Overthrow The Tyranny Of Paid Search Budgets
Budgets are a fact of life for many paid search program managers. Budgets are essential for some firms, unnecessary but required nevertheless for others; and, on too many occasions, an onerous impediment to success in paid search. I’ve argued in the past that many in the e-commerce space…
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Google Adds Enhanced Campaigns Bid Adjustment Reporting To Google Analytics
Google announced today that Bid Adjustments reports for AdWords enhanced campaigns are now included in Google Analytics. The reporting, found in the Advertising section under Traffic Sources in Analytics, are designed to help advertisers analyze the pe…
New B2B Content Consumption Habits In An Ever-Changing Advertising Funnel
In my last article, I discussed how some marketing tactics and concepts of yesteryear can still be applied in advertising to B2B customers today. Inevitably, however, some marketing media and channels have changed. The world of advertising has shifted …
Budget Flexibility: Accounting For Regional Differences In AdWords
Recently, I’ve been seeing a lot of odd spending patterns in client accounts, especially when it comes to international Google AdWords campaigns. No, I’m not referring to mobile or enhanced campaigns — I’m talking about to a failure to account for regional differences in how…
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Google: Today’s Enhanced Campaigns Rollout Will Take Several Weeks To Complete
Account managers have been bombarded with alerts in their AdWords dashboards for months now. Today, notices like the one below started appearing upon login to AdWords — upgrade your campaigns by July 22 or Google will do it for you. Now, in a new blog post, Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice…
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Google Enhanced Campaigns Are Here: What You Need To Know Now
If you haven’t done it, Google will do it for you today. All AdWords Enhanced Campaigns “legacy” campaigns will be “enhanced”. Many expected to wake up to an exclusively enhanced world. The big switch-flip at midnight didn’t happen, and you can even still create…
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Mastering PPC: Ad Extension Basics, Part 2
Last week I provided an overview of ad extensions, how they work and their key benefits. Now let’s take a deeper dive into the most popular types of ad extensions currently available, and when you might want to use each format. Location Extensions Most people think of SiteLinks when they think of ad extensions, but […]
Does Weather Affect Site Traffic & SEM Performance?
Omni-channel retail marketers with online sites and offline stores have often wondered about the effect that weather might have on their site traffic (which in turn would affect their paid search bidding strategies). There appear to be three competing …
Maximizing The Synergy Of Paid Search & Social
Are there any two online activities more ubiquitous than searching and socializing? According to eMarketer, “search is the first stop on the Web when it comes to finding information on anything,” and 90% of U.S. Internet adults regularly use search engines. Social is also huge. Research…
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5 More Landing Pages Tests To Improve Performance
Now that you’ve had a chance to implement 7 Landing Page Tests You Can Run Tomorrow, I have a few more weapons you can add to your SEM testing arsenal to improve landing page performance. 1. Don’t Provide Too Many Options In the last 10 years, I’ve only seen a home page convert…
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Analyzing Cost-Per-Click Inflation In The Marketplace
In any pay-per-click auction environment (like paid search), the average cost-per-click (CPC) represents the result of a complex auction algorithm which includes multiple factors, such as: Competitiveness level Quality Score Bidding strategy Seasonalit…
Quality Score Explained By A Former Googler
With the continuing expansion of ad space at the top of the page (from ad extensions like sitelinks with descriptions), it’s more important than ever to make sure your ads have a great ad rank. But CPCs are on the rise – so unless you can improve your conversion rate so you can increase…
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Mastering PPC: Ad Extension Basics, Part 1
What are Ad Extensions? Ad extensions are additional features that show with text ads on the SERPs. Ad Extensions are optional features on Google AdWords (google.com) and Bing Ads (bing.com and yahoo.com). Ad Extensions are not available on search partners. Ad Extensions are most often shown with ads in high positions (usually 1-3) but can […]
All Hail Quality Score – King Of The AdWords KPIs!
(Property of HBO) The high-level relationship between Cost-Per-Click and Quality Score is well known: the higher your Quality Score, the lower your cost per click. Earlier this year, I published some research data showing how, as average Quality Scores…
Single-Keyword Ad Groups: Maximizing Mobile Performance With Enhanced Campaigns
In early February of 2013, as part of the most debated AdWords update in recent history, Google introduced the concept of mobile bid adjustments, giving search marketers the power to optimize bids across devices for a single campaign. Though these adjustments were originally introduced at the…
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Are Search Engine Marketers Becoming A Commodity?
The amount you make at your job is heavily dependent on two factors: value and scarcity. By value, I mean how much you are contributing (usually financially, but not always) to a company. By scarcity, I am referring to how many people can or will do yo…
New Review Extensions In Google AdWords: What You Need To Know
Just yesterday, Google announced the beta release of AdWords Review Extensions, which allow advertisers to include blurbs of third-party reviews in their search ads. The extension could prove especially useful to local businesses and to advertisers who don’t have access to seller rating…
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Goodbye Enhanced Campaigns, Hello Bing Ads
Dr Shah has observed a 6% CPC increase from March through May. The report goes on to forecast another 5-10% CPC increase over the next two quarters, compared with the CPCs in the same quarters in 2012. These increases are being driven in part by enhanc…
Best Practices For Google Enhanced PPC Campaigns
If you do any pay-per-click marketing, you are no doubt aware that on July 22, 2013 Google is transitioning all AdWords accounts from “legacy” to “enhanced” campaigns. Google gives account owners the option to make the switch over sooner, but after July 22 Google will make the switch for you. If…
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Enhanced Campaigns Countdown: Rising CPC Insights & Migration Tips From iProspect
With the July 22nd mandatory migration to AdWords enhanced campaigns looming, we will be checking in with marketers over the next several weeks to get their perspective on the transition process, hear what they’ve learned so far and what advice they have to share. I recently spoke with…
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