Adobe offers a variety of resources for search marketers in their online search centre, and among them a comprehensive white paper on portfolio-based bid management algorithms. Portfolio optimization stands in contrast to rule-based bid management. A rule-based keyword bid system would look at every single keyword mostly siloed from the rest of the campaign. For instance, you could sell DVDs online, and you could set the maximum amount you want to pay for a conversion to $20. Your system would take care of not stretching this limit for any of the keywords you are using. If the search term “harry potter dvd” would convert at around $21, your system would simply decrease the bid on this keyword or pause it. There is nothing wrong with that and this method would assure that “harry potter dvd” is converting at an acceptable cost. However, the portfolio approach says that this is thinking too short. Your overall performance might actually be better if you take advantage of the maximum amount of “harry potter” traffic, even if this means paying more for these conversions than you are willing to, and in turn making up for this with other keywords in your account that are converting more cheaply, and thus at the end of the day arriving at a higher ROI and conversion numbers than with a rule-based strategy. That means that a portfolio approach will look at all possible combinations of bids across all the keywords in your account, and then choose the best combination to maximize the overall outcome. It is clear that an extremely sophisticated and fast algorithm is needed to continuously adjust bids across a large account, as there are countless variables from position to CPC and CTR to be considered and all keywords need to be regarded as part of an ecosystem.

The portfolio approach can theoretically work very well – if not best – for campaigns with clearly defined goals and target margins and a predetermined schedule that is not constantly being changed or switched around. Note that there is also a cost involved whenever you connect to the Google AdWords API.

If you would like to read more about portfolio-based bid management, we highly recommend you give to Adobe white paper linked here a read.

The post Bid Management: Rule-Based vs. Portfolio appeared first on Trafficbrand.

Originally you only had four IS columns, namely: IS, Lost IS (budget), Lost IS (Rank), Exact Match IS. You’ll notice historical data is no longer available before October 2012, this is to enable the new IS column transition, all new data will go as far back as 1 October 2012. The changes below are set to arrive immediately for some advertisers or by February 2013 for everyone!

What are the Changes?

1. Distinct Search and Display Columns. New columns separating Search and Display IS.
2. “Hour of Day” Segmentation. Evaluate ad coverage by segmented time “Dimensions”.
3. Filters, Charts and Rules. Apply filters, automated rules and graphs using IS metrics.
4. Accuracy. Improvements to the calculation of IS.

The new columns are simply Search and Display variations for each original column, as above – Now here’s a question: Can you tell us why there’s no Exact Match IS for Display? comment and WIN a massive, virtual high-five!

Source | More Source

The post AdWords Impression Share Changes appeared first on Trafficbrand.

Along with Google AdWords and Analytics becoming more intertwined – for instance, if your, you can now use basic metrics such as bounce rate and pages per visit with your automated campaign rules – Google has recently made a number of significant changes to the way Remarketing campaigns are set up and managed. This has also dramatically increased the functionality of this advertising method.

As mentioned by Lauren in her post, you no longer need to create a code for every Remarketing list you would like to work with. If you use Google Analytics, you can now simply modify your tracking script on all pages of your site in order to be able to distribute the so-called “DoubleClick cookie”. This process is described here:

https://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&utm_id=ad&answer=2444872

Google suggests you also update your privacy policy if you decide to use this feature.

With this done, you can now set up and specify all kinds of Remarketing lists directly from Google Analytics. You can find this feature under the “Admin” tab. It will no longer be necessary to create individual codes for every audience you would like to remarket to, making life much easier for your IT department, web developer or client.

A few clarifications up-front:

• Old audience lists cannot be converted to this rule-based method.
• You can use old lists and new lists together, and even combine them in custom combinations.
• There is no need to replace the old lists, but it can make life easier in the long run.
• After you have created a list, you still need to wait for it to distribute at least 100 cookies before ads will start showing for this list.
• Once you have saved a list in Analytics, it will automatically be imported into AdWords.

There are now four general types of Remarketing lists you can create. You can remarket to all visitors of your site, specify just a page or section (e.g. safari.com/tanzania, or your shopping cart), remarket to visitors who have converted on one of your Analytics goals, or you can build a list with the help of Analytics visitor segments. Especially the option to use goals to make your Remarketing even more targeted is very powerful. If you choose to set up a list via visitor segments, you can either work with the “Dimension & Metric Filter” or the “Sequence Filter”. ‘It sounds complicated at first, but I you have a little bit of experience with Google Analytics it shouldn’t take you long to understand. A dimension list could be “all organic visitors that have spent more than $100”, for example. The “Sequence Filter” lets you even use storylines in your advertising. You can remarket to users who came to your site via an E-Mail newsletter first, and then on a later stage visited your site via a specific search campaign. The possibilities are nearly limitless!

It is also very useful that Analytics will now calculate the number of users your lists would have at this point in time on the fly. As mentioned above, note that in any case you will still need to accumulate users after the list has been set up. However, this can give you a great idea if the audience you have in mind will be large enough for you to make crafting an individual campaign for them worthwile.

The post Remarketing 2012: Bigger, Better, Faster, More appeared first on Trafficbrand.

Unlike Analytics, Google AdWords has previously only ever allowed advertisers to select a set group of possible dates (this month, last month, last 7 days etc) with only one customisable option. Today, we noticed that Google has finally added a “Compare Dates” feature to the date range options in AdWords. Now allowing advertisers to choose/compare two custom date ranges and data is also displayed in your AdWords performance graphs. Now you can see at a glance the stats between two date ranges, instead of switching back and forth or exporting and arranging the data. Custom date ranges seem to remain saved when switching between accounts in your MCC.

Well done Google AdWords, we take our hats off to you on this one. Been waiting ages for it.

The post Compare Dates Comes to Google AdWords appeared first on Trafficbrand.

“Google Tag Manager took one big chunk of time out of the tagging process. What took 2 weeks now takes less than a day—sometimes just hours. We, the campaign managers, now make the call on which tags to use, and we can implement the tags ourselves.”

“Google Tag Manager just makes business sense. Why would we want to manually add hundreds of tags for our pages?” 

– source

The post Welcoming Google Tag Manager appeared first on Trafficbrand.

Google recently announced that TrueView ads are now available on mobile devices, but why is this significant? Lets take a quick look at some mobile YouTube stats from last year: more than 20% of global YouTube views came from mobile devices, YouTube is available on over 350 million mobile devices and roughly 3 hours of video was uploaded to YouTube per minute from a mobile device. The basic notion is that mobile traffic on YouTube was never monetised before and now allows advertisers to further expand campaigns across multiple screens; increasing reach, recall and conversions. AdWords for Video means that advertising campaigns across Google networks can all be managed in one interface, bringing YouTube and Google AdWords advertising together.

Study: How do people respond to TrueView Ads?

Some of you may know that there are four types of TrueView ads, but if I mention the pre roll ad that plays before your video, you probably know exactly what I am referring to and I’d probably be correct in assuming you hate those ads, yes? Interestingly, a study done by Google in the US with a sample size of 1600+ people shows different:

• Only 10% of people will always skip these ads.
• 8/10 viewers prefer TrueView ads to standard in-stream YouTube ads.
• 8/10 thought the “Skip” button was clear, which means people don’t have to think too hard, they know they can skip.
• 9/10 viewers thought TrueView ads create a better video viewing environment.
• Curiosity is the main reason users choose to watch an ad, therefore sparking interest in the first 5 seconds (before they skip) is key to driving viewership.
• Viewers are likely to skip ads they have seen before, which is good for not wasting ad budget.

Find the above study, here.

The post YouTube TrueView Ads [Study] appeared first on Trafficbrand.

Earlier this month, Google made some changes to how marketers are able to use this feature. The first change allows for Remarketing lists to be created and managed within Google Analytics, allowing for deeper analysis of these ads. This can be found in the Admin section under “Remarketing Lists”.

The second change is the ability to create various Remarketing lists using one piece of code instead of many.
Before, if you wanted to separate ad messages according to the page category that the user was browsing before they left the site, a unique code for each of those categories would have to be generated and implemented within the corresponding webpage. For example, if you have a site selling shoes, you would have to have a unique code for running shoes, a unique code for boots etc., in order to be able to deliver Remarketing ads specific to those shoe types.

Now, only one Remarketing code needs to be generated and implemented across all pages of the site. Some accounts may already have this code automatically generated. If you have this, it will be found under the “Audiences” tab, within the shared library, named “Main List”. If your account does not have this pre-generated list, then click ‘New audience’. Select ‘Remarketing list’ and then ‘define a list of site visitors by placing a new tag on selected pages’. Select the ‘+New tag’ button, name your remarketing list as ‘Main List’.

When the code of this Main List has been implemented across the site, you will then be ready to create category-based lists. From the Audiences tab, select ‘New audience’ > ‘Remarketing List’. Then select ‘Define a list of site visitors based on the selection below’. You can then create a list defined by the contents of the URL. For example, if you want to create a list for all users who viewed running shoes on your site, you would select all URL’s containing the term “runningshoes”. This method is therefore dependant on the URL structure of your site.

If you have already been using Remarketing, you can continue to use the old method, but some changes will need to be made in order to be able to use this new feature. See an explanation from Google on these changes here.

This new way of Remarketing has the obvious benefit of not having to deal with too many separate pieces of code, which can get especially complex when emailing to clients with explanations on implementation. It is also a time saver in that you would no longer need to keep adding additional code when there are changes to landing pages and promoted products.

Image source.

The post Recent Changes to Remarketing appeared first on Trafficbrand.

If you provide paid search marketing, you will often require your client to implement the AdWords conversion code somewhere on their site to track how many leads or sales have been generated by your campaigns. So far so good – you will contact your client, who will forward the request to their IT, who will implement the script for you and ideally it will work as intented. If the script has not been correctly placed, you will have to repeat this procedure. The larger a client, the longer it can take to forward your request through all the necessary instances. Now you also want to remarket certain sections of the site by placing individual scripts on pages of these sections and showing users who have looked at washing mashines different ads than users who have demonstrated interest in high-end gaming PCs. You will have to explain your exact requirements to the client again, who will have to execute the implementation of the needed scripts for you. This costs both you and the client time, resources, and therefore money. If you are offering web analytics advice and implementation, the list goes on .. events want to be tracked, user behaviour measured, e-commerce scripts enabled and tracking scripts amended. Every time a change is needed a new communication process will have to be initiated.

Container tags can take care of this issue for you. A number of different vendors with varying service and pricing models have come up over the last year. These so-called tag management solutions provide you with a JavaScript tag similar to any other tag you would use for Google AdWords or Analytics. However, this tag can contain numerous other tags which you can specify and edit at any given time using a web interface. So you would simply ask your client to implement one single tag across their whole site, and you can take care of the rest. You can include AdWords, Analytics and any other scripts you need in this tag – it empowers you to immediately make changes when needed and to always stay on top of tracking traffic and conversions in the correct way. I think that all of these systems provide you with the possibility to only place certain tags on certain pages you define, and many allow you to pull data from the HTML of a page (or, better, data layers – see reference below for more on this topic) and amend your tracking accordingly (great for instance if you are using Google Analytics e-commerce tracking).

There are of course also downsides to using container tags for your tracking. If you would like to read up on these and find out more about tag management, I highly recommend Google’s Justin Cutroni’s concise and highly informative article on the state and possible implementations of tag management here: http://cutroni.com/blog/2012/05/14/make-analytics-better-with-tag-management-and-a-data-layer/

The post Container Tags Can Save Time and Resources appeared first on Trafficbrand.

Example:

Phil is an online retailer selling a large variety of shoes in South Africa. He’s AdWords account has campaigns targeting 3 different regions (Western Cape, KZN and Gauteng). Within each campaign he has separate ad groups for generic and brand keywords. His structure (e.g. – Cape Town – Sneakers – Generic and – KZN – Sneakers – Generic) means that he has the same ads and keywords spread across different parts of this account. By applying a label “sneakers”  he can now easily sort his account or quickly run a labels report to see how well “sneakers” related keywords are performing in terms of sales across all three regions.

He can also now compare the performance of different types of shoes he is selling across these regions.

Labels can be used to organize your campaign elements in a way that you choose. Report on brand keyword performance versus all other non-branded keyword performance. You can measure how ads that mention “20% off” versus ads that mention “Save up to 25%” perform. You could also simply label your best performing keywords across ad groups in order to quickly review them. AdWords labels is a simple, yet handy tool have for any campaign manager’s tool box.

Source: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2012/04/slice-and-dice-your-data-using-adwords.html

The post AdWords Labels Allows You To Customize Your Data appeared first on Trafficbrand.

The first big change is that most of these video ads will no longer be charged for per click, but per view. A view counts as either a full watch of the video, or, in the case that it is longer than thirty seconds, a view of the first thirty seconds of the video. This will clearly make the video ad formats more lucrative for advertisers, as they will only be charged for potentially interested viewers. Users who skip their ads won’t leave a dent in the advertisers’ marketing budgets. Video ads will now also receive a sort of “quality score” similar to search ads that can, for instance, determine their position on the YouTube search results page along with the bid. This also adds a dimension of ‘engagement’ to the video ad model. Google thinks advertisers will aim for shorter, high quality clips more than ever to assure good scores, which would also be a definite win for the users.

The second big change is that you can manage all this from within AdWords now. You will also get additional metrics (such as view rate, thumb impressions and video impressions) and will be able to search for your YouTube videos from the AdWords interface to easily upload them. First and foremost, however, you will have access to AdWords’ highly sophisticated targeting methods. You can now target users by audiences consisting of interest categories, topics, content keywords or YouTube search keywords, for instance. This should make video advertising much more efficient.

The four ad formats promoted as “TrueView” video ads are as follows:

• In-search (previously known as promoted videos, showing on the YouTube SERP and targeting YouTube search keywords)
• In-stream (videos that show within a video – mostly up front, but can also be shown in the middle or at the end – and that can be skipped after five seconds)
• In-slate (this is a new format where users will be shown a selection of three videos, and can choose the one they want to watch before proceeding to the actual video they came for – this will be more “opt-in” than in-stream ads, as the user is given a choice, however note that with this format the advertiser will already be charged for the click of the video)
• In-display (these ads can show on YouTube or the GDN – for instance as a promotion on the right hand side of a YouTube video that is currently being watched)

Thinking about getting your advertising YouTube-ready? Remember that rich-media ads are becoming more important and effective than static banners in many cases and that YouTube is in fact the second largest search engine in the world. Two good reasons to give these new formats a try! Visit http://www.youtube.com/advertise/trueview.html for more!

The post TrueView Video Ads Bring AdWords and YouTube Together appeared first on Trafficbrand.