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Posted on May 15, 2008
Set and Forget PPC (AKA Burning Your Cash) - 7 Ways to Stop the Burn
BY BEN CASTELLI
Cruise control was a great idea for cars, auto pilot is perfect for planes, but in terms of pay per click advertising there is no such thing as "set and forget". A lot of companies waste their money (and Google makes a lot of money) from pay per click campaigns that are not regularly optimized. Checking up on your PPC campaigns several times a week is essential and tackling some ongoing weekly action items will really stretch that budget dollar and improve ROI. Where do you start? Below is a list of 7 digestible weekly to-dos:
Posted on April 7, 2008
Top 5 Pay Per Click Mistakes
BY BEN CASTELLI
I promised Stepan I would actually contribute to the CTC blog when the new design finally went live. Here were are 6 months later, the new design is awesome and its time for me own up. So here it is, the top 5 Pay Per Click mistakes we commonly see in client's PPC programs. If you are currently running a PPC campaign, I think you will find this list very useful, if not you may want to bookmark, star, tag or stash in a folder somewhere for future reference…
Top 5 Most Common PPC Mistakes (don't let this be you!)
- Abandoning ad copy split testing after initial success
- Misunderstanding margin and miscalculating ROI from PPC ad spend
- Assuming top ad placement will result in the greatest conversion or ROI.
- Not sending traffic to the most relevant pages
- Disorganized campaign structure
Ok, I actually have 6 but "Top 5" sounds better so here is a bonus one:
6. Having too narrow or too broad keyword strategy
Got any other common mistakes you think should be on the list? lemme hear about them!
Posted on June 25, 2007
Google Reveals Content Network Site Performance
BY BEN CASTELLI
I was finally able to catch up on some of the latest news in my reader over the weekend and was really psyched to see that Google has begun a phased launch of their Placement Performance report for Adwords. Several months ago Google announced it would be adding this new feature which basically allows you to “view site-by-site performance metrics -- including clicks, impressions, cost, and conversion data -- for domains or URLs in the content network where your ads have appeared.”
Overall, with our clients we see that the Pay Per Click ads on Google Search convert better (with a better ROI) than ads on the Google Content network. Ads on Google Search show up on the top and right hand side of the page when you do a search in Google, content network ads show on websites running Ad Sense (such as news and blog sites) that have content relevant to your keywords.
One of the biggest challenges I have had with running ads on the content network is that a major news story or popular event can trigger ads to receive a huge spike in impressions and clicks but not necessarily an increase in conversions. Without the ability to see which sites were driving all of the clicks, the only option was to scale back your bids on the content network or turn off the content network altogether.
Now with the Placement Performance report, you can see which content network sites are converting well and those that are not. You can use the site exclusion tool to eliminate sites that drive a lot of clicks but little conversions. And increase ad spend on the sites that drive the quality traffic that results in conversions and high ROI. This is accomplished with the site targeting feature.
I have also seen similar trends with ads on the Yahoo Search Marketing content network, where a news event triggers ads to receive a large increase in impressions, resulting in a large number of clicks with very few conversions. Hopefully Yahoo will continue to their strategy of copying the Google PPC platform and add this feature!
Actually, Yahoo recently did take one step to improving their content network by introducing Quality Based Pricing, realizing that all clicks from the content network are not created equal, something Google has been doing for a long time with their Smart Pricing.
So rather than shutting off your ads from showing on the Google content network when your cost per acquisition is high and ROI low, use this new transparency to improve your content network strategy by optimizing your ad for specific sites or weeding out sites that drive a lot of clicks but do not convert.
Posted on March 27, 2007
MFA's and Does Costa Rica Suck?
BY BEN CASTELLI
Brad Geddes recently posted a great article over on Search Engine Land about search arbitrage in PPC marketing and provides some interesting arguments for and against this practice. Sometimes called MFA’s (made for Adsense), these sites use some trickery in their ads to send an unsuspecting searcher to a site loaded with Adsense ads. When the searcher then clicks on one of those ads the arbitrager gets paid. “The arbitrager pockets the difference between what they paid per click and what they get paid per click.” Here is a great example of one I ran into the other day in Google: I searched for “costa rica + surf lodge” and this is the ad that came up:
Now that is some powerful ad text so naturally I was compelled to click on the ad and read the report, well this was the resulting page:
Yup, nothing but a bunch of Adsense and no information on why Costa Rica sucks. As an advertiser I may not mind my ads being shown on the above page because the search arbitrager is likely bidding on keywords that I am not and it presents another chance for a searcher to see my ad and visit my site. It all comes back to ROI and whether or not visitors from the arbitrage sites are converting well.
However, as a searcher I was annoyed that the original “Costa Rica Sucks” ad did not deliver the content it promised in the ad text and the ads being displayed on the subsequent page were only semi-relevant to my initial search of “costa rica + surf camp”. And that is the biggest argument against search arbitrage, poor relevance and a negative user experience. Since Google’s bread and butter is high relevance and user experience I expect them to continue to crack down on the practice.
Posted on February 27, 2007
3 New Ways Google is Showing Me Love
BY BEN CASTELLI
In just the past FEW DAYS Google has rolled out a number of upgrades, changes, and improvements to help out its Adwords advertisers. Here are the top 3 things they did recently to make my life easier (well at least my 8-5 life). Tune in on the steps after the jump.
