'Net Features : ppc

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.

Top PPC Landing Pages by Industry

Michael Garrity — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:00:00 GMT

When you’re paying good money for clicks from a search engine to drive traffic to your site, it only makes sense that you would want the landing page that users arrive at to be engaging and informative, right?

What seems obvious to some of us may go unnoticed by others. The importance of first impressions on converting visitors has been talked about at length, but it’s one of those old adages that is seriously important. That is, if you want your PPC campaign to be worth anything.

That’s why WM has studied a variety of broad industries (food, travel, apparel, entertainment and services) to look at common best practices that various websites employ to engage and, hopefully, convert visitors.

We used a unique query for each category and selected what we thought was the best PPC landing page that our search returned. While there was a lot of localization and personalization that affected the results and PPC ads that we saw, we're confident that all of these landing pages present great design examples in their particular industry.

The results are below:

“Order Chinese Food” (Food)
The website for Hong Kong Express offers an eye-catching design that immediately signals to visitors to “Order Online,” clearly highlighting just how and where to do that. The landing page also lays out other crucial information, such as restaurant hours, phone number and address.

“Bed and Breakfast Wisconsin” (Travel)
This landing page entices visitors with stunning images. However, it doesn't sacrifice information for aesthetics, as specific paths are available for users without being overwhelming. The page also features clear contact information and a call-to-action for users looking to book their stays right now

“Orange Shoes” (Apparel)
If you’re as big fan of tacky footwear as I am, this landing page for Zappos is for you. While relevant product matches clearly take up the center of the page, Zappos also offers visitors the option to narrow down their searches through a variety of categories and specifications to help find the perfect pair of shoes. It also features navigation options at the top of the page that lets users alter the way in which results are organized.

“Buy Theater Tickets” (Entertainment)
Anyone who wants to see a good show should look no further than Broadway.com, which displays some of New York City’s hottest performances in the middle of the page, with clear call-to-action buttons encouraging them to buy tickets. Additionally, visitors are able to toggle between different types of shows or search to find the one most interesting to them.

“Mechanic Chicago” (Services)
This sleek landing page is one of the best, with engaging visuals, a clear call-to-action button that stands out from the rest of the page and important information laid out in unobtrusive but easy-to-find locations.

Five Non-Google PPC Programs

Michael Garrity — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:30:00 GMT

Yes, we get it, Google does everything. Ask an affiliate marketer what they think the best Pay-Per-Click (PPC) program available is and they'll likely say Google AdSense.

Why? Because it's free, easy-to-use and comes with a very popular and proven name attached to it. And while AdSense is a great program, it's also expensive and it's not necessarily for everyone, so what are some of the alternatives out there?

Many other PPC programs offer things like a return on investment (ROI), faster payments and other features that rival or surpass Google's product. But with dozens upon dozens of different options out there, where does an affiliate start to look for the PPC program that is right for them? Well, at Website Magazine, of course!

Without further ado, here are five non-Google AdSense PPC programs to consider:

Bidvertiser
As the name suggests, this is an auction-based PPC program. Payouts with Bidvertiser are based on an advertiser's bid for your ad space, as opposed to things like keyword popularity. This makes it possible for more popular sites to make more money than their unpopular counterparts who use the same keywords. The upside here is that flash, low content or other application-heavy sites that are typically difficult to crawl much easier to monetize.

AdBrite
One of Google's biggest competitors in the field is AdBrite, largely because they accept many sites that Google doesn't, making it the sort of go-to program if you're rejected by AdSense. This PPC and Pay-Per-Impression (PPI) program rakes in over 330 million impressions and operates on approximately 100,000 websites. Members get paid based on how many clicks an ad gets or how many times an ad is viewed. Sites are monetized by AdBrite when the company pulls ads from top brands, keywords, demographics, location and over visitor targeting metrics. It's also free to sign up.

7Search
7Search, though smaller in their reach than Google, has one of, if not the, highest ROI measures in the industry based on their high quality search traffic sources. They provide solid analysis, such as letting you see how many searches were done on each of your keywords in the last month and then comparing those numbers to how many clickthroughs you got and where you're ranked. You can then see what happens if you raise or lower your bid. 7Search provides affiliates with multiple opprotunities to for revenue through their affiliate program such as standard and white label search boxes, Pay-Per-Text, an advertiser referral program, AccessoryAds and XML partnerships with other search engines, portals and directories. They also proudly claim to pay affiliates faster than any other ad network, with those who earn just $25 a month receiving their chekcs in the first ten days of the following month. Having operated since 1999 means that 7Search is a tried and tested network for affiliate marketers.

Ad:Dynamo
This PPC program is said to be the "fastest paying ad network." One leg up that they have over Google AdSense is that they show contextual ads. They also launched a mobile advertising platform earlier this year. The program offers an array of features like geo targeting that allows you to target customers in specific locations, dynamic text insertion into text ads and URLs, the ability to configue an ad to only show to the same unique user only a specific number of times and, perhaps most importantly, conversion tracking that lets you follow leads, acquisitions and sales in real-time to evalute the performance of an ad campaign. Though it's a young program (it started in South Africa in 2009 and went global even later than that), Ad:Dynamo is already considered a serious AdSense competitor by many users and reviewers.

Chitika
As a direct competitor to Google AdSense, Chitika is probably the most well known and highly regarded program on this list, and that is largely because of its proven record of success. Many who use both AdSense and Chitika have reported that they see a higher clickthrough rate with Chitika, though this is largely because the ads are product related, so they greatly outperform Google on niche blogs and sites. They have an interesting 1-tier referral program that allows you to earn 10% of the income generated by publishers that you refer. Their site claims that they are the only network that "knows when not to show an ad," which makes for a positive user experience. The compatibility with AdSense has, ironically, been the biggest boost to Chitika, and makes it a great option for those who are already using Google, but would like to add to it with another program.

What other PPC progams do you use? What do you think should be on this list? Let us know in the comments section below.

Super-Charged PPC Ads

Administrator — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 20:00:00 GMT

Running a successful pay-per-click advertising campaign can be a challenge for online retailers. In particular, writing great PPC ads can be a real struggle.

With numerous products that have various benefits and varying price points, advertisers often feel overwhelmed when it comes to writing great ads. In this article, we will outline a strategy for online retailers that will help to improve click-through rates, conversion rates and overall engagement of your PPC ads.

Feature the Product Keyword in Your Ad
One of the most important tactics for a successful PPC ad is highlighting the user’s search query directly in your ad. By displaying the keyword in your ad, it will be more relevant and this will result in a higher click-through rate.

In order to display the right keywords in the right ads, you need to structure your campaign so that each ad group contains a very tightly themed group of keywords. For example, if an ad group contains a few variations of the keyword, “organic pet supplements”, then you can write ad copy that highlights this keyword specifically.

To create tightly themed ad groups, you should follow this rule-of-thumb: Each ad group should contain two to four related keywords (and the appropriate match-type variations). With only two to four keywords per ad group, you can write PPC ads that highlight each of your core terms. In other words, you can highlight one product per ad group.

Highlight Benefits, Not Features
This is a common mistake when writing PPC ads. Many ads contain features and not benefits of their products. Your ads should be audience-centric. How will your product or service make the lives of your audience better or easier? What problem or desire does your product satisfy?

For example, if you sell treadmills, your ad shouldn’t mention the product weight, where it was made or the various running speeds. Most people looking for treadmills want to get healthy, have more energy, lose weight and look better. Those are the most desirable benefits of owning a treadmill. You may want to review your current PPC ads to see if they are featureor benefit-focused.

Close with a Call-to-Action – Urgency
This may seem obvious, but it is also worth saying: Tell people what you want them to do. For online retailers, you can use straightforward action verbs like, “Buy Now!” Or you can use a special offer to motivate people, such as, “Get Free Shipping!” or “Buy 1, Get 1 Free!” Or, if your product requires a demo before someone makes a purchase, you can use, “Get a Demo Now!”

Display Price and Discounts
Displaying prices in your PPC ads can give them a boost. You should test different prices to see what appeals best to your audience. Also, you should try mentioning discounts within your ads. Any specials or sales that are active on your website should certainly be mentioned within your ads.

Utilize SiteLinks
Google AdWords has a very helpful feature called SiteLinks. This feature allows you to display up to four additional text links below your PPC ad. I highly suggest that you take advantage of SiteLinks. With this option, you can write additional texts that display other product benefits — and you can send users to other products or pages within your website.

Expand Your Ad with Product Listings
Product listing ads are a powerful feature within AdWords. With this feature, you can display your products directly within search engine results (SERP) on Google. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough space in this article to go into the details of implementation. But, in a nutshell, open a Google Merchant account; upload a product feed from your website to your Merchant account; link your Merchant account to your Ad- Words account. There is a little more to it than this, but if you login into your Google Merchant account, the help section is very informative.

Claim More SERP Real Estate with Location Extensions
If you have a brick-and-mortar location, or multiple locations, you should take advantage of the Location Extensions feature in Google AdWords. With this feature, you can display your company’s location directly on the SERPs within Google. To implement Location Extensions, you will need to link your Google Places list with your Google AdWords account. Trust me, it’s easy!

Get Longer Headlines (hot tip!)
This is a new feature within Google AdWords. You can display longer headlines that will make your ad stand out, which will increase your click-through rate. All you need to do here is to make sure that Line 1 of your ad ends in punctuation (a period, question mark, etc.) — then when your ad appears in the top-ranked positions, line 1 will be bumped up into your headline, and your headline will be longer and more noticeable.

The PPC ad below works because it is using the following tactics from our list: feature the product keyword directly in the ad; display price (this is covered by the product listing); expand your ad with product listings; and get longer headlines.

The PPC ad below utilizes some other tactics from our list, such as: feature the product keyword directly in the ad; close with a call-to-action; highlight benefits, not features; utilize SiteLinks; and get longer headlines.

By implementing this overall strategy, you will be initiating the following thought pattern when someone reads your PPC ad:

1. This ad seems relevant to my search query (highlight the keyword)
2. This sounds like a product that I can use (highlight benefits)
3. It looks like they have a few interesting products (utilize SiteLinks
and product extensions)
4. Wow, this is a great offer (display a great call-to-action and/or deal)
5. I am going to click and I am going to buy!

You may be thinking that users don’t interact with PPC ads this way. But why not? If your PPC ads are good enough, they will. Now, go super-charge your PPC ads for higher click-through rates and conversion rates.

About the Author: Joseph Kerschbaum has been working in PPC advertising, search engine optimization, conversion optimization and social media marketing for the past five years. He is the co-author of PPC Marketing: An Hour a Day and the client services director at Clix Marketing.

Paid Search Ad Spending Up

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 13:49:00 GMT

Ad management platform Marin Software released findings from its Paid Search Quarterly Benchmarking Report (available here) which indicates a 20 percent year-over-year increase in paid search advertising spend.

Marin examined 800 large-scale advertisers from its Global Search Index and found not only that search spend increase, but click-through rates also rose (12 percent) compared to the same quarter last year. Overall cost-per-click remained the same.

Perhaps the most interesting bit of data was that on Google, advertisers saw a decline in impression volumes in the second quarter. Advertisers managed to increase click volumes on an annual basis however, suggesting that either search marketers are improving efficiency or Google modified its algorithm for matching ads to queries. It is likely a combination of both.

PPC Bid Management is Antiquated

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 15:30:00 GMT

A PPC Summit survey reveals that pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platform vendors and their customers are experiencing significant shifts in paid search marketing strategies. It's no longer just about bid management.

The 2010 PPC Management and Optimization report profiles 14 PPC management and optimization vendors that have traditionally been categorized as "bid management" vendors. The report also includes the results of in-depth interviews with the vendors and 27 of their agency and enterprise customers.

The results? Only two of 14 vendors profiled in the report consider "bid management" an accurate characterization of their product offerings. The other 12 say bid management is only part of what they do because their products now provide considerably broader functionality. Although the breadth and depth of features varies from vendor to vendor, there are now three fundamental feature sets that include bid management, campaign management, and reporting.

"Historically, bid management has been focused on optimizing position and keyword costs but it has become clear that other factors affect overall ROI and competitiveness," said Lisa Morgan, the report's principal analyst. "Although position and keyword costs remain important factors, search marketers also want to drive process and integrated marketing efficiencies."

Quality Score: 5 Steps to Optimizing a PPC Account

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:05:00 GMT

by Amber Speer, Hannapin Marketing

The most common mistake when companies try to manage their own pay-per-click (PPC) account is a lack of organization around, and understanding of the Google Quality Score and Yahoo! Quality Index.

Google Quality Score is an assigned number from 1 – 10, based on how well your keywords relate to your ad text and landing pages. The higher your Quality Score, the higher your ads can be ranked in position for less cost. Generally speaking, in Google, any keyword with a Quality Score of 6 or below is considered low.

The goal for most PPC advertisers is to achieve a higher Quality Score; which sometimes means making large changes within the account in a short amount of time. However, this tactic can be detrimental to your overall account health. Re-structuring and re-organizing your accounts for a higher Quality Score can actually decrease your scores initially, if not done correctly. A decrease in Quality Score will essentially bring in less traffic and less conversions or leads, at a higher spend. The goal then becomes to optimize your account without initially killing existing high Quality Scores. Low Quality Scores will eventually pick up in a few months — but who wants to have a broken PPC account for any length of time when the goal was to make it better?

Though trial and error, research, and speaking with my Google and Yahoo! reps, I have found the best way to restructure and optimize existing PPC accounts without killing existing high Quality Scores.

1. Don’t be in a hurry. Whether restructuring your account entirely, or just moving a few keywords around and writing new ads, take it slow. Especially in Google, when you make large changes in an account, it can throw the system into “shock,” as we call it. Google assumes your Ad- Words account was set up correctly in the first place. So, when you begin to make large changes, Google thinks that you must be doing something wrong, or made a mistake the first time around. Therefore, after large changes to an account your Quality Scores can tank. After a while (maybe a few months) Google can see that you have actually improved your organization, and your Quality Scores will begin to recover. But a couple of months with bad Quality Scores can result in lower traffic numbers, lower conversions, fewer leads, and lower ROI. Therefore, make a plan of optimizing your account week by week. Do one campaign or ad group restructure per week, including writing new ads, adjusting keyword bids, and settings.

2. Adjust campaign settings first. One thing you can do quickly and should be done immediately is to make sure your settings are correct for each campaign. The first setting I make sure to change can be found under rotate ads > set ads to rotate evenly. Do not set them to “optimize.” Setting your ads to optimize means that Google will only show the ad with the highest click-through rate. This also means that if you’re writing new ads for testing purposes, you can not split test (A/B) the new ad versus the old ad. The second setting I change can be found under bidding and budget > delivery method. This should be set to “accelerate.” This means that your ads will show as soon as someone types in your keyword. Google has an option to show your ads evenly throughout the day in order to make your daily budget last longer. The problem with this is that you could be missing out on potential qualified traffic by not having your ads show at all times for any search query.

3. Don’t overwrite old ad text. If you’re testing ad text — and you should be — do not write over the old ads, even if they have lower click-through rates. If there are any ads you wish to discontinue, simply pause the ad, and write an entirely new one. Anytime you edit existing ad text you’re writing over that ad’s click-through rate. Quality Score is based on having a high click-through rate. If you remove or edit ads with high or medium click-through rates and accidently replace them with ads that have low click-through rates you are hurting your Quality Scores.

4. Re-structure for optimal targeting. If your PPC account has more than 20 keywords per ad group, or only has one campaign in the entire account, it’s time to re-structure. Remember, Quality Scores are based on how well your keyword relates to your ad text. Therefore, if you have more than 20 keywords in each ad group, you can probably break those down into smaller, more targeted ad groups and write better targeted ad text. Doing so will increase click-through rates — a main driver of achieving higher Quality Scores. As mentioned previously, when restructuring, take it slow. Execute one campaign re-structure per day. In that campaign, you will be examining all of the keywords in your ad groups to find groups of keywords that can be broken out into their own, new ad groups.

5. Adjust bids accordingly. Again, when it comes to adjusting keyword bids, or pausing or deleting keywords, take it slow. According to my Google reps, taking a keyword bid from $10 down to $1 (or vice-versa) does not register well with AdWords. If you find keywords that could use major bid adjustments, pause them now then activate them later when you have the time and budget to work with those keywords.

Although it might be frustrating to make large changes slowly, it will be worth it in the end. Achieving a high Quality Score in Google or Yahoo! will take time — it’s not an overnight fix but, eventually, you will see traffic, and conversions and leads go up, while spend goes down.

About the Author: Amber Speer is a Senior Search Marketing Consultant at Hanapin Marketing. Amber’s primary role at Hanapin is managing pay per click and search engine optimization campaigns for a wide range of clients. She also writes for PPC Hero, Hanapin’s blog on the pay per click industry.

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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Competitive PPC: Keep Your Edge

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:15:00 GMT

Staying competitive for your most sought-after keywords requires diligence, persistence, and a strategic utilization of the tools and reports that are available to you as a pay-per-click (PPC) manager. Improve and preserve the performance of your highly-competitive keywords by following these strategic guidelines. Learn how to optimize your account structure, write targeted and benefit-driven ad text, how to properly utilize match-type options, use negative keywords, diversify with long tail terms and implement the right bidding strategy for your business.

Read Keep Your Edge on Competitive PPC Keywords

Stay up to date on the latest Internet trends:
Request a professional subscription to Website Magazine,
the most popular print publication on Web success.

SEO vs. PPC: The Engine Ready Study

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:04:00 GMT

It's the one discussion that every Website promoter wants to know - which traffic source is more valuable when it comes to conversion.

Search marketing service and software provider Engine Ready released an update to its ongoing study which compares conversion data of visitors arriving on sites from PPC ads, organic listings, other websites and direction navigation (typing the URL). Results of the Engine Ready study can be downloaded here (free, registration required).

"For quite some time, marketers have debated which investment tends to generate higher returns, pay per click or search engine optimization", reports Engine Ready CEO Jamie Smith. "This study prepared by the Engine Ready Research Team hoped to bring some clarity to that discussion by analyzing ROI and visitor engagement metrics with the intent to provide marketers with a better vision on which types of visitors most cost-effectively meet their goals".

Stay up to date on the latest Web trends:
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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.

Syncing Search Marketing and Inventory

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:30:00 GMT

Search marketing platform Kenshoo unveiled RealTime Campaigns today, a feature which links a company's search marketing program directly to their e-commerce or inventory system.

Connecting inventory and marketing clearly offers web enterprises many benefits to improve their overall advertising effectiveness. The Kenshoo system automatically updates dynamic items like promotional text and prices in the ads to reflect the status of inventory, can pause ads for items that are out of stock or unavailable (valuable in improving customer satisfaction), and eases management thanks for larger campaigns (the average size for a RealTime campaign so far is 1.2 million keywords).

Kenshoo is the first vendor in the search management space (that I am aware of) to offer this functionality.

"Select customers have been using RealTime Campaigns with resounding success - on average they are seeing a 40% improvement in ROI. RealTime Campaigns is the pinnacle of online technology solving the issues faced by real world advertisers. We have connected the supply chain and marketing departments like never before to increase the success and effectiveness of our customers marketing programs," said Yoav Izhar-Prato, CEO of Kenshoo.

DC Storm; More PPC Tracking for Affiliates

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:46:00 GMT

A new tool promising to help affiliates track and optimize PPC campaigns has launched. DC Storm, a web analytics, tracking and PPC optimization provider calls the service Storm for Affiliates(tm).

The solution enables affiliates to link commission generated through their programs on affiliate networks with money spent on pay-per-click engines such as Google, Yahoo, and others. Sound familiar? It is – in fact, we’ve covered a few of these software solutions catering exclusively to affiliates in Affmeter and StatsJunky.

How it works (according to the release): Storm for Affiliates achieves this (hyper level of tracking) by using enhanced StormAnalytics™ tracking integrated with sales data imports from all of the major affiliate networks APIs and click and spend data from the PPC search engines API’s. This means that data is collected, matched and aggregated automatically including any changes that are made to the status of a sale by the affiliate network.

Seth Richardson, CEO of DC Storm, said: “Affiliates are big PPC spenders however tracking commissions back to keywords and search terms that generated those sales has always been a challenge for affiliates. Storm for Affiliates takes the leg work out of tracking and reporting and presents the data within DC Storm’s market leading digital marketing platform StormIQ™. Affiliates are then able to utilise our robust reporting and dashboarding technologies as well as our PPC Optimisation technology StormOptimsier™ to help drive more revenue.”

Spend Less on Pay-Per-Click

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:17:00 GMT

Cutting down on PPC expenditures is at the forefront of SEM discussions these days. By the looks of search marketing agency IMPAQT's newly enhanced Adaptive Bidding tool, marketers will be able to do more with less - a key to surving in today's economic climate for many businesses. In some instances the tool is reducing cost for search-originated acquisitions by nearly 80%. That's the sort of saving that can't be overlooked.

The enhanced version of the tool integrates ‘shocks’ - streams of data from offline data - that could influence suggested bids. When shocks are combined with the history of paid search results, what results is a semi-automated analysis model that provides keyword-level bid recommendations on a daily basis – at an unmatched accuracy.

According to IMPAQT, the longer the system runs, the better it ‘learns’ and the more accurate its bidding suggestions become, according to IMPAQT’s VP of Analytics and Decision Support, Dr. Pat Stroh, whose team created and carried out the proprietary algorithms responsible for the success of the product.

“The upgrade to include shocks adds a level of detail that sharpens the bidding, “ according to IMPAQT’s VP of Analytics and Decision Support, Dr. Pat Stroh. “When shocks are added to a paid Search campaign which has thousands of keywords and millions of data points, it can be extremely meaningful to the outcome.”

Open PPC Policy, Affiliate Marketing and E-Commerce

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:26:00 GMT

A recent ABestWeb forum thread has truly shocked me. Shocked I tell you! And I've become nearly immune to most everything, hardly blinking an eye in the face of even the most innovative techniques, trends and technologies that come my way. So what is that shocked me so greatly?

The Pia Jewelry affiliate program has an open PPC policy! This means that affiliates are free to bid on all terms, including brand terms. Pia believes this policy enables its affiliate to "better promote Pia products and therefore boost earning potential." You might want to take a deep breath as I'm sure you are equally shocked.

You might remember that back in April Amazon notified affiliates they would no longer be paying referral fees to associates sending users to Amazon through paid search (keyword bidding) practices. Allowing affiliates to leverage pay-per-click search engines is nothing new, but the debate continues about whether to allow affiliates the right to bid on brand related terms (which are often trademarked). Is it good business or misinformed marketing? A control issue or a strategic decision?

The Affiliate Summit AffStat 2009 report covered yesterday on WebsiteMagazine.com highlighted that 55% of affiliates were currently using PPC to promote merchant products. Should more merchants take an open PPC policy, it's possible that these numbers could increase, perhaps dramatically. Pia Jewelry aside, affiliates trending towards using PPC as a promotional means typically look for popular brands whose affiliate managers support an open PPC policy. It's been my belief that merchants should allow PPC bidding through an open policy but measure the performance of affilaites and the key terms they are using so as to determine the best time to turn off the switch - which should come right after a good deal of brand recognition has been achieved.

For those interested in promoting Pia Jewelry, a little about the affiliate program might be in order. Pia Jewelry has a stated AOV (average order value) of $60-70, a high conversion rate and the majority of its products are priced below $50. that range from necklaces, rings, bracelets, earrings and brooches to a wide range of accessories & watches are available. Affiliates receive 8% commission on each sale (excluding shipping and handling charges). And of course, as a Pia Jewelry affiliate you will not be subject to any PPC restrictions.