The three entities involved in PPC advertising are the visitor, the host that carries the advertisement and the advertiser, who has advertised a product or service on the host website, usually a leading search engine. In this form of advertising, advertisers have to bid on keywords and phrases. Whenever someone searches a product or service using certain keywords, the search result page will feature those advertisements which contain the keywords using which the visitor actually searched in the first place.

The internet is fast becoming the battle ground for business to garner their share of the market. With increasing internet usage, people around the world are searching for all sorts of products and services online these days. It has therefore become important for almost every business to have a significant online presence. Merely having an online presence though will not guarantee business. Websites need to attract traffic and this is where PPC advertising steps in.

PPC advertising is growing rapidly at a mind boggling pace. Its popularity can be gauged from the fact that out of the total amount of money that is spent on search engine advertising, a whopping 81% is spent on PPC advertising. These figures do not come as a surprise to those businesses that have benefited from PPC advertising. There are several success stories of businesses that have been able to make the most out of PPC advertising campaigns.

The key reasons for the popularity of PPC advertising include:

1. The risk involved is low since the investment is minimal.
2. These advertising programs are fast to implement when compared to other media.
3. Advertisers can manipulate ad positions and also control costs with them.
4. Instantaneous results are a good possibility with PPC advertising.
5. PPC advertisements give an opportunity for businesses to test their products for online marketing feasibility.

PPC: A Brief History

Contrary to popular perception PPC advertisements are not a recent phenomenon. They have been in existence for well over a decade now. The term was increasingly heard during the mid 1990s when the dotcom boom happened. One of the companies that pioneered the concept was goto.com which later on was rechristened Overture. In 2003 Yahoo took over Overture. The actual PPC scene began to see hectic activities once Google launched its ‘Ad Words solution to PPC. Almost every major search engine is into this form of advertising these days.

The minimum price for click which is popularly referred to as ‘cost per click’ varies from one search engine to another. It also depends on the competition involved for a particular keyword list or phrase. It is for this reason that particular keywords and phrases are known to cost more on leading search engines.

Steps Involved in an Effective PPC Advertising Campaign

Although PPC advertising can look a relatively simple process, there are several issues that you will need to deal with once you decide on an advertising campaign. From choosing the right keywords to designing an attractive landing page, you will need to take care of several aspects.

A PPC Ad.
Several businesses have taken advantage of PPC advertising to make profits. With proper planning, you can implement a meaningful PPC advertising campaign, which can in turn mean more profits to your business. Let us look at the steps involved in making an effective PPC advertising campaign.

1. Selection of the appropriate keywords or phrases is the first step involved in PPC advertising. Remember, keywords and phrases are the cornerstones of success in a PPC advertising campaign. They are the foundation on which the entire campaign is built upon and developed. If you are already advertising on other media, then you also need to ensure that your PPC advertising campaign also complements them too.
2. Before you implement your PPC advertising campaign, you must first of all decide your budget. Proper planning will ensure that you do not overspend, while at the same time get effective results from your advertising campaign.
3. You must be clear as to who your target consumers are. This way you will ensure that you reach potential consumers through effective advertisements.
4. One way to target your target consumers would be to decide on a niche. Even if your niche market were to be small, a well directed and created PPC advertising campaigns can work wonders for your niche business area.
5. It is not enough if you just advertise and then assume that it would be effective in getting more business. You should constantly monitor your PPC advertising campaign. Always remember that the internet is a dynamic place, where things change very fast. You therefore need to make sure that your PPC campaign is in tune with the changing trends.
6. You must have a close look at statistical reports that are associated with your online advertising campaign. This will help you gauge the effectiveness of your PPC advertising campaign.
7. The best way to go about creating a PPC advertising campaign would be to hire the services of professionals. This is so because they will be experienced in creating the right copy or content for your PPC advertisement. A well written and concise copy can make the difference between success and failure in a PPC advertising campaign.
8. Along with working on your PPC advertisement, you should also simultaneously make sure that your website is attractive and easy to navigate, since your PPC advertisement will be leading web visitors to your website.

This form of advertising ensures a win-win situation of all the parties involved and it is no wonder that it is growing at a rapid rate. With increasing internet connections, the future holds immense possibilities for PPC advertising.

Google announced:

“Since 2005, we’ve improved Quality Score in many ways, such as the inclusion of landing page quality and landing page load time as factors. Along the way, we’ve also received much helpful feedback from both users and advertisers.
Today, we’d like to let you know of further improvements we’ll introduce in the coming weeks — based, in part, on this feedback. First we’ll outline the key points, and then dive into the details:

Quality Score will now be more accurate because it will be calculated at the time of each search query

Keywords will no longer be marked ‘inactive for search’

‘First page bid’ will replace ‘minimum bid’ in your account”

The idea behind having the quality score calculated for every single search is that it will make Google’s PPC results more relevant and time sensitive. For example, if you competitor writes a compelling ad which most of the traffic for a given keyword, your CTR will reduce, and Google will see you as less relevant in the next keyword auction.

I wanted to check that my long tail keywords were still being displayed, and this is what I discovered:

click to enlarge

For this keyword, I am in position 1.4 but my bid is not enough to display on the first page… I have to double it!

Furthermore, when I check the SERP for this keyword, there are no PPC ads out there. Not one. I would have thought Google wanted at least one PPC ads on every page to monetize their SERPs, but no, it prefers no ads at all… Could it be that the bid increase I need to get my keyword active again outweighs any other monetizing factor? I doubt it, I regard Google very highly.

OK, fair enough, I have had no click out of 28 impressions, I am not relevant enough to appear on the first page… I thought you’d give me at least 100 impressions before casting a judgement on me, but let’s move on.

Let’s have a look at this one:

click to enlarge

For this keyword displaying on average in position 3.6, I am getting a great CTR (7.27%) so I should be deemed relevant! But no, I am asked to “optimise my keywords and ads”. Or double my bid. (I think they mean the second option…). It’s only then that I remember what the Google Bible Blog said:

“First page bids are an estimate of the bid it would take for your ad to reach the first page of search results on Google web search. They’re based on the exact match version of the keyword, the ad’s Quality Score, and current advertiser competition on that keyword.”

Tagging keywords with first page bid estimates instead of marking them inactive is a way for Google to keep all your keywords in play – especially the broad matches as they trigger for more Search Queries. Who knows, maybe your ads will start displaying again if your competitors stops using one of their high performing ad, and you might start receiving traffic and spending without knowing it.

So I went to have a look at my Keyword Diagnostic tool (which I have to say have been improved greatly by the new functionalities, but that’s another post) and here is what I found:

click to enlarge

Even though my bid is high enough to get position 3.6, and even though I am getting over 7% CTR, I am being told that I need a higher bid (optimisation guidelines have been followed as explained on the pic). So why base this Quality Score attribution on the exact match only?

Instead of giving you an indication of how low you can pay, Google will give you an indication of how high you have to pay. It’s like O2 saying “iPhone on contracts around £50″ instead of saying “iPhone with contracts starting at £35″.

In theory, first page bid estimates are a sweet metric – whether you are on page two and want an indication of how much you are willing to bid, or whether you are in position one and want to go down without loosing first page visibility. But the execution is poor, and the combination of the first page estimate with the dynamic Quality Score calculation can really caused your account harm if you are not careful.

On these topics, there will always be two school of thoughts:

The sceptics will say: “Google doesn’t give us enough impressions to deem us relevant or not” and “Google says my ad is not on page 1 but it’s in position 2.6 – this is an outrage!”

The purists will say: “It’s great to have Google inform you that your position 4 is not deemed relevant… I need to create more ad groups!” and “My keywords aren’t inactive, they’re just irrelevant at this point in time”.

But, both parties will probably end up doing the same thing… (and so should you):

Go in and have a look at your [Exact Match Keywords]. If they don’t have a good CTR, check the other matches of the same keyword and examine whether you are going to have to increase your bids. Based on this, you will have to make a commercial decision

If most of your keywords have been marked as not reaching the first page, you need to create more ad groups and make your ads more relevant. However, you might also have to pay more as the rest of the advertisers around you are likely to increase their bids, thus artificially increasing CPCs.

More generally, PPC marketers now need on their tiptoes, and monitor performance very regularly as the market can now affect your performance more than ever!

]]> http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/09/googles-new-quality-score-improvements-analysed/feed/ 0 http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/09/the-great-online-advertising-divide-widens/ http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/09/the-great-online-advertising-divide-widens/#comments Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:14:41 +0000 Don Reisinger http://www.techcrunch.com/?p=21779 As online advertising spending continues its meteoric rise -- the Wall Street Journal is reporting a healthy gain of 20 percent in the second quarter alone -- not every form of advertising is enjoying such success. In fact, as economic troubles continue, more and more advertisers are only willing to spend money on search ads and are increasingly ignoring other forms of advertising. According to eMarketer, search ad spending will reach $10.4 billion this year, more than twice as much as advertisers will spend on display ads. More importantly for Google, search ads will represent 42 percent of all advertising spending, while display ads will account for just 21 percent of all online advertising.]]> As online advertising spending continues its meteoric rise — the Wall Street Journal is reporting a healthy gain of 20 percent in the second quarter alone — not every form of advertising is enjoying such success. In fact, as economic troubles continue, more and more advertisers are only willing to spend money on search ads and are increasingly ignoring other forms of advertising.

According to eMarketer, search ad spending will reach $10.4 billion this year, more than twice as much as advertisers will spend on display ads. More importantly for Google, search ads will represent 42 percent of all advertising spending, while display ads will account for just 21 percent of all online advertising.

With an economic downturn running amok, Google is quickly becoming one of the few companies that can actually withstand its onslaught. Because search results currently provide the best place for advertisers to spend money and realize a positive ROI, Google’s control of over 60 percent of the search market becomes even more important.

“We believe that if there were (a U.S. recession), we’ll be well positioned,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in a recent earnings call.

Generally speaking, search ads are better targeted than display ads. And in an environment where companies have less money to go around, they need to find the best ways to utilize that cash and speak to the target audience. For now, display advertising will not be the best place to spend ad dollars and although Microsoft and others will do their best to compete, Google is still in the cat bird’s seat.

]]> http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/09/the-great-online-advertising-divide-widens/feed/ 0 http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/the-trendy-concept-of-behavioral-marketing/ http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/the-trendy-concept-of-behavioral-marketing/#comments Sun, 24 Aug 2008 07:41:31 +0000 Manish Pandey http://www.seomegacorp.com/blog/2008/the-trendy-concept-of-behavioral-marketing/ The term ‘behavioral marketing’ is being increasingly heard across the world these days. The entire concept of behavioral marketing involves noticing consumer’s online behavior and then target them using advertising which is tailor made for their online conduct. It goes needless to say that the whole process is done unobserved by the consumer.

It won’t be a misnomer to say that the advent of internet has completely changed the business scene around the world. No longer are physical and geographical barriers a hindrance for communicating in a fast and reliable manner. These days, after the advent of the internet, it has almost become imperative for companies to concentrate on online marketing. The internet has become one of the most important media for advertising. A major chunk of a company’s revenue can be generated through online marketing and advertising. This is where behavioral marketing steps in with its proven capabilities.

There is intense competition prevailing over the internet, with thousands of companies trying to woo consumers to buy several thousands of products and services. This being the case, it is not necessary that a consumer goes through your particular website or online advertisement. With behavioral marketing though, you can target specific consumers, who could drive your business growth.

In today’s competitive business scenario behavioral marketing makes sense for both advertisers and marketers alike since they can target specific core groups, instead of frittering away money and energy without any focus. This in turn converts to tremendous savings of both efforts and money for advertisers and marketers. Importantly apart from saving significant amounts of money on other forms of advertisements, behavioral marketing also results in increased profits.

The entire concept of behavioral marketing focuses on targeting the consumers online behavior, rather than go by the page contents that they view. Advertisers and marketers collect data from various sources including click stream data and IP details in order to ascertain the internet behavior of their target customers. Once any targeted internet user visits a particular web page of interest to him or her, they are then targeted though advertisements that is specially created using a ‘run-of-site’ or ROS placement.

]]> http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/the-trendy-concept-of-behavioral-marketing/feed/ 0 http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/advice-for-mobile-marketers-courtesy-of-obama/ http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/advice-for-mobile-marketers-courtesy-of-obama/#comments Sat, 23 Aug 2008 00:26:14 +0000 Claire Cain Miller http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/advice-for-mobile-marketers-courtesy-of-obama/ Technology pundits have been heralding the “year of mobile” every year for a decade, but this year might really be it. The latest evidence: the tizzy over Barack Obama’s much-anticipated text message announcing his pick for running mate.

The Obama campaign is expected to send out the news sometime before the candidate’s rally on Saturday to everyone who has given it their cell phone numbers. The plan has political junkies and bystanders alike buzzing about the imminent Obama text message in a way that would make brand marketers swoon.

Mobile marketers are studying the Obama campaign’s initiative, which offers lessons for startups hoping to help big brands reach consumers on their cell phones. Advertisers have been slow to market via mobile phones, but that is changing thanks to a rash of mobile marketing startups and increased use of text messaging and mobile Internet.

A YouTube Experiment

The announcement came from Christine Tsai, a YouTube product marketing manager, via an official blog, one of the many ways Google releases company news to the public.

“You may have noticed that we started running a test of display ads on select pages of the YouTube mobile site in the U.S. and Japan,” Tsai wrote. “This is our first step in testing mobile advertising for YouTube — it will give you a new way to interact with content on the go, while allowing us to learn how video viewers engage with mobile advertising. Our test advertisers will also have an additional branding tool at their disposal and the opportunity to reach the millions of people who visit YouTube every day on their phones.”

For Internet television, the Beijing Olympics represent a milestone. NBC has created a site with an unprecedented 2,200 hours of live Webcasts of Olympic events.

But the Olympics are also a powerful illustration of the current battle line between the big business of network television and the emerging medium of Web video. NBC’s broadcast and cable networks will air 700 hours of live events that will not be Webcast. And even more frustrating to some, another 700 hours of the contests will be taped and shown hours later on television, with no legal way for people in the United States to watch them before the broadcast. (All of the broadcast events are available to replay on the Internet after they are aired.)

These limits have exasperated no small number of people who heard about the spectacular opening ceremony Friday but couldn’t find any video of it online until after NBC broadcast it that night. NBC has said that it needs to keep the most popular events exclusive to television in order to serve the advertisers, affiliate stations and cable systems that have all paid heavily for a share of Olympic gold.

AdWords was launched by Google in the year 2000 and by 2007 it was their main source of revenue. Initially an advertiser had to pay a monthly amount for advertising their product/service, but later in order to make room for small businesses and advertisers who wanted to manage their own promotion; Google launched the AdWords self-service portal. Google’s AdWords aim has been to provide the most efficient advertising to businesses irrespective of their size.

Over the years AdWords offering to its advertisers has changed for the better. Google has come up with formats like Pay-Per-Click and Site Targeted Advertisement.
Under Pay-Per-Click an advertiser pays on account of the clicks received. The advertisers has the option to bid from a range of 1 cent USD to 100US$ per click. By 2003 Google AdWords brought in the concept of Site Targeted Advertisements.

With Site Targeted Advertisements an advertiser can enter keywords by making use of AdWords control panel to draw attention of users and Google in turn puts the ads on relevant sites. The best thing about Site targeted advertisements is that the advertisers can bid on a Cost Per impression basis placement of their ads.

Leaving apart Pay-Per-Click and Site Targeted Advertisements, AdWords offer advertising facilities like:

• Ad scheduling: This is like creating a time table for running one’s ads on web according to his wish.
• One or numerous advertisements can be targeted with one or more keywords.
• AdWords also generate a 24/7 performance report of your advertisement to your online account.

By 2005, a campaign management service called Jumpstart was launched by Google to help advertisers in setting their own campaigns. Jumpstart was followed by Google Advertising Professional Program or GAP. The whole purpose behind GAP was to train people on AdWords and award them with a certificate on having passed the examination. This was a significant move by Google to help advertisers’ who had problem dealing with the complexities of AdWords and the amount of money being put at stake. Such advertisers now have an option to hire professionals to manage their campaigns.

AdWords Account Management is another impeccable offering from Google.  Its aim is to assist its clients who find it difficult to deal with the complications of building and running AdWords accounts search engine marketing. Trained consultants are there to help individuals on account management. The biggest advantage of AdWords Account management is that any organization without proper knowledge on advertising can reach out to a global online audience.

Such facilities from AdWords have eventually made an issue as grave as proper marketing or advertising on the web a Cake Walk for almost everyone.