Microsoft Advertising Intelligence (MAI), the Excel add-on for keyword research and optimization, is getting an upgrade — jumping all the way from version 5.6 to version 8. The company says the new version brings in more finely-tuned data from the Yahoo-Bing network on a wider range of keywords and competitive bids. Additionally, information on traffic, […]
Google’s revenues rose to $10.65 billion in the first quarter of 2012, resulting in net income of $2.89 billion, or $8.75 per share, the company announced after market close today. The revenue number represents a 24% increase over the year-ago period. Additionally, the board of directors proposed the creation of a new class of non-voting […]
By all accounts, paid search spending rose in Q1 2012 as compared to the previous year, but by how much depends on the source, and the sector. Covario, which serves mostly high-tech clients, says paid search in the Americas grew 15% in the first quarter, while Adobe’s Efficient Frontier, which serves clients in a variety […]
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit today revived part of Rosetta Stone’s trademark lawsuit against Google, meaning the search giant’s permitting the use of trademarked terms in AdWords is still legally questionable in the United States. It’s the first time an appellate court has ruled in a case of this kind. Previously, a […]
Google this week introduced the ability to target more than 30,000 ZIP codes in AdWords, giving advertisers the ability to find potential customers in a familiar, granular way. Another new feature, Location Insertion, is aimed at letting advertisers with multiple locations create one ad, and have information dynamically inserted depending on the user’s query or […]
Google says it’s spending “millions of dollars” to police AdWords ads to ensure they’re not contributing to human trafficking, but the head of a victim’s rights group seems to believe that’s not enough. Asked what he thinks Google should do, Philip J. Cenedella of the National Association of Human Trafficking Victim Advocates (NAHTVA) says they […]
Lawmakers Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) are concerned that Google is profiting from advertisements placed by sex traffickers, expressing these fears in a joint letter to CEO Larry Page. The missive seeks reassurances of the company’s commitment to ferreting out ads that contribute to the activity. “Whatever Google is doing or not doing […]
A Federal Appeals Court in Australia has found Google responsible for misleading ads that displayed when users searched for certain terms and received ads from competitors who had bid on those terms. The ruling, though it only applies in Australia, is important because one of Google’s most central beliefs — which has come up in […]
The Federal Government has approved a plan to distribute the $500 million Google paid for illegally accepting advertisements from Canadian pharmacies targeting U.S. consumers. Under the plan, $230 million will be divided amongst the Rhode Island law enforcement agencies that participated in the investigation of Google. Another $100 million will go to Federal agencies, and […]
In a bid to grow ranks of professionals accredited by Microsoft Advertising and educate them about its platform, the company has launched the free adCenter Training Hub. The hub is essentially a location where advertisers and agency folks can watch training videos and get up to speed on adCenter. The site keeps track of folks’ […]
When marketers have scrutinized Google’s research on how organic and paid search results work together — the search giant concluded that nixing the paid ads would result in a 89% drop in clicks — it’s been clear there’s more to the story. What happens if your brand is the top organic result for the keyword? […]
Google has revamped the Ad Review Center for AdSense, aiming to make it easier for publishers to control the ads that appear on their sites. The new Ad Review center will show ads of all targeting types that have previously appeared, and allow publishers to review and block future display of them. If ads are […]
Google says it’s tired of squeezing display advertising into an interface made for search, so it’s giving display its own tab within the AdWords interface. Given that display was launched almost as an afterthought to AdWords’ core search ads business, it makes sense to start from scratch and give display its due. The new interface […]
A year and a half ago, changes to Microsoft’s adCenter interface appeared maybe once or twice a quarter. This year, stay tuned for monthly updates bringing everything from Broad Match Modifier, a desktop version for the Mac, a special version for small businesses, and more integrated interactive ads on Bing. “When we talk about the […]
Google is providing AdWords users with a new way to figure out whether their ads are approved, or not, and why. The new feature is expected to be especially helpful for folks placing ads in categories restricted by the company’s advertising policies. To view an ad’s status, hover over the speech bubble in the Status […]
Microsoft Advertising seems to be introducing a new feature a day, these days. Some of the more interesting: the re-introduction of Yahoo Rich Ads In Search (RAIS), changes to negative keyword behavior and the ability to pick specific landing pages per match type. The re-introduction of Yahoo RAIS, mentioned by both Portent and Rimm-Kaufman Group, […]
Followers of news about Google AdWords know that problematic errors — instances in which ads that violate the company’s own advertising standards slip by — come up quite regularly. Most recently, Google, along with advertiser ProFlowers, was roundly and publicly criticized for AdWords that seemed to indicate that local florists were sold out in advance […]
Though it hasn’t been announced, a few eagle-eyed folks have noticed a change to Google’s Help pages that says demographic bidding will be phased out on March 21. We spoke to Google about it, and received confirmation that this is the case. “This is a feature that we have to retire to introduce additional features […]
Though most marketers likely think of their SEO activities and their paid search advertising as complementary, you’ve probably wondered, at one time or another, what would happen if you paused your CPC ads entirely or just cut them back dramatically. Google’s research folks covered this topic back in July of last year, when it concluded […]
Just a week after Foursquare said it would drop Google Maps, the Associated Press announced it will use the application to distribute Super Tuesday primary results to AP Election Services subscribers. AP will supply the feed of vote results and subscribers will be able to use Google Maps to display on their websites or on […]
Microsoft Advertising has begun reaching out to a handful of search engine marketing (SEM) experts and small business customers, hoping to pair them up in the first part of an initiative to educate SMBs about adCenter and learn about their needs and challenges. “It’s an initiative to see how we can better support our small […]
Imagine searching on your own company’s name and finding a competitor’s ad that said you were “Sold Out” right on your business’ most important holiday. That’s what florists like the owner of Chez Bloom in Minnesota had happen, as originally reported by Brand Channel. Indeed, as the owner of Chez Bloom Laura Chase told BrandChannel, […]
The Yahoo/Microsoft Search Alliance this week is beginning to transition Yahoo Search Marketing campaigns to AdCenter accounts in the UK, France and Ireland. The companies last month announced they’d begin testing adCenter ads on Yahoo in those countries. Organic results have been powered by Microsoft’s Bing for some time. Ramping of Yahoo traffic will begin […]
Microsoft adCenter is making changes to its location targeting functionality that will bring it into line with the industry standard Google AdWords. Now, the “market” (distribution channel) will no longer be available as a targeting option. It will be replaced by “language” and “target location” as individual targeting options. Advertisers will be able to target […]
Sick of inputting the same things across multiple campaigns in Google AdWords? Yeah, Google suspected that was the case. Following the same philosophy that spawned the introduction of negative keyword lists in January of last year, Google has added placement exclusion lists and list suggestions. All of these will live in a new place on […]
Say you’re marketing an Android app via AdWords targeted to mobile devices, but your product only works on Honeycomb and newer versions of the OS — still, you keep getting folks with older versions showing up on your landing page, and likely getting frustrated. That’s exactly the type of problem Google is trying to address […]
Google is releasing new functionality for AdWords that is aimed at helping them better allocate their budgets. The new feature will give advertisers impression share metrics down to the Ad Group level. Previously, impression share metrics were available only at the campaign level, which didn’t help when advertisers were trying to determine which particular ad […]
The wide-ranging Federal Trade Commission investigation into Google’s potential anti-competitive practices has been expanded to include its Google+ social networking service, according to a Bloomberg report citing “people familiar with the situation.” The news is likely to please critics like the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which earlier this week called for the FTC to […]
Microsoft adCenter ads are soon coming to Yahoo pages in France, Ireland and the United Kingdom, Microsoft announced today. The first testing for the roll-out will commence mid-January and may involve up to 10% of Yahoo’s traffic in these geographies. Microsoft suggests advertisers closely monitor campaigns and be prepared to increase budgets if they’re more […]
Ads for illegal Olympic ticket resellers, ads for cannabis, and ads for fake identification cards and UK passports. All illegal, but all could, up until recently, be found on Google.co.uk, according to a British Broadcasting Company (BBC) investigation publicized today. Though Google shut down the illegal advertisers when the matter was brought to the company’s attention […]
In the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen significantly more people reporting they’ve seen AdWords that allow advertisers to collect email addresses directly in the ad unit. Now Google has confirmed it has expanded the trial of the lead generation format to additional advertisers. We’ve seen the format used by daily deal provider bloomspot, which […]
Kantar Media is taking a stab at estimating advertiser spend on Google, and a new report it produced for AdAge shows IAC/InterActiveCorp spent $174 million on paid search ads in the first three quarters of the year. IAC is, of course, the parent company of Ask.com, Match.com and the Newsweek Daily Beast, among many other […]
Adobe has agreed to acquire digital marketing agency Efficient Frontier, which has a strong search marketing practice and technology to manage Facebook advertising. The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal. The companies said Efficient Frontier would become a part of Adobe’s Digital Marketing suite, which includes technologies and services it acquired with web […]
Google introduced a report in July that let AdWords advertisers compare performance between top-of-page ads and those appearing on the side (and now the bottom) of the page. Then it began letting advertisers know how high they have to bid to appear at the top. Now, there are a couple more ways to capitalize on […]
Observant users of Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool have noticed something odd in recent days — when you do an exact match search on certain terms, the volume reported is zero. Surely someone has been searching on terms like wine, iPod, and dogs. Indeed, a Google spokesperson confirms that it’s a bug. “We’re aware of a […]
If you know that Hermey The Elf longs to be a dentist, that Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer’s girlfriend is named Clarice, and if you can sing “Silver and Gold” as well as Yukon Cornelius, Bing’s new holiday ad campaign will be right up your alley. The Microsoft search engine’s newest video spots play off the classic Rankin/Bass Christmas […]
The online advertising mortgage scam investigation announced last week by the Treasury Department involves Bing and Yahoo, as well as Google. the agency has revealed. The Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) says 125 scams in all have been shut down, as Bing has ceased relationship with more […]
We know the illegal online pharmacies used to love the Google. Apparently, the mortgage scammers have found AdWords to be quite useful in their nefarious schemes, as well. The Treasury Department’s Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) announced this week that it’s worked with Google to shut down […]
The old AdSense interface is gone for good, as of yesterday, so holdouts clinging to that version are being thrust smack-dab in the middle of the new AdSense. Users had previously been able to toggle back and forth between the old and new versions of the interface. Publishers have certainly had plenty of warning. Google […]
Google’s “Dear Sophie” TV spot for Chrome, in which a father creates a Gmail account for his newborn daughter and sends her multi-media messages as she grows up, earned the top spot in Ace Metrix’ rankings of websites’ TV advertisements. Despite being a recent and reluctant entrant to TV advertising, Google dominated the rankings with […]