Sunday, November 15, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009
9 Tips for Organizing Your PPC Campaigns (2 of 2 continued)
6. Organize ad groups around keywords
Campaigns are for organizing your ads conceptually. By the time you get down to the ad group level, you need to start specifying ad groups in terms of specific keywords. Not concepts --keywords. So under the “Action” campaign for your movie rental site you might have the following ad groups:
• Schwarzenegger
• Stallone
• Bruce Willis
• Sci-Fi
• Monster
• Etc.
Obviously this can turn into a huge number of ad groups very quickly. That’s the idea. It’s much better to have 50 ad groups with 20 keywords per ad group than to have two ad groups with 500 keywords each. Why? First, using this method you can write specific ads for each ad group that actually contain the keywords
under that ad group. For example, the “Schwarzenegger” ad group could contain many keywords, such as:
• Schwarzenegger flicks
• Movies starring Schwarzenegger
• Movies starring Arnold
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Best of Schwarzenegger
• Schwarzenegger action movies
• Etc.
(Are you starting to get the idea of how your keywords can balloon?)
The ads under this ad group will all contain the word “Schwarzenegger” and therefore there will always be a match between the
keyword searched and the ad displayed. Not only does this create the critical keyword/ad relevance factor that Google likes, but you’re likely to see a better click thru rate because the visitors see the relevance too. Both of these factors will improve your quality score and result in a lower cost per click (CPC).
Another reason to use plenty of ad groups is that you will find it easier to determine which ads are working well for you by looking at it from the ad group level rather than zooming clear down to the keyword level and peering at a massive list of keywords. It’s a way of breaking the data down into manageable chunks just as we did at the campaign level. Again, you’ll want to triage at the ad group level before diving into the keywords themselves.
7. Use the “Sculpture method” to get your campaigns under control
Let’s say you’ve set up 20 campaigns with 20 ad groups per campaign. You have 20 keywords and two ads per ad group. That’s 8,000 keywords and 400 ads to keep track of. Now it’s time to start analyzing their performance and making adjustments. But how?
Chances are, in the beginning you will use the “sculpture”
approach to managing your campaigns. This means that you will notice situations that look like they could be improved and make little adjustments in an ad hoc fashion, chipping off some CPC here, building up some keywords there. For example, you may notice that you are showing up near position one for a given ad
group and, looking closer, you see some keywords that might get you into a decent position by bidding significantly lower. This is a perfectly fine way to gradually mold and sculpt your campaigns into the basic shape you want.
As you do this, you must always be aware of the date range you are looking at. The metrics for one date range may be completely irrelevant or even misleading to the question you are currently trying to answer. On one hand, you want to make changes based on the most recent data. If you make a change to a keyword bid based on the last months’ of data, you may not be factoring in that the CTR for that keyword has changed significantly in the last week. So all things being equal, you want to make changes based
on the most recent data. On the other hand, you don’t always have enough data recently to reach a valid conclusion. You don’t want to make decisions based on the behavior of just a few individuals, so you may need to expand your date range at times. Of course if expanding the date range means you muddy your results because you’ve made big changes during that time—well, now we’re back to the first case.
There’s more to optimization than just making bid changes. Optimization also includes modifying ad copy so it flows better with the keywords that generate traffic and modifying landing pages to meet the expectations set by ad messaging. Pausing or deleting poorly performing keywords is another effective way to improve and optimize campaign performance.
Obviously, keeping track of many ad hoc changes is tricky. An indispensible tool when using the sculpture method is the “My Change History” located in the Tools section. If you are ever in doubt about why some metric has suddenly changed, you’ll often be reminded of what caused the change right there.
8. Conduct controlled experiments
The “Sculpture” method is best used in the beginning as a quick and dirty way to get your campaigns under control. Once you’ve achieved a certain level of stability, however, you’ll want to switch to more controlled experiments in order to determine ways to optimize your campaigns. The sculpture method is based on gut
instinct and assumptions—for instance, you may assume that being in position four for a lower cost is more optimal than being in position one for a higher cost. Controlled experiments allow you to turn assumptions into facts. If you think being in position four is more cost-effective, find a keyword that has been consistently showing up in position four for a while and test it.
There are basically two types of tests: a “Time Split”, where you compare the performance of elements across consecutive time spans, and an “A/B Split”, where you compare the performance of elements against each other simultaneously.
Generally the A/B Split is preferable because with the Time Split you introduce the time factor. For example, if you compare an ad’s performance in October against its performance in November, changes could have as much to do with the approaching holiday season as with changes to the ad itself. However, sometimes the Time Split is your only option. In the above example you would use a Time Split because Google does not provide a way to simultaneously apply two different bids to a given keyword.
To execute a Time Split on bid adjustments, mark the date, and bump your bid to push the ad into position one. Let it run that way long enough to collect a significant amount of data. Then check to see if your cost per conversion has changed significantly. Simple.
A/B Splits are also straightforward. Simply set up two distinct versions of the ad you are testing and let them run long enough to collect significant data. One thing you will want to do when testing ads is go into the campaign settings and ensure that “Ad serving” is set to “Rotate” rather than “Optimize”. This will cause both of your ads to be displayed a roughly equal number of times. The “Optimize” setting, (which is set by default), will cause the better performing ad to show more often. But you aren’t leaving it to Google to automatically optimize for you—by conducting your own tests you’ll be able to expedite the process of finding the most effective messages.
While A/B Split tests on ads and Time Splits on bids discussed above are among the most important types of tests, there are actually several others you should consider:
Landing Page – comparing conversion metrics with different versions of the landing page
Day parting – testing performance between the same ads during different parts of the day or days of the week
Geotargeting – comparing performance from different location either within the your country or worldwide
Match type – testing the performance of exact, phrase, or broad match keywords
Regardless of what type of test you are conducting, three key points about controlled experiments must be emphasized:
1. You must get significant data. If your control condition gets two conversions and the test condition gets three conversions, you are not ready to conclude this experiment. Those numbers just aren’t big enough to be statistically reliable.
2. There should be no other major changes other than the factor you are testing. For example, if you are testing the effect of a bid change, you certainly should not change the ad text associated with that keyword or the design of the landing page. Those are pretty obvious. But some changes are not as obvious and not even subject to your control. For example, a competitor who suddenly enters the scene with a very compelling offer could throw off your results. In order to avoid the possibility of random factors throwing off your results it’s best to conduct experiments as quickly as possible. That means conducting experiments on your highest volume keywords.
3. When measuring test results, use rates or percentages rather than absolute numbers. For example, while comparing the performances of two ads, conversion rates are a better metric than the number of conversions. This ensures data is not skewed by the level of impressions an ad receives.
Once campaigns attain a level of stability, it’s best to set-up a systematic process of reviewing performance. Set benchmarks for performance and use the process to effectively monitor, regulate, modify and optimize keywords and ads against this benchmark.
Analytics can help expand your keywords effectively and sync your campaign with seasonalities and industry trends at this stage.
9. Use a Tool Like LyrisHQ PPC Management
While the AdWords interface is quite capable, it is far from perfect. To expedite and extend the management of your campaigns in a powerful way, you can use a tool such as LyrisHQ PPC Management.
Lyris HQ provides an enhanced interface to the same data you manage through the AdWords site. It incorporates visual data representation techniques that make it much easier to identify abnormal data that might require your attention. It also includes a “Problem Campaign” report that automatically identifies those campaigns, ad groups, keywords, or ads that aren’t performing well and it puts them in a handy list.
Lyris HQ uses advanced Web 2.0 technology for a friendlier environment with a lot more dragging and dropping and a lot less clicking and reloading. This is a huge time saver.
Integrated keyword research tools go well beyond those provided by Google, allowing you to more easily build the most complete set of keywords.
The Lyris HQ PPC Management tool also emphasizes the tracking of campaigns for web analytics. Rather than a single tracking parameter, the system will automatically append a set of tracking parameters that allow you to easily segment visitors from any campaign, ad group, keyword or ad. When combined with the organizational structure described above, Lyris HQ PPC Management gives you the ability to perform granular analysis on your campaigns based on visitor behavior after the click.
Campaigns are for organizing your ads conceptually. By the time you get down to the ad group level, you need to start specifying ad groups in terms of specific keywords. Not concepts --keywords. So under the “Action” campaign for your movie rental site you might have the following ad groups:
• Schwarzenegger
• Stallone
• Bruce Willis
• Sci-Fi
• Monster
• Etc.
Obviously this can turn into a huge number of ad groups very quickly. That’s the idea. It’s much better to have 50 ad groups with 20 keywords per ad group than to have two ad groups with 500 keywords each. Why? First, using this method you can write specific ads for each ad group that actually contain the keywords
under that ad group. For example, the “Schwarzenegger” ad group could contain many keywords, such as:
• Schwarzenegger flicks
• Movies starring Schwarzenegger
• Movies starring Arnold
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Best of Schwarzenegger
• Schwarzenegger action movies
• Etc.
(Are you starting to get the idea of how your keywords can balloon?)
The ads under this ad group will all contain the word “Schwarzenegger” and therefore there will always be a match between the
keyword searched and the ad displayed. Not only does this create the critical keyword/ad relevance factor that Google likes, but you’re likely to see a better click thru rate because the visitors see the relevance too. Both of these factors will improve your quality score and result in a lower cost per click (CPC).
Another reason to use plenty of ad groups is that you will find it easier to determine which ads are working well for you by looking at it from the ad group level rather than zooming clear down to the keyword level and peering at a massive list of keywords. It’s a way of breaking the data down into manageable chunks just as we did at the campaign level. Again, you’ll want to triage at the ad group level before diving into the keywords themselves.
7. Use the “Sculpture method” to get your campaigns under control
Let’s say you’ve set up 20 campaigns with 20 ad groups per campaign. You have 20 keywords and two ads per ad group. That’s 8,000 keywords and 400 ads to keep track of. Now it’s time to start analyzing their performance and making adjustments. But how?
Chances are, in the beginning you will use the “sculpture”
approach to managing your campaigns. This means that you will notice situations that look like they could be improved and make little adjustments in an ad hoc fashion, chipping off some CPC here, building up some keywords there. For example, you may notice that you are showing up near position one for a given ad
group and, looking closer, you see some keywords that might get you into a decent position by bidding significantly lower. This is a perfectly fine way to gradually mold and sculpt your campaigns into the basic shape you want.
As you do this, you must always be aware of the date range you are looking at. The metrics for one date range may be completely irrelevant or even misleading to the question you are currently trying to answer. On one hand, you want to make changes based on the most recent data. If you make a change to a keyword bid based on the last months’ of data, you may not be factoring in that the CTR for that keyword has changed significantly in the last week. So all things being equal, you want to make changes based
on the most recent data. On the other hand, you don’t always have enough data recently to reach a valid conclusion. You don’t want to make decisions based on the behavior of just a few individuals, so you may need to expand your date range at times. Of course if expanding the date range means you muddy your results because you’ve made big changes during that time—well, now we’re back to the first case.
There’s more to optimization than just making bid changes. Optimization also includes modifying ad copy so it flows better with the keywords that generate traffic and modifying landing pages to meet the expectations set by ad messaging. Pausing or deleting poorly performing keywords is another effective way to improve and optimize campaign performance.
Obviously, keeping track of many ad hoc changes is tricky. An indispensible tool when using the sculpture method is the “My Change History” located in the Tools section. If you are ever in doubt about why some metric has suddenly changed, you’ll often be reminded of what caused the change right there.
8. Conduct controlled experiments
The “Sculpture” method is best used in the beginning as a quick and dirty way to get your campaigns under control. Once you’ve achieved a certain level of stability, however, you’ll want to switch to more controlled experiments in order to determine ways to optimize your campaigns. The sculpture method is based on gut
instinct and assumptions—for instance, you may assume that being in position four for a lower cost is more optimal than being in position one for a higher cost. Controlled experiments allow you to turn assumptions into facts. If you think being in position four is more cost-effective, find a keyword that has been consistently showing up in position four for a while and test it.
There are basically two types of tests: a “Time Split”, where you compare the performance of elements across consecutive time spans, and an “A/B Split”, where you compare the performance of elements against each other simultaneously.
Generally the A/B Split is preferable because with the Time Split you introduce the time factor. For example, if you compare an ad’s performance in October against its performance in November, changes could have as much to do with the approaching holiday season as with changes to the ad itself. However, sometimes the Time Split is your only option. In the above example you would use a Time Split because Google does not provide a way to simultaneously apply two different bids to a given keyword.
To execute a Time Split on bid adjustments, mark the date, and bump your bid to push the ad into position one. Let it run that way long enough to collect a significant amount of data. Then check to see if your cost per conversion has changed significantly. Simple.
A/B Splits are also straightforward. Simply set up two distinct versions of the ad you are testing and let them run long enough to collect significant data. One thing you will want to do when testing ads is go into the campaign settings and ensure that “Ad serving” is set to “Rotate” rather than “Optimize”. This will cause both of your ads to be displayed a roughly equal number of times. The “Optimize” setting, (which is set by default), will cause the better performing ad to show more often. But you aren’t leaving it to Google to automatically optimize for you—by conducting your own tests you’ll be able to expedite the process of finding the most effective messages.
While A/B Split tests on ads and Time Splits on bids discussed above are among the most important types of tests, there are actually several others you should consider:
Landing Page – comparing conversion metrics with different versions of the landing page
Day parting – testing performance between the same ads during different parts of the day or days of the week
Geotargeting – comparing performance from different location either within the your country or worldwide
Match type – testing the performance of exact, phrase, or broad match keywords
Regardless of what type of test you are conducting, three key points about controlled experiments must be emphasized:
1. You must get significant data. If your control condition gets two conversions and the test condition gets three conversions, you are not ready to conclude this experiment. Those numbers just aren’t big enough to be statistically reliable.
2. There should be no other major changes other than the factor you are testing. For example, if you are testing the effect of a bid change, you certainly should not change the ad text associated with that keyword or the design of the landing page. Those are pretty obvious. But some changes are not as obvious and not even subject to your control. For example, a competitor who suddenly enters the scene with a very compelling offer could throw off your results. In order to avoid the possibility of random factors throwing off your results it’s best to conduct experiments as quickly as possible. That means conducting experiments on your highest volume keywords.
3. When measuring test results, use rates or percentages rather than absolute numbers. For example, while comparing the performances of two ads, conversion rates are a better metric than the number of conversions. This ensures data is not skewed by the level of impressions an ad receives.
Once campaigns attain a level of stability, it’s best to set-up a systematic process of reviewing performance. Set benchmarks for performance and use the process to effectively monitor, regulate, modify and optimize keywords and ads against this benchmark.
Analytics can help expand your keywords effectively and sync your campaign with seasonalities and industry trends at this stage.
9. Use a Tool Like LyrisHQ PPC Management
While the AdWords interface is quite capable, it is far from perfect. To expedite and extend the management of your campaigns in a powerful way, you can use a tool such as LyrisHQ PPC Management.
Lyris HQ provides an enhanced interface to the same data you manage through the AdWords site. It incorporates visual data representation techniques that make it much easier to identify abnormal data that might require your attention. It also includes a “Problem Campaign” report that automatically identifies those campaigns, ad groups, keywords, or ads that aren’t performing well and it puts them in a handy list.
Lyris HQ uses advanced Web 2.0 technology for a friendlier environment with a lot more dragging and dropping and a lot less clicking and reloading. This is a huge time saver.
Integrated keyword research tools go well beyond those provided by Google, allowing you to more easily build the most complete set of keywords.
The Lyris HQ PPC Management tool also emphasizes the tracking of campaigns for web analytics. Rather than a single tracking parameter, the system will automatically append a set of tracking parameters that allow you to easily segment visitors from any campaign, ad group, keyword or ad. When combined with the organizational structure described above, Lyris HQ PPC Management gives you the ability to perform granular analysis on your campaigns based on visitor behavior after the click.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
9 Tips for Organizing Your PPC Campaigns by Lyris, Inc. (1 of 2)
1. Understand the Google AdWords structure
Many people who use Google AdWords are not entirely clear on how the system is designed or why it is designed that way. But understanding the system design makes all the difference.
First, it is worth knowing a brief history of PPC advertising. The original PPC system was GoTo.com (circa 1998), which later became Overture, which was then acquired by Yahoo. Th is system used a straight bid-for-position auction model.
In 2002 Google introduced a new concept into the PPC model - relevance. In this new model, the click thru rate (CTR) and other aspects that related to ad quality factored into the placement of the text ad, allowing the cream to rise to the top and discouraging irrelevant ads, which ultimately resulted in a higher overall CTR
and more revenue for Google. This was a better mousetrap, and the rest is history. Today Yahoo and Microsoft AdCenter are both standardized on this model.
In order to accommodate what they knew would be very large numbers of keywords and in order to facilitate testing that could contribute to the quality of ads, Google designed the Campaigns => Ad Group => Keywords/Ads structure that is used today.
Under this model, an AdWords account can contain multiple campaigns. Each campaign can contain multiple ad groups. Each ad group is made up of up to 2000 keywords and up to 25 ads. For a search on any given keyword under a particular ad group any one of the ads associated with that ad group can be displayed. This allows you to conduct tests of which ads perform the best.
The key is relevance. When a visitor searches on a specific key word or phrase, those words need to appear in the ad itself. That’s how relevance is established. And the AdWords model provides you with a way to associate specific keywords with matching ads.
Thus, Google has provided a taxonomy within which you can organize and test a wide range of ads across a vast array of keywords and always show the visitor an ad that is highly relevant to them.
Now that we are clear on the structure and purpose of the system we’re using, let’s investigate how to utilize it to its full potential.
2. Organize campaigns around specific concepts
The campaign level provides your first opportunity to organize your ads. You should create multiple campaigns that are oriented to very specific concepts related to your business. These concepts are typically something like product groups or target markets.
For example, if you’re managing the web site Top 5 Flicks (http://www.top5flicks.com/) you might want to organize your campaigns into genres such as “Action”, “Comedy”, and “Drama”. If you sell and rent videos, you might want to organize your campaigns that way too. Or you might even want to combine these concepts and have campaigns such as “Action Rental”, “Action Sale”, “Comedy Rental”, etc.
Don’t hesitate to create multiple campaigns. You’ll be glad you did when you set up your ad groups as described on page 3.
But first, a few more tips about organizing at the campaign level.
3. Separate campaigns for content and search networks
Google campaigns are organized into two very distinct types: Search and content-targeted. The search network (which also includes Google’s search partners’ sites) displays your ads along with the organic search results in the search engine. The content network is a vast collection of websites that have incorporated Google ads into their website using Google’s AdSense system. In the content network, Google matches your keywords to the content found on the website, as opposed to the search network where your keywords are matched to what the visitor typed into the search field.
If you set a campaign to run on both the Search and Content networks you have just made your ability to track performance much more difficult. Why? Because the clicking behavior of visitors from the search and content networks tends to be quite different from each other. Visitors from search ads tend to be much more purposeful. They are more likely to be looking for what you are selling. Visitors from content ads tend to be more impulse clickers and may be less likely to convert.
You can expect click thru rates (CTR) from search result ads to be something like 100 times the rate of content ads. For instance, you may get an average CTR of 2.00% from your search ads and 0.02% on your content ads. Combine these into the same campaign and your overall campaign CTR may be something like
0.95%, which doesn’t tell you anything meaningful.
Not surprisingly, the cost per click (CPC) from content ads tends to be much lower than search clicks. So with content and search combined, not only is your CTR all muddled up, but so is your cost information. You may find yourself wasting time in a futile attempt to understand just what the data is telling you.
The other reason to create separate search and content
campaigns is that the keyword grouping, ad messaging and optimization for search and content are quite different. While grouping keywords for a search campaign, your focus should be on grouping similar keywords so the ad messaging is focused. While grouping for content, you will probably want to choose fewer keywords and keywords of different types so they trigger relevant content.
4. Separate campaigns for fat head and long tail keywords
Having created two different campaigns for the search and content networks, you may want to take a further step and create a separate search campaign for your “fat head” and “long tail” keywords.
For every category of products or services, there are a few keywords that have a high volume of traffic. These are called fat heads and they usually very broad words which can refer to a wide range of products or services. They have high traffic volumes and therefore attract more bidders, resulting in a higher cost. Their conversion rates tend to be lower but in terms of volume they usually get the most conversions.
Long tail keywords on the other hand have lower volumes but are naturally more specific. They tend to happen later in the purchase cycle and generally have higher conversion rates higher quality leads.
So using this method you would now have the following campaigns:
• Action movies – Content
• Action movies – Search (Top Keywords)
• Action movies – Search (Long Tail)
By putting your popular keywords in a separate campaign you can more easily focus on that campaign on a regular basis without having to wade through the masses of long tail keywords. Of course you’ll still want to peruse those long tail ad groups, but since there is less money on the line you can deal with them less frequently.
Another critical reason to separate these ads is budget management. On Google, budget is allocated at the campaign level. If your fat head and long tail keywords are all combined under the same campaign, the fat head keywords can burn up the entire available budget, thereby limiting exposure of your more profitable long tail keywords. To ensure this does not happen, it is essential to group the keywords by potential volume.
5. Filter Campaign Summary by Network
A dropdown control in the upper-right corner of the Campaign Summary allows you to display only traffic from the Search network, only the Content network, both Search and Content separately, or both Search and Content combined (the Summary view). Because you have defined your campaigns to separate the search and content traffic, you can view this report in the Summary view and still be able to see all your content and search traffic separately.
Now you can sort the Campaign Summary on various columns and it will reveal areas on which you need to concentrate. If you sort this report by cost and you don’t see all your “Top Keywords” campaigns clustered toward the top, then you should check out your “Long Tail” campaigns to see what important keywords have
not been identified. Sort the column by CTR and you may see the “Long Tail” keywords near the top while the “Content” campaigns cluster at the bottom. If you don’t, you’ll want to take a closer look because there’s probably room for improvement.
The idea here is to give yourself the data you need to triage your ad groups because, as we will see, you don’t want to just go meandering through your ad groups aimlessly—you may never return!
Many people who use Google AdWords are not entirely clear on how the system is designed or why it is designed that way. But understanding the system design makes all the difference.
First, it is worth knowing a brief history of PPC advertising. The original PPC system was GoTo.com (circa 1998), which later became Overture, which was then acquired by Yahoo. Th is system used a straight bid-for-position auction model.
In 2002 Google introduced a new concept into the PPC model - relevance. In this new model, the click thru rate (CTR) and other aspects that related to ad quality factored into the placement of the text ad, allowing the cream to rise to the top and discouraging irrelevant ads, which ultimately resulted in a higher overall CTR
and more revenue for Google. This was a better mousetrap, and the rest is history. Today Yahoo and Microsoft AdCenter are both standardized on this model.
In order to accommodate what they knew would be very large numbers of keywords and in order to facilitate testing that could contribute to the quality of ads, Google designed the Campaigns => Ad Group => Keywords/Ads structure that is used today.
Under this model, an AdWords account can contain multiple campaigns. Each campaign can contain multiple ad groups. Each ad group is made up of up to 2000 keywords and up to 25 ads. For a search on any given keyword under a particular ad group any one of the ads associated with that ad group can be displayed. This allows you to conduct tests of which ads perform the best.
The key is relevance. When a visitor searches on a specific key word or phrase, those words need to appear in the ad itself. That’s how relevance is established. And the AdWords model provides you with a way to associate specific keywords with matching ads.
Thus, Google has provided a taxonomy within which you can organize and test a wide range of ads across a vast array of keywords and always show the visitor an ad that is highly relevant to them.
Now that we are clear on the structure and purpose of the system we’re using, let’s investigate how to utilize it to its full potential.
2. Organize campaigns around specific concepts
The campaign level provides your first opportunity to organize your ads. You should create multiple campaigns that are oriented to very specific concepts related to your business. These concepts are typically something like product groups or target markets.
For example, if you’re managing the web site Top 5 Flicks (http://www.top5flicks.com/) you might want to organize your campaigns into genres such as “Action”, “Comedy”, and “Drama”. If you sell and rent videos, you might want to organize your campaigns that way too. Or you might even want to combine these concepts and have campaigns such as “Action Rental”, “Action Sale”, “Comedy Rental”, etc.
Don’t hesitate to create multiple campaigns. You’ll be glad you did when you set up your ad groups as described on page 3.
But first, a few more tips about organizing at the campaign level.
3. Separate campaigns for content and search networks
Google campaigns are organized into two very distinct types: Search and content-targeted. The search network (which also includes Google’s search partners’ sites) displays your ads along with the organic search results in the search engine. The content network is a vast collection of websites that have incorporated Google ads into their website using Google’s AdSense system. In the content network, Google matches your keywords to the content found on the website, as opposed to the search network where your keywords are matched to what the visitor typed into the search field.
If you set a campaign to run on both the Search and Content networks you have just made your ability to track performance much more difficult. Why? Because the clicking behavior of visitors from the search and content networks tends to be quite different from each other. Visitors from search ads tend to be much more purposeful. They are more likely to be looking for what you are selling. Visitors from content ads tend to be more impulse clickers and may be less likely to convert.
You can expect click thru rates (CTR) from search result ads to be something like 100 times the rate of content ads. For instance, you may get an average CTR of 2.00% from your search ads and 0.02% on your content ads. Combine these into the same campaign and your overall campaign CTR may be something like
0.95%, which doesn’t tell you anything meaningful.
Not surprisingly, the cost per click (CPC) from content ads tends to be much lower than search clicks. So with content and search combined, not only is your CTR all muddled up, but so is your cost information. You may find yourself wasting time in a futile attempt to understand just what the data is telling you.
The other reason to create separate search and content
campaigns is that the keyword grouping, ad messaging and optimization for search and content are quite different. While grouping keywords for a search campaign, your focus should be on grouping similar keywords so the ad messaging is focused. While grouping for content, you will probably want to choose fewer keywords and keywords of different types so they trigger relevant content.
4. Separate campaigns for fat head and long tail keywords
Having created two different campaigns for the search and content networks, you may want to take a further step and create a separate search campaign for your “fat head” and “long tail” keywords.
For every category of products or services, there are a few keywords that have a high volume of traffic. These are called fat heads and they usually very broad words which can refer to a wide range of products or services. They have high traffic volumes and therefore attract more bidders, resulting in a higher cost. Their conversion rates tend to be lower but in terms of volume they usually get the most conversions.
Long tail keywords on the other hand have lower volumes but are naturally more specific. They tend to happen later in the purchase cycle and generally have higher conversion rates higher quality leads.
So using this method you would now have the following campaigns:
• Action movies – Content
• Action movies – Search (Top Keywords)
• Action movies – Search (Long Tail)
By putting your popular keywords in a separate campaign you can more easily focus on that campaign on a regular basis without having to wade through the masses of long tail keywords. Of course you’ll still want to peruse those long tail ad groups, but since there is less money on the line you can deal with them less frequently.
Another critical reason to separate these ads is budget management. On Google, budget is allocated at the campaign level. If your fat head and long tail keywords are all combined under the same campaign, the fat head keywords can burn up the entire available budget, thereby limiting exposure of your more profitable long tail keywords. To ensure this does not happen, it is essential to group the keywords by potential volume.
5. Filter Campaign Summary by Network
A dropdown control in the upper-right corner of the Campaign Summary allows you to display only traffic from the Search network, only the Content network, both Search and Content separately, or both Search and Content combined (the Summary view). Because you have defined your campaigns to separate the search and content traffic, you can view this report in the Summary view and still be able to see all your content and search traffic separately.
Now you can sort the Campaign Summary on various columns and it will reveal areas on which you need to concentrate. If you sort this report by cost and you don’t see all your “Top Keywords” campaigns clustered toward the top, then you should check out your “Long Tail” campaigns to see what important keywords have
not been identified. Sort the column by CTR and you may see the “Long Tail” keywords near the top while the “Content” campaigns cluster at the bottom. If you don’t, you’ll want to take a closer look because there’s probably room for improvement.
The idea here is to give yourself the data you need to triage your ad groups because, as we will see, you don’t want to just go meandering through your ad groups aimlessly—you may never return!
ad:tech NY - Doors Open Wednesday
Wednesday, November 4:
- 7:30am Registration Opens
- 9:00am Opening Keynote with Sir Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive, WPP
- 9:55am Keynote Roundtable “The State of the Industry”
- 10:00am Exhibit Hall Opens
- 1:00pm Lunch Forum: Incorporate Social Network Intelligence in your Marketing Strategy – and Win!
- 4:30pm ad:tech New York Welcome Reception in the Exhibit Hall
- 5:10pm Keynote Roundtable “The Numbers Guru, the Video Maven and the Media Guys – On the Future of Video Online”
- 7:00pm Bands and Brands Cocktail Party at Roosevelt Hotel
- 8:00am Registration Opens
- 9:00am Keynote Presentation from Jonathan Miller, Chief Digital Officer, Chairman and CEO, Digital Media Group, News Corporation
- 9:55am Keynote Roundtable “Global Perspectives in the Digital Age”
- 10:00am Exhibit Hall Opens
- 5:00pm Exhibit Hall Closes for 2009
- 5:10pm Keynote Presentation “Follow the Money – The Buyers Weigh In”
- 8:45am Registration Opens
- 9:00am Keynote Presentation “Wikipedia, Wikia and the Optimistic Future of Media with Jimmy Wales”
Social CRM Virtual Summit- The largest online conference for social media and CRM professionals
You're invited to participate in the largest online conference for social media and CRM professionals on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009.
At this virtual summit you can:
| |  | | Ask for real-world advice by chatting live with industry experts and practitioners from companies including Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, Juniper Networks, Lenovo, National Instruments, Redfin and T-Mobile |
| | | | Learn about social trends impacting your business from thought leaders: Mike Fauscette (IDC); Paul Greenberg (The 56 Group); Bill Johnston (Forum One); Brent Leary (CRM Essentials); Jeremiah Owyang and Ray Wang (Altimeter Group) |
| | | | Download dozens of valuable white papers, podcasts, and presentations |
| | | | Network with other like-minded professionals in a virtual lounge |
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