Tag: AdWords

Rosetta Stone Law Suit Against Google Moves Forward

Rosetta Stone (makers of the language software) have been given the go ahead by the appeals courts to move their lawsuit against Google to the next stage of the litigation process – a trial.

Rosetta Stone is asserting that Google is serving up Ads triggered by Rosetta Stone’s trademarks. So, when a user types in “Rosetta Stone”, they are seeing ads for other products, thus confusing the consumer.

I have long advocated to not bid directly on the keyword marks of your competitors. It typically does not generate good conversion results in the B2B area in particularly. It’s also a poor business practice that usually results in the other business countering by bidding on your terms. The end result is a bidding war (and the only entity that wins is Google).

However, this case has further implications on broad match and session match. It’s quite possible that Google will have to block session matching whereby it would normally use your search behavior to serve you ads regardless of what your query is… For instance, if I make three searches about cell phones, and then refine my search to smartphones, I still may see ads triggered by the original “cell phone” key phrase. And broad match may kick in if I type “Nokia smart phone” whereby AdWords matches me to a “Samsung smart phone” ad triggered by the “smart phone” portion of my phrase.

If Google will be required to block all marks except to their owner, there’s a lot of work that will be required. Google will need to build a system to verify ownership of marks to enable advertisers to bid on their own marks; and also build a system that blocks ads from appearing on registered marks in any form (broad, session or otherwise).

One thing is for sure, this case will continue to take its time moving through the legal system. Here are some more details reported by MediaPost.
Google CPCs and Sitelinks

If you want to learn more about the relationship between you average CPC (cost per click) and AdQuality score, and how those might be influenced inversely by way of ad extensions, check out this great article by ClickZ:

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2143667/solving-mystery-googles-q4-cpc-drop

In a nutshell, as you leverage ad extension you you ultimate goal is to improve conversions as well CTR. Google ocourse wants both as well. Higher CPCs yield more ad revenue, while conversions keep advertisers happy.

So, ad extensions such as Sitelinks (one of my personal favorites) are essentially designed to do both. An interesting sideeffect of this is an improvement in your AdQuality score (because your CTR increases). In turn, your CPC decreases, a nice bonus. Over time this benefit will most likely diminish as more advertisers take advantage of the features. Therefore, being an early adopter of these types of technology can yield some nice benefits.

So it is more important than ever to ensure you stay up to date on the latest trends in the industry.

On a side note, this is my first post made from my iPad, and I’m doing soLin the airport waiting for my flight.
CPCs fall in Q4 for Google as Ad Quality Improves

In a rare turn of events for search marketers, the average CPC (cost per click) search marketers paid to Google in Q4 2011 actually fell by 8% according to MediaPost’s report on Google’s Q4 analyst earnings call.

As a search marketer, this news is extremely timely, relevant and refreshing. CPCs have been escalating for years as more and more competitors flood search with their ads.

It seems that many improvements that Google has made to scoring ads (QualityScore) and better education of advertising best practices, has lead to an increase in the quality of ads and advertising campaigns. This has made the campaigns more efficient, which then can often lower the cost of advertising and CPCs. To summarize at a really high level, higher quality ads don’t necessarily need the highest bid to be shown first and win clicks. Google factors in many variables to determine rank.

However, advertisers should not necessarily breathe a sigh of relief. In certain industries that are highly competitive, CPCs may not have declined, and certainly not by 8% as reported. Only your own data will show how your business has been affected. But, it might make you take your foot off the gas a bit and back down on those bids. I have long pondered about what would happen if advertisers all backed off to form a reverse auction, per se… Where everyone kept lowering their bids. A crazy thought of course, one that probably cannot take place in free market capitalism; and it has similarities to a cartel so-to-speak.

Nonetheless, I continue to encourage advertisers to occasionally take their foot of the gas and focus on landing page quality and ad quality versus simply raising their bids constantly. Focusing on the quality will yield better long term results.
Google, 2012 and SEO

I’ve long been a major complainer when it comes to low-quality content sites gaming SEO with big bucks and dedicate resources all with the goal of being in the first few organic SERPs (so they can steal traffic from higher quality sites).

The bottom line is that people like myself (and great sites like SEOmoz) are busy producing good content – which is where they should be spending their time; not gaming results to get high rankings like eHow and About.com. If you have ever come across a useful, meaningful article from one of those sites, please let me know.

However, those sites bring Google billions of dollars because of ad sharing programs such as AdWords.

But, Google has finally realized that if users find valuable content, that quality user experience will pay better dividends in the long run versus spammy sites or low value sites.

So, Google has been rolling out a number of new programs that place emphasis on social signals, authority and semantics and a little bit less on “all that other stuff” that big companies have mastered gaming over the past 5-10 years.

Read a great article by SEOmoz on this very subject, and how you can make sure your site is positioned for success in 2012.
Are Tablets Increasing the Number of Bad Clicks on your Ads?

If you are a Google AdWords advertiser, then you have the option of targeting tablet users with your ads. With the growing popularity of tablets, and the fact that studies show increasing home use for activities such as browsing, advertising is a huge opportunity.

On the Pingdom blog, they discussed a recent report about the increasing use of tablets and how they are generating CTR’s for ads that are performing 37% better than comparable ads in desktop/laptop targeting.

One hypothesis is the “fat-finger” problem. Simply put, on small screens, viewing a clutter website can be difficult – and interacting with it – especially click small links, can be quite a challenge. It is very easy to inadvertently click the wrong link. Similarly, if you are trying to scroll and there is an ad near the edge of the table, you may accidentally click the ad. I’ve done this many times.

The results is a click-through of the ad. I try to hit back as soon as possible.

The major search engines claim that they are able to filter out these types of clicks most of the time – clicks that result in an immediate bounce. However, I have not be shown definitively that this is indeed the case, nor provided any data to support this. Of course it is in their best interest to not charge advertisers for these clicks as it will erode their ROI and the advertiser will not continue spending on campaigns. So for now, I’ll have to take their word for it.

But, perhaps we are not far away from a scenario where on certain devices such as small-screens (tablets and smart phones), when you click an ad, perhaps you’ll get a quick prompt saying, “would you like to continue to view this link”. Maybe something like this is a good way to keep people from miss-clicking and to protect advertisers who ultimately pay the salaries of the search engine purveyors.
Voice Interactivity Changing the PPC Game

Those with Apple iPhone 4s devices may be less inclined to run text searches on Google.com as they grow more comfortable with interfacing with the Siri voice interaction platform. Furthermore, Google voice search and the probably development and maturation of voice interactivity embedded into more and more devices will ultimate force a shift in the way consumers interact with advertising on the internet. One can hardly assume ads will go away. They never have. In fact, with each new technology, ads seem to become even more prolific than on the previous technologies. Consider it sort of the Moore’s Law of paid search advertising.

So what is in store for paid ads if I never visit an actual search engine? Perhaps when I ask for “restaurants near Reston, VA” the system will deliver two sets of results? Or, will the results be intertwined? And if so, how will I know as a consumer which results are sponsored and which are organic? And where to social signals play in all of this? Maybe it’s important to me that three of my friends recommend on restaurant over another, or that one restaurant is offering a half-off coupon?

Advertising is an important aspect of the consumer experience and ultimately underwrites the fact that the internet is essentially free.

Will Apple build its own ad network for Siri usurping Google altogether? That’s a definite probability if not a certainty. Look at iTunes. It’s a complete silo from the internet, controlled fully by Apple.

The voice interactivity is a vast uncharted pioneer town ripe for entrepreneurs and bright ideas to move in and conquer.

Just what will be next for consumers and advertisers alike? Ask Siri, maybe she knows.
CPCs Increasing Sharply During Holiday Retail Season

CPCs Rising this Holiday Season

Advertisers need to be weary about rising CPCs headed into the big retail holiday season. They should not based their budget on rates and costs from earlier in the year as their sole source. Look to prior year metrics for the same time period as a better base line. However, it appears that even those seasonally adjusted numbers are rising sharply.

As a result, I hypothesize that retailers may branch out into long tail a bit more than normal, as well as dabble in newer areas such as display markets, video and mobile.

This may cause a shortage in inventory across all channels, further driving up prices for non-retailers in related industries, especially when you take broad match in to account.
Google Changes AdWords Demographics

I just received a notice from Google as an AdWords advertising notifying me that Google is dropping the explicit ability to target/exclude ads to the 0-17 age group. This age group will no be rolled into a new category called “age – undetermined”.

This is most likely due to Google’s endeavor to be more conscience about restricting marketers from targeting children. Unfortunately, the big side affect is that if you DON’T want to target children, it becomes more difficult to exclude that group.

Most likely you will not want to exclude the “age – undetermined” group because that is a huge group, as many sites don’t provide demographic info.

Therefore, as of December 1st, 2011, when this change goes live, your campaigns may be affected if you are using this type of targeting.

Now would be a good time to go into your campaigns and adjust those targets; and potentially your ad copy, to ensure you are messaging to the proper audience in the most optimized manner possible.
Google to Position Ads Below Search Results

Today, Google announced that it will be displaying some paid ads below search results (opposed to the side). I was not able to confirm, but still assume ads above search results may co-exist with those below search results. In this case, organic results will be “sandwiched” between paid results.

Google explains that during testing the bottom-vs-side scenario scored a higher CTR. I’m not too surprised, as we web searchers do browser in a north-to-south fashion, seldom scrolling back up to see the results on the right hand side.

But, remember that Google is in the business of making money. This means that it wants to have higher CTRs, even if it is just fractionally. We all know that even a fractional increase equals megabucks.

So, you should test this judiciously to ensure you’re obtaining the desired goals of your campaign. In my world, conversion rate is most important and a higher CTR does not always correlate to a higher conversion rate. So tread carefully, measure and monitor.
Google Call Extensions – Is it Right for You? 5 Tips
Google has had a feature in its AdWords ads for about two years now called, “click to call”. You can learn more about it here: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/01/introducing-click-to-call-phone-numbers.html. This is a feature whereby mobile viewers of your ad could click a link an immediately be connected to your business via an intermediary number. As a business, you pay per call placed. There’s a number of metrics Google uses to help you measure the effectiveness of your investment in this technology which you need to pay close attention to.

More recently, Google is rolling out “call extensions”. These are somewhat similar, but instead of clicking on a phone number, you actually dial an intermediary phone number that Google displays in your ad. The user is then connected to your business. Businesses bid on these ads similar to other ad types. Read more here: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=173346.

Before you jump into this technology, you need to understand how you will be able to measure the calls and report on the performance of the leads.
1. I suggest making sure the phone number you use is unique to this and only this medium. This way you know all inbound calls are related to the campaign.
2. Ensure that your sales team denotes that the lead originated from the call extension campaign when they create the lead in whatever CRM or lead management system you are leveraging.
3. Not all calls will result in leads. You can reduce the number of “dead” calls through solid ad copy and making sure that when current customers search for you they can find you organically. Since not all calls turn into leads, you’ll need to calculate your CPL and compare this to other channels for bench-marking.
4. Once you have tracking in place, you will want to measure sales metrics such as sales volume, closing time, sales amount, etc. These metrics will ultimately tell you if your investment is paying off.
5. Finally, make sure you allow enough time to measure your campaign’s performance. If you sales cycle is typically 90 days, you don’t need to run your campaign for 90 days, but you need to allow for 90 days to reach your “final” conclusions as to whether this medium is right for you.