The downsides to overbidding on keywords are both plain and painful: low-quality traffic at a high cost-per-click (CPC) and a limited budget quickly blown away with little to show for it. But bidding too little, or just not properly accounting for budget constraints, also has consequences, some subtle and some more obvious. Here we will consider some lessons that will help you to avoid the pitfalls of budget-constrained bidding.

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Features: Analysis | Search Ads: General

Three of every four paid search clicks happen on Google, and 75 cents of every paid search dollar is spent on Google. That's according to the latest quarterly report from Efficient Frontier, a search advertising agency that manages more than $750 million in annual digital spending annually. The stats cover Q4 of 2009, and show Google's share of paid search clicks rising from 71% in Q3 to 74.4% in Q4. Yahoo's share of paid clicks, meanwhile, dropped from 24.4% in Q3 to 21% in Q4. Bing's share was down slightly, but remains up 31% year over year. The numbers are similar on the spending si [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Microsoft: Bing | Search Ads: General | Stats: Spend Projections | Top News | Yahoo: Search Ads

OneRiot has announced the full rollout of RiotWise, a service that it calls "the first ad network for the realtime web." Today's launch follows a pilot phase that the company says was successful in allowing developers to monetize mobile apps, desktop clients, social search engines, and similar applications. Partners during the pilot phase included Digsby and UberTwitter, among others, while advertisers included sports networks, news organizations, and entertainment sites. Here's an example of ads from the program being shown in OneRiot's feed, tied to the "Conan O'Brien" trending topic: [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads: General | Search Ads: Mobile Search

One of Google's more vocal critics says the company should cut its ties with InfoSpace over what he calls "a particularly insidious kind of click fraud" that involves a fairly complex combination of paid ads, affiliate traffic brokering, and spyware. Harvard assistant professor Ben Edelman also wants Google to repay the affected advertisers and be more diligent in preventing schemes like the one he's written about. Edelman details the scheme on his own site, and followed it up with additional comments in a Forbes.com article that calls it "the slickest click fraud yet." Unlike most click fr [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Legal: Clickfraud | Search Ads: General

Paid search marketing is complicated enough, and several long-held industry myths aren’t helping make your job any easier. Debunk these SEM tall tales once and for all, and your campaigns will be well on their way to higher ROI.

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: AdWords | Industrial Strength | Search Ads: General

Managing your health requires achieving a balance between diet and exercise. In the same way, a healthy paid search campaign requires achieving a balance between branded and non-branded spending. Working together, the two create an optimal mix that will help you achieve the best results possible. Why balance matters Given branded terms' reputation for delivering ROI, they often receive the lion’s share of a paid search budget. However, in this economy—where consumers are still hesitant to purchase—many marketers are not seeing the revenue from their branded terms that they [...]

Related Topics: Brand Aid | Channel: SEM | Search Ads: General

In case you didn't see it there was an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning that seeks to capture a kind of shift or broadening of advertisers' attitudes toward search marketing. Formerly search was something of an island and not well integrated into wider marketing campaigns. Many search + display studies and several years later it appears that marketers have developed a somewhat more nuanced view of search in the context of broader consumer behavior. Here are some bits from the article: Sprint is buying the top ads tied to phrases consumers tend to search for when they are clo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: DoubleClick | Search Ads: General | Search Marketing: Branding | Search Marketing: General

Can you apply the spirit of social media to other marketing channels? At this year's SMX East, after my presentation on Landing Page Usefulness—emphasizing a "usefulness" mission over "usability" tactics—it struck me: great landing pages can bring many of the ideals of social media to paid search marketing campaigns. Here are five principles of social media marketing that can energize your landing page program: 1. Engage in specific conversations, not generic one-size-fits-all talk. When a company engages in social media, the worst thing it can do is echo canned, cut-an [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | How To: PPC | How To: SEM | Search Ads: General

It's time for an online advertisers bill of rights. So says Harvard assistant professor Ben Edelman, who has spent years researching Internet advertising and compares the current landscape to a "wild west." Edelman recognizes the "staggering" opportunity that online advertising provides, but says the current system has problems that "threaten to destabilize online advertising—wasting advertisers' budgets, slowing transition to online formats, and reducing payments to online publishers." In his just-published proposal, Edelman outlines five-point bill of rights for anyone advertising onlin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Search Ads: General | Yahoo: Search Ads

In an earlier post on Search Engine Land called Giving Credit to Keywords Where Credit is due, I mentioned we'd be following up on this topic with some future analysis. The analysis we've done is in the form of a case study, below. Most companies have difficulty justifying the purchase of general top-of-the-funnel keywords such as "slippers" because typically, these types of terms don't seem to convert-at least when measured using the last click method.  Add this to the fact that general terms are usually more expensive than branded terms like "LL Bean" or "Victoria's Secret" and you'll se [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Credit Is Due | Features: Analysis | Search Ads: General

First to pounce on the SEC 8-K filing by Yahoo was PaidContent, which provides an extensive bulleted list of many of the deal terms not revealed last week during the frenzy of conference calls and articles that followed the official announcement of the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal. CNET also writes about selected aspects of the deal contained in the filing, specifically an "escape clause" (termination) for Yahoo (see below). And the AP has a short piece on how the deal terms require Microsoft to hire at least 400 Yahoo employees. Here are some verbatim excerpts from the SEC filing: Negotiat [...]

Related Topics: Business Issues: Acquisitions & Investments | Channel: SEM | Features: Analysis | Google: Business Issues | Microsoft & Yahoo Search Deal | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Microsoft: Business Issues | Microsoft: Employees | Microsoft: General | Search Ads: Contextual | Search Ads: General | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Top News

Your ads are often not selling the products that you designed them to sell. We have found that upwards of 48.38% percent of the time people end up buying a product different than the the one featured on ad they clicked on, and upwards of 11.28% of the time they bought a similar product, but not exactly the same product as the ad they clicked on. When conducting this analysis, we excluded keywords that were brand terms and general category terms. For example, if we were analyzing a site that sold camping supplies and someone did a search for "camping supplies," we did not include that type [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Features: Analysis | Search Ads: General

In a recent Search Engine Land opinion piece entitled Automated Keyword Bidding? More Like Automated Money Sink, the author espouses the view that automated keyword bidding is flawed because it is impossible for agencies to scale their systems to deliver positive results to clients. While I agree with most of the points the author has raised, I believe his conclusion is wrong. Blaming automation for poor bid management is the equivalent of blaming a Ferrari for a car crash if a monkey was driving it. The real debate is really optimization vs. automation. Many people confuse the two and p [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Features: General | Search Ads | Search Ads: General | Search Marketing

We exhibited at the Internet Retailer show in Boston recently. The signage in our booth touted that we had the ability to do attribution management. For that reason, a lot of people came up to us and told us about a situation they are facing that is very common with paid search marketers: their branded keywords were the only ones were converting and their remaining keywords were just driving traffic. For each person that told me this, I asked them, 'How do you measure the success of a keyword?' They would say if it was the last ad clicked and converted, and had a positive ROI, then it was a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Credit Is Due | Features: Analysis | Search Ads: General

How much does moment away from “last touch” allocation impact the perception of PPC marketing? Does it help PPC, or hurt? Find out what we’ve seen in the data.

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Features: Analysis | Search Ads: General | Stats: Search Behavior

Search ad spending is stabilizing, advertisers are getting smarter, and Bing is making gains on Google and Yahoo. Those are a few of the trends cited in the latest research report from search marketing provider Efficient Frontier. The company regularly shares reports based on data collected from a portion of its U.S. advertisers. This new report covers nearly 81 billion impressions and 722 million clicks on search and content ads on the three major search engines during Q2 of this year. The report shows that overall ad spend during Q2 2009 was down 21% from a year ago, but that's better tha [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads: General | Search Marketing: General | SEM Industry: Stats | Top News

Search and display. One often hears how they work together, but there's still plenty of skepticism out there, especially in the SEM community, about the value of display advertising. Indeed, during the recession search has prospered (relatively speaking) while display has suffered. But a new study from the Online Publishers Association (OPA) and comScore argues that display ads can have a major impact on search and consumer engagement. The study, called "The Silent Click: Building Brands Online" (pdf), compares the behaviors of consumers exposed to online display advertising vs. those in a con [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Features: Analysis | Search Ads: General | Stats: General | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News

It is no surprise that the recession has affected online consumer spending habits. In lean times, people are more apt to curb spending and seek out the best bargains. From a search perspective, it is now more important than ever for marketers to adapt their campaigns to these changes in consumer behavior to better optimize performance. As consumers modify their spending patterns, their search behavior—the keywords and terms they use to locate products and services—also change. We recently culled over half a million search terms containing a certain modifier. For instance, queri [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | How To: SEM | Search Ads: General | Search Marketing: Search Term Research

There have been numerous reports published over the years by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft that attempt to prove how the use of display advertising, when combined with search, can increase your overall campaign performance. A recent report published by iProspect, Search Engine Marketing and Online Display Integration Study was featured in an article for MediaPost titled Study Confirms Display Ads, Paid Search Work in Concert. Robert Murray, iProspect's CEO is quoted in the article, saying "Internet users are more likely to engage and/or eventually make a purchase from brands with which they a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | How To: SEM | Search Ads: General

You have probably heard multiple pitches from advertising agencies and SEM firms looking to take over the search engine marketing campaign for your company. When was the last time one of these firms offered to pay for all of the ads up-front and be paid only for the sales and leads generated? Not too often, I suspect. Performance SEM agencies are out there building, managing and funding large scale search campaigns for companies that pay them a pre-negotiated rate for the sales and leads generated. Working with a performance SEM agency is a great way to take advantage of paid search whil [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | How To: PPC | Search Ads: General | SEM Industry: Outsourcing