'Net Features : adwords

What Internet Retailers Spend on Paid Search

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:31:00 GMT

Paid search is a significant driver of impressions for Internet retailers but acquiring users through the channel certainly does not come cheap.

Search engine intelligence provider AdGooroo released a thought-provoking infographic on the paid search retail universe which breaks down the $2.3 billion dollars spent on performance advertising (full year 2012 for AdWords combined with half-year 2012 for Yahoo! Bing) by retail category.

“Mass retailers” collectively spent a whopping $490 million and as a result received far and away the most impressions of any retail category according to AdGooroo which calculated that Amazon, Target, Wal-Mart, jcpenney and Macy’s racked up a whopping 13 billion impressions in total.

Adgooroo also took a closer look at the 2012 paid search spend for specific retail categories – a useful exercise in determining sector growth potential and current competitiveness. Besides the $490 million for mass retailers (approximately 21% of the total spend), six retail categories spent over $100 million including Apparel & Fashion ($271M), Consumer Electronics ($202M), Home Improvement ($155M), Stationary, Greeting Cards & Printing ($150M), Beauty & Cosmetics ($101M), and Shoes ($100M). Spend for Sporting Goods ($94M), Jewelry ($78M), and Flowers/Mail Order Gifts ($80M) also made a respectable showing to round out the list.

Social Annotations Now in Google Enhanced Campaigns

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:35:00 GMT

Google released enhanced campaigns back in February 2013 - ad campaigns which use context such as location, time of day, and device - and over 1.5 million campaigns have already officially been upgraded.

Two new features have made their way into the advertising ecosystem which should make the Google Adwords offering even more irresistible to Internet marketers.

Adwords advertisers running enhanced campaigns can now include social annotations. If you have a Google+ page with a significant number of followers and a linked website that matches the URL in a enhanced campaign search ad, you could start seeing the social annotations immediately. Companies including Red Bull are already using the feature as part of their digital strategy (see below).

Google didn't stop at adding some social elements into the advertising mix. Advertisers can now reach app users with their ads based on context (location, time of day, device). Couple that with being able to adjust bids based on demographics, interests and topics and you have a powerful mechanism to reach the right people at the right time with the right ad.

Recent Articles on Google at Website Magazine:

- Google Affiliate Network Retires
- Google Rolls Out Real-Time Widgets in Analytics
- Facebook Dominates Social Login Scene
- Google to Start Sharing Space
- Spam Web Hosting and Google Rankings

Sample Social Annoations from a Google Enhanced Campaign run by Red Bull:

Ecommerce Analytics for InfusionSoft Users

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Users of small business sales and marketing automation platform Infusionsoft now have access to a plugin that posts sales and transation data directly to Google Analytics and Google Adwords in real time.

The plugin, created by Flare Labs, enables retails to supply Google with data critical to analyzing performance and the optimizing return on advertising spend (ROAS).

Once installed, users will notice their sales data is pre-populated within the Ecommerce section of their Google Analytics account. Users can then see what traffic sources generate the most profitable sales. and which traffic funnels have low profitability, letting the user know which parts of their sales and marketing process needs optimization.

The same transaction data is posted to AdWords. Infusionsoft users can see which ads are generating the most sales, and more importantly, what ads are generating the biggest profits. Online businesses with over 30 transactions a month will also be able to use the Google AdWords Conversion Optimizer, which automatically adjusts ad settings to provide the highest possible return on investment of advertising dollars.

Google App Showcases the Best Mobile Ads

Michael Garrity — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 19:05:00 GMT

Last week at Google's Creative Sandbox event, the AdWords team officially unveiled its new Mobile Ads Showcase App.

This application is meant to put some of the best advertisements that Google’s mobile advertising platform has to offer in the hands of ad agencies so that they can all get a better idea of how to help their brands find the most advertising success possible on mobile devices.

The AdWords team felt that it was basically impossible for agencies and advertisers to get the full effect of some of the great interactive rich media mobile ads out there, such as those that use mobile video or HTML5, by simply looking at static images. So, they got together and developed the Mobile Ads Showcase App, which will help them all experience these interesting mobile ads exactly the same way their users will.

Using the application, users will be able to explore what some of the world’s best advertisers with rich media on mobile devices and interact with these ads. Of course, AdWords also wants to make sure that these users are also aware of all of the things that they can do using the Google Mobile Ads platform.

In addition, advertising agencies will be able to use this application as a mobile portfolio of sorts to code, test and upload their HTML5 ads by simply including them in the (MRAID-compliant) “My Ads” screen.

The Mobile Ads Showcase App is currently available for Android smartphones and tablets in the Google Play store.

Two Last Minute LOCAL Holiday Ad Suggestions from Google

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 20:25:00 GMT

It doesn’t take a digital guru to see that local advertising is a wildly popular topic for the Web business community.

Since most small businesses generate a strong percentage of their new business from the ‘Net , it only makes sense to stay up to date and in the know about developments in the local digital advertising space.

Google lent a hand last week with a two rather valuable suggestions for those looking to amplify awareness locally in time for the holidays.

Airport Targeting: Did you know that it’s possible to target travelers in more than 350 airports around the world? As travelers spend hours in and around these destinations, they will be on their smartphones and tablets making it the perfect time to promote applications.

Location Extensions plus Sitelinks: Once those Web users leave the airport they’ll likely start searching for things to do, places to eat. Local advertisers can show the specific address (linked to a map) alongside one line to three line sitelinks in text ads.

Google has made some serious headway in the local space over the past few months, offering larger and more useful maps, improved local matching, and its geo-targeting and location extensions are now available in more countries.

Merging Google Analytics and Adwords Data is Essential

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 22:45:00 GMT

When it comes to Internet advertising, the more data the better.

In early October, Google made available a feature which enabled advertisers to combine Google Analytics data directly within Adwords accounts. If you haven't done that yet then you should - it has been a virtual blessing for those seeking ways to improve their campaigns and achieve an ever more elusive return on advertising spend.

Advertisers that set up their Adwords account to import Google Analytics data now have access to metrics including bounce rate, pages per visit and average visit duration. Why are these metrics important to a paid search advertiser? Two reasons: one, they are determining forces in quality score (which influences how much advertisers pay and where they are positioned on the sponsored SERPs), and two, they serve as foolproof indicators of how well advertisers are engaging users arriving to their sites from paid search ads.

For example, say you are analyzing and testing two keywords. Both received the same number of impressions, but one had a much higher CTR and a far higher bounce rate. Knowing this information would provide the advertiser with the empirical eveidence they need when deciding whether to drop the underperforming keyword, make landing page adjustments to ensure visitors don't bounce (via improving relevance) or increasing their bids and optimizing for those keywords that drive engagement exclusively.

Adwords Shared Budget Aids Account Performance

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 17:54:00 GMT

Google just released a new feature that enables advertisers to share budget (daily spend) across multiple campaigns in an Adwords account.

The feature is actually quite innovative. Say for example that an advertiser runs three campaigns – one for desktop, mobile and another for remarketing. Prior to the release of the shared budgets feature, advertisers needed to decide how/where their budget would be spent and hope that their allotted spend would be used up.

When the budget was not maxed out, advertisers risked negatively impacting their overall account performance – lowering the quality score and potentially being forced to raise their bids over time.

With the new Shared Budgets feature however, even if one of the account campaigns sees fewer impressions for the day, advertisers are able to automatically shift their marketing dollars to other campaigns (mobile or remarketing for example) without having to monitor and modify campaign budgets throughout the day.

Adwords Policy Updates to Know

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Google announced last week that they would soon update their Adwords policies for software principles, arbitrage, advertiser claims, as well as relevance, clarity and accuracy. Let's take a closer look as the changes are expected to go into effect on October 15, 2012.

Relevance, clarity, and accuracy: Ads using keyword insertion must be "grammatically and logically" correct and result in a meaningful ad for the user. Ads that lead to a search results page must "clearly indicate" that the landing page will provide a search experience. This change will affect advertisers in all countries.

Advertiser claims: In another effort to reign in some over-zealous advertisers, a policy change on advertiser claims will be put in place in mid-October. Specifically, Google is clarifying that users must be able to perform an ad's call to action (if the ad includes one) on teh site within one or two clicks of the landing page.

Arbitrage: In its ongoing quest to quell the arbitrage issue (seems like it's been going on for years now), Google made numerous changes to its advertising policies related to arbitrage. In this update, the network is focusing on the "behaviors" that are often associated with prohibited arbitrage sites - those designed with the sole purpose of showing ads, featured scraped and "gibberish" content, "pre-generated" websites, offer deceptive navigation, have indistinguishable ads or are misleading, malicious or frustrating. If you have to ask, then you're likely not in violation of any of Google's arbitrage policies.

Perhaps the most interesting update related to arbitrage is associated with interstitial ads - the unexpected pages that appear when users navigate from one page to the next.

Software principles: In a (smart) move to protect its users from malware and the like, Google has updated its policy related to the software advertising. The guidelines for advertisers are lengthy and may need some explanation, but here are some highlights:

-- Users must understand the functions of software prior to installation or download, and must be given an opportunity to review all proposed installation options and system changes prior to doing so.

-- Google also indicated that it must be easy to disable or delete the software and that apps that change computer setting must make it clear what the changes are, why they are necessary and how they can be undone.

-- Finally, and likely the most noteworthy update to Adwords policies, Applications must not collect or transmit personally identifiable information from users with disclosure/consent.

"Today’s changes make the guidance clearer for everyone and tighten the rules and enforcement needed to keep the online advertising ecosystem clear, consistent, and useful for consumers," said Mansi Goel, Global Advertising Policy Lead. "The bottom line is that these revised policies and increased enforcement will help provide everyone with a safer, more trustworthy experience online."

Beat the Big Boys in Paid Search

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 20:00:00 GMT

It is possible to beat the "big boys" of paid search? You know, the companies spending millions each month on Adwords and adCenter campaigns? Yes, yes it is.

Digital marketing intelligence provider AdGooroo has released a report which shows how major retailers including Target, Toys "R" Us and Victoria's Secret are outperforming Amazon in paid SEM.

While Amazon advertises on millions of keywords and has twice the AdWords spend as the next largest retailer (which happened to be Target), AdGooroo’s research shows that outside of its strongest categories (books and other media) it is not always the dominant player. In fact, retailers with an established brand and specialized or niche offering were able to reap significantly better results than Amazon in SEM.

“We estimate their (Amazon) combined total AdWords spend, including their Zappos subsidiary, was more than $15 million per month in the second half of 2011, with more than 19 million clickthroughs generated in an average month,” said Richard Stokes, founder and CEO of AdGooroo. “Our report shows that even with this impressive spending and results, Amazon is certainly not infallible across the board. The breadth of Amazon’s PPC campaigns is certainly impressive, but when analyzed in categories where it lacks recognition or authority, their SEM efforts fail to live up to some of their most skilled competitors.”

A Formula for SEM Success
According to the report’s findings, retailers wishing to compete with Amazon in paid search should consider a key metric used by the search engines, Revenue Per Thousand Impressions or RPM (RPM = CTR x CPC x 1000). AdGooroo's analysis of the SEM results of Amazon and competing retailers found that paid ad position on U.S. AdWords is highly correlated to the RPM that each competitor delivers to Google, and that the biggest lever for improving RPM is clickthrough rate.

“Search engines are motivated to give preferred positioning to advertisers that generate the most revenue for them, so an advertiser’s best chance of gaining first SERP placement is to offer a higher RPM than competitors who are vying for similar keyword searchers,” explained Stokes. “Retailers should concentrate on improving their clickthrough rate through best practices such as maintaining fresh creative and delivering relevant ads and landing pages. They should also utilize competitive intelligence to better focus their efforts by benchmarking the strengths and weaknesses of their own SEM campaigns compared to their competitors.”

Adwords Scripts for Account Management

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 20:05:00 GMT

Managing performance-based advertising accounts can be a cumbersome and inefficient process – well, it can be if you’re not focused clearly on automating processes and using all of the data at your disposal.

Google recently announced the introduction of AdWords scripts (a limited release) which enable PPC marketers to make changes to their Adwords account by writing small/simple Javascript programs. The scripts function enables advertisers to use external inventory data to change bids or pause/unpause keywords, output stats to a spreadsheet (useful when creating reports and visualizations – we’re looking at you third-party developer) and even use statistical trends to change keyword or ad group bids.

The scripts will run on the Google Apps Script infrastructure, and developers will be able to integrate with Google Spreadsheets and URL Fetcher to integrate external data, and even email results of a script execution within the script itself.

AdWords Auction Insight Report – What to Expect

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 29 May 2012 20:00:00 GMT

What would you do differently if you knew the paid search strategy of your competitors?

Google has for quite some time provided data on impression share within campaigns and ad groups, reporting the percentage of impressions received as compared to the estimated number of impressions for which an advertiser was eligible.

While that information is certainly valuable, you just knew Google had more to share, right? Boy, do they ever.

Google recently released the Auction Insights report for AdWords, which provides advertisers the ability to compare their performance with other advertisers who compete for the same set of auctions. The more advertisers know about the strategy of their competitors, the better performance they’ll receive from their paid search spend. And likely, the more they’ll ultimately spend.

Through the new report, advertisers are able to see just ow often their ads rank higher than others’ on the search results and how often those competing advertisers ads appear compared to theirs based on estimated possible impressions.

What is interesting about the Auction Insights report is that it provides data at the keyword-level, and offers five different statistics including impression share, average position, overlap rate, position above rate, and top of page percent. Let’s look a little closer at the statistics provided within the report and how you may be able to use it.

The average position column shows how your ad ranks compared to other advertisers. Average position in this context is the average rank of the ad in the auctions, which of course determines the order of ads on the search results.

The impression share column, calculated as the percentage of impressions received, divided by the estimated number of impressions an advertiser is eligible to receive (based on a variety of factors, of course), provides the impression share of other advertisers as a proportion of the auctions in which you participate.

The overlap rate tells advertisers how often you and another advertisers received impressions at the same time for the same keyword. The position above rate tells advertisers how often that competing advertiser’s ad was shown in a higher positions, while the top of page rate shows how often your ad was shown above the organic search results.

The report provides information which will prove useful when making decisions about bids, budgets and even keywords by showing where an advertiser is winning and where advertising spend might be falling short. So what should you expect from this tool? In short, more information – information that can be used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your AdWords campaign.

AdWords Refines Display Ad System

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 16:30:00 GMT

AdWords advertisers running display campaigns have been using a system that was designed for search-based advertising, and doing so for many years. It's worked well but according to an announcement made today, Google is preparing advertisers for the fairy tale-like future that is display, rolling out some big changes that aim to simplify the increasingly important process of buying and running display ads.

For starters, Google will be rolling out an entirely new interface for display ads. Google built the interface for the exclusive purpose of running display campaigns. Through the system's interface, advertisers will be able to bid, target and optimize their display campaigns from a single location.

Perhaps most noteworthy are the improvements Google has made to its contextual engine -- which matches ads to pages based on keywords. AdWords advertisers will soon have the ability to combine the "reach of display with the precision of search", according to Google. Translated from Google-speak, that means advertisers can optimize performance of contextual campaigns down to the individual keyword level.

Google provides a good example below:

"Let’s say you’re running display campaigns for a travel agency who offers a vacation packages in several Caribbean islands. In the past, you would have created themed ad groups targeting vacations to Turks and Caicos and the Caribbean. Now, with this new keyword level transparency, you might realize that the keyword 'Turks and Caicos vacations' is four times more profitable than the keyword 'caribbean vacations'. You can optimize your campaigns to aggressively target these high-performing keywords, and be more conservative on 'caribbean vacations'."

Providing a dedicated tab and improving the ad refinement capabilities are just two of the enhancements coming soon. Google has also introduced a way to help advertisers visualize the reach of campaigns and see how "reach" is impacted by "combining multiple targeting types, such as keywords, placements, topics, interests or remarketing."

Google’s Ad Sitelinks Enhanced

Administrator — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 02:00:00 GMT

AdWords advertisers have had advertising sitelinks at their disposal for quite some time and, by all accounts, they seem to work pretty well. According to Google, in fact, the click-through rate is 30 percent higher for advertisements with sitelinks than those without.

Sort of makes you want to run off to your AdWords account and set up sitelinks if you haven’t already, doesn’t it? Hold on one moment before you go, though – Google just enhanced those sitelinks and did so in a rather innovative way.

Google is now incorporating text from other ads in your AdWords account that are related to your sitelinks. So, for example, if you’re a pizza place and advertising your order page, a page profiling locations, and a page offering deals, those text ads will now appear as enhanced (extended) sitelinks with text descriptions instead of one-line hyperlinks.

To be eligible for the enhanced ad sitelinks, advertisers must have ads with sitelinks that show above Google search results (probably safe to assume that means in the first or second position) and accounts must contain active ads closely related to the sitelinks in the campaign.

Traditional Ad Sitelinks at Google

Enhanced Ad Sitelinks from Google

Path Analysis: Google Refreshes Search Funnel Reports

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:00:00 GMT

Google has made several improvements to its AdWords Search Funnels, a tool initially released in 2010 that enables advertisers to better understand the series of search impressions and clicks that ultimately result in conversion.

Google today provided a sampling of the improved features which include the ability to compare data ranges - giving advertisers the ability to see how their funnel has changed year-over-year.

Google has also given advertisers the ability to access drill-down dimensions (campaigns, ad groups, keywords) via tabs, which are accessible from the top left of the Search Funnels tables. Finally, advertisers are now able to view the total number of conversions and conversion values side by side in new histogram reports.

BREAKING: WordAds from WordPress Launched

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:42:00 GMT

It's been a long time coming. But through its partnership with Federated Media, popular blogging platform Wordpress has launched an AdSense alternative dubbed WordAds.

While the name is confusingly similar (at least to me) to Google's search-based advertising product Adwords, expect the millions of Wordpress users to sign up in droves.

Wordpress has never supported the inclusion of advertising so this does come as a bit of a surprise for many.

“We’ve resisted advertising so far because most of it we had seen wasn’t terribly tasteful, and it seemed like Google’s AdSense was the state-of-the-art, which was sad. You pour a lot of time and effort into your blog and you deserve better than AdSense,” said Jon Burke of WordPress in the official announcement.

Only publicly visible blogs with custom domains will be considered for the program. Website Magazine will provide more information as it becomes available.