Freeloading An SEM Audit Will Cost You
I recently got introduced to the Director of Marketing at a very prominent travel company with an equally impressive SEM budget. The director wrote me an email stating that he was “very interested” in talking and wanted me to come to his office right away with an audit of his campaigns,…
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Bing Ads Goes Live In Australia And New Zealand
After months of planning, today Microsoft announced the launch of Bing Ads in Australia and New Zealand. In a joint partnership with Mi9, joint venture between Microsoft and Nine Entertainment Co. The addition of Bing Ads gives Mi9 its first foray into…
Google Changes How AdWords Quality Score Is Reported
In a post today, Google announced it is updating the way AdWords quality scores are reported. The changes will roll-out globally over the next few days. The updates are designed to “tie your 1-10 numeric Quality Score more closely to its three key sub factors – expected clickthrough…
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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…
Slick New Overhaul Brings Rank Tracking Back To Raven Tools
Late last year many Raven Tools users were surprised to find that Search Engine ranking data had been removed. Under pressure from Google, Raven yanked the SERP data and focused the tool on helping SEOs and Internet Marketers with analyzation tools. Well Raven users that have missed the tracking…
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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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Enhanced Campaigns Countdown: 10 Best Images That Told Us How You Really Feel
T-minus just days until Google flips the switch on AdWords Enhanced Campaigns. For a bit of a break, we’ve rounded up the best blog post images and meme hijacks made about Enhanced Campaigns since Google announced their arrival in February. In no order of greatness, here are your Top 10: How…
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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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New PPC Trend? Staples & Toys”R”Us Among Top Advertisers With More Impressions From PLAs Than Text Ads [AdGooroo Study]
Advertisers have flocked to Google AdWords Product Listing Ads (PLAs) since Google Shopping transitioned to a paid model last fall. A new study by AdGooroo estimates more than 4 billion PLAs were displayed in the U.S. from March to May 2013, accounting for 5.9% (71.7 billion) of the total of ad…
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Back-To-School PLA Advertisers: Heed New Google Shopping Feed Requirements
This is important for all merchants running Google product listing ads to note, but the timing makes it particularly key for advertisers running back-to-school or summer blow-out promotions. As we previously reported, Google announced new specification…
Infographic: Kenshoo Global Paid Search Trends, Through Q2 2013
Global ad spend is positive for the fourth quarter in a row, versus the same time the previous year. The same is true for click volume, impressions and clickthrough rates. And EMEA — the Europe, Middle East and Africa region — has the highest cost-per-click rate in the world. These…
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Google Study: Mobile PPC Ads Also Do Not Cannibalize Organic Traffic
Google released a new study as part of its series of analysis aimed at answering the perpetual question of whether PPC ads cannibalize organic traffic. You know the question: “If I’m already ranking, why should I pay for ads if they are just going to steal free clicks from my organic…
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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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