How Google’s latest design choice impacts consumers’ ability to search and discover
How has Google's recent update to its SERP display impacted consumers, advertisers and Google's bottom line? Adobe's Siddharth Shah looks at the data.
Siddharth Shah is head of web analytics, digital strategy and insights at Adobe. He leads a global team that manages the performance of over $2 BN dollars of ad spend on search, social and display media at Adobe.
Attribution: Busting The Myths
As one of the hottest topics in marketing, attribution is often presented as a panacea for marketers’ dilemmas, allowing you to understand how different advertisements in a purchase funnel work together. The typical description first shows how conversions attributable to various channels change when going from last-click to even-distribution or U-distribution (pick your favorite open-shaped […]
Does Weather Affect Site Traffic & SEM Performance?
Omni-channel retail marketers with online sites and offline stores have often wondered about the effect that weather might have on their site traffic (which in turn would affect their paid search bidding strategies). There appear to be three competing hypotheses about weather affecting site traffic: Hypothesis #1: Site traffic is negatively correlated with weather quality […]
The Christmas Jump, Tablet Hump & CPC Bump: Recent Trends In Mobile Usage
“I grab my tablet and get busy with the pen. Y’all could not be just like me if y’all was my twin.” –Andre 3000 That consumers are rapidly changing the way they interact with advertisers is no secret – but the rapidity in which they are doing so is quite surprising. As I looked into […]
January Survival Tips For Search Marketers: Revisit Your Budget, Rest Up – The Superbowl Is Coming
The beginning of the new year is usually a very busy time for marketers. Not only do they have to execute on their new goals and budgets, but they also have to deal with seasonal factors that affect many verticals. While search marketers in particular have to overcome several tactical and strategic issues in January […]
Why Attribution Really Matters For Product Listing Ads
With the holiday shopping season in full steam, advertisers are continuing to invest significantly in Google Shopping via Product Listing Ad (PLA) campaigns. Given the different format of these ads, one might expect users to interact differently than regular search ads. Perhaps people interact with them earlier in the sales funnel because these ads have […]
3 Mobile Trends Every Search Marketer Must Know
When I last blogged about mobile trends in 2011, I had predicted that mobile, i.e., smartphone + tablet traffic would be 10% of all paid search traffic by the end of 2011. I had also predicted that mobile traffic would be between 16-22% of all traffic. It turns out, at least for a few categories, […]
How To Effectively Use Attribution With Complex Campaigns
As marketers, we think that attribution is important. However, despite all the talk in white papers, blogs, etc., little has been discussed about its effective use. For instance: is attribution always useful, what are the common attribution techniques, which is the best attribution model, what improvements in efficiency can one expect from the right attribution […]
A 3 Step Model For High Seasonality Forecasting
In many verticals, much of the year’s business gets done during a short period. For instance, tax software is mostly sold at the end of January in the US when the W2 forms are mailed and right before the last day of submission in mid April. This is seen clearly in the Google Trends chart […]
Best Practices To Get The Most Out Of Google Shopping
As you should know by now, Google recently announced that it was combining its free Google Product Search listings and Product Listing Ads (PLA) to Google Shopping, where all listings would be shown in an auction based process akin to PPC. This is a significant change for retailers as it means that a significant percent […]
Singular vs. Plural: What Search Queries Can Tell You About Your Customers
“Remember: Y’all is singular. All y’all is plural. All y’all’s is plural possessive.” – Kinky Friedman In display or social advertising, the marketer can reach customers with different offers based on demographics or behavioral signals. This is not so in search where one only has the query searched as the fundamental mode of segmentation. This […]
Sometimes You Just Need To Go With Your Gut In Data Analysis
It is difficult to understand why statisticians commonly limit their inquiries to Averages, and do not revel in more comprehensive views. Their souls seem as dull to the charm of variety as that of the native of one of our flat English counties, whose retrospect of Switzerland was that, if its mountains could be thrown […]
Basic Econometric Modeling: Measuring The Offline-Online Effect Of TV Advertising On Search Spend
Multi-channel advertisers often ask me how to measure the effect of their TV ads on their online marketing channels. The question is important because it is the first step in the answer to the media mix question: What is the right distribution of budget across TV and online channels to maximize return on investment. This […]
Understanding The Limits Of Attribution
While there is much discussion about attribution and its benefits, marketers seldom discuss what it can’t do. Unfortunately, this creates a perception with many marketers that attribution will solve all their multimedia problems and that their media mix problems will go away. While I believe that the evolution of attribution and media mix modeling technology […]
Why Patience Is A Virtue With The Long Tail
A recent article by fellow Search Engine Land contributor Matt Van Wagner on long-tail keyword management – as well as some recent experiences with several large-scale advertisers, inspired me to write this article on quantitative long-tail management. Too often, I have seen cases where marketers apply incorrect reactive rules on the long tail and kill it in […]
Setting Campaign Budgets: Maximizing ROI While Controlling The Risk
Campaign budgets enable advertisers control over campaign-level spend on search engines. Once the campaign spend approaches the set budget, ads show up with lesser frequency, and ultimately ads do not compete in the auctions. However, this is not the best way to control your budget for two reasons: (1) If you have hit your campaign […]
Data Shows Retailers Need To Pace Spend To Maximize Black Friday Performance
Traffic volatility can make spend pacing during Black Friday very challenging. Spend too much too soon and you might suffer a lower ROI and not have money left for Cyber Monday. Spend less and you might be missing out on consumer volume. Performance data from the past three years reveals that search marketers are indeed […]
How The Rise Of Mobile Devices Has Affected Search Spend
A few months ago, I published a report about the rise of mobile devices including tablets. In this report, I showed that in a span of less than a year, mobile paid search spend went from 0.5% to 4.2% — an almost 9 fold increase. In that report, I also projected that by the end […]
Cost Per Like Campaigns On Facebook: The CTR, Conversion Rate, Reach Tradeoff
Managers of Facebook Fan acquisition campaigns are often faced with a dilemma when creating campaigns. They often ask whether or not they should they go for a broad audience and greater reach or should they go narrow and target audiences that might have a very small reach but a high affinity for a product. Marketers […]
Making Sense Of Multi-Click Data
Click path reports can be very useful tools in understanding how customers behave. For instance, they can tell you how much time consumers spend research before they buy a product. They can also tell you if there are certain keywords that help other keywords convert, e.g. assisting keywords. Finally, when coupled with attribution, they can […]
How To Use ACE For Landing Page Testing With Minimal Risk
A common way of testing landing pages is to do a split A/B test. The test setup typically goes like this: (a) Identify the keyword/adgroup sets for which the new landing page will be tested. (b) Set up identical ad copies in the ad group but with destination URLs pointing to the original as well […]
Size Does Matter: How, Where & Why People Buy
In my last post, I had discussed how big retailers with thousands of SKUs are faced with difficult performance management questions relating to their SEM campaigns. I had also analyzed transaction data and shown how small and big ticket items convert differently. Finally, I had also suggested management approaches for effective campaign management of these […]
Size Does Matter: How Retailers Should Manage Campaigns For Big & Small Ticket Items
Big retailers with a substantial store presence most often have a big online presence with thousands of SKUs. Apart from drawing consumers who might solely look online to buy products, they also help consumers in the earlier research phase of the buying cycle. Sometimes, the merchant will complete a transaction online that might have otherwise […]
Tips For Managing Ad Fatigue On Facebook
On the face of it, Facebook marketplace and search advertising are similar. In both platforms, the advertiser places a bids for an ad, competes against other advertisers at the impression level and then pays the platform a CPC for every click. These similarities help search marketers who are increasingly being asked to manage Facebook campaigns. […]
How To Make Your Statistics Skimpy Yet Meaningful
“Statistics are like a bikini – what is revealed is interesting but what is hidden is crucial. ” – Aaron Levenstein, Associate Prof. emeritus of Business, Baruch College. Statistics tell us about general trends and properties about our data but often they hide information that would give key insights. The goal of every analyst then is […]
Designed To Fail: Why Many Tests Give You Meaningless Results
You built out your new ad copy, tested out a bidding strategy, measured web and store sales to measure the online to offline effect; however, in the end you got the worst outcome possible – inconclusive results. A negative result would have been better; at least you would have known that your hypothesis was wrong […]
Applying Customer Life time Value To Paid Search
Online marketers have realized that traditional metrics such as sales, brand wareness, attitudes etc., are not enough to show return on investment. In fact, some academic studies have shown that marketing actions that improve short term sales may actually harm long term profitability of a brand. Further, with improvements in data mining and warehousing, marketers […]
SEM Trends For 2011: What To Expect & What To Do
As this is my last column for 2010, I thought it would be a good time to share some macro trends with you and make some predictions for 2011. While some of my analysis corroborates generally held conceptions in the marketplace, I hope you find my other findings new and insightful. Trend #1: CPCs Will […]
Is Your Digital Marketing Team Poised For Success?
In the last year or so, heads of marketing of several large companies have told me that they are interested in cross channel optimization and want the right media mix recommendation across all their channels, both online and offline. However, as I spoke to many digital marketing teams, I realized that they were not set […]
Does TV Advertising Help Search Marketing Performance?
Proponents of TV and SEM advertising often have contentious debates. SEM advertisers love the trackability of the channel and the immediacy of response while TV advertisers love its reach and its ability to build awareness. However, what is not clear is how the channels interact and how to find out the right media mix to […]
My Data Have Feelings
As search marketers, we are often asked to look at multi-dimensional data. This is often cumbersome, boring and overwhelming to go through. Take a look at this example from a campaign that’s running in multiple cities in the US: The CPA in Boston is high and it appears to be due to the conversion […]
The Subtle Science Of Bidding Part 3: Second Order Effects
In the past two posts of this series (part 1, part 2), I discussed the actual auction mechanism that the search engines deploy, with real life examples with both brand and non- brand keywords. In the final and concluding part of this series, I will discuss what I term as “second order effects” and will […]
The Subtle Science Of Bidding Part 1: The Real Story
Regardless of how experienced you may be with AdWords, and with interpreting data that Google reports about your campaigns, you’ll occasionally see numbers that simply don’t make sense. What do you do when reported data flies in the face of both reason and experience?
Caution: Reported Trends In Search Query Length May Be Misleading
We constantly are hearing reports about how web surfers are getting increasingly savvy with their searches. For example, Hitwise reports that average query length is getting longer. Search marketers have interpreted this information in the following way: If queries are getting longer, the long tail of search must be increasing; further, if web users are […]
Broad Vs. Exact Match Types: The Hard Data
Search managers are often asked the question if they are over- or under-exposed on broad and exact matches. I have heard several heated discussions debating this issue. Since this is an issue that touches many a nerve, I decided to take a dispassionate data driven look at the numbers. Methodology I selected keywords in my […]
Managing Tail Terms: Balancing Risk & Reward
The savvy search marketer always explores tail terms to improve overall performance. If done right, tail terms can convert better than the head and can also be cheaper in terms of Cost Per Click (CPC). Hence, effective tail management lifts the performance of the overall campaign. When exploring the tail, marketers are always faced with […]
Click to Conversion Time & Your Revenue Attribution Window
In my last Analyze This post, I alluded to the importance of click to conversion time, that is, the estimated conversion time of the revenue attribution window. I shall devote this article to explaining the importance of the revenue attribution window and some empirical methods to help determine the right window length. The revenue attribution […]
Click To Conversion Time (Part I): What This Metric Can Tell You About Your Clientele
An often-overlooked metric is the time taken from the first click on an ad to the final conversion of the keyword. That is, the total conversion time for a keyword in a given campaign. While this metric may seem relatively unimportant to ROI (for instance), it can help you understand your clients and also help […]
Dayparting: Profitable Tactic Or Waste Of Time?
Hour of day bidding, or dayparting, has been the topic of much discussion of late. Advertisers want to leverage every possible trend to maximize their profits, and one way to do this is to take advantage of search engines providing advertisers with the flexibility to run their campaigns with bidding by hour of day. With […]