February 11, 2012

Optimized Ad Serving? I Don’t Think So

Optimized ads

Below is a screenshot from a display network campaign that was running for about 16 hours. All the default setting were in place, meaning that ads were set to optimize instead of rotate.

Optimized ads

So unless Google is omniscient (and the algorithm may be approaching that level) I’m pretty sure they should have showed the other ad at least a little bit before making that determination. Has anyone else seen this?

AdWords Ads Now in Purple!

Adwords Purple Background

If you haven’t seen it yet, just run a Google search. Most likely you’ll see the new light purple background on the ads directly above organic results. It looks like this:

Adwords Purple Background

Subtle, isn’t it? On my monitor it’s so subtle that I didn’t see it at first glance. However, after sliding Firefox over onto my laptop screen I saw it more clearly. Rimm-Kaufman actually got the following quote direct from Google:

“Starting today and ramping up to 100% globally by the end of this week, we’ll be changing the background color for ads that appear above the search results on Google.com as well as our local domains. The ads, which currently have a pale yellow background, will change to have a pale purple background. This change is part of the ‘look and feel’ update to our color palette and logo that we made back in May of this year to keep the Google results page looking fresh and modern. This is purely an aesthetic change to our ads and won’t have any impact on the way we target or serve advertisements on Google.com.”

Look and feel? Here’s why I think they did it?

Google Is All About The Money

Don’t forget that Google makes billions of dollars in advertising revenue EVERY MONTH! Even the smallest change can have a huge impact on their bottom line and they test a lot. Based on what I see, this helps the top ads blend into the organic results. That means more people, even ad-averse people, will click on search ads, thus padding Google’s pockets.

As a PPC advertiser I like it a lot. Accounts with high QS will get rewarded even further by showing above organic results and getting an even higher CTR. For companies in competitive spaces (where high bids are also needed to hit the top 3) it sucks. They’ll have to work that much harder to make their PPC work.

But make no mistake, even though Google says this is “purely an aesthetic change”, I’m sure that dollars and cents made a difference.

Broad Match Modifiers Now Available in U.S.

Google announced the feature back in May and today the Rimm-Kaufman Group is announcing that broad match modifiers are now available to all US customers. So what’s the big deal?

What are “Broad Match Modifiers”?

Ever since AdWords went to expanded broad match (that’s Google-speak for “we’ll show you ad if we feel it is within 100 miles of being relevant to a search”) advertisers have been adding using more phrase match, exact match and negative keywords to avoid less qualified impressions and clicks. Frankly, experts have been bitching about this since it was pushed system wide. Of the 13 Deadly Sins of PPC, I rank it #3. Broad match modifiers is Google’s response to all the complaints.

This visual should help explain, but basically you add a plus sign to let Google know which word(s) are required.



Basically, if you add a plus sign in front of every word you can revert to the basic broad match. While most most beginner/intermediate users will go this route, advanced users will continue to test and optimize to find the best combination. I hate on broad match plenty, but Google has a lot of data and may help you discover profitable keywords you might have missed.

AdWords Offering to Set Up First Campaign for You

AdWords Free Campaign Setup

AdWords is famous for saying that you can reach millions of potential customers in just 5 minutes. They have taken every step possible to make signing up easy. Now, they appear to have taken it even further:

AdWords Free Campaign Setup

As you can see, Google is actually giving you a phone number for a free consultation and offering to set up your first campaign for you, FREE!

Why now?

Google is somewhat famous for not having good customer support. Sure their products are free, but if you needed help good luck actually getting a person on the phone (unless you had an account rep, which translated to “if you spend enough money”). Now they are volunteering to talk to you and even lend a hand?

This is all about the money. AdWords is the engine that drives Google’s profit. Google obviously is looking for some more revenue, so they will help advertisers set up new accounts. Pretty simple.

My only concern is the quality. I have gotten quite a few campaign and ad groups from Google reps and I haven’t been impressed with the results. They group the keywords tightly (good) and use the keywords in the ad copy (also good) but they don’t usually do enough research to write compelling ad copy. You get cookie cutter ads that get decent CTR and send generic traffic to your homepage. Not a real recipe for success.

Has anyone out there took them up on this deal? How did it go?

How To Add Sitelinks To Your Google AdWords Ads

AdWords sitelinks settings

Have you seen an AdWords ad that looked like this, with the links across the bottom?

Picture of AdWords ad with sitelinks

This is an example of Sitelinks, and as of June 24th, all AdWords advertisers can use them. But in typical Google style, they’ve buried the feature so that most basic users won’t find the option. Therefore, I have put together this step-by-step guide:

Google AdWords Sitelinks

  1. Choose Your Campaign – This feature exists at the campaign level, so login to your AdWords account and select the campaign where you’re going to add sitelinks.
  2. Go to the Settings Tab – Along with lots of other goodies, here is where you’ll find this golden nugget.
  3. Find Sitelinks under Ad Extensions – Click EditAdWords sitelinks settings
  4. Fill in up to 10 links – AdWords sitelinks interface
  5. Click Save

The Catch


For now Google claims that sitelinks will only show for “the single top-ranked ad for a given user search” (but lower position ads also have been seen with sitelinks too). So make sure and take the time to add these valuable little guys to you campaigns, but remember that the links should be relevant for the entire campaign.

AdWords Reporting Keeps Getting Easier

Google logoWhile Google has been called out recently to release ad and campaign QS data, they have been taking steps to make other data more easily obtained in AdWords.

More Reports in the Interface

I was a big fan when the Search Query Report functionality was moved into the interface. Not only did it make obtaining the information so much easier, it made it easier to act on that data by adding new keywords, new match types and negative keywords.

Google is continuing to build on that success by moving even more reporting functionality into the interface. A recent post from Inside AdWords blog details the changes, which includes the ability to “segment your data by things like keyword match type and day of week, and email and schedule downloads of the data you want to share.”

If you haven’t been using reports, don’t blame Google, because they’re making it easier all the time.

PPC Poll – How Often Do You Run AdWords Reports?




R.I.P – Google AdWords Professionals

Google AdWords Professionals

Google AdWords Professionals
“She’s a goner.”

“Time of death?”

“Monday, April 26th, 2010 at 3:01 AM.”

And thus was the end of the Google AdWords Professionals (GAP) program.

New – Google AdWords Certification

Before the body was even cold, Google already had their new bride at the altar; Google AdWords Certification. According to the post on the Official AdWords Blog “the new program provides agencies and their employees with more up-to-date, comprehensive, strategy-focused training and certification on the latest tools and best practices for managing AdWords accounts.” Here are the highlights:

  • More training materials for agencies so they can sell AdWords more effectively
  • Tougher certification tests
  • Advanced-level tests
  • New badges that link to a verification page

And here is what I think of them:

  • Training agencies better produces an army of volunteer AdWords sales reps who already have relationships with the clients. They’ve been trying to do this with Agency Land but this has a much larger scope. Makes great business sense.
  • The test is tougher than the previous test. The test browser doesn’t let you access the internet to teach, it’s 120 questions long and you only have 2 hours. However, I took the Fundamentals test in less than 1 hour, with no studying and passed easily. This should be no sweat to experienced PPC wizards.
  • I like this idea because it allowed them to ask very in-depth questions about more advanced features of AdWords. Still passed the test without studying, but it was a better test in my opinion.
  • New badges. Cool. Click to verify option. Cool. Anything that helps me sell my services to a client I welcome.

What have been your thoughts/impressions on the new Google Certification Program?

Creative Relevance in PPC Ads

Food Inc PPC ads

News Flash: To get better CTR and conversion rates, your PPC ads need to be relevant to the search term and the user intent.

Okay, so that’s not really news so much as it is common sense. But before you dismiss this post, consider the following PPC ads for the search term “Food Inc DVD” (which is obviously a very specific product name):
Food Inc PPC ads

As you can see, Barnes & Noble and eBay hit the nail on the head. My exact term is in the headline and therefore bolded. eBay even takes the extra step and puts the search term in the ad copy to reinforce the relevance of their ad. However, look at our friends from DealOz.com. They may brag about their 70% off DVDs and free coupons, but I don’t even know if they have Food Inc. (in their defense, all three ads go to a search results/product page for Food Inc.)

Easy Way – Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI)

Our eBay and Barnes & Noble ads weren’t written with my exact search term in them. They use DKI to insert my term. For those of you not familiar with the syntax, in AdWords you simply put {KeyWord:Default Copy} into your ad and AdWords will automatically put the exact search term into your ad (as long as it fits the character limits). Instant relevancy, but be careful. Make sure to monitor your negative keywords or you could end up with an embarrassing faux pas like this:
Target PPC ad

Last time I checked Target didn’t sell infant body parts and they definitely didn’t qualify as furniture.

Hard Way – Static Ads in Tight Ad Groups

Every PPC campaign has a handful of top-performing keywords. You know, the 20% of your keywords that deliver 80% of the results. Take these keywords and place them in very tightly themed ad groups (like 2 or 3 keywords/ad group). Then right static ads using the keywords directly. This will ensure relevancy and allow you to put 2 or 3 relevant mentions in the ad (headline, ad copy, even the display URL). With a highly relevant ad, you can then work on your landing page to make sure you’ve established a strong chain of relevancy.

YouTube Advertising: So Easy A Caveman Could Do It

If you consider YouTube a search engine it would be larger than Yahoo or Bing (according to the February numbers from comScore). BILLIONS of videos are viewed every month. However, most PPC advertisers haven’t been tapping this resource because of the resources required to create overlays for YouTube videos. Google saw a huge revenue opportunity felt their pain and enhanced the Display Ad Builder to create InVideo ads.

Advertise on YouTube

Just bring up the Display Ad Builder, pick a template and turn your current image ads into overlay ads. You can still choose either CPC or CPM while targeting all the way down to a video by video level. However, I would recommend you ask yourself a few questions before taking the plunge:

  • Is your product/service relative to the videos on which it’s being overlayed?
  • Are you okay with potentially being perceived as an annoying advertiser messing up someone’s YouTube creation?
  • Why should someone leave their video by clicking your ad?

If you don’t answer Yes, Yes and have a dang good reason on the last question, this probably isn’t for you. But Google isn’t stupid and I see some opportunities here. With the video by video targeting you could place your ads on a handful of extremely relevant videos where your ad presents a complementary product/service or you could “hijack” a video as it goes viral to get a ton of exposure. However, the best opportunity I can think of would be to serve your own ads on your own videos. The link in the video’s description is great, but now you could have a clickable call-to-action (CTA) right on the video itself.

How do you see this working?