Online Marketing Challenge
Any professor at any higher education institute can enter any class, graduate or undergraduate, regardless of discipline. It is open to any institute and class that wish to participate. Before you sign up you should consider two things to decide if the competition is right for you and your class:
First, Google should be reasonably established where your business has customers. With more people running search queries on Google, the likelihood is greater that your advertising will receive a sufficient amount of impressions and clicks. If Google is not well known in your region, perhaps consider a business in another region.
The main support materials are in English, however you can find summaries in 13 additional languages in the upper right corner of this site. You can advertise in your local language, but must submit the reports in one of the 14 languages available.
No, we use the term 'professor' to simplify things. To supervise a student group, you must be an academic employed by a higher education institution and conducting lectures or seminars for students. For example, you might be a lecturer or a researcher.
The competition window is over any three consecutive weeks between January and June. You can choose to start on any day that suits your class. To help students succeed, professors must have sufficient class time to cover online marketing and Google AdWords, and time for students/professors to recruit their businesses.
Student clubs may enter teams under the direction of a professor, given the following conditions.
As the coordinator of your teams, you will mentor and work with your students to ensure they have a solid understanding of online marketing and the Challenge. You will be responsible for making sure they receive Challenge materials, select an appropriate business or non-profit organization and submit their reports on time. Beyond that it's up to you. You might like to run a competition among your class teams and invite the participating businesses or non-profit organizations to relevant class presentations.
An academic judging panel consisting of independent judges, in collaboration with Google, will choose regional and global winners.
Google AdWords is a core part of the Challenge but it's more about teaching and learning effective online marketing. Google AdWords serves as a vehicle for gathering real world data and discussing online advertising's role in online marketing. Teams, however, must discuss other aspects of online marketing such as website layout and offline promotion, in both written reports. The competition is about real-world applications of online marketing; Google AdWords is merely the platform.
As Google's flagship advertising product, setting up and running an AdWords account is simple. You and your students will have ample AdWords material in the documentation sent to all registered professors. All things equal, the more you know about AdWords, the more fun for your students and you, and the better their chances to win.
The global winners and their professor will receive a trip to the Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California to meet with the team that developed AdWords. Regional winners and their professor will receive a trip to their local Google office. Teams working with non-profit organizations can also win the Social Impact Award.
More importantly, students, professors and businesses are all winners. Students gain practical experience in online marketing, teamwork and business consulting. The participating businesses have more website traffic and a better understanding of online marketing while you get the chance to deliver a great teaching and learning opportunity.
There are four competition regions - The Americas, Europe, MEA (Middle East and Africa) and Asia Pacific. In addition to an overall global winner, there will be four additional winners - one from each region.
Selecting the right business is important. To help you and your students make a choice, please review the 'Selecting And Working With A Business Or Organization' section in the Competition Guidelines.
Professors or students can decide the business – whatever works best. In some cases, the school might have preferred candidates, or student teams might have friends or family with ideal businesses for the competition.
Please note that each student team must work with a different business or organization. Teams may not use the same business or organization.
Important: the business or organization should not currently use AdWords in any capacity and not have had an active account within the last 6 months.
No. Each team must use a different business or organization otherwise the effectiveness of your campaign may suffer directly from the efforts of external Challenge campaigns to yours.
Here are some ideas to simplify finding a business or a non-profit organization.
If the business or non-profit organization agrees to participate, at a minimum they should understand and agree to the information contained in the Info for Businesses/NGOs and agree to let you advertise their website and products/services.
Ideally, the business or non-profit organization will take an active interest in the campaign, such as explaining what they do, their online marketing objectives, and providing feedback on the proposed campaign strategy, interim campaign results and campaign changes. You may want to invite the businesses or non-profit organizations to any class presentations of the proposed 'Pre-Campaign Strategy' and final 'Post-Campaign Summary'.
The competition has two components. The first component is the Campaign Statistics algorithm developed by Google. This algorithm examines over 30 factors within an AdWords account including impressions, cost-per-click, click-through-rates, keyword choices, ad creatives and budgeting to determine effective AdWords online marketing campaigns. The second component to judging is the written reports based on a template developed by the academic community.
At the end of the competition, Google will compare all the Campaign Statistics across the population of students taking part in the competition. Results from the Campaign Statistics determine the top five teams in each region. The Global Academic Judging Panel then chooses regional and global winners, based solely on each team's written reports – a four-page Pre-Campaign Strategy and a eight-page Post-Campaign Summary.
What is the evaluation criteria?
You can check all the items that the judges use under the Evaluation Criteria.
Is there any disqualification criteria?
Teams who had active campaign days over 25 or under 7, or spent an insufficient amount of the US$250 budget to allow for competitive algorithm calculation are liable to be disqualified for the Challenge.
There are ample resources available to help you learn about creating an effective online marketing campaign with AdWords. The best resource is the "Growing your business with AdWords" guide, available in more than 40 languages in the AdWords Beginner's Guide site.
In addition, you will find key online resources to help your students with their learning in the 'Teaching Resources' section within the Competition Guidelines.
These guides will be updated before the Challenge begins in January.
Due to several reasons, particularly keeping the contest fair for all student teams, Google is not able to provide a team's Campaign Statistics or other feedback until all teams have completed their AdWords campaign. The grading for Campaign Statistics is performed on a peer-to-peer ranking of all entrants in the Challenge so for the scoring to be fair, we need to wait until all teams have completed their campaigns.
You may wish to grade your students on the criteria for the two written reports, the Pre-Campaign Strategy and Post-Campaign Summary. Details of these reports are in the Competition Guidelines.
You can check here the Rubric for the Campaign Reports.
Using the points system provided will allow you to determine team grades.
No - student teams will receive free online spend worth US$250 to run their three-week campaigns. Details how students setup their AdWords accounts will be sent to all registered professors prior to the start of the Challenge.
No. Google has practices and procedures in place to detect invalid clicks as part of the competition. Student teams, professors' classes and institutions risk disqualification for excessive invalid clicks. The Help Center provides information on how Google detects and tracks invalid clicks.
Use of a competitors name can be subject to editorial and content restrictions, particularly if trademarked. Student teams should refer to the policies at the AdWords Advertising policies to ensure their ads and keywords comply with these guidelines. Failure to comply with the guidelines penalizes a team's Campaign Statistics.
Given the global nature of the contest and accommodating different class schedules, it will be July before announcing the regional and global winners.
Registrations for the Challenge are usually open between october and january, check our homepage for the latest news. If the registration is closed and you are interested in taking part in the next Challenge, you can also register your interest in our homepage.
We have a Facebook page where you can interact with other Online Challenge fans, such as sharing tips, results, questions, photos and videos. You can join it at: facebook.com/GoogleChallenge