Performance Max transition: Key trends for Google advertisers
Here's a look at how Performance Max campaigns have performed so far and what may lie ahead for advertisers as we close out the year.
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Mark Ballard's latest articles
Coaxing smarter paid search bidding decisions out of sparse conversion data
Columnist Mark Ballard explains how we can use statistics to supplement our conversion data and intuition when deciding on keyword-level bids in AdWords.
How Apple Could Play Spoiler For The Search Ad Business
Could Apple disrupt business as usual for search marketers in 2016? Columnist Mark Ballard explores the possibilities.
As Yahoo Gemini Ramps Up, How Well Is It Performing For Search Advertisers?
For search marketers considering adding Yahoo Gemini to their advertising mix, columnist Mark Ballard of Merkle RKG shares data to help assess the potential opportunity.
AdWords Brand CPCs Rising? Here’s Why And What You Can Do About It
Many advertisers have noticed a recent surge in costs per click (CPCs) for their brand terms. Columnist Mark Ballard explores the issue.
Is Google Showing Fewer Ads Per Search?
Columnist Mark Ballard explores both first- and third-party data to help understand what's really driving Google's paid search impression decline and weakening click growth.
Understanding How Your Brand Drives Google Shopping Campaign Traffic
Separating brand from non-brand traffic is not as straightforward in Google Shopping as it is for standard AdWords text ads, but columnist Mark Ballard has a solution.
What Yahoo’s Firefox Deal Tells Us About Paid Search In 2015
Has Firefox's switch to Yahoo as the default search engine impacted PPC campaigns? Contributor Mark Ballard from RKG examines the data.
Anticipating What Products Will Drive Your Holiday Paid Search Sales
With products changing from year to year, how can you predict which items will be hot sellers this holiday season? Contributor Mark Ballard offers some advice.
Are Bigger iPhones Better For Paid Search?
Despite smartphone ubiquity, desktop conversions still largely outpace mobile conversions. Columnist Mark Ballard looks at whether larger iPhone 6 screens will narrow the gap.
Analyzing The Impact Of Amazon’s Departure From Google’s Search Network
If, as rumored, Amazon will replace Google's ads on its site with those from its own network, what would that mean for advertisers?
If Account-Level Quality Score Doesn’t Exist, Can It Really Hurt Your AdWords Program?
Google has continually denied that an account-level Quality Score exists -- yet this unseen metric still seems to have an impact on AdWords performance.
How Google Can Help Enhanced Campaigns Reach Their Potential
It’s been over a year since Google publicly announced Enhanced Campaigns for AdWords, and just shy of a year since the mandatory transition date in late July of 2013. Early on, there was a great deal of consternation surrounding the changes brought by this new campaign model, but advertiser sentiment improved as some of their […]
Does Google Want to Cut Out AdWords Middlemen?
The launch of Google AdWords and its subsequent rapid growth in the early 2000s helped spawn an entire industry around paid search advertising. The ecosystem that arose includes Google and its advertisers, as well as a slew of agencies, consultants, software platforms, data providers, third party tools and various combinations thereof in between them. Almost […]
Google PLAs May Be Bigger And Better Than You Think
As someone responsible for compiling, analyzing and putting narratives to raw marketing data, I spend a good portion of my time reviewing similar material from other sources in our industry. This is helpful for generating new ideas for analyses and serves as a basic sanity check of the results we are finding at RKG. On […]
Getting A Better Read On The Value Of Smartphone Paid Search
The increasing ubiquity of mobile devices has been a mixed blessing for paid search advertisers. On the one hand, most industry stats show smartphones and tablets driving nearly all Internet traffic growth, while volume from traditional desktop and laptop computers has begun to fade. But as more consumers have taken to using new devices for […]
Will Enhanced Campaigns Drive Mobile CPCs Down?
There are two pieces of conventional wisdom surrounding Google’s Enhanced Campaigns that seem to get tossed around a lot without much thought or examination. The first is that this new campaign model will make it easier for small advertisers to get into the mobile advertising game. The second related piece is that Enhanced Campaigns will […]
Relax, The Search Industry Is Doing Just Fine
For enterprise SEM practitioners looking to set budgets or otherwise anticipate their needs in the space for the months and years ahead, it’s been a particularly difficult time to get a read on how the industry is really trending. Conflicting data and opinions abound; new threats to the hegemony of search, real or just perceived, […]
Will Facebook’s Graph Search Be Big For Bing Advertisers?
Following Facebook’s announcement of Graph Search a few weeks back, there’s been no shortage of analysis and speculation on what the move will mean for Facebook, its users, marketers and possible Facebook competitors, including the traditional search engines. At least in one arena, we can try to put some specific numbers together to shed some light […]
6 Holiday Trend Shifts That Heavily Impact SEM
Anyone involved with online retail should be well aware of just how critical holiday revenues are, not only to a strong fourth quarter, but to our success for the entire year. An RKG analysis of 2011 paid-search results shows that, on average, retailers generated 18% of their annual revenues over the 30 day period starting […]
Is It Time To Revisit Your PPC Strategy For Tablets?
Going by the last couple of months, the humble tablet computer is playing an increasingly pivotal role in the strategic plans of many of the biggest names in tech, and it will continue to hold greater significance to paid search advertisers as we move toward the holiday season. Following the March release of the new […]
A Beyond Average Look At Search Ad Position
Among the scores of data points search marketers have at their disposal, perhaps no other metric is as shrouded by mythology and misconception as ad position. Despite careful studies showing, including one by RKG in 2006, and confirmation by Google in 2009 that conversion performance doesn’t vary much by position, you will still hear pronouncements, […]
Why You’re Paying More For Your Brand Terms On Yahoo
Yahoo has suffered through its fair share of turmoil over the last few years: a revolving door of CEOs, significant layoffs, investor revolts, and a declining share of the search space, both paid and organic. One recent bright spot for Yahoo was their first year over year growth in search revenues after traffic acquisition costs […]