Traffic improvements and new name for Google Ad Planner

Every day, thousands of AdWords advertisers use Google Ad Planner to research websites and select where to advertise online. We're continuing to improve this tool in order to provide the deepest, most accurate insight into online audiences possible.

To that end, we've improved how Ad Planner calculates site traffic by over 10%, and we've changed its name to DoubleClick Ad Planner. Visit the DoubleClick blog to read more about the traffic improvements and the new name.

You don't need to be a DoubleClick customer to use the newly renamed DoubleClick Ad Planner as the tool remains free and open for everyone. You can continue to access it at: www.google.com/adplanner.

If you haven't used Ad Planner, we invite you to give it a try. We think you'll find it to be a powerful research and media planning tool that makes it easy to find your audience and create well-informed media plans.

Posted by Emily Williams, Inside AdWords crew

Go Mobile! Series: Join us for a free mobile webinar

The Internet is going mobile. Every week, tens of millions of people search on Google from their mobile phones and generate hundreds of millions of searches. Using mobile ads, you can reach these consumers while they're on-the-go.

Please join us for an upcoming webinar about what we're seeing in the mobile ad space and how you can incorporate mobile advertising into your marketing strategy.

Specifically, we'll cover how you can:

* Understand mobile trends and what they mean for your business

* Drive consumer action online and in the store

* Optimize your strategy for the mobile platform

Register here for the webinar to be held on March 2, 2010 at 11:00am PST / 1:00pm CST / 2:00pm EST.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew

Now Implementing Updated U.S. and Canada Pharmacy Policy

We want to let you know that the changes to our pharmacy policy in the U.S. and Canada will start to go into effect today.

As we explained a couple weeks ago, this update means that Google AdWords will only accept advertisements from VIPPS and CIPA certified pharmacies, and that these pharmacies can only target ads within the countries where they are accredited.

To ensure that users see the most relevant and useful ads possible, pharmaceutical manufacturers and VIPPS and CIPA certified pharmacies will be allowed to run on prescription drug and pharmaceutical-related keywords.

For more information about this updated policy, please see this link: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=7463

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew