'Net Features : cpc

Global Search Ad Trends You MUST Know

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:30:00 GMT

To be successful in digital advertising, you must always keep your virtual finger on the pulse of the industry. It’s essential to understand what is happening when it comes to click-through-rate, where spend is increasing/decreasing and the average cost-per-click.

Without that information, you just can’t make good decisions or plan effectively for paid search campaigns. Kenshoo's new report, which examines the performance of paid search marketing, provides exactly that.

Here are a few of the more interesting highlights:

Global CTR and Click Volume Spike: Q1 2013 global CTR reached 1.68% compared to 1.04% in Q1 2012, a dramatic 62% increase year-over-year (YoY) while Q1 2013 click volume increased 21% YoY. Meanwhile, impression volume declined 26% compared to Q1 2012.

Paid search ad spend increased globally but decreased in Europe: A 15% boost in global paid search ad spend was fueled by a 24% increase in U.S. search ad spend. Paid search ad spend decreased in Europe, however, with U.K. paid search advertisers spending 11% less YoY and search advertisers throughout the rest of continental Europe spending 4% less YoY.

Global average paid search CPC at five-quarter low: After reaching a peak value of $0.46 in Q3 2012, global CPC levels continued to decline in Q1, reaching a five-quarter low of $0.39. This average CPC falls just below the Q1 2012 value of $0.41. In the U.S. and U.K., average CPC values declined to $0.38 and $0.44 respectively, while continental Europe CPC remained flat at $0.36.

Mobile share of ad spend continues to trail relative share of clicks: In the U.S., mobile devices accounted for 19% of all paid search clicks while only accounting for 14% of total paid search ad spend. In the U.K., mobile devices accounted for 28% of paid search clicks while accounting for roughly 25% of total ad spend.

“After examining our Q1 data, what stands out most is the increase in paid search efficiency,” said Aaron Goldman, chief marketing officer of Kenshoo. “With global ad spend, click volume and click-through-rates all growing, it’s clear advertisers are becoming even more sophisticated with their campaign targeting and optimization techniques. This is a very healthy sign for Kenshoo clients and bodes well for a strong 2013.”

Paid Search Spending Grows Across the Globe

Allison Howen — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 18:24:00 GMT

Marketers across the globe are putting more dollars into pay-per-click advertising campaigns, according to a new report from Covario.

The search marketing agency announced the results of its third quarter Global Paid Search Spend Analysis, which reveal that global paid search spending grew 33 percent over the same period last year, and 6 percent above 2012’s second quarter results.

The report shows that the Americas (led by the U.S. and Canada) saw PPC ad spend grow 39 percent compared to the same time last year, while Europe only saw an increase of 10 percent year-over-year. Additionally, although the Asia/Pacific region saw year-over-year search spend growth come in at 45 percent, the quarter-on-quarter growth declined to 7 percent.

The report also included a cost-per-click (CPC) analysis of the major search engines, which shows that keyword pricing increased on a global basis for the second consecutive quarter.

"Across all of the search engines, the combination of a 4 percent increase in click-through rates and a 12 percent increase in CPCs suggest that keyword pricing in conjunction with higher performing ad formats – and not volume – has largely been responsible for the sequential growth," said Alex Funk, the global performance media strategist at Covario.

The report found that Google continues to control 87 percent of the paid search spend market share, with third quarter advertiser search spending increasing 34 percent from a year ago and 8 percent from the second quarter. Additionally, the Yahoo-Bing Network, which has 10 percent of the global search spend market share, steadily grew with spending on its platform increasing 25 percent year-over-year and 5 percent quarter-over-quarter.

Conversely, China’s popular search engine, Baidu, saw a spending increase of 55 percent year-over-year, however, it experienced a 20 percent search spend decrease from the second quarter. That being said, Funk reports that in the third quarter Baidu accounted for about 5 percent of global PPC spending as well as "an incredible" 26 percent of the world's clicks.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the most interesting metrics of the study revolve around mobile devices, like smartphones and tablet PCs. In fact, the report found that global spending on paid search advertising for these devices increased by 17 percent in the third quarter versus the previous quarter, and by 90 percent year-over-year. And, for the first time, Funk claims that CPCs for tablets received a 1 percentage point edge in the third quarter over desktop CPCs. According to Funk, this increase could be attributed to Google's advertising default opt-in to desktops and tablets, in addition to a higher degree of user engagement, content consumption and consumer purchase affinity on the tablet platform.

Optimizing Content Creation around CPC

Administrator — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:25:00 GMT

Eightfold Logic recently released a new advertising capability for its InboundWriter service that is designed to help Google AdSense™ publishers better monetize their content.

Content publishers using the Google AdSense network are now be able to tailor their content strategy for keywords with the highest cost-per-click (CPC) rating. By optimizing around CPC, publishers will be able to attract higher paying text ads and banners served via the AdSense. The functionality is available in the cloud-based application and within the InboundWriter Wordpress plugin.

The new advertising feature enables users to make selections related to search competition, reader targeting and advertising. InboundWriter, which offers a free plan and an unlimited account for $20/mo) then provides a set of keyword recommendations, along with automated recommendations on how to structure content for maximum search visibility.

"For the first time, publishers and bloggers using Google AdSense will be able to monetize their content as they type," said Jay Baer, a social media strategist and president of ConvinceandConvert.com. "This is an important new capability that raises the bar for digital and SEO content optimization."

Screenshot of the new InboundWriter functionality via the WordPress plugin:

Also read:
Inbound Writer & Real Time Content Optimization

Matching Logic in Bing adCenter

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 02:00:00 GMT

Last week Bing announced that the ad matching logic used in Microsoft Advertising adCenter has been updated.

Advertisers bidding only on the singular or only on the plural form of a keyword, adcenter will serve ads for both singular and plural forms of the keyword. adCenter will automatially deliver the plural version of campaign keywords even if advertisers don't already have the plural version included in their campaign.

For example, if your account has the term :car" but does not contain the term "cars," adCenter will now apply and serve the “car” keyword bid and ad copy for “cars”. The same matching behavior will apply if you bid only on a plural form of the keyword, adCenter will still serve ads for both singular and plural forms of the keyword.

Bing was careful to note that only a subset of keywords where the meaning of the keyword is preserved in the singular and plural form will experience this matching update.

Monetization Models for Affiliates (Intermediate)

Linc Wonham — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 20:00:00 GMT

WM recently posted an article entitled How to Make Money on Your Website, which was intended to give those new to affiliate marketing a useful overview of the different payout structures available to them through merchants and networks. These monetization models include cost per acquisition (CPA), cost per lead (CPL), cost per click (CPC) and cost per impression (commonly known as CPM).

Novices just starting out in the world of Internet marketing must know the basic differences between each option, but more savvy affiliates will tell you that one size does not fit all. The reason for now exploring these payment structures in more depth is to illustrate the fact that the most successful Web marketers are the ones who – rather than pick and choose – can find the optimal balance between them all.

CPA – Cost Per Acquisition
As the name suggests, the affiliate earns revenue only from actual sales – or acquisitions – made through their website. In most cases, this can require a significant amount of time and effort on the part of affiliates, whether through building a following, persistent communications, creative promotional offers or all of the above. This is the most common payment structure, and also the one that involves the most work and produces the greatest rewards. Choose these campaigns wisely, and then devote the proper amount of available resources to make your investments worthwhile.

CPL – Cost Per Lead
If the CPA model requires a hard sell from affiliates (and it does), the CPL model can be considered a considerably softer sell. The affiliate earns revenue simply by providing leads to the merchant, which can include any number of interactions but does not have to involve an actual sale. Under this structure, the affiliate’s main goal is to get visitors to fill out a registration form, download a whitepaper or join an email list, which is a significantly smaller undertaking than trying to get them to purchase actual product. Again, the most successful affiliates are vigilant in their choices, allotting the most time and energy to the highest-hanging fruit.

CPC – Cost Per Click
Cost-per-click revenues may be the lowest-hanging fruit on the Web marketing tree, but they also demand the least amount of effort on the part of affiliates and generally produce the lowest returns. Whereas CPA models require acquisitions, CPL models require moderate engagement, CPC campaigns require only that visitors click on an ad or a text link for the affiliate partner to receive a percentage of the merchant’s bid price. The downside, of course, is that the commissions on each click can be quite low, and marketers have to be somewhat discretionary about the CPC agreement into which they enter. These campaigns can provide a nice supplement in combination with the other models – and with much less effort – but, again, choose them judiciously based on your overall affiliate strategy.

CPM – Cost Per Thousand Impressions
This payment structure is far better suited for highly trafficked websites and makes little sense for (nor is it available to) those not pulling in a large volume of visitors. But once a site starts to generate a high number of pageviews, CPM campaigns can be an outstanding method for increasing that site’s affiliate revenues without the heavy lifting involved in CPA or even CPL models. This model is also commonly and effectively used for testing new formats that can be implemented in the targeting and segmenting of these larger audiences, once a site reaches that coveted level.

Once marketers have grasped the general concepts behind each payment structure, they can begin to tailor their affiliate campaigns accordingly. A CPA campaign, for instance, may be built around creating a community of followers -- or vice versa. CPL campaigns, on the other hand, may be more aggressive in their immediate calls to action, but less so in terms of building relationships with visitors. The ultimate goal, of course, is to find the right balance and to know which models call for which strategies.

How to Make Money on Your Website - Affiliate

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 05:45:00 GMT

If there's one question asked repeatedly by those starting out in the world of Internet business, it is how to make money on their website. If you're not selling product (whether ebooks or any other tangible goods), then the only option is to become an affiliate (also often called the more innocuous "publisher") of another company.

There are tens of thousands of affiliate/publisher programs out there but understanding which type of program and which model best suits your site and your users is a difficult decision to make. Let's look at the different ways to make money on (or from) a website in order of the most-utilized/common.

CPA - Cost Per Acquisition
If you have ever signed up for an affiliate network you will likely be very familiar with cost per acquisition. CPA is by far the most common payout structure for merchants and in turn affiliate networks and affiliates. In CPA, affiliate websites direct their visitors (through display banner advertisements or sponsored text links) to the merchant's website. When a sale is made, the merchant gives the affiliate the pre-agreed commission.

CPL - Cost Per Lead
Those affiliates/publishers that are performing at an effective rate are those which may also have the luxury of promoting offers on a CPL basis. Cost per lead means that you, as the affiliate, direct website users/visitors to merchants' websites not in the hopes of them purchasing anything (although some programs have a CPA/CPL hybrid offering) but rather providing their information via filling out a form, signing up for a service, requesting information, etc.

CPC - Cost Per Click
Most publishers and affiliates starting out opt for cost-per-click offers. In CPC, affiliates receive a percentage of the advertiser's bid price. The most popular CPC affiliate/publisher program in the history of the 'Net is Google's Adsense program. The challenge for affiliates is in producing content that drives a sufficient amount of traffic so that even the small percentage of clicks which happen on these ads is profitable.

Cost Per Impression
CPM - While not as common as it once was, CPM (cost per thousand impressions) is now typically the reserve of websites with large amounts of traffic and sophisticated targeting and segmentation capabilities. CPM deals are often extended to publishers/affiliates by merchants when the site is established and afforded some authority by its users. For merchants, CPM deals are ideal for branding and awareness campaigns. For affiliates and publishers, CPM provides a low-impact way to generate profit from traffic without much leg-work.

Mobile Paid Search Impressions Skyrocket

Mike Phillips — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 18:56:00 GMT

A new study by Performics (paid search marketing specialists) shows that mobile paid search impressions accounted for 10.2% of all paid search impressions (desktop and mobile) for Performics' client base in Q1 2011. It's the first time 10 percent has been reached, and marks an impressive 195% increase in mobile impression volume.

Mobile clicks are rising, too. In Q1, mobile click share accounted 9.8% of all paid search clicks, for an overall increase of 230% -- compared to clicks from computers which rose 13.7%

While this is just one study, the hard evidence points to mobile paid search as an increasingly important part of marketers' strategies. And while the volume of mobile paid search rises, mobile cost-per-click (CPC) remains well below that of desktop CPC. In March, mobile CPCs were 42.1% lower.

CPC Campaigns - Best Time of Day

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 17:30:00 GMT

What is the best time of day to run your CPC campaigns?

A recent study conducted by online customer acquisition firm NetElixir examined the time of day that online orders and clicks peak. The findings indicate that there is a daily pattern for both behaviors with orders peaking during midday, while clicks (indicating people researching products) increase steadily throughout the day. These behaviors can provide guidance to retail marketers on the best times to run online ads.

The research reveals that online purchases peak during the midday hours between 2:00PM – 7:00PM, while clicks increase steadily throughout the day starting in the morning hours to about 10PM. Unique visitors to the site and on-site purchases followed a distinct hourly pattern based on the 32 retailers studies (see chart below with the amount of clicks on the left Y axis and orders on the right Y axis). Activity for both orders and clicks is at its lowest point in the early hours of the morning and rise over the course of the day, with clicks steadily increasing throughout the day and orders rising more sharply and peaking in the afternoon hours.

NetElixir makes several recommendations for improving SEM effectiveness based on the study including breaking down perforamnce by the hour to increase aggregate rturn on investment, and applying time-bound search tactics.

“The search advertising industry in 2011 is hyper-competitive. Retailers need to adopt smart optimization techniques and intelligent SEM technology in order to compete with increasingly sophisticated advertisers,” said Udayan Bose, CEO of NetElixir. “Analyzing and understanding when shoppers search and purchase can help to create more precise and effective search engine marketing strategies.”

MyLikes: Fully Customizable, CPC Affiliate Marketing

Mike Phillips — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:00:00 GMT

Looking for an alternative to restrictive AdSense for your website? New start-up MyLikes believes they have a solution, and it's aimed squarely at niche publishers and industry influencers.

In short, it works like this: Publishers sign up for an account then choose among participating advertisers to feature on their website, blog or Twitter feed. The publisher can create custom ads, or "Sponsored Likes" - using their own language and text - then publish those ads to their website or blog, or send the ad as a tweet. Every ad runs on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis and all ads are clearly marked as sponsored content. Sponsored Likes can also be included as a blog post. Advertisers have the option to accept or reject the user-generated advertising.

Here's how the Sponsored Likes CPC model works: Publishers are given a starting CPC, first based on Twitter. The more "influence" you have (determined by a number of factors including data from Topsy and Klout), the higher your starting CPC. You do not need a Twitter account, however, and a starting CPC without an audit of your Twitter influence is usually around $.05. From the start of a new campaign, CPC is constantly tweaked, based on click-through rates on your website or Twitter feeds. The click-through rate model - and not total clicks - is used to determine influence and, therefore, relevance to advertisers.

For publishers, the big advantage is increasing clicks and CPC by offering custom advertising. After all, you know your audience best and what will resonate with them the most. In addition, unlike typical affiliate programs the publisher is paid by the click, not a per-acquisition basis. So, the publisher is not relying on the effectiveness of another person's website or sales strategy. Advertisers benefit by getting highly-qualified clicks from an audience with very specific interests. The ability for publishers to customize an advertiser's message is a key component to targeting the ever-expanding long-tail, and preventing unqualified leads. Advertisers can learn more about Sponsored Likes here.

"From the publisher point of view, these ads are far more engaging than a typical AdSense ad," says Bindu Reddy, MyLikes co-founder. "They can customize the ads to talk to their audience. They get complete creative control to maximize monetization.

"From the advertiser perspective, they get a very engaged audience. It's a much more targeted lead, something that is not just randomized language. AdSense doesn't measure the effectiveness of a website."

To start, MyLikes has 12 advertisers on board, such as Moo Cards and Joylent Cloud Computing. But they will be expanding in short order and look to target several industries outside of the tech field such as lifestyle and food. They will be looking for advertisers where the long-tail is the longest - such as fashion and beauty and mommy bloggers, where there is a surplus of sites to target. And to help gain advertisers, MyLikes is offering an early bird promotion - they will pay 50 percent of the advertiser's budget for the first 50 advertisers.

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Bing Paid Click Share Grows (Again)

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:11:00 GMT

Efficient Frontier reported some significant growth in paid click share for Microsoft's Bing. The data shows that as of the first week in August, Bing lifted their click share 44% since the beginning of June.

Bing did particularly well in both the Travel and Finance categories with an 11% and 22% click share lift in these categories respectively.

Efficient Frontier’s VP of Marketing and New Product Development Justin Merickel postulated that Microsoft's new category focused Bing features may have “helped them capture more of the seasonal summer travel searching and the additional query volume related to the stock market recovery.”

Merickel also argued that the announcement of the Yahoo!/Microsoft deal may have promoted additional searches on Bing as users check out for themselves the new service.

Facebook Advertising Basics | Social Promotions

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 19 May 2009 19:46:00 GMT

Let's move beyond traditional search engine marketing for a moment and focus on another very viable opportunity in Facebook advertising. It might be the largest social network site ever developed and is ripe with social marketing opportunities, but it also presents an amazing opportunity to advertise. Facebook is an impressive advertising platform that enables Web marketers/online advertisers to target by interest and demographics. Early adopters recognize it and are already leveraging the platform to drive high quality, inexpensive traffic.

The downside is that many advertisers have already caught on to the opportunity present. The result, as is the case with any advertising market, is that both the CPC (cost per click) and CPM (cost per thousand impressions) are increasing. There remain plenty of opportunities, however, in a variety of individual markets. One very pervasive problem that advertisers must accept (and that Facebook must acknowledge) is that users aren't actually looking for products or services when using the service. Instead, they are there to connect with one another and are often far outside of the buying or research mindset. That doesn't mean that we can't market to this group effectively.

Facebook advertising works (or can work) because of the rich data set the company has about users and groups of users. It is the job of advertisers to promote the right product, promote it to the right audience (gender, age, location, etc.) and use compelling ads to do so. But the requirements for advertisers don't stop there. As with any advertising, it is essential to test various ads (including images and text) and ad combinations. It is vital to understand what you are willing to pay. And most importantly, it is imperative that you have a clearly defined objective for ads and campaigns and create or modify landing pages to reflect that purpose. A failure at any point in this process will turn you off from any online advertising. Now that we have a solid understanding of the requirements, let's dig into actually using the Facebook advertising platform.

Say for instance we were promoting a new nightclub in Chicago.

Designing ads in Facebook is about as simple as it gets. Create a 25 character ad title and an ad body (135 characters), upload an image (optional but recommended) and provide a destination URL. Facebook does provide a few guidelines (e.g. not capitalizing every word, not using incorrect grammar and spelling, not including irrelevant or inappropriate images or using deceptive discounts and offers, etc.) that might act a deterrent for a few rogue marketers, but all ads are reviewed to ensure they meet Facebook's content guidelines (a test review took about 90 minutes but that was late at night). Advertisers are able to see the ad they create and make adjustments to text and images should it not appear as intended. While the system does not leave a lot of room for creativity, creating an ad for the most part is a simple and straightforward process.

The next step to getting started with Facebook advertising is the targeting - where the real value in the network resides. Since we're promoting our Pretend Nightclub in Chicago, we're able to narrow down our targeting to the specific location we want. Advertisers essentially start with a pool of 200 million users and refine their choices from there (Country, State/Province, City - and have the option to include cities within a specified distance using IP addresses of users). We'll use Chicago as the location for this particular ad. Facebook also lets advertisers indicate the age and gender of those who will see the ads. Since we're a) serving alcohol, 2) don't want anyone over 30, 3) want folks single and ready to mingle, 4) only want people who can spend some money, and 5) don't care whether those viewing the ad are male and female, we end up with a very respectable audience of 27,460 people. While that might not seem like the millions advertisers might anticipate, remember this is exactly the audience we're looking for. Not a bad start start considering our pretend club has a capacity of zero.

Establishing pricing for the Facebook ad campaign is where most advertisers should invest the most time and thought. New advertisers will first need to create a new campaign. Keep in mind that creating more than one ad in a campaign means you'll be sharing a daily budget and schedule. Advertisers have two options when it comes to the advertising model: either pay for impressions (CPM) or pay for clicks (CPC). Paying for impressions will be appropriate for advertisers interested in gaining brand recognition (when you just want people to see your ad), but since we actually want people to come through the ad to our landing page (where, for example, we might provide them a free drink ticket), CPC is a better option in this scenario. Facebook will ask the advertiser to provide a maximum CPC bid (how much they are willing to pay per click - minimum 0.01 USD) and provides some suggestions based on the targeting that was specified. Advertisers are able to lower the cost per click by removing some of the targeting, but doing so will result in less-targeted ads and even fewer targeted clicks. Since Facebook provides a range for advertisers to bid, play it conservative and place your CPC bid somewhere in the middle of the recommended bid. Our testing revealed that the CPC will gradually lower over the time the ad is running. Do keep in mind that the choice of CPC and CPM does influence the placement of ads; all Facebook ads compete with each other to show for each impression, regardless of how they are bid.

Facebook advertising works and a tremendous opportunity exists for those willing to invest. Have you tried Facebook advertising? Tell us about the results you received and what you might advise others considering Facebook as an advertising opportunity.

AdBrite Launches Cost-Per-Click Auction for Graphical Ads

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:46:00 GMT

AdBrite announced today the launch of a cost-per-click (CPC) auction for graphical banner ads. Advertisers can now pay for graphical banner advertising in the same way they pay for search placements and text ads -- paying only when their ad is clicked.

CPC auction pricing is a significant departure from traditional CPM (cost per impression) rates paid by most advertisers for graphical banner ads (display advertising). When advertisers pay for impressions, they are assuming the full risk of impressions that may never convert into clicks or sales. In a CPC banner auction environment such as that offered by AdBrite, display advertisers pay only for clicks. This lowers advertiser risk while increasing performance. In addition to advertiser benefits, CPC pricing rewards AdBrite's high-quality publishers by compensating them for the full benefit of their contributions to each advertiser. Many AdBrite publishers will see a significant increase in revenue.

You may have never heard of AdBrite, but they are the fifth-largest ad network by pageviews according to ComScore (October 2008). "AdBrite is committed to our advertisers' success," said AdBrite CEO Ignacio Fanlo. "Allowing them to pay for performance makes sense. More than 90 million consumers visit AdBrite's sites every month, and our new CPC auction provides an effective and low-risk way for advertisers to engage them."