|
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
My, how well organized Google was to announce their new behavioral ads in content targeting offering.
To the public at large, VP Product Management Susan Wojcicki provides the official explanation of why digital advertising is good, how Google tries to make the ads relevant, and what behavioral targeting is going to entail. Above all, this part of the announcement scrupulously covers the privacy principles and the user control and opt-out elements of Google's advertising technology.
For AdSense publishers, a good-news announcement that advertising will continue to reach more relevant audiences, and a brief allusion to settings in AdSense accounts that deal with the new capability.
And finally, the piece de resistance: what about the AdWords gang? For the paying customers, the advertisers, a post on the Inside AdWords blog explaining that this program will be in beta for several months and that it will be expanded "later in 2009." Product manager Aitan Weinberg writes about this offering "helping you to better reach your campaign goals at scale." Concisely put, and that is exactly what we're looking for out here in advertiser-land.
It's hard to imagine any company covering the communications bases as well as this for a product that won't be fully rolled out for 4-6 months. Google, if you were expecting a major firestorm of controversy about your announcement, I have to apologize in advance. It just isn't going to happen.Labels: content targeting, google adwords
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Thursday, December 04, 2008
 Well, it took 18 months to gestate and another few months for final proofs, printing, and machinations to unfold, but the totally-updated, hot-and-fresh Second Edition of Winning Results with Google AdWords is now in the house! And available for purchase on Amazon (I expect it to be in stock there by week's end) and in finer bookstores. "This book is a must-read for all marketers over the holidays!"... so says its author.Labels: google adwords
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Quality Score = SEO. That's the oversimplified version of things being shared around by some marketing advice-givers of late.
Ask any key Googler on the paid or unpaid search side, and they'll readily admit something like "for both the organic search algorithm and the paid search ranking system, we look at very similar signals."
That's not the same as saying the AdWords program responds well to "SEO," however. Landing pages serve a very different function in paid search campaigns. You don't have to perfect them with SEO principles, and you'll very rarely get a major ranking boost from using SEO principles. You'll still predominantly rank well if you (1) have a high CTR; (2) bid sufficiently high; (3) create a strong relevancy pattern by associating the most relevant high-intent keywords with relevant ads and relevant landing pages.
Strictly dealing with the landing pages themselves, though, don't go overboard worrying about their impact on Quality Score. The wrong landing page can give you a poor Quality Score, for a variety of don't-be-evil reasons. Google does attempt to look at the page content, and will measure user responses such as bounce rates and back-button-hitting. But you don't have to twiddle around with keywords in headings and stuffing keywords in body text as if this were SEO circa 1997.
Powerful campaigns with real patterns of satisfied user behavior are "relevant enough," even with the basic elements of relevancy present on the page. Additional relevancy is likely not gained with keyword stuffing efforts. Outdated efforts to game QS with SEO principles only take away from real user response testing - pleasing navigation, persuasion, and testing that can improve conversion rates (without gimmicks and superstition).
The folks to say "AdWords = SEO"... they may be in the ballpark, and they haven't totally struck out, but the analogy is a foul tip into the bleachers, at best.Labels: google adwords, quality score
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
My sources just informed me that Google has pulled out of the advertising agreement with Yahoo, citing regulatory interference.
Although it is a short term loss to Yahoo's bottom line, I believe ultimately it's healthier for competition to keep the two companies more at arm's length and for Yahoo to continue to develop their own, proprietary platforms.Labels: google, google adwords, yahoo, yahoo search marketing
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Saturday, September 13, 2008
The New York Times' Joe Nocera reviews a legal case emanating from a site, SourceTool, that felt hard done by Google's Quality Score algorithm.
Sourcetool's owner suspects that Google simply doesn't like the site because it is "another search engine," or because it competes with Business.com, a Google partner.
I doubt this is it.
Anyone with experience in the game can sense what Sourcetool is, and that sense would be augmented or confirmed by a peek at the mix of destination URL's within the AdWords account, no doubt: it's pretty much straight click arbitrage.
Recall that straight click arbitrage is a business model that is all but banned by Google.
It does bring up another point. I just completed a fairly extensive discussion of this here in Winning Results With Google AdWords (2nd ed.), but that won't hit the shelves for a little while, so the capsule summary is this. Yes, there are muddy middle grounds, since many businesses are making a living off arbitrage in one form or another and you can't shut everyone's ads off! And there are cases of mistaken identity in the thin-slicing that an algorithm does to attempt to catch bad guys.
But here, Google isn't just stereotyping or rushing to judgment. Google knows who the person is, knows what the site does, understands the strategy fully, and has consciously decided to ban him from advertising, at least at regular prices. That's not an algorithm talking. It's Google's policy. And antitrust law or not, I believe this is their right.
In short, Sourcetool is in good company -- or in Google's eyes, bad company. It isn't being harassed because it's a "search engine," it's being harassed because it's a scraper-cum-arbitrage site. It contains little or no unique content, and the means of creating a high volume of pages is automated. Google does not feel that these are valuable kinds of sites, and that's been confirmed right out of Eric Schmidt's mouth, to large gatherings of journalists, since 2005 at least.Labels: google adwords, quality score
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Thursday, August 28, 2008
With another major change to Google's Quality Score formula and reporting comes much uncertainty for advertisers. The changes: fixed minimum bids have been eliminated, and Quality Score is calculated in real time, at the time of the query.
I can come at this from a few angles, and probably will, in the coming months. Today, just one piece of the puzzle to address: efficiency for both the advertiser and Google.
First, some background assumptions:
1. New advertisers (and unevenly-engaged advertisers returning to refresh their memories) do keep pouring into the space, especially internationally. The optics of high minimum bids don't look good. They're alarming and off-putting to newbies.
2. Google likes its black box, and likes to avoid black-white distinctions. Building very flexible (read: confounding) architecture helps Google achieve a number of goals. And even those goals are subject to change.
3. Yet Google faces pressure for additional disclosure. So for every layer of complexity they build in, they try to offer up at least an equivalent step forward in terms of disclosure.
4. At Google AdWords, CTR is king. Clicks drive revenue, and continue to be a reasonable proxy for relevance. This is the biggest constant since 2002.
5. The platform as it stood at version 2.6 (my nomenclature), contained pockets of inefficiency. It did a good job of ramping up the "quality" bar, to the delight of users, but as even Sergey sheepishly admitted to investors, they might have "overtightened" the calibration of the platform, showing too few ads for advertisers', Google's, and investors' taste. The new release is intended to offer Google the ability to "untighten" selectively, without giving anyone the satisfaction of being able to point definitively as to exactly how that is being achieved.
--
Further detail:
The "pockets of inefficiency" buried in the fixed minimum bid regime were evidently ferreted out by smart Google engineers who realized that fixed minimum bids for keywords were too rigid. Rather than determining that a keyword in a given account should be "all on" or "all off" no matter what the context, Google has designed the new system to give keywords a fighting chance to show ads in all cases. (The official explanation is that no keyword is ever technically inactive for search.)
Quality Score is now determined in real time, per query. But wait. Don't think that means the only negative thing that happens to a Low-Quality-Score keyword is that it's relegated to a Very Low Ad Position. No, it can still be inactive at query time if it fails to meet what Google is calling a Bid Requirement. (Among other things, this gives Google an excuse to charge high prices for clicks in some instances, even if no other ads are showing up on the page.) What's different in this version is that the same keyword is eligible to be re-evaluated for the next query, and the one after that. So like the parrot in the sketch, it's not dead, just resting.
Let's be especially clear about this much: keyword quality (whose formula is outlined in Google help files, but clearly rests on measures of CTR history as well as predicted relevancy, especially for newer accounts with less data history) will determine both where your ad ranks for a given query, and whether it is eligible to show up or not at query time. So "fighting chance" and the "chance you might show up" even on a low quality keyword, some of the time, doesn't mean the same as "free for all." Advertisers aren't being encouraged to "go to town" with unrelated keyword experiments just to "see what sticks" -- in fact, that tactic is as bad as ever, because this can hurt account-wide quality.
Through all of the complexity of the explanations you'll read, then, and the potentially excessive focus on some tweaks in reporting (scale of 1 to 10 transparency for Quality Scores) and projections (First Page Bid estimates), the efficiency angle, and Google "shading" its quality initiative to make it more flexible and subtle, is the main story here.
And not a moment too soon, I'm guessing. By Google standards, the months of July and August were likely slower than they or investors would like. By notching up revenue in September, Google can turn in a respectable Q3. (Especially internationally, I'd expect to see click arbitrageurs given some respite, and getting a chance at more clicks - raising Google's revenue, but lowering overall search quality.) By the time things are off to the races for Q4, Google can always tighten things up slightly from a quality standpoint, and raise prices at the same time. If you asked, I'd predict steady-looking year-over-year revenue growth in Q4, with a bump in profit margins. Investors will cheer, and Google (GOOG) stock will head back to $700.Labels: goog, google adwords, quality score
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Monday, August 25, 2008
Is this how it goes? The PR machine starts to roll *after* you've made more money than you'll ever need?
This just in: Google is seeking AdWords testimonials. Success stories. Some that you might even want to "share with the press." (Did someone attend a marketing seminar over there?)
It's beyond doing good stuff with campaigns, though. It's about how AdWords "changed your life". (AdWords is lucky it is not a mobile device, or, for every one part "it changed my life," you'd see ten parts of those Corona ads with someone deciding to chuck that sucker into the ocean, and kick back.)
Some of the questions from the "yes I want to submit my testimonial" form are as follows (with my own, personal answers furnished here):
Q. How has AdWords impacted your business and personal life?
A. It is my business. And personal life.
Q. Has it allowed you to expand your business?
A. See above.
Q. Become an entrepreneur?
A. Um, I'd like to think I was that before AdWords. But while we're on the subject of wild west entrepreneurialism, remember the good old days when we could bid on all kinds of keywords without thought to quality scores and predictive algorithms?
Q. Quit your day job?
A. I have never had a day job. At least, not prior to AdWords. So thanks for nothing, AdWords, I now have a day job. My parents are very proud.
Q. Spend more time with your family?
A. Definitely. I spend more time with my Page Zero Media family.Labels: google adwords
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Those who know me all to well are aware of my irritating resistance to the word "pop up" in connection with Google AdWords ads.
That was one of my many suggested corrections to a recent story on Google ads over at The Register, for example.
My take is that slipping the term "pop up" in journalistic pieces about Google (as in, "and for only a dollar or so, Mr. Neufeldt's ad would pop up on Google when searchers typed the words 'truck tires'...") is part of an ongoing, insidious campaign by sellers of traditional advertising to associate (still, to this day) online targeting with things that go bump in the night. (Or something even worse, like annoying pop-ups.)
So when the casual conversation here in the Traffick Living Room on a Saturday turned to my spouse's observation that "I don't see Google ads pop up very often when I use the search engine in South Africa," I had to interject: "bup! bup! bup! waait a minute!"
I know, it's irritating to be around me, but we can't take this shit lying down. :)
Ads on Google searches "appear," "show up," "come up," or "are displayed." Or are simply there. They never pop up!Labels: google adwords
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
So a man got 668 clicks on his ads through one portion of his Google AdWords, and zero conversions. And for that, it's seen as good enough reason for a lawsuit. Ever heard of testing?
I'm no lawyer, but it looks like the complaint is shoddily written and inaccurate.
The thinking here is that the suit has limited merit because:
- There is little truth to the claim that the ads had "little or no chance of converting." Since Google made breakdowns of parked domain clicks available in a specific reporting feature, although it's certainly uneven, I've seen evidence that these channels convert about as well as other content.
- Google, unlike their competitors, reports separately on the performance of this inventory. And allows advertisers an opt-out of whole categories or channels of content.
- Google also allows you to "negative out" undesirable sites and IP addresses. It is taking what I see as reasonable measures to offer more control to advertisers.
No, the program isn't perfect. Among other things, some of the ambiguous inventory is stuck in the "search partner" network where breakdowns and opt-outs aren't readily available (but just contact your Google rep and you can work around the problem, likely). A Googler recently told me that better reporting and opt-outs for the "search partner" network is forthcoming in the next few quarters.
Further reading: Revisiting Content-Phobia in Paid SearchLabels: google adwords
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Thursday, May 29, 2008
When a certain kind of data is really close to your heart and mind, you'd like to think that some leading indicators are just too blatant to dismiss.
To date, "Internet-inflated" political campaigns have often had that easily punctured quality to them. What turned out to be niche candidates had disproportionately strong donor bases and loyalties through cliquish but still impressive online channels. They got puffed up a bit in the early going, then proved to be paper dragons in the end.
The field is fast evolving, however. Top candidates today are employing real online marketing tactics to boost already solid campaigns, pushing themselves over the top with savvy, controlled, and tightly measured spending of campaign funds on the ads that we here know and love so well: paid search and contextual ads.
ClickZ News is reporting that the Barack Obama campaign spent a cool $1.7 million on Google ads in February alone.
I'll also go out on a limb and take this as a leading indicator for an Obama victory in November. It just doesn't seem that much different for me from customer acquisition in retail and B2B. Companies that are already strong, who add this targeted channel to their mix and pursue it aggressively before their competitors catch on, tend to pull away from the others. It isn't magic.
The only roadblock I see that could prevent this from happening would be a low turnout among youth voters. And by youth, I mean the entire 18-44 demographic that is currently most impacted by the online ad strategy. With unprecedented turnout in this demographic, Obama would win in a cakewalk. Without it, he could actually lose to McCain.
Hard to say what impact the wildly popular "Obama Girl" videos might be having on the candidates' fortunes, but again, if you compare what is happening -- and what *can* happen -- for McCain or Clinton at least in this social media realm... well... this Obama thing feels like a movement; yes, as some have stated, on a par with JFK (or PET for you Canadian viewers).Labels: google adwords, obama, youtube
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
 Now, it's more fun than Risk.
When you're setting your country choices in Google AdWords campaign settings, you may notice some new functionality. A handy map will visually display the countries chosen; and you can select countries in "bundles" such as "US and Canada," "Western Europe," "Latin America," "Caribbean," etc. A real time-saver as opposed to hunting and pecking from a long list.Labels: google adwords
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Friday, November 09, 2007
Nag incessantly, and ye shall receive.
I don't see this on Inside AdWords, so it must be new. I just stumbled on an opt-out functionality for the content network, being beta tested currently.
Two types of "content exclusion" have been added alongside site and page exclusion options: (1) topics; and (2) page types. Under "topics," advertisers will have the ability to opt out of certain types of content, like "edgy content" and "death & tragedy." More benignly, page types you can exclude include "image sharing" and "domain ads."
Wow. And in the opt-out interface, Google is really hitting me over the head with the recent conversion stats on some of the different types. In the campaign I chose, domain ads did just fine today - outperforming the campaign as a whole, in fact, from an ROI standpoint. There's no point in disabling something if it actually works, obviously!
So be cautious when this launches. If content is working fine for you, of course you'll want to avoid unduly limiting your exposure in the universe. In fact, if you can exclude unwanted content types, it might be wise to raise your bids on the rest.
For advertisers concerned about showing up in unwanted places, this is great news. Also great will be the fact that we'll be more armed with the facts about ad performance on different types of content. Heat gives way to light.Labels: content targeting, google adwords
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Monday, September 10, 2007
Litigants in anti-Google keyword cases such as this latest in Australia speak in one-sided "baby talk," acting for all the world like Google has set out to deceive and wrong them personally. I'd call it "food fight tactics," if I'd ever witnessed a food fight mostly involving applesauce, but I haven't.
This complainant blithely accuses Google of sneakily "selling off top spot" in spite of its reputation for ranking results based on relevance, not money. The sponsored results supposedly appear "in the same format" as search results. Car dealership Kloster Ford was "outraged" by its competitor's conduct... and hence, the ensuing lawsuit and brouhaha. Too bad for the complainants, but the outrage was not backed by, at least, brussels sprouts, or other food you can whip at someone, because applesauce thrown in anger is still applesauce. It was also not backed by facts or sound argumentation.
The overinflated sense of outrage and weak argumentation reminded me of my penchant for the helpful if opaque works of Jurgen Habermas, particularly his late work Between Facts and Norms. If the ideal for better understanding and progress in any problem-solving exercise is what Habermas might have called a "discursive situation," Habermas can argue that "communicative power" is merely pushy coercive power based on bluster and sometimes backed by money or illegitimate influence. "Real" power as embodied in the law (as it should be) would emanate from a discursive situation. Winning in a legitimate court case based on a proper weighing of facts and ethics as generally agreed in legal codes would be "legitimate power."
Luckily, Google wins most of these cases. Apparently, in many jurisdictions, "I was outraged" and blatantly manipulative descriptions of how Google "sells off top spot," are trumped by the more accurate argument that accurately describes the real workings of Google's advertising program, and the legitimate right of advertisers to buy space online.
At the entirely opposite end of the spectrum, I then read a nice piece by Mike Grehan in Larry Chase's WDFM newsletter that focuses heavily on trends in search and how Google Universal Search presents results to users based on search history or apparent intent. There is far from a single "list" of "most relevant" results in a given format. So kudos, Mike, for presenting deep-seated facts which lead us towards a "discursive situation" about search and ads, thus staying on Professor Habermas' good side. In an ideal society, the legal system would take account of such facts. Most modern legal systems attempt to do so, fortunately.Labels: google adwords, keywords, trademark, universal search
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Thursday, August 16, 2007
...but it helps!
That's the t-shirt many paid search auction-grapplers have been mentally wearing for years.
In a few weeks, Google will be going live with a slightly altered version of the AdWords auction. Group Business Manager for Ads Quality, Nick Fox, was kind enough to go into considerable detail outlining the change, which as usual has been misinterpreted somewhat here in the ventosphere. The most common dismissal of any change Google has made to AdWords is "another cash grab by Google"... which I guess looks like a clever dig in pixel form, but I think the changes are definitely more interesting than that implies. Many of those comments tend to emanate from sources who still think all clicks should be free, so take them for what they're worth.
1. The Simple Explanation... Past vs. Present
a. OK, so the explanation isn't that simple if you've been doing this for awhile but not paying much attention, because Google has changed the way they sell the top-position "premium" ad slots several times in the past few years. Several years ago, the first major change occurred when Google started, then stopped, selling those ad positions completely separately on a costly high-CPM basis, using a dedicated sales team, 6-month insertion orders, and the whole nine yards. That was convoluted to administer -- and more importantly, divorced that type of ad buy from Google's traditional AdWords formula that focused on ad relevance and quality -- so they discontinued the practice. The top slots more or less joined the regular auction, but they remained distinct in look and feel, and were great to achieve due to high CTR's, high volume, and sometimes, higher conversion rates.
b. However, Google then began to experiment with how many ads it would show in those positions, and by and large, placed a higher threshold of quality [prior to August 2005, CTR (click-through rate) was the only measure of quality] and CPC (cost-per-click) before it would elevate an ad to the premium area. The exact thresholds were never publicized, but typically, ads with actual CPC's below .75 had trouble making the grade for premium positioning. Ads with CTR's below the averages for the keyword or industry sector had trouble making the premium spots too. I'm guessing Google tweaked the formula several times.
As Nick Fox told me today, because (1) "these ads get more attention from users," and (2) "push organic results lower on the page," to say nothing of (3) "being particularly valuable for many advertisers," it's important for Google to find the right balance here. Above all, the user response to the ads is paramount. Users must not become turned off by the overall perception of quality in their day-to-day use of the search engine.
So until now, the function that determined whether an ad would show in a premium position or be placed in the right-hand margin was weighted heavily towards quality score, but also included actual cost-per-click. That made it different from the rest of the auction, which went on the basis of quality score and max bid. Max bid can often be much higher than your actual CPC because of the discounter built into the pricing method.
c. Now, there will be a small change to the formula. The downside of the "actual CPC" part of this was that it stopped certain advertisers from getting in premium slot due to a lack of what Nick Fox called "auction pressure." Other advertisers simply might not have been present or bidding high enough to push the actual CPC up enough for the leading advertisers to qualify for premium spots. Worse, I'm guessing that this might mean that slightly lower-quality ads could creep into premium positions, because they *did* pay more on an actual basis. They wouldn't be *poor* quality ads, but they might not be the highest quality. This actually reveals a flaw in the previous formula because it unwittingly relaxed quality standards slightly in the area where it should have been heightened.
My interpretation here is that advertiser control and overall user satisfaction rise with this change, but yes, it does seem that some advertisers might experience price increases.
2. Unforeseen complexity.
Unpredictable effects might occur to some advertisers who find they suddenly get promoted to premium position, or who have been bidding very high and changes in the auction dynamic cause other advertisers' positions in the auction to change.
Will you pay more in those cases? Probably, if your actual CPC has in the past been coming in below what the new minimum price for premium placement is set at.
What, did I just say "new minimum price for premium placement?" I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth. There is no set reserve price that Google is implementing here, but rather, a dynamic minimum that is a little bid difficult to grasp at this stage.
I guess the throbbing feeling I have in my brain about now comes from the fact that by adding this wrinkle, Google appears to be adding a second "minimum bid" - I'd liken it to a larger rung partway down the auction ladder. If you qualify to be in the premium slots (let's call this the treehouse), then you can stay up there, but you'll potentially pay more. The rope ladder down to the ground has the usual auction dynamic, but if you fall below that familiar minimum bid, the bottom rung on the rope ladder breaks and you fall into a big pile of leaves on the ground (out of the auction entirely). Potentially, your best friend's dog, Scrappy, licks your face as consolation, while you muster the courage to "improve quality or bid higher."
The minimum bid to be on the rope ladder (active in the auction at all) is *published* right next to the keywords in your AdWords account. But it doesn't look like your price of admission to the treehouse (the premium positions) is going to be published. One minimum bid, disclosed; the other, not. And a real dilemma for Google as to how they could possibly publish that given the limitations of the AdWords user interface as complicated as it now is.
So while the change may be minor in practice, advertisers are counseled to watch their bids, particularly if they've mucked about with high maximum CPC's (aka bids) in low actual CPC zones. You might begin paying more than that low level you've been accustomed to, in those cases. You should always be prepared to pay the full amount of the max bids you set, so it's never a good idea to bid wildly high, counting on a lack of auction pressure to make up for your laziness in bid management.
Let's ditch the passive voice, just to be clear. I counsel you to watch your bids!Labels: ad quality, google adwords, nick fox
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Thursday, April 26, 2007
I've noticed that Google's emphasis on the radio ads marketplace has been particularly strong - even amidst all of the other things they seem to be pumping all at once. Some client accounts have this tab visible (Account Snapshot); others, that tab (try this beta); and others, still, the other (Radio Ads). Or so it seems.
Google's testing a lot of stuff right now, but you keep hearing about the radio part.
I wonder why?
One reason seems to be the surprising growth of radio in the United States. As the most urbane members of the Creative Class and Yelp Gen have completely neglected to notice, "extreme commuting" has become ever more rampant in the U.S., as noted in a riveting recent piece in The New Yorker. As Nick Paumgarten, the author, points out, the long car commute is often very lonely. You have "cup holders for company." And the likelihood of you listening to the radio: increased. Think Google knows something?Labels: commuting, google adwords, new yorker, radio ads
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
You know you're doing something right when a speaker hanging out in the green room here at SES NYC unplugs his laptop and wanders over to show a fellow marketer a marketing campaign, as sort of a 15-second case study. This Coffee Fool appears to be a fairly heavy user of contextual advertising at the moment, showing up adjacent to GMail and such. (Not a really surprising semantic match given that you probably type a lot of messages like "meet for coffee?" in email.)
I'm not sure what "coffee secrets" are really "exposed," but hey.
Disclaimer: I don't endorse or know much about their marketing methods. I don't know the company. I just noticed them.
Very important disclosure: I was not paid to post this!Labels: coffee, content targeting, contextual ads, google adwords
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Google refers vaguely to the "need for a new look" in shifting their top sponsored ad background color from blue to yellow today. Were CTR's declining? We know that rotating ad design in banner campaigns sometimes props up CTR's. Personally, I haven't seen much evidence of declining CTR up there at the top, but you never know.
Another significant shift is not triggering a clickthrough unless the user actually clicks the link. It's been a bit cheesy that clicking anywhere in the box caused a click. So the result of this shift should be a noticeable improvement in ROI out of the top ad spots. Fewer clicks, but more clicks that meant to click.Labels: ctr, google adwords
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Google has been testing a "pay-per-action" ad model since July 2006.
Today they're announcing a wider rollout of the service, but still in "limited beta release."
In a brief chat yesterday with Rob Kniaz, product manager for Google advertising products, I learned that AdSense publishers will be able to add the pay-per-action units in addition to their current AdSense (CPM or CPC) ad units. They'll be able to shop for potential offers in a variety of ways, either by selecting a specific advertiser's offer or by incorporating keywords into their code and letting Google's system smart-match from their advertiser list.
From the advertiser side, there will be a dedicated interface that allows them to upload creatives as well as the parameters for payout (eg. $3 per sale; $35 per lead, etc.). I'm waiting to see the full implementation, but at this early stage it looks like there will be a couple of things to look out for:
- Verification of the actions is a key concern. I always argued that cost-per-action was no panacea to the verification issues around CPC or CPM based advertising. To be sure, you can't fake a sale if money changes hands, but a no-good publisher or random vandal could certainly potentially generate low-quality or fake leads. As with pay-per-click, it's not quite good enough to argue that advertisers should lower their bids accordingly, since the impact of bogus activity could be quite uneven.
- How are these outcomes going to be tracked? I assume through Google Analytics, Google Conversion Tracker, or Google Checkout.
- As such, it does certainly expand the Google footprint in all of these areas. It also confirms that the introduction of products like Checkout were not disjointed experiments but rather part of a broader overall strategy that is only being shown to us gradually.
There are some clear positives in this experiment. In potentially opening up a CPA marketplace to all of its several hundred thousand advertisers, with tens of thousands of publishers on board as well, it instantly gains the clout of a service like Commission Junction or Amazon Associates, but with less friction and lower cost (and over time, greater variety to choose from, for both sides in the transaction). It gives publishers a new way of experimenting with maximizing their monetization efforts (with better targeting, not user overload as shown in the last post), and allows advertisers to explore a new way of buying content-targeted exposure through Google. Put another way, it allows merchants to set up an "affiliate program," but with considerably less hassle than with other affiliate systems.
To be clear, the cost-per-action test has nothing to do with the search results or ads next to them. It's an additional marketplace being built to facilitate cost-per-action ad payments between AdWords advertisers and AdSense publishers.Labels: cost-per-action, google adsense, google adwords
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
CBS Marketwatch is ahead of the curve with this item. Google is releasing more detailed information about click fraud. Last time around, they were somewhat transparent in their approach as they chatted with Andy Beal. However, some stats never got fully examined - so now Google is redoubling its efforts to explain both the magnitude of the proactively refunded clicks (it amounts to over $1 billion per year in forgone revenue), but also the relative tininess of the proportion of clicks that get refunded by request in investigations after that (below 0.1%, well below). Recently I had an opportunity to speak at length with Shuman Ghosemajumder to discuss some of the stats and also Google's fraud detection methods. IMHO they have some pretty interesting tricks up their sleeve on the detection front.
Having gone over some of their info so far and reflected on how it squares with current opinion in the industry, I just completed an audio interview (a PZCast to be exact, hosted as always by Mona) with some detailed comments on the click fraud controversy. The MP3 file will be posted to the member area for Page Zero Advisor subscribers by noon Thursday. If you listen, remember as always, the initial 90 second throat-clearing banter is only outdone in its inanity by the official banter lasting three full minutes. Fast forward past both if you prefer content to yuks.Labels: click fraud, google adwords, page zero, podcast, shuman ghosemajumder
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Monday, February 26, 2007
Search Engine Land has it. Expect more Google announcements re: click transparency in the near future.Labels: content targeting, contextual ads, google adsense, google adwords
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Monday, February 19, 2007
Excuse my giddiness, but it's definitely addictive to look at your keyword quality scores. You could have guessed them before by the assigned minimum bids, but these are fun to look at anyway:
Yet confounding, too - no doubt seeing this stuff will cause some advertisers to overthink and to try to divine the impossible. The one with 5.1% CTR today is called "great" but there is one with over 10% CTR that is being assessed as merely OK. Presumably, that's based on some predictive stuff around the generic nature of one of the keywords (the OK one is too general maybe). And presumably it would only be a few hundred more clicks over a week or so at a high CTR and it might kick into "great" territory. We'll see. I guess that would be my advice in the "avoid overthinking" department: realize that an established CTR history will give you a more stable quality score than the stuff you see on new keywords.
I also think it's cool (laugh if you like) that Google makes it slightly difficult to display this, so it doesn't confuse newbies. You have to drill down a fair bit to find the place to turn on QS info.
At the campaign summary level, if you click on "customize columns," the only non-default column you can add here is "CPM." (I find this cool too. You don't need to do the math - you can measure the eCPM on your campaign by enabling it in the interface. On this ad group - a brand new campaign - we're getting a rock-bottom $0.85 CPM. So far, so good!)
Anyway, once you drill down past the ad group level to the "keywords" tab you can "customize columns" and enable the extra quality score information in the interface.
Speaking of new stuff... at the bottom of your keyword list in the available options is a button for "pause" and "unpause". Shut up! I'm pretty sure Google slipped this in without telling us. Some time ago they added a feature that allowed you to pause an ad (handy for testing and sharing info internally), but this pause a keyword was something I'd been hoping for. Heck, who knows what you'll use it for, but power users always come up with something.
UPDATE: OK, so via the Inside AdWords blog I see the "pause keyword" feature was added on Thursday. I spent Friday on an airplane... So by now it's still only five days old. And my spidey sense tells me that my colleagues here in the office are already pausing keywords! LOL, gotta love 'em. The "pause ad" feature was added some time ago, as I recall.Labels: ctr, google adwords, minimum bid, quality score
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Kevin Newcomb's take on the latest incremental update on ads quality. As Kevin does, I interpret the changes to mean an increase in transparency (obvious, because that's what Google tells us); and a more relaxed minimum bid status for "unknown" type new keywords where Google has little data to go on. Here, they might be less likely to punish you for the trends seen with other advertisers trying similar keywords for similar offers, and let you create your own good or bad track record on your own. (It's not a black and white change, more of a tweak in emphasis.)
At the same time, they also allude to the new algorithm being tougher on bad ads and nicer to good ones, so basically just further refinements based on machine learning and so on. If you're on the receiving end of the additional toughening up, it'll hurt even more. The majority of advertisers will likely feel the new regime to be slightly more liberal.
The increased transparency will lead to more questions. Once I'm absolutely sure of what keywords or groups of keywords are low quality, how should I respond. Google explicitly advises that you do not raise your bid, but rather, optimize your campaign. (So much for the "cash grab" theory.) And they point in particular to the relationships between your keywords, ads, and offer. This is what I was getting at in the last post.
Creating more granular campaigns will potentially boost quality for those who do have available content and offers on their sites, but who have been lazy in how they build the campaign structure, for whatever reason.
What still confuses me is how Google can know what score to apply if you're running a complex test that includes multiple ads and multiple destination URL's, where you're actively trying to understand the best places to send users on the site, the best wording to use in ads., etc. for any given keyword. Or does the mere act of doing more systematic testing of this nature possibly give you some brownie points? I think I'll have to ask them about that. By and large, I think the answer is this: the system is designed to be punitive to campaigns that have some aspect that falls really far outside the normal, relevant, user-friendly range. Most campaigns are going to run unimpeded, or in other words ranking and status are largely based on the old standbys of historical CTR and your max bid. That's what I call AdWords 2.0. The current iteration, 2.7, is probably not too far from 2.0 for the vast majority of campaigns, keywords, ads, and sites.Labels: google adwords, quality score
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
In one of the paid search sessions yesterday here at SES London, one audience member gave his account of the "death spiral" that seems to afflict certain keywords in his AdWords account. "I wake up and Google's asking for £2.50 for a keyword, so I raise the bid. The next day, they've put it up to £5.00. (etc.)."
Obviously this is a signal that the relationship between this keyword, ad, and landing page is seen as "very low quality."
So I asked roughly what industry he was in - turns out it's related to debt relief. The keyword in question? "Lottery tickets." Yup, I thought to myself - in the new Quality Based Bidding regime, that's seen as just too far off the mark in terms of relevancy to the service being offered to the consumer.
This might have fallen flat at any stage of AdWords history, though, by virtue of the low CTR it would likely attract. A "popular culture" type word (people looking up lottery listings is a very common navigational function) will be so high volume that the proportion of users who are thinking "transactionally" and willing to check out an offer is so low that it will lead to a CTR that is below any threshold of reasonability as far as today's PPC auctions go.
You admire the lateral thinking here: people desperate to dig themselves out of debt might be more inclined to buy and look up info on lottery tickets. If so, then an advertiser should probably try to get placement on relevant websites through direct media buys and various banner and text ad targeting tactics (one being Google's Site Targeting option).
But you'll have much more trouble doing this type of "loose targeting" if you're using AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing, unless of course you have a strong, established CTR and user experience history.
So is an ad for debt relief next to search engine results for lottery tickets really "low quality"? Yes, moderately so, because in the user's eyes, search is special. They want even the ads to be tightly targeted, or let there be no ads at all.
Google is no doubt going to continue to modify the Quality Score algorithm to fine-tune the balance between advertisers' needs and the user experience. Stay tuned.Labels: google adwords, minimum bid, quality score, relevance
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
At least one panelist (David Szetela) on the Ad Program Strategies: Compare and Contrast panel here at SES London, argued that while he liked the control of Google's Site Targeted flavour of content targeting, he wasn't so fussy about the CPM-based pricing model.
Coincidentally, today Google is announcing that they're beta testing a CPC-based version of Site Targeting, so advertisers who like the idea of paying by the click (that's pretty much anyone who is used to PPC as it's implemented in the rest of your account, and on YSM and MSN adCenter too) can do so.
Seems like advertisers just don't like switching to CPM-based thinking inside of a CPC-oriented platform.
Related Traffick posts:
Note, even if we go entirely over CPC's, it's always a snap to track the associated cost in CPM, if you're into apples to apples comparisons. In previous posts I had argued that even in traditional CPC-based content targeting, some of my favorite campaigns were successful precisely because of the price - which was effectively about $0.25 CPM.Labels: content targeting, contextual ads, cpm, google adwords, paid search
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
Monday, February 05, 2007
In a densely-written post about click quality on the Inside AdWords blog, Google provides a surprising amount of information in a short space. They combine an informative approach to different types of click fraud and the steps advertisers need to take to document it, with a new, consistent approach to communications that includes a dedicated contact form.
Google has been opening up its communications in several areas. For example, a member of that team took the trouble to chat at length with Andy Beal about the invalid click detection process. And Nick Fox of the Ads Quality team has commented directly on this blog on issues relating to arbitrage and the adwords ranking algorithm.
Permit us one small note of churlishness however, by way of defending conventions of ordinary human conversation the way we remember them pre-Google. "Meet the Click Quality Team" as a post title gives the impression we'll be hearing attributed commentary from identifiable individuals. We might even get names, or a group photo. Here, we're getting nothing of the sort, so we haven't in fact "met" anyone, although information has been disseminated. Also, there is a big stylized "open quotation" mark, and the use of the first person (singular as well as plural), but the quote is never closed and the person(s) is/are never identified. Am I the only one confused by this?Labels: click fraud, google adwords
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
View Posts by Category |
