Recently in PPC Category
Product Extension Ads isn’t the newest tool on the block from Google AdWords, but it most certainly is pretty cool. Especially if you have a Google Base Merchant Center account with product feed. The Help Center stuff at Google is a wall of explanatory text, but I still found myself emailing the reps asking for the nittiest and the grittiest of details, in particular, how these ads are tracked, attribution and how items are chosen. So first of all, these are the “plus box ads” that were buzzed about earlier this year in beta. The feature is available on a
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Continue reading How to: Set up and Track Product Extension Ads in Google AdWords
Dear Yahoo, While I admit that I was pretty annoyed with the Google session based keyword searches, I have to say that Yahoo has them beat. Ever since they advanced “advanced” matching that’s been taking over in PPC accounts, keywords that used to see 3,000 impressions in a month are now seeing 3,000 within a week. Why? My Yahoo reps explained to me that it had to do with increasing traffic and trying to tell me that I was getting more for my money. What I actually find is that is quite the opposite. Based on the back end keyword
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Continue reading Dear Yahoo, Please Stop Showing My Ads for EVERYthing
Our good friends over at Hanapin Marketing - you know, the folks who run the PPC Hero blog - are running a pretty amazing SEM Sweepstakes right now. They have some great prizes available, including: (3) Paid Subscriptions to SEOMoz (1) 3-Month Subscription to ClickEquations (a neat bid management tool that we use at Portent) (100) Various Internet Marketing Tomes (1) Full PPC or SEO Audit by the Hanapin Marketing Team (worth $4,000) What are you waiting for? Go sign up! They’ll start randomly selecting winners on October 12th, 2009.
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Continue reading Shout-Out: Hanapin Marketing's $16,000 SEM Sweepstakes
Dear Google, I was going through my search query reports the other day and noticed that more and more I am seeing these broad match (session based) results. Interesting. I know that there is no opt out button for this and like my fellow SEMs am in a bit of an annoyed snit, but since it’s now rampant through one of my accounts, I’d like to just straight out ask for a refund. My intended audience would be looking for a math game for first graders. I have included many negative keywords in my campaigns (And yes, I thought of
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Continue reading Dear Google, Please Give Me Back My Money
Periodically you’ll see a post where someone has collected “epic fail” (and not just on the Fail Blog) screenshots of ads gone wrong. The serious plane crash news article next to the banner ad for discount tickets on the same airline that crashed. The diet pill flash banner across a forum for recovering anorexics. A recall notice with a coupon code site for $5 off your next purchase of the same item. You know the ones I’m talking about. In fact this post on The Business Insider about Google’s Worst Ads Ever, got me to thinking about how these ads
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Continue reading Did Google Earn the Fail Badge or did the Advertiser?
After attending a Stratigent workshop with Jennifer Vessenmeyer called "Pimp your Reports" it got me thinking about PPC reporting and how I could be "pimping" my own reports. I don’t mean throwing so much data together that no one will ever read it like a house bill nor exporting something out of AdWords and handing it over, I mean putting together the suggested meaningful and insightful report. Currently the PPC report I put together each month now for clients is actually right in line for what the workshop covered- but definitely in need of a tune up and there were
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Continue reading Simplify PPC Reports
As we all already know Google AdWords has beta testing the AdWords Bid Simulator feature since late May/early June. So what’s new since then? I’ll show you: Previous screenshots of the new feature have not included this Cost versus Clicks graph, which gives you a nice visual on how your estimated stats will look like with an increase in bid. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find much else on this new feature, it’s been like an Easter egg hunt just to even find campaigns that have it enabled. What we do know: It’s campaign based, not just account based. Last week I
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Continue reading AdWords Bid Simulator Update
As promised, my presentation from the SMX Advanced session Writing Killer Ad Copy. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. And you’ll completely re-think how you write ads. Keep in mind that this presentation was created for advanced paid search specialists. The purpose of the session was to get people thinking “outside the box.” My job was to go so far outside the box that it would be almost uncomfortable and to also bring humor to what can be a very tedious job, managing paid search campaigns. Writing Killer Ad CopyView more OpenOffice presentations from Elizabeth Marsten. Read the warnings and disclaimers slide
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Continue reading Writing Killer Ad Copy...and not getting arrested
That’s right, yours truly is on one of many SMX Advanced panels this June 2 and 3rd in Seattle, dedicated to organic, paid search and internet marketing tactics. In particular my panel is on the paid search track for “Writing Killer Ad Copy- The Interactive Edition.” After the conference, I’ll post my presentation here (or rather a link to it) for those that couldn’t make it across the country or foot the entry fee into the conference. A sneak peak of what I’ll be presenting on: Writing ads that use guilt or are aggressive: Buy My Stuff Now Hey You!
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Continue reading Writing Killer Ad Copy: SMX Advanced Seattle Speaker
This week as part of the MSN AdCenter Spring Upgrade a new feature was released that’s been a long time coming: Content Network reports! Ever wonder what those mystery “Microsoft property sites” are? I sure have. I asked an AdCenter rep once and got a “we don’t know either” answer which I found pretty unsatisfactory. But now we can see where on the content network of Microsoft sites our ads are showing and even going that extra step to block a few. So what do we do next? Rip it apart of course! Accessing the reports is easy enough through
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Continue reading MSN AdCenter Content Network Reports
