Andrew Goodman is founder and President of Toronto-based Page Zero Media, a full-service agency obsessed with PPC performance since 2002. Current clients include Well.ca, Princess Auto, and Nuts.com. Andrew wrote 2 editions of Winning Results With Google AdWords (McGraw-Hill), a pioneering book on PPC strategy and tactics. He continues to speak regularly at SMX and other events. He was also an adviser to (and later, co-founder of) a consumer review startup, Toronto-based HomeStars, acquired by HomeAdvisor in 2017.
Last time, I covered some shaky assumptions behind bid management automation, including the assumption of an easily pinpointed target CPA. In this column, I’ll address some additional issues that don’t often come to light in industry discussions. While they may make some vendors squirm, they also might help advertisers select the tools that are just […]
Today, there’s no viable “con” position in the “paid search bid management” debate. Either you sing the praises of automated bid management, or you’ll be asked to sit in a dark corner (or cave) and contemplate what possessed you to enter the digital marketing arena. Unfortunately, there are few real debates on the advantages and […]
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” This gem from heavyweight boxing legend Iron Mike Tyson also applies to AdWords account strategy, especially when starting a new account. Beginning in 2006, some advertisers in the affiliate marketing, Made-for-AdSense, and other spheres have referred to harsh quality score treatment — especially treatment […]
As promised in Wall Street Meltdown: 11 Ways It Affects Digital Marketers, I’m wrapping up with a continuation of the 60,000 foot view of our industry in light of current economic turmoil. No doubt I’ll get back to the close-up view next time, but for now, to get all the bad news talk behind us, […]
Since 2002, we who advocate the paid search niche of marketing have been pretty vocal about how much more this stuff can do than people realize. It’s not pure direct marketing, we’ve pleaded. It can do other stuff too! It can sing, dance, weld, flutter, soar, and giggle. It deodorizes, disinfects, scours, and scrubs – […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.
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 […]
Maybe it’s just me, because I’ve spent years ingesting the Purple Cow Kool-Aid. But I can never get over the number of cookie-cutter, copycat businesses that spring up online. Choosing the exact same business model as someone else almost appears to be a favorite pastime in North America these days. Kind of a macho, or […]
Another bundle of advertising flyers just landed on my front porch, only to go straight into the recycle bin. Although I merely dream of the distant day when such lazy and wasteful advertising methods will be punishable by death or a day spent shopping with Paula Abdul, I hold out some hope that search marketers […]
I thought I’d gracefully retired from the Danny Sullivan Keynote Review business. Comparing Danny to Edward R. Murrow, assessing how the attendance stretched the room capacity… ahh, they were good times. Then I awoke to find myself in a large hall at the Santa Clara Conference Center. It wasn’t a dream! Turns out I was […]
It’s been well established that a core—predominant, even—component of the Google AdWords quality-based bidding formula is historical CTR (clickthrough rate). New keywords get treated a bit differently, though; the algorithm must predict CTR based on the similarities of your ad group’s characteristics to historical data in Google’s vault. If you read through Google’s official descriptions, […]
I was casually chatting with a super-savvy Web 2.0 friend – we’ll call him Mac – about a website I work closely with. We’d spent the last year overhauling the strategy and the design of the site, though there are still several features waiting to be built, and the content growth is just at the […]
If I were writing the local County Cross Country Ski Club newsletter, a retrospective might cover two or three minor changes in the field, and a watershed moment or two. Primitive skis were used by Vikings as much as 5,000 years ago. In about 1460, someone in Scandinavia discovered that you could climb hills easily […]
Perhaps it was lucky fate that Anders Hjorth (of Relevant Traffic, a European SEM agency) and I didn’t have too much time to compare notes going into the panel “Tuning Ads for Quality Score” at SMX Stockholm last week. Fortunately, the presentations didn’t overlap too much. The interesting thing is the overlapping conclusions we drew […]
If you’re like me, you often figure out ways to work smarter on your marketing campaigns in the time allotted. In fact, you secretly suspect that you can actually be more successful if you reject some of your more conscientious habits and just get the job done. As the saying goes, perfection is the enemy […]
Let’s get this uncomfortable truth out of the way up front: Google’s actions, manifested through a variety of methodologies to rank (and sometimes ban) listings and content, have regularly irritated, angered, and alienated some webmasters, website owners, and advertisers. The outcry is more vociferous if you can give an initiative, a cute name, and get […]