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January 31, 2005

So the rumours were true. Google has announced an AdWords API, which has been covered ad inifinitum in the press - so I won't rehash it here. The Google API FAQ (beta) is here and the main Google API (which has been around a while) is here.

What is interesting is the apparent Google API blog started on Google's Blogger service by Josh McFarland, Product Manager and Nelson Minar, Software Engineer.

Hopefully we'll see some interesting posts from these guys (assumming this is a genuine blog and not a spoof, it's a bit spartan at the moment). Give them time - and kudos for the blog. At the moment it doesn't mention a XML feed, but the standard Atom feed Blogger produces is here.

Go on, add it to Bloglines. You know you want to.

Posted by duncan at 10:09 PM | Comments (0)

January 26, 2005

Google are trialling a new link beneath AdSense ads.

Beneath some ads, links to related adverts are appearing, e.g.:

Change to Ads About:
Beltone Hearing Aids
Hearing Loss
Siemens Hearing
Hearing Loop System
Hearing Software

This example is from a page about hearing aid complaints.

An interesting idea - but I wonder how many clicks this will actually get?

Of the percentage of people who visit a page and click on a contextual advert, how many readers will notice the links and then click on them? Not many, I suspect.

Posted by duncan at 08:22 PM | Comments (1)

January 25, 2005

Google Adwords offers advertisers the ability to auto-insert keywords into advert text (following a trend started by Espotting in Europe and other engines in the US).

However, this can be a bad, bad idea. Have a look at this ad for a sexy dead single. In case it gets disabled, it reads:

Sexy Dead Singles
Free photos, personals and hot
profiles of local singles. Free
www.infobert.com

And is followed by the oh-so-common junk eBay advert (do they bid on every word in the English language?):

Dead Sale
New & Used Dead
Check out the great deals now!
www.eBay.com

("Dead" has been inserted).

So if you are dynamically inserting keywords into ad text, check how it reads! If not you risk making your adverts a source of humour - or annoyance - with potential custmers; and so damaging your brand.

I once audited the Google ads of a well-known UK job website and found they were appearing for "bl0w job" searches. Nice "job", guys.

From my time at Espotting as an editor I know that dynamically insertng keywords is a nice idea in theory - but each ad has to be checked by the editors, and frankly, it's an invite for lazy advertisers at times.

No doubt this is why Overture doesn't allow this.

Useful tip: you can insert keywords into ad copy using the concatenate feature in Excel to test them or submit them as a spreadsheet file.

Hat tip to Gary at SEW.

Posted by duncan at 08:00 PM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2005

My latest article for PPCA has been posted online - "Click Fraud: the reality".

In it I've tried to outline click fraud for anybody not familar with it by providing a basic FAQ - and so cut through some of the mainstream press hype out there at the moment. I've also mentioned some of the tools available to detect and report fraud; hopefully I'll have time to review them in detail for PPCA.

Oh, and if you want to hire somebody to carry out fraud for you, look here ;-)

Posted by duncan at 12:16 PM | Comments (3)

Further speculation on the changes rumoured to be announced after the Google staff conference in the US (original post about this). This time the rumour is that Google conversion tracking, currently free to all AdWords advertisers, will be extended to cover any type of online advertising - including Overture advertising.

Personally I'd be very cautious about sharing any conversion tracking with any search engine. Whilst they might offer conversion tracking today with the best of intentions (helping advertisers improve campaign performance and so stay as advertisers) who knows how it might be used in future? To set industry specific minimum bids perhaps? (Google actually used to run their old advertising programme like this but dropped the idea with AdWords; Yahoo's paid inclusion programme, Site Match, charges a flat CPC that varies by sector).

More importantly, will the Google conversion tracking be developed to provide the data which normal click and conversion tracking services already provide?

These services - from simple Hypertracker to industry heavyweight DoubleClick - provide data including the IP address, time, date and source of every click. This can be used by advertisers to spot possible click fraud and identify which sites in the PPC networks provide the most valuable clicks (e.g. I might discover that in Overture's network MSN is the best source of traffic for one client, Yahoo! the best for another).

And this only tracks media buys where you can specify the URLs to be sued - it does not cover organic (SEO) traffic.

Will Overture, FindWhat etc. be happy with data about the performance of their networks be recorded on Google's servers? Their reaction will be interesting to see.

Of course, free conversion tracking will win Google some favour with SMEs who can't afford to use a third party service (although as Hypertracker is less than $15 a month, it's not exactly expensive).

But I'd still be cautious about sharing performance data with the media owner - whether it's a search engine, banner network or individual website. Companies with good intentions today could become the price-raising, market controlling companies of tomorrow.

Update: Ask Jeeves are having a little fun with Google...

Posted by duncan at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)

January 21, 2005

Rumour is spreading across blogs and forums that the results of the Google staff conference and general party(going on in the US now for Googlers from across the globe) will be changes in both AdSense and AdWords.

So what could the changes be? Hopefully we'll see some of these:

- improved functionality in the AdWords interface (move campaigns between ad groups for a start)

- increased reliability (no more error messages telling me I have "used the back button and changes have been lost", when all I've actually done is stop using the interface to take a phonecall)

- API access to Adwords so 3rd party tools can be developed to make it easier to manage multiple accounts and save time in general (very important as this should lead to marketing dashboards for managing multiple accounts at multiple PPC engines being developed - like AtlasOnePoint but on speed!)

- more implementation options for AdSense (XML for a start) so results are not blocked by security software (Javascript implementations are blocked at times) and can be added to RSS feeds and implemeneted in other new ways.

Hat tip to Nick W at ThreadWatch for spotting this...

Posted by duncan at 02:27 PM | Comments (0)

AOL are finally showing their hand in search.

They've launched a new search engine based on technology from Google, FAST (for local search), Yellow Pages results and, hidden away in the press release, will start offering pay per call advertising.

More on the local search implications of this here on the local search blog.

For PPC advertisers AOL Search is good news too, with 4 listings appearing in the searches I tried (see digital cameras for an example). These are from Google.

So have AOL made a good move? I think so. They are leveraging the value of the AOL / Time Warner back catalogue of content by adding it into search results (they have editors doing this - it's called "Snapshots"). Something Yahoo! do with their content already of course. Will Yahoo! buy more content sources / strike deals with content sources? I think so, over time.

Hopefully we'll see more than articles etc. in the results; there are magazines, music, videos, films etc in the AOL/TW stable; how long until we see micro-payments for access to articles? For AOL users these could be easily charged via their accounts. (They are doing MP3 and film downloads already of course).

Search results include a "Recommended Sites" link (picked by AOL editors) as well as results from Google, but most importantly, AOL's editors have chosen AOL and 3rd party content to promote at the top of the page - for example the loans guide on a search for loans.

Why is this good? Authority. Consumers want to read guides / reviews / articles about their potential purchases (and their problems) from authorative sources they can trust - who hasn't, after all, read an article they found via a web search and started to realise what inaccurate, out of date rubbish it is? Searchers will reward good, up-to-date content with loyalty to a) where they read it and b) where they found it. Neither are remarkable or new ideas of course.

If AOL can attract enough non-AOL users, and build on their strategy of licensing the best search technology from Google, Vivisimo (results clustering) FAST etc, they could take license share - mainly from the likes of Lycos, Ask Jeeves, Excite and other 2nd tier engines I believe. Getting users to switch from Yahoo! and Google will be harder.

More competition in the market place can only be a good thing.

Hat tip to John Batelle for picking up on the release.

Posted by duncan at 09:45 AM | Comments (0)

Welcome!

So, the first post on my PPCA blog. Here I'll link to articles, resources and tools about pay per click marketing, as well as comment on developments in search in general and draw out their impacts on PPC marketing and search engine marketing as a whole. Occassionally I might cover some SEO items, too.

If you want to suggest a tool, site or share your ideas, please email me*. I can't promise I will cover everything I recieve, but I'll try (after sorting the wheat from the chaff, of course).

Oh, and in advance, I apologise for the typos. I fear there will be many!

* you need to edit the address to get it to work - anti-spam measure.

Posted by duncan at 04:31 AM | Comments (1)