02.19.07

Yahoo Ad Optimization feature needs update

Posted in New to PPC at 6:43 am by PPC Guy

The ability to have in is one of the of the new Yahoo Panama, however Yahoo didn’t include into their ad statistics. The fields Yahoo currently reports on are:

  • Ad Name
  • Editorial Status
  • Display Rate (%)
  • Quality Index
  • Impressions
  • CTR (%)
  • Clicks

Although you can tell which message is more appealing to your audience, has a , you don’t know if that message is costing you more that another message with a lower click through rate. I would advise advertisers to test a similar message in first, prior to deleting the ads with a lower . Another work around would be to create a duplicate with all the same keywords and bids only changing the ads. This isn’t the most efficient method, but it will work.

I made this know to our Yahoo representative and hopefully Yahoo pushes into their next round of upgrades.

02.15.07

How to get a better quality score in Adwords

Posted in New to PPC at 11:00 pm by PPC Guy

Google is updating their for by the end of this month. This is part of a series of updates that Google has been slowly implementing for the past two years. The update this time around will not add new elements to the ad ranking score, as much as change the weight that each component receives in the scoring, said Nicholas Fox, a senior business product manager at Google.

Google’s Quality score was previously based on keyword (CTR), ad text relevance, the historical performance of the keyword. Now Google is introducing the user’s experience on the landing page as another factor of Quality score.

This means that Google is going to be placing more weight on . Many advertisers are upset because they don’t understand how this will impact their advertising efforts. What this simply means is that you’ll have to invest more time in creating quality messages and landing pages. Your ad will have to be relevant to the search term and your landing page will have to promote a positive user response. A few tips to accomplish this are:

  • Place keywords into the ad text
  • Use the same keywords and messages you used on your Google ad on your landing page.
  • Test messages to get a high Click through rate

You can check you quality score by enabling the for your adgroups. You can select this column by clicking ‘Customize Columns’ in one of your ad groups. The quality label will give you a general indicator of how well your keywords are performing. Remember, the better your , the less you’ll and the higher your will .

02.08.07

Search Center as a Pay Per Click Bid Management Software

Posted in New to PPC, Experienced at 12:22 am by PPC Guy

A few weeks ago I mentioned that we were looking for a new for our . We finally found a solution that met all our business needs. We decided to go with Omniture’s Search Center for our Pay Per Click Bid Management solution. Search Center offers many benefits over our current bid management software, . Here are a few of the features that make Search Center worthwhile.

Alerts
Provides alerts and reports on based on defined thresholds.

This can help you detect suspicious keyword activity early on and possible get refunds as a result.

Rule Builder
The Rule Builder provides a library of best practice . You are also able to specify custom bidding rules.

Day Parting
Ability to perform sophisticated day parting. You can specify which bid rules are ran for individual time segments.

Centralized Access
Search center gives you the ability to manage , , , and .

Easy to import your Keywords into Search Center
Search Center imports the categories, subcategories and keywords and mirrors the campaign structure within their interface. This ensures consistency across marketing channels. This will speed up campaign maintenance and help all team members understand the campaign layout structures.

API Access
Search Center provides the ability to access their interface with our in-house applications.

Pricing
Depends on your negotiating skills.

01.14.07

20 Reasons to Advertise with Google

Posted in New to PPC at 4:53 pm by PPC Guy

I have advertised on all the major search engine platforms and most of the 2nd tier Pay Per Click Engines, and to date Google Adwords is the easiest and most robust system I’ve used. If you’re new to you should make your first PPC experience positive and choose Adwords. Here are a few reasons why you should advertise with Google Adwords. (By the way Google is not paying me for this)

  1. Easy, and intuitive interface - Organizes information in a logical order without cluttering the screen.
  2. Customized reporting - Ability add and remove information in certain reports
  3. Daily budget caps
  4. Organizes keywords into Groups and Subgroups - Also known as Campaigns and Adgroups. This is essential for large advertisers or advertisers that sell many different types of products.
  5. Ad Scheduling - You can specify what time of which days your ads are shown
  6. Almost real time reporting (about 3 hour delay). You know how many clicks, impressions and dollars you’ve spent in almost real time.
  7. Ability to pause all ads with a couple of clicks
  8. Conversion tracking tools - Almost every provider has conversion tracking, but Google also allows you to track 3rd party conversions.
  9. Ad optimization - This is one of the most valuable features. Ad optimization allows you to do message testing, so you can find out what sells.
  10. Integrated
  11. Integrated
  12. Customizable reporting
  13. Ability to Schedule reports
  14. Ability to Email reports
  15. Ability to make quick bid updates
  16. Ability to make mass bid updates without the need of a mass upload sheet.
  17. Instant ad approval
  18. API support - Ability to integrate inhouse reporting with Adwords
  19. Logs account changes
  20. Google has at least 60% share of the search market

01.09.07

Yahoo Purchases MyBlogLog for 10M

Posted in New to PPC at 11:25 am by PPC Guy

Yahoo recently made a noticeable effort to enter the social Internet realm by purchasing MyBlogLog. With over 45,000 blogs currently using MyBlogLog, this is a great investment in Yahoo’s part. The official offer was accepted today. MyBlogLog went for 10M. Bradley Horowitz, VP of product strategy at Yahoo, said that MyBlogLog would remain a separate entity, but there are plans to eventually allow you to login with your YahooID. Yahoo is yet to announce if they will place Pay Per click ads on MyBlogLog, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.