Google PLAs Gamed by eBay
Someone just gamed Google PLAs (product listing ads) with a listing on eBay. Aside from the somewhat unique PLA display shown below, with 6 product listings to the right of the SERPs; you can see that the advertiser added a red border to their product image. This essentially highlighted the listing and made it look like Google featured it out of all the other listing ads. But, it was just a trick with the product image. You can see the highlighted border in the image. *I only added the arrow. You can see in the actual eBay listing that the product image still has the red border; which eliminates any notion that Google highlighted the original ad in the SERP. I’m not sure if the eBay user (the-la-guy) realizes what he did or if he was just trying to highlight the listing in eBay, but it is a genius way to improve CTR in Google PLAs. Will other advertisers figure this out and start adding crazy borders to their product images? When will Google figure it out and add it to their TOS that you cannot have a border around the image? Will they write a program to automatically remove borders on images? It should be interesting to see how advertisers and the search engine handle this in the near future. *I only saw the highlighted border when the PLAs were featured on the right. But it really depends on when eBay advertises the-la-guy’s listings. You can see that he does it to many of his products http://myworld.ebay.com/the-la-guy/?_trksid=p4340.l2559. Let me know if you’ve seen this and what your thoughts are on the ethics or policies of this. Happy...
Read MoreClick-To-Teleport Customer Overflow Issue
While most businesses would love to get a customer in the door, the new Google AdWords Click-To-Teleport creates another problem, getting customers to leave! Their terms of service states that Google is not responsible for return teleportation. This leaves heaps of customers in the store, and adventurous shoppers wondering aimlessly around unfamiliar towns. CTR is so 2011. The only metric I care about now is Teleport-Through-Rate! ~ Greg A. Since the April Fools debut of the beta AdWords program, businesses have been teleporting customers from couches, right into the showroom floor. Business owner David Robinson stated, “We absolutely love getting customers into the store, but they often click before grabbing their wallets…or pants. It creates a bit of a problem with our more conservative staff members, and the overall plan to make money as a business.” While Google failed to teleport to my office for an in-person explanation of the issues business owners are facing, I did receive a response from famed rep, Holly “ice cream sandwich” Breyers. “We as a search company are only responsible for driving (teleporting) more customers to businesses at an affordable Cost Per Teleport. The business is responsible for handling their displaced customers post-click.” As a search marketer, I really love the idea of sending my companies real breathing customers with the ease of a click on my ad. But I also have to explain to businesses that traditional retargeting should be converted to relocating. Taxi and air travel fees can really add up for a proper relocation campaign. What about the online-only players in the eCommerce world? I was able to get a hold of Jeff Bees, an employee at Amazon. After a brief rant about NASA, I was able to get Jeff to comment on Google Click-To-Teleport. “Click-To-Teleport…where the f*&$ are we teleporting them to, our robotic warehouse? This is total bull. I’m going to play with my spaceship.” We’ll see what types of studies come out as this CTT program is more widely adopted. What will be the incremental lift of teleportation? My guess is that the lift is somewhere close to the speed of light, but only Google knows that answer. Happy April 1st bidding,...
Read MoreGoogle AdWords Seller Ratings Update
Another Google AdWords update spotted today. It looks like another beta that only impacts the display of an AdWords ad. The update is that they expanded the Seller Ratings extensions to a pop-out preview, similar to the Landing Page preview. Maybe it’s more than just a new look. The preview also includes a second instance of your ad. Does it count as two impressions, once it is expanded? Does this count against your CTR, impacting your quality score? The same question goes for the current landing page preview. What this does show, is the continued importance of Google Seller Ratings. If you sell a product or service online, you should be participating in reviews. It helps your CTR, not only because of extra ad real estate, but because it adds relevance and trust to the user…which could help conversion rate. I wrote more about Seller Ratings in the past: Google Seller Ratings CSE Ratings to Google Seller Ratings Or you can read about it on the Official Google Blog. New Google Seller Ratings preview:...
Read MoreBig AdWords Update: Google Display Network Tab
A Beta update rolling out in AdWords finally allows search marketers to see keyword data from their Google Display Network. Finally! Seriously…this has been a BIG frustration with search marketers for the last few years. Google LOVES to take your money and pump out impressions and clicks through the Google Display Network (GDN) but never reports on granular performance. You could have 100,000 keywords driving $1mm worth of clicks to your site and Google would never tell you which keyword did what. How are you supposed to optimize an account with no keyword data? This is straight from their, somewhat hidden, AdWords help file release: “Now you can find all your Display Network targeting and exclusions in one place. We’ve moved your Networks, Audiences, and Topics tabs under the new Display Network tab to make it easier for you to build, monitor and refine your display campaigns.” Read the actual release notes here: New Google Display Network Tab in AdWords With this new data, we can finally optimize to a keyword – just like we have always wanted. This should be a very valuable update to SEMs. It should also lead to more money being spent in the GDN, now that it can be better measured. I think that this is a win-win for the advertiser and Google. In addition to Keyword data (which I think is the real news here), Google also moved Managed and Automatic Placements, Topics, and Remarketing management into the Display tab. This is really just a bit of house-cleaning to the AdWords UI. Happy bidding…with new GDN keyword...
Read MoreAdWords Enhanced Sitelinks – Update Your Architecture
Google’s recent AdWords Sitelink Extension update is a big one. It seems as if Google updates something in AdWords several times a month. While many updates are nice, they are not all game changers. The most recent update, called Enhanced Sitelinks is a game changer. You essentially get rewarded with A LOT of SERP real estate if you have closely themed Ad Groups within your campaign and those Ad Groups have ads that are closely related to your Sitelinks. Best practice is to theme everything from top to bottom very closely to each other, and this update will reward that practice. The problem is, many account managers and SEM professionals do not structure their accounts correctly so they will not be able to use the Enhanced Sitelinks. I have taken over and audited dozens of accounts in my career, and not many of them started out with a good architecture. This latest update will force people to make drastic changes to their accounts. This is all for the better, of course, but it will be quite the undertaking for some SEM managers. Enhanced Sitelinks is not only a layout update, it’s Google telling you that you better start building your AdWords account architecture in the best way possible. While there isn’t an exact account architecture guideline from Google, they do have some general recommendations for building out your account located in their help documents. This is a good read from a senior member in the AdWords Community. While it is informative, there is a lot left to the imagination. Let’s Paint a Picture, by Numbers The main idea of account architecture is to keep topics in tightly themed campaigns, groups, keyword sets, and ads. Think of an account as a dresser. You, the account (dresser) manager, should be very OCD about how you organize your clothes. Keep the socks in one drawer, shirts in another, and pants in another drawer. Those are your Campaigns. Now, inside of your sock drawer you also have rows of socks. These rows are variations of dress socks, gym socks, and casual socks. Those are your Ad Groups. Inside the rows are the individual socks, each pair made of a similar thread. The individual socks are your Keywords. On the outside of your drawer you have large labels. The labels are in-line with the rows of socks so you know what you’ll see when...
Read MoreThe Flaw of Last Click Attribution
TweetThe Flaw of Same Session / Last Click Attribution Think of a traditional retail purchase at a store without eCommerce…heck; let’s imagine the Internet doesn’t even exist for this scenario. The potential customer is watching TV and sees an ad from a new store in the area, for a product she needs for the house. The next day she heads out for a shopping trip to her usual stores, but happens to see a billboard for that new store. She knows the general location of the store but cannot find it until she spots a WACKY WAVING INFLATABLE ARM FLAILING TUBE MAN in the parking lot of the new store. She walks in and browses the merchandise, but doesn’t purchase anything until a nice young store clerk shows her to the product she saw on the TV commercial. She walks out a happy customer. The story above isn’t unimaginable; it could very well happen 1000’s of times per day. Multiple marketing mediums touched the customer before she made the purchase. So what channel gets the credit? Did the TV ad cause her to buy from the store? Was the billboard the real winner in the marketing mix that reminded her that she wanted to shop at the new store? How about the WACKY WAVING INFLATABLE ARM FLAILING TUBE MAN? He practically ushered her into the parking lot! Or, was it the young store clerk taking her directly to the product that made the sale? Ask 10 different people that question and you will get many different answers. The clerk would say it’s all because of his product knowledge and Brut cologne he was wearing that day. The Arm-Flailing Emporium owner would say it was the high-quality arm flailers that made the sale. Mr. John Billboard would argue that his billboard location and design really drove the sale. And the producer would say it was the amazing TV spot that was responsible for the sale. The problem, of deciding which channel to credit the sale to, is extremely difficult to solve. If you take one channel out of the mix, the sale may not have occurred at all. So, in order to produce more sales, which channel should get more funding? Which channel drives the most sales and how do you measure that? It is a very real problem that companies deal with every day. And many companies simply make...
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