PPC Blog | Paid Search Marketing | Sem Geek - Making Sense of Paid Search Marketing

Are You Flying Blind With Google Placement Targeting?

When Google upgraded their Site Targeting to the newly named Placement Targeting, they made some impressive upgrades, including the most influential which is the option of CPC or CPM. However, even with this change, Google makes it very clear that "Your ads will continue to compete with other placement-targeted and keyword-targeted ads in the Google Network." This sentence, which is a direct quote from the link below, does not make me feel any better. Let me explain.

> Find out what has changed with Google Placement Targeting

When you are in the Campaign Summary >> Placements Tab, you cannot do the following:

1. See the position where your placement Ad is located.
2. Edit CPC or CPM for each site in your placement targeting adgroup to improve visibility
3. See how much competition is actually taking place. (ads in rotation?)
4. Make intelligent decisions on how to optimize. (Google says Ads or increase Bids)
5. Run an Impression Share Report to see where you are vs. competitors.

To elaborate on #3 above, when you are in the help section within Adwords account and want to know why you can't see your placement targeted ad, this specific example on Dynamic ad performance definitely rubs me the wrong way.

Remember that ads are served dynamically, based on campaign budgets, the number of placement-targeted and keyword-targeted ads competing for each site, the Quality Scores of those ads, and other competitive factors. Your ad simply may not be showing at the moment you look at the page...

The Google Love vs. Hate Relationship:
Google makes is rather easy to pick apart their service offerings, because they open the doors to what is going on more than any other engine. However, it's very frustrating to constantly try and make sense of the vagueness of your PPC spending on the engine.

When I see "obvious holes" in this placement targeting service, I often think that this is intentional. Google is a thriving business and a major part of our daily lives. They are always concerned with both increasing the revenues, as well as protecting the pipeline for improvements , PR and stock price.

In conclusion:
The bottom line here is that it's very difficult to commit to a percentage of your PPC budget on placement targeting when you cannot see the competition, evaluate the impression share or edit bids on individual sites, etc... If you cannot see these metrics, you are simply flying blind. 

Attention Paid Search Marketers. How Do You React?

If someone were to ask me what is the key to maintaining a successful PPC campaign, I would say "Reacting swiftly and intelligently". As in life, (see photo on left from the Slap Fight scene from Napoleon Dynamite) we cannot predict the future, but in PPC we can at the very least setup an intelligent campaign based on relevant keyword research & structure, attractive Ads/Creatives and landing pages that direct the visitor to the page they are looking for. However, no matter how great a campaign or adgroup may be, something strange almost always happens during the lifecycle of the campaign. Let me dig a little deeper into what I am talking about...

Is it an UFO or an Abduction?
No I am not talking about Alien related UFO's, even though I had read many books on the subject (TMI, considering I do not read many books) Anyways, I have witnessed strange anomalies with weekend editorial blunders, destination urls that get deactivated as the sites unexpectedly go down, or even when all keywords get turned off for no apparent reason. Of course, the UFO's (in this case Unexpected Freakish Occurrences) can possibly be attributed to Algorithmic changes or simply 1-3x a year when the planets of Google and Yahoo are in alignment. Who cares what it is! But when push comes to shove and you have the client on the phone demanding answers like "what the hell did you do to the account....." You better tell them you are already on the phone with Search Engine Rep. as to what is going on.

But seriously, the only way to get ahead of this weirdness is to constantly monitor and react based on your knowledge and past experience. You can tell the experience level of a search marketer by how fast they react to a problem and solve it in a timely fashion.

In conclusion:
A slow response to an existing PPC campaign can be not only detrimental to your previous efforts, but is also an embarrassment to you and your organization. Have you witnessed these UFOs in PPC? Have you felt like you have been probed by late night email alerts from Google or Yahoo that your campaign has been deactivated? I believe as PPC  continues to increase in cost, the algorithms will be in overdrive to maximize revenues for their stockholders. As this happens, Clients as well as business owners will rely on you to react swiftly and accurately to make sure revenues and goals are met.

Yahoo PPC Looking Attractive Again - Just Stay Away From The Content Network

It took me 5 seconds into a call with a Yahoo Rep who told me something to the effect of "yeah, I would avoid the Content Network for now, because were having reporting problems with it and don't expect to see it fixed anytime soon. After I heard that, I said "Good thing your CPCs are much lower than Google's because what else are you good for these days"

But think about it, other than shaking your head at Yahoo in disbelief, why would you put a single dollar into a program where you cannot do the following: Run a report and see the referring Urls? Or allow you to exclude URLs after they have ran and are bleeding you dry? As far as I know, NO, NO, NO. So why are they even offering it? To add my fuel to the fire, they automatically activate it (like Google) when you create a new campaign. Even with this debacle, Yahoo still has a future in their Cards. Let me explain.

Let's Consider a Different Perspective:
Google knows this Content Network weakness and I am sure that is one of the reasons why they are putting more R&D into enhancing this once "bastardized step-child" (other reason to squeeze more money) and making it more manageable. I am still not 100% happy with it yet as there are still many ''shady" parts to it [domain ads, error pages, etc..] but at least they allow you to exclude sites and reveal who is in their network of partnering sites. Here's an interesting Forum (back in 1007) about a similar topic on Webmaster World - Yahoo Search Marketing Pay Per Click Advertising. So where am I going with this....

Yahoo Needs to play to It's Advantage:
Ahh, here I go. I know this sounds crazy, but Yahoo does have a unique advantage over Google and it's all about taking advantage of Google's increasingly Disciplined Quality Score and skyrocketing CPCs. Furthermore, the advertisers who can best leverage this difference in CPCs are the Political Candidates bidding on very generic issues like Illegal Immigration, War in Iraq, as well as more mainstream advertisers in the retail, financial and entertainment industry.

Quality Score Difference:
Yahoo does not put as much emphasis into the quality of Landing Pages as Google does. And they are not getting Monopolous in nature (did I just create a Greggorism?, Liana Evans....) as Google is with the CPCs. So in order to keep the budget from getting out of control, Yahoo appears to be attractive again to Search Marketers as well as VPs of marketing because you can get a much lower CPC for a head term and or even a highly competitive long tail.

Change of the Search Tide?
As the recession lingers on and Google continues to alter it's algorithm to increase the CPCs to make their investors happy, Yahoo seems more and more appealing to keep the money from breaking your bank. Also, with Analytics continuing to make an impact in search, more and more advertisers will realize that cannot simply afford Google anymore. In fact, when advertisers start realizing their profit margins are not what they were before and applying them to ROAS and ROI metrics, they will start to realize the value in putting more money into Yahoo.

In conclusion:
Online Marketing Budgets will probably either decrease or even balance itself out due to a shift in the overall Ad Spending where online will steal more share form the other offline channels. With that said, as the beginning of a recession settles in PPC marketers will need to figure out how to best to manage their clients or companies online budgets as well as get the ROAS/ROI needed to keep the business profitable.

Google is becoming a very expensive playground to play in. The amount of money they require these days to play the game is starting to effect "real" online marketing decisions and Yahoo needs to step up and get their pipelines moving faster. Yahoo is in a unique position to take advantage of our deteriorating economic conditions and capitalize on moving up the ranks for that % of PPC spend.

Holy Crap - I Won A SEMMY Award for Best PPC Blog Post

I am very surprised yet very happy to have been chosen as the Best PPC Blog Post for 2008. I just want to thank everyone who voted and I also want to give credit to all of the finalists and others who were nominated. I also like to especially thank the Judges and contributors who without them, the SEMMYs as we know it would not exist.

Runners-Up:  The top two runners-up in public voting were:

   1. How to Lower Your AdWords Minimum Bid
        ~ by Brad Geddes, eWhisper | 4/16/07

   2. (TIE) Five Common Paid Search Mistakes That Can Sink Your Campaign
       ~ by Jennifer Laycock, Search Engine Guide | 11/6/07

   3. (TIE) Starting from Scratch: A Paid Search Primer
       ~ by Ryan Gibson, rkgblog | 11/20/07

Again, thanks!