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Monthly Archives: February 2009

Breaking! The First Ever Conference on AdSense and Contextual Advertising

24 Feb

A few years ago, a common mantra heard amongst search marketers was “stay away from the Google Content Network.” The conventional wisdom was that the content network was fraught with click fraud, difficult if not impossible to manage, and just wasn’t worth the time.

That was then. Today, Google’s Content Network – AdSense – as well as many other similar contextual products, like Quigo, AdKnowledge, IndustryBrains, and Business.com, are on the rise. For savvy advertisers, contextual advertising often offers lower CPCs and higher margins. For quality publishers, multiple networks combined with multiple ad units (video, mobile, in-text), and even an entire industry of contextual optimization companies (YieldBuild, PubMatic, Rubicon Project) has improved earnings per thousand impressions (eCPMs) dramatically.

If you look at Google’s earnings reports, you’ll see that AdSense contributes almost $7 billion a year to Google’s coffers. And there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of publishers around the world that make some or all of their livelihood off AdSense and related products. This might very well be the biggest industry no one talks much about.

So a few months ago, my friend Marc Phillips of SearchForecast came to me with a thought: shouldn’t there be a conference dedicated to contextual advertising? Millions of people are involved in a multi-billion dollar industry, and yet the maximum exposure this industry gets is at most a solitary panel at a multi-day search conference. And there’s a lot of tactical knowledge from which both publishers and advertisers could immediately profit. Plus, simply putting all the publishers and advertisers in the same room (along with the networks that glue the two together) is an awesome networking opportunity.

The more we talked about the idea, the more excited we became. We discussed the idea with the folks at Ad:Tech and they grasped the opportunity too. After months of planning, we’re now ready to announce . . . ADSPACE! April 22nd at Moscone Center West in San Francisco, co-located with Ad:Tech San Francisco.

The show has two tracks – one for publishers, and one for advertisers. If you’re an advertiser like yours truly, your sessions will be focused on practical, money-making tips to help you kick butt on AdSense and discover new contextual networks you should be advertising on but aren’t. The sessions on deck include:

  • Tools & Technologies: Using Targeting and Optimization to Achieve Success
  • Measurement & Metrics
  • Social Media Strategies
  • Placement Targeting vs Content Ads – What’s the Difference?
  • Emerging Platforms (Mobile, Video, Display)
  • Marketers Roundtable: the View from the Buy Side
  • Performance Branding

For publishers, you’ll learn how to increase eCPM for your Web sites, whether from better optimization of your current AdSense placements, through alternative monetization strategies, or a combination of AdSense and other advertising. Sessions include:

  • The State of Contextual Advertising
  • 10 Proven Methods to Increase Your eCPM and Generate More Revenue
  • AdSense Publisher Forum (Your chance to ask AdSense folks questions, live!)
  • Beyond Text Ads: In-Text, Affiliate, Lead-Gen, eBay and More!
  • The Secrets to Success: Tips and Tricks from Leading Publishers

And for everyone in attendance, there will be two keynotes, to be announced shortly).

On top of all of that, there will also be an exhibit hall where you can learn about networks, tools, and technologies that can increase your profit, either as a publisher or advertiser.

And the price . . . right now it’s only $395 for the whole enchilada. Most conferences don’t let you get the free tote bag for that price! And if you are already registered for Ad:Tech, for $200 more you can add on ADSPACE (this is the early bird price).

I think this is an event who’s time has come. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be finalizing the speaker list (suggestions? email me at davidrod at g-mail), and providing more details on sponsors and events around the show. I hope you’re as excited as I am about this and I look forward to seeing you in SF in April!

 
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Posted by on February 24, 2009 in adsense, adspace conference, contextual advertising

 

AdWords Quietly Changes Double-Serving Policy: Welcome Affiliates, We Need Your Money!

17 Feb

Years ago, when AdWords was a largely unregulated world, affiliates made millions by “double-serving” their ads on Google. This was a simple and straight-forward scheme: all you needed to do was to set up a few domain names, host them on different sites, set up separate AdWords accounts, and buy the same keywords for each site. If you knew that they keyword “blue widgets” was a guaranteed money maker, you could dominate the results with two, three or sometimes 15 URLs, virtually guaranteeing that any searcher who clicked on an ad would end up buying a product or service from you.

Google initially tolerated this “shelf space” strategy, but once the number of advertisers participating in AdWords auctions increased, Google clamped down on this sort of behavior. The Google policy on double-serving made it clear that anyone trying to show more than one ad on the same result would incur the wrath of Google – in most cases, this just meant that Google would “link” offending accounts together, such that all the related sites could only advertise once on a given keyword, but in egregious cases, Google could and did simply shut down and block all the sites entirely from AdWords.

The policy, until recently, had the following rules:

When reviewing requests, we focus on the preservation of a unique user experience for each site, and also take into account the following:
  • The destination site for each ad offers different products or services (for example, a large manufacturer with two product sites, one solely for stereos and one solely for computers, both running on the keyword ‘electronics’) and each destination site has a different layout and design
  • The destination site for each ad features unique site content, features, and/or services which are highly significant to users and create a distinct user experience
  • Product overlaps for each ad’s destination site are minor and don’t affect user experience. This criterion particularly applies to high volume retailers and other large inventory websites

I found the above wording quoted on a Google groups forum (the messaging has now been replaced), but as far as I can tell, this was the original text of the policy.

Recently, a little birdy alerted me to a pretty significant change in the policy, allegedly changed in January of this year. Here’s the new policy:

Exceptions are granted only in very limited cases. When reviewing requests, we focus on the preservation of a unique user experience for each site, and also take into account the following:

  • The destination site for each ad offers different products or services (for example, a large manufacturer with two product sites, one solely for stereos and one solely for computers, both running on the keyword ‘electronics’)
  • The destination site for each ad serves a different purpose (for example, one site focuses on product information only, and the other site focuses on product sale only)
  • Any product overlaps for each ad’s destination site are not significant enough to affect user experience
  • The pricing difference offered by each site is significant and based on the same criteria (for example, if one site includes pricing with tax, the other site must include pricing with tax)

The biggest change is the last one: “the pricing difference” clause. Though this seems somewhat innocuous, if you think about the consequences from an affiliate/lead gen perspective, it could be massive. For example, let’s take your standard “Acai Berry Diet.” The parent company offers a special deal on their site – get a free trial and then pay just $5 S&H. They then go to one affiliate and tell them to run an ad that says “get a free trial and pay only $8 S&H” and then tell another to offer a $10 offer but with a free booklet. Suddenly, an offer that would have only been allowed once on a SERP is being multi-served and is actually compliant with Google’s double-serving policy!

The timing of this change – and the fact that it hasn’t been publicized – leads me to the conclusion that this is a recession-related change, a loosening of AdWords rules that will enable more affiliates to participate in auctions in which they were previously excluded. Affiliate marketing and lead gen is a lot more recession-proof than typical brick and mortar advertisers, as we say in 2001 with the rise of companies like LowerMyBills and Nextag.

When the economy recovers, I’d expect this clause to once again disappear. For now, however, it appears that Google is ready to welcome back affiliates with open arms!

 
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Posted by on February 17, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, double serving, Lead Generation

 

Google Audio Ads Off the Air – Google TV Ads, The Last of the Trilogy, Is Next

12 Feb

First they shuttered Google Print Ads, and now comes the news that Google Audio Ads (radio) is also going the way of the Dodo Bird. Google TV ads is surely not far behind. Of the three ad formats, I actually thought that Audio Ads had the greatest chance for success, simply because it cost less than TV or print, it didn’t require much creative knowledge, and it was already a popular advertising medium for the direct marketers who make up most of Google’s advertiser base. So I’m surprised that Audio Ads got the ax before TV ads. But never fear, TV will be gone too as well.

Why did these ad extensions fail? Well, I think there are two main reasons. First, as noted above, these are mediums that typically require a lot of in-depth knowledge and creative development that the average Google advertiser simply doesn’t possess. Second, Google took a heavy-handed approach with the existing players in these industries, creating a lot of resistance and suspicion among the very companies Google needed to work with to gain entry into these verticals.

The outstanding question I have is whether Google has learned its lessons from these failures and whether the Google-DoubleClick entry into banner ads will avoid making the same mistakes all over again. My bet is that this will be a much better space for Google, again because AdWords advertisers are more comfortable with banner ads, and because it appears that Google has moved slowly and deliberately with DoubleClick, rather than rushing into banners with great bravado.

 
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Posted by on February 12, 2009 in adwords audio

 

The Three "Rs" of Online Success: They Aren’t Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmitic

12 Feb

The three Rs of online success: customer retention, employee retention, vendor retention. Think about this for a minute and I think you’ll agree with me.

Customer Retention

Successful Companies:

  • Get rave reviews for customer service
  • Acquire a customer once but get repeat orders for a lifetime
  • Live and breathe the notion that ‘the customer is always right’

Failing Companies:

  • Think of customer service as a cost center and nothing else
  • Expect customers to buy once and never again
  • Regard customers as suckers that can be tricked to maximize revenue

Employee Retention

Successful Companies:

  • Believe that employees are the lifeblood of the company
  • Understand that money is not the primary motivator for employees (a feeling of accomplishment and respect for peers is)
  • Hire and retain team players
  • Refuse to tolerate self-interested politics

Failing Companies:

  • Do not trust their employees
  • Believe that employees should be thankful to be working for them
  • Believe that employees are interchangeable and replaceable

Vendor Retention

Successful Companies:

  • Pay vendors promptly
  • Are tough but fair on deliverables
  • Strive to build long-term relationships

Failing Companies:

  • Always pay late and require constant reminding
  • Are tough on deliverables, and come up with reasons to dispute work
  • Only care about price and switch vendors whenever they get a lower quote

How would you rate your company?

 
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Posted by on February 12, 2009 in retention

 

Considering Job Offers? Know the SCORE

10 Feb

Its amazing to me how much job satisfaction drives life satisfaction. I look at a bad job like an abusive relationship – the person being abused often doesn’t realize how miserable he/she is until long after they’ve gotten out of the relationship. My friend Joel has a good credo when it comes to jobs: “If I’m not happy, I wait two months. If I’m still unhappy, I leave” (as an aside, Joel left the rat race and is now the founder and CEO of a great company, Krillion.com).

For this reason, it’s important to do everything you can to avoid bad jobs. And now that I have a few gray hairs and have been around the Internet industry for almost a decade, I increasingly get approached by young Internet folks asking for career advice. My first piece of advice, of course, is “plastics,” but after that I give them this little mnemonic that was helpful to me over the years – S.C.O.R.E. When evaluating a job offer, I suggest you consider these five aspects collectively (note: they don’t need to be in this order, every person should weigh each piece differently – see my note at the end of this post).

S is for “Stability.” Is the company well-funded? What’s its burn-rate? How many months until they need to raise more money? Are they cash-flow positive? If not, when will they be (whatever they say, add at least six months onto this number, due to over-optimism or exaggeration). Has the management been in place for a while?

C is for “Compensation.” How does the salary compare to other offers? What benefits are included (for example, health insurance will usually cost you $4-$6K a year if your employer doesn’t cover it). Is there a guaranteed bonus? Are there stock options, what percentage of the company do you get, and how long until they vest? When do you get a performance review? Are there “bands” that determine caps on raises?

O is for “Opportunity.” If you excel at your position, what’s the next step for you in the company? Is the organization already top-heavy, meaning a promotion is unlikely? Can you try out different positions in different departments if you demonstrate competency and there is a need for you? Will you learn valuable skills that you don’t currently have?

R is for “Responsibility.” What are your day-to-day duties? Will you manage others? Do you have authority to approve projects/expenditures or do you need someone else to rubber stamp your ideas? Will you be able to quantify your impact on the bottom line?

E is for “Environment.” Do employees seem happy? What’s the company culture like? What’s the dress code? Is there a need for face time or can you telecommute occasionally? What’s the turnover rate? Do you like the people? Does the office seem comfortable?

One of the things I’ve realized over the years is that the order of these factors usually changes as you get more experience. For example, as a young employee right out of college, you may put a great emphasis on stability and compensation, because you know how hard it is to get a job in the Internet sector, and because you have lots of student loans to pay off!

As you get more senior, however, you can take risks on less-stable gigs and the compensation (though always important) becomes something you are willing to take a hit on for the right fit. In my last few years on the market before going solo, I realized that the “ORE” of “SCORE” had the most impact on my job satisfaction; in particular, I found that environment was the #1 determining factor for me. This may in part explain why Google is able to hire brilliant engineers and allegedly pay them below-market. It’s hard to resist the endless food, keg parties, massages, and generally quirky atmosphere of the Googleplex.

So whether you decide its “CORES” or “CORSE” or even “ORSEC” (which would be a very bad mnemonic), I hope you find this methodology helpful!

 
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Posted by on February 10, 2009 in job satisfaction, SCORES

 

How The Zappos Photo Mystery Was Solved

06 Feb

Congrats to Mike Bunnell for solving the mystery client photos – the correct answer was indeed Zappos. Nice try to CalTrainWreak for his attempt to steal away the victory by noting that the answer should really be “Zappos.com” – sorry Cal, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades!

I’m so impressed with the way that Mike solved this that I had to include his reasoning. Personally, I hope that Mike never stalks me – there will be no place to hide!

By the way, the prize for this contest is actually pretty cool – it’s a pass to a soon-t0-be-announced conference, valued at around $600 (details of the conference will be announced on this blog soon, hopefully in the next week, so stay tuned)!

Here’s Mike’s research:

How I figured it out….
Well the first 2 photos told me that this is a young/hip company.
The license plate told me that the company is in Nevada, they have an employee that does SEM, and that employee went to Purdue.
In the last photo, I saw the Birkenstock display at the left, so I knew the had something to do with retailing footwear.
After a couple Google searches around Nevada shoe retailer, I found Zappos’ wikipedia page which said their headquarters are in Nevada.
To seal the deal, I searched LinkedIn for “zappos purdue” which returned one result: Robert Avila, Search Engine Marketer at Zappos.
Thanks again — made me feel like a modern day Sherlock Holmes!
 
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Posted by on February 6, 2009 in zappos

 

Guess the Mystery Client!

06 Feb

OK, here are four pictures from a recent client visit of mine – first one to guess the correct client (and, um, you can’t be from that client!) will get a cool prize, to be determined later! Just put your answer in as a comment to this post.

Picture #1

Picture #2


Picture #3


Picture #4


Happy guessing!

 
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Posted by on February 6, 2009 in Uncategorized

 

26 Character Headlines: Is AdWords Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?

04 Feb

We all know how frustrating it is to finish a really powerful headline for AdWords and then to discover that our masterpiece is a few characters longer than the 25 character limit. I suppose it encourages all of us to be more direct in our writing, but there are many times when I think to myself: “An extra two or three characters could only help consumers find the most relevant ad for their needs!” Apparently, some advertisers have found a way to get around this limitation. This morning, a client of mine pointed out a competitor’s headline that was 26 characters long.

Here’s a screenshot (it’s the third ad):

I’ve counted the characters a few times to be sure and it is in fact 26 and not 25 characters. My only guess as to why this is happening is that this reflects the exact query I entered into Google. I did a few other related searches and I could not replicate the 26 character result, so I think this is probably what is happening.

But still, how would Google even allow a 26 character ad to be approved, even if the entire query was included inside the dynamic keyword insertion brackets? My only thought here is that Google is allowing the advertiser to buy the singular phrase “Mortgage Refinancing Loan” and then automatically appending an “S” to the end to increase relevancy. I’m sure the advertiser doesn’t mind the increased relevancy and character count.

Has anyone else seen this happening? This is a first for me.

 
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Posted by on February 4, 2009 in headline character limits

 

New AdWords User Interface Beta: A Review

02 Feb

Late last week I got an invite to preview the new AdWords UI. After playing around in the interface, I thought I’d share some of the cool features with you, as well as comment on what this means for Google’s direction and for Google’s competitors. Spoiler alert: as with most things in paid search, this is another win for Google and another set-back for Google’s “competitors”, if we can still call them that.

The Line Between AdWords and Analytics (GA) is Becoming Blurred

The new interface borrows substantially from GA, both in terms of the expandable left frame navigation and the prominent and customizable graph at the top of the page. I noticed a few weeks ago that Google was encouraging AdSense publishers to integrate their AdSense account with GA. I’ve been told that Google Affiliate Network (GAN) publishers will also be able to integrate their affiliate stats with AdWords and other Google tools via GA as well. And I can only assume that once Google does something with their DoubleClick acquisition, this too will become part of the GA universe.

The Line Between AdWords and AdWords Desktop Editor is Becoming Blurred
One of the best features of Desktop Editor is the ability to view all Ad Groups or all keywords within a multi-campaign account at once. This feature is now available in the new AdWords UI and will definitely be a big time saver for those who prefer to use AdWords online instead of the Desktop Editor.

As in Editor, you can sort all of your Ad Groups or keywords by any column, so if you want to see the top click-getting keywords across all campaigns and ad groups, you can do this in a matter of seconds, as opposed to the old method of running a report to get this data.

Instant Query and Placement Karma



Yet another feature that eliminates the need to run a report is the “search query report” button. Using this feature you can instantly see which search queries got clicks off a broad match term. Pretty handy if you want to quickly add new keywords.

The same functionality exists for placements within the content network, which previously required a visit to the “placement performance” report on the reporting tab.

Better Quality Score Data

I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied with the amount of data Google gives me on Quality Score, but this new UI at least makes the data a little more transparent and certainly a lot quicker to review. Click the thought bubble next to any keyword and your QS pops-up with details as to why you are or aren’t doing well in this category.

Overall Grade: Thumbs Up
Personally I was perfectly happy combining the old AdWords UI with the Desktop Editor, but now that I see the potential that the future of the AdWords UI might combine the best of Desktop Editor, Google Analytics, and the old UI, I have to say I am pretty excited. This is clearly an example of a better mouse trap that never occurred to me but that I am interested in using.

If you are frequent user of the Desktop Editor you have no doubt experienced some of its shortcomings – almost always due to the processing power of your computer. I’m talking about things like lengthy downloads of statistical data from Google, waiting minutes for a screen to load, or the occasional “not responding” message when you try to do too much too quickly. I’m happy to leverage the massive processing power of the Google cloud instead, all things being equal.

Oh Yahoo, Where Art Thou?
The AdWords UI and Desktop Editor were already light-years ahead of YSM (which doesn’t even have an Editor to begin with). I’ve been saying for years that YSM and MSN would do themselves a great service by simply copying Google’s UI and Editor. It appears, however, that Google is not resting on its laurels and YSM and MSN aren’t listening to my advice. The fact that Google is continuing to innovate when it already has a massive technology lead does not bode well for anyone that hopes for a more level playing field in paid search.

So kudos to the AdWords team for continuing to develop better and better tools and shame on YSM and MSN for letting Google get even farther ahead – folks, they don’t need the help! Carol and Steve, I hope you’re reading!

 
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Posted by on February 2, 2009 in adwords editor, adwords user interface, google analytics

 

The Idiot Tax, The Free Will Tax, Charity Tax, and Opacity Tax: Four Charges You Pay When Advertising on AdWords

01 Feb

We search engine marketers spend our days rigorously study reams of data and repeatedly testing new ad text and landing pages, all in the hopes of improving the performance of our paid search campaigns. Ultimately, we do all of this work in attempt to predict and control the outcome of our campaigns. If we have a high level of confidence that a certain keyword, ad text, and landing page, placed at a certain time of day in a certain geography is going to convert, we are at an advantage over any competitor who has not done such calculations.

But we all understand that we can’t control everything. Economists call these “externalities” – these are”taxes” on our AdWords spending that we not only have no control over, but that in theory just shouldn’t exist at all. I’ve identified four such forces that cut into our profits and are virtually impossible to counter.

The Idiot Tax
I credit Chris over at SearchQuant for this one. What happens when a dumb advertiser spends way too much on a keyword that they shouldn’t be buying in the first place? Well, in the long term, this advertiser loses a lot of money and either quits AdWords or goes out of business. But while that advertiser is live on Google, he is costing you and me – the ‘smart’ advertisers – money. If we are paying $2 a click for a keyword and a dumb advertiser comes in and bids $2.50, to maintain our position, we need to bid more (just assume CTR and Quality Score are equal).

Google makes it very easy for advertisers to join AdWords, and I don’t blame them for their incredible user interface and instructional tools. At the same time, however, Google also encourages stupidity, through “innovations” like “automated matching” and misleading marketing messages on AdWords. There’s really no way for us to prevent this, we end up having to grin and bear it.

The Free Will Tax
We can’t stop consumers from clicking our ads even though the ad text clearly states that we are not selling what they are looking for. Do you know what the number one search on Google is – it’s the word “Google.” My friends, we are still in the early days of the Internet and consumers are still figuring this whole Web thing out. Even the most targeted keyword with the most targeted ad text (indeed, I’ve tried ad text that say things like “Serious buyers only, please!” and it still doesn’t work) are not enough.

Of course, it doesn’t help that Google continues to expand the definition of “broad match”, so much so that I have repeatedly wondered whether keywords even matter anymore. Combine confused consumers with Google’s broad-broad-broad match and advertisers end up with a lot of useless clicks.

The Charity Tax
Google Grants is “a unique in-kind donation program awarding free AdWords advertising to select charitable organizations. Charities can apply to the program and receive thousands of dollars a month in free advertising on AdWords. Again, I applaud Google for providing free marketing dollars for non-profits to promote their organizations.

Of course, for the rest of us, this only increases the competition for keywords. Google gets a nice tax write-off and simultaneously increases the bids for their paid advertisers (in their defense, the Google Grant rules limit bids to a maximum of $1 CPC, so the impact is somewhat limited). As an aside, Google Grant recipients can only advertise on Google directly, not on Google’s search partners or the content network, so Google ends up basically losing nothing on the proposition!

The Opacity Tax
A few weeks ago Google opened their “conversion optimizer” tool to all AdWords advertisers. The response from the blogosphere was overwhelmingly positive. In particular, bloggers were excited by the notion that Google would be using data not available to mere mortals in their optimization decisions. As David Szetela noted in a Search Engine Watch post:

Google says (and we trust them, right?) that the bid optimization algorithms take into consideration data that only Google can possibly have. Google knows the conversion history for most of the search terms in your campaign — across many advertisers. So they know with better precision than anyone how likely it is that your keyword will trigger a conversion (when associated with a proper ad and landing page, of course).

On the one hand, any tool that uses tons of data to automatically optimize by campaigns to my CPA targets is great, I can’t complain. On the other hand, the fact that Google apparently has valuable data that it isn’t sharing with its advertisers begs the question: why not? In the example that David is using above, we are talking about anonymous and aggregated data across thousands of clients – there are no confidentiality problems about releasing that data to advertisers.

And as I’ve discussed many times on this blog, Google could do a better job of providing granular conversion information in their reporting – for example, the “date stamp” of a conversion – but they have thus far chosen not to (I know that frequent reader CalTrainWreck will agree with me on this point).

Savvy search engine marketers love data and know how to use it – by not providing us this information Google is effectively forcing us to act inefficiently, which ultimately means more money for them.

What Did I Miss?
I had started to write a long dystopian diatribe about a future where giant advertisers are the only AdWords customers (and where they don’t even know they are being taxed), but it sounded too grumpy and perhaps a bit paranoid. I’m sure you have experienced other “hidden taxes” when advertising on Google – drop my a comment on this post and let me know what I’ve missed!

 
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Posted by on February 1, 2009 in conversion optimizer, google grants, searchquant

 
 
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