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Google and Nielsen measured the impact of advertising across multiple screens, and the findings were stark. Advertisers will be happy to learn that advertising across devices appears to significantly increase brand retention by eyeballs... I mean, people.

The study tested a 15-second car ad on different subject groups. Some saw no ads, others saw them on various combinations of TV, PCs, smartphones and tablets. Those who saw the ad on TV alone recalled the brand of car correctly 50% of the time. The people who saw it across all devices got it right 74% of the time.

Google has announced a shift in policy to reward sites with good mobile optimization with better AdWords performance. If you promote your site with Google AdWords, your ads will drive traffic at a lower cost if they link to your mobile-optimized site.

The blog post cites a recent study that found that 61% of users are unlikely to return to a website that offered a bad mobile Web experience. This adjustment to AdWords is an incentive for site administrators to improve mobile experiences.

In its ongoing quest to capture more local ad dollars, Google yesterday announced the launch of AdWords Express, a simplified version of their search advertising platform. This new advertising product aims to streamline the process of purchasing search ads, enabling smaller, local businesses to get on board.

If AdWords Express looks familiar, that's because it was originally launched in select markets last October under the name Google Boost.

Designing and managing your business's Google AdWords can be an overwhelming process. Even though there's plenty of information available - or perhaps because there's so much available - figuring out your strategies can be confusing. Even if you have a clear plan, the Google AdWords interface can be incredibly frustrating.

But Google AdWords are still a key form of online advertising - and it remains Google's largest source of revenue. Frustrations with the service, then, make it a great opportunity for a startup like AdGrok that launches to the publi today.

The Y Combinator alum provides search engine marking tools to small businesses, simplifying keyword bidding and and ad creation.

For a while now, Google has allowed select mobile advertisers to add their phone number to AdWord text ads so that customers can just click on the number and place a call. Until now, though, it was hard to track how well these ads really performed, as Google didn't give advertisers a convenient way to track these calls. To remedy this, Google is launching AdWords Call Metrics today with a limited set of U.S.-based advertisers. The company plans to open this beta up to more advertisers in the coming months.

Today Google introduced two new elements to its popular advertising system, a Search Funnel and something it is calling Ad Innovations.

The company's VP of product management, Susan Wojcicki, described the Search Funnel as a "set of reports describing the Google.com search ad click and impression behavior leading up to a conversion."

According to Unwired View, Google Voice just filed an application with Fish and Richardson legal services on a patent that is suspected to monetize caller waiting on Google Voice.

The patent application lays claim to the methods and software "in which an indication of a telephone call being placed from a calling number is received, and a determination is made of an audio advertisement to play based on the calling number."

I'm going through an SEO overhaul of our company's website. There is definitely a combination of art and science that I never appreciated until having to do it. So, to save others some time, here are some very basic things that any business should do to optimize the ranking of its website in search engine results. Nothing explained here is necessarily a secret or difficult to find out. The trick is to find a good cookbook and a process that is easy to follow.

Google is everywhere. From your web mail to your web searches and now even tracking your location on a map, the ubiquity of Google is something that many of us have just started taking for granted when we go online. But something a lot of people don't realize is that Google is also tapping into our information when we're offline. Case in point: Google TV Ads, a part of the company's AdWords channel gives Google access to DVR viewership data from millions of set-top boxes here in the United States.

Back in the day, online display advertisements used to be all the rage. And then Google AdWords came along and blew the lid off of online advertising with its simple text-based ads and its cost-per-click model. Advertisers were able to quickly create a terse, compelling chunk of text. Users were clicking. Revenues were rolling. All was right with the world.

But recently, something changed. Now, we're suddenly seeing a renaissance for the display ad. Today, Google is getting into the mix with the release of do-it-yourself display ads.