Brandt Dainow, CEO of ThinkMetrics, has conducted research which supports a position I’ve long held—the top position in Google Ad listings doesn’t necessarily have an advantage over the other positions.

 In an article appearing in iMedia Connections’ January 18, 2007 newsletter, Dainow details how he conducted research spanning 2003 to 2006 examining clickthrough rates for ads his company ran for its clients during that period.

 The results? In 2003, top position did have a slight advantage on clickthrough rates, although the fifth and sixth position (generally the bottom positions on the screen), also had higher clickthrough rates than the other positions.

 But by 2006, his research shows that the clickthrough rate for all positions was relatively equal.

 What does this mean?

 For one thing, it means the text in your ad may be more important than positioning.

 Admittedly, as a copywriter I have a bias toward text being the dominant factor in getting someone to click on an ad, but Dainow’s research bears this point out. It also further demonstrates how individuals conducting searches on the Internet are becoming more knowledgeable about finding what they want on the Web.

 It’s still a good idea to get the best positioning possible on Pay Per Click ads, but Dainow’s research shows that you may not have to blow your budget trying to be the top dog in positioning. In the quest for clickthroughs, your message is probably more important than your position.

Google Adwords API can help you manage your Adwords program more effectively.

Google Adwords API comes as a relief for Search Marketers holding large or complex Adwords accounts, as well as all third party advertisers.

To reap the best results of Google Adwords API, you need to have programming skills. It supports languages like Java, .NET, Perl, PHP, Python, OCAML, Ruby and XML. Signup requires setup of a My Client Center (MCC), which offers powerful controls like:

a.       Viewing up to 1,000 linked AdWords accounts.
b.       Access to relevant information from one platform.
c.       Run reports on multiple client accounts.
d.       Your clients have login access to their individual accounts.
e.       Generate automatic keywords, ad copy.
f.        Integrating AdWords data with databases, such as inventory systems.

For more information, visit:
http://www.google.com/apis/adwords

Below is example how “Adwords API” would Over Perform a normal Adwords Campaign.

Just imagine if you search for “temperature in Texas” and you see the Ad showing real time temperature in Sponsored listing at Google.com. It’s pretty certain that it will overshadow other ads.

Texas Temperate – 9^oC.
Real Time Temperature Online
Find Temperature for Your City Now!
YourDomain.com

Similarly, a sports site wanted to attract a huge number of visitors, so they planned and implemented a similar Adword technique.

They designed an ad where visitors can see the LIVE Football score while searching for anything related to football or sports related phrases/keywords. The campaign had a 15% Click Through Rate (CTR), which is excellent!

Germany V/S Italy
Germany - 0, Italy – 1
Get Live Score Update now!
YourDomain.com

Adwords API makes this possible by giving you the flexibility of generating automatic keywords, Ad text, and URLs, as well as integrating Adwords data with database.

 

If you have a paid ad running on Google, or if you’re thinking about running one in the future, then  LISTEN UP!  

Recently there was an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Scheduling Online Ads” by Kelly Spors. It was an important article for anyone who has steered clear of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising because of a fear that their money will be wasted by bored web surfers or fraudulent clicks instead of serious consumers.

 So Google came up with a great solution to help advertisers protect their money and keep away those pesky “Midnight Marauders”.

 Adwords now lets you schedule the display of your ads using "Ad Scheduling."

 Researchers found that there are proven times during the day when consumers are looking to BUY, and other times, such as the middle of the night, when they’re more likely to surf, click, and leave.

 Most online shopping happens on weekdays between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. and then in the late afternoon between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. Knowing this information could help you optimize your conversion rates and stop needless spending.

 What I like most about the ad scheduling feature is that the interface is simple and extremely user friendly,  unlike SearchIgnite, a program that can confuse advertisers into turning their ads OFF when they should be ON.

 I applaud Google for implementing a much needed feature! I can only hope that Overture and MSN follow suit and create their own ad scheduling programs too.

It's the most common error I see with clients who have been running their own PPC campaign, and the bigger their budget, the more likely they are to make it: They want to be #1 - and they want to be there for anyone who might possibly be searching for what they offer.

I can't blame them. It does intuitively seem like being in the number one spot would be ideal. It does, after all, generate significantly more traffic, and often a high click-through rate. Just think, if you have enough money, of all the people you could direct to your site if you can afford to be in the number one position for your most general term! An auto dealer that's #1 for "car," or a home loan site that's #1 for "mortgage" - assuming they have enough money - surely would benefit tremendously from this kind of placement.

And because of this, it can be difficult to convince a client that their favorite position, as sexy as it seems, may just be the least fruitful. It may simply be scattering their seed on barren earth - and the results it produces may be so costly that they take away resources from more fruitful areas of the campaign.

It's easiest, perhaps, to explain why a general term like "car" is not the best term for anyone in a PPC campaign. Simply put, the percentage of people searching on that term who are looking for what you offer is too small. Even if you rule out, with your ad copy, those who are looking for a review or automotive history - there's still far too much variation in what people mean by "car" in their heads, which didn't make it into the search bar. Even if you do have dealerships across the country, chances that you offer every make and model of vehicle are slim.

People typing in general terms are also generally early in the buying cycle, and doing research. They don't know yet quite what they want, and are unlikely to decide on this visit to your site.

A little harder to grasp is why the number one spot itself is rarely ideal. I guess the main idea to get across is the behavior of searchers. People type in their search - then click on the first result, often without even reading it. Only after getting to your site, and costing you a click, do they stop to notice that it's not what they had in mind at all. People who click on the results further down are more likely to have actually read the ad, and be thinking about what they want before they click. In other words, lowering position, while it may reduce the number of clicks you get - also is more likely to let your ad copy do its job to pre-qualify those clicks.

A recent example - I took a client from the top spot on most of their keywords, costing them several dollars per click, and lowered them to #2 and #3. They saw their cost per click drop nearly in half - but were uncomfortable about the fact that the total number of clicks also dropped dramatically. However, those who clicked were far more likely to remain on the site - with half as many clicks, their page views went up from 37k per week to 40k. I have had several clients who found that once they moved down to the 4th - 6th position for most terms, their conversion rate went up. Yes, they were getting fewer visitors overall, but a higher percentage of those visitors were making purchases - and at a lower cost-per-click, the cost per acquisition went way down.

One other danger of being in the top spot - especially for a general or popular term - is that this spot is more likely to be a target for click fraud. It's simply easier for affiliate-type fraud, to click on the top spot. And for competitor-type fraud, well, everyone wants to take a shot at the big guy.

There are some cases, however, where being in the top spot makes sense. That's for the company's own name or brand. Potter Barn could benefit from being number 1 for all terms with "pottery barn" in them. It's not always as cost effective as a lower spot, but it is good branding - and if someone is searching for a specific brand name, especially if they offer their own product for service on their website, chances are good that they will be happy to end up on that company's website. I would, however, put a cap on the CPC for those terms, as it's not unusual for someone to try to make it prohibitively expensive for a well-known company to buy their own brand name, by making their max bid absurdly high.

But it can be scary for the client to let go of that top spot, especially when they see traffic dip - so just make sure you have your tracking in place and can demonstrate the benefit in terms of the bottom line... and be prepared to move them back into the top spot if, by some fluke of fickle search behavior, it turns out #1 really is the most profitable place to be.

Yahoo announced that they will no longer allow bidding on competitor's trademark terms. This announcement has generated a little bit of confusion as to where Yahoo stands on allowing trademarked terms as keywords. I was asked, for example, whether this meant that agencies would have to start getting permission from clients to use the client's trademarks. Not according to my understanding of it.I feel qualified to answer this - since I was an editor at Yahoo, and was on the special team that was dedicated to reviewing trademark terms. As it stands, on Yahoo you can advertise under any trademarked name as long as you have content on your site supporting it – such as a comparison of your product to your competitor’s. There is nothing in the change which indicates they will not allow advertising under the trademark name associated with the website doing the advertising. This is designed to be sure that Geico can’t advertise under the keyword “progressive” – even if they have a page of facts comparing themselves to Progressive. This is designed to protect the interests of big name corporations who don't like PPC because competitors can use it to show up in search listings when a potential customer is looking for them. Geico, whether directly or through an agency, will still be able to advertise under “geico.” The place that trademark terms get sticky is on Google – where you can buy the term, but not put it in the ad unless you have written permission from each trademark holder – and while that is meant to prevent this kind of competitor advertising, often it ends up with situations where someone selling a product can’t use the name of that product in the ad. For example: MLB (major league baseball) is copyrighted. AcmeTicketReseller.com sells MLB tickets, but can’t say “MLB” in the copy. Or AcmeShoes.com - they are unable to use “kenneth cole” in the copy, even though they are selling kenneth cole shoes. If a shoe site sells 200 brands, getting written permission for each is somewhat prohibitive. These hardly seem like the kind of uses of trademark terms which threaten their integrity - since they make the trademark holder money, but that's how it's handled. On the other hand, on Google, Geico *can* advertise under the term “progressive” – as long as they do not say “progressive” anywhere in the ad copy or imply in any way that they are Progressive. Now, this seems to me to be exactly the kind of thing that the big corporations want to prevent - their direct competitor showing up when a user is searching on their brand name. Yahoo does not restrict trademark terms in this way – and it sounds like the limitation will ONLY effect competitors, not resellers. This has actually been a change they’ve talked about for over a year, as it was under discussion while I was still working there. The lawyers were evaluating it while I was there, trying to balance the choice between free speech and attracting large-name companies’ business. I personally would have preferred to see them lean in the other direction - as some legitimate consumer comparisons will end up getting shut out by this. (addendum - per Yahoo, sites that offer a comparison can still advertise under a trademark term as long as they don't sell a product that competes with this... this will mean that some sites will get sneaky and try to hide their relationship to the product sales - but should protect legitimate consumer comparisons - BUT it means they will rely on editorial review heavily for these decisions, and editors, being human and having quotas to meet, do make mistakes.)

Yahoo has decided to cut the length of their creatives down to the same length as Google - 70 characters.

The strongest advantage of this, is that it will allow advertisers to run the same ad on both networks, giving them the opportunity to more directly compare results and to present a more consistent message.

The biggest disadvantage is that Google's ads are too short, particularly considering that Yahoo has editorial rules in place that will make it even more difficult to maximize that small amount of real estate.

Yahoo's longer ad length allowed the advertiser to more clearly qualify the click - presenting a better idea to the user of what lay beyond the click at the advertiser's site. I never thought that anyone read a full 190 character ad, but relevant bits would jump out to their eye. A 70 character ad scans more easily, and can be absorbed in less than an eye-blink - which is as long as you've got to get your point across anyway before a user moves their eye on to the next item on the page or navigates away.

But there's a huge difference between the two. 100, 110 characters would still allow for a little more messaging, while keeping the ads concise both verbally and visually.

Yahoo has also stated that they are not changing any of their editorial rules, which makes no sense with such a radical change. You must include the entire search term in an ad – shoot some of my search terms are that long. You can’t use ampersands, or abbreviations. We aren’t allowed any of the neat “tricks” that allow us to squeeze a little more information into our ads as we can on Google.

Yahoo also doesn’t allow advertisers to run multiple ads simultaneously, which puts them at a disadvantage. Advertisers will use Google to test creatives first, and apply what they learn from Google to Yahoo, secondarily.

So, this is going to be a little bumpy at first. Until editorial standards are changed to more closely reflect those at Google, it still won’t be a simple matter of using the same ads and being able to compare results from one engine to the other. Ads will still have to be re-written, sometimes dramatically. Still, I think that shorter is better in the online world.

(Not that you’d know it from my blog posts!)

article here

Not everyone is a good candidate for PPC. It can be hard to learn when to turn a potential client away.

Reasons to tell a potential client not to do PPC:

1. They don’t have a completed website.

You can’t develop a decent PPC campaign without a website. If you are building the website internally, then you may be able to work with the developers on it and actually tailor the site to make a smoother PPC campaign. However, if all you have to go on are the client’s descriptions of products, it’s difficult to assess the feasibility of PPC. The client’s descriptions may be overly optimistic. They may describe something as a “gourmet gift basket” when it’s just sausage and cheese.

2. The product is a commodity, or otherwise not well differentiated or branded.

If there’s nothing outstanding about the product – whether it’s better or cheaper – it’s damn hard to sell it through any advertising medium. But if you have Acme Little Guy selling Acme way-cool widgets – and they are up against Big Guy Widgets, who is one of the names everyone thinks of for widgets, and up against Discount Widgets who are cheaper, and Universe of Widgets that has more kinds of widgets than have any sense existing - well, the chances of diverting some of that traffic to Acme are slim. You have to have something unique. This is a problem many internet retailers have. They see that there are many companies doing well in a vertical and think that they can jump in the market, without finding their own niche.

3. The site has no focus.

Any business needs to have a clear focus. People want to know that they are at a hardware site, or a gourmet food site. They don’t like to go to a site looking for widgets and also see caviar. The widgets and the caviar might both be quite good, but it throws people off. They don’t have confidence in the product. Yes, some big names out there have a broad focus, but they almost all started small, with a narrow product line in a brick and mortar store and built a name for themselves.

4. It’s a poorly branded product where the competitors are well branded, or in a vertical where people are looking for a brand-name.

This is partly the issue of commodification – as in the case with Big Guy Widgets in #2, but also a case of brand loyalty. Women, especially, are brand-loyal, and will rarely jump to an unknown brand. Things that are tied to traditions, as well, such as holiday or religious items can also face this issue. You are unlikely to get people to try a new brand of summer sausage for Christmas, when most of them buy one from Hickory Farms for their dad every year. To change people’s buying habits requires a strong branding campaign. PPC can have a role in this, but it’s not going to be a big money-maker at the outset.

5. There are no good, specific keywords which designate the product.

That is, the product is hard to describe, or not quite what people usually mean when typing in the relevant keywords. A good example of this kind of thing is gift baskets. A gift basket contains so many different items, that to get specific with search terms can be quite difficult. People who are looking for “smoked gouda” are unlikely to want to purchase a gift basket in which gouda is one small component. Another example is new technology. A combo widget-thingamabob might be a fabulous idea, but if few people know they exist yet, then few people are searching for them. People searching for “widgets” and people searching for “thingamabobs” are going to be difficult to convince to buy a combination item.

What is a good candidate for PPC? A well-branded, discount product with a unique benefit… that comes with something free. People love free.

OK, so not many of those come through the door. I’ll go into more detail about good candidates next week.

What factors make a client a good candidate for a PPC campaign?

The ideal client offers well-branded, discount product or service, in a wide selection, with a unique benefit… that comes with something free. For example: Nike, promoting their latest shoes with a new patented suspension system, in more colors than are available in stores, on sale – with free shipping.

No, not many of those come through the door – but each of those elements are what is needed to set a campaign apart.

1) Well-branded:
It doesn’t matter if you’ve heard of it, only if the target client has heard of it. If you don’t buy widgets, you have no reason to have heard of Acme Widgets… try doing a little research. Use the internet, and ask your uncle who buys widgets for his watchamacallits. They don’t have to be the biggest name out there, but if they are a name people know – that gives you the strongest possible advantage over other advertisers.
In a PPC campaign, unless the brand name is not known, or is similar to a common non-branded search term (for example: if the company’s name was “red tomatoes” and they sold make up,) then we can expect to see click-through rates of over 10% and conversions of over 5% consistently on branded search terms. One of our clients saw click through on their brand name averaging 40%, and conversions averaging 15% on that term. This is a simple matter of making sure that the client is there, at the top of the page, when people look for them.

2) Discount:
Comparison shopping is easy online. If you offer the same or similar product as anyone else, you better be sure you are selling it cheaper – or at least for the same price. This is especially important when the competitor mentions price in the ad. This is more important in women-oriented verticals, and verticals where the product is widely available. The client doesn’t have to offer the lowest price on everything, especially if some of the other factors mentioned here are going in their favor (especially brand and uniqueness,) but they should at least appear to be competitive.

3) Wide selection:
Again, comparison shopping is easy. So is finding exactly the color/style/size or the precise service someone is looking for. If your client doesn’t carry it, chances are, someone else does. A wide selection, or variety of services, allow you to not only advertise that selection in the copy – but to use more tail terms, and get broader coverage.

4) Unique benefit:
Are your client’s widgets the shiniest? Do they come in more colors? Do they widge more effectively than any other widget on the market? Are they highly rated by critics? Bestsellers?
In short, as an advertiser, you should always be looking for what it is about this product that sets it apart. Exclusivity is almost as much of a sales driver as brand or selection – so if your client carries something that can’t be gotten from anyone else, you can capitalize on that.

5) FREE!
People love free. Whether it’s a free pair of sunglasses when you order tanning lotion, or a free night’s stay when you book at least 2 months in advance… but the best offer of all is free shipping. Free shipping is the single biggest reason why a user will click on one listing rather than another. So if it’s at all feasible, try to talk your client into having a free shipping offer of some kind, and be sure to mention it in the copy.