What Is Twitter Cards ?

Introduction

With Twitter Cards, you can attach rich photos, videos and media experience to Tweets that drive traffic to your website. Simply add a few lines of HTML to your webpage, and users who Tweet links to your content will have a "Card" added to the Tweet that’s visible to all of their followers.

The Tweet below shows a Player Card below the 140 characters:

Drive engagement from your Tweets

The below Card types have a beautiful consumption experience built for Twitter's web and mobile clients:

• Summary Card: Default Card, including a title, description, thumbnail, and Twitter account attribution.
• Summary Card with Large Image: Similar to a Summary Card, but with a prominently featured image.
• Photo Card: A Card with a photo only.
• Gallery Card: A Card highlighting a collection of four photos.
• App Card: A Card to detail a mobile app with direct download.
• Player Card: A Card to provide video/audio/media.
• Product Card: A Card optimized for product information.

To learn more about how Card meta tags and our web crawler works, please check out Getting Started Guide.

Drive app downloads from your Tweets

In addition to displaying your content in a more engaging way, Cards also drive downloads of and even link directly into your mobile applications. For more information, see App Installs and Deep-Linking.

Measure results of your Cards

To complement the Twitter Card platform, analytics reveal how you can improve key metrics such as URL clicks, app install attempts and Retweets.

Click here to learn more about measuring your Twitter performance with Twitter Card analytics.

Get started in 5 simple steps

Ready to get started with Cards? In most cases, it takes less than 15 minutes to implement.

1. Review the documentation for the type of card you want to implement.
2. Add the pertinent meta tags to your page.
3. Run your URLs against the validator tool to be approved.
4. After approval, tweet the URL and see the Card appear below your tweet.
5. Use Twitter Card analytics to measure your results.

We hope you enjoy using Twitter Cards, and if you have any questions, drop us a line on the Twitter Cards Forum. Thanks, and happy coding!

All data from:-twitter.com

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How To Calculate Engagement Rate?

When there are bugs reported in Facebook´s Reach metric, it´s always good to know that you have one metric you can rely on. Find out which one it is!

As you know, we’ve driven home the fact that brands’ should not just rely on one metric to measure their social media performance. We believe that all metrics must be taken into consideration when developing social media marketing strategies, including Fan Growth, posts from you and the Engagement Rate they generate, your users’ wall posts and the speed of your response.

However, since, in the last few months, bugs were discovered in the reach metric on Facebook, brands need to consider relying on a metric that is guaranteed to work and is publically comparable – Engagement.

Why is Engagement Rate the #1 Social Metric?

When we talk about Engagement, we are referring to the activity on your page, to fan interactions to your post types, etc. There are several types of Engagement metrics:

• Interactions – Like, Comments, Shares, Replies, Rewteets, and so on.
• Reach – the percentage of fans that have seen your post from your Page.
• Engagement Rates – a formula for quantifying brands’ success

Engagement Rate is always relative to Page size. This means that brands with 1 M fans can still be compared to brands with 2 M fans, with unbiased results. Look what we did here – we compared the average post Engagement Rate over a 7 day and 30 day period of Lufthansa (1 240 236 fans) and KLM (2 940 250 fans). The graph shows that KLM has been more successful in engaging its audience over the past month on Facebook despite the fact that Lufthansa has a smaller Page size and should therefore find it easier to mobilize its fans. Also notice, that KLM has experienced quite a few fluctuations on a weekly basis whereas Lufthansa maintained a stable Engagement Rate.

Engagement Rate is a metric that we have developed and shared with many on the market. In fact, it has become today’s standard for measuring social media success. Like all components of the social media world, Engagement Rates will continue to develop over time, but still, we are happy with the comparative results the metric currently provides.

What to Look Out for When it Comes to Engagement Rate

1. On an average basis, if a Page doesn’t post much but is getting an oddly high amount of engagement, you may have to look more closely to see if it’s Engagement Rate is credible. You can do this by benchmarking it against a company of a similar size and posting frequency. Could it be that they are artificially boosting their Engagement Rate?

2. For Pages with smaller fan bases, the Engagement Rates may grow dramatically, especially if a post goes viral.

3. It can be argued that not ALL people interacting are necessarily fans, however, a clear majority of the responses, questions, and posts are done by fans.

Engagement Rates work just as well on Twitter as they do on Facebook. you can also apply them to Google+, Tumblr, and any other social networking site with connections and social interactions present on the channel. YouTube, however, works a bit differently – a metric we will discuss another day.

All data from:-http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/1427-engagement-rate-a-metric-you-can-count-on

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Understand Twitter Analytics Terms

One of the key components for marketers to look at while deciding on the performance of any of their social networks is measurement. While Facebook always had Facebook Insights to give out the details of your owned presence details along with the post level activity, we always had to rely on third party estimated data for Twitter. Now with Twitter going public and aiming to generate more money via advertising, they have certainly stepped up their game with the introduction of Twitter Analytics for different components on Twitter.

The Twitter Analytics dashboard is available to everyone who has created ad accounts on Twitter. Now, you don’t have to be an advertiser with Twitter to access the dashboard and can access the Analytics Dashboard by just setting up your Twitter Ads profile or clicking here

How to get started with Twitter Analytics Dashboard:

Logging in to the Twitter Ads or Twitter Analytics platform, the default dashboard is presented to the account with three components to look at:

Impressions are IN:

The new dashboard has new functionality & metrics which makes it easier for you to decipher the performance of your account on a tweet level basis. The ‘Impressions‘ metric is the newest addition which many users demanded and Twitter has added that feature which lets you see the number of times your followers saw your tweet on Twitter.

Benchmark Yourself:

Twitter also lets you compare your performance over the 28 day period with specific actionable metrics such as Engagement Rate, Favorites, Replies, ReTweets, Link Clicks & Impressions.Now it is much easier to compare & benchmark your content performance with the help of Twitter itself. The tweets are segregated in to different categories already if you want to view a Tweet by Tweet performance for your organic Tweets, Replies and Promoted Tweets.So if a conversation with a Twitter user is generating a lot of eyeballs and engagement for you, you will know it via this dashboard.

Some of the key metrics detailed on the Dashboard are:

• Impressions: The number of times users on Twitter view your tweet in their timeline
• Engagement: The total interactions that have occurred on the tweet by the user which includes all the clicks on the Tweet (hashtags, link clicks, avatar, username & tweet expansion) along with the usual engagement metrics like favorites,replies,retweets as well as new follows
• Engagement Rate: The Engagement Rate for Twitter is the ratio of the Engagement actions and Impressions generated over a Tweet.The key difference to note here is Twitter is giving us the engagement rate based on impressions whereas Facebook does a similar metric based on the number of unique people reached.

Download and See the Fun!

The best addition to the new dashboard is the ability to download data getting a whole new information along with it for each tweet. The ‘Export Data’ option at the right hand corner gives you a lot of meta data attached with each particular tweet to play with. The information is available from 1st October 2013 till date which can be downloaded in to an excel file for further analysis.

The metrics available in the downloaded format is given below:

• Impressions
• Engagement
• Engagement Rate
• ReTweets
• Replies
• Favorites
• User Profile Clicks
• URL clicks
• Hashtag clicks
• Detail expands
• permalink clicks
• embedded media clicks
• App Opens (If you are promoting an App or sharing one)
• App install attempts
• Follows
• email tweet
• dial phone

The same metrics are available for organic as well as promoted tweets.Such level of detail is awesome to play with for brands to accurately point out (rather than just speculate) as to which tweet resulted in more engagement and which tweet resulted in higher new followers/app installs. The user consumption can be broken down in to specific actions to analyze the behavior of your Twitter followers and plan your content accordingly. How cool is that?

All data form:-http://blog.digitalinsights.in/

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How To Use Twitter Analytics ?

In what could be termed as the best thing that ever happened to Twitter users, the analytics dashboard has been thrown open to everyone.

Previously accessible only to advertisers, now anyone who is a Twitter user can see the impact generated by his/her tweets.

Currently, the dashboard displays the impressions and engagement for your tweets along with your community size and it’s composition (more or less).

The charts & graphs are well made and must say they are much better than Facebook insights.

Another remarkable fact about the analytics dashboard is that the impression count is way different than what other tools show – who count your entire community size as the impression. And since this data is coming from Twitter itself, there shouldn’t be any doubts over its veracity.

In all this, you can hope to see a huge drop in the number of impression counts bragged about by agencies and brands for their campaigns. Also, as brands & agencies, you can use this to verify the effectiveness of the influencers you’re working with.

Other than just advertisers & verified users having access to the analytics dashboard, the fact that users can now monitor the engagement of each of their tweets is real good news!

Some what similar to Google Analytics, analytics.twitter.com allows you to track the performance of each & every tweet you put up. Right from the number of people who saw your tweet, to the number of people who actually clicked on your links can now be traced by users.

Here’s a step by step guide you can follow to use Twitter Analytics to your best advantage:

• To get started, simply login to analytic.twitter.com with your username & password.
• Monitor how many people have seen your tweet in real time.

• You can easily compare your monthly activity of tweets & the engagement it gains along with tracking the increase or decrease in your followers.

• You can view details like the Engagement Rate, Link Clicks, Replies, Favorites, Retweets.

• You can view a gender wise break up of your followers, their location & interest on Twitter & also view their followers.

This will now help users improve their tweets by allowing them to peek into details

The twitter analytics dashboard is now accessible to every Twitter account that has been open for at least 14 days and sends out tweets in English, French, Japanese, or Spanish!

It excludes accounts that are either protected, restricted or suspended.

If you seem to fulfill the above mentioned criteria, you can quickly check out the engagement rate of your tweets right here – analytics.twitter.com

Please Note – The analytics will not show you details about tweets as soon as you visit analytics.twitter.com. Put out a tweet after you’ve visited  the analytics.twitter.com dashboard. Also it wont give out details of your earlier tweets.

All details from:- http://www.socialsamosa.com/

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10 Awesome Google Features

 

 

Google is so ubiquitous it's easy to overlook some of the search giant's coolest tools. It has many tricks and products that you don't need to spend money on.

 

Some of these will make your life easier and others will just blow your mind.

 

 

 

 

Google Flight Search.

 

Need to find the best price on a flight? Google Flight Search is one of the easiest price-comparison sites around. Pick your start point and destination - or destinations - on the map, and then pick your dates. When you pick the dates, be sure to pay attention to the prices on each date and Google's graph of days with the cheapest tickets.

 

Then, you can filter the results by flight length, airline, price, stops and more. When you find a flight you like, you can book it directly on the airline's site.

 

Atari Breakout.

 

Need to take a quick break? Thanks to Google, you can play a version of the classic Atari Breakout game on your computer whenever you want. Simply go to the Google Image Search page - www.google.com/images - and search for "Atari Breakout." Then, wait for the fun to begin.

 

Google Public Data Explorer.

 

Google's normal search site is great for most searches, but Google has more specialized search sites as well. For example, the Google Public Data Explorer is a treasure chest full of information on public statistics.

 

Go to the Google Public Data page and type in a topic. Keep your searches simple, like "Unemployment in the U.S." Google will return results from sources like the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. You'll end up with an easy-to-read graph, and you can even tweak it with options like gender, age and state.

 

Google translations.

 

Need a quick translation of a word? Go to the normal Google search page and type in "translate (word) to (language)" in the search bar. For instance, you could type "translate apple to French."

 

Google will let you know in less than a second that "pomme" is French for apple. It also includes a small speaker icon that will let you hear the word if you aren't sure how to pronounce it. For longer translations, check out Google Translate.

 

Google nutrition comparison search.

 

What's healthier, an orange or a banana? Type "compare" into Google's search bar, along with the foods you want to look at, such as "compare broccoli and asparagus." Google will do the rest.

 

Google definitions.

 

When you don't know what a word means, don't reach for the dictionary. Type "define (word)" into the Google search bar, such as "define tintinnabulation" and you'll have the definition instantly - it's "a ringing or tinkling sound," if you were wondering.

 

You'll also get pronunciation, part of speech, and you can click the gray arrow for more information, including word origins.

 

Google Conversions.

 

Whether you're cooking or helping your child with math homework, odds are you're going to have to convert units of measurement. On the Google search page, enter a search like "convert eight ounces to cups" or "convert 10km to mi." You'll have your answer instantly, and you can even tweak the numbers and units after the fact.

 

Google nGrams.

 

Google nGrams is a great research tool that lets you search how many times specific words occur in more than 5 million books written between 1800 and the present. You can see how words get more or less popular over time.

 

You can put in multiple words separated by commas to compare two or more words at once. Google lets you adjust the time period, language of the books and see what books contain the words.

 

Google Sky.

 

If you think Google Earth is great, then Google Sky is going to blow your mind. It lets you search the heavens and see images of stars, planets and galaxies taken from telescopes, probes and satellites.

 

It includes infrared and microwave images as well as a historic map of the stars made by Giovanni Maria Cassini in 1792. If you don't know where to start, the site has some suggestions that you'll love.

 

Exclude search terms.

 

Google's algorithms are really good at searching the Internet to find the information you're looking for. Sometimes, though, I'm sure you get frustrated because you keep getting popular results that just aren't right.

 

Tweak your search using the minus (-) symbol. Just put it before any words you don't want to show up. Say you want to search for "puppies," but don't want to see sites that sell them. Just type in "puppies -sales" and you're set.

 

Source:  usatoday.com

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Top 10 Best Affiliate Marketing Websites

For many years, Google AdSense has been the best way to monetize a website, and start earning some good money online. However, recent updates from Google have made lives tougher for webmasters and online marketers. Due to this, people have been looking for some good alternatives to Google AdSense.

In this post, we have discussed the Top 10 Google AdSense Alternatives in 2014. These alternatives can help you monetize a website without using Google AdSense. We have also discussed why you should consider using these alternatives.

10. Infolinks

Infolinks is a PPC advertising network. It allows you to make some good money through your blog on the basis of specific keywords. The service indexes your web pages, and automatically adds hyperlinks in the text. Since Infolinks is not a standard CPM program, it may take some time before you start earning a good amount of money. However, it’s still a good alternative to Google AdSense.

The service makes payments via Wire Transfer, Paypal, ACH, Payoneer and Check Western Union. The payment has an initial limit of $50. This platform is ideal for big websites, and works in multiple languages, including English, French, German and Spanish.

9. Kontera

Kontera is a popular network. It’s quite similar to Infolinks. This is also a text based network. Therefore, it adds links to the content on the basis of specific keywords. The keywords show pop up ads and double underlined text. Kontera is an effective Pay per Click program. Thus, the amount of money you earn will depend on your CTR percentage.

Kontera can be the perfect choice if you’re just setting up a website or run a small blog. The primary reason is that the service allows small website to be added to the network. The company makes payments via Paypal or check. The initial limit for payments is $50. The best part is that Kontera can be used simultaneously with Google AdSense.

8. Amazon Associates

Amazon is one of the biggest e-commerce stores in the world. If you run a website that talks about a product available on Amazon, this service will work great for you. With Amazon Associates, you can add dynamic image advertisements to the blog. This allows you to promote the products. Though Amazon Associates is not a PPC program, it pays a small commission for every product you sell through the links.

7. BuySellAds

If you have been planning to sell advertising spaces on the website, but can’t find good clients, BuySellAds will be the perfect choice. The service allows you to sell a unit of space to various customers on the basis of traffic they want. Thus, if the blog has space for 5 advertisements, you can publish them in these spaces, and wait for someone to buy the ads.

Selling spaces for advertisements can lead to a good steady income. However, you will need a lot of traffic, and page views you be appealing on BuySellAds. The service pays 75% of the revenue. It pays via Paypal twice every month. The best part is that there’s no initial limit.

6. Text Link Ads

With Text Link Ads, you can sell text based advertisements from your websites. The price of the ads will vary between your Alexa Rank, Page Rank, Social Media, Traffic and other factors. If the page rank’s higher, you will be able to sell more expensive links. Text Link Ads pays you via TLA voucher, Paypal or check. With a minimum limit of $25, you can get 50/50 revenue. With one website, you can sell up to 10 text based ads.

5. Clicksor

Clicksor is a popular ad advertising network. The services allows you to serve contextual, popup and text based advertisements. There are over 150,000 pages working on the platform. Thus, it has become an excellent alternative to Google AdSense. The company shares up to 60% review on the basis of advertisements. The service pays via Paypal or check. The initial minimum limit is $50.

4. Qadabra

This is one of the most popular performance based ad networks. It has been specifically created for publishers who want to monetize their traffic and website. The platform is very easy and simple to use. The service offers various advertisement sizes, and a pop up option. This platform also supports international traffic with excellent fill rates. The company pays via Payoneer prepaid card ($20 minimum), Paypal ($1 minimum) and Wire Transfer ($500 minimum). It’s an excellent alternative for beginners.

3. Chitika

The overall interface of this platform is quite similar to Google AdSense. The service allows you to customize advertisements. However, it serves only text based advertisements. A good thing about this platform is that you can use it with Google AdSense. You won’t experience any problems. The company pays via Paypal. The initial minimum amount for Paypal is $10. It also makes payments via check. In this case, the initial minimum amount is $50. For most beginners, Chitika is the first choice for an alternative to Google AdSense.

2. Adversal

Adversal is one of the best alternatives to Google AdSense. It works just like Chitika, and even better. The platform has some really good banners, along with revenue and CTR adapts to achieve the best results with your website. Most advertisements on Adversal have a great CTR. The platform also has excellent image based advertisements. This ad network seems to work better for people looking for a replacement to Google AdSense.

Unlike Chitika, Adversal works fine with multiple languages. The account gets approved very fast. This is one of the major benefits of using Adversal. The platform also features Pop Under / CPM ads. It’s worth mentioning that using Adversal requires a site within a minimum of 50,000 web page views per month. The income you can earn with Adversal is very good. The company makes payments via Paypal.

1. Affiliate Marketing

There’s no doubt that affiliate marketing is the best alternative to Google AdSense. In simple terms, affiliate marketing requires you to sell a service or product from another company. You earn a commission for every sale you make. These days, it’s easy to find a lot of good and legitimate affiliate marketing opportunities. The best part about affiliate marketing is that you will be able to work and earn on your own terms. Moreover. there’s no minimum limit for payments.

Content from:-

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The Right Job for You

There are no right or wrong people or right or wrong jobs. This situation is more like the right people stuck with the wrong career option, or the wrong people taken for the right job. So, how will we deal with this confusion? Let`s take a look at what astrology has to say about this. Let your zodiac sign help you guide your career path. You never know, you might just make the most of it, starting today!

Aries: 

Aries make great artists and sportsmen. People of this sign cannot take too much of interference with their work. These guys make great researchers, scientists and engineers too. They like to work at their pace and in their style. No, that doesn`t mean they can`t take orders, but try letting them be on their own and they`ll come up with the best results! 

Taurus:

Taureans are creative souls. They have a taste for art and are talented entertainers. These guys cannot go by the hardcore corporate rules. They find it hard to breathe in a dishonest environment. Being great money managers, banking and accounting jobs are also great career options for them. 

Gemini:

Geminis make outstanding journalists. Due to their innate nosy nature, these people fit perfectly in this profession. A Gemini person has strong verbal skills; a talk show host is a great option too! Translators, Public Relations, company HR and other such professions are more suitable for this bunch.

Cancer:

Cancerians can find their perfect stop as a judge or a lawyer. With their perfect sense of judgment, and ability to not let wrong happen, these people will do just great. Being affectionate and very caring, they make great nurses too! As writers, artists and filmmakers, Cancer is known to outshine most other signs. 

Leo:

Leo loves to be the center of attraction, a clerical job involving backend paperwork would be so frustrating for him. A Leo actor might be the most satisfied person on earth! With oh-so-much-attention, what more could he ask for! These guys make excellent spokespersons or publicists.

Virgo:

Computer scientists, engineers, financial advisers and architects; you`ll find Virgos perform outstandingly in these professions. With an eye for detail, these jobs are some of the best options for this lot. 

Libra: 

Librans have a balanced temperament. These people know how to balance things and are very serious about making no mistakes in that. With such unbiased approach, Librans prove to be great teachers and counselors. Librans also have a thing for beauty. Stylists, beauticians and interior decorators are also some perfect options for them. The legal field attracts Librans and most Librans are doing well as lawyers and judges.

Scorpio:

Scorpions are very dedicated and hard working professionals. They are very secretive and at the same time, willing to know other people`s problems and secrets. These people will fit well as investigators. They also make great therapists and hypnotists. Don`t be startled to find a scorpion working in the science lab or as a researcher.

Sagittarius:

Sagittarians are the always-happy ones. They like solving problems and bringing a smile on others` faces. Psychiatrists, school counselors, customer service desks, managers, they`ll excel in all these career options!

Capricorn:

With a very high level of concentration, Capricorns prove to be perfect doctors and electrical engineers; they are the perfect choice for project managers too! Work which requires a lot of reading, analyzing and writing are also perfect for them.

Aquarius:

Aquarians are free birds, restricting them to a 9 to 5 schedule will suffocate them. The urge to do something different, independently, makes flexible working conditions favourable for this sign. Excellence in the field of science and technology is expected from an Aquarian person. Social work and politics are also preferable fields for them.

Pisces:

Pisceans have very strong visual imagination. A creative field such as animation is one of the best options for them, with confirmed success! Other career options include photography, filmmaking, and teaching.

All content from:- https://in.finance.yahoo.com

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Google AdWords Is Stopping Regular PLA Campaigns in Favor of Shopping Campaigns

Hello Friends

Google AdWords announced today that by the end of August, regular Product Listing Ads (PLA) campaigns will be going away in favor of "Shopping" campaigns. Shopping campaigns are a way to manage PLAs, and offer more features than regular PLA campaigns alone. 

"We'll be retiring the regular PLA campaign type and asking all PLA advertisers to upgrade to Shopping campaigns by late August 2014, at which time all remaining PLA campaigns will be automatically upgraded," Google said in its announcement.

AdWords first introduced Shopping campaigns to a test group in 2013, and in February of this year, made it available to all advertisers. Then in March, introduced the AdWords API to "help you manage your campaigns at scale," Google AdWords said.

Based on feedback, Google AdWords outlined new features for Shopping campaigns in its announcement today, like:

• A "bid simulator": Google AdWords said this feature will "provide more actionable insight into your PLAs" that can "estimate how bid changes could impact your impressions, clicks or costs."
• Options for creating Shopping campaigns: "In the coming days, we’ll be adding some options to help you get started," Google AdWords said in its announcement. "You would be able to create a Shopping campaign from scratch or, for many of you, use one of your regular PLA campaigns to create similar product targets, negative keywords or promotional text." 
• Multiple ad groups for "advanced retailers": Google AdWords said "advanced retailers" will now be able to create multiple ad groups within a Shopping campaign.

If you're still new to the idea of Shopping campaigns, AdWords gives an in-depth explanation in its help files of the differences between regular PLA campaigns and Shopping campaigns, starting with what hasn't changed:

Product Listing Ads are still Product Listing Ads: The way you manage your campaigns may have changed, but as far as the people out there searching for your products or services are concerned, your Product Listing Ads are just as relevant and informative as before. The ads appear in the same places, on the same networks. It’s in the managing, monitoring, and optimizing of your campaigns where you’ll see what we improved.

And here’s what AdWords said did change with Shopping campaigns:

• Use product groups, not product targets, to organize your campaigns:Instead of manually creating and managing product targets, your Shopping campaigns are powered entirely by your Merchant Center product data. With your product inventory at your fingertips in AdWords, you can seamlessly organize your products into product groups using any combination of product attributes. Then, bid upon each product group according to your evolving advertising goals. You’ll also find your performance data in the new “Product groups” tab and “Dimensions” tab, instead of the “Auto targets” tab. 
• Say goodbye to "adwords grouping” and "adwords labels" attributes:You can’t use the “adwords grouping” and “adwords labels” attributes to group your products in Shopping campaigns. If you need additional categorization beyond your product attributes, you’ll use custom labels instead (described below). Both “adwords labels” and “adwords grouping” attributes can remain in your product feed. In particular, if you’re continuing to use regular Product Listing Ads campaigns, don’t replace the “adwords labels” attribute with the custom labels attribute in your product feed. This could negatively affect your regular Product Listing Ads campaign performance. Instead, simply create new custom labels for your Shopping campaigns. This is also useful, for instance, if you use these attributes for other ad solutions, such as dynamic remarketing. 
• Say hello to custom labels: You’ll use the custom labels attribute when you want to use values of choosing to subdivide the products in your Shopping campaign. For example, you can create a custom label for best-selling products or on-sale items. You can create up to five custom labels for each product, numbered 0 through 4, in your Merchant Center product feed. Assign values to each custom label as you need them.

One brand that was an early adopter of Shopping campaigns was ValuePetSupplies.com. Nick Carter, director of marketing and sales said the company jumped on the chance to test the new feature. 

"I was knee deep in PLA campaigns (80+ of them) when Google approached me to alpha test Shopping. I probably had the most man hours handling PLA campaigns, which were labor intensive for sure. I generally like to test new features and capabilities within Adwords, so I jumped at the opportunity."

Carter said the bidding guidance in Shopping campaigns offer streamlined operations. "My favorite feature, in addition to the 10x time savings, is bidding guidance. With PLAs, bidding was a complete and utter mystery, Shopping has real-time marketplace guidance for target CPC and CTR. This provides more than enough insight for me to adjust bids efficiently and with some degree of confidence that I'm bidding properly."

With Shopping campaigns, Carter said the overall experience was better compared to regular PLA campaigns. "Managing PLAs for ValuePetSupplies 8000+ product catalog was all but impossible, requiring 20 to 30 hours per week. The Shopping campaign acts like an accordion wallet, magically containing everything in one easy-to-manage place. I'm saving a ton of time, and the hours I'm putting in are well spent - I can easily see and fix problems. These efficiencies mean better results in less time."

All content from:-http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2337788/AdWords-Retiring-Regular-PLA-Campaigns-in-Favor-of-Shopping-Campaigns

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