A Paid Search First? Olympic Sponsor Visa Opts To Advertise Its Tumblr On Google, Bing and Yahoo

YouTube and Facebook have long been the favored social accounts promoted by brands in paid search ads. Visa is cracking the mold. In what may be a first for a major brand, the Olympic sponsor is using paid search to drive visitors to its Tumblr account…

Who’s Tops? Bud Light Is Unseated As Number One Super Bowl Advertiser On Google And Bing

It looks like we have an upset. Bud Light appeared to be the clear front runner among Super Bowl advertisers running paid search ads on Google and Bing, It turns out the King of Beer’s less filling counterpart is merely the runner up on both search engines. Volkswagen has garnered the top…

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5 PPC Tactics Super Bowl Advertisers Are Using To Boost Their Campaigns

In the weeks leading up to game day, several Super Bowl advertisers have been employing paid search to help ensure their campaigns are found by the legions of users searching for “Super Bowl ads”. While the majority of Super Bowl advertisers still aren’t taking to PPC, those that…

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Tax Season: Plan Now For Great Advertising Returns

Someone once said that Americans deserved a tax system that looked as it if were designed on purpose. No doubt, the world is a complicated place when tax time looms. Rule changes, exemptions, complicated deductions — it’s no wonder that people start to sweat a little as April 15…

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Covario: Global PPC Click-Through Rates Hit New Highs, Spend Up 17 Percent YoY In Q4

Though the numbers vary, the Q4 reports we’ve covered all point to solid year-over-year increases in paid search spending. Covario’s Q4 analysis of the global paid search advertising landscape is no different. Based on results from their high tech, consumer electronics and retail…

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RKG Report: PLAs Fuel AdWords Growth, Bing Ads Spend Rises Sharply In Q4

RKG has released its Q4 2013 Digital Marketing Report, and as other reports have indicated, paid search saw solid year-over-year growth in the holiday quarter. Paid search spend among RKG’s retail-heavy client set rose 23 percent year-over-year. Overall click volume increased 19 percent, and…

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Report: US Search Ad Spend Rises 12 Percent YoY In Q4 2013; Smartphone CPCs Drop

IgnitionOne released its fourth quarter Digital Marketing Report today, showing that the paid search market in the US continues to grow. Search ad spend rose 12 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2013. In part as a result of the later kick…

A Paid Search Christmas Carol: Learn From The Ghosts Of SEM Past, Present & Future

‘Twas the night before Christmas in the search marketing department and SEM Director Scrooge was heading out hours before his staff. “Director Scrooge,” said one of the young SEM analysts, Tiny Tim. “It’s Christmas Eve. The gang and I wanted to know if we could get a paid search management tool for…

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Report: Google PLAs Deliver 4X Revenue Lift For Retailers In Early Holiday Season

It’s probably not too surprising to hear that retailers have doubled their year-over-year spend on Google product listing ads this holiday season thus far. After all, the paid format of Google Shopping had just rolled out in the fall of 2012. What is stunning, however, is the four-fold…

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Now “Undo” Google AdWords Changes From Change History Reports

Taking action after a completing a test in Google AdWords may just have become a whole lot easier. An new “undo” button was spotted last night in the Change History reporting by Heather Cooan, director of client services at Clix Marketing. Here’s a screenshot from Heather’s…

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Google Trusted Stores Now Integrates With AdWords, Shows StellaService Ratings In US

Today Google formally announced several updates for Google Trusted Stores, the free ratings service Google launched in 2011, just ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. AdWords Seller Ratings Integration Google Trusted Stores is now among the services that help to power seller ratings, which show…

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Will Big Retail Rule Paid Search On Black Friday, Cyber Monday Again This Year?

Here we go, just over a week until Black Friday and Cyber Monday. All hands are on deck, budgets are ready to be unleashed. The big box retailers appear poised to yet again dominate paid search results for queries related to these all-important retail …

Bing Ads Introduces Refined Broad Match Keyword Targeting

In an effort to help advertisers attract more click volume from the Yahoo Bing Network, Bing Ads has rolled out Broad Match keyword targeting. The company says that with refinements and ongoing updates the “Bing Ads platform is able to deliver Broad Match conversion metrics that are 85% of…

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Conversion Metrics Now Available In Google AdWords Bid Simulator

The AdWords Bid Simulator tool now offers conversion estimates in addition to impressions and clicks to show how bid changes may affect conversion volume and values. For each bid option shown in the simulator, the bid simulator provides the number of conversions — both 1-per click and…

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Holiday PPC Tips From Back-To-School Season: How BookRenter Faced Down Bigger Competitors & Rising CPCs

As online businesses prepare to ramp up their holiday paid search campaigns, it can be instructive to look at insights from the retail’s second biggest season: back-to-school. For BookRenter.com, an online text book rental company, back-to-school is its holiday season.  Jean-Michel…

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3 Ways B2B Search Marketers Can Stand Out With Rich Ad Formats

We all know B2B customers differ from regular consumers for a variety of reasons. Their purchase cycle is longer, as they have to consult more options before pulling the trigger on signing a contract for a solution or purchasing a product. There is als…

Google AdWords Yellow “Ad” Icon Spotted On Desktop SERPs In UK

The bold yellow “Ad” icon that started showing up in Google search results on smartphones in September, now appear to be  getting a test run in the UK. This weekend, Ashley Williams, SEO Project Lead at Summit Media in the UK, noticed the icon appearing in the SERPs for every query he…

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The New Visual Brand Ads: What Google Banners & Bing Hero Ads Mean For Search

In the past two weeks, both Microsoft and Google began testing display-style ads that appear on search results for select brand queries. Many see the introduction of these ads as a money grab to get brands to pay for traffic they would otherwise get fo…

Google Testing New AdWords Site Search Extension

A new flavor of AdWords form extensions has been spotted. It’s a site search box, and according to Google, this test is related to the drop-down navigation extension seen in August. Users can perform an internal site search of the advertiser’s web site right from the search results….

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