The digital event of the year played off in the beautiful city of Cape Town. Net Prophet was hosted in the impressive Artscape Theater on a rainy Wednesday morning. The rain couldn’t keep away the die-hard digital fans wanting to hear what the best in the industry had to say. It played host to some … Read more
The Digital Marketing Collective (DMC) Event began towards the end of last year. The brain child of three digital marketing guru’s – our own Jan Boshoff, C6 Consulting’s Riaan Carstens and TMI’s Pete Brooke-Summers. The creators of DMC wanted to create an event that focused on the world of Digital Marketing. Their goal is to create … Read more
Marketers rejoice because the clever individuals at Google have managed to pull off yet another one of those ingenious stunts, this takes the form of a tag manager. A place where you as the marketer can implement and manage campaign tags without waiting in agony for your script to be implemented. We all know that … Read more
Google is an ever evolving and changing brand. Their recent endeavor – Gmail Sponsored Promotions (GSP) was rolled out in Beta in 2013. This year Google has launched it in South Africa and has us excited with the opportunities it presents. Previously you could target an audience on Gmail through the Google Display Network. However, … Read more
One element that justifies any marketing budget towards digital media is measurement and being able to prove Return on Ad Spend (R.O.A.S). There are many ways to track and measure ad performance, but conversion tracking is easy for most people to understand. In simple terms, Conversion Tracking is when a piece of web code is … Read more
If you are working on sizeable search marketing campaigns you are probably well aware that managing bids for thousands of keywords manually becomes impossible to do efficiently. You need rules and algorithms to adjust bids for you and act and react to changes in the marketplace according to your predefined strategy. Adobe even thinks that … Read more
Google Search – the year in review, 1.2 trillion searches in 146 different languages. Visit: www.google.com/zeitgeist/2012 and select your country to see local trends.
Erik Qualman releases an annual video packed with stats and figures that he gathers for his writing. From the latest Social Media Revolution 4 video, some takeaways were: 20% of Google searches are new (not searched for before), every day. Social Media is the number 1 activity on the web, yet Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Google … Read more
The Traffic Brand team put on their funky attire for our end of year party last Friday. We were split up into three teams and competed in an Amazing Race around the mini-peninsula. Starting in the Company’s Gardens in town, we completed a few fun team building exercises – we solved the human knot in no … Read more
Three reasons why you need to go MOBILE*: 63% of South African smartphone users access the Internet from their phone every day Almost 50% of South Africans use smartphones each month for shopping 53% of South Africans have seen an ad on their mobile device GoMo – Is a Google initiative aiming to help business … Read more
How many times are your Exact match keywords triggering an ad instead of a Broad or Phrase? How many Impressions are you losing because your daily budget ran out early or your bids/quality score weren’t high enough? All questions that “Impression Share (IS)” metrics in Google AdWords can help answer for advertisers. Google’s “Analyse Competition” … Read more
Elaborating further on Lauren’s excellent blog post about the changes that have come to Google AdWords’ Remarketing feature, I would like to take the time to explain the possibilities that have arisen for marketers a bit more. Along with Google AdWords and Analytics becoming more intertwined – for instance, if your, you can now use basic … Read more
As an online marketer it is essential to be able to easily compare your data between two date ranges. Knowing if your campaign experiment or test has improved results or not and having a clear understanding of account performance between two date ranges is often critical when making educated decisions with regards to campaign optimisation. … Read more
This is really just an extension from a previous article published on these pages, Container Tags Can Save You Time and Resources, but now has an official home among Google’s products. Google has officially launched Tag Manager, a one-stop-shop for managing all your marketing tracking scripts/codes. This is a massive step forward for marketers that will dramatically … Read more
YouTube TrueView video ads offer a pricing model that is based on user engagement, only paying for interested viewers. This creates a win-win scenario for both advertiser and YouTube user. Impressions are free, just the same as a Pay Per Click model, advertisers are only charged when a users selects to watch a video ad, … Read more
Remarketing is a very useful AdWords tool for targeting users who have already been your site but did not complete the desired action (eg. A newsletter sign up or a product purchase). There are various methods for using Remarketing to work for your campaign objectives. Please see my previous post on the basics of Remarketing. … Read more
Some holistic perspective on the state of mobile in Africa, mobile’s development into 2012 and just how massive mobile internet access in Africa is, here are some facts from the video: Africa is just over 30.2 million km² – home to more than 1 billion people Speaking more than 1000 languages, we’re the most multilingual … Read more
It is a well-known issue for digital advertising agencies and expert PPC and analytics agencies in particular – tracking and tagging the right events and conversions on a client’s site by implementing the right scripts to accurately measure the success of marketing initiatives, page traffic and site usage. The problem I am referring to that … Read more
AdWords labels is a nifty new feature allowing you to organise your account’s keywords, ads, ad groups and campaigns into your own custom groupings. This allows you to quickly filter and report on the data that’s of most interest to you. It also allows you to see how the custom categories you’ve created are performing … Read more
The new Toyota Etios has arrived in South Africa. Much like the smiling grille of the car, the campaign is centered around being “here to make you smile” and incentivises people to share fun content to earn smile rewards in the form of airtime, cash vouchers and music tracks. They created a unique test drive experience for potential … Read more
In the attempt to get more small and medium AdWords advertisers to try video and to simultaneously expand and improve the targeting options on YouTube and the Google Display Network (GDN), Google video ad formats and targeting options have received a significant update. The first big change is that most of these video ads will … Read more
Google Search is becoming the only encyclopedia needed to find information, images, videos and just about anything, all online. Google decided it would be a good idea to educate students/people who wanted to better understand the power of search as an everyday tool to empower ourselves and recently launched their new website, Search Education. Shoppers and … Read more
After months of extensive brainstorming, tearing apart briefs and doing monkey dances around different ideas, we are finally ready for zen and present our fresh new look. A big thank you to our amazing team, our design and development partners and you for being so patient. The same clean look has been applied to our Twitter and … Read more
Google released a teaser video on Tuesday, of a study they conducted in the US on adult smartphone users. Yesterday the full report was released to the public and the statistics are not surprisingly incredible! Mobile is personal and accessable to us almost anywhere. 70% of people use their smartphone when shopping in-store to seek further product … Read more
On behalf of the Traffic Brand team, we would like to wish Mandy Schreiber a very Happy Birthday for today! Her laughter can be heard from a mile away and anyone who has had the priviledge, will know that Mandy’s presence lights up any room. She is our “boss lady” at Traffic Brand, but we … Read more
The question of whether to let AdWords handle your budget for you in the name of conversion goals is a tough one to answer. Do we trust these features? Are they more effective than manual bidding practices? When a typical online marketer asks these questions they will probably be thinking of Conversion Optimizer, and the … Read more
The next best thing if you weren’t able to dive right into your competitors account would be to know how you are performing against them. Google’s real time bidding (RTB) model means that advertisers cannot pay for a guaranteed position in the ad auction. It is a real time impression determined from a keyword entry … Read more
“The consumer has gone mobile. They absorb, share and create content on the fly, which now defines how they make and evaluate their buying decisions.” Brett St. Clair, Head of Google Mobile South Africa Smartphones, comparison sites, group buying and social networks are changing our shopping habits. We become all seeing and all knowing. We … Read more
Search has always been the primary advertising medium in the Google stable and the main revenue generator for them. Yet it seems that Google has been working hard on taking Display advertising to the next level. By providing users with meaningful, relevant, targeted ads and giving digital advertisers all the measurement metrics they need to … Read more
Remarketing has become a necessity for most PPC accounts. It is an AdWords feature that was introduced last year, which enables marketers to re-capture user who have been to their site. This means that a user’s first visit need not be their last, and marketers get another chance to entice them to convert. Setting up … Read more
Many marketers view Facebook ads in the same light as the Google Display Network. These advertising messages are not as accurate as people actively searching for your product or service, but they both target relevant users. Last month Facebook’s online population exceeded a staggering 677 million users. 50% of these Facebook users log on to … Read more
It’s already been a year and a half since Google last gave their free web analytics software Google Analytics a major overhaul. Now, version 5 has finally been made available to everyone. As Google Analytics is the web analytics solution most website owners and search marketers alike use – after all, it is hosted, completely … Read more
Google is finally making a social move in the right direction. Past experiments (Wave and Buzz) left a sour taste in many people’s mouths as the value was questionable. It is no secret that users are more influenced by other humans rather than an algorithm, so adding social signals to search results makes complete sense. … Read more
New Blue Pins Location extensions became available to AdWords advertisers two years ago as a means to give specific information about the location of the business being advertised. (Read more about location extensions) The new blue pin that was launched in February 2011 is a new feature on certain ads with location extensions that appear … Read more
It was a big year for Blogger in 2010, as they rolled out an improvement to the template designer, real time statistics and they improved spam filtering. This year, they have let on to some improvements that will be taking effect throughout 2011. They promise to redesign the dashboard with a more modern looking user interface, … Read more
What do these new looking adverts mean for AdWords advertisers and users? The first description line of a text advert becomes an extension of the headline, divided by a hyphen. Is this a positive step for better performing adverts or a silent factor that could be negatively affecting your account performance? I don’t think Google … Read more
When Google released Instant Previews on SERP’s late last year, it enhanced the search experience and made usabililty more convenient in finding quality search results. This great feature has now been released for mobile devices running Android (2.2+) or iOS (4.0+). Simply click the magnifine glass on the right hand side of search results for a … Read more
Posted by Matthias Wobrock on 23 Feb 2011 Testing and marketing go hand in hand – if you sell a product or service, you want to know how to best reach your customers to generate as many sales as possible. This is where testing can help you. You might want to test different layouts of … Read more
Statistics from the above video: 89% of consumers started their holiday shopping online. Portable PC shoppers do an average of 14 searches during their shopping process. Consumers exposed to Home Page adverts on YouTube are 4 times more likely to: visit the advertisers website, search for the brand or watch the companies YouTube videos. ±60% … Read more
Another superb and socially responsible initiative from Google. The competition is called YoungMinds and the prize is open to 12 exceptionally talented, entrepreneural and motivated 18-24 year olds accross Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Winners will get to take part in the Zeitgeist event in London during May this year. Apparently speakers such as … Read more
This is a new feature in Adwords, still in the beta* stage of testing, which allows advertisers to schedule automated changes to specific parts of their accounts based on the criteria they specify. Sounds brilliant…Or so I thought when I first heard of i! But is it really? The idea behind automated rules is to … Read more
Google never seizes to amaze us and this time they have created a virtual tour of seventeen of the world’s most renowned art galleries. The Art Project, powered by Google takes users right into the museums and allows close up visuals in high definition of over 1000 major pieces of art. The site navigation is … Read more
Google visited several areas in the USA and surprised small business owners with a massive gift to encourage further success and growth for 2011. They invested in these small business by providing them with these amazing gifts: Brand new laptops and smart phones 1 year worth of high speed broadband 1 year of green environmental … Read more
Along with the roll out of Instant Search by Google on 8 September this year, came a big response from the SEM community. Many feared negative effects that it may or may not have on the way marketers would have to adjust their AdWords campaigns and budgets. Instant Search is not yet a feature on … Read more
Posted by Adam Mitchell on 17 Nov 2010 Google Ad Extensions offers PPC advertisers more opportunity to stand out with text adverts on desktop and mobile devices. Ad extensions such as: Location extensions (map), Sitelinks (additional page links), Product extensions (catalogue/shopping cart), Phone extensions (click to call) and recently announced Seller Rating extensions (consumer reviews) … Read more
Advertisers, please welcome a new match type to the well-established Google AdWords family of broad, phrase and exact. It answers to the rather clunky name “modified broad.” Technically, it’s just an operator represented through a plus symbol that you place in front of any term within a broad match keyword to further restrict its scope. … Read more
Help us kit out the children of Lusaka Sundowns United Football Club. It only costs R2,500 to sponsor a whole team with kit. Your small contribution will make a huge difference. Help keep the youth off the street and keep them playing football. Please help us to feel it – LONG TERM! For more information … Read more
Posted by Jan Boshoff on 4 Jun 2009 Unfortunately the most basic principles of web design are often overlooked when brainstorming the brief for a new website. In most cases this is due to the fact that the people creating the brief are doing so for the first time. For example, imagine the owner of … Read more
Posted by Matthias Wobrock on 28 May 2009 The evolution of keywords has progressed as users have become more specific in their requirements. Our societies are rapidly being broken down into small areas of experts. People work in more specialised groups and more specific fields than ever before. The web supports this development, streamlining workflows … Read more
All the stats, research and opinion pieces I have read lately show that online marketing is rapidly gaining a bigger piece of the marketing. Personally I think the overriding factor that enables marketers to justify online spend while cutting back on offline spend is measurability and ROI, specifically identifiable ROI. With online marketing campaigns, such … Read more
When it comes to ethics and search marketing there are some very dubious lines that are and have been skewed by search marketing companies in South Africa owing mainly to the lack of knowledge of their clients. That said, it is a rapidly expanding industry in this country and indeed worldwide and on the flip … Read more
Posted by Jan on 7 Aug 2008 So you have targeted different countries for your campaigns to run in, but are still getting conversions from users outside of your targeted locations. Now what? Well, we recently had to go through a whole exercise to exclude a certain country from one of our campaigns… Let’s look … Read more
Posted by Jan on 20 Jun 2008 Most online marketing agencies don’t like to take on clients with advertising budgets of anything less than R20k per month. There are a number of reasons for that, but the fact is that there is a place for smaller companies, or companies with limited budgets in the search … Read more
Posted by Mandy on 16 May 2008 Yes its been a while since we wrote on our blog! Tut Tut! But moving offices and other exciting changes had us running around like wild creatures for a few weeks. Things are settling into a manageable pace again so hopefully some more chatter from the Traffic Branders … Read more
Posted by Jan on 12 Mar 2008 Last week, somebody from Google made a crucial mistake, which sparked a flurry of cross channel marketing attempts. On Friday morning when I looked at my inbox, I found a mail from the Google Advertising Professional team which at first seemed like just another mail from them asking … Read more
Posted by Jan on 12 Mar 2008 Yesterday, Google finalised their acquisition deal of DoubleClick, a company that offers an awesome range of online marketing products to advertisers, publishers and agencies. One immediate question comes to mind: What does it mean for all other agencies and Adwords advertisers? In my opinion, it sure looks like … Read more
Posted by Jan on 29 Feb 2008 Although web applications are great and handy, many systems are still better in desktop format than web format. This is mainly due to speed and usability. Luckily, with web 2.0 this is changing rapidly and personally I can’t wait for the day that I don’t have to install … Read more
Posted by Mandy on 27 Feb 2008 aaaarrrgghhh! Maybe you could get away with it if you had some direct satellite link to the bandwidth Gods…but please flashy people – have you never tried to surf the net in South Africa and had to wait 5 minutes for a site to open because it’s all … Read more
Posted by Mandy on 21 Feb 2008 Of course there are several companies who have finally caught on to the worldwide trend of transferring a large percentage of marketing dollars to online channels. But as a whole I would say that there is still a severe lack of comprehensive understanding of the opportunities that online … Read more
Posted by Jan on 20 Feb 2008 Today marks the day that my son is two months old and I can’t help but wonder what the future holds… Where will technology be in 5 to 10 years time when he starts using the internet? Will we still have offices to go to or will technology … Read more
Posted by Jan on 14 Feb 2008 Everybody knows that it is extremely important to keep your adcopy fresh and updated, but at what point do you decide whether an ad is working or not working? The answer to this question is not a simple one and will be different across different industries. Different criteria … Read more
Posted by Mandy on 8 Feb 2008 It’s hard to believe that the second biggest search engine (admittedly a distant second!) can make such a fundamental error in their Pay Per Click (PPC) ad copy. “Pay Per Chick” is certainly a new take on paid search! What is particularly embarrassing is that this really unfortunate … Read more
Posted by Jan on 7 Feb 2008 Just came back from one of the Cape Town Entrepreneur Meetup sessions organised by Eric Edelstein. This is a networking meeting for just about anyone and everyone from any kind of industry. We sat at the same table as an entertainer who also works in offline marketing for … Read more
Posted by Jan on 25 Jan 2008 With the recent power outages we’ve been experiencing here in SA, I felt it necessary to provide some info regarding its effects on South African search engine marketing companies. Unless there’s a big team of staff members to keep busy and therefore lose money because of loss of … Read more
Posted by Jan on 17 Jan 2008 Is Google trying too hard to think for advertisers? Any search engine advertiser knows that there are very good reasons for knowing exactly what search terms users are really finding your ads for. There are quite a few ways of getting this information, which is not what this … Read more
Posted by Mandy on 15 Jan 2008 OK I know its cheesy but we couldn’t help it! Jan is after all a Google expert so when faced with the choice of which fun cake to make to celebrate his birthday it simply had to be a Google cake. The office was happy with the extreme … Read more
Posted by Mandy on 15 Jan 2008 One of the challenges of being at the forefront of the world’s fastest growing media industry is that you are expected to stay abreast with the wealth of knowledge and information that is spun around on the Internet about the Internet. This mass of information pertaining to emerging … Read more
