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Posts Tagged ‘Google AdWords’

Google rolls out click-to-call for AdWords

1
February
2010

Keith Vera
Client Services Manager
After a successful testing of the new AdWords click-to-call feature, Google has rolled out the service to all paid-search advertisers.  AdWords click to call now “makes it even easier for potential customers to reach you by adding a location-specific business phone number in ads that appear on mobile devices with full internet [...]

Keith Vera
Client Services Manager

After a successful testing of the new AdWords click-to-call feature, Google has rolled out the service to all paid-search advertisers.  AdWords click to call now “makes it even easier for potential customers to reach you by adding a location-specific business phone number in ads that appear on mobile devices with full internet browsers”. Phones with full browser capability that can show standard HTML web pages, like the iPhone, will allow phone number in the ads to be clicked to make phone calls direct to a business. The ads can be served based on a users specific location, automatically displaying the business location closest to the user.

View how click-to-call adverting works, shown in the Google Mobile (Ad)itude video:
Mobile [Ad]itude 9 with Meredith: Click to Call Ads

Costs to advertisers are the same as the cost for a click, which is a very cost effective way to generate calls to a business. Let us know what you think of the new click-to-call AdWords feature, and if you’ve seen the same type of boost in click-through rates that trail participants reported.

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Google Announces New Search-Based Keyword Tool

19
November
2008

This new tool is designed to help advertisers find appropriate Google AdWords keywords that are relevant to a particular landing page they want to use, essentially taking the guesswork out of keyword selection.

Keith Vera
Account Manager

Google announced yesterday the release of a new “search-based keyword tool", currently in beta. This new tool is designed to help advertisers find appropriate Google AdWords keywords that are relevant to a particular landing page they want to use, essentially taking the guesswork out of keyword selection. Just plug in your website and a list of terms is returned that will help you better understand what your “potential customers” are actually searching on to find your products or services.

The problem with this new approach, for service based businesses in particular, is that the site or pages the new tool will make keyword suggestions for are (or should be) already optimized for highly relevant terms based on search volume. These terms are found through traditional keyword research like using the keyword tool Google already offers. Just to test, I ran two different service-based sites through the new tool, one currently optimized for SEO, and one that is not. Naturally, the site optimized for SEO had many keyword suggestions that were highly relevant to the site, along with all the important information like monthly search volume, competition level, and suggested bid price. The site that is not currently optimized returned just one extraneous-for-paid-search keyword suggestion.

It appears that the new search-based tool is only significantly valuable if the site that it is analyzing is properly optimized or able to be crawled easily by Google. I can see this new tool being useful to help analyze current landing pages, or to possibly catch some keyword terms that advertisers may have missed during initial keyword development. Let us know your thoughts on Google’s new search-based tool.

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Google AdWords Quality Score Update

25
August
2008

Google announced Thursday through their blog a major update to how AdWords Quality Score is calculated.

Keith Vera
Account Manager

Google announced Thursday through their blog a major update to how AdWords Quality Score is calculated.  According to Google, here are the updates that advertisers can expect:

– Quality Score will now be more accurate because it will be calculated at the time of each search query

- Keywords will no longer be marked ‘inactive for search’

- ‘First page bid’ will replace ‘minimum bid’ in your account

What does this update mean for advertisers?   For starters, all keywords in campaigns that are currently inactive for search will suddenly be active.  If bids on those terms are low enough then there should not be too much of an issue, however if bids are high enough for those terms to show ads, a large unexpected spike in spend for those campaigns could occur.  AdWords users will also most likely see cost-per-clicks across their campaigns rise in the coming months, as more advertisers take advantage of the new fist page bid option. 

These changes will roll out slowly over the next few days before they are fully implemented. Advertisers can also expect to see future updates to AdWords Editor and the AdWords API to reflect the new "first page bid" option.

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Google Exposes Students to the World of Paid Search

10
June
2008

University students across 47 countries around the world had the opportunity to experience first-hand SEM tactics that help increase visibility on search engine result pages (SERPs) in the Google Online Marketing Challenge.

Christine Pepin
Media Coordinator

According to Compete.com, over 135 million people frequent Google’s website each month. Despite the widespread familiarity of the search giant’s site, many visitors are unaware of the strategy behind the paid search system that business-owners rely on for exposure. This year, university students across 47 countries around the world had the opportunity to experience first-hand SEM tactics that help increase visibility on search engine result pages (SERPs) in the Google Online Marketing Challenge.

To compete, student teams worked with a local business not already advertising with Google AdWords to develop strategic online marketing campaigns. Using only $200 of free advertising provided by Google, the teams launched a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign for three consecutive weeks. Judging was based on a post-campaign summary of each team’s results and experience during the competition. In mid July winners will be announced, with the global winners receiving a trip to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA, and regional winners a trip to their local Google office. Individual and university recognition will be awarded to other top finalists.

As a participator in this competition, and as someone working in the interactive marketing industry, it is easy to see the value of the Google Online Marketing Challenge. The process of identifying the most effective keywords to produce high click-through and conversion rates, understanding the role of bidding and which ad content users are more receptive to, are all important elements of paid search that students learn first hand throughout the competition. Come October, 2008 when registration for the 2009 Challenge opens, EyeTraffic Media will be assisting both The University of Maryland and Georgetown University in developing their AdWords campaigns.

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Changes to Google AdWords Site Targeting

9
November
2007

The Google AdWords Site Targeting Campaign program has been redubbed “Placement Targeting”? and features new options.

Keith Vera
Account Manager

The Google AdWords Site Targeting Campaign program has been redubbed "Placement Targeting" and features new options. The renaming of the site targeting tactic as reported by the Inside AdWords Blog comes from the upgraded drill level in which advertisers can now place their advertisements on sites within the Content Network. Advertisers can choose to show their ads all the way down to precise subsections of sites and even a specific ad block on a Content Network page.

Along with the new improvements, Google is also introducing a new cost-per-click bidding option allowing advertisers to pay per click, or per impression depending on needs. Conversion focused campaigns can be run on a CPC  basis to maximize ROI, while branding oriented campaigns can be run on a CPM basis to maximize impression share.

Share your experience with Placement Targeting.

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Google AdWords Behavioral Targeting

3
August
2007

Recently Google has started to tailor the delivery of its paid search advertisements, basing the delivery on not just the search query, but the previous query and sometimes even combinations of recent queries executed by the searcher.

Keith Vera
Account Manager

Well, sort of. Recently Google has started to tailor the delivery of its paid search advertisements, basing the delivery on not just the search query, but the previous query and sometimes even combinations of recent queries executed by the searcher. Google’s new approach to paid search ad delivery is detailed nicely in a blog post by Zachary Rodgers of ClickZ (link below).

Google has been quick to shoot down any notion that they are moving towards true behavioral targeting. Nick Fox, Google’s group business product manager for ads quality states, "We’re not doing things like trying to profile the user to find out if the user is a man or a woman or a 45-year-old or a 25-year-old," he said. "In the context of search it doesn’t seem that powerful, and we haven’t seen any evidence that it will be that powerful."

While online behavioral targeting carries heavy privacy issues, I would disagree with Fox in that I can easily see how behavioral targeting can immensely help paid search advertisers. All marketers have a strong idea of who is in their target audience; wouldn’t paid search campaign ad servings be a lot better off if advertisers knew exactly what audience demographics their impressions were reaching? On the other hand, is capturing this kind of detailed information on searchers an excessive violation of privacy rights?

So let’s hear your opinion. Who out there would like to see stronger behavioral targeting techniques for paid search ad placements?

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Having Trouble with Google AdWords Conversion Tracking?

19
June
2007

Recently we have been experiencing anomalies in our conversion tracking data across some of our Google AdWords accounts leaving us in need of a solution, and the recommended one from Google is their own product, Google Analytics.

Keith Vera
Account Manager

You might be surprised to learn how easy the answer can be. Recently we have been experiencing anomalies in our conversion tracking data across some of our Google AdWords accounts. While Google has admitted that there is a current conversion reporting problem, I have yet to hear a legitimate reason as to why these errors are occurring. Of course, this leaves us in need of a solution to report those ever-important conversions, and the recommended one from Google is their own product, Google Analytics.

Now I know some of you might be skeptical about the usefulness of this free solution. However, for those who cannot afford a more-robust analytics product, we have found that the recently updated Google Analytics is a good answer to our conversion reporting problems. Once linked to your AdWords account it can provide more significant insight into your web traffic then AdWords conversion tracking. Unlike AdWords conversion tracking code, the Google Analytics pixel is simply one piece of JavaScript code you put on landing pages and every page you want to track. Of course to gain the best insight into traffic patters, you will need to install the Analytics pixel on every page in your site rather than just your conversion points.

You can find out more information about Google Analytics at the Help Center, set up Google Analytics through your AdWords account under the Analytics tab, or directly at the Google Analytics site.

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