As online businesses prepare to ramp up their holiday paid search campaigns, it can be instructive to look at insights from the retail’s second biggest season: back-to-school. For BookRenter.com, an online text book rental company, back-to-school is its holiday season. Jean-Michel Boujon, BookRenter’s Marketing Director, discussed some of the paid search challenges his company faced this […]
Today, Marin Software issued a report on the impact of Google’s move to enhanced campaigns based on $5 billion in annualized spend managed through its paid search platform. The study focuses on a year-over-year performance comparison covering the nine week period beginning the week after the migration deadline of July 22, 2013, and compares it […]
Google rolled out product listing ads (PLAs) on mobile devices in March. Now the company has launched an updated display for PLAs on smartphones that allows more products to be displayed from the search results page. Users can swipe to see more PLAs from their smartphones. Google also enlarged the product images and product titles […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Google Intros Android App For Managing Google Places Listings Local business owners have a new tool for managing their Google Places For Business Listing. Mike Blumenthal got the scoop on the […]
The Search Agency released its third quarter State of Paid Search Report, showing strong growth in mobile for Google since the completed roll-out of enhanced campaigns this summer. Mobile clicks accounted for one-third of Google’s click share. In contrast, Bing’s mobile click share remained flat at 17.7 just percent in Q3. A whopping 93 percent […]
With two months of enhanced campaigns behind us, RKG’s Q3 Digital Marketing Report offers a look at the near-term impact of the roll-out on its client set, which includes 40 of the top 500 online retailers. Most metrics remained relatively stable; however, the effects were seen in smartphones where CPCs dropped significantly after the transition. […]
The IAB has just released Q2 and first half 2013 online and mobile ad revenue figures. Total digital ad revenue in the US for 1H 13 was just under $20.1 billion (vs. $17 billion last year). Mobile represented 15 percent of the total. Search revenues were up 7 percent in real dollars ($8.7 billion) vs. […]
Earlier this week, I attended the How To Do Click-To-Call In An Enhanced Campaign World session at SMX East. As a search usability professional, my primary interest is to understand not only how searchers locate and discover desired content, but also why searchers make specific choices. For example, when does a searcher prefer to use […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Two Years Later, BitTorrent Now In Google’s Auto Completions Over two years ago, Google removed BitTorrent from the instant search auto-complete search suggestions. Now, it appears that when you begin typing […]
The added features Bing Ads introduced to Location Extensions in June are now available to all advertisers in the US. If you’re running mobile or local paid search campaigns, you’ll want to be sure your location extension data is comprehensive to take advantage of these features. Here’s a look at the latest location extensions in […]
Keep an eye out for a new look Google is testing for mobile AdWords ads. In the screenshot below, you’ll likely first notice the new eye-catching yellow ad icon next to the display URL. The bright new label replaces the much more subtle “ad” that rests next to the “i” icon in the current design. […]
In its latest look at mobile ad revenues, eMarketer estimates Google is generating nearly one-fifth of its US advertising revenues from mobile search, coming in at 19.1%. In yet another indication of how fast the mobile ad market is growing, only two years ago, mobile made up just 4.8 percent of Google’s US ad revenues. […]
Welcome to our Ad Size Guide, where we explain everything you need to know about the most prevalent ad sizes available within the world of online advertising. The IAB keeps a list of ad sizes here which it recommends to people, however as we have a slightly different take to them, we thought it would be […]
Today, Marin Software release a new study that finds Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs) continue to see increased adoption among retailers. According to the study, over one billion products were being promoted through PLAs as of May 2013. PLA impression share, when compared to text ads, has slowed some since its holiday season peak in […]
In an updated digital and mobile advertising forecast, eMarketer has projected that mobile search will be worth more than $15 billion in the US by 2017. Accordingly, it will lead all other types of mobile advertising, similar to its current position online. Display advertising will follow with $14.5 billion by the end of the forecast […]
Google is following up on the recent roll-out of its updated Google Maps app for Android and iOS devices with a new local ad view and click type. The ads appear at the bottom of the screen. In addition to the standard title and ad text, the ads include the car icon link to get […]
Restaurants is still the most widely searched local business category according to YP’s Q2 Local Insights report. However restaurants doesn’t even show up in the top 10 when it comes to advertising spend. According to YP data, the following list represents the most searched local categories overall. The list is a blended average of both […]
If you haven’t done it, Google will do it for you. Beginning today, many AdWords “legacy” campaigns will be “enhanced” and in the near future, all will be. Many expected to wake up to an exclusively enhanced world this morning. But, the big switch-flip at midnight didn’t happen. Google has said it will still take […]
On today’s quarterly earnings call, Google CEO, Larry Page, addressed Enhanced Campaigns and noted that nearly three quarters of AdWords campaigns have migrated. Page said: “… we want to make advertising super simple for customers. Online advertising had developed in very device specific ways with separate campaigns for desktop and mobile. This made arduous work […]
Google released a new study as part of its series of analysis aimed at answering the perpetual question of whether PPC ads cannibalize organic traffic. You know the question: “If I’m already ranking, why should I pay for ads if they are just going to steal free clicks from my organic listings?” This time, Google’s […]
Covario reports overall pay-per-click (PPC) spend accelerated, rising 22 percent from Q1 and 23 percent year-over-year. Mobile PPC spending outpaced overall growth, increasing 39 percent from Q1 and 132 percent year-over-year. Mobile accounted for 16 percent of global search spend. Smartphones claimed 40 percent of the mobile spend allocations, tablets 60 percent. Smartphone CPCs remained […]
Google AdWords enhanced campaigns have had negligible influence on general Google trends so far, according to RKG’s Q2 Digital Marketing Report. However, Bing Ads continues to draw market share in clicks and ad spend. According to RKG’s tracking, Google AdWords has lost spend share for six straight quarters. RKG saw a 58% increase in spending […]
Paid search spend in the US increased 7 percent year-over-year in Q2 2013, according to IgnitionOne’s latest Digital Marketing Report. That’s up from a 2 percent YoY increase seen in Q1, though IgnitionOne found that total search spend fell quarter-over-quarter. Clicks and impressions both rose 5 percent, and CPCs ticked up 2 percent YoY. The retailer […]
With the July 22nd mandatory migration to Google AdWords enhanced campaigns looming, we will be checking in with marketers over the next several weeks to get their perspective on the transition process, hear what they’ve learned so far and what advice they have to share. Today, Sid Shah, Adobe’s Director of Business Analytics for Advertising […]
Facebook has said that it’s getting rid of sponsored search results for the time being. It’s not walking away from “search advertising,” however. In the future, there will be ads in Graph Search. But, the company is still in the process of working all that out. Facebook told me this morning that, as a practical […]
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 […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Google Glass Diary, Part 4: Local Search & Navigation Remember that first Google Glass video? It was published a little more than a year ago and gave the world its first […]
In an update on the early progress of the transition to enhanced campaigns last night, Sridhar Ramaswamy, SVP, Ads and Commerce at Google — and the lead on enhanced campaigns — said that close to two million campaigns have been set to enhanced. That’s up from 1.5 million Google quoted on the first quarter earnings call on […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Google & Time Inc. Launch Timelapse: See How Any Part Of The World Has Changed Over Time The new Timelapse site, created by Time Inc. and Google, is a pretty amazing […]
Google announced that ad group-level mobile bid adjustments will start rolling out today and continue over the next couple of weeks in the Web UI. The added feature went live in the AdWords API last week. Like the elusive Keyword Planner that is rolling out now, ad group mobile bid adjustments are only available in […]
Yahoo has apparently been working with search-ads network Chitika since 2006. Chitika ads appear on various Yahoo PC sites (e.g., Answers, Local) and Yahoo (Bing) search/text ads are syndicated across Chitika’s network of roughly 250,000 publisher sites. Now that relationship is expanding to mobile. According to the news out this morning: The multi-faceted agreement with […]
Google Enhanced Campaigns – What You Really Need to Know Presentations from SMX West, March 2013 Google recently announced AdWords enhanced campaigns, a major update designed to simplify campaign management across multiple devices, and to increase adoption rates of mobile advertising among small and medium sized businesses. Should you transition now or wait? What are […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the Web. From Search Engine Land: Google Expands List of “Generic” Top Level Domains and Makes Them Geotargetable Typically, the country-code top level domain (ccTLD) is just that — a country code. For instance, example.co.uk has content […]
The roll-out has begun. Earlier this month Google said it would be adding ad group-level mobile bid adjustments to enhanced campaigns. As of yesterday, ad group mobile bid adjustments are available through the AdWords API. The new feature is accessible from all current versions of the API with the new AdGroupBidModifierService. Google has updated the […]
Yelp released their first quarter 2013 earnings report today, announcing a 68 percent increase from Q1 2012 with $46 million in net revenue this quarter. CEO Jeremy Stoppelman started the earnings report webcast by stating the company had hit record highs in all core metric areas. Climbing to approximately 102 million, Yelp’s average monthly unique […]
Like many of my fellow PPC colleagues, I feel uneasy about the impending move to Enhanced Campaigns and the lurking cutover deadline of July 22nd. Should we convert now and get it over with? Should we run a few tests with our smaller, simpler accounts? Should we abandon tightly-crafted, geo-segmented campaigns in favor of the new geo-bidding […]
Starting today Google is adding functionality for social annotations and in-app ad targeting to enhanced campaigns. Social annotations, really Google+ annotations, display the number of Google+ followers an advertiser has under the ad text. Here’s an example from Home Depot on a search for “dining room chairs” Social extensions have been available for nearly a […]
Are those sweet efficiencies early adopters of AdWords product listing ads saw in their holiday numbers coming to an end? Well, CPCs are rising, but ROI is still solid. RKG’s Q1 Digital Marketing Report finds that as more merchants come on board, product listing ad CPCs are now just 10% lower than comparable text ads. […]
Mobile-location based advertising network xAd joined forces with mobile call measurement provider Telmetrics to release their first U.K. Mobile Path-to-Purchase study, focusing on U.K. mobile search behavior. Conducted by Nielsen, the online study, surveyed 1,500 U.K. smartphone and tablet users to measure consumer search activity on mobile devices. While price comparisons and reviews were the […]
Google announced today that ad group-level mobile bids will be coming to enhanced campaigns. The added functionality will be available to all advertisers in May. This is a fairly substantial modification. Currently mobile bids can only be set at the campaign level in enhanced campaigns. It is unclear if this change is in reaction to […]