Three men are walking down the beach and come upon a tarnished bronze lamp. After wiping off the sand with a t-shirt a genie emerges and grants each of the men 1 wish.

The first man wishes that he started Microsoft, so Bill disappears in a puff of smoke to Redmond, WA.

The next man wishes that he founded Google, so Sergei disappears in a puff of smoke to Mountain View, CA.

The third man was a humble PPC manager. After pondering a moment, he wished that Facebook PPC would be smart enough to serve ads not only on demographic information set by the advertiser, but also incorporate user feedback.

The genie just laughed and said, “Hey, I’m a genie, not Mark Zuckerberg.”

User Feedback

Last year, the most popular post on this blog was my rant – Why I Hate Facebook PPC Ads: A User’s Perspective. Basically, I rail on the fact that despite marking ads as “Uninteresting” or “Offensive” or “Repetitive”, Facebook still shows the same ads.

In the comments several people gave recommendations on how to improve the ads I saw. The suggestions talked about how I needed to “Like” more things or fill out my profile more so that Facebook would have a better idea of what to show me. While I agree with these suggestions (and even followed them as an experiment) the bigger point here is that I flat out told Facebook I wasn’t interested in certain ads and they still served ads from the same advertisers, to the same sites, for the same services.

Facebook PPC Is Dumb

Dumb
Definition: lacking intelligence or good judgment; stupid; dull-witted (Dictionary.com)

Here is a screenshot of ads I saw on Monday, January 3rd, 2011:

As you can see, Facebook is still showing me dating ads. A full 5-pack of them. So I did what I always do and gave them all the “X” for being “Uninteresting”:

As you can see, Facebook thanks me and then lies to me. Behold the ads I saw the next day, January 4th, 2011:

Two ads from ChristianMingle.com on Monday, two ads from ChristianMingle.com on Tuesday. Ad from Smartdate.com on Monday, ad from Smartdate.com on Tuesday. At least they swapped out RealMatureSingles.com & BlackPeopleMeet.com for True.com. That’s obviously way more relevant.

Why Advertisers Should Be @#!*% Too

This problem isn’t just something that annoys users. If you’re an advertiser bidding on a CPM basis, this is terrible because you’re paying to show ads to someone who has said they aren’t interested (multiple times in my case). If you bid on a CPC basis, this hurts your CTR. Not mad yet?

User feedback is double opt-in feedback. Not only do users click the “X” but they also select a radio button with a reason. That’s double opt-in confirmation that users don’t want to see your ad, yet Facebook keeps showing it over and over.

Am I crazy? Has anyone else thought this might be an issue?

In the words of Andre below, “You are so dumb. You are really dumb. For real…”

You may have seen in the news recently that Lake Superior State University recently added the term “viral” to their List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.

You may have also noticed that every marketing agency with a live body in the office now claims to offer a service to produce or promote viral content.

Look it up in Wikipedia and they define viral as “The adjective or adverb viral and the noun virality may refer to any viral phenomenon, that is, an object or pattern that is able to induce some agents to replicate it, resulting in many copies being produced and spread around.”

However, how does someone outside of the “industry” define what viral means? Enter my two younger brothers:

Situation: They are sitting on the couch during the Christmas break watching a funny YouTube video.

Randy: “How did you find it?”

Mike: “It has 4 million views. You don’t find it; you hear about it.”

Eureka!

That discussion encapsulates what viral is all about. Once something is viral you don’t need to go looking for it, it finds you. Your friend might post it on Facebook. Perhaps you saw a tweet about it. Someone talks about it and then pulls out their smartphone to show you right there on the spot (a personal favorite of mine). That’s how good, bad, awesome or ugly something has to be.

How would you define viral to a non-techie?

Image by SanFranAnnie

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