RKG Q3: Paid Search Ad Spend Surged 26 Percent Y/Y

Q3 brought more paid search growth among RKG’s clients according to the firm’s third quarter digital marketing report. Paid search ad spend on Google increased 27 percent and Bing increase ad spend rose 24 percent, for an overall growth rate of 26 percent year-over-year.  No surprise,…

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Bing Ads Makes Close Variants On Exact Match Permanent In U.S.

That test didn’t last long. A month ago, Bing Ads announced that it would test close variants on exact match in the U.S. As of yesterday, the switch has been flipped and close variants on exact match keywords are here to stay. Close variants include search queries that are close but not exact…

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Tackling AdWords’ New Default Close Variants Matching Behavior

Contributor Benjamin Vigneron explores the new default behavior and finds an efficient negative keyword strategy is more important than ever.

The post Tackling AdWords’ New Default Close Variants Matching Behavior appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Survey Reveals Google RLSA Performance Benchmarks & The Promise Of Cross-Channel Retargeting

Contributor Matt Ackley shares insights gleaned from a survey of 224 marketers about their retargeting practices and performance.

The post Survey Reveals Google RLSA Performance Benchmarks & The Promise Of Cross-Channel Retargeting appeared first…

Bing Ads Introduces Bulk Editing In Web UI, Now Review Up To 1 Million Keywords

Bing Ads has been building out its capabilities in the Web UI this year so that account managers aren’t as beholden to the Bing Ads Editor as they have been to manage campaigns. Today, Bing Ads announced bulk editing features and the ability to review accounts with as many as 1 million…

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Managing The Very Short Tail: 9 Tips To Manage A 10 Keyword Account

Everybody loves the long-tail and diversified PPC accounts. However, sometimes these ideals just aren’t possible. Some accounts inherently have only a short tail. This applies heavily to lead gen advertisers that measure post-lead activity to determine actual profitability. Are the insurance…

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Hearing The Rhythms Of Human Search Behavior: What We’ve Learned

Watching people search is great entertainment. It’s not a one-note performance. It’s an all-day, around-the-clock jazz show, with the performers constantly changing their themes, rhythms, even their instruments. Along the way, one gains some great insight into human behavior and how…

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Bing Ads Puts Estimated Keyword Bid Suggestions In Columns, Adds Keyword Delivery Status Alerts

Bing Ads launched a couple of relatively small but helpful features today. Both bring keyword status and bid insights into closer parity with Google AdWords. To get a better understanding of where keyword bids stand in relation to the competition, Bing…

The 10 Most Important Paid Search Developments So Far In 2014

It’s been a big year so far for product listing ads on both Google and Bing. Google started putting more ads in the Knowledge Graph. Bing followed Google’s lead on combining tablet and desktop traffic. And Google said it would begin stripping paid search queries from referrer strings….

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Mobile Calls Are The New Conversions: 7 Tips For SEMs

Are you seeing depressing plateaus, or even declines, in your year-over-year conversion numbers? The fact is that a huge portion of search activity is moving to mobile. Soon, mobile activity will account for over 50% of searches. The problem is that the mobile conversions don’t follow the…

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How Hard Should You Press The Gas Pedal In Paid Search?

The following post contains a number of metaphors strained to the breaking point; viewer discretion is advised. An enduring truth in the paid search business is that paid search managers and marketing teams spend far more time thinking about tactical m…