Adwords Archives - Lost Press Marketing

Tag Archive for Adwords

Google-ACCC article puts focus on Journalism standards

Posted on September 25, 2011 by David

A recent post published by ITNews has managed to again raise a level of concern about the quality of Technology journalism online and but also highlights the danger of being quoted out of context to support a poorly research article. When you read the quote from “Truman Hoyle” below you will see that you risk the danger of appearing like you have no idea about online marketing and one might wonder why you were quoted in the first place. The IT News article has pissed me as it was recently written around the recent judgement against the Trading Post which they were successfully sued by the ACCC over engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct in relation to Google AdWords campaigns but the article tries to link the decision back to SEO on some level. The article screenshot is included below because I have no interest in linking to mis-information.

The case was about Sponsored Links

In what could amount to lazy journalism combined with failing to actually read a court judgement one of their journalists decided to pick an alternative viewpoint on how the case outcome had put focus onto SEO. The mention of links does not automatically mean the story is about SEO, there is a large difference between SEO & SEM and the case is very clear that it’s about “sponsored links” as that term is mentioned 39 times during the case judgement. If you check you will find that SEO is not mentioned once during the whole judgement and the judge actually highlights that there is a clear difference between “organic results” and “sponsored links” just in case you took the time to read the judgement. Part of the ACCC case was trying to force the judge to accept that users might not be able to easily identify between Organic and Paid results but the judgement focuses around Google AdWords and does not entertain the idea of SEO. To re-enforce the flimsy nature of the article and how it is lacking support there is also no mention of any variation of SEO such as “search engine optimisation” to further re-inforce the point that this journalists failed to take the care the due diligence before writing this sub-standard post!

The journalist fails to make any real supporting links between the article theme about SEO and the actual court judgement, and gets a random quote from a lawyer at Truman Hoyle who weren’t even involved in the case. The statement by Bridget Edghill doesn’t even really fit within the context of the judgement and could have even been taken out of context in reference to the actual court judgement.

Suggest you retract your quote

If I was Truman Hoyle Lawyers I would at least get my comment retracted as it does not put forward an image of a law firm that has an understanding of the difference between Google AdWords (case theme) and SEO (not discussed). I don’t see any way the judgement implied or suggested there was a link between the case and placing SEO users on notice as the case was about Google AdWords not Google Organic results, so any link between the two is fanciful. There is a clear statement that there is no defamation implied or directed towards Truman Hoyle as it is clearly the journalist who has written a poorly researched article and added a law firm to try and add some credibility to his mis-informed article.

Journalists have to answer for fact checking

It is no wonder that business struggles to make the identification between how Google AdWords (Paid results) and SEO (organic results) actually differs. The journalist obviously found the word “link” in the judgement and choose to ignore the entire theme of the judgement along with the heavy use of “sponsored” links throughout the reasons for the judgement. There is a very big difference in the context of the word “link” and it’s use for Google AdWords and some basic fact checking would have ensured this post actually added some value around the judgement instead of mis-informing the readers of ITNews.

Google AdWords is NOT part of SEO

Just to re-enforce the point while longer term there might be a case where SEO might place a website in front of a judge currently it’s just in the minds of fanciful journalists who don’t take the time to research articles before posting them! Feel free to respond with nasty and unsupported anonymous comments below or you can reach out to the the journalists who wrote the mis-informed post on twitter.

2 comments Posted in search industry

AdWords rematched keywords

Posted on February 1, 2011 by David

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is easy to start doing. With an account and a credit card, anyone can get to the top of Google, Yahoo! or Bing in a matter of minutes. At least until they run out of money. An entire industry has grown up to help business owners avoid this, for a commission. There is one very good reason SEM agencies exist: it is easy to buy search traffic, but it can be expensive to learn how to get the right kind. Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing (soon to be defunct in Australia) and Microsoft adCenter (not in Australia yet) all provide a range of basic tools to their users to control the traffic that they receive, beyond putting keywords into a campaign.

One of the basics of SEM campaigns is understand how each search engine chooses queries that match the keyword as negative keywords operate differently in Bing/Yahoo than they do on your Google AdWords campaigns. Since Google is a majority of the web traffic in Australia this post will be focused on how you get better use negative keywords in your campaigns.

There are three ways that Google AdWords matches a keyword from a campaign to a search query:

Exact Match - Your ad is displayed on searches that match the exact phrase
Phrase Match - Your ad is displayed on searches that match or contain the exact phrase
Broad Match - Your ad is displayed on similar phrases and relevant variations

Both Broad Match and Phrase Match increase a campaign’s potential reach while keeping the size of the keyword list under control. These match types can also produce unproductive traffic, as ads are triggered by irrelevant searches.

Negative terms are the best way to deal with this. A negative term stops Google from showing your ad for any search query containing it. This is vital in campaigns with keywords that are relevant for multiple industries. Well chosen negative keywords make a real difference to the cost per acquisition of the campaign.

Obvious Negative Keywords?

A Sydney-based marketing agency has launched an AdWords campaign. The business focuses on generating search engine traffic for their clients, and is based in just one city. They are bidding on the keywords “online advertising” using Phrase Match in one of their campaigns. The cost per acquisition has blown out, and now they need to trim the fat.

A quick look over a keyword report, with ‘All’ selected from the ‘See search terms…’ dropdown, exposes a number of obviously irrelevant, expensive terms:

online advertising course
online advertising job statistics
Perth online advertising company
online advertising industry news

Based on this information, there are a number of potential new negative keywords, both single and phrases:

course
job statistics
job
statistics
Perth
companies
industry
news

Adding negative terms can lose sales for the campaign from other searches. For example, using ‘statistics’ as a negative term will also remove search queries like ‘online advertising statistics trends’, which might actually be productive. Removing ‘job’ may cut out valuable ‘online advertising job quote’ traffic. Negative keywords can affect more than the obvious, if you don’t have a closer look first.

Search Visibility & Negative Keywords

Instead of looking only at the cost per conversion of a campaign’s listed keywords, look at the numbers for the most commonly occurring words in the search terms that triggered your ads. Creating a list of all search terms containing all of the words from the problematic searches will show what impact using them as a negative keyword could have. Often a small number of words correlate strongly with unprofitable traffic. These can be removed from the campaign without limiting the flow of sales. If the cost per sale for all searches with the word ‘statistics’ is within your target, maybe a different response is needed.

For an accurate picture of what is going on in the campaign, this analysis needs a decent amount of data. You shouldn’t make a decision based on a small dataset if you have enough time or traffic to make a better analysis. There is a risk that the normal churn of clicks and sales will be mistaken for a trend or an impending disaster, you should also anticipate what is the expected result based on your change.

As the size of the campaign increases, so does the number of terms. Short of some heavy duty automation, or serious statistical analysis software, this technique is very labour intensive. However the idea that you can break a campaign’s traffic up into groups based on a few shared attributes is a useful tool to have. It can be applied to geo-targeting, day of the week, type of device, ads, placements, search and search partners, and even time of day.

Managing the Negatives in Search Engine Marketing

The keywords you select are just one thing that determines the quality of the traffic you will get in any SEM campaign. Other factors, such as changing search habits, competition, location, time, device and network all affect how well a campaign performs. Changes in any of the above will alter how the campaign works. Just as importantly, any change that is made to deal with this can affect the entire campaign. A campaign is more than just the keywords, and any change you make based on information from just one variable can affect a lot more than you planned.

Author Bio: Anthony Contoleon is currently the online marketing coordinator for GreyHound Australia, who operates a portfolio of infographics, illustrations and vector drawings.

One comment Posted in Adwords

Google Adsense Refreshed

Posted on November 11, 2010 by David

After around 6 months of beta testing and constant feedback from Adsense partners it seems the new platform is finally ready for primetime with the rollout occurring globally across all Google Adsense accounts. But as in a number of previous updates, Google Adsense does allow you to return to the old Adsense interface for the moment but it is a good idea to start migrating over your reports and management to the new interface. The invitation to try the new Google Adsense is shown below but you can also click “no thanks” and skip straight to the old interface.

The new platform is meant to offer publishers much more control and deeper insights into your websites revenue, much more control over what is displayed and even more assistance with testing and optimising your Adsense. You can now view graphical reports in your account, compare Adsense performance over time and quickly find the more important pieces of information. The requirement to add a 2nd pop-up ajax welcome screen seemed a bit redundant but once I closed the welcome screen shown below I was suitably impressed with the refresh as it was well overdue.

The first thing you notice is the home dashboard has a bulk of information you require such as earnings estimates, account alerts, performance summary, quick reports and saved reports. The Adsense payments section has been cleared up and provides a much simple view on what amount is unpaid, what method will be used to pay it. It is also great to see last issued Adsense payment showed on the same screen with the ability to view all your finalised earnings and payments and export to CSV to send off to your accountant or book-keeper.

My Ads Section
The my ads section is now much more structured and splits up the 4 main Adsense products on the left hand menu with more products such as mobile content shown below. Each of the Adsense products can now be expanded to show sub settings including custom channels specific to that AdSense product. You can type to filter by custom channel or via by Adsense ad unit name which makes it easier for enterprise users or those with a large network of websites to better organise their inventory. You can now also see a bit more detail for each Ad Unit under Summary where it shows you what custom channel it is currently advertised under which can help understand and confirm you are adding the code for the correct Ad unit to your page.

Hide Old Ads?
While it doesn’t seem that you can yet delete Ad units you can now hide Adsense units but with a simple click you can easily show “idle” or “hidden” ad units if required. You just have to click the hyperlink below the Ad unit and it’s done, you can even bulk hide ads via the actions button.

Allowed & Blocked Ads
The ad review centre seems much more open and transparent with the new interface and you can quickly see what number of advertisers are always allowed, how many advertisers you have blocked and have you enabled auto-approval to run ads immediately. The blocking options are also much more visible where you can see quickly what number of sites you have blocked and what sensitive categories you don’t want showing within your Adsense units.

Adsense Performance Reports
The new Adsense platforms has reports that most people who are used to AdWords or Google Analytics will simply fall in love with, as well they are simply awesome.

Custom Channels Performance Reports
If you want to have an understanding on how your Adsense is performing, you can select date period and select the items that you wanted displayed on your graph. The chart is dynamic and you can select just one of the following or multiple or all of them so you can begin to look for trends.

Estimated Earnings (Your account balance for the time period selected. )
Ad Unit impressions (Queries column shows the number of times an ad unit on your site requested ads be displayed.)
Coverage (Coverage is the ratio of requested ad units or queries to the number that is returned to the site. )
Clicks (Ad clicks)
CTR (Click thru Rate)
CPC (Cost per Click)
RPM (Revenue per thousand impressions)

The cool thing about the new Adsense platform is that once you have picked your date period and what items you want graphed, if you want to work in more detail you can now click to export to Excel CSV or save the report for viewing later.

Products Performance Reports
This is a great report for quickly comparing how each of the Adsense products is delivering you and you can click each to drill down to view the activity via day units.

Ad Types Performance Reports
You can now get a better idea on which types of display ad are earning you the most money for your websites, but this is also important feedback to advertisers who are considering advertising on your website. You can view the performance of the following

Text
Flash
Image
HTML
Dynamic Image

Ad Sizes Performance Reports
This report is one of the most important for websites looking to test and optimise their earnings based on ideal Adsense unit size so you can know quickly compare which maybe generating impressions but not the average number of clicks. Just above the totals there is a line that shows your averages so you can quickly see if a particular unit size is performing above or below average and change it.

Bid Types Performance Reports
This is more important to larger accounts that have a larger mix of CPC and CPM bids but still provides an interesting set of data if you have both. Its likely the CPA from Google Affiliate platform will eventually be added back in along with CPL with the click to call/phone tracking features that are coming.

Targeting Types Performance Reports
The majority of your Adsense earnings will likely come from the automatic Contextual placement rather than the manual placement but it does provide a good insight into the quality of your content and website if there is a growing number of impressions around Placement targeting.

Ad Units Performance Reports
This is where you realise that maybe your ad units could be better categorised to make this report a bit more useful, but you now have a simple edit link where you can adjust and tweak the units details to offer better reporting.

Review of Performance Reports
The platform has moved a fair bit forward from version2 to the current version3 and much of the reports does make the platform a lot more friendly for preparing client reports straight from the interface so there might be a renewed push around Adsense partners in 2011.

Basically I love the new interface but some users of the old platform do have some complaints that certain data that used to be easy to find now takes up to 5 clicks to find it and there are some side issues such as how quickly you can see how today is doing against yesterday. The comparison element is very important for those using AdSense so hopefully what look like dashboard modules can be customised and new ones added as you can in Google Analytics soon but I think the clean design will lead to an influx of Adsense users ready to get rich…

No comments Posted in adsense

Google mortgage rates add up

Posted on September 3, 2010 by David

Rodrigo Stockebrand noticed earlier today that his search queries for the generic term “mortgage rates” had started to show a new style AdWord’s result at the top of the organic results and it seems to be more than just a small test group. It was covered briefly in a quick post at SEL by Barry Schwartz, but I thought there was more to explore around the new comparison ads and evaluate their longer term impact for advertisers and business.

It seems that the early Google’s AdWords comparison ad experiment has been expanded to cover home loan and mortgage products but has also taken place at the top of the search results in a 4th sponsored link. The issue is that Google websites have an artificially inflated Google Quality score which guarantees any of their products top placement and potentially inflates the costs of advertising on that keyword, and the additional box is clearly a separate module as you can see thin white line between it and the standard AdWords modules. Below is a screenshot of the new Google AdWords product which is exclusive to Google’s own comparison products, it’s not clear if it was manually placed for certain search queries to guarantee it would show just below the search bar. But other advertisers should be able to check in their AdWords account under average position on if its showing even thou they are shown as top position.

Less space for organic results

One of the bigger concerns is that it doesn’t just affect competitors who are buying traffic with AdWords it compounds the problems for those trying to rank organically, there is more paid space and more Google products and less room for natural listings. While this extra Google comparison ad has obviously pushed down the other ads, on my 1920×1080 resolution monitor it was less dramatic, but a majority of users don’t have a monitor so large so I dived into my visitor information contained in my Google Analytics accounts to find a baseline monitor size. Looking at the average website visitors from my Google Analytics data around 48-54% of people have a screen resolution of between 1024×768 to 1280×1024 so I thought I would test the 3 smaller monitor sizes as to how it impacts the competitive landscape.

1920×1080 Resolution Monitor

Analysis: You can see that there is actually now only 5 organic results showing above the fold (visible without scrolling down) and the 6th result just creeps in. The problem for organic rankings is that unless you are in the top 5 you are now going to miss out on a majority of the clicks, where in the past top 7 rankings still keep you above the fold. Dynamic AdWords like these will also continue to change Google users behaviour and may have a dramatic long-term effect on the perceived importance of the organic results and further increase the market share of Google’s own products.

1280×1024 Resolution Monitor

Analysis: You can see that with the 1280×1024 resolution SXGA monitor but you can see that with the new Google Comparison Ads that showing below the 5th result on the first page will mean that you miss a majority of the potential clicks. Its hard enough for some clients to get to the 1st page on Google now it’s a case depending on your typically visitors you have to be in the top 5.

1280×768 Resolution Monitor

Analysis: By shrinking the monitor size down slightly more to 1280×768 resolution it even cuts out the Google News results and also now only 7 AdWords ads are showing, decreasing the number of advertisers who are able to be seen. It also reduces the organic results down to 3 which further increases your reliability on buying traffic from AdWords or from the new Google Comparison Ads.

1024×768 Resolution Monitor

Analysis: The final screenshot is actually based on 1024×768 which is a 19inch monitor far larger than most laptop screens and still if you view the same result on a netbook you can actually only see the first organic result because of the 4 AdWords results showing at the top. Again Google News results are gone and there is 1 less Google AdWords spot on the right hand side.

Advice: If you are in this vertical start to examine in your web analytics solution the screen resolution of your typically visitors who just visit and those who generate a lead or revenue. It will start to provide you a guideline as to if you are trying to increase your paid traffic what position you should try to bid for and from an organic ranking where you should be aiming if you want more clicks. You want to break it down by those who just browse and those who actually generate a lead or revenue for your company.

Google’s potential audience?

The potential audience which is now able to see these new comparison ads is huge and its likely that the CTR from the other ads will plummet, which will likely impact their quality scores and lead to them having to pay more to bid for the same positions. By Google offering a better quality Ad they are changing the behaviour of how people will select what ads to engage with but are also limiting other advertisers clicks as consumers are draw to the new style ad box. The traffic volume based on the single generic keyword “mortgage rates” has estimated 1,000,000 monthly searches in the US with an average CPC rate of $14.88, according to Google’s own Google AdWords tool which is a massive audience to test the impact of its platform. The question is how much cheaper is it to buy the lead directly from Google compared to fighting with other advertisers in the AdWords market?

Google’s invasive ad box

While its interesting to see how Google is experimenting with new Ad types, I have discovered that there is also a second ad that Google is running which offers a bit more interactivity for users with a drop down menu for the approximate home value for quicker rate comparisons.

As you can see in the screenshot below, the bigger issue is that when consumers actually interact with the ad it blocks a majority of the competitors advertising message and also close to half of the first 2 organic results. This type of ad seems to lack any aspects of tact by how it impacts and overrides the competitors presence on the page. These types of ads show that Google is testing the ads for different markets where you might want to compare two pricing points before visiting the website. Obviously Google is tracking all the interactions and may start to refine the pricing points as it gathers more data on users, so those who are based in a lower economic area may start to see slightly different approximate home values or even APRs….

The CTR between the two ads modules being tested would be quite interesting as if users with different motivation or at a different stage of the buying cycle. Obviously to further understand the mortgage market Google is bidding on search traffic for its comparison ads around a number of keywords, but I’ve select the top 20 related keywords based on estimated monthly search volumes, but it’s also interesting what keywords they are choosing not to bid on.

Google is also bidding on the following keywords

mortgage loan rates
mortgage loan interest rates
home loan interest rates
mortgage interest rates
current mortgage interest rate
best mortgage interest rates
current mortgage rates
home mortgage rates
home mortgage interest rates
refinance mortgage rates
refinancing mortgage rates
mortgage rate calculator
current home mortgage rates

Analysis: obviously most of these keywords are very high volume but are also closely related to “mortgage” but you notice that “home loan” is also featured which shows they might be testing language for different markets such as the UK or Australia.

Advice: Look at the ROI around these terms and if you are not already bidding on them, I would advise doing a trial with their own campaign and own budgets. Remember Google buys search traffic with AdWords for branding and for testing so you should look at buying the same traffic but for testing.

Google is not bidding on the following

compare fixed mortgage rates ($0.05/cpc)
bad credit mortgage rates ($35.72/cpc)
home mortgage loan rate ($18.72/cpc)
best mortgage loan rate ($36.37/cpc)
current mortgage rates canada ($4.61/cpc)

Analysis: Obviously the product is US focused so any terms that focus outside the country such as “current mortgage rates canada” are likely to be ignored. The keyword that The Google AdWords tool said has the most traffic “compare fixed mortgage rates” is likely a bug or very low quality traffic. It’s likely that Google is avoiding some of the very expensive terms because the ROI doesn’t match with their comparison ad business model or they are just overpriced.

Advice: Best look at what other keywords Google is not bidding on and if you are take a closer look at the ROI and KPIs around those terms as they have been ignored for a good reason.

Google protects its mortgage leads

The screen shot below shows you a sample of the Google mortgage comparison page, where you can filter out and compare mortgages with a few clicks. The comparison mortgage is generic enough to be expanded to feature an entire comparison shopping site as the URL structure also hints at future products can easily be added google.com/comparisonads/mortgages.

Google doesn’t want to miss out on a single dollar of commission or miss a single conversion if possible and have built a fairly idiot proof contact system that can be automatically tracked and optimised. When you visit the comparison mortgage page you will see there is 3 contact options available for each lender: phone, call back and email. Call back and email appear to be exactly the same contact form but are coded slightly differently for tracking purposes which will affect future AdWords bidding strategies.

Google is actually fairly smart in how their built the platform as the number listed above is a special Google phone number that will forward your call to the lender, but it can also be used to track the lead generated. If you fill out the request a call or email lender contact form Google provides the lender with another special Google phone number that will forward to you which they can also track as a lead. Any details that you enter such as Street Address or Zip codes are just passed onto IntelliReal that has partnered with Google.

Will Comparison Ads expand to other verticals?

I say yes, based on how Google is growing its maps & technology platforms its only a matter of time before it expands its product to include other verticals. It’s easy to see Google expanding its comparison ads to include Real Estate & Hotels as they already offer a simple search function within Google Maps as shown below. You have already seen one comparison ad that featured a drop down box which shows they have the technology to place other interactive items into their text ads now.

Search for New York hotels directly from within Google Maps

Search for New York real estate from within Google Maps

It’s likely that Google has a number of options to increase its revenue by competing for direct leads and sales and cutting out resellers and affiliates but the question is how quickly they will risk upsetting their advertisers or how much money they can make on the comparison ad platform. Do you take the path to doing more of the work generating leads and hope the reduced revenue from your advertisers doesn’t drop quicker than you can grow your comparison shopping products?

Google Comparison Ads expanding internationally?
If you want to know when Google Comparison Ads might be expanded to your country I suggest keep an eye out for any new financial licensee such as when Google registered Google Payment Australia back in 2007, in what was thought to be part of Google Checkout Australia. Google Payment Australia Pty Ltd was supposed to be setup for local Checkout services and has a Australian Financial Services licence (No. 318755). Google Australia holds the licence under which it is authorised to offer Google Checkout as a “non-cash payment product”. The Google company is not licensed as a bank or deposit-taking institution in Australia and does not provide banking services but might allow it to soon offer a similar comparison ad platform in Australia soon.

One comment Posted in Adwords, search industry

Do Hotel sites get PPC?

Posted on August 30, 2010 by David

While doing some research on a current project I finally got annoyed at the constant poorly placed and targeted Google AdWords campaigns running by some of the largest travel booking websites in the world. The only sites that appear to be successfully buying AdWords traffic is Tablet Hotels & Tripadvisor. The companies that appeared to be having the most problems with AdWords traffic was Qantas, Travelocity & Expedia who just seemed to have missed the market in delivering a great first impression for AdWords visitors. Even the leader Priceline.com didn’t fair that much better with a PPC campaign obviously setup by a monkey at a keyboard who has shares in Google and wants lower quality scores and higher CPC rates.

Test 1# Hotel Alexander, New York – The first test was to pick a random New York hotel from the Upper Westside of Manhattan and see what were the relevance of the ads showing. You can see that there is a 2 ads which are well off the mark with a hotel chain in Israel and the second is stretching it a bit thin as they are the Hotel Alexander Amsterdam in Europe. While I didn’t add any geographic markers such as “New York” to my query, you have to consider the chances that your consumers will refine your traffic for you is not as likely and the search was done on Google.com with a NYC based IP address. Its fairly obvious that these advertisers are not making use of AdWords many geographic filters and possibly even broad keyword match types. Knowing that what the AdWord Ad is showing does not always match the landing page results, lets look at the other more suitable results shown to confirm there is a lack of understanding of PPC.

HotelReservation.com advises that it is a hotel reservation system for smart savers, but you can see the landing page showing 91 possible hotels found for “Alexander” does not provide a smart or time-saving result for this search query. The landing page doesn’t even narrow down the selection by my country location (USA) or by state (New York) or by city (New York), instead it presents me with another search panel. All the geographic information is fairly easily accessible and it would save me time and if it offered my result in a single click I might have reserved my hotel instead I leave and head back to the Google search results.

The next site HotelReservations.com actually does an even worse job for a landing page by offering me a hotel listing for the Alexander Hotel in Germany, this doesn’t present the visitor with much confidence that the booking site even understands what New York hotel they were looking for.

To show how far off the mark, the Okeanos Hotels are, you can see they don’t even have a hotel named Alexander but there are several hotels named Alexander in Israel they were likely targeting but its not a great campaign plan. It’s clear they don’t understand PPC as the quality score for their campaign would be very low and their cost-per-click rates for bidding on those keywords would be far higher than they should be, meaning they are spending lots more money than they need to!

Hotels.com also seemed to miss the mark completely with the AdWords campaign taking me through to a Hotel Alexander in Italy, not the best or most relevant for such as high-profile site. But when they do get the hotel location right they do a good job of promoting other hotels in the surround area that you should consider booking with.

Test 2# Library Hotel, New York - While Hotel Alexander was not one of the highest ranking hotels in New York according to TripAdvisor, I wanted to see how that Travel PPC campaigns might improve by picking the #1 rated Hotel in New York which you would assume is a fairly high-profile search query they would be focusing on?

Priceline.com fails to understand how to use PPC to drive sales by just dropping all the visitors at their homepage, this method offers advertisers a lower quality score but is much easier and less time-consuming for staff or agencies running their PPC campaigns. Typically the conversion rates for a websites homepage is one of the lowest so its likely buying traffic for the sake of buying traffic is not a sustainable or effective way to grow your company.

Expedia is the world’s largest travel site but it also makes the same mistake as Qantas does below by presenting the visitor who clicked on the AdWords result with an error page. The advice to choose another hotel option was not given in the first place and advising someone looking to book a hotel to try again later will lead to losing the visitors business to a competitor. Expedia has the most to lose because of the sheer volume of money that is being spent every hour on their AdWords budget by their digital agency…. but really what does conversion rates matter in the travel industry with such thin profit margins….

Qantas Hotels Search – The test was for search on Google.com.au but when one of the hotels advertised was picked I was presented with an error page. The problem is that I didn’t select a date for when I wanted to stay at the hotel, Qantas fails fairly badly as I clicked their AdWords Ad and was presented with this screen, the only upside they at least have kept some details from my search query such as the hotel was in New York, USA so I won’t have to re-enter that information if I choose to search again. Qantas can easily have followed Hotels.com which offers a list of hotels in the surrounding area which I could book.

Travelocity also presents the same failure message, so I could assume they are using a similar bid management platform or trying to be more advanced than their CMS will allow which is causing the range of errors. But Travelocity does win back points for having 3 different places you can find a contact number and they clearly advise they are open 24/7 which would likely catch more lost sales due to these types of error pages being the first thing an AdWords visitor sees.

Who is doing PPC right? It appears that Tablet is actually the poster child on how to do a travel PPC campaign right, they have a hotel specific landing page with clear photos, address details, reviews and a clear call to action with a simple booking widget. They constantly are performing well for one or two other New York hotels such as the Soho Grand Hotel and should be commended for their smarter approach for travel PPC campaigns.

The agencies that are looking after Qantas and Expedia should take a leaf out of Tablet’s book or read my book Google Advertising Tools 2nd Edition, as they are costing their clients a lot of lost sales by a poorly run PPC campaign, and yes I think that Travel sites really don’t get PPC but that’s lucky for their affiliates who can make it work, its not like they have a good history in Hotel SEO…

5 comments Posted in Adwords

Webtrends integrates with Marin Software

Posted on August 28, 2010 by David

Webtrends has been fairly aggressively trying to catch up to its competitors through a number of purchase Transpond (Social Mobile Marketer), Widemile (Testing & Optimising) and ClickShift (Ad Optimisation) and the partnership with Marin Software could easily develop into an acquisition. Webtrends is now the only enterprise level web analytics platform that is still privately owned and not part of a bigger software company but its clear that sooner or later it will either have to merge or be bought out.

MediaPost has reported Webtrends & Marin Software have signed a license agreement which also involves the integration of their technology platforms. The move is smart as it allows companies to link the entire campaign metrics similar to Overdrive’s Social Eye social media ROI dashboard.

The benefit is that companies can analyse website traffic via webtrends analytics platform to measure campaign performance and goals/revenues and adjust the paid campaigns through their Webtrends Ads which is now powered by Marin Software to improve or optimise their traffic. The benefit for those using Marin Software is they can now collect details on organic traffic to source new keywords for SEM campaigns and measure its impact on brand awareness for a particular product or service, similar to Google Campaign Insights.

Facebook Integrations

Webtrends announced one of the first analytics solutions for Facebook fan activity and interactions that happens inside Facebook on custom tabs , Facebook apps and shares back in March 2010. Also just recently Marin Software had announced their bid management platform now allows for managing Facebook ads, but has layered over the ability to use algorithmic bidding, advanced audience segmentation and ad testing/rotation features. The companies are working along very close paths and by using API integration it is easier to pass data between platforms and reduces incorrect decisions made based on poorly aligned data that previously processed manually to find patterns.

Benefits in buying ads?

The benefits of being able to successfully purchase advertising space on Facebook with a pure focus on measurable campaign objectives and optimise the campaign to deliver the most sales or leads does offer an strong incentive for more agencies to examine their platform. The obvious other benefits is the time saved in reporting and analysis which allows for larger and more complex campaigns to be run more efficient with less cost and decreased wasted spend.

Google Analytics Competitor?

It moves their technology platform closer to a true competitor for Google Analytics which has continued to integrate with DoubleClick and AdWords. While the recent updates to Microsoft adCenter do improve the market place for advertisers it doesn’t integrate as well as this agreement. It will be likely that a number of technology companies will be looking at either increasing their purchases of smaller players or examining how much a bid for the two companies would cost. Webtrends has continued to remain a niche player with only around 1,000 clients or around 1.74% of all web analytics installs compared to Google Analytics 48.9% of the market.

Who would buy the combined Webtrends/Marin Software company?

It would be a smart move for one of the search networks such as Microsoft adCenter, AOL or even ASK to buy the two companies as it will finally allow for a real competitor to emerge to Google Analytics. The a smarter purchase of Webtrends/Marin Software would be by one of the two leading social media platforms that are trying to show their investors they have a solid business model for earning revenue and their ad network is more than just an experiment for advertisers. If Twitter or Facebook purchased the combined Webtrends/Marin Software company it would allow for them to expand their Ad network and rapidly scale their value to advertisers.

The dark horse in the market is Apple, which based on Google’s purchase of Urchin which forms the base of their web analytics it would possibly approved by the FTC and European competition watchdogs who want more than one powerful player in the market. IBM would likely be locked out of any more purchases in the analytics space due to its recent consumption of two of Webtrends biggest competitors.

Webtrends competitors purchased

Unica was purchased by IBM on the 13th August 2010
Coremetrics was purchased by IBM on 15th June 2010
Omniture was purchase by Adobe on 15th September 2009
Urchin Software was acquired by Goolge on 29th March 2005

The upgrade has begun with existing accounts and any new advertisers will have to wait until October 2010 to start using Webtrends Ads for their digital campaigns. It will be interesting to see what competitors such as Kenshoo, Efficient Frontier or Acquisio might be doing over the next few weeks to counter this technology marriage. I say the analytics market needs some more consolidation and plenty of more agreements to share API access and cross platform integrations would be welcomed by most advertisers and agencies.

4 comments Posted in search industry

Google Funds PPC Agency

Posted on July 22, 2010 by David

It was announced by NYTimes and on Trada’s own blog that Google ventures has made an investment in the crowd sourced ppc agency Trada.com. Trada closed a US$5.75 million Series C round of financing led by Google Ventures and Foundry Group to increase its cash balances and working capital to continuing expanding its network of ppc specialists beyond 500. The money raised in the latest funding round will be spent on international expansion to covers markets such as Canada, UK and Australia. It will improve support for Trada campaigns in multiple time zones, currency support and banking details such as credit cards that currently make running some campaigns outside the US less efficient.

According to the press release, Trada plans to expand its platform to cover new types of advertising such as text ads on blogs, banner display, mobile and video ads. The next expansion is planned around Facebook Ads but also what they can do with the Trada platform on other social platforms such as Twitter.

Does Trada get preferential treatment in Google?

The company argues that it will actually be under more scrutiny by Google because of the nature of their relationship, Google and Google Ventures are separate entities but still questions maybe asked by other technology platforms. The obvious benefit of the Series C funding means Trada can scrap any plans or requests for what Google may consider grey areas of marketing. The company will potentially slow the growth in some markets who are looking to bend or twist the search engines ppc rules. similar to the ITA Software purchase by Google recently it does place Trada in an interesting position with Microsoft/Bing. While Trada has plans to expand its platform it’s too early to see how the investment may change their business models if Google makes a decision to purchase more shares.

How does Trada work?

1) Setup client’s ppc campaigns in Trada, and request to add new campaigns on demand

2) Get the best ppc experts in the world to work on your campaigns

3) Complete control of your clients relationships and campaigns

4) PPC ads begin to run on Google & Bing

5) Conversions/Clicks are generated and shown on customised reports

Watch more about the Trada.com platform

4 comments Posted in Adwords

Google Certified Partners – AdWords

Posted on April 26, 2010 by David

Google announced today on their AdWords Agency blogspot that they have started rolling out a new Google Certified Partner program that focuses on AdWords. The new AdWords certification seeks to improve the relationship and training available to SEM Agencies and Digital Agencies. Much of the feedback has been around not enough training or certification in AdWords and how Google can reduce costs for those using AdWords APIs.

The move also seeks to wind down the Google Advertising Professional program and replace it with a new Google AdWords Certification program. The new Google AdWords Certification program is to provide more up-to-date and comprehensive certification with a focus on training for strategy and how to use the latest tools and new best practice guidelines.

Will the new banner be accepted?

While it seems that some of the more advanced-level exams should address more areas such as search, display, reporting and analysis, will everyone make the effort to get the new certification? The new AdWords certified partner badge shown above takes up much more website realestate than the old badge which may annoy some webdesigners. The new badge also has an interchangeable blue text/icon element that can be use for their other products “Analytics”, “Maps”, “Search”, “Apps”. The problem is that a number of agencies have created their own versions of the old banner over the years and it is hard for consumers to actually recognise who is actually certified to support Google products, and it will likely take a fair while for agencies to replace the old banner with this new version and its not clear if Google can even enforce the update?

Centralised Partner Program?

Google has looks to be in the process of replacing a number of their programs with a central Google Partner program. The new partner program section advises that as a Google Certified Partner, Trainer or Reseller the logo represents Google’s endorsement of this partner’s expertise and experience. This move by Google continues to resolve some of the issues with private enterprise making claims to being Google SEO Partners, or independently certified as TOPSEOs claims. The program should hopefully start to take actions again advertisers and agencies who abuse the T&C and take advantage of consumers who may not have a full understanding of marketing and hide behind fake Banners and untrustworthy Associations.

Google help you outsource

The new Google Certified Partners should help you outsource AdWords program management or implement Google tools to measure and improve your campaign ROI. All the Google Certified Trainers have met rigorous requirements set by Google to offer in-depth in-person or classroom training on Adwords, Analytics and many more…

Google Authorized AdWords Resellers can provide professional, full-service AdWords account management, from account setup and activation to ongoing campaign monitoring and optimisation and should always provide quality customer support. It is not public as to what changes Google AdWords partners have already had to accept as part of the move to the new program, besides an increase in staff training and certification.

The AdWords certification program appears to be replaced with a broad Google Certification Program which provide another indication the product will expand to other Google products not yet listed. The new feature which advertisers might find useful is the Google Partner Search that allows clients to search for agencies within the trusted walls of Google and not use unverified sources such as TopSEOs.com. There are other programs that have joined the new Google Professional Program such as their Website Optimiser website testing product.

What about Google AdWords Professionals?

As Brad Geddes pointed out in his recent blog post the old program required a GAP to pass an exam and maintain a level of spend, but the new program has eliminated the spend level but added an advanced exam requirement. So now to gain qualification as a Google AdWords Professional, exam takers must pass both the Advertising Fundamentals exam and one advanced-level exam. So the requirement to not have certification tied to an active client does make it easier for consultants to retain their qualifications when moving between agencies it also means that you can no longer guarantee that they can or have run any actual campaigns. The certification almost moves to a theory based Leaners permit where you don’t have to drive to retain you qualification just really show up to class and get a stamp…

Find Google AdWords Certified Partners (FREE)

The Google Certified AdWords Partners can opt-in and pitch their core attributes and capabilities direct to advertisers. You can offer suggestions on expected budgets, specify office locations and industry verticals supported. There is no charge to the AdWords certified partners to be listed or for clients to pay which may upset a number of sites such as TOPSEOs that currently have a business model where they charge for these leads. The improved search feature has been available for several months but a number of agencies were not aware of its availability or even the benefit of providing relevant and accurate details into their profile. There is still the practice of Agencies trying to grab as many leads as possible and worry about running the campaigns later, so hopefully this will start to reduce that behaviour.

The biggest change to the program is that those using the AdWords API to access, run and optimise their clients campaigns using inhouse software and commercial bid management platforms can almost do it for free as long as their clients spend enough. This change makes it more profitable for agencies using AdWords APIs the more money they get their clients to spend, so hopefully this will result in some reduction in costs for some products that have heavy API usage. The new Preferred AdWords API Pricing model also requires that if you use an AdWords API to manage your clients campaign on behalf of your clients and meet the requirements you can then apply for the preferred pricing. While this is a great step forward it could have been better if it had of been automated and the program doesn’t start accepting API applications until the 26th May 2010, so stick around.

7 comments Posted in Adwords, google

Display gets new AOL Ad Desk Platform

Posted on April 21, 2010 by David

Yesterday AOL rolled out the heavy guns in display platforms with its new AD Desk system designed for Advertising.com and allows for direct access to AOL’s premium audiences. Being a new platform it contains a number of new technologies and data insights unique to AOL properties and its Advertising.com display network. The new advertising platform advises that you can now have the keys to the most powerful advertising platform, but is the Advertising.com & AOL Network enough?

According to Google’s Ad Planner the 48 primary placement websites have around 99,000,000 unique visitors with a reach of around 39.6% of the US market with around 8,600,000,000 page views which does seem to show that AOL’s Ad network does have a significant scale. Some of the many Advertising.com sites you can target with AD Desk include a number of well know sites including those run by competitors such as Microsoft:

AOL.com
ParentDish.com
Mapquest.com
AIM
Cooking.com
SI.com
TMZ.com
Essence.com
USATODAY.com
Classmates.com
Allrecipes.com
Shape.com
AutoTrader.com
Music.com
Expedia.com
LemonDrop.com
BackStage.com
PopEater.com
Games.com
Joystiq.com
MSNBC.com
Moviefone.com
WeatherBug.com
Terra.com
Realtor.com
RollingStone.com
Rhapsody.com
iWon.com
Blackvoice.com
Asylum.com
USNews.com
WashingtonTimes.com
CafeMom.com
Apartments.com
FoxNews.com
Realtor.com
Technorati.com
Geek.com
Maps.com
YellowPages.com
eHarmony.com
Alexa.com
Cooks.com
MensFitness.com
VegSource.com
Golf.com
HowStuffWorks.com
Fandango.com
Film.com

So who is AdDesk built for?

It is being pitched as built by advertisers for advertisers and AOL has been actively prospecting for new clients over the past few months to join the alpha test that helped form the product and what features it would include once it was released to a broader market. The AOL AdDesk seeks to follow Google’s lead in providing more transparency for advertisers and more control over their display ads as it is rumored to provide a vast amount of proprietary AOL data to better self-manage your campaigns.

The solution appears to try and solve both agencies and advertisers issues within a bid management style interface, so the question that needs to be asked will the other rumors hold true and will it support multiple platforms such as Bing & Google in the next version?

What are the AOL AdDesk features?

Media planning tools similar to Google Ad Planner
Analytics?
Audience Segmentation based on interests, audience and geography
Complements current AOL sales team

What are the AOL AdDesk sales pitches?

Manage your campaigns – plan and launch campaign within minutes, new & improved impression volume estimation, select level of support needed
Lots of targeting options – state, city, types of sites, visitor demographics, visitor interests, re-marketing
Reporting – 24/7 access to reports, creative & campaign level reporting, audit trail feature

So where does AdDesk Fail?

The point around such a make or break product, you would assume that AOL would have secured any similar domains such as “TheAdDesk.com”, but it failed and this site currently flagged as having Malware is likely getting a large spike in visitors. The other issue is that there are 2 other established websites already offering a product called AdDesk which currently outranks the new AOL AdDesk product, along with a number of blog articles about its product.

Naples News Media Group – AdDesk

CNI Corporation – AdDesk

The important part is that it seems a wonderful product but some of the steps could make the rollout easier and is likely to less confuse agencies and advertisers who go looking for the product but find two competitors products which appear to do a similar task. With so much money on the line in making this product a success AOL should be more proactive securing domains and also examine the financials behind buying the Trademarks/licence of the competitors and close down their product or have it renamed.

You can always create an account with Advertising.com AdDesk and test the software for yourself, but since its a beta test their might be a delay in approval…

No comments Posted in display ads

Marriott Hotels fail to grasp search

Posted on February 7, 2010 by David

Marriott hotels is one of the world’s leading hotel groups and it seems that its search strategy of its Australian operations are not contributing its overall online marketing strategy. The online travel sector is one of the most competitive areas of online marketing, so it makes commercial sense to approach it with careful planning and strategy not half-hearted efforts. So it is amazing that since we started researching this article 2 weeks ago it seems to have the same issues causing problems for them to attract any new guests.

We have flagged several issues that they should consider fixing if they think that online matters to their business:

poor onsite seo (another post….)
you don’t rank well for terms you are targeting in Google
landing pages aren’t consistent or helping you rank well in Google
you don’t rank well in local search
AdWords campaign
broken links
poor 404 pages

URL Structure

So the first issue we are going to look at is the wasted effort trying to get ranked for every possible city and not ranking well for any of these geographic regions, even the landing page url structure is not something that I feel is assisting the brand with their goals of better rankings in search engines. Looking at any of the accommodation sites such as Expedia or Wotif you can see how badly Marriott does at building a search friendly URL structure…

https://www.marriott.com.au/holidays/bangkok-hotels

https://www.marriott.com.au/holidays/brisbane-hotels

https://www.marriott.com.au/holidays/hong-kong-hotels

https://www.marriott.com.au/holidays/kuala-lumpur-hotels

Holiday Landing Page

The holiday landing pages seem to be the pages that Marriott wants to be ranked high as all the internal links in the pages and in the footers point to these holiday landing pages. A sign that this is not working is that very few of them are shown highly in the search results and almost none of them appear in the Google local results, but all appear in the sponsored Google AdWords results. So they are having to buy traffic around these terms where they should be focusing some of this budget on long-term goals of better organic listings and being listed in Google local.

The footer shown above is a sign of what keywords or phrases a website is wishing to be ranked well for, but is not the case for Marriott.com.au, the other point as you can see below that it doesn’t really work that well for them. The other point is that the seo is being done for the /holiday/ urls but these are not featured in a single result within the top 100 search results. So it is likely a waste of links to send this to the landing pages as they don’t rank and dilute the possible benefits being passed to the city hotels.

Even we can see that the page titles are not correctly optimised or consistent in their structure/message for the visitors, it is usually sensible for large websites to use a consistent structure. We have used Google.com.au as our search engine and the search phrase “city hotels”, interestingly they do seem to rank much better for “city hotel” but that is not the phrase they are trying to rank well for based on their footer links.

Page Title: Bangkok RMLP | Hotels in Bangkok | Hotel Deals by Marriott

Adwords Listing: Yes

Google Local Listing: No

Google Organic Rank: #92

Analysis: There is a lot of work required, for organic and local listings within the Thai market.

…..

Page Title: Hong Kong RMLP | Hotels in Hong Kong | Hotel Deals by Marriott

Adwords Listing: Yes

Google Local Listing: No

Google Organic Rank: #30

Analysis: Some more work is required on organic to get it up to at least 1st page.

…..

Page Title: Kuala Lumpur RMLP | Hotels in Kuala Lumpur | Hotel Deals by Marriott

Adwords Listing: Yes

Google Local Listing: No

Google Organic Rank: #22

Analysis: A little bit more work will make sure that at least the organic results show up on 1st page.

…..

Page Title: London RMLP | Hotels in London | Hotel Deals by Marriott

Adwords Listing: Yes

Google Local Listing: No

Google Organic Rank: Not in top 100

Analysis: Local result shown in image is not Marriott website.

…..

Page Title: New York RMLP | Hotels in New York | Hotel Deals by Marriott

Adwords Listing: No

Google Local Listing: No

Google Organic Rank: #20

Analysis: They are ranked for their city information not an actual hotel.

…..

Page Title: Phuket Hotel | Phuket Hotels | Hotels in Phuket | Marriott Hotels

Adwords Listing: Yes

Google Local Listing: Yes #5

Google Organic Rank: Not in top 100

Analysis: A big focus is needed on organic for all Thailand properties, including locations such as Karon Beach or Kata Beach.

…..

Page Title: Beijing Hotels | Beijing Hotel | Beijing Accommodation | Marriott Hotels

Adwords Listing: Yes

Google Local Listing: No

Google Organic Rank: #30

Analysis: If Marriott cannot managed to get ranked in Local results they should just give up on online marketing…

…..

Page Title: Los Angeles Hotels | Los Angeles accommodation | Los Angeles hotels from Marriott

Adwords Listing: No

Google Local Listing: Yes

Google Organic Rank: #20

Analysis: An updated search today, shows them in local results, they are ranked for their city information not an actual hotel.

…..

Page Title: Miami | Hotels in Miami | Hotel Deals by Marriott

Adwords Listing: No

Google Local Listing: No

Google Organic Rank: #41

Analysis: Google confuses this with Miami, QLD so this keyword would be harder to rank within Australia.

…..

Page Title: San Francisco Hotels | San Francisco Hotel | Hotel San-Francisco | Marriott

Adwords Listing: No

Google Local Listing: No

Google Organic Rank: #21

Analysis: The hotel is ranked where other US locations the local city information is the highest ranked pages.

…..

Page Title: Washington DC | Hotels in Washington DC | Hotel Deals by Marriott

Adwords Listing: No

Google Local Listing: Yes #4

Google Organic Rank: #4

Analysis: A decent ranking for both but a search for “Washington hotels” shows organic results of #18.

…..

Page Title: Brisbane Hotels | Brisbane Accommodation | Brisbane Hotel | Marriott Hotels

Adwords Listing: No

Google Local Listing: No

Google Organic Rank: #20

Analysis: The Marriott ranks #2 for “Brisbane Hotel” so a slight change to their seo could give them #1

….

……

Page Title: Sydney Hotels | Sydney accommodation | Sydney hotels from Marriott

Adwords Listing: No

Google Local Listing: No

Google Organic Rank: #25

Analysis: The Marriott ranks #17 for “Sydney Hotel” so a decent change to their seo could give them at least 1st page.

…..

Marriott Google AdWords Campaign Fails

It also appears that the Australian online marketing team continues to struggle even with paid AdWords campaigns as since we started the research on this blog post on the 25th January 2010 and we rechecked again 2 weeks later the links are still broken. So when you search for “London Hotels” and click the sponsored link you are presented with a 404 error page and each time this mistake is costing Marriott around $4.22 per click with around 2,500 search queries a day for “London Hotels” that is a fair waste of money. It’s scary to think the number of locations around the world including high traffic terms like Las Vegas Hotels that they are buying traffic for and losing those visitors.

It is important to check your broken links and even your 404 pages and discover where the traffic is coming from, as this could have been fixed with a simple redirect….

Marriott 404 Error Page also Fails

There are a number of issues with the error page, that is shown and we will highlight the main points that we feel should be addressed.

The error page advises that you are receiving this because the Marriott website was recently updated, and you should also update your bookmarks in your browser.
There is no ability to flag the broken page or error to their web developers to fix
no search box so you can quickly search for the correct city or country that you were looking to book a hotel.
The frequently visited pages are not dynamic and are just static links
page links hold no real value and could be vastly improved for the visitors.
404 error page does not match with Marriott hotel branding
message “we hope to see you soon” also seems more like a farewell message such as a thank you message after a booking or inquiry is made with Marriott, it is not a welcome message.

The suggested site to visit is actually Marriott.com.au but the webpage clearly says Marriott.co.uk which is likely to confuse visitors, and is just a lazy cut and paste effort by the web developer from their UK website, if you are going to brand the site as Marriott Australia at least change the text to suit the market…

While they are doing better than some of their competitors such as Hyatt.com that has no custom error page, we feel that the 404 error page does not match with the brand so we included 2 examples of what their competitors are doing well from Ramada & The Hilton. The Hilton makes use a room number to show the error code, keeping with its hotel image and supplies direct customer service contact numbers for when the page was generated during a booking or revenue earning exercise, that way they will likely be able to save the sale if this is technical issues preventing a booking. The only downside is the limited support of international contact numbers and no way to get back to the main website or homepage.

Ramada seems to focus more on its worldwide presence and with its booking widget for an instant call to action to book now. The page has 4 clear image boxes that link to Ramada’s promotional packages, direct discounts and online deals to remind you of the benefit of staying on the site and booking direct. The error page branding matches with the site image but could be slightly improve to place the booking widget in the centre of the screen and display the customer service contact number more clearly and not hidden in the top right section of the screen.

So all up there appears to be a fair bit of work required for Marriott Australia, but it can be done in stages but I would have a preference in what I would start with first if you are looking at Hotel SEO campaigns….

2 comments Posted in search industry

Facebook Conversion Tracking

Posted on January 28, 2010 by David

Facebook has released more details about its alpha conversion tracking program for advertisers which allow them to use a javascript tag to record successful conversions or actions on their website. This information is passed back into the Facebook Ad Manager so you can begin to understand more about how much a particular action or goal costs on Facebook and will be recorded as an “Action”.

The only way that a conversion could be tracked in the past was by using web analytics and adding unique campaign code to every single ad shown on Facebook. The example of campaign URL that is used with Google Analytics is shown below but meant a manual process to filter out your Facebook campaign and review what ad sent the visitor.

http://thelostagency.com/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=CPC&utm_term=seo&utm_content=logo&utm_campaign=contact

We are yet to run any of our clients 2010 campaigns using the new conversion tracking, but we understand that it will use the now blank Actions column shown below. The action tracked can be a number of behaviours such as become a fan, perform an action on your website… and similar to conversion rate the ActionRate % will be an important KPI to watch.

MediaPost was one of the first blogs to write up a decent post about how it can benefit companies running Facebook Ad campaigns and how you can now get a clear ROI but also how this conversion metric may kill social media campaigns. The problem is that social media doesn’t always match perfectly with traditional paid metrics as your Fans may have significantly different levels of engagement with your brand, but you cannot segment that data that much yet.

The more important benefit is that companies can now see how much they are spending to grow their fan base and using different ad types and targeting how this can affect the ActionRate. Facebook Ads has made a big step forward to being a scalable Ad platform and the next steps they have planned make it seem a very viable platform for business.

No comments Posted in facebook

Google warned to stop property portal

Posted on July 27, 2009 by David

smh News just from Sydney Morning Herald a Fairfax company has publicly announced its first threat against Google Maps new Real Estate update. It seems that there has not be much has been publicly said about Google’s move into the backyard of Domain & RealEstate.com.au until today.

Two of Australia’s largest media companies appear to have made the first threat to pull their business because of Google’s move into the real estate listing market. While it will be a public independent decision, it is likely that with 90% of the market their decision will have a massive impact on Google’s local revenues.

The Australian market for classified advertising is worth around $144,000,000 to Google annually according to the SMH article, accounting for around 15% of Google’s revenues within Australia.

This relationship has shown some signs of strain, with Rupert Murdoch already accusing Google of failing to pay for content shown on its Google News service. To further add insult to injury Google News has begun to sell ads against this aggregated content which has not helped with failing advertising revenues.

Google Maps began the process on 6th July sourcing listings from local real estate aggregators, Homehound & My Home offering real estate agents an opportunity to list their properties free on Google Maps. This listing service generates hundreds of dollars of revenue for Domain & RealEstate.com.au for each property and thousands from real estate offices.

While RealEstate.com.au has not allowed private sellers to list their properties on its website instead choosing to protect its real estate agents. It is likely that RealEstate.com.au will have examine if 45% annual increases will continue to be sustainable. Domain encourages this self service listing service with costs from $250-499 and this will likely be the first market that will prefer to list their home for free on the new Google Maps service.

The CEO of REA Group, Greg Ellis did not initially object to the Google Maps service at least publicly. He did considered the interesting concept of REA paying for Google AdWords to compete against a free Google Map product which was funded by REA Google AdWords revenue.

Analyst Frost & Sullivan forecast that the online real estate market grew at 38% in 2008 and is forecast to grow by a further 23% in 2009. Nielsen advise that the market size is significant with around 500,000 visits to property websites each day. Leading marketing intelligence provider Hitwise advise around 30% of the traffic to these property websites comes from Google, so who is supporting who more?

Former CEO of REA, Mr Baker said Google Australia might be shooting themselves in the foot by this battle as their core business model is selling ads against search queries. It has the potential to move into a paradox if the new Google Map service struggles to attract enough visitors Google may begin to utilise their AdWord system to drive more visitors. The paradox is that the other Real Estate portals will now be competing and bidding against Google for the same traffic.

There has been agents who have been carefully watching the matter and have found that Google is only scraping the Head Offices, MyHome and Homehound websites and none of the independents or franchise websites that have individual websites. If this is true this has the potential to kill localised franchise websites and independent operators who typically get around 75% of their traffic from Google.

Google advised they would like to work more closely with Fairfax & REA who are currently refusing to list their properties on Google Maps. What is interesting is that a majority of the real estate groups are using Google Maps to display their listings, which makes people comfortable with using Google Maps for real estate. Another interesting future development unless these independent real estate portals have a Google Maps Premier API key, Google can potential show their listings on these portals maps.

3 comments Posted in Public Relations

Try Yahoo! Search Marketing for FREE

Posted on June 27, 2009 by David

Want to Try Yahoo! Search Marketing for FREE?
With Yahoo! Search Marketing’s BIG BANG offer you will get a 3 month campaign to a maximum value of $150 setup which ever is first. The Ad campaign will be optimised by a Yahoo! certified local specialist. Yahoo will run your ads across Yahoo!7 and Ninemsn exposing your product upto 1.1 billion searches every month**

Yahoo gives you the power to test their ad platform and make a impact on your bottom line today! Just fill in their expression of interest form and Yahoo will call you! To be eligible to take advantage of this offer you must have the campaign accepted by 31st July 2009, and must NOT be an existing Yahoo! Search Marketing advertiser (direct or through Yahoo! resellers). For more details about Yahoo! Big Bang full terms and conditions click here.

What is the benefits of Yahoo! Search Marketing?
By choosing Yahoo! Search Marketing, you get all the latest features and benefits. These include:

Target who you want to – whether you run your ads across the entire network or target locally
Spend as much as you want – You decide on your monthly budget – it can be as little or as much as you want it to be
Optimisation – Ongoing refinement of your campaign to best meet your marketing objectives
Know your performance – Ongoing insights into your campaign performance
Yahoo will give you the support you need – Yahoo! certified local specialists will take care of everything

If you have no website, can I still take advantage of Yahoo! BigBang?
Yes you can request the Yahoo! resellers to build a website for you at a cost, or you can take advantage of your Free TrueLocal listing. We can send all the visitors during your campaign direct to your TrueLocal listing. If you want to learn more about the Yahoo BigBang promotion visit their FAQ section.

** Stats Purple, Y!SM – Internal Reporting. Average monthly figure based on searches, consisting of Sponsored Search and Content Match products, from October 2008 to February 2009.

No comments Posted in web marketing

Google’s Marketing Cycle helps Business

Posted on June 24, 2009 by David

Google has also recently tried to help kick start small business with a $75 AdWords stimulus package. They understand that in this current economy advertising is becoming exponentially harder for marketers. Google has also helped with a newly released portal Google for Advertisers where they help educate SME business about the benefits of online marketing.

Google has started to work to help SME business use their AdWords systems with a fun “worst case” case study pet stick. This “worst case” case study website covers the typical marketing cycle a business would experience if using Google for their online marketing campaign.

worst case study

Google for Advertisers start with helping business defining their marketing strategy, where they can define objectives, audience and message. Google offers SME some tools to provide insight into what people are searching for, what sites visited and what they do on your site. There are other online solutions and specialist marketing organisations who can provide more consumer details combined with demographic and other profiling data, but Google provides a good base level.

campaign circles

Google then moves to the next step in the cycle providing SME with the tools to create ads using their Display Ad Builder. This tool provides some standard and basic templates for creating some interactive ads it does not take the place of a marketing agency or a creative graphic designer. The Display Ad Builder tool makes the options for building ads to display on the content network quick and painless.

The next step in the marketing cycle is the media planning and buying options for your campaign. Media buying is where Google uses its extensive user data to allow business to hyper-target specific media channels or networks. This does not take the place of specialist marketing agencies or media buying agencies that provide much more detail and you can benefit from their experience. the marketing cycle

The final step in the marketing cycle is optimising and tweaking your campaign to ensure the maximum return on investment. Google provides some of the industries leading technology which provides marketers the ability to optimise campaigns by offering a number of tools such as Google Analytics and Website Optimiser. These tools offer a number of advanced features that often require a web analytics specialist to setup and configure to ensure you get the most out of your data. Many digital agencies employ staff with experience setting up complex features such as tracking flash & video, ecommerce transactions and advanced tracking, so if you are unsure speak with them. Another option for small business is to buy a book to teach yourself more about Web Analytics.

Google for Advertisers presents the campaign information in a fun colour coded timeline that allows for simple and quick navigation. Each part of the campaign process contains links to related Google product’s and a quick link for more detailed information.

Overall the site does a wonderful job in organising all Google’s solutions, marketing products and up to date information in one location. It also has a great section where advertisers can stay in touch, with product news, help forums, email, webinars and blogs.

While Google for Advertisers does help to educate business and marketers more about Google products and online marketing it does not replace the added value provided by Search Marketing Companies and Digital Advertising Agencies. Many marketing agencies have contacts and account managers within Google that assist them when they are planning, designing or launching your campaign. So if you find that your online strategy is not performing maybe its time to speak with your marketing agency and find out how they can help your business.

So if you want to learn about Google for Advertisers before Google launches their new portal AgencyLand later this year.

4 comments Posted in marketing, Web Analytics

Lost Press Marketing

Business & marketing news, articles, interviews, product reviews relating what's important to Social, Search and Analytics

Tag Archive for Adwords

Google-ACCC article puts focus on Journalism standards

AdWords rematched keywords

Google mortgage rates add up

Do Hotel sites get PPC?

Webtrends integrates with Marin Software

Google Funds PPC Agency

Google Certified Partners – AdWords

Display gets new AOL Ad Desk Platform

Marriott Hotels fail to grasp search

Google warned to stop property portal

Try Yahoo! Search Marketing for FREE

** Stats Purple, Y!SM – Internal Reporting. Average monthly figure based on searches, consisting of Sponsored Search and Content Match products, from October 2008 to February 2009.

Why not Like or Follow?

Looking for SEO Software?

Recent News/Articles

Blogroll

David Iwanow

Lost Press Marketing

Business & marketing news, articles, interviews, product reviews relating what's important to Social, Search and Analytics

Tag Archive for Adwords

Share via

Share via

Share via

Share via

Share via

Share via

Share via

Share via

Share via

Share via

Share via

Share via

Share via

** Stats Purple, Y!SM – Internal Reporting. Average monthly figure based on searches, consisting of Sponsored Search and Content Match products, from October 2008 to February 2009.

Share via

Share via

Why not Like or Follow?

Looking for SEO Software?

Recent News/Articles

Blogroll

Article Keywords Cloud

David Iwanow