The Conversion Optimizer, our free cost-per-acquisition (CPA) bidding feature for AdWords, came out of beta in January. One of the top requests we’ve heard is from advertisers wanting to use the Conversion Optimizer with AdWords Editor and the AdWords API. Today, we are pleased to announce that the Conversion Optimizer is now supported by both AdWords Editor and the AdWords API.

Many advertisers have told us that by using the Conversion Optimizer, they have not only made their campaigns significantly more profitable, but also they save time managing their accounts. Though one question we often hear is, "How does the Conversion Optimizer make my campaign more profitable than I can on my own?"

You probably already vary your bids by keyword and may also use separate bids for the search and content networks. The Conversion Optimizer takes this strategy a step further by automatically adjusting your bids to take into account many additional factors, including: the country the user is browsing from, the specific content network site or search partner site your ad appears on, and the broad match terms a keyword has matched on.

As part of AdWords, the Conversion Optimizer is able to consider all these factors, and then adjust your bids based on the potential value of each click. Clicks vary in value because every click has a different likelihood of converting. For example, the keyword "flowers" may have a 2% conversion rate while the keyword "roses delivery" may have a 7% conversion rate. That doesn’t mean that you don’t want any clicks on "flowers," but you probably wouldn’t want to spend as much on that keyword as you might be willing to spend for clicks on "roses delivery." The Conversion Optimizer uses information like this to adjust your bids based on how valuable each click is for you.

If you would like to use the Conversion Optimizer, you’ll need to have AdWords Conversion Tracking enabled and have at least 200 conversions in the last 30 days. To get started, check out the Conversion Optimizer homepage.

Since launching video units to U.S. publishers with English-language websites, we’ve received quite a few emails about this new product. Here are the top 4 questions we’d like to address:

1. I selected “Automated Content” but the videos aren’t relevant to my site. What can I do?

Thanks to your feedback, we’ve implemented a feature to improve content relevance. Before, if you typed in [cars planes taxis], for example, only videos which matched all of these keywords would be returned. If there were no videos which matched all of these keywords, we delivered a default set of videos from the most popular YouTube partner content. We’ve modified this so that now [cars planes taxis] will deliver videos which have to do with cars or planes or taxis. This will greatly reduce the likelihood of default popular content being delivered to your units. In general, to refine video targeting with the “Automated Content” setting, you should try different keyword combinations to see what works best.

2. Can I select the individual videos that appear in my video unit?

It isn’t currently possible to select individual videos for your video units. If you’re choosing “Automated Content” for your video unit, you can further refine video targeting by testing different combinations of keywords.

3. I followed your instructions to link my AdSense and YouTube accounts, but my account still shows as “pending”. I haven’t gotten a confirmation email yet.

You might have to manually link your AdSense Account to your YouTube account. To do so please follow the steps below.

1. Log in to your AdSense account.
2. Click the “Account Access” link located under the “My Account” tab.
3. Under “sites”, find “www.youtube.com” and click the “grant access” link.

Your AdSense account should now successfully be linked to your YouTube account.

4. Do you offer any other sizes for the video units?

Right now, we only offer the three sizes listed in your account when you generate the ad code — note that the ‘mini’ size is larger than what appears on your code generation page. We’ll be sure to announce any new sizes and styles as they become available.

Please keep in mind that video units are different from click-to-play video ads; while video units contain YouTube partner videos complemented by standard AdSense ads, click-to-play video ads are ads created by AdWords advertisers in video format. At this time, no in-stream video ads will show in your video units.

To make changes to your video units or try them out for the first time, visit your AdSense Setup page. Thanks again for your feedback, and stay tuned for more updates on video units.