were matched to? You can see Keyword Paths within Search Funnels - and now, you can see Query Paths as well.

Note: this option will only show queries for search ads that were clicked, and not for impressions.

This data gives even more insight into the searches users make before finding and then purchasing on your site. With this information, you should be able to better target these users by seeing how they find you, and gain confidence in bidding on keywords that convert or assist in the conversion path.

We’ve received very positive feedback from advertisers using Search Funnels—the new set of reports launched in Conversions. Advertisers are beginning to understand the path to conversion beyond just the last click and are now able to give credit to assisting keywords and ads that customers saw and/or clicked before converting. Each buying cycle is different and Search Funnels is eliminating the guesswork over the roles your keywords are playing in the path to conversion.

A buyer may take longer to research and buy a vacation package rather than purchase movie tickets, for example. The funnel for various conversion types can differ greatly in regards to time to purchase and number of clicks to purchase. Now, you can adjust the time span, or Conversion History Window, to 30 days (default), 60 days or 90 days prior to a conversion to see the Search Funnel data leading to that conversion. With this feature, you can look further back into the history of your conversion paths.

Only show complete conversion paths

A percentage of surfers clear cookies from time to time, which can influence search funnels data by causing conversion paths to appear shorter by eliminating some upper funnel assists - impressions or clicks on your keywords - that may have occurred prior to cookie deletion. For instance, if a buyer clicks on one of your ads, then clears cookies, then goes on to click another one or your ads before making a purchase, the click prior to cookie deletion will not show up in your Search Funnels reports.

Now, you can sanitize the search funnel data you’re looking at by checking a box in your reports called “Only show complete conversion paths.” This option will filter out conversions that are from paths that are potentially biased by cookie deletion. As such, while you will end up analyzing fewer conversions overall, you will be seeing truer, more complete conversion paths. Use this option to strengthen your overall funnel analysis and understand how buyers are finding your products.

These new features were created based on feedback we received from Search Funnels users and we hope you find them useful as you experiment with, analyze, and optimize your portfolio of keywords.

Are you eager to optimise your Conversion Rate, but feel a little bit overwhelmed by all of the tools available to help you? Today we're delighted to introduce Improving Online Conversions for Dummies.

We have just released a simple, easy to follow mini book, in conjunction with John Wiley Publications, to help you get a better grasp of the conversion improvement tools offered by Google. Improving Online Conversions for Dummies explains how you can make sure your ads show on searches that are most likely to convert into sales. Understand which ad clicks and impressions lead to conversions, better apportion your marketing spend and even develop your own conversion attribution model. Discover the secrets to getting more bang for your buck with this ebook.

We're excited to announce the launch of Enhanced CPC, a new automated bidding feature that can help you improve your ROI on your campaigns with manual bidding. Enhanced CPC uses your campaign's historical conversion tracking data to automatically adjust your Max CPC bid based on the likelihood that your ad will convert. As a result, you should receive more conversions while maintaining or reducing your overall CPA and hopefully spend less time managing your Max CPC bids.

How does it work?

Let's walk through an example. Jeff sells model airplane kits and has enabled Enhanced CPC for a campaign that contains the following keywords, each with a Max CPC bid set to $0.30: model airplane, model airplane kits, and build model airplanes. When a user searches for 'model airplane kits,' the AdWords system recognizes that this term has converted well for Jeff in the past, and therefore increases the Max CPC bid to $0.32 for this specific auction. If the likelihood of a conversion is very high, Enhanced CPC can bid up to 30% above the Max CPC. This means that the most that Jeff will be charged for a click is $0.39.

On the other hand, when a user searches on a term that has not converted well in the past, e.g. 'model airplane,' the AdWords system will lower the Max CPC bid for this specific auction to $0.20. By adjusting bids based on Jeff's conversion data, the AdWords system ultimately helps him increase sales while maintaining or decreasing his average cost per conversion.

Enhanced CPC has the unique ability to consider a number of factors when predicting the likelihood of a conversion. A few examples of what Enhanced CPC is able to do include:

Adjust your bid depending on how well a particular search or display network partner site in the Google network has converted for you in the past

Recognize when specific words within a keyword (e.g. 'kits') convert well and adjust your bid when users search on variations of these terms (e.g. 'model airplane kits for children')

Detect attributes such as the user's location, language settings, browser, and operating system and analyze how these attributes may impact the likelihood of your ad converting

How to get started

To use Enhanced CPC, you'll need to first enable Conversion Tracking for your campaigns. Conversion Tracking not only allows you to take advantage of ROI-boosting features like Enhanced CPC but also provides you with valuable insight into how frequently your ads convert into sales and how much you're paying for these conversions.

If you're already using Conversion Tracking, getting started is easy. Simply navigate to the 'Bidding and Budgeting' section of the settings tab for your campaign, and select the checkbox under 'Enhanced CPC.'

In early June, we announced the Conversion Champion Challenge, a contest challenging you to use free AdWords conversion products to increase your ROI, then submit a mini-case study telling us about your experience. The grand prize winner will receive an AdWords voucher as well as an all-expenses paid trip to Google Mountain View or Google Zurich, where the Google Conversions team will meet with you to review your account and provide customized recommendations.

For those of you who took us up on the challenge, final entries are due tomorrow, July 31 and can be submitted here. So get those entries in soon!