Bingo! Now what do I do with this website?

I got a comment (from Barak) on the last post suggesting I wouldn’t give up on managed placements and that “if you “catch” a winning horse on the automatic placements, I you should add it as a managed placement. In most cases it won’t fail and you’ll gain better control over the spend your’e allocating for this placement.”.

I begun writing my comment to that but then I realized it is something worth writing a post about since other people might have the same situation.

So, what to do when you find that one great website on the automatic placements that is performing really well and the CPA is right on target and even better?

As some of you may do, you have the option to target your ‘winning horse’ through your managed placements in the same ad group. My experience with this action is quite bad. Sometimes it worked, but many times it didn’t. Barak was right when he said you get the benefit of better control over the spend you are allocating for this placement, but on the other hand, if something is working, why fix it?

As I mentioned in my last post, Managed placements vs. Automatic placements, PPCHero wrote a post that describes my experience from taking ‘winning horses’ to the manged placements and explains why this happens. Basically they are saying, and I think they’re right, that if you move a site to the ‘managed placements’ you are actually saying to Google, ‘hey, this site is working well for me and I want more of it’, and then you can kiss good-bye to the discount you got in CPC there thanks to ‘smart pricing’.

I think the best way to go is to open a new managed placements ad group and add your winning horse there. This way you can check your ads performance on this website both on managed placements and on automatic placements. Check how many impressions your ‘winning horse’ is getting in each ad group and adjust the bids accordingly. Be prepared to pay higher CPC though, cause after all you are telling Google this site matters to you so the smart pricing system won’t take effect on this site anymore.

You might see that this site is not performing well on the managed placements after all and decide to stick with targeting it just through the automatic placements. But it might be too late to save your ‘smart pricing discount’. If this is really the case, then your last option might be to copy this ad group and place higher bid on this new ad group. Why copy it and place higher bid? because if you raise the bid on your old ad group you might lose other sites that are performing well since you will suddenly have many more websites you weren’t able to reach before because you had a low bid and these websites might consume your budget.When you open this new ad group, you might want to open a new campaign for it in order to control its budget.

What I described in the last paragraph really depends on the niche, the volume of traffic you get and your daily budget. You might decide to forget all about your ‘winning horse’ and start looking for a new one.

Oh man the content network can get tricky. This is really advanced stuff. I hope I didn’t mix things up but if I did let me know.

Last thing, sign up to my RSS feed to keep yourself updated with my latest posts. Thanks!

P.S

Thank you Barak for inspiring me to write this post.

Managed Placements vs. Automatic Placements

When you first create your campaign targeting the Google Content Network ( GCN) you need to decide if you want to go with automatic placements by using keywords to target the relevant sites and let Google decide what is relevant, or to go with managed placements by picking the exact websites you want your ad to show on and not trust Google’s algorithm to pick the places for you.

My opinion is that although by choosing automatic placements you take a risk that Google will show your ad on irrelevant websites (and it will happen), it is the better way to go since after all Google knows better than you all the relevant sites in their network, and if you try to find them yourself it will take you hours and you might end up missing that one killer site that could have generate mass amount of conversions.

As mentioned, the obvious  shortcoming of choosing the automatic placements is of course spending money on irrelevant sites. But the weird thing is, that you will most likely to find sites that on first glance seems irrelevant, but convert well. And who said that if you pick the relevant sites yourself you will get great CPA there? After all, if you found them easily, probably your competitors did the same, and the result is higher CPC on those sites.

PPCHero wrote a really good post about why your managed placements might fail even if you found those sites by using the automatic placements. Basically, Jessica, the post creator, wrote that when using the automatic placements the rule of smart pricing applies, while it doesn’t on managed placements, and that is why your managed placements will often cost more than the automatic placements (even if we’re talking about the same site). Smart Pricing, for those of you who don’t know, is a system of pricing Google is using in the content network that basically says that you will pay less per click where Google thinks your conversion rate will be lower than average.

I first planned to write a post about how to optimize in the Google Content Network but somehow I didn’t get there. Maybe next time…

AdWords Is Testing A New Match Type

One of my clients’ account got an invitation to take part in a beta test of a new feature in AdWords called ‘modified broad match’.

If you ever got upset over the extremely wide range of search queries that trigger your broad match keywords (and my guess that 99% of PPC managers and affiliates did), this new feature is made for you.

Modified broad match gives you better control over which search queries trigger your broad match keywords. Adding a plus modifier (+) immediately before a word indicates that word must very closely match a word in the user’s search in order to trigger the keyword.

This is the example AdWords provided in their email:

If you have leather shoes in a campaign as a broad match keyword, your ad could show when someone searches for “leather shoes,” “leather sandals,” “blue suede shoes,” “athletic footwear” and other related searches because broad match attempts to match your keyword to a wide range of relevant variations.

However, if you have +leather shoes as your keyword instead, the range of searches that trigger your ad is much narrower. Only the exact word, very close variations (e.g. plurals), or a common spelling mistake of the modified word (+leather) can trigger a match. Synonyms do not trigger a match.

Based on this example, when using +leather shoes, these queries will trigger your ad:

• dress shoes men’s leather – “leather” and “shoes” appear in the search.
• leather sandals – “leather” appears in the search, and “sandals” are closely related to “shoes”.
• leathr sandals – “leathr” is a common misspelling of “leather”, and “sandals” are closely related to “shoes”.

These queries will not trigger your ad:

• blue suede shoes – “leather” does not appear in the search.
• athletic footwear – same reason.
• leather belt – “leather” appears in the search, but “belt” is not closely related to “shoes”.

The really great thing about it is that now, unlike the time before this new feature, I don’t need to be worried that if I raise the bids on my broad match keywords more irrelevant queries will trigger my ads and I will pay too much for irrelevant traffic. Now I can enjoy the great power of the broad match without the negative sides of it.

Learning to use this feature properly will, without a doubt, push your PPC campaign to the next level.

The Rules To Help You Rule The Google Content Network

I don’t  about you, but I like Google’s content network. I get some really nice results there during the last 2 years or so. Before that I didn’t come near it since all the gurus told everyone to shut it off and I was part of the herd. (I’m assuming that who ever reads this blog already knows what is Google content network, but if you don’t then I suggest you go ahead and search some information on it.)

Since many are still trying to find their way through the content network I decided to share the rules of thumb I use when I create a content network campaign:

• Use up to 10 keywords in each ad group – I suggest using between 5 to 10 keywords. Unlike search, in the content network you are building your ad groups in a way that each ad group will represent a certain theme. For example: if you are promoting a clothing retailer, you should create an ad group about shirts and another about skirts. If you mix themes you might “confuse” the machine and thus get less impressions.
• Create the “themes” as specific as you can – This is in order to get the most impressions you can. If you are running a content network campaign that you are trying to expand, go and check if you could split your ad groups into more ad groups. For example: the ad group “shirts” you could probably split into many other ad groups like “men shirt”, “women shirts”, “polo shirts”, “sports shirts” etc..
• Don’t use exact or phrase match keywords – It just doesn’t matter.
• For each theme create 2 ad groups. 1 with text ads, and the other with image ads - The logic behind this rule is very simple: When you are running an image ad you are taking the spot of 3 text ads, meaning that you will basically need to pay per click 3 times the cost of a text ad. For this reason you will have to set a different bid to it and therefore you will need a different ad group. Plus, it will help you to better analyze and control which ad is shown where.
• You should always test dynamic image ads – Who said banners are dead? Even if you theoretically need to pay more for an image ad than for a text ad, the CTR that you will get on your dynamic image ads may help you cut your costs per click to be even lower than text ads.
• Test as many ads as you can – In the content network you have a lot of impressions on your ads. That gives you the opportunity to test more than 2-3 ads, like you usually do in the search network campaigns, and improve your results faster. Later you can take the winning ad and copy it into your search campaigns.
• Create your image ads in every available size – If you won’t than you are missing on out on what could have been great traffic. Google allows 8 ads sizes:
  • Leaderboard – 728×90
  • Banner – 468×60
  • Small Square – 200×200
  • Square – 250×250
  • Medium Rectangle – 300×250
  • Large Rectangle – 336×280
  • Skyscraper – 120×600
  • Wide Skyscraper – 160×600
• Make use of more “emotional” ads than informational ads – Remember that this is different from search. Search is more “pull” marketing while the content network is more “push” marketing. This rule does not apply on B2B products.
• Follow AdWords guidelines about image ads - Following these guidelines will save you time and trouble figuring out the errors.

What I described so far are the things I keep in mind when I’m building a new campaign that is targeting the Content Network. The thing that is missing here is how to optimize these campaigns and I plan on write another post to explain just that.

The Google Content Network (GCN) is a big opportunity and if you learn how to take advantage of it you will find yourself ahead of your competitors.

7 Reasons Why AdWords Won’t Let You Upload Banners

When trying to upload image ads (I prefer banner ads) to AdWords, either through the AdWords Editor or the AdWords interface, you might find that Google is not able to upload your banner.

Here are 7 reasons why:

1. Wrong usage of click tag in you SWF file – AdWords guidelines specify the exact click tag they want you use in your SWF files. Find it here.
2. Usage of random numbers in your SWF file – Sometimes flash designers use random numbers to create certain effects on the banners. For example: Making the text on the ad glitter every few random seconds.
3. Your banner is trying to ‘pull’ data from your site – For example: SWF files have the option to include a video on them. In order to make the banner ad file size smaller, the designers use a function that tell the SWF file to pull a video from a different location (website). This is against the guidelines.
4. The animation length is longer than 30 seconds – After 30 seconds your banner ad should be still.
5. The file size in bigger than 50K – Kinda explains itself.
6. Your banner is blinking, flashing or “strobing” – The AdWords Editor is more sensitive to this matter in GIF images. I had a situation when a GIF banner which was a bit flashy was rejected by the AdWords Editor while the exact same banner  as SWF file was uploaded without a problem.
7. You have more than 50 ads in your ad group – Yes, AdWords has a limit of 50 ads per ad group. If you are asking yourself who the hell have 50 ads in their ad groups, than well, try to calculate how many banners you may need in order to test simultaneously 2 types of banners and 4 landing pages (remember there are 8 banner sizes available for use). Hint: 56 .

Now that you know what are the reasons for the errors you are getting from AdWords try to avoid them in the first place. The best way to avoid the errors is to go and read all the guidelines about image ads in AdWords.

Enjoy your reading and tell me if I missed anything. Thanks.

Google stands by my predictions

It’s funny how one week or so after I published the post about how Google may be cutting the middle man I ran into this PPC Blog post about how Google is doing exactly that. This post may be from October but it’s a really big sign for all the PPC advertisers

In the post PPCBLOG.com are laying down all kinds of implications for advertisers like deciding how much data you should share with Google and consider using conversion tracking from other sources (and not AdWords conversion tracking).

Anyway, I think you should go ahead and read it now and try to think about the future consequences. Click here to read it.

PS

There is a nice post by one of the guys who left a comment there about how Google is advertising AdWords on Facebook. Did anyone else see this ad?

Will Google get rid of the middle man? (that’s us)

Recently I’ve been hearing a lot of affiliates claiming that Google has banned many of us since they don’t need us anymore. They claim Google is heading to a direction of being an affiliate themselves, meaning that they will move into the CPA pricing method.

The CPA pricing method is not like using the conversion optimizer Google AdWords is offering when you just set you max CPA and the algorithm will adjust your bid accordingly, rather it’s actually charge the advertisers just when a conversion occurs. These affiliates claim that over the years we have all helped Google gather all the keywords and ads that gets a user to convert and now they don’t need us anymore. That’s the perfect solution for all products and sites owners. Google will become as profitable to the advertisers as the affiliates used to be and both Google and the advertisers won’t need the affiliates anymore (this applies just for adwords of course).

A few months ago I read an article about “paid search without keywords“. This article tells the same story as the affiliates I mentioned above but it is more relevant to agencies. The article is raising the possibility that Google will create a paid search without keywords since it already have enough information about what ads and keywords works best and can soon offer the advertisers to just register to AdWords, select their relevant niche, provide information on products, product descriptions, pricing, etc. . Now if you combine that with a CPA pricing method, the advertisers won’t need professional PPC managers  and won’t need the agencies.

I persoanlly think that we’re far away from that situation and PPC advertising in the major search engines will just get more and more complicated as more and more features will become available.

As for the affiliates theory, I also think this is not the case (yet). Affiliate marketing is still alive in Google, just the “instant 1 page landing pages” are dead. Direct linking is live and kicking although every “guru” would tell you otherwise if you asked them just 6 months ago.

What do you think? Will Google eventually get rid of the middle man?

My ads are on googleusercontent.com

I recently noticed that my client’s ads in the content network are showing in this site: googleusercontent.com .

If you copy this domain to your browser address bar you are redirecting to google.com . I contacted Google to find what is this site and why it’s redirecting me to google.com.

This is the answer I got from them:

Please know that ‘googleusercontent.com’ represents a page that is participating in the Open Social network. Therefore, your ad appeared on a page participating in the Open Social network. This is different from Google Search or Search Network.

Just thought I should let you know since there are probably more of you who have seen your ads on this site.

Google Browser Size Tool

When going over my Google Reader today, I found that Google has released a great tool called Browser Size.

As you all know, in your landing pages there are some elements you just don’t want the users to miss and therefore you design your landing page in a way that those elements will be above the fold.

Also, as you all know, Internet users use different types of screen resolution, different sizes of monitors, and also a big part of the Internet users use a toolbar. All the factors I mentioned are making the users’ first look at your website a bit different for each. That way, not everyone will get the same “fold” line as you.

This is why you should try to use Browser Size by Google. It let’s you see what is the % of users that can’t see the main elements (like the “click here” button) in you landing page.

What I found using this tool is that 30% of Internet users can’t even see my RSS button if they don’t scroll (and I have a big RSS button). Lucky for me, most, if not all of my readers are using a “normal” screen size and resolution. But what if your site is about selling health insurance that is mostly visited by “old guys” (no offense )

PS

Can you recommend a free screenshot software that won’t write “unregistered version” all over my image?

Internationalize Your PPC campaigns with Google Translator Toolkit

Have you ever thought of selling your product or service in other countries beside the countries you advertise in now? This option could mean more sources of revenue, and who wouldn’t like that?

For a PPC manager/optimizer, it’s important to be able to target more than the English speaking countries. This is something that is getting more and more attention as the world of PPC and online marketing in general evolves.  By not holding the skills of multilingual PPC marketing you are missing really big clients and you are very limited. The internet is all about being global, so why can’t you?

To help us with that Google has released a new feature to the Google translator toolkit. Why Google is helping us with that? well, obviously if you target more countries and more languages, Google is making more money.

The new feature is intended to help you translate your PPC campaigns into other languages in a fast and easy way. All you need to do is export the campaign from your AdWords Editor with the “export backup” option (AEA file) and upload it to Google translator toolkit. After that it should be easy to follow the instruction and translate your campaign.

The interface is not perfect, and I think a bulk edit of some kind is a must here, but it’s still pretty impressive.

You should be really really careful though, since although Google is translating the keywords fairly well, full sentences are not translated well, so the text ads translation is far than perfect, and for some languages I checked, the translation doesn’t make sense at all. I suggest that you won’t count on this machine and send your text ads to a professional translator.

Image by Patrick Q.