June 15, 2005

New article: Vertical PPC

New article published today: Going Vertical in PPC.

If you think there are more vertical PPCs I should cover, please leave a comment below.

If you have feedback on any of these networks, let me know below, too.

Posted by duncan at 03:17 PM | Comments (1)

April 16, 2005

Mamma.com deal falls through.

Copernic kills takeover deal with Mamma.com.

(Mamma.com are facing an official SEC investigation).

Posted by duncan at 01:35 PM | Comments (0)

March 15, 2005

MSN to start beta testing it's PPC advertising program

More specualtion on MSN - this time the rumour is they will put their own PPC advertising program into beta testing.

Bloomberg are reporting that an official beta will be announced tomorrow (16th March).

Their sources are, well, vague to say the least. But if not tomorrow, then sometime soon...

Gary Price at SEWatch has said that MSN isn't commenting today, but that the official word will come out tomorrow - and Ggary and Danny at SEWatch are normally pretty accurate.

But don't start adding MSN into your PPC budgets just yet - this will be a beta test, US only. I suspect this will be for a limited number of "big" advertisers (so that'll be eBay, then) and agencies with search expertise (Did-It.com, KeywordRankings.com etc). Overture ads will fill the spaces, no doubt.

MSN's contract with Overture lasts until June 2006 - but I suspect the terms allow MSN to use Overture to fill space their own advertisers haven't bought (a backfill deal) and the "buy out" cost is well within Microsoft's budget if they decide to end the relationship completely before June 2006.

Posted by duncan at 05:17 PM | Comments (0)

March 12, 2005

eBay founder for sale...on eBay?

We've all seen eBay adverts on Google for searches that make no sense to eBay as a business. Today I saw the best result yet -

Pierre Omidyar Sale
New & used Pierre Omidyar.
Check out the deals now!
www.eBay.com

(so for Pierre Omidyar)

That's right, you can buy eBay's founder on eBay - new or used! Start bidding now and you too can own your own dot com billionaire - or maybe you can "buy him now".

Somebody should explain the phrase "overkill" to eBay when it comes to buying up keywords...and ask them why the ad is linked to search results for "pierre by". Odd.

Sarcasm aside, I wonder what damage these adverts do both Google and eBay in the eyes on the searching public. They make Adwords results look less relevant, and so deter searchers from considering clicking on links in this screen area (and so any Adwords results) in future.

For eBay, they just look silly at times, and in bad taste alongside some searches. I wonder what impact this has, over time, on perceptions of their brand.

Posted by duncan at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)

March 10, 2005

Online ad spend to reach $16.1bn by 2009

Online ad spend to reach $16.1bn by 2009 according to Jupiter Research.

Posted by duncan at 05:43 PM

5 years ago today: the dot com bubble went "pop"

Five years ago the dot com bubble went pop - Dotcom shares still spook investors (BBC News).

Many investors are (understandably) still cautious about Internet companies and there has been some talk about a "paid listings bubble", esp. since Yahoo, Google and FindWhat have seen falls in their share prices

It looks to me like investors calming down after the paid search hype of some analysts and expressing understandable caution.

But let's reflect on the fact that search and companies like Google, Yahoo etc have generated value for shareholders, their partners and SEM professionals via the phenomenal growth of PPC - and with personlisation, RSS, local search and mobile platforms all developing quickly, there are many more intersting times to come...

Posted by duncan at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)

March 02, 2005

Ask Jeeves land Lycos.com as partner

The butler has a new best friend - the Lycos dog. Ask will power non-advertising (i.e. natural) searches on Lycos.com in future (press release here).

Significance:

- Yahoo lost the deal (Yahoo's Overture bought FAST web search, who powered Lycos.com) Not a massive blow for the big Y.

- Ask are building a distribution network, adding to their acquisition of IHS and existing deals with CNET and some meta search engines etc.

- As this grows, will they be happy to keep on sharing ad revenue across multiple sites with Google? Or will they build a PPC? Or buy a small PPC engine for it's technology, people and advertiser base, and run those PPC listings (with AdWords appearing only when there are no advertisers to keep revenues up)?

Coupled with the MSN speculation, it's been an interesting day (all because the SES New York conference is on now, of course).

Posted by duncan at 06:53 PM | Comments (0)

February 28, 2005

Snap.com officially launches "Cost-Per-Action" Search Advertising

I've been watching Snap.com for a while - they are aiming to offer CPA advertising (cost per acquisition) direct to advertisers; the idea is you only pay the engine for actual conversions (sales, enquiery leads etc):

"With Snap's CPA system, advertisers pay only when a customer completes an action tied to precise revenue, eliminating this risk [of click fraud]. Furthermore, because Snap does not syndicate its results to third parties, advertisers have added confidence that they will receive high-quality traffic."

(Press release here).

They offer standard PPC ads too - the full advert range available is:

- Cost-Per-Click (CPC)
You pay only when a user clicks on your listings on Snap.
Bid-per-click: $0.05 (5 cents) minimum per click

- Variable-Cost-Per-Action (VCPA)
You choose a fixed percentage of purchase price and pay only when the item is sold to a customer from Snap.
Variable bid-per-action: 5.0% minimum per sale

More info here

They are aiming to develop a user base of broadband-enabled "web savvy" users. The real obstacle for them will be convincing users to be loyal to them as their first search destination, not Google, Yahoo or the shopping search sites.

They are trying to offer users more, with logos, product images, and longer descriptions and interactive forms with deep-linking on offer to advertisers: so a mix of some of the best bits of PPC (logos like Espotting), longer descripitions (like directories, or Overture compared to Google AdWords) and product images (Froogle, Shopping.com, Kelkoo etc.).

But most notable of all, Snap.com displays how many users have clicked each listing, the average number of pages viewed on that site by Snap.com visitors, the cost to the advertiser and the conversion rate.

Example for "car buying guide"

The idea is more clicks/conversions indicates a better site and so more relevant result - so the more clicks/conversions, the higher your position.

Paid listings are mixed with natural listings - a high bid does not guarantee #1 ranking. Google's AdWords currently rewards good ad copy; Snap.com aims to reward good sites (those that are good at selling, anyway). They have their own crawler too (submit your URL here).

No doubt some of you will be worrying about sharing conversion data with your competitors. It'll be interesting to hear how they persuade advertisers to part with data - for example, can you see eBay, Amazon and Barnes and Noble making that data public? More likely they will use standard PPC, IMO.

(Note: Conversion data is only shown for paid listings where the advertisers are paying on an action basis and have put Snap.com's tracking code on their confirmation page.)

And their backers? IdeaLab - who just happened to back a certain company called GoTo*

*For the unitiated, you know them as Overture.

Posted by duncan at 03:02 PM | Comments (0)

February 26, 2005

Impression Fraud

What is it?

Causing an advert (PPC, banner or indeed any online advert) to be served many more times than normal. E.g. by clicking refresh in IE.

Why?

On Google PPC ads are positioned based on bid and click through rate. Lots of servings (i.e. displayes) of the advert with no clicks leads to a low click through rate, and can therefore lower the position of the advert in Google results, to the advantage of competitors.

A low click through rate can also lead to Overture adverts being penalised.

How to combat it?

Aside from the efforts of Google and Overture themsleves, watch out for sudden decreases in the performance of keywords - does the number of impressions for the keyword seem to have suddenly spiked upwards?

Related blog post from Search Engine Watch.

Posted by duncan at 05:33 PM | Comments (0)

SuperPages.com PPC Advertising: One Year On

A year ago I wrote about the PPC advertising programme launched by Internet Yellow Pages website SuperPages.com ("A Preview of SuperPages.com's Pay Per Click Advertising").

The company has made public details of their achievements in the last 12 months (their PR people have been sending out cup cakes with candles - and went so far as to arrange for one to reach me in the UK. 10/10 for persistence).

Some facts:

- 16 million unique visitors in December 2004 (31% increase from November 2004)

- 9 million business profiles on the site (57% increase since March '04)

- According to the The Buying Power Index, SuperPages.com's network visitors spend 112% more than the "average" Internet user

- They have also added a self service centre to allow advertisers to manage their own campaigns; if memory serves, when first launched advertisers had to request changes and SuperPages staff then made them.

(Details of their PPC program and other advertising options here).

Now where are the matches for that candle...

Posted by duncan at 02:44 PM | Comments (1)

January 21, 2005

Welcome

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)