PPC Ad Writing Contest by Marketing Experiments
Our friends at Marketing Experiments are working with one of our clients on their marketing content strategy. They're inviting everyone to compete in this creative experiment.
Read about their Ad Writing Contest and then submit your best entry as a comment to their blog post.
From their post:
"The trouble with a content strategy is that it is very difficult to create content, and very difficult to predict what content will resonate with your customers.
You could spend a lot of time creating high-quality content only to find out later that another approach would have been more profitable.
To help provide clarity to their content strategy, we are going to run some PPC ads to 'take the temperature,' in a sense, of the people who are searching..."
The results of this experiment will guide their content strategy, but I'm sure we'll end up testing a few of the winners in the rest of their paid search campaigns as well.
The winner will be announced during their next web clinic on February 1st, 2012: Online Advertising Forensics: We investigate how and why a text-based PPC ad produced 47% more conversions. Click the link to sign up for this free clinic!
Google Privacy Policy Overhaul: Reflections for Online Marketers
Google's upcoming privacy policy overhaul addresses two themes:
1. Providing users with more intuitive functionality across Google properties (Search, Gmail, YouTube, etc.), and
2. Providing advertisers with more relevant targeting options across Google properties.
The key distinction here is "across Google properties."
While the most privacy-conscious users may be concerned with the changes, for advertisers there is nothing but upside. Google's updated privacy policy opens the door to more cost-effective targeting to your most responsive traffic across Google properties and devices.
Google will be able to provide advertisers with a richer picture of their users for advertisers to target with remarketing, interest category targeting, and demographic targeting. (Users can see how Google defines their individual interest & demographic buckets in their Ads Preference Manager.)
As an example use-case, let's say someone visits your website on their mobile phone and adds something to their shopping cart. They abandon their cart and leave your site, but not before you add them to a remarketing list you're building within AdWords. Assuming the user is logged into their Google profile, you'd be able to target them with your remarketing ads when they're browsing the web at home from their iPad later that night. Furthermore, you may find that users interested in certain topics are more responsive to your remarketing ads. Google's new policy will enable them to boost the accuracy of the interest category inferences for their users.
Google's updated privacy policy may leave room for them to go further than just associating more data with users logged-in to their Google account... Google states that they may store "cookies that may uniquely identify your browser or your Google Account." This language opens up the possibility that Google could in the future use your Google profile data to deliver ads even if the user has since logged out of their Google account. The cookie would persist on the computer which ties it to a Google account. Currently, less than 10% of traffic from Google searches are from logged-in Google users. A cookie-based profile link would move this number up substantially.
Expect to see more Google advertiser tools rolled out over the next few quarters that make use of the cross-property and cross-device advertising functionality promised by this policy.
YouTube TrueView Video Ads: Only Pay For Interested Viewers
YouTube has launched a new ad format out of beta: TrueView Video Ads. The basic concept is that the user has a choice whether or not to continue watching the ad. The advertisers only pays when the user watches at least 30 seconds of the ad (or to completion, whichever comes first).
This new format is referred to as a TrueView in-stream ad. Long-form YouTube videos are eligible for the TrueView in-slate ad format. With in-slate, the user is given a choice to either watch a longer commercial video ad before the primary video begins, or see regular commercial breaks during the video.
According to Google's onesheet on TrueView (pdf), in-stream ad viewers choose to watch an ad 15-45% of the time. Some advertisers have seen 3-4x higher CTR's with TrueView than with other video ad formats.
YouTube Promoted Video Ads are being renamed "TrueView in-search" and "TrueView in-display" depending on where they show.
Such a shift in video ad delivery is sure to start affecting how video ads are composed. Advertisers need to front-end-load the "interesting" parts to entice the viewer to watch. Also, given that you only pay when someone chooses to watch the video, the proportion viewers from your ideal target audience will be higher.
Google Plus One: How AdWords Advertisers Can Prepare
Google recently announced the launch of their latest social initiative: Google +1 (Plus One). Still in beta, Google +1 consists of a tiny icon next to each and every organic and paid search listing that, when clicked, communicates your stamp of approval for others to see.Google +1 has strong implications for all AdWords campaigns -- the number of "+1's" will show alongside each ad, which is sure to increase the clicks. Yet there is one important nuance to this that is sure to leave many advertisers unprepared...
Every distinct URL gets its own Google +1 score. If your ad destination URL's include tracking parameters you probably won't get much benefit from Google +1. By default, the following URL's will each get their own Google +1 score:
http://www.example.com/landingpage1/?adid=234523435&campaign=profit
http://www.example.com/landingpage1/?adid=548891387&campaign=money
The above destination URL's go to identical landing pages, but because the query string parameters are different, each will garner its own Google +1 score. As such, your +1 effectiveness will be watered down and you won't enjoy the nice CTR boost to which you're entitled.
This issue will effect top advertisers the most, as they are the ones most likely to be using additional tracking parameters on their ads. AdWords auto-tagging (i.e. the "gclid" parameter) is not affected by this behavior. Top advertisers typically use additional tags so they can track ad source data in their customer database.
How to fix this? Easy:
Employ canonicalization in your HTML header. According to Google, canonicalization can help you retain your +1 data across pages. Learn more at the Google Webmaster Central Help Center.
Also see this help article on the order of priority for the +1 URL target.
We're expecting Google +1 to experience mass adoption by the end of 2011. Make sure you're prepared -- and go get the button!
Google Plus One: How AdWords Advertisers Can Prepare
Google recently announced the launch of their latest social initiative: Google +1 (Plus One). Still in beta, Google +1 consists of a tiny icon next to each and every organic and paid search listing that, when clicked, communicates your stamp of approval for others to see.Google +1 has strong implications for all AdWords campaigns -- the number of "+1's" will show alongside each ad, which is sure to increase the clicks. Yet there is one important nuance to this that is sure to leave many advertisers unprepared...
Every distinct URL gets its own Google +1 score. If your ad destination URL's include tracking parameters you probably won't get much benefit from Google +1. By default, the following URL's will each get their own Google +1 score:
http://www.example.com/landingpage1/?adid=234523435&campaign=profit
http://www.example.com/landingpage1/?adid=548891387&campaign=money
The above destination URL's go to identical landing pages, but because the query string parameters are different, each will garner its own Google +1 score. As such, your +1 effectiveness will be watered down and you won't enjoy the nice CTR boost to which you're entitled.
This issue will effect top advertisers the most, as they are the ones most likely to be using additional tracking parameters on their ads. AdWords auto-tagging (i.e. the "gclid" parameter) is not affected by this behavior. Top advertisers typically use additional tags so they can track ad source data in their customer database.
How to fix this? Easy:
Employ canonicalization in your HTML header. According to Google, canonicalization can help you retain your +1 data across pages. Learn more at the Google Webmaster Central Help Center.
Also see this help article on the order of priority for the +1 URL target.
We're expecting Google +1 to experience mass adoption by the end of 2011. Make sure you're prepared -- and go get the button!
Google Plus One: How AdWords Advertisers Can Prepare
Google recently announced the launch of their latest social initiative: Google +1 (Plus One). Still in beta, Google +1 consists of a tiny icon next to each and every organic and paid search listing that, when clicked, communicates your stamp of approval for others to see.Google +1 has strong implications for all AdWords campaigns -- the number of "+1's" will show alongside each ad, which is sure to increase the clicks. Yet there is one important nuance to this that is sure to leave many advertisers unprepared...
Every distinct URL gets its own Google +1 score. If your ad destination URL's include tracking parameters you probably won't get much benefit from Google +1. By default, the following URL's will each get their own Google +1 score:
http://www.example.com/landingpage1/?adid=234523435&campaign=profit
http://www.example.com/landingpage1/?adid=548891387&campaign=money
The above destination URL's go to identical landing pages, but because the query string parameters are different, each will garner its own Google +1 score. As such, your +1 effectiveness will be watered down and you won't enjoy the nice CTR boost to which you're entitled.
This issue will effect top advertisers the most, as they are the ones most likely to be using additional tracking parameters on their ads. AdWords auto-tagging (i.e. the "gclid" parameter) is not affected by this behavior. Top advertisers typically use additional tags so they can track ad source data in their customer database.
How to fix this? Easy:
Employ canonicalization in your HTML header. According to Google, canonicalization can help you retain your +1 data across pages. Learn more at the Google Webmaster Central Help Center.
Also see this help article on the order of priority for the +1 URL target.
We're expecting Google +1 to experience mass adoption by the end of 2011. Make sure you're prepared -- and go get the button!
Google Plus One: How AdWords Advertisers Can Prepare
Google recently announced the launch of their latest social initiative: Google +1 (Plus One). Still in beta, Google +1 consists of a tiny icon next to each and every organic and paid search listing that, when clicked, communicates your stamp of approval for others to see.Google +1 has strong implications for all AdWords campaigns -- the number of "+1's" will show alongside each ad, which is sure to increase the clicks. Yet there is one important nuance to this that is sure to leave many advertisers unprepared...
Every distinct URL gets its own Google +1 score. If your ad destination URL's include tracking parameters you probably won't get much benefit from Google +1. By default, the following URL's will each get their own Google +1 score:
http://www.example.com/landingpage1/?adid=234523435&campaign=profit
http://www.example.com/landingpage1/?adid=548891387&campaign=money
The above destination URL's go to identical landing pages, but because the query string parameters are different, each will garner its own Google +1 score. As such, your +1 effectiveness will be watered down and you won't enjoy the nice CTR boost to which you're entitled.
This issue will effect top advertisers the most, as they are the ones most likely to be using additional tracking parameters on their ads. AdWords auto-tagging (i.e. the "gclid" parameter) is not affected by this behavior. Top advertisers typically use additional tags so they can track ad source data in their customer database.
How to fix this? Easy:
Employ canonicalization in your HTML header. According to Google, canonicalization can help you retain your +1 data across pages. Learn more at the Google Webmaster Central Help Center.
Also see this help article on the order of priority for the +1 URL target.
We're expecting Google +1 to experience mass adoption by the end of 2011. Make sure you're prepared -- and go get the button!
Google Plus One: How AdWords Advertisers Can Prepare
Google recently announced the launch of their latest social initiative: Google +1 (Plus One). Still in beta, Google +1 consists of a tiny icon next to each and every organic and paid search listing that, when clicked, communicates your stamp of approval for others to see.Google +1 has strong implications for all AdWords campaigns -- the number of "+1's" will show alongside each ad, which is sure to increase the clicks. Yet there is one important nuance to this that is sure to leave many advertisers unprepared...
Every distinct URL gets its own Google +1 score. If your ad destination URL's include tracking parameters you probably won't get much benefit from Google +1. By default, the following URL's will each get their own Google +1 score:
http://www.example.com/landingpage1/?adid=234523435&campaign=profit
http://www.example.com/landingpage1/?adid=548891387&campaign=money
The above destination URL's go to identical landing pages, but because the query string parameters are different, each will garner its own Google +1 score. As such, your +1 effectiveness will be watered down and you won't enjoy the nice CTR boost to which you're entitled.
This issue will effect top advertisers the most, as they are the ones most likely to be using additional tracking parameters on their ads. AdWords auto-tagging (i.e. the "gclid" parameter) is not affected by this behavior. Top advertisers typically use additional tags so they can track ad source data in their customer database.
How to fix this? Easy:
Employ canonicalization in your HTML header. According to Google, canonicalization can help you retain your +1 data across pages. Learn more at the Google Webmaster Central Help Center.
Also see this help article on the order of priority for the +1 URL target.
We're expecting Google +1 to experience mass adoption by the end of 2011. Make sure you're prepared -- and go get the button!
Google Plus One: How AdWords Advertisers Can Prepare
Google recently announced the launch of their latest social initiative: Google +1 (Plus One). Still in beta, Google +1 consists of a tiny icon next to each and every organic and paid search listing that, when clicked, communicates your stamp of approval for others to see.Google +1 has strong implications for all AdWords campaigns -- the number of "+1's" will show alongside each ad, which is sure to increase the clicks. Yet there is one important nuance to this that is sure to leave many advertisers unprepared...
Every distinct URL gets its own Google +1 score. If your ad destination URL's include tracking parameters you probably won't get much benefit from Google +1. By default, the following URL's will each get their own Google +1 score:
http://www.example.com/landingpage1/?adid=234523435&campaign=profit
http://www.example.com/landingpage1/?adid=548891387&campaign=money
The above destination URL's go to identical landing pages, but because the query string parameters are different, each will garner its own Google +1 score. As such, your +1 effectiveness will be watered down and you won't enjoy the nice CTR boost to which you're entitled.
This issue will effect top advertisers the most, as they are the ones most likely to be using additional tracking parameters on their ads. AdWords auto-tagging (i.e. the "gclid" parameter) is not affected by this behavior. Top advertisers typically use additional tags so they can track ad source data in their customer database.
How to fix this? Easy:
Employ canonicalization in your HTML header. According to Google, canonicalization can help you retain your +1 data across pages. Learn more at the Google Webmaster Central Help Center.
Also see this help article on the order of priority for the +1 URL target.
We're expecting Google +1 to experience mass adoption by the end of 2011. Make sure you're prepared -- and go get the button!
Google Plus One: How AdWords Advertisers Can Prepare
Google recently announced the launch of their latest social initiative: Google +1 (Plus One). Still in beta, Google +1 consists of a tiny icon next to each and every organic and paid search listing that, when clicked, communicates your stamp of approval for others to see.Google +1 has strong implications for all AdWords campaigns -- the number of "+1's" will show alongside each ad, which is sure to increase the clicks. Yet there is one important nuance to this that is sure to leave many advertisers unprepared...
Every distinct URL gets its own Google +1 score. If your ad destination URL's include tracking parameters you probably won't get much benefit from Google +1. By default, the following URL's will each get their own Google +1 score:
http://www.example.com/landingpage1/?adid=234523435&campaign=profit
http://www.example.com/landingpage1/?adid=548891387&campaign=money
The above destination URL's go to identical landing pages, but because the query string parameters are different, each will garner its own Google +1 score. As such, your +1 effectiveness will be watered down and you won't enjoy the nice CTR boost to which you're entitled.
This issue will effect top advertisers the most, as they are the ones most likely to be using additional tracking parameters on their ads. AdWords auto-tagging (i.e. the "gclid" parameter) is not affected by this behavior. Top advertisers typically use additional tags so they can track ad source data in their customer database.
How to fix this? Easy:
Employ canonicalization in your HTML header. According to Google, canonicalization can help you retain your +1 data across pages. Learn more at the Google Webmaster Central Help Center.
Also see this help article on the order of priority for the +1 URL target.
We're expecting Google +1 to experience mass adoption by the end of 2011. Make sure you're prepared -- and go get the button!
