Recently, I’ve started to revisit the idea of dayparting across several of the campaigns we manage. With the strong focus on keywords, ad copy, and bids, dayparting often gets overlooked when setting up a campaign. It's is a true hidden gem that can help drive additional visitors and maximize ROI.

Dayparting (or “Ad Scheduling” as Google AdWords calls it) lets you schedule the display of your ads for specific days of the week and hours throughout the day.  You can raise or lower the normal bid by a set percentage during each period. This sort of ad scheduling enables you to capture more visitors during your peak traffic times and save money during off-peak times.

Continue reading "Dayparting - a Hidden Gem"

Last week I got the opportunity to attend Day 2 of the PPC Summit in Chicago. The PPC Summit brings together experts in the pay-per-click industry who cover a number of B2B and B2C search marketing topics.  Topics include keyword targeting, ad copy strategy, landing page optimization, lead generation, ecommerce, third-party tools, social media, and analytics integration.

My favorite session was the first one I went to – Expanding Advertising Coverage: Local Search Opportunities. The talk started off with the benefits of local search and quickly moved into Facebook advertising. Unlike many of the other sessions, this one evolved into more of a conversation than a talk; the audience started asking questions, which we tackled together as a group.

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Ever since the announcement that Bing and Yahoo! will fold into one search engine, there have been a lot of questions as to when exactly this will happen, what it means for advertisers, how it will affect users, and whether it will hurt Google.  I have spent some time trying to find answers to these questions, and thought I’d share what I found.

Most important to note is that the transition from Yahoo! to Bing will take anywhere from 12-24 months, starting in the US and then expanding to other regions. Therefore, advertisers’ and users need not worry about it just yet! When the transition is finally complete, here are some key points to know.

Continue reading "Yahoo! and Bing Search Marketing Agreement - What’s the Deal?"

Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village - The Onion

If you're interested in reading something legitimate about Google's Behavioral Targeting, you might enjoy these posts:

• Data Sharing and Privacy Concerns
• Does Google Ad Planner = Privacy Concerns?

Google’s sponsored links have inched their way over to get a little closer to organic search results. This shift happened on August 11th. Now when you run a search you'll see something like this:

Continue reading "Google’s Sponsored Links Move on Over"

Lately I’ve been focusing a lot of attention on optimizing our PPC text ads for several of our clients. I’ve read articles on PPC ad best practices, looked at presentations and consulted Google help for advice on how to write the best text ad. My findings were overwhelmingly varied and I realized the best resource was my own tests and results.

Here are my 7 Tips for Writing Effective PPC Ad Copy:

1.  Use actual keywords in the ad copy. Although this may seem like a no-brainer, I often see ads come up that don’t include anything remotely similar to my search query. Using keywords in your text ad will help trigger your ads more often. **An extra tip is to use a keyword in the display URL, allowing there to be one more occurrence of the specified keyword.

2.  Include a strong call-to-action. I like to take the short and sweet route such as “Order Now,” “Reserve Today,” or “Learn More,” which work well for my clients’ campaigns. However, other paid marketers choose to include longer versions, like “Click Here to Buy.” In the end the important thing is to include a call-to-action that grabs the visitor’s attention.

Continue reading "7 Tips for Writing Effective PPC Ad Copy"

The new Google AdWords interface has been around for a few of months now. While at first I was hesitant to make the switch over, I eventually made the jump and now I’m starting too really like it, as do others. There are a few aspects I miss about the old interface (the Statistics drop down menu, faster loading times), but the new interface definitely has its pros. In my opinion, one of the best new additions to the interface is the integrated Search Query Report.

Continue reading "What can the New AdWords Interface Search Query Report do for You?"

As I dig deeper and deeper into the Google Analytics realm I’m learning a whole lot more about traffic patterns, goal funnels, and conversion tracking, than I ever thought possible. I’m also starting to find, and take advantage of, some great tools that Analytics has to offer (that is, tools that aren’t easily accessible in the standard Google Analytics tutorial).

One of these is the utm_nooverride string.

When tracking conversions, Google Analytics will report the most recent non-direct source as the source of the conversion. For example, say you search for “skydiving in Virginia.”  You click on an ad for “1800Skyride.com” and browse the web site.

Continue reading "Nifty Little Analytics Tool"

When creating keyword campaigns in Google AdWords I’ve always believed that using all three match types – exact, phrase, and match – for a single keyword would negatively affect your campaign. I thought that with this setup your own keywords would be competing against each other. I realized, however, that my beliefs had no solid foundation.

Continue reading "Finding the Perfect Match Type"

Is paid search predominately a research mechanism? Or do visitors have strong purchase-intent when clicking on paid advertisements? Does PPC predominately expose new visitors to your company? Or does it seal the deal? Out of the box Google Analytics doesn't return this data. Google Analytics tracks the last referring source and overwrites the previous. So, if a visitor is exposed to your company via PPC, but then makes a purchase during a later visit via organic search, the organic visit gets the credit thus blinding you to your PPC's conversion rate.

Here's what we did to try and get at this data (still not sure if it will work).

Continue reading "Under the Hood: Measuring Purchase Intent of PPC Traffic In Google Analytics"

I can't stand most banner ads. They just get in the way of my browsing and annoy me. However, like so many other technologies, it's not the technology's fault, it's how we use it that's the problem. I came across a group that is running an excellent integrated digital marketing campaign; rockin' some sweet banners, a cool microsite, and some other essential online marketing tactics.

Continue reading "(Good) Banners + Microsite = Effective"

For those of you who think Google is set on taking over the world, add this to the list: Google pay-per-click ads will now show up on Yahoo! search engine results. The two companies signed a 10 year deal thus further increasing Google’s dominance in the paid-search world.

AdAge put together a great article summarizing a few of the details and I would encourage you to read it.

While this deal is causing fear of rising CPC costs, increased government scrutiny, and Yahoo! becoming more reliant on Google; there are also a few pros such as small business being able to advertise on both Google and Yahoo! from one platform and Google learning from Yahoo’s successful display advertising techniques (especially with Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick).

This won’t affect the consumer for at least another 3 months as Google and Yahoo! have agreed to delay implementation to allow the Justice Department to read the fine print. Hopefully, it wont be Senator Ted Stevens doing the reviewing (see below).

 

Continue reading "Google and Yahoo! Join PPC Forces"

Building out a pay-per-click advertising campaign can be a tedious and, dare I say it, slightly boring process. The strategy that takes place leading up to the build-out, and the optimization that takes place post build-out, is challenging and enjoyable. However, the build-out itself is just good old fashioned grunt work.

Well, Trace recently discovered a program called Efficient PPC that has changed our PPC build-out lives forever.

We used Efficient PPC in the past to build-out a massive campaign; but until recently we hadn’t tapped into the full potential of this angelic app. Yesterday, when building out a large PPC campaign, I dug in a bit and discovered the power of Efficient PPC. Basically, creates multiple campaigns, ad-groups, keyword lists and text-ads in one fell swoop.

Here’s how it works (For the sake of this example, I’ll ignore the campaign level and geo-targeting and pretend all these ad-groups are part of one big, messy campaign--which would be incorrect; but I don’t want to write all day):

Let’s say I’m advertising a chain snowboarding shop in the DC Metro Area and I only want to target people in the specific cities in which these shops reside. With Efficient PPC, I simply create a list containing the specific cities (Arlington, Washington, Bethesda etc.) and call it “City-words.” I create another list containing all the keywords in the snowboardingvertical (gnar gnar, radical, sick, etc.) and call it “Snowboarding-words.” These lists have now become tokens and are implemented by using braces ( {city-words} ). Here’s where the genius of Efficient PPC kicks in. Rather than manually creating multiple ad-groups with separate keyword lists and text-ads; Efficient PPC automatically populates my ad-groups, keyword lists, and text-ads based on the lists I’ve created. That’s probably still a bit confusing, so check this out:

Continue reading "Efficient PPC: A Must Have Tool"

Pay-per-Action (PPA) is an advertising model based on, of all things, actions. Its cousin is Pay-per-Click (PPC). PPC campaigns cost advertisers money each time someone clicks on their ads. PPA campaigns only cost advertisers money when someone takes an action.

You may be familiar with both PPA and PPC without even knowing it. PPC ads are shown on Google all the time. They are the advertisements associated with keywords such as “web design” and “washington d.c. restaurants” and are typically shown in the right sidebar of search results. Google calls its program “AdWords”—and it has been wildly successful ever since it began.

There are a number of problems with PPC. One of the more significant problems is called click fraud. The idea behind click fraud is simple: click on competitor ads to run up their costs and run down their advertising budgets. Of course, Google, Yahoo!, and many others have made significant efforts to mitigate click fraud; but, it still happens.

PPA is not without flaw, but will definitely further fight these sorts of issues. PPA is not a new idea. For example, Amazon has offered this sort of affiliate relationship with web sites who list their books or other products. Anytime someone clicks over to Amazon and actually purchases one of their products, the affiliate gets a small referral fee.

But PPA is a new idea for Google.

Google recently announced a limited release of the PPA model. PPA ads will show throughout their content network (i.e., on web sites running AdSense) and also through text link ads (i.e., publishers will be able to link directly to PPA ads).

There’s more to dive into; but, here are a couple of take homes: How much are you willing to pay for a lead? How much are you willing to pay for someone to buy a product? Those answers may vary but, hopefully, you have a good idea. If you know a new customer is worth $1,000, are you willing to pay $5 for a lead? Well, if 1 in 10 leads convert to an actual customer, that means you would spend $50 for $1,000 of new business.

PPA in the Google context is going to be important, so stay tuned to when Google releases it to all advertisers.

Today’s Washington Post had a front-page article entitled ”‘Click Fraud’ Threatens Foundation of Web Ads.” It’s a good overview of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and the problems challenging the model.  Some of the more interesting facts and stats mentioned in the article:

• Google and Yahoo together handle more than 70% of all web searches in the U.S.


• PPC ads generated $5 billion last year, which is about 40% of the Internet advertising market.


• The PPC model is only about four years old.


• The Yankee Group research firm estimates that 10% of clicks on text ads are fraudulent.  Google claims it’s less, while others estimate it to be as high as 30%.


• Google employs “about three dozen” people who monitor click fraud, 20 of whom respond to click fraud complaints from advertisers.


• 39% of Google’s third quarter revenue ($1.04 billion) came from its affiliate network (text ads placed on other sites).


• New York ad agency Carat Fusion says that “sixty percent of new customers come through Google.”


• This summer, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Corp., and Ask.com executives agreed to form a click fraud working group to develop industry standards.

Clearly, click fraud has the potential to be an enormous problem as the number of bogus companies and networks grows (and becomes more sophisticated).  To help maintain advertiser confidence in PPC, Google and Yahoo tout their dedication to combating click fraud with expert staff and innovative, secretive technology (which they conveniently can’t say too much about since releasing details on exactly how they fight fraud will tip off the cheaters trying to stay one step ahead).

The solution to all of this is mentioned indirectly in the article when John Slade, director of Yahoo’s click-fraud protection efforts, says that “advertisers must help search engines thwart fraud by sharing more information about what visitors do on their sites after clicking on ads.” This is where Google’s 2005 acquisition of web analytics package Urchin (now dubbed Google Analytics) starts to make more sense.  At the time, Google said their goal was, in part, to “help web site owners and marketers ... generate a higher return-on-investment from their advertising spending.”

Online advertising started with a nice enhancement to a basic offline model: pay-per-impression.  Rather than the wide estimates of how many people might see your ad in a magazine, online, you could know exactly how many times your ad was displayed and, presumably, seen by a potential customer.  Pay-per-click was a big step in the right direction when advertisers said “I don’t care about people just seeing my ad, I want web traffic—and I’ll pay more for that.” The next obvious step?  Pay-per-conversion (Google called it cost-per-action or CPA when they announced testing the new program in June).  Advertisers are now saying what’s been obvious all along—that they’ll pay the most for an actual customer.

It’s not a new idea, nor is the technology all that advanced.  Amazon’s affiliate program (and others like Commission Junction, LinkShare, and DoubleClick) has paid affiliate marketers based on actual purchases for years.

Part of the challenge, though, in combating fraud and implementing a pay-per-conversion solution is a technology one.  Site owners need to be able to share data with Google about what their users do on their sites after arriving through a text ad.  That becomes a lot easier when the site is using Google Analytics.  Whatever the data sharing solution, it has to be a largely automated one.  Google’s text ad success is a classic long tail example, which falls apart if the pay-per-conversion solution only targets the most advanced site owners and advertisers.

With massive amounts of money at stake, you can bet the problems around click fraud will be solved in the long run.  Will it be by thwarting fraudulent clickers through automated technology or by advancing the advertising solution beyond paying for clicks at all?  It may be too soon to tell.