December 6, 2010 By 1 Comment

Product Listing Ads – Google’s PPC Christmas Gift

As someone who has focused about 70 percent of their online marketing time on B2B, it’s always fun to get involved in a B2C project, especially one that’s e-commerce related. Over the past few years I’ve been able to work with a handful of accounts that fit this description nicely. The rush of seeing live dollars at work online is addictive to say the least.

Recently, one of our employee was asking questions about a new e-commerce PPC account she was assigned and the topic of Google Product Listing Ads came up. As the beta tests had been limited for a long time and the client wasn’t a Google affiliate, it seemed as if it would have to wait.

But not for long! Earlier this month Google revealed that they were expanding these product listing ads (PLA) for all of their advertisers and just in time for the holiday season!

Product Listing Ads

The key points that advertisers should be aware of when thinking how to set up product listing ads are:

  • They pull data (product image, price, and merchant name) from the Google Merchant Center.
  • No fancy, persuasive ad copy.
  • CPA based price (as opposed to CPC, you only pay when people who clicked convert to a sale).
  • Not based upon keywords (see Google eliminating keywords from PPC).

With a successful account (also running through Google Merchant Center), we were just given access to this expanded beta at the end of last week. No, we weren’t greeted by a welcoming e-mail or visit from one of Santa’s elves. Instead we found that we had a new “Auto Targets” Tab inside our AdWords account.

AdWords Auto Targets Tab

Clicking on the “Learn More” link doesn’t yield much help:

AdWords Not Helpful

However, hovering over the Auto Targets Tabbed Tool Tip gives the advertiser a bit more info:

AdWords Auto Target Tip

In doing a bit of digging around the AdWords Help Center, I found a few resources that aren’t linked to (currently) through your AdWords account:

If you think you have the differences down, have been recently included in the beta test, and are ready to try out your new found toolset, then set up is pretty straightforward.

Under the Auto Targets Tab, if you click on “+ Add product target” you’re given a selection of current campaigns and ad groups from which to choose:

Google Auto Targeting

Your choice is to add All Products to the ad group of your choice, or you can be more specific and choose a group of products to display. These are based on up to three different criteria from your Google Merchant Center Feed. Your choices include:

  • product_type
  • brand
  • adwords_grouping
  • condition
  • adwords_labels

If you need help fully understanding Google Merchant Center Attributes, try here.

Once you select your criteria, your new Product Ads will be added to your account. You may change the columns you see to include Conversions, etc. But other than reporting, the only thing you can change is the maximum CPC.

As this is so new I’m not able to report results yet. But if you were a lucky early adopter or can shed some light on anything you’ve learned, please share in the comments and I’ll happily update the post with the most recent information. Stay tuned for the results in my next column.

Additionally, as a comment on my original article, Michael J. Kaye wrote:

Hi, don’t forget that in order to setup the Product Listing Ads properly, you will need to go into the “ads” tab and add a “Product Listing Ad”. More details here:

http://www.ecommercecircle.com/how-to-setup-google-adwords-product-listing-ads_3913272.html

Update (12-7-10): We’ve been up and running with this for a while now but haven’t been able to see any conversions come across. Google got back to us and let us know that this is a known issue and they are looking to have it fixed by the end of the week.

Update 2 (12-8-10): Product Listing Ads conversion tracking is fixed and we’re seeing sales come across now.

Update 3 (12-21-10): Although I thought we’d see more traffic from these at this point, I’ve been quite pleased at our overall conversion rate and cost associated with these Google Product Listings. I’d say overall that the ads appear thus far to give us about a 50% cut in cost per conversion over the text ads running in the same space. Can’t wait to do my full review on these next month. Stay tuned!

Filed Under: Featured, Paid Search Tagged With: adwords, product listing ads
November 13, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Google Ad Sitelinks

Last week, Google announced the launch of a new product called Ad Sitelinks, which is not available for all advertisers yet.  This is usually how they release new products, commencing a preliminary run with a select few advertisers before the product is even widely discussed.  Then they start expanding the reach more and more before it is eventually available to all advertisers through their normal AdWords interface.

This new product allows your AdWords paid search ads to include more links that can go deeper into your content, beyond your landing page.  It would look like the example above.

Advertisers may add up to ten links, although Google will only display up to four.  Google thus recommends that advertisers list their most important links first.

To employ this new feature, it is not necessary to write new ads.  Instead, Google will simply add these new Sitelinks to your current ads.  If you are eligible to participate, you will see the option in your Campaign Settings.  Right after the demographic and language targeting, you should see a section called Networks, Devices, and Extensions.  Within this section there are a few options, one of which being to edit your Ad Extensions.  If you do not see this edit option, then this is likely not available to you yet.

Ad Sitelinks Edit Option

This could prove to be very helpful for some advertisers, allowing more options to consumers.  Google recommends taking advantage of this during the holidays as an easy way to update seasonal promotions.

Filed Under: Featured, Paid Search Tagged With: Ads, google, Paid Search, Pay per click, ppc
October 30, 2009 By Leave a Comment

‘Tis the Season for PPC

Are you in the holiday spirit?  Well, if you have a product or service to be promoted this holiday season, you better get in it fast.  Hopefully, you’ve already thought about how you would like to go about your holiday promotions.  It’s important to get an early start on your holiday campaigns.  In fact, according to the Google Retail Blog, consumers are getting an earlier start on holiday shopping this year than ever before; this includes the researching and purchasing phase.  Here’s a chart to show expected holiday purchasing.  As you can see, there are many consumers to catch from now through Thanksgiving weekend.

Google Retail Holiday 2009 Chart

Early planning is essential.  It’s usually recommended to start planning in August or September at the latest, which will give you time for testing, expansion, and any necessary adjustments.  What’s more, your paid search ads and keywords can run for a bit to improve their quality score.  Ultimately, your campaign will be primed and ready to go for current holiday searches.

Some important dates to remember are…

  • November 27th – Black Friday
  • November 30th – Cyber Monday

Even Christmas Day is a big shopping day.  However, I believe that in-store purchasing this day is more substantial than online.

If you haven’t started your holiday campaigns yet, it’s time to get on the ball.

Photo: ‘Tis the Season courtesy of  bensonkua.

Filed Under: Featured, Paid Search Tagged With: holidays, Paid Search, Pay per click, ppc
September 30, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Truth in Web Marketing: Seeing is Believing

“Let me tell you the truth. The truth is, what is. And what should be is a fantasy, a terrible terrible lie that someone gave to the people long ago.”  –Lenny Bruce

A couple of weeks ago, Sage posted his weekly SEM news and the lead story on that was “Cup of Joe: The Fact of The Matter Is, I am Pretty Drunk Right Now“  a story from the reputable Marketing Pilgrim about Toby Jones: “a serial entrepreneur that understands successful small business tactics that have given him a competitive edge more than once.” According to Marketing Pilgrim: “This man has the pulse of the people under his finger at all times. To put it simply, he is one with his market. He understands small business tactics so well that he can pull off stellar marketing materials like the one above while completely intoxicated!”

The problem? Toby Jones is 100% fake. That’s right folks, the man responsible for “Jones’ Big Ass Truck Rental & Storage” and “Jones’ Good Ass BBQ & Foot Massage” is a phony. Somewhere, Holden Caulfield is laughing you. It took me approximately 30 seconds with Google to determine that things were not as they seemed. As it turns out, the videos above were made by bigdogeatchild and Toby Jones is actually a stand-up comedian, Robert Hines.

wrong age

Now that doesn’t mean that the spots are any less funny. In my mind, the fact that so many people eat it up, longing for it to be real make this even more funny than originally intended. In reality though, this should speak tons to those of us involved in web marketing. From link bait, to viral campaigns, to text ads on Google there are volumes to be learned and applied from this example.

And if you look to the left here and you realize that that top lady in the PPC ad there might not be 22 years of age, then you should also question where she’s from and if you really would have a chance or would even want to meet her on a night out around town. She’s been following me around the internet so much lately I highly doubt that she even has time to get out if she wants to.  In reality though, I’m starting to doubt that she’s even from Akron ;-) But for someone, somewhere, this ad is working. Are yours?

Photo “Fake Love” by C。Yu via Flickr.


Filed Under: Featured, Paid Search, SEM News, Social Media Tagged With: creative ppc ads, web marketing
September 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Paid Search Site Targeting and Exclusion

As mentioned in my last blog post, Microsoft adCenter Placement Reports, MSN commenced transparency, via specialized reports, of where your ads display within the content and search networks; namely, the Publisher Placement Performance report.  Since that post, Yahoo Search Marketing began sharing this same information, as well.  Their report is named the Ad Delivery Report.  Google’s original version, available since June of 2007, is called the Placement Performance Report.

These reports are very helpful when viewing performance of your campaigns.  To take this information to the next level, you’ll want to use it in managing your campaigns.  In these reports, you can view which sites are working well and then target them with higher bids to try for better placement in Google AdWords.  This does not seem to be an option at this point in Yahoo or MSN.  Conversely, in all three of the engines, you can see which sites are more costly with no return (conversions) and you can choose to block them.

In Google, you can adjust bids per site and exclude sites within the campaign or ad group.  In the new AdWords interface, you can view this information under the Networks tab.  You must choose to show the Automatic Placements to view all sites and you can choose any of interest for managed bidding or exclusion.  You can also exclude sites through their Site and Category Exclusion tool.

In Yahoo, you may submit sites in their Blocked Domain tool.  This can be found in the General Account Information under the Administration tab.  When blocking sites in MSN, you can do so under the Campaign or Ad Group Settings under Website Exclusions.

These are great tools to use when managing your Paid Search accounts.  Hopefully Yahoo and MSN will continue to improve these features to make them more robust.  Google has been working on this longer and has more functionality.  I encourage everyone to take advantage of these reports and use them wisely.

Photo courtesy of lorello.

Filed Under: Featured, Paid Search Tagged With: google, MSN, Paid Search, Pay per click, ppc, Yahoo Search Marketing
August 21, 2009 By 3 Comments

Microsoft adCenter Placement Reports

If you are a fan of Google’s Placement Performance reports, you may be interested in MSN’s version.  While running reports in Microsoft adCenter, I ran into this report that I had not before seen.  They call it the Publisher Placement Performance report.

Microsoft adCenter Publisher Placement Report

This report is very similar to the Placement Performance report that is available in Google AdWords.  This report allows you to see on what sites within their network your ads are showing.  This capability makes the content network advertising more manageable because it allows for more transparency.  This report breaks it down by Search and Content network.  In the content network results, I see my ads were showing on sites such as moneycentral.msn.com and online.wsj.com.  Under the search results, there are sites such as bing.com and ivillage.com listed.  iVillage.com is listed because they use MSN listings as part of their search feature.  There are many different sites listed under each network type.

While running this report in one of our accounts, it allowed me to go back to May 13, 2009 to retrieve data for this report.  It was unable to gather any data before this time.

I highly recommend using this report to your advantage to see where your ads are showing, because this is a crucial component to the overall success of your campaign.  It offers an understanding as to which sites perform well and which ones fail to bring any conversions.

In my next post, I’ll discuss what to do with this information once you start running these reports.

Photo courtesy of isriya.

Filed Under: Featured, Paid Search Tagged With: bing, MSN, Paid Search, ppc
July 24, 2009 By 2 Comments

Paid Search Geo-Targeting Hierarchy

Location, location, location was once the mantra of successful businesses in regards to brick-and-mortar organizations.  With so many businesses online these days, it would be expected that location may no longer frustrate success; if your business is online, it’s everywhere.  Oh, but not so fast; location very much matters online, and that’s where Google’s geo-targeting solutions come into play.

There are many different ways in Google in which you may geo-target locations.  You can target by country, state, city, zip code, or custom location by dragging points on the map.  You may also target by DMA (Designated Market Area), which is defined by Google as

“Media markets in which people can receive the same or similar television and radio station offerings, as well as offerings of other media types, such as newspapers. DMAs are defined by Nielsen Media Research, and are used to identify specific media markets for those interested in buying and selling television, advertising and programming.”

What if your business could benefit from displaying different messages to someone searching at the state level as opposed to the zip code level, but you want to speak to both audiences?  There are ways to reach to everyone with a different message.  First, you must understand the hierarchy of the geo-targeting capabilities.

Let’s say there are three campaigns set up with the same keywords but different geo-targeting.  One campaign targets at the state level, one at the DMA level, and one at the zip code level; the targeted areas are Ohio, Cleveland-Akron (Canton), and 44304 (our zip code at the office), respectively.

If someone in Columbus, Ohio searches for a keyword that is common in all three campaigns, they will be served an ad from the campaign that is targeting Ohio at the state level.  If someone in Cleveland searches for this same term, they would be eligible for both the state level and DMA level campaign ads.  They would end up being shown the ads from the DMA targeted campaign.  The most specific targeting will take over.  Lastly, if I were to search for this same term while here at the office, I would see the ads targeted to 44304.

This could be an important tactic for some businesses, such as banks and real estate agencies, where audience locations may be specific.  For example, the state level might show them the state headquarters, the DMA might show them the regional headquarters, and the zip code targeting would allow them to see the local branch.

Photo courtesy of davidrossharris.

Filed Under: Featured, Paid Search Tagged With: geo-targeting, google, Paid Search, ppc
June 26, 2009 By 3 Comments

Google Search Query Report

If you are using broad-matched keywords in Google, I hope that you have taken advantage of the Search Query Reporting that is available through Google, also.  This report is also useful when using phrase-matching.  When you use broad-matching, you are allowing Google to show your ads whenever a similar keyword is searched or something that they deem relevant to your keyword.  Especially with their expanded broad-matching, many times your ad may be showing for keywords that you do not find to be relevant at all.  This can be a costly mistake but may be combated through negative keyword matching with the help of the Search Query Report.

The Search Query Report shows you what people typed in Google to make your ad appear.  This includes these expanded broad searches.  This is helpful to review and pull out keywords that would bring you unqualified traffic.  You can then add these keywords as negative keywords to prevent it from happening again.  This is an ongoing process that will help refine your account.

Let’s say, for example, you are bidding on the keyword “tennis shoes.”  In your Search Query Report, you may find that people are searching for “kids tennis shoes” and you only sell adult sizes.  You should add “kids” as a negative keyword to prevent spending money on customers that won’t find what they are looking for.   You may also end up with keywords in the report like “tennis rackets” which may not pertain to your business.  In this case, you should add “rackets” as a negative keyword.

Along with picking out the possible negative keywords, you should also review for new keywords on which to bid.  There may be some keywords that you hadn’t thought of that you should capitalize on, perhaps long tail phrases or common misspellings.  This is where broad-matching comes in handy.

For example, if there are people that are clicking on your ads and converting off of the key phrase “buy new tennis shoes,” you should consider adding this key phrase to the account.  This will allow you to appear more often when people search this rather than just hoping that the broad-matched key phrase “tennis shoes” will catch it.  It also may end up being a cheaper cost per click as it is a longer phrase.

For anyone who has run the Search Query Report lately, you might have noticed some recent changes.  They are now showing more query results rather than lumping many together under “Other Unique Queries.”  They also started noting “Session-Based” by some broad-matched queries.  This lets you know that that query was evaluated alongside previous queries from that person to decide to show your ad.

Photo courtesy of dullhunk.

Filed Under: Featured, Paid Search Tagged With: google, Paid Search, ppc
June 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment

How to Hulu

I had a stomach ache over the weekend. Normally when this happens, I take a big swig of Pepto-Bismol, lay on the sofa, and watch some TV. This time Hulu accompanied my chalky pink stomach-savior.

About two weeks ago, I downloaded Hulu Desktop from Hulu Labs. Now I can surf Hulu from my sofa using my Windows Media Player remote. I attached my lil’ laptop to my LCD TV and voila! I can watch the Hulu in all its glory from my sofa on the TV. With about 30 minutes of putzing around on my laptop, I successfully stopped using my cable TV service.

Since I have officially gotten sick of seeing Men’s Speed Stick and Sprint commercials on Hulu, I thought I would look into their advertising model to see how this whole thing works. So I contacted their sales department and here is the low-down on Hulu advertising. Maybe I can perk some reader’s interest and I won’t have to hear more about armpits!

As you probably guessed, this is a CPM model. You get your commercials tossed into a show and you get a sponsor link on the video page. The big issue with this is the CPM. I was told that CPMs range in the neighborhood of $25 to $40.

Besides the high cost, there is one other factor that I’m not super excited about with Hulu’s advertising program. You cannot just bid to be shown along side a certain show; you bid to be included in demographic chunks. Now, these are not demographics like we normally think of online where you bid to be in front of someone who falls into a specified range. These demographics are based upon the people who tend to watch certain shows.

So how does this play out? I was catching up on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Thanks to Microsoft adCenter Labs’ Audience Intelligence tool, these shows that are most actively watched by men between the ages of 18 and 34. To me, that is about the audience that the Speed Stick commercials were targeting. They bid on that demographic and because I was watching a show that seemed like a likely target for a male between the ages of 18 and 34, I was served up their ad.

Was it effective? Sure. I mean I’m blogging about armpits so something had to take hold.

Here’s the thing you have to remember though: These ads are not going to result in boatloads of direct traffic to a site. Online video, rich media ads and standard banners are not going to get you the return you see in search, but what they will get you is the intangible concept of lift, the idea of more brand awareness and more people actively looking for your brand.

If you partake in some mad Hulu-ing, don’t freak out about low click-throughs to your site. Instead, watch your stats programs more carefully. Look for increases in direct traffic and increases in branded searches from the engines. Compare these numbers to a timeframe without the added benefits of video ads, and see what kind of growth you have. It might just be the missing piece to your marketing puzzle!

Thanks miss_blackbutterfly for the awesome pic on Flickr!

Filed Under: Featured, Paid Search Tagged With: CPM, paid seach, video ads
May 29, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Google Trademark Update

I wanted to add an update to a past blog post I wrote, Trademark Infringement in PPC.  Last week, Google updated their trademark policy in the US.  More ads will be allowed to use trademarks in their ad text with these new criteria.

This change will be mostly helpful to AdWords advertisers that are resellers or informational sites.  You can now use a trademark in your ad text if you are using the term in a descriptive way, reselling the trademarked product, selling components for the trademarked product, or providing non-competitive information on the trademark.  Your landing page will have to back this up, too.

If you are advertising your site on Google AdWords for any of these reasons, and have run into problems with declined ads in the past because of trademark policies, you should edit your ads now.  You can resubmit these ads with the trademark terms and they could start running as soon as June 15.  This is only the US, but pertains to both the Search and Content networks.

This is a big change for Google, as this has been a problem that many advertisers have run into the past.  Fortunately, I think this should allow for the proper sites to use trademarked terms appropriately, without their use being abused.

Photo courtesy of gurms.

Filed Under: Featured, Life, Paid Search, Social Media Tagged With: Ads, Google AdWords, Paid Search, Pay per click, ppc
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