There were a lot of changes in the PPC industry in 2010. Facebook has become a major player in the PPC world. Microsoft took over PPC ads for Yahoo and now serves ads on about 30% of searches.

And some things don’t change. Google continues to thrash everyone and a poorly managed PPC campaign is still equivalent to flushing cash down the toilet.

Top 6 PPC Posts of 2010

In 2010 I wrote nearly 100 posts, but these were the posts that the readers thought were the best:

1. Why I Hate Facebook PPC Ads – A User’s Perspective topped the list despite being a December post (thanks to a mention from Chris Crum at WebProNews) and was also the most commented post
2. Free AdWords Checklist: The 13 Deadly Sins
3. 4 Ideas for Landing Page Forms – a guest post from Megan Leap of ion interactive
4. 13 Deadly Sins of AdWords – Conclusion
5. Gmail PPC Fail
6. 5 Reasons PPC Is Better than the Ipad

Analysis

The top posts include a Facebook rant, a free download, a guest post, a post from 2009 that still gets a lot of pageviews, a post poking fun at a messed up PPC campaign and a post poking fun at the Apple iPad. The Facebook rant benefited greatly from the mention in WebProNews and the 13 Deadly Sins list got some love from being posted in PPC-related LinkedIn groups. All of these posts got help from Twitter.

Personally I’m happy to see that everyone enjoyed the variety and if you have a suggested topic you’d like to see me address in 2011 please leave me a comment.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

*Rankings based on pageviews from January 1, 2010 to December 20, 2010

Over the weekend I got a bunch of great comments on my post about Why I Hate Facebook PPC Ads. So imagine the irony as I was looking at pictures of my cousin’s recent musical and I see that Facebook is now serving FIVE ADS!



Of course, this isn’t the first time that Facebook has shown 5 ads. Back in April of 2009 this format was seen in the wild and captured by AllFacebook.com. So I guess this is more like a resurrection.

Evidently Facebook has decided to take the shotgun approach to “relevant” ads. If you throw enough ads at the users, you might get them something relevant (even if it’s lost in the shuffle). Now the only question is how long before I see a page with 5 dating ads in a row?

UPDATE

Over the last 24 hours I’ve seen 5 and 4 at various times. Looks like Facebook is doing some testing on this.

Quotes taken out of context can be dangerous!

While reading from Scott Stratten‘s book, UnMarketing, this morning I came across the following quote:

Please look back at the wording and see that I am not selling anything on the landing page. That is probably the worst thing you can do. “I hope you enjoyed the movie, now give me money.”

The reason this caused me to pause was because I stopped reading after the second period and said “What?” Did he just say that not selling on the landing page is the worst thing you can do? Because he was just making the opposite point. Then I read the following sentence and realized that the worst thing you could do was immediately ask for money (which was what he was saying initially). But this got me thinking about how a quote can be taken out of context so easily.

Quoting with Evil Intent

Scott is a major advocate of building relationships to build your business. He rails against cold calling and pushy sales tactics. I heard him speak on his book tour (Salt Lake) and at PubCon. However, let’s say some pushy sales guy wants to be a succubus and steal some of Scott’s cred. He might use the following quote:

“Please look back at the wording and see that I am not selling anything on the landing page. That is probably the worst thing you can do.”

This would make it look like Scott was advocating pushy landing pages that sell, sell, sell. Not cool.

Proper Quoting

Rule #1: Maintain the original intent of the quote.
Rule #2: Refer to Rule #1.

I know you want to use the shortest possible snippet, but make sure you understand the original intent (yes, that means you’ll likely have to read what was said before and after the quote. Maybe even a few paragraphs). Then maintain the integrity of the quote. Seems simple doesn’t it?

I don’t often see the login page for AdWords, so I was pleasantly surprised to see this when I went to log in to a client’s account today:



Google is the king of minimal design, so a big image like this is a major departure. I, for one, like it a lot.

I think this may be a reaction to Bing and the love they’re getting by making things “pretty” with images, so chalk up a point to competition making things better in the PPC world (even if it’s only an image).

Putting your keyword in the title of your PPC ad is a great idea because Google will bold the term, thus helping increase your CTR and QS. However, sometimes it’s the smallest things that trip you up; like a space.



They go to all the work of getting a nice, keyword-rich .co domain and then totally mess up the title. #fail

Over the Halloween weekend (Sunday, October 31st to be precise) I was perusing Facebook and came across the following ad:



As you can see, this ad was custom targeted on at least 3 fronts:

• Gender: I’m a guy, so the picture is of a gal (well endowed of course)
• Relationship Status: I’m single, so they are pushing a dating site (that’s Facebook ads in a nutshell for me)
• Date: This title is only good for 1, maybe 2 days. That’s pretty dang targeted folks

Most likely the ad was also targeted by age, but I can’t say for sure.

Upcoming Holidays = Opportunity

With the targeting options available in Facebook you have some huge opportunities coming up over the next three months. Here are a few suggestions you might consider:

• Thanksgiving/Black Friday: Why not run ads that mention a specific promotion for the holiday? Make sure you have a landing page to match the ad, but make them feel like they’re getting a special deal
• Christmas: Run some ads targeting Cyber Monday. Run ads guaranteeing delivery before Christmas up until the very last day you can actually deliver on the promise. Put the number of days left in the ad such as “Only 2 days left to guarantee your present arrives before Christmas”
• New Year’s: Obviously you’re going to see a lot of health and dieting offers around New Year’s to correspond with everyone’s resolutions. What about an ad that speaks to people’s frustration with failing on their resolutions every year? For example, run this ad on New Year’s Day – “Just 31 days until you break your New Year’s resolutions. We can get you past Feb. 1″
• Hanukkah or Kwanzaa: Use the right keywords and you can reach very specific demographics at just the right time of year

The holiday season is in full swing. Are you taking advantage of it?

Just last week I wrote about Google Boost, the new “set it and forget it” PPC tool for small to medium businesses. I don’t advocate any internet marketing that is “set it and forget it”, but if you need help with PPC I just came across another option that might be more your style: SearchManager from American Express OPEN. I found out about them through this ad in LinkedIn.

What is SearchManager

From the site, SearchManager allows you to “Manage your pay-per-click campaigns all in one place – and improve results”. All the other copy on the site is equally generic in tone and content, but if you look closely at the site you quickly notice that the software is powered by Clickable. This became even more apparent in the product demo video where I saw the familiar red and yellow colors to indicate the urgency of recommendations. My best guess is that SearchManager is nothing more than a white-labeled version of Clickable (unless anyone knows more details and could make a comment?)

And What Is Assist?

What interested me more than the white-labeled Clickable was their Assist option. According to the site, “SearchManager Assist offers pay-per-click management services — whatever amount you need — to maximize your campaigns results.” Now this looks a little more interesting.

They have 3 service levels, Standard, Premium & Elite, that give you a little help and guidance all the way up to full-blown PPC management services. Again, they might simply be reselling Clickable services here, but it is an interesting play. The OPEN community is very targeted at SMBs and this announcement comes right on the heels of the Boost announcement. Evidently the SMB segment of the PPC industry is looking hot right now because there are some big players jumping in the pool.

What do you think about all this?

Google reported revenues of $7.29 BILLION for Q3 2010, with a majority of that income originating from AdWords. I say it all the time, but AdWords pays the bills at Mountain View. Thus I hope you’ll understand my reluctance to endorse the newest addition to the AdWords product offering: Boost!

What is Boost?

The official launch announcement came from the Google Lat Long Blog, but Boost is essentially a super-simplified version of AdWords that Google manages for you. You only need four things to get started:

• A short business description
• A web or Google Place page
• Your business categories
• A monthly budget

After loading up that info Google “automatically sets up your ad campaign – figuring out the relevant keywords that will trigger your ad to appear on Google and Google Maps, and how to get the most out of the budget you allotted”. Sounds great right?

Fox Guarding the Hen House?

Google has a lot of stockholders demanding a return on their investment. They deliver that ROI by beating Wall Street expectations quarter after quarter. You beat expectations by making more revenue. I love AdWords, but I can almost guarantee you that Google will find a way to spend your entire budget every month because that is what keeps the revenue flowing. And nowhere do they mention how to set up conversion tracking, so who knows if those clicks are turning into actual sales or leads.

PS Though the official announcement says this is only available in San Fran, Houston & Chicago, Mike Blumenthal’s blog post about Boost has commenters from Connecticut, New York, Georgia, Tennessee & Florida that set up the product.