As a PPC professional I actually make a point of looking at PPC ads instead of ignoring them like the majority of people on the internet. And while I occasionally come across a misspelling, this one bears special mention because it’s for a major brand. Behold the all new Bud Light Plain…um?
Anyone know who’s managing this campaign?
Growing up on a farm, I would often hear my dad or grandpa talking to a neighboring farmer about the weather. I know it’s somewhat of a joke, but it’s true for good reason. The weather plays an integral part in the success or failure of crops. If you plant too early you run the risk of your seeds molding in the muddy ground without sprouting or the young plants freezing once they have sprouted. Plant too late and you don’t get the crop harvested before it freezes or is damaged in the fall. If you don’t get enough rain, crop yield can be decreased. If you get too much rain, crop yield can be decreased.
Farmers talk about the weather so they can make the best possible decisions. If the summer is going to be dry, you might plant more drought-resistant crops. If spring came late, you can switch to a variety that matures more quickly. Understanding the climate is critical to success.
I recently received the SEMPO State of Search Marketing Report in my email and it contains a lot of insight into the “weather” that the PPC world is going to be experiencing in the coming year. Below are a few of my observations and how I think they might impact your paid search efforts:
So how would a farmer summarize the PPC climate?
Looks like it’s gonna be a bit stormy and lots of these young bucks are gonna have a rough ride.
What do you think about the weather?
No one is surprised when Google products show up as the top result for searches involving Google branded keywords. For example, here is the SERP for a search on the keyword “google adwords”:
As you can see, Google grants itself the top paid ad (with 4 sitelinks as an added bonus) for this search and relegates other advertisers to the right sidebar. No big deal. Run searches for other Google tools and you’ll see similar placement, but they always show up in the barely visible, highlighted box that reads “Ad” in the upper right hand corner. However, I spotted an interesting result yesterday while searching.
I was doing some research and using the “site:” search functionality in Google. First of all, I was surprised to see an ad at all because I couldn’t imagine a PPC manager in his right mind that would be bidding on “site:www.realestateproarticles.com”. However, if you look in the upper right corner of the highlighted box you’ll see the “Google promotion” text:
Obviously this is a different class of ad. But does Google pay for the click like everyone else? Would another advertiser actually show up if they were to bid on this extremely specific phrase? What do you make of it?
The other day, a friend of mine ran a search for “marketing plan software” and got the following SERP:
He sent me the screenshot because he thought that the third ad looked a little odd, and boy was he right. Here is a closer look at the ad in question:
You’ll notice that the highlighted ad shows both the Title and Line 1 in large blue, underlined text. Then you have Line 2 in the regular small black font and the Display URL is in green. I haven’t been able to replicate an ad in this format, so I was wondering if anyone else has seen a similar result? What impact do you think this might have on CTR?
UPDATE: I talked with the advertiser, Marketing Plan Success, just to confirm that yes, the 1st line of ad copy is what is showing after the hyphen in the title.
Yesterday I noticed a new addition to the Google search results page; a little blue triangle next to the #1 paid listing.
With the spartan nature of Google’s results pages this is a big deal. My guess is that CTR could increase 25% for the top listing since the blue triangle/arrow will draw the eye of users.
Anyone know how long this has been live?
PPC ads only allow you 25 characters in the title and 35 characters in line 1, line 2 and the display URL. If you’re counting, that’s 130 characters of available space. Not even a full tweet or text message. Therefore, correct spelling shouldn’t be that hard and I can forgive an occasional error (I’ve made them myself). However, in certain situations you simply MUST get the spelling right; like when you’re using Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI).
Congratulations Paramount Equity, you #FAIL.
While traveling to Costa Rica a couple weeks ago, I was doing searches for a rental car. Mind you, I’m in San Jose, the capitol of Costa Rica, searching on the term “san jose costa rica car rental deals”. Here is what I see:
How in the world does a big company like Avis, which should have a smart person or two working on their PPC, let that ad into the wild? I am in Costa Rica, so they must have targeted the country and I’m using Costa Rica right in the search string.
Congratulations Avis, you #FAIL on geotargeting!
Yesterday I was doing some research and came across the following set of ads in the 1-3 positions:
All I could say was “How did they get that phone number to appear next to the title?” The phone number in question was plain text, not clickable or anything.
Anyone have an answer?
Last week Google moved the MCC link and drop-down box up to the top of the screen and now I’m seeing these cute little icons in their own column of the MCC dashboard.
The red one is for critical alerts in your individual client accounts. In this case, a failed payment method.
The yellow guy is for the annoying less important alerts, such as a campaign that has ended (even though it was set to end and ended right on time).
Looks like the all-seeing eye of Google has decided to focus its gaze on the MCC interface yet again.
As usual, Google continues to change and modify their AdWords platform and policies. The newest change (announced via the AdWords blog) was the topic of a Brad Geddes post on Search Engine Land that very clearly laid out the good and bad of the policy change. However, here is my take:
A lot of PPC providers out there take your money and give you back the leads/phone calls that result from the spend. If the results justify the cost they keep paying. However, these aggregators don’t usually report how much was spent on clicks and how much they pocket for themselves. Hence the policy change.
Google is just requiring that the end client know how many impressions they got, how many clicks and the total spend. This way the advertiser will know if an agency is pocketing a large chunk or not.
In a word: Transparency! Agencies that are afraid to disclose their cut should be culled from the herd. If you’re good then your clients should be willing to pay the fee because you produce results. Pretty simple if you ask me.
Conversion rate optimization and PPC wizard. If I'm not out playing ultimate frisbee or golf you may find me hiking, skiing or mountain biking. [Read More …]