I recently spoke with iProspect’s Associate Director of Paid Search, Jeremy Hull, about his agency’s experience with the migration process and the results they’ve seen.  Hull issued an updated POV at the end of last month based on the $6 million in spend iProspect had run on enhanced campaigns since February.

The agency began testing enhanced campaigns a month before the public announcement in February. Ten advertisers opted to transition immediately, either because they saw merits in the new approach or they wanted to take advantage of a particular feature like click-to-call. After the management platforms iProspect uses — Marin, Kenshoo, Ignition One and Doubleclick Search — made their first round of changes for enhanced campaigns, the agency began transitioning all of their clients. Today, nearly all client campaigns are enhanced.

Learn Best Practices & Migrate Early

Hull admits that getting accounts switched over to enhanced campaigns puts an extra burden on already time-stressed PPC teams, but says migrating is actually easier than it’s been built up to be.

“This is a major change that requires advertisers to ‘flip the switch themselves’,” says Hull. “But Google has done a good job with documentation and explaining why things need to be done a certain way.”  iProspect also built their own internal best practices guide based on Google’s guidelines and from what they learned in their early testing.

Hull advises advertisers not to wait until the last minute because those who experiment and optimize now will be in a better position than their competitors who hold out.

Identify Your Primary Campaigns, Establish Campaign Parity

The hardest part of the process, says Hull, is the initial planning phase and reviewing duplicate, or cloned, campaigns. His advice is to first determine which campaigns to keep and enhance and which ones to pause. If you have duplicate campaigns set for device or location targeting, “pick one version of the campaign to move forward with, and then make sure it has parity with its other versions,” he advises. If for example, you have keywords or keyword match-types running in a mobile version of a campaign but not in the desktop, put in the time up front to ensure all the keywords and match-types  are included in your new primary campaign.

Then devote time to getting the campaign settings right.

CPCs Started Rising Across All Devices

From February until a few weeks ago, iProspect saw very little movement in CPCs, looking both across the entire client set and at just those accounts that had migrated.

However in mid-April, iProspect started to see a change in device-level CPCs across both enhanced and legacy campaigns. Tablet CPCs increased each week and were 12 percent higher by mid-May. Desktop CPCs increased by 14 percent and smartphone CPCs increased 9 percent.

One client that transitioned on May 1 saw overall CPC increase by about 9 percent, which was in line with the overall CPC increases the agency saw at that time.  However, the higher CPCs were offset by a 10 percent increase in traffic and an 18 percent increase in revenue. Both performance increases were larger than previous years during the same period, says Hull.

iProspect projects that CPCs will be volatile as more advertisers migrate and they expect that tablet CPCs will reach parity with desktop CPCs by August. ”The low hanging fruit of less competitive device targeting is going to go away,” says Hull. Still, the agency predicts smartphone CPCs will not rise as drastically as tablets since many advertisers are electing to opt out of  smartphone targeting in enhanced campaigns.

To those advertisers sitting out for fear of seeing their CPCs immediately rise, Hull says that simply migrating to enhanced campaigns isn’t going make your CPCs increase; the increases in CPCs aren’t tied to an individual campaign migration, but reflect an advertiser’s competitive set as a whole migrating.

As quality score is calculated separately by device, Hull notes that similar to the volatility you see when launching new keywords,  advertisers that have not been running ads on tablets are likely to see more CPC volatility than those advertisers who already have established campaign history on tablets.

Beware Of Over Bidding With Bid Adjustments

It will be very easy to over bid without realizing it, warns Hull. “The bidding tools are very powerful, but we are probably going to see spikes because of this”, he says.

Here is an example from iProspect of how overbidding can be an easy mistake:

Imagine a keyword with a $1.00 bid. After analyzing the data, your paid search team sets a device modifier to increase your bid for smartphone searchers by 100 percent, a geographic modifier to increase bids for searchers in New York by 100 percent, and a time of day modifier to increase bids between 4:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. (Eastern Time) by 100 percent.

Now imagine a searcher on her phone in New York at 8:00 p.m. performs a search that triggers your ad, and clicks on it. Because of the way the modifiers combine, you just bid $8.00 for that click.

Original bid: $1.00

X location modifier of 100 percent: $2.00

X time of day modifier of 100 percent: $4.00

X device modifier of 100 percent: $8.00

For those advertisers that have not been using device, day-parting or geo-location targeting, Hull recommends starting slowly and building up based on initial testing. Analyzing bid modifier impact is not an easy task at this point. For now, iProspect segments keyword data by location, time of day, and device in a single report and then goes back and manually to enter their current bid adjustments, a cumbersome and complex process that many advertisers won’t have the resources for.

Hull says they’ve been talking with Google about getting more granular reporting that will make analysis and optimization easier and for now cautions advertisers to modify with care.

Note:  This is part of an ongoing, occasional series about how marketers are prepping for the migration to enhanced campaigns.

According to the announcement, when a user searches for “restaurants, bars or other local places” from their desktop, they will get the horizontal Carousel display of images against a black background at the top of their SERP.

Users can scroll through more images by selecting the arrow on the right side of the carousel or zoom in on the map to pull results for a restricted area. By clicking on an image in the Carousel, users will see more location details, including overall review-based score, address and photos.

Google confirmed that Carousel results are rolling out today in English in the US, with more features and languages to come over time.

As we approach the 20^th anniversary of the launch of those search engines, a key industry trend in search marketing is the long called-for move to placing transparent, objective and measurable KPIs at the heart of search, social and content marketing campaigns.

Witness the rollout of campaign ROI analysis, attribution modeling and then social campaign engagement metrics in Google Analytics (GA) over the last twelve months — all the result of customer demand.

Industry KPIs

For some time now, I’ve been banging the drum for transparency in digital marketing performance metrics, and I welcome the shift toward an industry standard measure of performance in each online marketing channel.

Imagine the value of an objective list of top-performing agencies based upon an agreed set of standard KPIs rather than the current glut of lists ranking by revenue (skewing the results wildly towards agencies passing high PPC campaign spends through their books).

Some of the metrics I’d love to see used as industry standards are as follows:

• Year-over-year (YOY) growth for non-branded organic traffic and revenue,* corrected for “not provided”** and viewed in the context of overall traffic growth. (Measuring YOY growth is a good way to adjust for seasonality as it eliminates the impact of industry trends and general brand growth.)
• YOY click-through rate (CTR) improvement from the SERPs, split by branded and generic search queries.
• Month-Over-Month (MOM) backlink growth archived and trended over course of campaign and normalised for disavowal activity undertaken at the start of campaign.
• YOY PPC Cost, Clicks, CTR, Transactions, CPA and Revenue, split by branded and generic terms. (This information should be available at the campaign and ad-group levels.)
• Campaign-level reports for Email, Affiliates, Display and Social channels showing: Spend, Open Rate, Impressions, CTR***, Clicks, Bounce Rate, Attributed Revenue, ROI.
• MOM/YOY landing page bounce & conversion rate, segmented by channel and split by branded and generic terms where appropriate.
• MOM/YOY conversions to the start of the checkout funnel (again, split by branded and generic for appropriate channels).
• MOM/YOY funnel conversion and exit pages (split by branded and generic for appropriate channels).
• Total reported conversion issues based on customer feedback (expressed as a percentage of the overall conversion rate), segmented by issue type, channel and funnel as required based on site complexity.
• YOY Lifetime Value (split by branded and generic for appropriate channels).

* Revenue should always be tracked, even for non-transactional websites which should go through a value estimation process to establish a “value per enquiry” or similar metric which is then applied to goal tracking and funnel processes on the site.

** The correction is calculated by taking a trend of brand growth month-over-month and applying the factor to attribute “not provided” to brand and generic appropriately. This is a “thumb in the air calculation,” but at least normalises sufficiently to allow rational decisions to be made from the resulting data.

*** Where not given naturally for the channel, can be calculated (for example, a social campaign can use engagement metrics to calculate an equivalent CTR).

Comparative Metrics For Industry Transparency

While there are plenty of more actionable metrics that could be added to this list, the purpose is to try to establish metrics that can be comparative across agencies to enable industry transparency.

While we all live in the real world and regularly walk into a new campaign with sub-par existing analytics implementation in place, it’s certainly possible to run on MOM metrics for the first year after auditing and implementing accurate tracking with a view to second year YOY comparison — the point is to set an accurate baseline.

And, just for the record: even if you don’t have e-commerce or goal tracking metrics set up and full year data, everyone can filter out non-brand organic traffic, trend it over time and compare to the previous year’s performance with an adjustment factor if required for a super-simple, objective agency performance metric.

Why Should We Care?

Because businesses are finally waking up to the fact that data is an enabling tool to let them make better business decisions and reward the best performing agencies with more clients. Consider the graphic below, recently highlighted by Forrester.

Big business decision makers are more comfortable applying data analysis to vet their agencies’ search marketing performance.

My list of KPIs is not exhaustive — what metrics would you like to see introduced to an industry-wide set of search marketing benchmarks?

In short, tons of webmasters who analyze their links using Google Webmaster Tools have noticed a huge drop in the number of reported links to their sites. For example, my site, Search Engine Roundtable, had 3.8 million links reported last week, then yesterday dropped to 2.1 million links and now it is reporting 1.3 million links.

Scary, but for those who are familiar with Google Webmaster Tools — they know there are frequent reporting glitches. In fact, a similar issue sprung up back in February.

Here is Google’s statement from today:

Some Webmaster Tools users have reported missing data in the “Links to your site” section. We are aware of this issue and are looking into it; you do not need to take any action. We hope to have the normal data shown again in the near future. The data shown there is informational and does not affect your site’s crawling, indexing or ranking.

Do not worry; hopefully, the numbers will go back to normal shortly.

Several of the offerings mentioned are still in beta, so getting access to them requires coordination with a Google Representative to get the offering turned on for your account.

Retargeting Tips Panel at SMX Advanced 2013

The SMX Retargeting Tips panel was composed of Bryant Garvin of Get Found First, Jarvis Mak of Rocket Fuel, and Susan Waldes of PPC Associates, Moderated by Ginny Marvin of Search Engine Land. Here’s a summary of the highlights presented at the session.

Google’s Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)

Essentially, remarketing works by letting advertisers define a remarketing list which is simply a set of criteria that identifies the segment of visitors to whom to serve ads. Google’s RLSA (which is in beta) gives advertisers a program for targeting based on a visitor’s behavior and allows advertisers to adjust their keywords, bids and ad based on a user’s past action on the advertiser’s website.

Susan Waldes presented a case study where she used RLSA for an ecommerce site. She ran a short purchase cycle ecommerce site over the holidays with a short time cookie of 7 days. The short cookie duration was due to the manic holiday season where the buying cycle is shortened. Her results using RLSA were impressive. The Cost per Acquisition (CPA) was cut in half and the conversion rate nearly quadrupled! Considering the holiday season can make or break many ecommerce sites, those results would put the crustiest Scrooge in good holiday spirits.

A subset of the Google’s remarketing is the exclusion lists. Susan encouraged the use of exclusions which allow advertisers to further segment and refine the audience. Some common uses of exclusions are to tag visitors who have already purchased or filled out a form so you don’t keep selling to the converted. Susan described a case study that demonstrated the value of exclusion lists. When she added an exclusion list of converted users, she was able to eliminate over 25% of unwanted costs and duplicate leads.

YouTube Remarketing

Remarketing on YouTube is a valuable way to turn YouTube into a “social channel” for collecting qualified user lists. Susan suggested promoting key videos in YouTube and to consider cross-channel efforts such as promoted tweets of videos to “feed” your list.

Search Companion Remarketing

Search companion remarketing (currently in Beta at Google) is when a user searches for a keyword query and then Google shows your ad on the page they select in the organic results (the page where the ad shows has to be on a website that allows Google ads).

Results of Search Companion Case Study

The appeal of this program is the searcher does not have to go to your web site first. The searcher is tagged just by doing a search on Google. As the searcher visits other sites, your ad will show (again on the sites that participate in the Google Display Network).

In the case study testing Search Companion remarketing, Susan found her conversion rate went from .1% with regular Google Display network, to .49% with regular remarketing, to .57% with Search Companion remarketing.

Dynamic Remarketing

If product listing ads (PLAs) are working well for you, you should test out the dynamic remarketing program, another program that Google is currently offering in beta. Susan recommended that you contact Google for their assistance in implementing it. She warned the audience that the set up is difficult.

Fortunately, the results of the PLA dynamic remarketing program made the tough implementation worthwhile. In Susan’s test case for users who viewed a product page less than seven days ago, she had a 40% increase in CTR and 112% lift in conversion rate compared to regular remarketing. The program was also extremely effective in recapturing users who had abandoned a shopping cart 15-30 days prior. In her case study, they had a 772% higher conversion rate—definitely a lucrative endeavor!

Similar Users Remarketing

Susan Waldes and Bryant Garvin presented case studies highlighting successes produced by using Similar Users Remarketing. This program provides a way for advertisers to target an audience who is looking for products and services your company offers, but haven’t yet visited your site. Because they are actively seeking your offerings, the results of this form of remarketing are promising.

Google Analytics Lists

To take advantage of Google Analytics lists it requires a one-time Google Analytics code update. This form of remarketing allows much more granularity of remarketing lists. For example, advertisers can tag visitors who have multiple conversions, orders over a certain dollar amount, by geography and even by site actions.

Facebook Retargeting

According to a 2012 comScore white paper entitled 2012 U.S. Digital Future in Focus, advertisers can access 25% of all Display Inventory through Facebook advertising. Speakers Bryant Garvin and Jarvis Mak both advocated Facebook retargeting as a cost effective channel for online advertising.

The Facebook Exchange service (FBX) officially opened their program in September 2012 with 16 partner companies. Reports during the closed beta program with the partners showed impressive results.

Recently Facebook has been reducing their ad inventory (they had swelled to 27 different ad units). They dropped the sponsored stories and announced on 13 June 2013 that they are ending sponsored search ads as well. Facebook will continue to have ads (the ads in the right column are still present), but they are attempting to streamline their ad offerings by eliminating some and consolidating others.

Retargeting Channels Survey Results

Diversity Is Stability

Bryant Garvin advocated using a variety of retargeting programs. While Google’s remarketing program is simple for most advertisers to start on, he encouraged not being dependent on one source of traffic. Some of the other retargeting programs advertisers might want to acquaint themselves with include Simplifi, AdRoll, Rocketfuel, Fetchback, Chango, Quantcast and Tradedoubler.

Bryant shared his findings from a survey he conducted that asked respondents about the retargeting channels they used in their online marketing. Surprisingly, he found over 40% of the respondents only used Google remarketing. The biggest reason respondents gave for not participating in other channels was the minimum budget for other retargeting channels was too high. Many of the retargeting programs outside of Google require a large minimum budget: $5K or $10K is common.

Final Pro Retargeting Tips

Since the session was billed as “pro tips,” speakers dropped a few good reminders for the most effective results in remarketing including:

• Develop your remarketing plan upfront. Take time to construct well thought out, segmented lists.
• Set and test impression caps (or risk being creepy).
• Use the audience exclusion or a “kill pixel” to not sell to the converted.
• Test your cookie lengths and make sure the length is appropriate for your goals.
• Craft the marketing message to the purpose, product and user. Customize it for the user—don’t just use a generic display ad. Plan the sequence the ads are shown to the person.
• Make sure your messaging is consistent – if you have an ad for a special sale; make sure you have consistent messaging on the web site.

Done properly search retargeting is an effective tool for the online marketer. It works well to keep your brand top of mind and gives you a second chance to re-engage the visitor who got away. If you’re not retargeting consider starting with Google’s remarketing and then expanding out to other channels.

Retargeting opportunities are growing every day as it moves more into social media. Twitter recently announced they will offer a retargeting plan similar to Facebook’s only the Twitter offering will consider browsing history (which may turn out to be a weighty indicator of user intent). As the regular PPC bidding auction gets more competitive, retargeting is an area that isn’t as saturated and where creative messaging and list building is rewarded. Set aside a budget and try it today.

Today, Sid Shah, Adobe’s Director of Business Analytics for Advertising Solutions, released new findings and predictions for enhanced campaigns based on nearly 100 major U.S. advertisers representing over $100 million in ad spend from March through May 2013.

I spoke with Kohki Yamaguchi, Senior Business Analyst for Adobe Advertising Solutions, about the new report.

CPCs Are Already Rising

“Over the next six months, Google CPCs will rise for the first time in almost two years,” Yamaguchi told me. Tablet CPCs are already rising to reflect desktop CPCs, now that the two are inextricably entwined in enhanced campaigns.

Yamaguchi says, “In the past three months we’ve seen a six percent increase in CPCs across all devices. Tablets had had lower CPCs than desktops, but now the combination is forcing an increase”.

Adobe has tracked a three percent increase in tablet CPCs against desktops, and a one percent increase in mobile CPCs. Shah writes that they expect the percentages to grow as advertisers holding out until the July 22 deadline are forced into enhanced campaigns.

After watching Google CPCs fall year-over-year the past two years, because of the “increase in mobile and tablet traffic where CPCs were lower”, Adobe saw CPCs stabilize YoY. Shah predicts they will start rising YoY next quarter.

Testing Mobile Bid Adjustments

Advertisers who have already made the switch to enhanced campaigns and set their mobile bid adjustments (MBAs) to the level suggested by Google during the transition process may be surprised to learn that their campaigns likely had the same recommended MBAs that nearly all other advertiser campaigns received.

Adobe found that more than 90 percent of all Google mobile bid adjustments were set at either -20 percent or 0 percent.

Google’s MBA suggestions are based on how ‘similar advertisers’ bid on mobile compared to other devices, but we have found that these numbers tend to not reflect the performance of individual campaigns and ad groups. The mobile bid suggestions are not tailored to an advertiser and the performance of a specific campaign.

The company ran a four-week test on a sample set of four major U.S. campaigns to compare Google’s MBA distribution to Adobe’s own algorithmic-ally set MBAs. The test ran for two weeks with Google suggested MBAs and then for two weeks on the Adobe system to see if there were differences in mobile bid distribution and ROI.

From their test, Adobe found mobile ROIs were lower on average than desktop/tablet when using Google’s MBAs, suggesting to them that the MBA recommendations tend to be too high and that mobile bids should be lowered further.

“MBAs can have significant effect on overall ROI,” says Yamaguchi. “You want to see a nearly 100 percent ROI ratio between mobile and desktop and tablet.”

Rather than simplifying bidding for advertisers, Shah writes that bid adjustments “complicates matters for the advertiser. Not only does one have to consider the bid but also the mobile adjustment factor to get the most out of a search campaign”.

Yamaguchi foresees a “war of who can build the best algorithm,” saying, “Advertisers need to calculate how the MBAs will interact with the base bids, and we see algorithms becoming more important” to be able to optimize at scale.

Yes, the call for automated algorithmic bidding platforms is coming from the algo guys, but it does beg the question of whether some advertisers will find enhanced campaigns harder to manage, or less efficient, rather than easier with better ROI, because of the layer of complexity mobile bid modifiers — as well as other targeting options like geo and day-parting — add to bid management.

Still, Adobe expects the rising CPCs to push spending on Google beyond the current 15 percent YoY growth that has thus far been driven by volume.

Update: A Google spokesperson responded, “There have been many speculative reports, but it’s far too early for any of them to be reliable. Advertisers will choose their bids and adjust their spend based on the value they see in their campaigns.” 

Optimize Your Site For Tablets

In a point that often gets overshadowed by the focus on optimizing for smartphones, Shah notes that all advertisers — whether they’ve been running smartphone-only campaigns or have been targeting tablets specifically already — will have to focus on optimizing their sites for tablets. Shah concludes that with the forced inclusion of all advertisers on these devices, and as “the CPC advantage goes away, marketers have to focus on better user experiences to increase the conversion rate on tablets.”

Note:  This is part of an ongoing, occasional series about how marketers are prepping for the migration to enhanced campaigns.

The question was, “Does using stock photos on your pages have a negative effect on rankings?”

Matt’s answer was very short, he said “no.” There is no positive or negative impact on your organic Web ranking if you use stock imagery versus original imagery.

Of course, if you want to go deeper, images might enhance your content, which may attract more visitors and more links. But, images are currently not a ranking factor for your content, according to Matt Cutts.

Another obvious point is that this is not discussing image search ranking. Typically, you won’t see the same image shown in the image search results. So, having unique images may help there.

Here is the video from Matt:

The Carousel display shows results in an image-focused fashion, listed horizontally at the top of the SERP. The new reports show an updated design, with images set on a black background.

According to Greg Gifford on the Autorevo blog, Carousel results are moving beyond restaurants and hotel searches, with more than 50 different topics serving up the Carousel display, including searches for: wedding venues, recording studios, city parks, art galleries and grocery stores.

Mike Blumenthal’s blog reports that the new Carousel design and display of results, “…will ‘disrupt’ traditional searcher behaviors that heavily favored the first search results by spreading clicks more evenly across the page. With a horizontal display, it might be equally advantageous to be third as it is to be first in order.”

(Image credit: Search Engine Round Table)

Now, you can use Google Tag Manager‘s container snippet code to verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools.

To verify your unverified site with Google Tag Manager, go to the Webmaster Tools home page. Then, click Manage site for the site next to the site that you’d like to verify, and then select Verify this site. Click the Add a site button in the top right corner.

Then, you will be taken to the Verification page; select Google Tag Manager as the verification method and follow the steps on your screen.

Then, click on Verify and you should be all set.

Related Entries:

• Google Simplifies Verification For Multiple Owners In Webmaster Tools
• Google Updates Webmaster Tools Verification & Adds Analytics Code Option
• Updated: Google Webmaster Tools Security Bug Re-Opens Access To Old Accounts [Now Fixed]
• Google Webmaster Tools Adds Structured Data Dashboard & CNAME Verification
• Google Webmaster Tools Improves Verification Reporting & Process
• Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics: The Beginning Of A Useful Integration?
• The SEO Guide To Getting Started With Google Webmaster Tools
• Google Updates Webmaster Tools Verification Feature

The feature offered searchers a fast way to see a lightweight version of a webpage without having to fully click through and load the page.

We first reported on the test last December, and then Google formally announced it in April. At the same time, Google offered a Web form where site owners could indicate their interest in having their sites considered for the Quick View feature.

Google offered a smartphone search for the phrase “poker hands” as an example that showed a Wikipedia page with the blue Quick View button. That same search today on an iPhone doesn’t include the Quick View option. Here’s a then (on the left) and now (on the right) look at that search query.

TechCrunch noticed the button was gone on Friday. A Google spokesperson declined to confirm for us (and TechCrunch) that the trial was officially over, only saying that the company is always changing things in the interest of improving the mobile search experience.

Mobile search is clearly becoming a bigger priority for Google. It just announced last week that pages that don’t serve mobile searchers well will not rank as highly in mobile search results.