Google Launches Near Match – Should You Use It?

Google just announced they are taking near match out of beta and rolling it out to everyone.

What this does is match you to close variations of search queries. It’s pretty similar to modified broad match, only it works for phrase and exact match.

What Near Match Does

For instance, if you are advertising on the keyword: “buy plasma TV”; you will NOT show for these queries:

• buying plasma TV (stemming)
• buy plasma TVs (plural)
• buy plasa TV (misspelling)

With the near match options, you will show for those keywords.

Dartboard Image credit: Velo Steve

Google Does It Again – Auto Opts You In – You Have to Opt Out

I really don’t like when Google does this – they opt you into something instead of leaving existing campaigns alone. I logged into an account today and all the campaigns were changed to the new match type by default.

So, if you don’t want to use it, you need to go through every campaign and disable it. It’s not in the AdWords editor yet, so you have to do this campaign by campaign. You do have until mid-May (supposedly) to change this.

To change the settings; just go to the campaign settings, and near the bottom of the page you’ll see the Exact and phrase matching options:

From there you can turn it off (or enable it if you turned it off earlier).

Update:  Various readers are seeing a large variety of things going on in their accounts. Some are seeing that all campaigns were opted in, and now only half are opted in. Others are seeing that they are completely opted in, yet others are changing the setting only to have it changed again after a couple hours (without them doing anything).

It seems that Google should not have launched a setting that wasn’t in use this far in advance of it going live. It’s only making people more confused and annoyed.

Will Exact Match Trump Near Exact Match?

I’ve talked to several people at Google about the near match ad rank issues to see what will trump what. I don’t have a clear answer. This is what I hear:

• Google always uses the most precise matching option, so if you have the exact match version of the word and the near exact match version of the word; then the exact match will be displayed
  • This isn’t true to begin with (always uses most precise match); so the extrapolated answer seems incorrect; but it could be correct
• Ad Rank is max CPC x QS. Since QS will be the same, then if your near exact match bid keyword is much higher than the exact match version of the word, then the near exact match will show and not the exact match
  • I’m guessing this is correct; and it could mess up stats.

How Stats Can Become Corrupted

Let’s say you have these two words:

• [Restaurant waiter clog]
• [Restaurant waiter clogs]

There are usually less ads on the ‘clog’ version of this keyword, and the CPC is generally lower than the ‘clogs’ version. However, it also has a lower conversion rate. Therefore, you bid the ‘clog’ version down a little bit, but as there are so few ads, it doesn’t matter.

Now, with everyone being opted in by default into this option, the ‘clog’ version is going to get a lot more competitive; so the CPCs will go up. As the ‘clog’ version has a lower conversion rate, you just accept the fact that you’ll get fewer conversions from this word and bid the word based upon ROAS.

However, the bid is so low for the ‘clog’ version that when someone searches for ‘restaurant waiter clog’ Google no longer triggers the exact match version; they trigger the ‘clogs’ version as it is a ‘near exact match’.

Now, the search query report should show that the ‘clog’ version received the click; but you can’t bid on a search query. You have to add it as a match type first. But, this keyword is already a match type with a lower CPC. So, you’ve now lost ad serving control.

How Often Do “Near Exacts” Have Different Conversion Rates?

That really depends (yeah, I hate the answer too).

I’ve dealt with accounts where the singular and plural versions sold different products, or used different pages.

I’ve dealt with accounts where everything similar behaves the exact same way.

Only you can find out this data for yourself. Take a look through the search query report and see if there are any commonalities amount singular words, plural words, misspellings, and stemmings.

It’s the stemmings I’m more concerned with that the plurals or misspellings.

What will this be matched to (note: phrase match): “Cleveland Driver”

• Cleveland driver (brand of golf club)
• Cleveland drive (the 1987 John Elway Game ‘The Drive’) or a street name
• Cleveland driving school
• Cleveland drivers license (drivers vs driver is a huge difference here)

And I’m sure there are much better examples that will come to those who have had more coffee than myself.

Can You Test It?

You can test almost anything; but this will be really hard to test. Cross campaign ACE (AdWords campaign experiments) would be really useful. That is among my top 5 wish list items for AdWords.

From a conceptual standpoint, there seem to be two ways to test it.

Exact Match Positive & Negative Keywords

Sometimes, Google won’t show you when you have the same word as a positive and negative in the same ad group or campaign – so this might not work.

• Copy/paste your exact match keywords to a new campaign
• Copy/paste those same keywords as negative exact match keywords
• Enable the setting
• See if you get traffic (uncertain if you will)

Since the new campaign’s keywords say show me for this, but don’t show me for the exact same item – then only if it’s a near match should the keyword be displayed.

In the old campaign, leave the ‘near match’ setting off so that it will capture the true exact match data.

Collect some info and compare the two campaigns.

Duplicate Campaigns w/ Lower Bids

This method is how you use to control search partners:

• Duplicate the campaign
• Change the setting to ‘near match’
• Lower the bids by 10%-20%
• Collect the data
• Examine the results

Now, this method is not as good as the other one. As the bids are lower, you will receive fewer clicks. And as you’re not controlling the info with negatives, you’ll get some corrupted data. However, it’s much faster than trying to match up all the negatives.

Should You Use It?

I have very mixed feelings about near match.

I work with some accounts that have loaded up on so many exact match and phrase match variations of words for their auto-bidding system; that the setting really isn’t that useful. In this case test it or leave it off.

I work with some accounts that have loaded up on exacts and phrases when it seemed useful, but they don’t spent enough time really controlling all of the display and they prefer to let the bidding system handle it. In this case, test out the setting to see how it performs.

In some accounts modified broad match is doing great, and when there’s a lot of traffic they also add the keyword as an exact match. For these accounts, it might be more useful to let the modified broad catch the ‘near match’ impressions and then use search queries, negatives, and true exacts to manage the bids – when there is a lot of traffic.

I think that might be the difference, the above management method is great for medium to large accounts. It is very difficult for accounts with little traffic.

So… are you a control freak? Then leave it off or split it out into another campaign.

Do you want the most exposure for the least amount of work, or do you have a small data set? If so, turn it on.

Are you in the medical jargon industry where misspellings outnumber correct ones? If so, turn it on.

Time vs Control

With these new betas, such as Display Campaign Optimizer, it comes down to control vs time. If you want lots of control, then it’ll take you longer, but you have control.

If you don’t want a lot of control, or have very little time, turn them on, benchmark how they do, and then decide to keep or turn off the setting.

As Google tries to make AdWords more appealing to the masses who don’t have lots of time, or sophistication; expect to see even more features that offer time saving methods, but at the cost of losing some control.

Google Launches Near Match – Should You Use It? is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Google AdWords vs Charles Darwin

Anybody who’s developed a modicum of chops with Google ads knows how utterly Darwinian Google is. Most of your ads vanish forever after being seen by (maybe) a few thousand eyeballs. 3% of the advertisers get 50% of the traffic and everyone else fights over the scraps.

As an advertiser, you know that a major key to success is proliferating dozens of ads in as many creative directions as you can until you hit your customer’s “Sweet Spot.”

What you might not realize is how much AdWords can teach you about real evolution – the kind they debate in science class. Most interesting of all is that it highlights a crucial mistake Charles Darwin made 150 years ago. You may not be aware that modern evolutionary theory is in a massive state of flux right now. Old-school “Darwinians” are in a panic as of late. As I shall explain.

One of my favorite blogs is that of University of Chicago geneticist James Shapiro, who writes for the Huffington Post. Dr. Shapiro has impeccable credentials. He was the first to discover that bacteria have the ability to massively re-arrange their DNA in 1968. He was mentored by the Nobel Prize winner Barbara McClintock, and he holds an Order of the British Empire medal from the Queen of England.

Lately Shapiro has been firing salvos at old-school Darwinists who insist that the all-powerful driving force of evolution is random copying errors and Natural Selection, aka “survival of the fittest.” Au contraire, says Dr. Shapiro — the real source of evolution and the flourish of life is the spectacular ability of organisms to exchange and re-arrange their own DNA in direct response to the environment.

In other words, cells re-write their DNA almost exactly the same way you re-write your Google ads: By watching, listening, predicting and calculating. A protozoan (complex microbe) under stress can splice its DNA into 100,000 pieces, re-arrange them, and produce a new protozoan in minutes.

Seldom do popular evolution books breathe so much as a single word about this. They would have you believe evolution happens randomly and accidentally; that all you need is survival of the fittest and given enough time, “presto,” you get an entire earth filled with life.

‘Tain’t so.

If you’ve built a few AdWords campaigns… you know where the ads come from. You know exactly how the winners get sorted from the losers. You understand the evolutionary process very well, thank you very much. In fact you probably know a few things you didn’t even realize you knew.

Consider this diagram:

You write or rewrite ads. Google distributes them far and wide. People click on some and not others. Google moves the winners to the top and sends the losers to the scrap yard. You keep rewriting your best ads (a process which requires you to listen to your customers). If you’re really good, you wind up at the top of the heap.

This is all everyday experience, the normal operation of the $50 billion paid search industry. Nothing controversial about it. But what’s interesting is this:

Living things evolve exactly the same way – which is NOT the way Darwinists have been telling you for decades. Conventional Darwinists say DNA gets re-written by accidental copying errors, and that all the power is in the last step: “Natural Selection.” Natural Selection has attained a magical, godlike status in some circles.

If you’ve ever done Google ads, or even if you just look at the diagram, you plainly see that Natural Selection doesn’t create anything. Zero. Zip. Nada. Natural Selection is surely very powerful – in advertising, it’s the “court of last resort.” The marketplace will vote for or against your ads in maddening, frustrating ways that you could have never predicted. (I myself get those “Which ad won, A or B?” tests right, uh, about 50% of the time.)

But in the end, Natural Selection doesn’t add, it subtracts. It kills off the losers. It’s death, baby. That’s all that it is. There ain’t no life in death.

Where does the creative input come from? In Google ads it comes from you, and what you hear from the marketplace.

Likewise, Dr. Shapiro will tell you that the protozoan edits its own DNA much the same way you edit your ads: By monitoring hundreds of signals in its environment and responding with precision.

Charles Darwin was almost right… but not quite. He thought cells were blobs of goo. He had no idea that tucked inside were incredible networks of sensors, digital code, signal processing, and 24/7/365 adaptation.

Shapiro is presently at war with a somewhat notorious atheist, University of Chicago biology professor Jerry Coyne. Coyne insists that all those DNA splices are blind and haphazard, and all the creativity comes from Natural Selection. (Shapiro keeps his religious views to himself. Coyne uses his position as a pulpit for proselytizing his militant form of atheism.) It’s scientifically and mathematically impossible to prove Coyne’s theory that DNA mutations are random. Cellular engineering is provable, though, and has been proven.

Everyone who’s ever done AdWords knows Natural Selection doesn’t create anything new, now or ever. The failure of one ad to get clicks, all by itself, does not in any way shape or form furnish fresh content for a different ad. And in 10 years of teaching AdWords to literally hundreds of thousands of people, I’ve never seen anyone beat their old ad with text that came from a computer glitch or data copying error.

The punch line is: Living things possess amazing natural genetic engineering ability. They edit their own code with greater skill than the smartest human programmers. They reprogram their instructions the same way you innovate your advertising:

• They re-arrange text according to linguistic rules (“transposition”)
• They borrow copy from other cells (“horizontal gene transfer”)
• They merge with other cells (“symbiogenesis”)
• They silence specific letters and words to make them inactive (“epigenetics”)
• They form hybrids with similar creatures (“whole genome duplication”)

The fact that cells adapt in such systematic, cooperative patterns, and not by accident, blasts a crater in the long-held notion that life is accidental and purposeless. You and I are not just a bunch of billiard balls banging around in the universe. Every cell on planet earth is intentional right down to its DNA.

Jerry Coyne and his posse are boiling mad about this, but facts are facts. If you have an appetite for biology, I highly recommend Shapiro’s book “Evolution: A View from the 21st Century.” Endorsed by several Nobel prize-winning researchers, is literally the first book in print to provide a comprehensive, accurate, modern account of how evolution really works. (See my Amazon review.)

But if you’ve been A/B split testing your ads like Claude Hopkins told us all to do in Scientific Advertising in 1918, you already knew how evolution works all along :^}

The art of automating winning with PPC bidding engines when you have something to sell

For every search on Google there is 1 click to be had; sometimes it goes to the organic (SEO) search result and other times it goes to paid advertising results (PPC). The companies with a product to sell who are participating in either organic search or PPC are competing for this 1 click. So, if you know there is only one click to be had, what are you willing to do to get that click? Your answer is likely “whatever it takes,” but reality is likely more “I hope whatever I am doing now will catch that click.” There are mind blowing facts within the PPC world: Companies will spend time, resources, and efforts on exploring SEO strategies to get the click; and they will engage in off-the-deep-end strategy discussions with their agencies and advisors for how the relationship with SEO and PPC works, how the search funnel should be capitalized, and how branded terms should or should not be part of the PPC effort. Those are the facts, but what is so mind blowing about them?

Those facts are mind blowing because they are the little things that only need to be fine-tuned later on. What companies are missing out on it this: The PPC world lives by the CPA model (cost per acquisition/conversion). The more competitive the industry, the more insane this gets. Take the travel or insurance industry; prime examples of why the CPA model is a key illustration of what is wrong with an entire industry. Everyone is setting a target on how much they are willing to pay for a conversion/sale, and of course this is based on the cost of the conversion (click costs divided by number of conversions for your site) in relation to what you are selling. This makes perfect sense and is why everyone is doing it. There are two problems with it: (1) Everyone is doing it (and likely have somewhat the same metrics in the big picture), and (2) It depends on averages which are worthless unless you have one product (one price) to sell.

Am I saying that everyone using CPA as a measurement is doing it wrong? YES!!!

Most companies selling products online have a range of prices for their products. Would you be willing to have a higher CPA for a $5,000 sale than a $50 sale? Of course you would! Chances are that you are in the 95%+ of the companies we encounter that track conversions, but not the Value (Google’s terminology for dynamic tracking of sales or profits). Picture this: Most companies with significant ad spend have had multiple people managing or involved in their campaigns over the past years, and the tracking codes usually illustrate this clearly. Action codes (tracking) get added and sometimes result in double or triple tracking on the conversion count, yet most are not tracking what matters the most (sales and/or revenues).

Do this today: Check your conversion tracking codes (in AdWords go to Reporting, Conversions) and look at what you are tracking. If you have a shopping cart on your site, find the Action that is tracking those conversions, and look in the Value column to the far right to see what the number is. If it is zero (0) or matches the number of conversions by some fixed amount, you need to fix it by inserting the variable that sums up the items in the shopping cart before checkout into your tracking code. You will now be able to associate the revenues each click generates. Why? Because this single action is the key to outsmarting your competitors when you bid for the next click (remember, Google is a live auction for companies that bid on the click from a given keyword, and the display of your ad is a function of how much you are willing to bid and your quality score combined).

Now, back to the example of the $50 product and the $5,000 product. If you did the above, now you will at least track the revenues that are resulting from your live auction bidding on a click. How in the world can you enter an auction to bid on a click if you do not know what that click is worth to you???

Knowing how much the next click is worth when you have thousands of keywords, thousands of products, and thousands of ads gets complicated very quickly and is not a task for humans. It is a task for computerized bidding. Are you doing it? Are your competitors? Find out more about Finch and how computerized bidding can help your online sales at finch.com.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Certified Knowledge. If you would like to write for Certified Knowledge, please let us know.

The art of automating winning with PPC bidding engines when you have something to sell is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Change to Quality Score Factors

The overall Quality Score Factors haven’t changed in several years. Some of the weightings and algos have changed; but Google’s page about QS has remained relatively static.

There was one change in October of last year that pertained to landing pages and how they would receive ‘more’ weight; where ‘more’ is very undefined. Overall, most companies did not see a difference when this factor was changed.

I noticed that recently there is another change, and that is:

Your keyword/search relevance: How relevant your keyword is to what a customer searches for
Source: AdWords Help

This is an interesting change as it shows that if your keyword isn’t related to what they are searching for; then your QS can be lower. But, if your keyword was triggered – isn’t the searcher looking for something pertaining to your keyword?

This seems like a catch-22 and something is amiss.

Is this a match type problem?

On the surface, it might seem that this is a strike against broad match as in that case, you can often show for something totally unrelated to your keyword. However, Quality Score is only calculated when the query matches your keyword regardless of match type. So, that can’t be the issue.

Isn’t this against the point of search marketing?

Now, this new factor doesn’t care about the landing page or ad copy, just how related ‘what someone is looking for’ is to your keyword.

Isn’t the point of search marketing that the keyword is always related to the query?

To answer this question, we might have to think a bit more about keyword intents.

Search Query Intent

When you have a keyword such as:

• Nike tennis shoes
• Caribbean vacation packages
• Chicago accountant

Then the query is quite obvious; but what about these words:

• TV
• Radio
• Lawyer

In those cases, you could be looking for TV repair, TV guides, Plasma TV, family planning lawyer, how to become a lawyer, Pandora, Spotify, or any number of items.

In this case, your keyword will rarely be related to the query.

Device Types Change Intent

If you search for ‘movies’ on a mobile phone; you usually want near by theatres and movie times.

If you search for ‘movies’ on a computer, you could be looking for online movies, movie reviews, or any number of various items.

This factor could help Google better understand how to serve ads by geography or device types.

Search or Display

Google doesn’t do nearly as good of job at breaking down Quality Score factors between search and display as they use to. It might be that this is only used on display and is part of the new display initiative to show you keyword level stats for display. In that case, it could be a way for them to start showing quality score information for display (which they don’t right now).

Displayed or Used Quality Score

You see the Quality Score in your account as its rolled up across all of the factors to a keyword. You don’t see the real time Quality Score. For instance, if you are advertising for ‘TV Repair’ you could have a QS of 7. However, if the query is ‘Chicago TV repair’ your QS might be 8; and when the query is ‘Fix my TV Set’ your QS might be a 3.

If this goes to the real time QS; then it makes a lot of sense. If it goes to the displayed QS; then there must be some bad matching or keyword selection happening that forced Google to add this change.

Wrap-Up

I didn’t see this change until today when I was examining some feed information. However, this change was made about a month ago.  In fact, it was made right around when the new display changes were taking place. That could be coincidence; but something to keep in mind if you saw some odd changes to display.

Yet, Google didn’t mention anything about the change. There was no mention by reps, agency newsletters, or even blog posts about this change. I did reach out to some reps, so I’ll see what they have to say about this change. If anyone else has any info – please leave a comment.

Regardless of the change – it isn’t earth shattering. It might cause lower quality scores on ambiguous keywords, or on words that normally have a different intent by device type or geography; but as a month has gone by and no one has seen anything crazy; the effect can’t be too drastic.

However, when you start working on Quality Scores and are wondering why certain words might have lower or higher scores than other keywords regardless of the CTR – this is a factor to now keep in mind.

Change to Quality Score Factors is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Last Chance to Register for The Toronto AdWords Training Workshop

SMX Toronto is just around the corner. After the conference ends, the training day will begin.

On April 27th, I will be conducting a full day training on AdWords.

Here’s all the details about the Toronto AdWords Workshop:

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Even with all of the new marketing channels that have opened up over the years, AdWords is still the core of many companies interactive campaigns. If your PPC campaigns are not running efficiently, it can have a drastic impact on your bottom line.

Join Brad Geddes for a full day of AdWords education and discussion that will teach you not only the best practices, but also advanced concepts and strategies that are based upon a decade of research and testing.

What Will I Learn?

Comprehensive Keyword Research: The absolute center of every PPC campaign is keywords. Learn the effective methods to discover and research keywords. While keywords are the lifeblood of PPC, perfecting your match types usage while controlling your negative keywords can drastically increase your overall revenue.

Writing Compelling Ad Copy: You will learn how to sync your ad copy with both your keywords and buying cycle stages.

Ad Copy Testing: Testing ad copy is essential to any AdWords account’s success. You will takeaway several ideas for ads to test by the time you leave the session.

Demystifying Quality Score: Quality Score has a larger effect on your account’s visibility than any other setting inside of AdWords. Quality Score can be a challenge to increase. Receive step-by-step instructions in how to prioritize Quality Score improvement, and what actions to take to increase your Quality Scores.

Increase your Reach Through the Google Display Network: Consumers spend about 5% of their time with the search network. The rest of their time is spent on content sites. Learn how to effectively reach users beyond search with contextual ads, placements, and enhanced campaigns.

Control Your Ad Display with Location Targeting: Do you think that geographic targeting isn’t relevant to a national business? Think again! Whether you are a brick and mortar local business, or a global e-commerce site, learn how geographically targeted campaigns can create additional connections with searchers.

Increase Your Landing Page Conversions: The first impression to a potential customer is the landing page. With only a few seconds to engage the buyer this may be more important in your conversion funnel than anything else. This section of the course will not only go into best practices and usability, but how to test landing pages in a simple and effective method.

Networking Opportunities: Conferences are fantastic places to network and meet fellow practitioners of online marketing. Lunch will be provided so you can spend time getting to know your fellow attendees.

Who is Brad Geddes?

Brad Geddes is the Founder of Certified Knowledge, a company dedicated to consulting, educating, and training marketers on Internet marketing theory and best practices. Not one to hold secrets, Brad is a prominent educator in the PPC industry.

• Google Certified AdWords Trainer
• Author of “Advanced Google AdWords”
• Host of Marketing Nirvana on Webmaster Radio
• Internationally recognized speaker
• Trained more than 10,000 businesses on AdWords
• Columnist for Search Engine Land
• Founder of Certified Knowledge
• Worked with companies with budget ranges from $17 month to millions each month
• Has worked with Red Lobster, Encyclopedia Britannica, Yahoo, Google, Amazon, YellowPages.com

 

Past Training Video Testimonials

How to Register

If you would like to attend the Advanced AdWords Training @ SMX Toronto you will need one of two passes for SMX:

• Workshop only pass
• All Access Pass + Workshop

More Information:

• Learn about SMX Toronto
• Register for Advanced AdWords Training
• Learn more about the workshops

Please Note: This is a one day event that is a partnership with SMX. This is not the same as the AdWords Seminar for Success. This is one day event that is jammed pack full of information in a short amount of time. Please come ready to learn.

Last Chance to Register for The Toronto AdWords Training Workshop is a post from: Certified Knowledge

5 Adwords Metrics that Count

Not sure where to start in Adwords? These stats come first.

To manage your Adwords campaign effectively, you need to know how each metric can help you improve your site and better engage your audience. If you’re new to the game, though, you don’t have to be intimidated by the mass of statistics that you’re asked to juggle. To help you get started navigating in Adwords, we’ve assembled the following vital metrics, with some information on why they matter.

Quality Score

Google is in the business of getting users where they want to go—and an irrelevant ad makes Google look bad to the customer, who is then less likely to trust Google’s results in the future. For this reason, Google rewards quality and punishes misdirection and manipulation with a high or low quality score, which determines to a large extent the cost of your advertising and the exposure you receive. These are the factors Google uses:

• Does the text of your ad match your chosen keyword?
• Does clicking your ad take the user somewhere relevant to the ad text (or is the ad misleading)?
• How often does your ad get clicked (also known as click-through rate or CTR)?

Landing Page Optimization

Google likes your ad to link directly to a specific, relevant landing page; for instance, if provide SEO services and your ad relates to Pay-Per-Click, an Adwords newbie might just have the link direct the user to your homepage; but your ad will score better if it links the user directly to your pay-per-click services. The general rule is that clicking your ad should send the user directly to the product or service you advertise. Even if Google didn’t track this metric, it’s basic common sense; people don’t like clicking ads, so if a customer is interested enough in your business to click through, it’s silly to make them dig through your site map to find the product or service you want them to buy. For the sake of your business, your users, and your Adwords campaign, your ad needs to provide the shortest possible distance between reading the ad and buying the product.

Bounce Rate

It’s important for marketers to measure how many pages of your site your users are viewing after clicking on your ad. If users click your ad only to click away disappointed a moment later, you’ve wasted your money and the user’s time. Users who click your ad should have instant access to the information they need—and then have a reason to stick around. By creating engaging content and smooth navigation throughout your site, you can bump up this metric and improve the effectiveness of your advertising. This is one of the more interesting metrics to examine, because what constitutes “good content” is fairly subjective; but it can also be a huge factor in the success of your Adwords campaign.

Time on Site

For the same reason your bounce rate is important, it’s equally important to consider how long users spend on your site (as it’s an important indicator of how useful and/or interesting they find your content). Improving this metric is a matter of maintaining content that is rich enough to keep the user on your site, but not so dense that they’re intimidated or bored.

Conversion Rate

Conversion is probably the most significant metric for your business, because everything else is just numbers unless you can convert ad-clicks into revenue. Conversion rate is a simple metric that examines the ratio between how many people visited your site versus how many did some action. The more you turn clicks into leads, and leads into satisfied customers, the higher your conversion rate will be.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Certified Knowledge. If you would like to write for Certified Knowledge, please let us know.

5 Adwords Metrics that Count is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Advanced Google AdWords 2nd Edition Now Shipping

I’m very happy to announce that the 2nd edition of Advanced Google AdWords is now shipping from stores.

This book is a little bit longer than the first – it’s 571 pages.

It is fully updated with information on:

• Remarketing
• Ad Extensions
• Topic and interest targeting
• New location options
• New case studies
• And a lot more
• You can buy it from most stores and it’s available in the Kindle version.

Here’s the links for Amazon.

• Paperback edition
• Kindle edition

If you’ve enjoyed the book, please leave a review at Amazon. A few positive reviews can go a long ways towards making a book launch successful.

Thank you everyone for you questions, information, and feedback over the years. It’s through the wisdom of the  community and extensive testing everything on AdWords that makes a book like this possible.

Advanced Google AdWords 2nd Edition Now Shipping is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Advanced AdWords 2nd Edition Currently Available in Kindle Format – Others Coming Soon

The second edition of Advanced Google AdWords should be shipping to stores this week. Usually, it takes one to two weeks before a book is available on the store shelves.

Amazon is listing the ship date as April 24th; however, it would not surprise me if it shipped a few days earlier.

I have been assured by Wiley (my publisher) that the book will be available in the Kindle format by the 24th of April, but they are trying to make it available even sooner.

Update: The kindle version is now available at amazon

Regardless, before the end of the month the 2nd edition should be available online, in retail stores, and on the Kindle.

The companion site, Advanced AdWords Book should also be updated in the next week or two to reflect the new book.

You can preorder the physical book right now at Amazon.

I just received a nice image of the updated cover, which you can see here:

 

A lot of work went into the 2nd edition.

I hope you enjoy it

Advanced AdWords 2nd Edition Currently Available in Kindle Format – Others Coming Soon is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Display Campaign Optimizer: Some Recommendations from a Beta User

Google just announced that the Display Campaign Optimizer (DCO) is open for everyone. Before you start jus using it, I wanted to give some feedback on how its worked for a few accounts as I’ve been using this feature for more than a year.

Please note, these are large accounts that participated in the beta. Some of them have spent more than $40 million on DCO all time with monthly budgets of a few million just for DCO. Other campaigns have spent somewhere in the $5-$10 million range.  I think the smallest campaign was spending around $10,000/month on DCO. So, there was a lot of data available.

First, you should know how successful display campaigns are run, and then we’ll look at the differences of how DCO works.

Successful Display Campaigns

Most successful display campaigns use a few steps in optimizing their overall performance:

1. Choose a handful of keywords by ad group
2. Let the ad groups collect data
3. Examine the placement data
   1. If a site does not meet your goals – block it
   2. If a site meets you goals – make it a management placement (often in a new campaign)

As your goal is to find sites that meet your target CPAs, and you’re constantly playing with ads, bids, and exclusions and that can be quite time consuming.

Note: Another way to manage display is to just use managed placements, which is usually best for small budgets.

The main question is: can DCO take out some of this work? Let look at how DCO has worked.

How Display Campaign Optimizer Works

With DCO, you only write ads in the campaigns and set a CPA. You do not choose keywords, placements, topics, interests, or other targeting options.

Based upon your ads and landing pages – Google does all the work.

So, what you lose is control. What you gain is time.

The Big Change to DCO: Minimum Conversions

During the beta, you needed at least 150 conversions a month to be eligible for DCO. Google just opened it to everyone as they lowered this threshold to 15.

This is similar to CPA bidding. When it launched you needed 60 conversions/month. Then it was lowered to 30, and finally 15. While CPA bidding is wonderful if you have 60-100 or more conversions each month in your campaign, it does not work well if you have 15 conversions and 10,000 keywords. There just aren’t enough data points for Google to optimize.

Because you set a CPA, you must be using the Conversion Optimizer bid system with target CPAs enabled.

Should You use DCO?

If you have a large budget and are willing to try DCO out with a budget of at least $5,000/month AND you have found some success on the display network; then please give it a try – you’ll probably see some good results.

If you can spend at least $10,000-$100,000/month on a DCO campaign and have had some success on display – then definitely try it.

If you have a budget that is only going to receive 15-50 conversions a month on the display network, you can either:

• Proceed with a lot of caution as it really might not work
• Use DoubleClick adPlanner to find managed placements and maintain lots of control

You are giving up control. So if you have a well organized display campaign that is working well and you don’t have ‘new budget’ to add to DCO – meaning you’ll be moving existing budget – then proceed with caution as you’re pulling budget away from effective advertising.

I’ve found more success with DCO when you give it a new budget and then as it works, you can transition budgets from existing display campaigns that are working marginally to the DCO campaigns.

How to Enable Display Campaign Optimizer

Enabling DCO is easy. Navigate to the campaign settings and then at the bottom of the page, change the targeting options as seen in this screenshot.

The Confusing Part – You Can’t have Keywords, Placements, or other Targeting Options so How Do You Get to 15 Conversions?

In the beta test you needed a rep to enable this for you. So, you or your rep made the campaigns, you added your CPAs, budgets, and ads and then the system went to work.

You could not have keywords, placements, topics, interests, or other targeting options enabled.

Now, in the new system you must have at least 15 conversions – which means you must start with placements, keywords, topics or some targeting option that will get you enough conversions so you can enable CPA bidding and DCO.

So, it would seem that once you meet the threshold you have to delete all your targeting options for it to work or pause your old ad groups with targeting options, make new ones, and then let it go to work.

This step seems very odd at the moment. I reached out to Google to see how this is going to work. If anyone knows, please leave details in the comments.

In the beta, you really needed to give the tool a couple weeks to collect data and really get going. Sometimes it worked immediately, other times it took a while. Most of those reasons were based upon Google collecting enough data to show your ads. As the new system requires a campaign that already has conversion data, the wait period for success or failure determination could be much lower.

Overall Success

So far, I have put several accounts into the beta. In almost all cases (there was one exception) DCO did a great job of finding new conversions and acceptable CPAs.

It did fail for one account; but I have a feeling that part of that issue was it was a product with a landing page that didn’t have lots of text data on it (it was images and video) and DCO mostly had the ad copy to work from for targeting purposes.

As DCO uses only ad text and landing page data to serve your ads, landing pages with at least a few paragraphs of descriptive text seem to do a little bit better overall – at least to start. Once the system gets going, it has enough historical ad serving data that the landing page info matters a bit less.

The landing page importance of DCO for small to mid sized budgets that won’t have lots of conversion data might (again, I don’t know as there haven’t been small accounts in DCO yet) really come into play for proper ad serving. In other words, if DCO isn’t working and your landing page doesn’t have much text, changing the text of your landing page might help DCO serve your ads better.

Conclusion

If you have additional budget that you aren’t spending and have found success on display – definitely try it out.

If you have had marginal success on display and a healthy budget, then put some budget into DCO to see if it outperforms what you have been doing.

If you have a small to mid-sized account and are an experimenter – try it out – it could be really good (or not).

If you have a small to mid-sized account and prefer to let others fail or succeed first so you can make a highly informed decision about trying it out – then wait until some more results from these types of accounts are published.

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed it – but I have been working with large accounts with lots of data. If DCO works for small to mid-sized accounts, then the display network just got a whole lot more attractive.

Additional Resources

• DCO announcement from Google
• DCO help page (note, its not updated to reflect the fact its open to all)
• Google Promo video for DCO with Dale Carnegie

Google video on Display Campaign Optimizer:

 

Display Campaign Optimizer: Some Recommendations from a Beta User is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Are You Creeping Out Your Customers?

I was recently talking to a group of consumers (not search marketers) who had some very negative perceptions about a handful of brands.

In some cases, they use to be a fan of the brand, or at a minimum would buy continue buying from that brand. In other cases, they had never purchased from the brand before.

These negative feelings did not derive from product usage, social media, or even word of mouth.

These negative feelings had arisen because they felt the companies were haunting them.

No matter where they went, no matter what they did, the ads followed them around.

If you can’t control your ads, you may no longer be reaching your customers – you might be driving them away.

I did an experiment today. I went to eight sites I suspected of not controlling their ads well. Then I wandered around the web for an hour. Six of the eight sites showed me more than 100 ads in less than an hour.

The biggest culprit is remarketing ads. While remarketing ads are fantastic when used correctly, they can be harmful to your brand if not controlled. In today’s column, we will examine a few ways of controlling your display ads.

Frequency Capping

The easiest way to control your ad display is by capping the frequency in which you show your ads. Frequency is the number of times the same person can see one of your ads in a time frame.

By default, Google does not place frequency caps on ads. This is very simple to do. Navigate to your campaign settings. Under advanced settings, you can set a frequency cap.

If you are buying CPM from someone besides Google, make sure to set frequency cap. If you don’t, you could buy 1000 impressions and reach a total of 1 person.

Use Multiple Ad Themes or Offers

Most companies are pretty good about using multiple sizes within an ad group. However, those sizes are often for the same offer or theme, just resized to fit all of the ad format sizes.

If someone has seen the offer fifty times, the fifty-first impression is not going to be magical. Create a few offers, using completely different themes (look and feel of the ads) and place them in the same ad group. Now when you show your ad to the same person a few times (and showing someone an ad multiple times is fine – just control yourself), at least you are rotating the ad’s themes and offers. If offer one does not convert them, then maybe offer two will.

Use Topics Targeting to Refine Your Ad Displays

It is common to see someone research a cruise on the weekends while sitting with the spouse and thinking about their next vacation. Later in the day, that same person realizes their computer is getting old and they start to research computers. In another week or two, that same person might go back to researching cruises, but that could be an entire week.

While they are researching computers, they often don’t see computer ads, they are seeing vacation ads.

The vacation ad impressions are completely wasted at this point in time.

These silos of research are common and sometimes are referred to search sessions. It’s common to start with one session, find an answer or postpone the search and switch to a completely different train of thought for a while.

With remarketing you are reaching the person regardless of their current intent unless you filter your ads by topic (in this case travel) and your remarketing ads at the same time. You can easily use topic targeting to refine your remarketing lists so you are only showing ads when they are researching similar products or services to what you offer.

Use Negative Audience Lists

In my previous remarketing article, I detailed a way to reach back to customers a month or two after they bought from you with remarketing. However, after someone buys from you, they probably don’t want to see your ad another twenty times in the next two days. Use negative lists to stop your ad from showing to customers for a while. It is OK to reach out to them with new ads in the future, but do not annoy them in the meantime. If your company does not have repeat buyers, then use your negative lists to make sure you are not putting your ads in front of someone who will never be a customer again.

Control Your Ads

Displaying ads is easy. It takes just a couple minutes to add another ad to an ad group (or buy CPM from another company) and start showing ads across the web. Getting clicks to your site is a bit more  difficult as your ad needs a compelling offer, and needs to be shown at the correct time and place to the consumer. Getting customers from ads is even more difficult as your landing page needs to convince them to take an action.

Advertising is easy. Getting customer is no t – assuming that you have a chance of even converting the customer.

If you do not control your ads, you might annoy potential customers so much that they buy from your competitors because you drove them away with your incessant advertising.

Taking control of your advertising is a necessary step so that you are not just advertising; but you are acquiring new customers with your marketing efforts.

Are You Creeping Out Your Customers? is a post from: Certified Knowledge

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