Google has recently added a few features to it’s system. One is that they’ve added keyword quality score and Estimated First Page Bid to the reports you can run and the 2nd is they’re allowing you to separate Google Search clicks from Google Search Partner clicks.
These are two nice additions to their advertising platform that can help advertisers with their analysis and strategies. As an advertiser, you’re now able to easily find and filter out high and low performing keywords (based on quality score) in order to better optimize them. Being able to separate Google Search clicks from their partner network allows you to quickly see where your traffic is coming from on an ad group or campaign level.
I’m making splitting this into a separate paragraph because this could be BIG. A HUGE benefit of this is… if you have ad groups with either just one word or even just a couple of keywords in it, you can get a much clearer picture of your CTR on Google.com. Why is this important? The CTR that is used to calculate your quality score comes from your performance on Google.com*. If you want to optimize a keyword’s QS, then you can use this new data given to see if your changes are having a better impact on the Google Search Network (data that is mostly from Google.com) which should lead to a higher QS.
* This might be changing a little bit since one place says “note that CTR on the Google Network only ever impacts Quality Score on the Google Network—not on Google” while other sources maintain what Google has always said - they only take your Google.com CTR.
I’m also assuming that if you’re using Google conversion tracking, you’ll be able to see conversion data broken out by Google Network and Partner Network - another benefit.
Now, this all sounds great, but Google being Google, always likes to hold back when they give us something. The quality score and “new minimum bid” reporting only shows current data so if you want to view any trend data on your QS or first page bids, you’ll have to collect the data yourself. For the Search Network vs Partner Network display, the first negative is that I didn’t see any option to run a report to get the data so it looks like it’s only available within the campaign management section.
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According to the Washington Post, a study of adults between the ages of 55-76 showed that those that were “internet savvy” had increased activity in their visual cortex, the part of the brain that controls reading and language.
In the aging brain, atrophy and reduced cell activity can take a toll on cognitive function. Activities that keep the brain engaged can preserve brain health and thinking ability.
Dr Small thinks learning to do Internet searches may be one of those activities. “It tells us we probably can teach an old brain new Internet tricks,” he said.
Us search marketers probably use search engines more than anybody else - maybe this means you’ll be able to lay down the sodoku without worrying about how it’ll affect the long term health of your brain.
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Originall posted by Search Engine Land, data collected by JupiterResearch from 103 agencies and advertisers spending at least $50,000/month in paid search shows how they would be willing to spend up to 22% more if they had better PPC management software.
According to the survey, between 18-25% of search marketers are still using Excel to calculate bids, for reporting and analytics, linking engine data to conversion data and editing creatives. Out of these five, linking conversion data to your engine data is most important. It allows you to quickly see performance of your account and keywords in order to quickly see any issues before they become into larger scale problems. Also, if your software can’t match up conversion data to your engine data, then you can’t really have any type of bid optimization at all anyways. The others can many times be done quicker in Excel just because any “quick adjustments” that are made are usually much harder to perform when working with 3rd party software. The easiest example I can think of is undoing your work. Many times, online software doesn’t allow you to go back one step at a time like Excel does, if at all, so any mistakes that are made (or if you simply want to change what you originally put in), you usually have to start from scratch.
Having a mix between using Excel and paid search software is usually an ideal solution in order to make account management efficient. 3rd part software only will do whatever the programmers tell it to do and with Excel being extremely powerful, it is usually more flexible - especially for analyzing data. Getting rid of tedious and error prone activities such as linking engine data to conversion data and account setup are what software developers should be working on allowing PPC marketers to have more time for analysis and strategy.
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Shawn Collins is reporting that there is a bill being pushed through to repeal the tax affecting New York affiliates.
Good news for New Yorkers if this gets passed.
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Click arbitrage is the practice of buying traffic from the search engines and sending it to a page with ads in order to get the user to click on ads that will produce revenue greater than the amount spent on the traffic.
Arbitrageurs do what many people in the financial industry do, they look for inefficiencies in the marketplace and exploit them to make a profit. There’s huge money to be made in this industry, but it’s not for the faint of heart since many times, it’s the volume that creates any worthwhile profit.
Google, specifically hates this as they claim it provides a poor user experience but probably also because it provides revenue to their competitors. Around February of this year, Google updated its quality score algorithm and in the process, kicked out many thin affiliate sites, arbitrageurs and other sites it didn’t like at the time (coupon sites, comparison shopping sites, and other sites that Google competes with doesn’t like).
I’ve been starting to see arbitrage sites slowly making a comeback as they figure out new ways to show up in the results, but today it looks like they’re back in a big way. Conducting a search for “flights”, you can see that 3 of the listings on the first page are for arbitrage sites that provide nothing more than more choices ads for the user to click on. Is this cottage-industry starting to boom again as Google needs to keep revenue numbers up?
On a side note, whoever is advertising for h20gearexpress.com, you may want to take a look at your metrics a bit because I don’t think you’re going to see any positive results from that ad, but please, prove me wrong.
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With YouTube adding click-to-buy links within it’s site, the first thing I thought of was that companies or their affiliates could make a lot of money with it. Well, who knows if it would be a lot, but at least some. It seems other news sources are thinking the same thing.
ClickZ and Search Engine Watch both reported that Google will now allow “click to Buy” advertisements so that users can purchase products based on the videos they see. So far, from the linked video it looks like it’s either Linkshare and Amazon affiliates doing the linking or maybe EMI is just using affiliate URLs to make tracking easier. Either way, it looks like there is a lot of potential for this.
The most obvious is already being noted, for songs that people are listening to or for movie previews that people watch, there could be a link to buy that song or movie directly from YouTube. Another, less obvious of this would for content producers. Depending on the structure of how the links are added, someone who is willing to take the time to produce a video demonstrating how the product is used or even just having a video review of the product could go ahead and add links for the user to buy the product from Amazon or another online retailer. While not everyone who is watching some crazy soccer tricks will go and buy a soccer ball, somebody watching a review of one the best TV’s on the market will be more closer to the purchasing part of the buying cycle.
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Is saying that “growth slows” not dissimilar to using a double negative? Maybe it’s just the way people report the news, maybe because it’s below what original forecasts were so it may change the analysts viewpoints on the industry, maybe it’s another reason that I’m just not aware of. Whatever it is, it seems as though the positive side of the data is being downplayed.
Percentages can be misleading, especially when comparing them to numbers as they’ve been growing - it’s usually best to have both the percentages and actual numbers to make any judgements. See the chart below for the percentage growth in online ad revenue (data from IAB) along with the actual dollar growth.
|
Year
|
Total Online Ad spend (Q1 & Q2)
|
Growth from Previous Year
|
% Growth from Previous Year
|
|
2008
|
$ 11,500,000,000 |
$ 1,500,000,000 |
15%
|
|
2007
|
$ 10,000,000,000 |
$ 2,063,492,063 |
26%
|
|
2006
|
$ 7,936,507,937 |
$ 2,143,436,450 |
37%
|
|
2005
|
$ 5,793,071,487 |
|
|
While the numbers still don’t look fantastic for 2008, increasing $500 million less than the year before, the industry is still growing at a very high pace.
Other good news for search agencies is that paid search increased by 24% up to $5.1 billion, up from about $4.1 billion.
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Customer service seems to be a marketing tool that people don’t usually talk about all that often - unless it’s bad customer service. I’m actually writing this post due to a poor customer service experience with Chase, but I’ll get to that in a bit. I’ve always believed that customer service is pretty much above all else. You don’t always have to bend over backwards for them, but you should use whatever power or authority you have to do as much for them as you possibly can. You could have a great product, but because you treat your customers poorly, you will lose them. Conversely, you could have an average product or at least higher prices, and still have a successful business if you can provide the added benefit of superior customer service. If a customer has a bad experience just because you’re company is trying to save money, it can lead to a loss of that customer and possibly others in the future.
Customer service is another “touch point” people have with your company, and most, if not all of the time, it’s when they have some sort of problem they want resolved. People trust names like P&G and Tylenol not only because they’re huge and well known, but also because to become a huge conglomerate, you usually need to have a good product and stand behind it. Your customers are willing to do business with you, sometimes at a premium, because your reputation has shown that other people trust you. A company like Newegg.com probably has one of the best reputations online. They ship faster than expected and also work hard to work out any problems AFTER the sale as well.
It seems as though most companies only concentrate on the selling part but don’t realize that what you do after the sale is just as important - at least if you want to retain customers. There are some businesses that this doesn’t matter such as your fly by night internet site or maybe a highway gas station. However, repeat customers on average cost a lot less than new customers. That fly by night site might be able to get business through PPC and then relaunch the same business with a new name a couple months down the road, but you’ll be paying just as much, maybe more for the traffic as you were before whereas if you just provided good service, you could get customers to shop again on their own and even get new customers from referrals.
It’s getting to be a decently long post, so I’m not going to go into all the details about my experience with Chase. I’ve been a customer with Chase for the last 3 1/2 years or so and they just lost my business for $12. If you by chance don’t believe me that it costs more to keep a customer than to gain a new one, then look in your mail, you might have just received a voucher for $100-$150 if you open up an account with them. Between calling them and visiting them in person (they kept sending me back and forth), it seemed no one was willing to help me and since the only thing keeping me from leaving is the fact that my online billing is set up with them, I decided that I’d rather change all that and open an account elsewhere than try to deal with them anymore. The odd part was that on my last visit, there was a customer satisfaction woman there too!
I’ve been hearing more and more stories about poor customer experience lately and have had a few of my own. Before, it was usually a pleasure and the company will work with you but it seems now, as the economy has deteriated, so has the customer service at many companies.
On a side note, providing good customer experience can provide you with a nice link while providing bad experience can get you links to your Chase Sucks site. Or maybe they’re going with this strategy.
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“Even if you’re not a genius, you can use the same strategies as Aristotle and Einstein to harness the power of your creative mind and better manage your future.”
There was a post on a study guide resource site that I saw a while back that described how some of the smartest people in the world look at the world. While the list is more focused on the sciences, it can also be specific to paid search and online marketing.
- Look at problems in many different ways, and find new perspectives that no one else has taken (or no one else has publicized!)
This is one of the most important and probably why it’s also #1. Especially in the business world, we hear phrases like “think outside the box” which are used so often the actual meaning gets partially lost. To make this tactic successful, you have to try to forget the rules as you’ve learned them and then look at a problem. Doing this can allow you to come up with ideas that you may have easily disregarded.
- Visualize!
Using other senses can help with the first point. If you write out your ideas or better yet, put them into some type of graphic or diagram, it can be easier to expand upon it, correct any inaccuracies and also look at it differently. When creating a strategy, this might be just to create an outline of your first, second and third steps. This way, it will get you to think about what you’re doing more and also will allow you to see your plans in case any adjustments need to be made.
- Produce! A distinguishing characteristic of genius is productivity.
You can’t get anywhere without doing. Maybe I’m remembering this article when I thought of this example, but when I think of productivity and genius, I think of Thomas Edison. He had lots of inventions that didn’t work, but the ones that did were huge. There are plenty of people who have lots of ideas, and they may even sound great, but if they don’t do anything with them, then a) you won’t see any results, and b) you’ll never know if they even work. A bonus benefit of producing is that each time you create something, you’ll use what you learned from your mistakes to improve the design. Launching a search campaign is much easier if you’ve done it 100 times than if you’ve never created one before. You’ll be sure to turn off content right away and have other little trick in the back of your head.
- Make novel combinations. Combine, and recombine, ideas, images, and thoughts into different combinations no matter how incongruent or unusual.
This one I love. There’s a lot to digest in the paid search industry, and even more if you start including affiliate marketing, SEO, social media, web design, etc. etc. There’s no one stopping you from taking an idea from SEO and using it in paid search. People get so entrenched in what they do on a daily basis that they never take a step back and (like #1), look at things differently to see the whole picture. You can use the previous and following points together to make a unique combination. The reward is being able to advertise or market in a way that noone else is doing which = $$$. That’s pretty much the whole point of affiliate marketing - at least to me. How else are you supposed to compete against hundreds if not thousands of other people who are getting paid the same or maybe even more than you are without having a novle approach?
- Form relationships; make connections between dissimilar subjects.
Home Depot noticed that every now and then, their sales within their stores would drop significantly. I’m not sure if it was an immediate insight or if it was one of those “a ha” moments, but someone at Home Depot also was able to link those same drop in sales with the weather. Each time it would rain, the store would sell less of it’s products. Hearing about this makes it seem obvious - when it rains, it’s a lot more difficult to do any type of home improvement work if a roof hasn’t yet been installed. Yet, knowing that this is the case, Home Depot is able to use the weather to determine how many employees it needs in it’s stores and also can predict how sales will be for that day.
- Think in opposites.
This helps you think differently and create new ideas. Use what Google tells you about their quality score along with what you see to create your own conclusions on what’s important. Google only tells you so much (and they definitely won’t tell you any faults or weak points with their QS), so to be better than the next guy, you need to do your own testing and see what’s important.
- Think metaphorically.
This is similar to making connections between dissimilar subjects but can also be between objects that resemble one another. If you’re able to say that one thing is like another, even if it doesn’t appear to be, it will help you take a different look at your campaigns. This is very important in conducting a thorough - and accurate - analysis. You can give to search marketers some data and you may end up with two very different conclusions. In order to make sure your conclusions are correct, you need to make sure you’re looking at all the data, the right data and also make sure you’re making the right connections, especially if they’re not right in front of you.
- Prepare yourself for chance.
A lot of things are out of our control. We may not have all the right data, maybe there was a huge incident and your brand is getting a lot of bad press or maybe there’s a new, and better product available. Whatever it is, instead of waiting for something bad to happen, you need to be “proactive” to ensure that even if it does, you will be ready or at least have a backup plan. If one door closes, look for another that’s open. If you can’t find another door, try the window.
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A new study released by iPerceptions shows that text ads are still king in terms of the types of ads a user is most likely to click on while video ads are pretty unpopular with people. Below is how the numbers break down.
- 25% are likely to click on simple text ads
- 20% are likely to click on display ads follow
- 20% are likely to click on right banners
- 12% are likely to click on top banners
- 11% are likely to click on video ads
I’ve read through their press release and tried browsing the iPerceptions site, but wasn’t able to find the methodology they used for the study. Looking at what the company does, it’s most likely that this mainly pertains to regular websites (and not search engines), but I don’t know for sure However, there are still a few important pieces of info that are present along with some important questions that are left unanswered.
First, this study shows that if you want traffic to your site (or if you’re trying to create a revenue model for you own website), then you should take into account the various results from the study. Users are more likely to click on your text ads rather than if you spend a lot of money on some fancy video ads. One surprising result, at least to me, is that side banners are more likely to get a click than top banners. Maybe it has something to do with how the information is displayed or that users see the ad for a longer period of time (as they scroll). Either way, it’s an interesting result.
A question that I’m left with from this study is… a user is “more likely” to click on a text ad, but what do they actually click on? The company states that they “collected user-generated feedback.” Many times, people say one thing and do another. Overall though, it at least shows that people are more content seeing text advertisements than banners.
A bigger question I have is, what about the actual conversion? Again, it’s great to hear that text ads are the ones that are most likely to get clicked on, but I’d want to know if display advertisements (being prettier, and also usually able to provide more information to and interactivity with the user), are able to also prequalify the user more.
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