Paid Search
Paid Search looks at search advertising programs and how to most effectively use them. Columnists cover topics such as bid management, managing multiple campaigns, ad and landing page quality issues and other subjects. The Paid Search column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.
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Sep 29, 2008 at 3:02pm by George Michie
Why Position Bidding Wastes Money
It’s remarkable that in 2008 there are still many bidding systems in use by SEMs and in-house PPC managers dedicated to “finding the right position” for each keyword. These position crawling systems guarantee inefficiency and lost opportunity; to put it concisely: they’re playing the wrong game. Here’s why:
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Sep 22, 2008 at 9:07am by Andrew Goodman
Wall Street Meltdown: 11 Ways It Affects Digital Marketers
Tim O’Reilly (like me, as you’ll see below) seems to believe we’re in a bit of a bubble that’s set to burst, even though, as he walked in to deliver his keynote at the Web 2.0 conference, the stock markets were in the middle of a rebound, vaulting up about 7% in a 26-hour period. Notwithstanding the current stampede to the entrance, if you will, brought about by federal governments pumping hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of liquidity into the system — and a ban on short-selling all 799 financial stocks tradeable on the U.S. markets — it’s a fair bet that we’re in for tough economic times.
O’Reilly noted that a financial bubble seems to go hand in hand with a “reality bubble.” When the best and the brightest are working on sheep-throwing apps and “iBeer,” isn’t there something wrong with our priorities? Maybe that’s a separate discussion. But when either bubble bursts, chances are we will see our priorities more clearly.
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Sep 15, 2008 at 1:56pm by Brad Geddes
PPC Payment Options - Risk & Reward
There are several different payment options you can use to pay your
ever-growing paid search bills. Each method has its own risk and reward, so
it’s best to consider your options against your business model. Please note,
Microsoft adCenter is similar to Yahoo in billing, but they also have many
options, and it’s worth speaking to your rep about their options.
Before we can talk payment though, we must talk financial risk.
See Related Stories In How To: PPC, Paid Search, Search Ads: General
Sep 8, 2008 at 1:43pm by Mona Elesseily
Pain Reliever Pages
I’ve been thinking a lot about landing pages lately. Last time, I talked about getting multivariate landing page testing straight. Today, I’ll look at a specialized offer technique that employs what I’ll call a Pain Reliever Page (PRP). A PRP is problem-based (or pain-specific). It addresses a specific consumer issue and attempts to alleviate a consumer pain point. The page, if well executed, taps into the psyche of a buyer and convinces them to make a purchase. In this article, I’ll outline key steps in designing a PRP and provide short examples from Apollo Health. (Fortunately for the marketer, in medical fields, the pain felt by prospects is often all too real and physical.)
See Related Stories In How To: PPC, Paid Search
Sep 1, 2008 at 11:00am by George Michie
9 Keys to Successful Day-Parting
Taking advantage of intraday fluctuations in traffic value can be important to maximizing the efficiency of your pay-per-click (PPC) ad spend. We see statistically significant variances in traffic value on the order of 5% to 25% for many retailers, and much more than that for some.
However, measuring and acting on these value differences requires careful thought and proper execution.
See Related Stories In How To: PPC, Paid Search
Aug 25, 2008 at 1:04pm by Andrew Goodman
Whither DART Search?
SES San Jose 2008 is now in the books and another Google Dance — that annual bash that provides us all with so much safe, clean YouTube fodder — has come and gone. Among the various features and benefits — upscale backyard barbecue fare, free beer, modified karaoke, dancing, and light shows — is the most fascinating spectacle of all: Googlers meeting other Googlers. (Oftentimes, I ran across Googlers just sticking with their own little clique and talking among themselves, but what do you expect… it’s a “campus”.)
Google is such an enormous entity by now that it carries a real risk of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. Overall, though, the company does a pretty good job of keeping its initiatives in sync.
But if Googlers are always needing to meet other Googlers for the first time, imagine the effort of digesting a large company in the digital ad space whose founding predated Google’s by two years, and which brings to the table a variety of legacy technologies and platforms along with its own corporate culture. Googlers, meet DoubleClickers!
See Related Stories In Google: Business Issues, Google: Critics, Google: DoubleClick, Paid Search
Aug 4, 2008 at 1:07pm by George Michie
Pay-Per-Click Averages Hide Incremental Realities
You’re hitting your pay-per-click (PPC) efficiency targets and everyone is pleased with the results. Congratulations, but are you wasting money in your PPC program? Averages often hide waste, and in this economy it may be worth taking a look at how you’re getting to that average.
Suppose you budget $200 to buy a DVD player. When you arrive at the store you find the model you want is actually on sale for $100! You arrive home, your 5 year-old hears the good news, grabs the leftover $100 and feeds it into the paper shredder. You are: a) indifferent because you planned to spend $200 anyway; or b) irate because your son just wasted $100?
Is this happening in your PPC program?
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Jul 28, 2008 at 3:00pm by Andrew Goodman
Google Ad Planner: Another Disruptive Technology From Mountain View
When I tried out the new Google Ad Planner recently, I had no idea my reaction would be so out of step with the reactions of various observers on the scene.
Has this ever happened to you? It’s like being in an episode of The Twilight Zone, as you pass by the horrified shouts of onlookers towards some scene that will surely turn out to be horrific carnage when you turn the corner, but all you see when you get there are gingerbread houses and bunny rabbits.
There I was, doing research using Google’s intuitive interface in order to develop a list of potential target sites broken down by demographics and relevancy, and my impression was: (i) keep up the good work, Google; and (ii) there really isn’t all that much to this, so I really hope they’ll be beefing it up. I wasn’t yawning, so much as I felt like it was a little free service that fit like a glove and made me feel like “business as usual, but with a new toy to play with.”
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Jul 25, 2008 at 8:49pm by Brad Geddes
What Should You Do When Quality Score Kills Your Keywords?
One of the biggest frustrations for an AdWords advertiser is when a minimum bid for highly relevant keywords jumps from a few cents to a few dollars without any seemingly reasonable explanation. The keyword, ad copy, and landing page can all be highly relevant. The CTR could be above 5%. The keyword converts well. Users are obviously happy to be clicking on your ads. However, when Google updates the quality score, there are days when logic and minimum bids seem to disagree.
Besides screaming at Google and calling the AdWords system illogical, what should you do next?
Below is a step by step diagnosis procedure for trying to find the hole in your quality score chain.
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Jul 14, 2008 at 3:08pm by Mona Elesseily
Getting Multivariate Landing Page Testing Straight!
These days, you can’t go anywhere without hearing about multivariate testing
so I thought I’d walk through a landing page test. Along the way, I’ll
provide testing pointers and leave you with several testing considerations.
I’ll highlight the importance of multivariate testing and show it can yield significant improvements in
pay per click (PPC)
accounts.
This case study centers on NXPowerLite, which sells compression software
for PPT, Excel, and Word documents. While too many details are
involved in multivariate testing to cover them all, the following information should
provide a good basis for your own testing.
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Jul 7, 2008 at 11:03am by Andrew Goodman
Revisiting Content-Phobia In Paid Search
While I am on holiday this week, through the magic of Internet time and custom tubes, my column isn’t. During this time off I’ll be taking time out for rest, reflection, and especially, a hiatus from one of my several jobs: Designated Undercompensated Google Ad Salesman.
What, you say? Google ads sell themselves? $14 billion in annual revenues would seem to suggest that yes, they do.
But recall that about half of those revenues come from non-search inventory: the contextual ads Google facilitates in partnership with tens of thousands of online publishers. Because—yes—the search ads by and large sell themselves, Google has put a ton of effort into moving the contextual inventory. And unbeknownst to skeptics, they’ve done much to improve it for advertisers. Although the financial breakdowns in annual reports are a bit difficult to interpret, a rough reading of the financials suggests that the share of overall revenues accounted for by the “Google Network” dropped again in fiscal 2007, to around 36%, from a high water mark four years ago near 50%. Google’s revenue growth overall has been driven primarily by the core: ads showing on Google Search and a few other Google-owned properties.
See Related Stories In Google: AdSense, Paid Search
Jun 30, 2008 at 7:42am by George Michie
Don’t Let Machines Write Your Keyword Lists
As anyone who has seen the Terminator or Matrix movies can attest, if machines rule the world humans are in deep trouble. Similarly, if you allow machines to control the PPC keyword creation process you are guaranteed to both leave opportunity on the table and flush money down the toilet.
The reason is simple: language is really hard. The best language software in the world, Google’s, is awful with language. My last SEL post related to bid management in PPC; the AdSense ad running next to it was for a contracting firm looking to bid on construction projects.
Consider the following:
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Jun 9, 2008 at 6:50pm by Andrew Goodman
Instant (Bad) Karma’s Gonna Get Ya: AdWords Account Quality At Startup
This one’s for all of you consultants, agencies, and in-house SEM’s who find themselves “inheriting” a sloppily-built account started by someone else.
It’s also a cautionary tale for anyone thinking about “casually” starting out an AdWords account. Hopefully I’ll save you some cash today, but in particular I hope to save you time.
See Related Stories In Google: AdWords, Paid Search
May 27, 2008 at 12:32pm by Brad Geddes
PPC Management Options – Are Your Fees Inline With The Advertiser’s Goals?
There are many ways to bill for PPC management and each has its own distinct characteristics. Some of these billing techniques align more with an agency, and others more with an advertiser.
For agencies, the proper billing types can make the difference between being profitable and going out of business. In addition, if your goals are aligned with your advertisers, then long term synergies usually develop which means longer client retention.
For advertisers, it is important to understand the options that exist. Not all agencies offer all of the below pricing options. However, some will be willing to work with you to find a solution that benefits both parties.
A contract extends beyond just billing to include contract lengths and contract renewal types. First, we will examine agency fees, then we will dive into contract lengths.
By seeing the billing point of view from both an agency and an advertiser, it can be easier to choose the proper type of contract so that both the agency and the advertisers succeed in their digital efforts.
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May 19, 2008 at 4:38pm by Mona Elesseily
How To Solve Communication And Differentiation Problems
Last week, Page Zero Media held a seminar in Toronto called Winning the Paid Search Game. In the intensive half day seminar, we focused on tactical PPC issues like ad copy generation, landing page optimization, and the differences between the search engines. But strategy is possibly even more important than tactics – envisioning the “endgame” well beyond the click helps you do a lot better in the opening game (bidding on keywords).
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May 13, 2008 at 9:39pm by George Michie
Bidding For Dollars - Margin Dollars, That Is
As the competition in search becomes more sophisticated, refining tactics becomes more important than ever. For online retailers, bidding by margin is all but essential.
Every firm has a different marketing objective: some look for maximum ROI and some are willing to spend to break even in hopes that future orders will drive the profit, while others see search as a means of spreading the brand message.
Whatever your objective, you’re more likely to reach it the more tightly your success metric jibes with the real value of the traffic driven.
See Related Stories In Paid Search, Search Ads: General
May 5, 2008 at 12:05pm by Andrew Goodman
Make Your Ads Better: Three Powerful Techniques
Tomorrow I’m giving a talk at the eMetrics summit in San Francisco. A search marketing perspective can often seem “refreshing” in the context of the discipline of marketing in general; it even seems to go against the grain a bit. I’ll be telling the eMetrics audience a bit about how I use core stats in paid search to iterate much more rapidly than most analysts are used to. In other words, I won’t be talking about the fancy stuff you get from analytics reports, but the bread-and-butter stuff, like CTR and even initial Quality Scores (yes, that’s a statistic!).
See Related Stories In Paid Search, Search Ads: General
Apr 28, 2008 at 1:35pm by Brad Geddes
What Yahoo’s New Minimum Bid Means To You
Yahoo recently announced
that they are moving away from a $0.10 fixed minimum CPC to a variable minimum
bid. However, there are some differences in how Yahoo calculates minimum bids
compared to AdWords. These differences are important to note as you switch between these PPC engines so that each account is properly optimized for each engine according to how the bids are calculated.
See Related Stories In Paid Search, Yahoo: Search Ads
Apr 21, 2008 at 4:57pm by Mona Elesseily
Microsoft - Three Weeks Or Else!
Since Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion, interesting times have been ours to enjoy here in the land of the search engines. On April 5 2008, Steve Ballmer stepped up the game by giving Yahoo! 3 weeks to make a decision on the 44.6 billion dollar offer or they’ll bypass the board and go directly to shareholders.
See Related Stories In Microsoft & Yahoo Merger, Paid Search
Apr 14, 2008 at 12:00am by Alan Rimm-Kaufman
Secrets Of Paid Search Success From 1930s Direct Mail Wizards
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If you buy search ads to drive sales, you are a direct response advertiser. Welcome, today’s short column is for you.
If you buy search to increase awareness of your brand, you’re a brand advertiser. Sorry, but this column is for the direct response gang, us red-headed step-kids of the advertising world. Save us a canapé from the awards banquet; we’ll be back at the office with our spreadsheets.
Just us direct response folks? OK, here’s today’s suggestion: we search marketers can learn a lot from the direct mail wizards.
Putting it more crudely: if Claude Hopkins were alive, his Google campaigns would kick ass.
