Google recently expanded their beta program for their Google Gadget ads to a limited number of their adwords advertisers.  Unfortunately, none of my clients have been invited to join yet.  These gadget ads are rich media ads that can contain a large number of interactive, interesting features such as data feeds, flash and other multimedia tools.  The ads run on Google’s content network and can be cpc or cpm based.

Some examples of these rich media ads can be found at: Gadget ad examples .

I am so excited about all the opportunities becoming available for online advertising.  These gadget ads are just another example of how Google continues to innovate and push the marketplace further along.

Its easy to be lured into thinking all you have to do is set up some automated bid management toolset for your paid search campaign (PPC) and sit back and watch the money come in. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. Nonetheless, with a little planning, you can use these various ppc tools to your advantage, freeing up your time to do more important, less routine things than managing bidding.

Case in point, I have been using www.keywordmax.com lately and I do love the new version they came out with a few weeks ago. You can now simultaneously manage multiple instances of the same keyword/match type across multiple campaigns! Before this release, what happened is that the first instance of the keyword that keyword max found was managed, the others being ignored. Not a very good situation if you are running 25 identical versions of the same keyword but differing in geotargeting (e.g. “keyword A” in kansas, “keyword A” in nebraska, etc…).

I have also found that having a good methodology and system for selecting what keywords to manage really helps as well. I have been using database technology and simple formulas based upon conversion rates, minimum impressions and overall competitiveness of the keyword to come up with my selection of keywords to manage using keyword max. I then run the query and save the results as a table, labeling as this month’s keyword max selections.

Give keywordmax a try and let me know what you find out! Its alot of work but will pay off with lower conversion costs and more effective spending of your advertising dollars!

Google came out around a month ago with another new PPC tool for their adwords advertisers - called “Optimize Campaign” (see snapshot below).

I guess we can’t expect Google to programatically replace us search engine marketers just yet. I tried out the campaign optimizer on a few client campaigns and found out the following:

• It seemed to suggest raising the bids quite a bit of the time (imagine that!)
• The suggestions for optimizing the text ads were really weak - all I ever saw was a revising of the display url to show the ‘www’ subdomain (which i dont want to do anyway)
• The google optimizer did however have some good ideas for new keywords

Frankly, on first glance, a search engine marketer may have been worried, thinking that Google was going to eliminate our business by building an automated tool to do our PPC work. However, on first glance, it looks like it will be a while before you can replace your human search engine marketing analyst!

What are your thoughts on the new tool?

The Changing PPC Landscape and Challenges for the Search Marketer

One could argue that there are three main PPC players right now: Google, Yahoo and MSN. Ask.com has a smaller market share, around 7% (Comscore 2006) while Google commands around 50% of all the searches. 2nd tier search engines, like Kanoodle, Dogpile and Mamma, niche business search engines like Business.com, or even PPC networks such as Quigo, give us as search marketers many options for our paid search advertising.

However, along with all these options come challenges:

• Data Management and Integration - how do you capture and act on all this data?
• Targeting Options - Google offers geotargeting, time and day parting, with Yahoo hot on their heels with a similar set of options in their upcoming fall 2006 release. MSN even offers lifestyle targeting and demographic data on their searcher data. How do you properly configure these parameters?
• Competition - How do you see what your competitors are doing? How much they are bidding?

PPC Optimization Levers

Short vs. Long Term Optimization Levers
Short Term - Done every couple days - examples: adjust CPC bids, monitor/adjust coverage monitor 3rd party PPC tool settings, adjusting budget to adjust coverage
Long Term - This takes more planning and analysis - biweekly or monthly - examples: new text ad creative/offers, study/adapt to competitor ads/creative ideas, adding new keywords, changing overall bidding strategy

Campaign Structure

Having a well organized PPC campaign can help you in several ways:

• Easier to manage your budgets, targeting and ad positioning settings (Google, MSN)
• Allows you to quickly see what is going on with your PPC campaigns at the campaign level, before you jump in and get lost right away at a more granular level
• Organized campaigns lead to better organized ad groups/categories and thus more relevant keywords and higher response rates