The 4-step health check for your target ROAS and CPA
Your bidding strategy is only as good as the targets behind it. Validate them with practical formulas and real campaign data.
Topic: George Michie
Google Announces Customer Match: Upload Email Lists For Search, Gmail, YouTube Ad Targeting
Customer Match marks the first time advertisers will be able to set bids and create specific ads tailored to customer audience segments built with first-party data.
Why Google’s Reported CPC Declines Can’t Tell The Story Of “A Mobile Advertising Problem”
It’s still happening. Google reported on Thursday that the average cost-per-click (CPC) was down again in Q2 from the prior year, marking the eleventh consecutive quarter in which the average CPC fell year-over-year. Some analysts and news outlets have been pointing to this as evidence of Google’s “mobile problem” — the problem Enhanced Campaigns was […]
The Aftermath: Clarifications & Expert Reactions To Google’s Move To Secure Paid Search Queries
Yesterday, Google announced it is expanding secure search to clicks on paid ads. The change means that the search query a user typed in before clicking on an ad will be dropped from the referrer string in the URL and won’t be passed to analytics or other software other than AdWords. The move is aimed […]
The New Visual Brand Ads: What Google Banners & Bing Hero Ads Mean For Search
In the past two weeks, both Microsoft and Google began testing display-style ads that appear on search results for select brand queries. Many see the introduction of these ads as a money grab to get brands to pay for traffic they would otherwise get for free, an assault on SEO, and the further “brandification” of […]
SMX East 2012: PPC Analytics: Crunching Your Own Data
PPC Analytics: Crunching Your Own Data Presentations from SMX East, October 2012 In this session, we will explore new ways to analyze data from all available sources to improve your PPC campaign performance. We’ll tackle the challenges of both large and small data sets, managing through the fog of long-tail data, and making decisions from […]
SMX East 2011: Best Practices with AdWords
Best Practices with AdWords Presentations from SMX East – NYC, NY, September 2011 As Google continues it’s amazing pace of updates and enhancements to AdWords, it means that paid search marketers need to work just as hard to keep up. Last year’s best practices are being trumped with newer, more powerful best practices. Come to […]
Rimm-Kaufman Group Acquires AudetteMedia
Two well-known online marketing agencies are joining forces. RKG (Rimm-Kaufman Group), based in Charlottesville, Virginia, has announced its acquisition of Bend, Oregon-based AudetteMedia. The acquisition allows RKG to continue expanding its service lineup. Long established as a leader in paid search marketing, RKG has recently added services such as shopping engine management, social media advertising […]
Black Friday & Cyber Monday Recap: Search Ads Drove Big Retail Gains
The dust seems to have finally settled on the long holiday weekend, and according to several reports both formal and informal, that dust is largely colored green. Green, as in money: transactions, average order size, revenue, and other metrics are widely reported as being up this year compared to 2009. Here’s a recap of several […]
SMX East 2010 Slide Video: Industrial Strength PPC
Industrial Strength PPC Presentations from SMX East, October 2010 Are you managing thousands – or even millions – of paid search keywords? Perhaps for more than one website or customer? To do this effectively, you need to scale up from basic tools and Excel spreadsheets and adopt major league practices and processes. Panelists in this […]
Google AdWords Updates Policies, Releases New Billing Tab & Broad Match Modifiers
Google AdWords has made some changes to their AdWords policy recently. They also have expanded the reach of their new billing tab, as well as given more users access to the broad match modifier. AdWords Policies: If you look at the AdWords Policies release notes, you will notice serveral updates occurred this month. The updates […]
Google AdWords Tests New Broad Match Modifier
The Google AdWords blog announced a new match type, a modifier to broad match that let’s you be more specific on your keyword targeting than the normal broad match. This is currently being testing in the UK and Canada and it is named the broad match modifier. How does it work? Put a plus symbol […]
Short Vs. Long Tail: Which Search Queries Perform Best?
The focus on the utility (or lack thereof) of long tail keywords in paid search campaigns seems to ebb and flow, but recently a series of articles about leveraging the long tail for pay-per click have been published. But in all the debate there’s an important distinction that most people fail to focus on. Keywords […]
Alan Rimm-Kaufman Passes Away After Courageous Bout With Leukemia
The editorial staff at Search Engine Land has just learned that over the weekend, on July 18th, Alan Rimm-Kaufman passed away following a 16 month long battle with leukemia. He bravely faced countless rounds of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant in hopes of a cure. Alan Rimm-Kaufman was just 41 years young, and is […]
Why Position Bidding Wastes Money
It’s remarkable that in 2008 there are still many bidding systems in use by SEMs and in-house PPC managers dedicated to “finding the right position” for each keyword. These position crawling systems guarantee inefficiency and lost opportunity; to put it concisely: they’re playing the wrong game. Here’s why:
Pay-Per-Click Averages Hide Incremental Realities
You’re hitting your pay-per-click (PPC) efficiency targets and everyone is pleased with the results. Congratulations, but are you wasting money in your PPC program? Averages often hide waste, and in this economy it may be worth taking a look at how you’re getting to that average. Suppose you budget $200 to buy a DVD player. […]
Should Advertisers Fear GoogleHoo?
Forget the business issues over the deal where Yahoo will selectively serve Google ads on the Yahoo site. What about the impact on the advertisers? Overbidding on Yahoo and potentially underbidding on Google’s network system will likely be the most immediate changes. But there are positives, as well.
Bidding For Dollars – Margin Dollars, That Is
As the competition in search becomes more sophisticated, refining tactics becomes more important than ever. For online retailers, bidding by margin is all but essential. Every firm has a different marketing objective: some look for maximum ROI and some are willing to spend to break even in hopes that future orders will drive the profit, […]