Clix Marketing PPC Blog

The time has come for all PPC advertisers to pay attention to Google’s +1. Last week I wrote an article about how +1 is starting to change how we manage AdWords for Search due to its potential affect on CTR and the indirect influence on Quality Score. Yesterday, Google announced that +1 is going to be included with ads on the Display Network starting in October!

Today, I noticed a new section under the AdWords campaign Advanced Settings (as did a few folks on Twitter) labeled “Social Settings.” Not only is Google rolling out +1 on Display Network ads, but they are *shockingly* giving us the ability to opt in and out of this feature:

In my opinion, it is crystal clear that Google fully intends to marry their social utilities in +1 with AdWords both on Search and Display. We are still in the early stages, but I anticipate these developments to be permanent. Google +1 is very quickly changing the face of PPC as we know it. What is yet to be seen is how will +1 influence factors such as Quality Score? When will Google begin including social engagement stats in AdWords? Soon is my guess.

Are you ready to start managing your PPC to social engagement metrics? Perhaps that is not the right statement because at the end of the day, we as PPC managers will still be responsible to manage to conversion (revenue, ROI, etc.) metrics. But how will social engagement play into that? How big of a factor will it become? Leave me a comment with your predictions!

Google recently mentioned that “97% of new visitors do not convert the first time they arrive at your site.” While you never get a second chance to make a first impression, you have limitless opportunities to make that critical second impression, thanks to remarketing in AdWords.

Google AdWords’ robust remarketing feature can enhance and expand your PPC campaign. This article will focus on seven high-level strategies that you can employ to bring users back to your website using remarketing after they’ve made their initial visit.

Remarketing: Definition & Basics

When someone visits your website, you can drop a tracking cookie onto their computer. Later, when that individual is viewing other websites that utilize Google AdSense, you can display your PPC ad in front of that user again via the Google AdWords Display Network (GDN).

The objective of this type of targeting is to encourage the user to return to your website – and hopefully convert!

Target Segment Strategies

Remarketing is extremely flexible and you can get tremendously precise with your targeting. You can target users who visit specific pages on your website.

For example, consider this list of targeting strategies:

1. Visits to your homepage: This is your broadest targeting method. You can deliver GDN ads to anyone who visits your homepage.
2. Visits to specific product pages: If you’re an ecommerce client, you can target users who visit specific products on your website. Or if you offer a variety of different services, you can target users for each service they visit.
3. Visits to your landing pages: More than likely, visitors to your landing page will come from PPC. You can retarget these individuals in an effort to gain more value from that initial click.
4. Visits to your shopping cart: If a visitor goes all the way through your website, looks at your products, and actually places one or more items in their shopping cart – they are pretty engaged. You can target users who use your shopping cart but don’t purchase.
5. Visits to your confirmation page: Does your product have a high propensity for reorders? You can target users who visit the purchase confirmation page. You can encourage your previous customers to purchase again by bringing them back to your website with remarketing.
6. Visits to your FAQ/Contact page: If a user looks for additional information on your site, such as your FAQ page or contact form, they have exhibited a high level of interest because they are actively looking for answers. However, if they have to search deep into your website’s content, they may not find what they’re looking for. You can bring these specific users back to your site and help them convert.
7. Visits to your free trial confirmation page: If you offer any type of pre-conversion action, such as a free trial or a whitepaper download, you can target users who complete this initial engagement action. For example, if you offer a 30-day free trial of your product, you can deliver ads to individual who are in this trial period and encourage them to purchase your product.

These are just a few strategies that work. Your remarketing options are as unique as the structure of your website.

How Can These Targeting Segmentations Apply to Your Website?

Ask yourself these questions:

• Why would someone leave your website before converting?
• What does it mean if a user leaves your website on a specific page?
• What would you say to these abandoned visitors to get them back, and how would you convince them to convert?

Mediate on these questions for now. Remember, you have numerous opportunities to make a second impression. But since your first impression didn’t pull the visitor in enough to convert – let’s make the second one count!

Next time: ad messaging tactics and landing page strategies that can help you get the most out of remarketing. See you then.

This article was originally posted on SearchEngineWatch.com on May 13, 2011.

If you’re like me or thousands of other Google AdWords advertisers, you have lamented the loss of the “old school” AdWords reports. Last year Google began pushing all of the report modules into the physical interface of AdWords in lieu of bundling them all in a central location. While all of the old reports technically still exist, they are more difficult to find and certainly less intuitive to manipulate. So, if you have been struggling to figure out the new reporting system, or just simply want to use the old reports again I’ve got good news for you. There is a loophole that you can exploit to get those reports back!

The process is super simple. Create an AdWords Master Client Center (MCC). Serendipitously, Google recently simplified this process so that anyone can create an MCC without the help of AdWords support. Just visit this website and follow the instructions. Once you have created the MCC, follow the instructions to add your AdWords account to your new MCC.

At this point, when logged into your AdWords MCC, you will magically (OK, so no magic was really involved) have access to the “old school” report center. Click on the “Client Reporting” tab and behold the glory of your reports.

Enjoy!

by Joseph Kerschbaum

Director of Client Services, Clix Marketing

Google announced their new Search Funnel reporting capabilities within AdWords earlier this year. Search Funnels is a set of reports describing click and impression behavior leading up to a conversion on the Google Search Network.

AdWords attributes conversions to the last ad click before a conversion, but the Search Funnels reports provides some insight on how other clicks/impressions influenced users to take action.

If you haven’t reviewed these reports previously they can be overwhelming. This two-part series will describe how you can apply this data to improve your conversion rate and overall PPC performance.

Where do You Find the Search Funnels Reports?

First, let’s discuss the nuts and bolts on where these reports are located within your Google AdWords account.

The Search Funnels reports can be found within the Conversion reporting tab of your AdWords accounts.

What Types of Reports Can You Run?

There are eight Search Funnel reports. Each of these reports provides click-to-conversion data in regards to number of clicks or impressions, or the length of time that users take to convert. Here’s a quick description of each available report:

• Top Conversions: Displays all of the conversion actions within your Google AdWords account.
• Assist Clicks and Impressions: Displays when your ads were shown but not clicked, otherwise known as “assist impressions.” You can also see clicks that assisted in generating a conversion, known as “assist clicks.” These impressions and clicks are responsible for gaining a user’s attention early in the buying cycle, but the user eventually converted on another click.
• Assisted Conversions: Shows last-click conversions and click-assisted conversions for each campaign, ad group, and keyword.
• First, Last Click Analysis: Shows the number of conversions with a first click or last click from each campaign, ad group, or keyword.
• Top Paths: Shows the most common conversion paths based on ads that were shown and/or clicked prior to conversion.
• Time Lag, Path Length: Show the amount of time it takes for users to converting after clicking on your ad. The Path Length report shows the average number of clicks and/or impressions it takes for users to convert. The Time Lag report shows how long it takes for users to convert after clicking on your ad.

How Can You Use These Reports to Improve Your Conversion Rate?

If you haven’t conducted this kind of analysis before, the data can be overwhelming. You can end up with a lot of information without much actionable analysis. Let’s walk through the important Search Funnel reports so you can understand the implications of the data and what they mean for your conversion rate and overall performance.

We’ll start with the reports that are easiest to grasp and understand.

Path Length Reports

The Path Length report displays the average number of clicks or impressions it takes for users to convert. Here’s an example report.

click to enlarge

This report shows that a large portion of this client’s audience (approximately 46 percent) doesn’t convert after the first click. Forty-six percent of our audience converts after two or more clicks.

Time Lag Reports

The Time Lag Report shows the average amount of time it takes for users to convert. You can view this data in daily or hourly increments. Here’s an example report.

click to enlarge

This report shows that, on average, users converted on our client’s website approximately three days after the first click. Approximately 72 percent of our audience converts within one day of clicking our ad. However, this means that 28 percent of users need more than one day to convert.

The click path and time lag lengths seem about right for this client. This client sells expensive, high-end exercise equipment and this isn’t the kind of purchase that users make on a whim.

There’s no cause for alarm with these stats. We know that users shop around for this kind of product, but this doesn’t mean that we won’t work on our conversion rate to shorten both our click path and time lag and convince users to convert sooner.

However, if a client were selling lower-cost goods, or the conversion action was simply a contact form, then these stats would indicate that we weren’t engaging users as quickly as possible (if it takes users three days to fill out a form, we have a big problem!). We’d know that our landing pages aren’t grabbing users’ attention and inspiring them to take action.

What Can You Do Now?

Check out your Time Lag and Path Length reports. Review the data to determine if conversions are taking longer than you expected. If they are, brainstorm on why users aren’t inspired by your landing page to action upon the first click.

Now, you’re on the path to using the Conversion Funnels reports to improve your conversion rate and your AdWords campaigns overall.

In Part 2, we’ll review other Search Funnel reports to see how general keywords may be driving your branded keywords and what this means to your conversion rates.

This article was originally posted October 13, 2010 on searchenginewatch.com.

by John Lee

Search Marketing Manager, Clix Marketing

So many strategies surround even the most basic of pay-per-click (PPC) principles. One principle that is kicked around the most is the use of match types in Google AdWords.

Some camps preach that exact match is king. Others continue to spread bad advice, asserting that broad match is evil and should be avoided at all costs. Google employees have even recommended that campaigns should be run only with phrase match.

But all three match types can work together harmoniously. To kick things up a notch, we’ll attempt a metaphor, where AdWords match types make up your “keyword team” (pick a sport, it doesn’t really matter)!

{The Anchor}

If you hadn’t guessed already, exact match is the anchor of your keyword team.

With exact match keywords, you know exactly what you’re going to get. The searcher has to type that exact string of characters into Google’s search box in order for your ad to be triggered. That takes most, if not all, guesswork out of the equation.

On top of that, exact match keywords generate higher click-through rates (CTR) and are generally consistent performers. If you’re running a PPC campaign without running exact match keywords, you should take a serious look at your strategy.

“The Star Player”

The star player of your keyword team is phrase match. Phrase match keywords are more adventurous, but still dependable, consistent performers.

With phrase match, the searcher still has to type the exact string of characters into the search box, but Google can match that root phrase to other terms the searcher may have used. This loosens your keyword strategy so that you don’t have to be clairvoyant and predetermine every possible keyword phrase permutation.

Alongside your exact match keywords, phrase match terms create your PPC campaigns’ keyword foundation.

The Talent Scout

So I’ve gone from players to front office management, but for good reason. Broad match keywords are like a team’s talent scout. You send your broad match keywords into the world to find new searches and new customers through keyword variations you had not previously considered.

For years, people have claimed broad match would cause the downfall of Google AdWords PPC, and PPC managers were told they should beware of “keywords gone wild.” OK, so there are legitimate concerns over simply throwing one- and two-word broad match keywords into an account without a plan in place.

But when it comes to the long-term success of a PPC account, broad match is as important — if not more important — as phrase and exact match keywords. The benefits outweigh the potential concerns. Broad match keywords become a slightly higher risk, but much higher reward proposition.

Run your broad match keywords with a short leash. Consistently run search query reports and employ negative keywords to weed out irrelevant traffic. This will serve to replenish your arsenal of phrase and exact match keywords and maintain a healthy PPC campaign.

The +Rookie

Broad match modifiers are the rookie in the world of keyword match types. Google released this feature earlier this summer, ultimately giving advertisers greater control over how wide of a net AdWords could cast for broad match keywords.

By adding a plus sign in front of a term in a keyword string, you ensure that term will actually be a part of the initial search query. Broad match modifiers offer the flexibility of matching to a wide range of queries while remaining directly rooted with a relevant core term. If you already run broad match, broad match modifiers won’t be of much help to you (and you could actually see a drop in impressions, clicks, etc., if you put them to use). But if you’re an advertiser who is only running phrase or exact match and are wary of broad match, this could be a great way for you to broaden your keyword scope.

Weak sports metaphors aside, the goal here was to convince some of you to unleash the full potential of your PPC campaigns with Google’s full array of match types. My colleagues and I run campaigns with all three match types working in concert with each other to great results. It requires some hard work to find success, but what in the world of PPC is really easy, right?

This article was originally posted September 17, 2010 on searchenginewatch.com

by Joseph Kerschbaum

Director of Client Services, Clix Marketing

Google announced the global rollout of their AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE) feature last month. ACE is a useful feature that helps you understand the impact of certain changes to your AdWords account.

There are numerous benefits (and some drawbacks) to using ACE.

ACE Benefits

Previously, when you launched a change within your AdWords account, you had to use a before-and-after approach to your analysis. This meant that you would make the desired change to your AdWords account, and compare your performance before and after the alteration.

With ACE, you can split test two versions of a campaign or ad group simultaneously to see how your changes influence your performance in real-time. The real-time testing aspect of ACE is beneficial because it can help mitigate the influence of outside factors on your tests, such as other sales/marketing initiatives, changes in the competitive landscape, and seasonality fluctuations (by day, week, or month).

Basically, running an experiment with ACE is like split testing your PPC text ads. If you have two ad texts within your ad group, each variation can receive 50 percent of the impressions and you can determine which one garners the best results. ACE works similarly but instead of testing ad text variations, you are split testing variations of your entire campaigns or ad groups.

You can’t test everything within your AdWords accounting using ACE. Let’s look at five campaign elements that work well when tested with this feature.

1. Ad Group Structure

You can break down ad groups into more finely-tuned themes and test to see how this impacts your performance. You can take an ad group that has 25 keywords (this is your control variation), and break it down to five ad groups (this is your experiment variation). You can also move keyword themes around to see which variation results in the highest click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate.

2. Keyword Match Types

You may want to experiment with different match types. If you haven’t tried phrase or broad match of certain terms, you can add these match types to your ad group and then launch an experiment to see how this impacts your CTR and conversion rate. Instead of inserting these match types and hoping for the best, you can maintain your original ad group (your control variation) and launch a test variation with your new match types.

3. Keyword Expansion and Reduction

If you want to see how new keywords impact the overall performance of an ad group, you can launch these new terms as an experiment. You can see how the ad group performs with and without these new keywords.

On the flip side of the coin, you may want to remove keywords to see how this impacts the other terms with an ad group. Do the remaining terms get a lift in impressions? Does CTR increase or decrease? You can launch two versions of your ad group: one with these keywords intact (your control version) and one version without these keywords (your experiment version).

4. A Note on Google Instant Experiments

Brad Geddes wrote a great article (as usual) on the bg Theory blog about using ACE to test new keyword suggestions from Google Instant results. Here’s his process for testing keyword suggestions from Google Instant (good tip for those advertisers who have the budget to devote to a test that may increase spending):

1. Choose a few of your root keywords (generally the two-word variety)
2. Type these words into Google instant or Web Seer
3. Make a list of these words
4. Break them into appropriate ad groups
5. Enable ACE (AdWords Campaign Experiments)
6. Create new ad groups with these words
7. Make these brand new ad groups part of your experimental campaign
8. Let the experiment collect data
9. Measure the results

With this experiment for including shorter term keywords, you should utilize exact match. This way you know exactly which terms are generating the traffic and results.

5. Keyword Bids

You can make aggressive keyword bid adjustments to see how significantly different bids will affect your campaign’s results. For example, you keep all of your keyword bids the same in your control ad group, but within your experiment variation you can increase (or decrease) your keyword bids aggressively. With this type of experiment, you can see how elevated bids would impact the overall performance of this ad group.

Remember, you can tell ACE the percentage of traffic that you would like to dedicate to your experiment variation. Also remember to monitor your tests closely. If you launch an experiment and it tanks, your overall performance will suffer.

ACE Limitations

Some of these limitations will be eventually be address by Google. For now, here’s a list of the shortcomings:

• Number of experiments: You can only run one experiment within one campaign at a time.
• Campaign settings: You can’t test campaign-level settings. For example, you can’t test CPC bidding against CPA bidding. Or, you can’t test the ad delivery method settings of Standard against Accelerated to see which one works best.
• No AdWords Editor or API support: You can manage experiments only within the AdWords web interface.
• Reporting and analysis: This is where the feature lacks the most. Within the AdWords web interface you can segment the view of your campaign so that you can see the control variation performance against the experiment variation. This is helpful but it’s difficult to dig into these numbers any further than what is displayed within the ad group section of AdWords. If launch a large campaign structure you can’t see how all of the control ad groups compare to the experiment ad groups. You will have to look at them on a one-by-one basis or an ad group by ad group basis. This can make the experiment analysis process laborious. This isn’t such a large drawback that it should hinder advertisers from using ACE, it’s just kind of a pain.

To learn the nuts-and-bolts on setting up an experiment within your account, the AdWords Help section is quite thorough. A series of videos will walk you through the process of getting started with ACE. Now, you need to determine which elements of your AdWords campaign would benefit most from these types of testing — and get out there and start testing (and improving your PPC performance).

This article was originally posted September 15, 2010 on searchenginewatch.com.

by John Lee

Search Marketing Manager, Clix Marketing

Google announced Enhanced CPC, a new bidding feature for AdWords, earlier this year. This conversion-oriented feature is just the latest in a string of bidding tools introduced by Google. What better time than now to cover each of the available bidding features available in AdWords so that you can make an informed decision on which is right for your campaigns.

Focus on Clicks: Manual Bidding

Manual bidding is the format all of us advertisers know and love. You set ad group and/or keyword-level maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bids and adjust them up or down depending on your performance.

There is absolutely zero automation here — the bids only change when you say they do, providing the ultimate level of control of your campaigns. Advertisers who are willing and able to put in the reporting necessary to make manual bid adjustments can and will get the most out of manual CPC bidding in AdWords.

Focus on Clicks: Automatic Bidding

The automatic bidding feature was Google’s first attempt to make bidding easier for advertisers. Some might argue that this was to the detriment of PPC as a whole, but alas some advertisers needed this feature.

Automatic bidding is based off of two advertiser inputs: daily campaign budget and CPC bid limit. In essence, using this feature will get you the optimum amount of clicks based off of your daily budget.

Before this week, if your goal for PPC was to blindly increase click volume, then AdWords automatic bidding was the way to go. Prior to the Enhanced CPC feature, automatic bidding was strictly oblivious to conversion performance!

Focus on Clicks: Enhanced CPC

The new Enhanced CPC feature is an interesting beast, for sure. It can be used with either manual or automatic bidding options in AdWords to improve conversion performance. The major caveat to using Enhanced CPC is that you must have AdWords conversion tracking installed as the AdWords system will use historical conversion data to increase or lower your CPC bid by up to 30 percent.

With Enhanced CPC, you still set your bids as usual at the ad group and/or keyword level. Unfortunately, no direct reporting is available to see which keywords Google adjusted bids for.

Focus on Conversions: Conversion Optimizer

The Conversion Optimizer feature is where Google is really stepping up their game for bidding features. As much of the PPC world is growing up and trying out third party tools that include true automated bid management, Conversion Optimizer lends some much needed sophistication to the native AdWords toolset.

With Conversion Optimizer, the entire CPC bid paradigm is shifted to instead focus on your cost-per-conversion or cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and actually bid to that goal. Conversion Optimizer also depends on you installing AdWords conversion tracking. You can set maximum CPA bids (the most you’re willing to pay for a conversion) or you can set target CPA bids (the average amount you’re willing to pay for each conversion).

CPA bidding is an automated process, in so much as you set a CPA bid and Google adjusts the actual keyword CPC in order to reach your CPA target. Conversion Optimizer works great, but it takes away a lot of control you have over individual keywords.

To truly succeed with Conversion Optimizer, you have to be willing to relinquish that control and loosen up on your beliefs regarding average position and clicks. These stats are still important, but the automated nature of the system means these stats aren’t as important!

Overall, the trend is that Google wants advertisers to be more conversion focused. It’s a game of give and take, too. All of us advertisers must decide to relinquish a bit of control over our keywords in exchange for Google’s promise of improved conversion performance.

By and large, this exchange has been profitable. If you haven’t already, you should experiment with these bid types to see what works best for your PPC campaign.

Remember, even if the word “automated” is used, it should never mean you can ignore your campaigns or will never have to make any changes. Human interaction is and will remain to be the key to PPC success (or else I’m out of a job!).

This article was originally posted August 20, 2010 on searchenginewatch.com.

by Joseph Kerschbaum

Director of Client Services, Clix Marketing

One of my recent columns explained how to use the Opportunities tab within Google AdWords to gauge how you stack up to the competition. The Opportunities tab offers other functions, specifically keyword suggestions provided by Google, which are helpful but a little bit tricky if you haven’t used them extensively.

Goals

The Opportunities tab provides keyword and bid alternation suggestions for your AdWords account. These suggestions can be viewed with a few different goals in mind.

You can view suggestions that will help increase the traffic within your account, or help balance cost and traffic, or help maintain or decrease cost. You can view the suggestions geared toward each goal:

Of course, the “Increase traffic” goal will almost always contain the most suggestions. The more keywords you add to your account, the more clicks you’ll accrue, and the more money Google will make. That’s not to say Google is evil or trying to be sly or dishonest here — that’s just how it is.

However, adding relevant keywords to your ad groups will increase quality clicks to your website and should generate more sales. Everyone wins.

The other two goal objectives, “Balance cost and traffic” and “Maintain or decrease cost” usually provide few suggestions for account optimizations — and some of these suggestions aren’t high quality.

To sum up on the goals objectives in the Opportunities tab: you can view this section of your AdWords account as a way to find new keywords, with maybe a few keyword bid suggestions that you can usually disregard.

Keyword Suggestions

This section of the Opportunities tab is most useful as an alternative source of keyword research. Where do these keyword suggestions actually come from? According to Google, their automated tools generate keyword suggestions. Google takes search data and compares it to themes in your existing keyword lists. Google analyzes the search data related to your campaigns, then tries to find new keywords that are relevant to your ads which don’t exist in your account.

Keyword suggestions are provided at the ad group level of your account. As seen here, there are 57 keyword ideas for my Engraved Name Badges ad group; 100 keyword ideas for my ID Card ad group; and 64 keyword ideas in my Belt Clips ad group:

As with any suggestion (in general), take these ideas with a grain of salt. Review all of the suggestions carefully. When you click on one of your ad group names, you can review all of the keyword ideas for that ad group.

Assessing Keyword Ideas

As you review your keyword suggestions, you have a few options for gauging how relevant a keyword is for this particular ad group or your entire account. You have three ways to judge a keyword idea:

• Keyword is fine: You can check the box next to the keyword, hit Apply Now at the bottom of this screen, and the keyword will be added to this ad group.
• Keyword is irrelevant to this ad group: The keyword is relevant for your account, and perhaps would fit best in another ad group, but it isn’t a good choice for the ad group that Google has suggested. Selecting this option gives you the chance to load this particular keyword idea into a different ad group.
• Keyword is irrelevant to my account: If you select this option, the chosen keyword idea won’t be suggested again for this ad group or any other ad group in your account.

For each ad group, you must rate each keyword idea and then hit Apply Now on the bottom of the screen. If you have numerous keyword ideas in various ad groups, this task can be time consuming. However, you can find new relevant keywords for your ad groups, and if you take the time to tell Google which terms aren’t relevant for your account, Google will provide better suggestions in the future.

Also, the Opportunity tab shows you the estimated search volume and level of competition for each keyword, which is helpful. This can help you decide if a keyword is worth adding to your account. Perhaps the competition is too high or the search volume is too low.

If you haven’t looked at the keyword ideas within your Opportunities tab recently (or perhaps ever), check them out. Remember, however, you need to review each keyword suggestion carefully and make good decisions about which keywords will generate additional targeted, relevant traffic to your website.

Bonus Tip!

When you’re reviewing the keyword ideas within an ad group, it’s all or nothing. A note at bottom of the keyword ideas screen reads:

“All unselected ideas will be discarded when you apply or save any ideas above. Before you apply or save any ideas, make sure you’ve selected all the ones you like.”

So, if you open up an ad group to review the keyword suggestions, it’s best to review all of them (good or bad) — otherwise, all unchecked suggestions will be discarded.

This article was originally posted August 18, 2010 on searchenginewatch.com.

by John Lee

Advertising Account Manager, Clix Marketing

One of the biggest advantages of using a wide range of the available Google products is that many of them are interconnected in powerful ways. For example, most of us utilize Google AdWords with Google Analytics and maybe even Website Optimizer, too.

But one product connection that many advertisers haven’t caught on to yet is between Google AdWords and Google Merchant Center (formerly known as Froogle or Product Search). This connection allows the Product Extension feature to form within AdWords and enables you to display product images and details in line with your pay-per-click (PPC) ads.

Product Extension ads are a powerful asset for PPC advertisers. As the image above shows, it provides a tremendous advantage over competitors for occupying search engine results page (SERP) real estate and when the Plus Box is opened and images are available — quite eye-catching. This creates increased interactivity between searchers and ads, but more importantly it can have a major impact on increasing click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rates.

Making the Connection

To make the connection between your AdWords ads and your product feed, there are a few crucial steps to complete.

First, a note on availability: the Product Extension feature is already available to U.S.-based advertisers. Canada or other non-U.S. markets may need to discuss with their Google representative to get your account(s) white-listed for this feature.

Second, everything discussed here assumes you have a Google Merchant Account and an existing product feed (just in case, read this to get started).

Step 1

Within Google Merchant Center, click on the AdWords link on the dashboard. Here, you will be prompted to enter your AdWords Customer ID:

Step 2

Because you entered your Customer ID, Google now associates your Merchant Center account and product feed with your AdWords account. The next step involves logging into your AdWords account and choosing to activate the Product Extension feature on a campaign, by campaign basis.

Within each campaign you choose, go to Settings, find Ad Extensions, and click “edit” under the Products heading. Here you will see your Google Merchant Center account name and ID as an option. Check the radio button and click save:

For some of you, the settings for Ad Extensions are now housed under their own tab (aptly named “Ad Extensions”). For you folks, the instructions are slightly different.

Head over to the Ad Extensions tab and select Product Extensions from the “View” pull down menu. Click on “New Extension” and you’ll see your Google Merchant Center account name — click save to enable the feature:

Tips and Tricks

Once you’ve connected Google AdWords to Google Merchant Center via the Product Extensions feature, your job is mostly complete. From this point, it takes about 24 hours for the connection to take hold and for your Product Extension ads to begin displaying in the SERPs. So, what else can you do?

• Product Extension ads are only eligible for Google Search. But you should enable Product Extensions for all of your search campaigns to take full advantage of the opportunity. The only exception being if your product feed doesn’t relate to your search campaign.
• If you’re creating new ad groups to take advantage of Google Image Search ads, Product Extension ads will appear there, too!
• Within Google Merchant Center’s settings, you can dictate the name of your business. This name will be displayed with the Product Extension Plus Box. Make sure that the name is 20 characters or less. If it’s more than 20 characters, it will be truncated or potentially not used at all.
• Because Product Extension ads provide searchers with an interactive ad via the Plus Box, there’s more data to be understood than just clicks and conversions. Take full advantage of the fact that Google provides extensive reporting for open rates of the Plus Box and click activity of the Product Extension ads themselves.
• HOT TIP! I just discovered this week that you can include URL parameters in your Google Merchant Center product feed that will give you control over how your products interact with your AdWords ads. There is an option to opt products out of the feature altogether (adwords_publish). There is an option to suggest which products should show for which keywords (emphasis on suggest, adwords_prefer_for_query). And there’s also an option to dictate that Product Extension listings should send users to a different landing page. This one is important because it gives you the power to apply unique tracking and ultimately segment your incoming traffic as specifically as needed.

Google’s Product Extension feature isn’t new by any means. But I’m frequently reminded that not all advertisers are early adapters — and it wasn’t that long ago that Product Extensions came out of beta.

So if you haven’t used Product Extensions yet, please use this information to get started today. Google has made this a relatively simple feature to use and the results are well worth the effort!

This article was originally posted July 23, 2010 on searchenginewatch.com.

Last time, we discussed the basic principles of placement targeting on Google’s Display Network. Let’s expand on that topic by looking at how placement targeting alters the performance dynamics of your display ads.

It’s easy to assume that placement targeting is as simple as hand-selecting the sites you want your ad to appear on and there ends the process. This is far from the truth. In fact, placement targeting success requires that you understand how placement ads compete for position on display sites and how your bids and quality score will decide your fate.

One Ad vs. Everyone Else’s Ads

For many advertisers, this may be a new concept, so brace yourself. When you place ads on the Display Network through placement targeting, your ads will be placed differently than if you were running an automatic keyword targeted campaign.

For the “auto” campaign, your ads will compete for the top spot based on Ad Rank (bid X quality score). The winner gets the number one spot and the rest of the ads appear in positions number two, number three, etc., depending on the size of the ad unit.

Things work a little differently when you run the same ads through a placement targeted campaign. The placement targeted ads and “auto” ads still compete for the top spot based on Ad Rank, but if the placement targeted ad wins — not only does it take the number one spot, but it will be the only ad in that ad unit!

What This Means for You

As the examples at left show, using placement targeting gives your ad a huge advantage for increasing CTR and conversions (assuming you claim the top spot). Bumping your competition entirely out of the picture is what every PPC advertiser dreams of. The effect is even more visible when an ad unit designed for three or more ads only displays a single placement targeted ad.

Don’t be misled by the apparent promise of increased CTR and conversions. Yes, that can and will happen if you properly manage your placement campaigns. As you might imagine, achieving the number one spot can be a challenge.

I’ve seen it happen in my own accounts and heard other advertisers discuss the same phenomenon: You run an “auto” keyword targeted display campaign and discover that a handful of sites are generating a ton of clicks and conversions. You decide to put these into a placement targeted campaign. To your dismay, after making the switch these sites seem to all but stop working!

What happened was your bid and quality score weren’t high enough to achieve an Ad Rank capable of winning the top spot. This resulted in your ad being displayed in a secondary ad unit or not at all.

What You Need to Do

I’m sure you’re already drawing some logical conclusions as to how you can ensure your placement targeted ads have a fighting chance to perform. Because your ad’s position will be determined by Ad Rank, we’ll break this down by the two primary pieces: bid and quality score.

Bid

The most important strategy for ensuring your placement targeted campaigns succeed is to increase your bids.

In a scenario where you’ve discovered a site through your “auto” keyword targeted display campaign, you already have a baseline CPC bid that works. When you move that site into your placement targeted campaign, assume that you’ll need to set the placement bid between 10 and 15 percent higher than the “auto” campaign’s max CPC. You may find that even this bid increase isn’t enough — in which case implement another bid increase test to attempt increasing your Ad Rank.

If you’re starting a placement targeted campaign from scratch, you’ll have to play the testing game by setting a bid, reviewing performance, and adjusting as needed.

Quality Score

No one escapes quality score! Quality score is derived from CTR and “other factors” related to relevancy. As such, CTR is your primary point of attack.

If you discover a site through an “auto” keyword targeted campaign and move it to a placement targeted campaign — move the best performing ad already associated with it. Obviously, that ad is generating results, so use it as a launching point.

For all placements, continue practicing your ad testing best practices to write ads that improve CTR and your other target KPIs.

Originally posted June 25, 2010 on searchenginewatch.com