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DMI Blogs | google adwords
google adwords
Friday, August 27th, 2010
One of the better Google video’s that I have seen (and I show as many folks as possible) is one delivered by a guy called Hal Varian who is Google’s Chief Economist. The video introduces viewers to the wild and woolly area of the AdWords auction. You can watch this Google AdWords video below.
Finally, remember that if you’d like to understand how bidding can affect your ad’s performance in the auction, you can use the bid simulator. It will provide you with click, cost, and impression data estimating how your ad could have performed over the last seven days had you used a different bid.
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Posted in adwords, adwords campaign, google adwords | No Comments »
Thursday, August 26th, 2010
Google recently launched their Google Certification Program (to replace Google Advertising Professionals program). To provide professionals who had previously taken the program time to transition over to the new program, Google is running both programs side by side during a six month grace period which ends in October 2010. To retain certified status and continue using the badge within your marketing collateral, Google AdWords professionals MUST meet the requirements of the new program.
What’s the difference between the two programs? With the Google Certification Program, Google is offering updated learning materials written by Google experts. The company has developed four, separate in-depth exams on AdWords management called Fundamentals, Advanced Search, Advanced Display and Advanced Reporting & Analysis. The exams are designed to prove proficiency in these areas and are being widely adopted by employees of search marketing agencies. To gain qualification, exam takers must pass both the Advertising Fundamentals exam and one advanced-level exam.
In addition to this, Google has also launched Google Partner Search, a directory to help advertisers find agencies to manage their campaigns. Currently, all Google Advertising Professionals who have opted in are part of Google Partner Search, but this will not be the case by the end of October. If you have an employee that already qualified under the old program, this is a great time for them to update their skills through the Google Certification Program. Digital Marketing Institute runs training courses that enable AdWords professional to take the Google Exams. Call us on 01 271 1888 for more details on these Google AdWords training courses.
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Posted in Advertising, Online Marketing, adgroups, adwords, adwords campaign, browser, digital marketing institute, google adwords | No Comments »
Thursday, August 5th, 2010
Are you a business in Europe using Google Ads to build visibility about your products and services or to drive traffic to your website?
Then you are going to find the announcement this week made by Google of interest.
Google have just announced that they are changing their policy to allow European advertisers to buy and include keywords in your Google Ads that have been trademarked by other companies.
This change comes into effect on 14 September 2010 and extends changes that were made in Britain and Ireland in 2008 – though this has been possible in the US since 2004.
Up until now, brand owners have been able to file a trademark complaint with Google to stop third-party ads from being featured alongside the results of a trademarked name.
The New York Times reports that “brand owners, led by the French luxury goods company LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, had argued that only they or authorised sites should be able to buy and use such trademarked terms in searches, so as to protect their brand value.”
It goes on to comment that “Google argues that selling brand names as ad keywords to multiple bidders helps consumers because it allows them to find product reviews, sellers of second-hand goods and other information. It stressed that the new policy would not extend to the actual display text in search findings.”
This is clearly a good move for Google and will boost their revenues for Google AdWords. I am wondering however what the impact of Facebook advertising being highly targeted and the growth of people using Facebook has been to Google. Have you moved some of your online advertising from Google to Facebook in the last year?
Photo credit – The Truth About on Flickr
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Posted in Krishna De, deloitte, google adwords | No Comments »
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
 Forrester Research’s latest findings are explained in the follow post on Tech Crunch where Fliqz CEO Benjamin Wayne reveals some of the secrets of using video to help boost the search results rankings of your website. Video SEO tops Google Search
Tags: Online Marketing, SEO, video optimisation
Posted in Online Marketing, SEO, google adwords, insights for search, online marketing study | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
If Charles Dickens will allow me I’ll hijack and invert a quote of his. Companies who are successful online are successful in different ways, whereas companies who fail, all fail in the same way.
I am asked regularly to audit organisation’s Digital Marketing Strategies and have noticed similar issues across most of the organisations who’s digital marketing strategies are stuttering or have plateaued.All of these organisations tend to make the same mistakes and these mistakes are conceptual as opposed to technical.
The first and most common mistake is a conceptual one in how people approach the medium in the first place. The web differs form the other media channels in one important and very significant manner. TV, Radio and Print are publication and presentation based media channels. The Internet on the other hand is an interactive medium. People do not go to the web to read, they go to interact, whether that’s with your business or with each other.
The web is not a presentation medium, its an interactive one. Campaigns and strategies that respect the manner in which customers use the medium are more likely to succeed as they understand that people are not a rapt audience in the same way that they are in the their sitting room in front of the TV or in their car listening to the radio. The Internet allows a level of user control that is unheard of and deeply important. And the number one thing people choose to do with that control is to interact with other people.
The most successful websites in the world are the ones that facilitate user control and allow and encourage user interaction. Think of EBay for example, i can sell what ever i want, when ever i want in any way shape format and ship it anywhere in the world and the number one way I express all of that user control control is by interacting with other people, ( i sell, they buy).
Similarly for Facebook. Its not just publishing photos videos, comments opinions and and anything else i want but its that fact that all this control is being expressed through interaction with other people. Think about it the only time facebook makes the news is when they change their terms and conditions or functionality in way that hampers user control and user interaction. So the most effective websites are the ones the ones that get out of the way of the user, in a sense the websites that win are the ones that disappear. Read More
Tags: digital marketing course, online marketing training, Search Engine Optimisation
Posted in Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, adverts, digital marketing institute, finding broken web site links, google adwords, google analytics, linked in, social networking training, social networks, webmasters | No Comments »
Monday, January 25th, 2010
Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin plan to sell five million Google shares each over the next five years, in a trading plan disclosed Friday in a regulatory filing.
The sales, if completed, would provide each of the founders $2.75 billion based on Friday’s closing price of $550.01.
Now, here’e the interesting thing … if you read the NY Times, they tell us that the lads would not lose control of the company that they founded. But if you read Techcentral.ie (an Irish basedtechnology news wire) they give a completely different spin.
New Yowy Times says …. “The sales would bring the founders’ combined voting rights to just below 50 percent, 48 percent to be precise. But for all practical purposes, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin would continue to have effective control of the company. What’s more, Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive, has an additional 10 percent of Google’s voting rights, giving the triumvirate absolute control over Google’s fate as long as they remain united.”
Techcentral.ie says …. “Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are to cede majority control of the company with a forthcoming share sell-off. The duo’s stake in the company will fall from 59% to 48% after the sale is completed over a period of five years. It will mean the pair lose majority voting rights, although given that CEO Eric Schmidt has 10% voting power, the company’s senior management will still remain firmly at the wheel.”
Either way, 48% is a pretty good chunck!
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Posted in Google Chrome, Online Marketing, Search Engine, Search Engine Optimisation, google adwords | No Comments »
Thursday, January 21st, 2010
Thanks to Perry Marsall and Howie Jacobson for ths following Top 10 AdWords Tips (actually, they are in the form of thetop AdWords mistakes so you need to invert!).
If you need AdWords Training, then you might think about the next Google AdWords Training Course that we are running.
Here are the Google AwWords tips (ie don’t make these mistakes!):
1. Neglecting to Split-Test Your Ads. I’ve gotta say one of the coolest discoveries of my whole life was, in my first week of playing with AdWords 5+ years ago, noticing that “create new ad” link and seeing that I could create a 2nd and 3rd and 4th ad and try different text. Running them simultaneously, then seeing how teeny tiny changes made huge differences. I still get jazzed about this. It’s like practicing psychology without a license.
2. Letting Google Retire Your Ads Without Testing: In Campaign Settings, when you turn “Optimize Ad Serving” OFF, you declare a winner and a loser much faster. Turn that option off if you’re checking in every day.
3. Split Testing for Improved CTR Only: At first, Click Thru Rate is the only thing you can measure. You want it high so you get the most traffic. But eventually what REALLY matters is conversion rate and cost per new customer. Sometimes high CTR ads don’t bring buyers. Conversion is what matters most.
4. Ignoring the Display URL Line in your Ad: If you own http://www.redwagon.com, you should try http://www.RedWagon.com, and http://www.RedWagon.com/RadioFlyer, or http://www.RadioFlyer.RedWagon.com, or RedWagonStore.com. Tiny hinges swing big doors.
5. Creating Ad Groups with Unrelated Keywords: Do not write an ad and dump every keyword under the sun into the ad group. Make tight ad groups based on a narrow set of related keywords matched closely to the ads and the landing page.
6. Muddying Search and Content Results: If you run all three streams of traffic (Google / Search / Content Network) through the same ad group, you lose the ability to distinguish among the very different kinds of traffic. I prefer to separate Google & Search from Content, in different campaigns.
7. Ignoring the 80/20 Principle: The 80/20 Rule says that the vast majority of outputs (impressions, clicks, leads, sales) are caused by a very small minority of inputs (ad groups, ads and keywords.) Spend your time on the vital few instead of the insignificant many.
8. Declaring Split-Test Winners Too Slowly: If you can declare a winner twice as fast, your site improves twice as fast. I recommend combing through your ads as often as you can announce a winner. If you go to http://www.splittester.com you can enter the # of clicks and the CTR of any two ads and it’ll tell you whether the better one is really better, or if it might just be luck.
9. Declaring Split-Test Winners to Quickly: If one ad got 1% and 5 clicks, and the other got 2% and 8 clicks, that’s not enough clicks to know for sure the winner is a sure thing. Again, let http://www.splittester.com decide their fate. Rule of thumb: 20+ clicks on each ad.
10. Ignoring negative keywords: Just about ANY ad group should probably have some negative keywords. It should always be on your checklist. It increases your Click Thru Rate because your ads don’t get shown to people who shouldn’t see them. Less waste.
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Posted in adgroups, adwords, adwords campaign, digital marketing institute, google adwords | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
Google AdWords is text only advertising. There are no images or videos or any of the other rich content that is currently associated with banner advertising. Therefore, the branding possibilities are limited. As an example, have a look at how companies like O2 and Vodafone use a combination of text-based and image-based adverts to build and enhance their brands.
So, while text is often useful, sometimes videos and pictures are a more effective way to receive information. For example, if you want to learn how to open a bottle of wine, a video showing you how to do this is likely the best result for your search. Over the past few years, Google has blended videos, images, maps and more into the search results on Google.
It also makes sense for Google to provide richer types of information in the ads. For example, if you are looking to buy your mother a new handbag for the holidays, you might want to see pictures, prices, the addresses of boutiques in your area and a map of how to get there — all within the advert.
To provide a better search ads experience, Google has been developing and testing a variety of new ad formats. These formats are focused on giving you the information you need, while ensuring that the adverts continue to be relevant and useful.
Read the complete article, which was written by one of the Google Product VP’s
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Tags: google, search
Posted in adwords, digital marketing institute, google adwords, google analytics, webmasters | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
Most of Google’s business comes from search advertising (also called Pay per Click – PPC). This is the little adverts that appear at the top and to the right hand sid of the the search results. However, they are also, to a very small extent, in the display advertising business. To prove a point, Google paid $3.1 billion for DoubleClick in 2008, one of the leading players in the display advertising business.
Yesterday, Google announced that it was acquiring a company called Teracent, a dynamic ad serving and optimization startup company.
Teracent’s technology displays ads in real-time. Ad elements go in and Teracent’s technology figures out how they can be combined to produce the best results:
Teracent’s technology can pick and choose from literally thousands of creative elements of a display ad in real-time — tweaking images, products, messages or colors. These elements can be optimized depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads.
This technology can help advertisers get better results from their display ad campaigns. In turn, this enables publishers to make more money from their ad space and delivers web users better ads and more ad-funded web content.
Google’s announcement shows the product of a Teracent optimization:
The ad on the bottom is the product of Teracent picking and choosing ad elements using machine learning, and ostensibly converts better than the ad on the top.
Google believes that Teracent’s technology “has great potential to improve display advertising on the web” and once Teracent is in the Google fold, plans to make its technology available to DoubleClick and Google Content Network advertisers.
Click for more information from Google on the purchase
Read more about Teracent
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Tags: acquisition, google. teracent
Posted in Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, adwords, google adwords | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
Digital Marketing Institute has just announced that we will be starting the next Diploma in Online & Digital Marketing in Belfast on 25th November 2009. The details for the course are as follows:
- Start Date: Wednesday 25th November 2009
- Time: each Wedneday for 12 Weeks at 9.30 – 9.30
- Venue: Radisson BLU Hotel, The Gasworks, Belfast
- Cost: £1,495
- Booking: Visit the Apply Page on the Digital Marketing Institute web site
For more details on this course, visit this page …
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Tags: belfast, blu hotel, course, digital marketing, gasworks belfast, online marketing course
Posted in Main Category, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, digital marketing institute, google adwords, google analytics, online marketing study, social networking training, social networks | No Comments »
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