Executive Summary

Last week, Google announced that it would be tweaking its quality score algorithm to provide more weight to a site’s landing page quality. The decision follows successful trial results in Brazil, Spain, Portugal, and Spanish-speaking Latin America, which were completed in August. We’ll dig into exactly what this may mean for your campaign’s performance moving forward.

What’s Changed?

This new algorithm will provide an increase in landing page quality, as it is weighted with the other major factors such as keyword/ad relevancy and click through rate in determining quality score. This change was prompted by Google when it noticed that ads winning the auctions did not necessarily own top quality sites.

But didn’t Google already account for landing page quality score? Correct! However, up until now, we have only seen landing page relevancy considered as a negative factor, meaning landing pages with exceptionally poor relevancy would be rejected, while those with high relevancy would be minimally impacted, if at all.

What This Means for Marketers

The changes will likely take place in the US within the following weeks, so advertisers should expect keyword quality score to be affected during the initial rollout. That said, Google claims this change should normalize within a few weeks, and advertisers should not see any significant shifts in performance.

Ads with landing pages that Google finds most relevant to the query will continue to rank high, if not higher, than they do today, so this news should not cause panic for campaigns already following best practices. If anything, the update will now provide an additional way to increase positioning at more effective CPC’s, improving campaign cost efficiencies simply by following best practices.

Conversely, advertisers with poor quality landing pages will see its negative effect on their campaign performance. Google will crawl landing pages associated with an ad similar to how a site is crawled for organic rankings, which places higher emphasis on your site page readability and overall site quality.

In theory, the update should only further bridge the gap between site development and paid search.  It is our recommendation that search be seen as one cohesive unit between the disciplines, and for advertisers to bridge the connections between their SEM and SEO efforts. 

Potential Impact

In addition to the more widely seen effects of desktop landing pages, more pressure will be added to advertisers with mobile campaigns. Mobile ad serving and organic ranking sophistication will soon be up to speed with that of desktops. As brands begin to level the playing field with optimized mobile experiences, this update will have a great impact in what is soon to be a highly competitive area for ad space.  Given the small share of SERP space on a user’s mobile device, quality score will play a key role in ad rank and performance.   

Algorithmic features such as quality score are vital components to the evolution of search. Engines will continually seek to provide the best user experience, forcing advertisers to perfect their campaigns. While the slight tweak in algorithm makeup may not be the monumental shift we’ll remember at the close of 2011, it is nonetheless a global search enhancement that will yield a level of sophistication amongst advertisers and ease amongst users.

Recommendations

Keep an eye out for variations in ad position and keyword quality score over the next few weeks. Advertisers should continue to push the impact of crawlable SEO and its significance in paid results while maintaining best practices in landing page deep-linking. In the end, campaigns that follow standard best practices from a paid and organic point of view should only see a positive impact from the update.

Recommended Reading

Search Engine Land: Google Adwords Puts More Weight on Relevance, Landing Page Quality

PPC Hero: Mobile PPC: Google Wallet, Quality Score & Speculation

BizReport: Optimize Mobile Landing Pages for Better AdWords Quality Score

Google recently announced two updates that will enhance their current ad offerings: first is an increase in rich media ad units and the second is a circular-type ad unit. Advertisers will see an increase in the proportion of text vs. enhanced ads up from one quarter to one third of its paid search results inventory. Secondly, Google is working on a new ad unit that mimics that of a newspaper circular insert. This is in line with Google’s vision to provide richer information to consumers with the credo that “search ads should be beautiful and informative as well as useful to the consumer as an answer”.

Google launched a newly dedicated promotional website touting these changes and qualifying them with numerous data points. The promotional website provides marketers and advertisers with figures such as:

• The +1 button is being served 2.3 billion times a day all over the web (source: Google)
• More than 20% of searches on Google on a desktop are related to location. On mobile, it‘s about 40% (source: Google)
• 80% of reviews on the site of a given retailer are written by the top 20% of their customers (source: Google)

The news of this new circular ad type comes with little information on the ad itself other than it’s in partnership with Macy’s Inc and Best Buy. Beyond its availability announcement in the space on Tuesday October 4th, there is also speculation that this may tie back to an ad unit creation methodology that was similar to a company, Teracent) Google acquired a couple of years ago. It could essentially create and deliver dynamic display ads based on various factors, very similar to what sources are claiming.

What Does This Mean?

With regards to the circular ad unit and from what we can gauge from sporadic sources, it will be displayed when someone clicks on a regular search ad on Google but it’s still unclear if this is an overlay on the search results page, or if this is a new page altogether (interstitial for example). The ad itself will be formed on the fly, in coordination with the query, the location of the consumer clicking and other factors. In the coming weeks, this should become clearly apparent to all marketers as it rolls in market.

This positions Google competitively with eMarketer projecting a 78% market share in 2012 up from 76% this year. This new Google format also launches in the heels of the new social experience Google+ Project. What this may give advertisers and marketers is the integration sustenance to quell the cross channel mapping craving in display and searchthey have been looking for. Thinking a bit ahead, Google announced that the ad unit could effectively provide multiple clicks through to individual products with a projected increase of 15 to 50 percent as compared to traditional ad types.

At Reprise, we believe that this could also mean a small step towards online to offline attribution by way of providing value in this visual ad unit as a takeaway, which can be plugged into something like Google Wallet or even printed and brought in-store. The tie-in Google can create from the SERP to offline, assuming the new data points this will provide, and subsequent shifts in media buying optimization based on this data, could very well create a paradigm shift in how marketers and advertisers plan and buy media. This is all fairly speculative of course, but the writing is on the wall.

How Do Advertisers and Marketers Ensure Opt-In to Rich Search Results Inventory?

On the search inventory front, advertisers may or may not already be opted into this pool of ad types. Those that have not opted into rich extensions such as site links, promoted video’s, location extensions, product extensions, Google+1 and new betas need to ensure this becomes a part of their ad mix and optimization framework. Those that have already opted into these are well positioned to show up against this new inventory push.

Advantages to the End User

Anytime Google creates a richer experience for the end users, it will be advantageous to the end user and provide more succinct — and in this case visually pleasing— “answers”. The fact that Google’s new ambitious ad unit will mimic something that is deeply embedded in the age agnostic psyche of us all, is a testament to its move towards something a bit more aligned with consumers “wants” out of the web vs. the web trying to shift consumers tendencies. Overlaying the aforementioned with a forceful shift in rich search results from text based, will help solidify this as the norm across all advertisers and marketers search media buys.

Advantages to the Advertiser

Specifically to the new ad unit: The opportunity for brands to get in front of the end user with relevant products/services, tied to specific queries, and aligned with a “known” format like a circular, has almost limitless implications.

It could be advantageous for traditional click to online conversions and most importantly helping to solve the looming online to offline intent of the consumer. If we assume that analytics will come with the newly enhanced display search ad format and if Google allows the consumer to “take” the ad unit with them via the phone or by printing it, while subsequently providing added value with a unique identification number…..it may have the ability to be tracked in-store and fed back to online data helping marketers optimize and plan. Essentially, we’ll get closer to finely tuned online to offline media spend modeling.

Disadvantages to the End User

Not many. Since this increase in rich search results proportion to text based ads and new circular ad unit are positioned to benefit the consumer, the only downside might be load times or imposition of the ad unit pending further hands on experience. If the ad unit does not provide added value to the consumer in-store, that would be a huge miss since these ad units are geared towards retailers.

Disadvantages to the Advertiser

Advertisers are presented with a myriad of existing and new challenges, but only for the ill-prepared. Those advertisers and marketers that have created a campaign architecture, optimization framework, and process workflow with fluidity at the helm.

On the existing challenges front, advertisers and marketers lagging behind in the ad extension space will lose to competitors well positioned to take advantage of the inventory increase towards rich ad types. For example, those advertisers who have not opted into product extensions and who have not figured out a direct feed to this opportunity will have trouble catching up. CTRs may shift to those who show up more often with rich ads vs. those of whom do not, and an eroding of quality score may occur for advertisers who do not react quickly. Lastly, given the positions you must be in for contention of these rich ad units (typically 1-3), the premium inventory space will get a bit more crowded and expensive. This may have implications for those retailers that like to play position roulette on the right-hand rail. A good way to mitigate this risk to leverage a combination of competitive reporting, to exploit engine tactical gaps and monitor SOV and position strategies, and your own analytics that allows you to review your own natural position shifts against your average CPC costs.

The new challenge this represents to advertisers lives with those who choose to watch the search landscape change before them and then react, rather than adapt in the “now” as it relates to new ad adoptions.

Recommendation

The bottom line here is that those advertisers that have not figured out rich ad extensions in Google will suffer against competition that have. If they are not shifting in line with rich ad experiences from an ad type and inventory standpoint, they are missing out on exception opportunities to answer consumers questions in a form that tends to resonate well from a CTR and conversion perspective.

Advertisers should keep an eye on their metrics, and compare them to pre- and post- when this inventory shift was implemented.

Recommended Reading

http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/03/google-says-13-of-search-ads-are-now-enhanced-launches-new-formats/
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-to-Debut-Circular-Search-Ads-Generated-on-the-Fly-224983.shtml
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-03/google-takes-page-from-sunday-newspaper-with-new-circulars-ads.html
http://www.google.com/ads/answers/numbers.html

The mobile device has become a sophisticated piece of hardware with increasingly scalable life applications that run the gamut; it allows us to keep in touch with people in all social circles/platforms, updating us by push by app notifications, acting as place for distractions, a secure payment source, a data repository, augmented reality, and of course it’s also a platform with almost limitless marketing potential. But, while the digital marketer can get caught up in the innovation and seemingly limitless bounds of mobile marketing, the nature of the user or even the device can be lost in creative concepts. The challenge is to tailor the message the user in a succinct and personalized way.

It’s a challenge writing, for example, compelling search copy with its limited character set. Translate that into the mobile web and it gets even more difficult to include cleverness, invitations, offers or other relatively long-winded answers to consumers’ queries via search ad copy.

Navigating through these challenges requires us to revisit what the mobile web represents. In essence it’s a secondary ( and in some cases primary) web experience vehicle that fills desktop gaps and limitations, has a smaller screen, answers real-time questions inclusive of in-the-moment targeting (geo-location) and fuels are lessening attention spans (screen size and use cases drive this). Whatever the desktop leaves in its wake mobile devices pick up, and as per Google, the mobile device provides an incremental inventory source that doesn’t sleep. That said, there is a very small time frame to captivate your audience with compelling messaging in order to secure a qualified click.

Specific to paid search, capturing this audience requires us to tweak approach a bit:

• To the Point: only provide what is necessary to get that click as you have seconds to capture the audience.
• Use Strong Headlines: make your headlines quick, full of wit, smart and provide enough thought provoking mystery to get that user to want to read more via the website content.
• Be Mindful of the Screen Size: we have a tendency to think BIG, which is OK – just shrink it. This applies to text copy and engine tactic mix.
• Frontloading: bring the most compelling information or call to action to the beginning of the ad copy. Remember, mobile users have ADD.
• Testing and Experimentation: try multiple messaging types and if you fail, try again.

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For more information about Reprise Media’s paid search services, visit our website or contact us for a quote.

Situation

Google made an announcement last month that they’ll be implementing new tablet device targeting options on their AdWords interface to give advertisers tighter control over their campaigns. Considering that tablets are becoming a hot item among tech-savvy consumers and that tablet usage is rapidly increasing, it only seems like the rational next step for Google to specifically target this growing audience. And though Google currently offers the option of selecting Apple iPads, this new functionality will allow advertisers to target ads to all tablet devices and operating systems (similar to the current mobile options). This new setting can be applied to AdWords text and images ads as well as in-app advertising.

In the upcoming weeks, the “Networks and Devices” section in the Settings tab of your AdWords account will include the targeting option “Tablets with full browsers.”

From there, you can choose to target all mobile and tablet operating systems or target only select operating systems (e.g. If you only want to target iPads only, you would select “Tablet with full browser” and choose “iOS” as the operating system.)

For measuring performance, there will be an easy way of checking clicks, impressions, CTR, cost, and average position by clicking on the Campaigns tab in AdWords and selecting the “Device” option under the “Segment” drop-down.

Tablet User Behavior

It’s important that tablets are being broken out into their own separate device category, because studies show that tablet user behavior is unique from mobile and desktop user behavior.

According to Chitika Insights, the #1 spot for Google search results is much less dominant on tablets, where it takes up 20% overall Google traffic, than on desktop devices, where it amounts to 34% of traffic. This data implies that tablet users in a touchscreen environment are more willing to scroll for results, even going down multiple pages.  This finding might even suggest that the top spot in paid search advertising might not be as profitable for tablets as it is for desktop ads. In contrast to the static nature of desktops, the mobility of tablets as well as its touchscreen display, is accommodating to the online shopping experience. Jeffrey Grau from eMarketer noted that the iPad is transforming shopping behavior and that “the iPad’s portability, tactile screen and vivid graphics foster a casual and exploratory shopping experience that leads to product discovery, impulse buying and shared experience.”

When comparing tablet usage with mobile usage, Surojit Chatterjee, Google Mobile Ads Product Manager, stated that “the distinction between mobile and tablets is worth making because traditionally mobile usage tends to be the direct compliment of desktop usage, happening outside of work hours or lunchbreak periods, whereas tablets may be used simultaneously with home activities, such as watching TV.”

According to the admob Tablet Survey conducted by Google (March 2011):

•77% of tablet users say that since, they started using their tablets, their desktop/laptop usage has decreased.

•43% of respondents spend more time with their tablet than with their desktop/laptop

•78% of tablet users use their tablets to search for information, 42% for shopping online.

•69% of tablet users use their devices more frequently on weekdays, 62% of tablet users use them more frequently during the night.

Benefits for Advertisers & End Users

Because of the unique features of tablets and the distinctive user behavior of tablet users, this new targeting distinction will offer greater precision and control when managing campaigns, while also providing more detailed, insightful learnings.

1.       Advertisers and agencies will have the capability to optimize campaigns by tailoring creative copy to tablet users.

2.       Advertisers and agencies will also be able to assign proper landing pages specific to tablets whether that would mean steering away from flash pages, creating sites with faster load time, or making sure sites are aesthetically pleasing.

3.       Targeting tablets will allow advertisers to track user behavior patterns and how they differ from desktop/laptop users and mobile users. Advertisers will now be able to track time-of-day, positioning, and purchasing trends among tablet users. At a more granular level, advertisers can break down how user behavior differs according to different OS’s or tablet devices.

4.       Considering that tablet users like to multi-task while using their devices, these learnings will provide more opportunities for holistic monitoring across other media/advertising channels (i.e. television, print) and will provide avenues of integrating these channels with paid search marketing.

5.       With the exponential growth of tablet purchases and higher expectations of the end user, the tablet user will enjoy a better online experience through tablet-optimized websites, while receiving more relevant ads.

6.       Google will also benefit from these campaign optimizations and specific targeting, because they will be able to deliver more relevant ads and site content to their users, providing an overall better search experience.

Recommendations & Considerations

Once this capability is available, ads will run on tablet devices by default, so if you do not want to target your campaign by tablets, you would need to opt out of this setting. They only way that your campaigns won’t be targeting tablets is if your campaign is currently specifically opted-out of targeting iPads.

Though oftentimes tablets are roughly similar in size to small laptops or netbooks, they run on entirely different operating systems. Unlike desktops and laptops, only standard text and image ads can be currently shown on tablet devices, so it is important to make sure that landing pages render correctly. For iPad’s specifically, it is recommended to test landing pages by using online tools like iPad Peek, since Google will automatically restrict ads from running on tablets if landing pages contain a lot of flash or other incompatible content.

In a larger scope, the inclusion of device, carrier, and OS targeting will open up added dimensions of campaign managing and reporting that can be overwhelming and time-consuming if not managed properly.  With a multiple device tracking, agencies/advertisers need really to plan out the scope of their campaigns to ensure that they don’t get buried in the abyss of data and lose sight of the end goals. Advertisers/agencies need to create clear testing strategies to make the most use of their budget while limiting incremental waste.

Summary

It will be inevitable that as tablet sales reach up to 81.3 million units in 2012 (eMarketer, Dec. 2010), the tablet advertising space will heat up and become that much more competitive. Targeting users by tablets will allow advertisers to have tighter control over their campaigns, while also providing a clearer look in identifying trends in tablet consumer behavior for optimizing and reporting purposes. Overall, this new tablet device targeting option will be beneficial to both the advertiser and the end user for it will offer opportunities for advertisers to fine-tune their campaigns, resulting in a better user experience for consumers. However, agencies and advertisers need to be wary of the complications that might arise from the multiple segmenting of accounts and campaigns. With these new capabilities, we are able to slice and dice the data as much as we like, but without clarity in our goals and directions from our findings, we will be losing the big picture. With the arrival of new tools and devices, agencies need to evolve and plan accordingly in order to manage all these separate buckets, while still maintaining a cohesive vision of our portfolio goals.

Recommended Reading

http://googlemobileads.blogspot.com/2011/05/introducing-new-ways-to-reach-your.html
http://googlemobileads.blogspot.com/2011/04/tablets-are-changing-way-consumers.html
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/110510-151100
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/110502-104302

What is Keyword Attribution?

Historically in search engine marketing (SEM) it has been a common practice – and widely accepted – to attribute a one-to-one value to the last keyword clicked (“Last Click” attribution) prior to the conversion. But often times, when shopping for a product or service, consumers use more than one search query to get to their end result. Keyword attribution applies a value to all keywords clicked on prior to the end conversion.

There are 3 sections of the keyword attribution funnel: introducer, influencers and closer. These sections can be seen below in Figure 1.

The first is the introducer; these terms tend to be generic, non-branded terms. Introducer keywords can be found at the top of the keyword attribution funnel. Users at this stage of the funnel are thought to be starting their research process.

The middle part of the funnel is called influencers. These keywords are typically a little more specific in describing what the user is searching for. These terms may include brand names and/or more specific product information. Users at this stage of the funnel are deciding on a specific product or service.

The final stage of the keyword attribution funnel is known as the closer. Keywords found in this section are very specific, at this stage users are often finished researching and are actively shopping for a specific product or service.

Figure 1: Keyword Attribution Funnel

Until recently it has been difficult to tie back the string of keywords used in a conversion. It’s been common practice for search marketers to allocate the most attention to closer keywords that typically result in a last click. Keyword attribution model reporting can shed light on introducer and influencer terms that assist users in converting the consumer, providing a much more robust understanding of consumer search behavior. With this insight, search marketers can allocate more attention to the earlier stages of the purchase process.

How Does Keyword Attribution Work?

Depending on the goals, the advertiser will need to choose the appropriate attribution model. For example, if the advertiser’s goal is to increase awareness, then the first click attribution model is best suited. Usually keywords that are used at the beginning of the purchase funnel are higher in volume which lend well to a brand awareness goal. An example of a brand awareness keyword is “new car” for an automotive campaign. The search volume on a term like “new car” is a lot higher than a term that includes a specific model name of a car. On the other hand the last click attribution model would suit a campaign that had a shorter consideration cycle. An example of that would be last minute flight deals.

Figure 2: Keyword Attribution Models

o Last Click Allocation
Last click allocation is the most traditional allocation method. This allocation method is usually the default setting on most conversion tracking systems. Last click allocation gives all conversion credit to the last keyword a consumer clicked on in their purchase process. Using this method doesn’t utilize the potential of understanding the consumers purchase funnel.

o First Click Allocation
As the name suggests, this method gives 100% of the conversion credit to the first keyword a consumer clicks on in their purchase process. In the example above, full credit would go to the keyword ‘hybrid sedan’. This method is based on the initial visit, or the first time the person becomes aware of your site. It assumes that regardless of any later visits prior to conversion, the initial visit was ultimately responsible for the final action.

o Linear Allocation
A more democratic approach is to simply divide the conversion credit among all the paid search keywords that the user clicked before converting. In the example above, this ‘linear’ method divides the credit giving 33.33% to each of the three keywords.

o Weighted Allocation
Weighting conversion credit creates a customized attribution model for all previous keywords used in the purchase process, shifting value across keywords in a way that more accurately reflects their contribution. The most common varieties of weighted allocation are “Weighted: First Touch” and “Weighted: Last Touch”. These allocation models allow advertisers to attribute even value while focusing on either first click or last click.
There are several keyword attribution tools on the marketplace that are both free and subscription-based. The most important feature to look for in these tools is a customized attribution modeling feature. Some tools have static models that cannot be altered, whereas other tools allow for customizable weighting of conversion attribution. Google, ClearSaleing and The Trade Desk are a few companies who offer keyword attribution tools, among many others.

Advantages of Keyword Attribution

Overall there are many advantages to incorporating keyword attribution to your campaign. Keyword attribution can help increase performance and/or conversion volume for your SEM campaigns, especially campaigns with longer purchase funnels. The longer the purchase funnel, the higher the chance of losing a potential customer. The best way to combat the long process is to increase the amount of touch points with proper messaging to “push” users down the purchase funnel. Keyword attribution also allows search advertisers to create messaging strategies based on where users are in the purchase funnel. For example, an automotive search campaign manager can determine the specific keywords that users begin their research with. Once these keywords are known, search marketers can create ads using those keywords.
Keyword attribution can also help search advertisers make a case for an increase in search budget. Keyword attribution will show proof of how presence on introducer terms benefits overall conversion volume. It has been widely assumed that the more times a user views a specific brand message the more likely they will view that brand as a trusted source to purchase a product or service from. In the past this was hard for search marketers to prove. Now that this technology exists, advertisers will see proof in the value of targeting users at the beginning of the keyword attribution funnel with appropriate messaging.

Another advantage of keyword attribution is the ability to partially understand how users engage with the brand at different points in their purchase funnel. This information can be shared with other marketing channels to provide consistent messaging to users at particular points of their purchase funnel.

Disadvantages of Keyword Attribution

As an advertiser using keyword attribution, it’s still not possible to see 100% of the search queries customers use to find a product. Google’s search funnel will report on impressions and clicks received by all terms that are in an advertiser’s paid search account, omitting any terms users may have queried that exist outside of the advertiser’s account. Outside of Google, other vendors allow advertisers to see additional search queries outside of the advertiser’s keyword list, but don’t include keywords that have not been clicked on.

Another disadvantage is that you must tag your site for the keyword attribution to work. This can be extremely timely and depending on the relationship with the search marketer and webmaster, may not even be possible.

How can Keyword Attribution Benefit Automotive?

The automotive vertical would benefit greatly from keyword attribution. Google and Compete’s Auto Buy Flow reports that the average research period of an auto shopper is usually longer than a three-monthperiod. Understanding what users query throughout the timely, auto purchase funnel allows advertisers to target users with the most relevant message.

Keyword attribution can also help automotive search advertisers increase brand engagement. By giving conversion credit to higher volume, upper funnel queries, consumers that had not previously been considered part of the purchase process can now be focused on.

Since automakers don’t actually sell cars directly from their websites, it is critical for them to measure their online performance through brand engagement key performance indicators (KPIs). Each automaker usually measures around 7 or 8 KPIs on their website to understand how their online marketing efforts are performing. Consumers often engage with specific KPIs depending on where they are at in the purchase funnel. For instance “Build Your Own” (BYO) is an action that users can take to customize how they want their favorite model to look. Once completed the BYO tool usually includes pricing information. The BYO action is usually performed in the beginning or middle of the auto shopper’s purchase funnel. Understanding where users are in their purchase funnel can help auto advertisers include relevant KPI call to actions in their search ad copy. Overall this would increase click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates.

Recommendation

Google and Compete conducted studies that show almost 50% of auto shoppers search five or more times before purchasing a vehicle. While 35% of shoppers that go on to submit an online credit card application do five or more search queries while they are shopping. In most verticals or industries, users typically search multiple times before actually converting. Keyword attribution will align these search queries into a specific purchase funnel path. Understanding this search query purchase path allows search advertisers to capture more engagement and touch points, while aligning proper messaging to help guide the consumer down the purchase funnel in a timely manner. Overall, this will help consumers engage with brands in a more relevant manner giving the consumer a better experience while increasing performance. All search marketers should incorporate keyword attribution to their accounts. After implementation, always remember to revisit results to make sure your attribution strategy still aligns with better performance. If done correctly it will at least give search advertisers a larger understanding of their consumer set.

AdWords Position Preference authorizes Google’s system to automatically increase and/or decrease an advertiser’s bids in order to capture a specific position range on the search engine results page (SERP). As of April 5^th, Google announced that advertisers can no longer enable this Position Preference feature and it will be completely shut down in early May.

How does Position Preference Work?

Ads appear in their positions based on the advertiser’s bid and quality score. When an advertiser sets a position preference, such as “position 2,” AdWords will try to show the ad whenever it is ranked second, and avoid showing it when it is ranked in a lower position.  Bids are automatically managed by Google in order to help ensure the advertiser’s preferred position.

Advertisers have the following options to request:

• Higher than a given position (such as above 7)
• Lower than a given position (such as below 4)
• Within a range of positions (such as from 2-8)
• In a single exact position (such as position 2)

Advantages

Directly, there isn’t a clear-cut advantage to getting rid of Position Preference for advertisers, since it merely eliminates this additional feature. Indirectly, advertisers benefit by competitors not having this option to choose from. When advertisers use this feature, it creates an unnatural bidding environment, which increases costs for advertisers as a result of their competitor’s use of the feature.

Disadvantages

SEM strategies that have a heavy brand awareness element may find the elimination of this feature to be more of a disadvantage. Advertisers that are using SEM to position their brands in high-impact positions may find that it takes a bit more time and effort to make this happen.

Position Preference has always been looked at in SEM circles as a “set-it-and-forget-it” tactic where there is typically little strategy and/or thought behind it.  With that said, there are many advertisers that use this technique to ensure that they have a paid search presence with little effort. Removing this feature requires this segment of advertisers to rethink their approach, as well as allocation of their time and resources.

Recommendation

Eliminating position preference places more emphasis on increasing campaign quality, and less on bids. Ultimately, the SERP environment may become a bit noisier as advertiser’s that once chose not to appear in specific positions will now show up in these positions more often. This may or may not create an increased competitive cost. Keeping an eye on cost is always critical, especially after changes in the game’s rules are implemented. Most of the time there are a host of other variables that come into play as we manage our campaigns and as a result these changes show diluted effects in our results, but one would be wise to keep their eyes peeled as time goes on.

Client

The client is an automotive manufacturer with national and regional digital strategies. The national (Tier I) advertising is brand interaction and direct response focused, while the local dealers (Tier III) are solely focused on inventory and selling the vehicles in individual dealer lots. With that being said, the purpose of the regional (Tier II) advertising is to build the bridge between brand interest and in-market automotive consumer purchase intent.

Tier II consists of six geographic regions that account for 83 DMAs (Designated Market Area) and 794 dealerships. Each DMA has individual campaigns targeted to its respective counties. The primary Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for the regional campaigns is a ‘Dealer Site Click Action’. This KPI indicates that a consumer used the Tier II regional website to find a specific Tier III local dealership and clicked through to that dealer’s website. Reprise Media was brought on to create Tier II campaigns to drive in-market automotive consumers, based on their geographic location, to their closest dealer. The search marketing campaigns were launched without any unforeseen complications; however, it was determined over time that the consumer experience post-click was poor.

Situation & Challenge

Each market has its own website, built from the same template. Because of this, all 83 websites had a similar layout and functionality. Complications that affected the overall SEM (Search Engine Marketing) efforts were a lack of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), a poor consumer experience, and a poor communication process between Reprise SEM team and the site management team. These turned out to be the catalysts for many of the challenges Reprise Media would face:

Slow-load Times
a. An auto-play video that ran in the background of the homepage needed to render upon each visit.
b. The Flash-based site took much longer to load (25 seconds) than the average website.

Inadequate Conversion-Pathway
a. There was no measureable KPI on the homepage (landing page) which was where SEM traffic was directed to.
b. The actual conversion existed on a page that did not have a unique URL, limiting the ability to deep-link traffic to the desired KPI.

Poor User Experience
a. The map on the homepage was not interactive; it simply linked to a larger, functioning map where the KPI could be carried out.
b. The functioning map was not user-friendly, and the view of the map skipped and jumped around as the mouse hovered over dealer icons listed on the map.

Keyword Irrelevancy & Low Quality Score
a. The lack of HTML content did not make for crawl-able text for search engines to determine if the keyword was relevant to the landing page.
b. As a result of keyword irrelevancy, Quality Score suffered and overall cost increased (88% of each region’s keywords had a Quality Score of 4 and below).

As they say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”; this same rule applies when search engines measure website content quality. It doesn’t matter how the website looks, it’s the site’s content that counts. The challenges above ultimately played a big part in negatively affecting the search marketing campaign metrics.

Strategy

Phase 1: Campaign Optimizations
In attempts to reduce CPCs and cost-per-KPI, a series of optimizations were implemented to help combat the issue:
1. Bid changes were made to the top-performing and low-performing keywords to ensure maximum cost efficiency.
2. A series of ads were developed and tested to find the most relevant messaging for the consumer.
Although these changes had a slight positive impact on overall performance, a larger issue was still at hand.

Phase 2: Client Communication
Performance suffered severely due to factors outside of a search marketers control:
1. A communication process was developed to educate the client on underperforming metrics, what lead to those metrics, and recommendations to improve future results.
2. Website inefficiencies regarding page load time, the lack of SEO, and poor consumer experience were addressed in a POV to the client. The POV included an in-depth analysis of how each of the websites’ inefficiencies were affecting the campaign and inflating media spend beyond the automotive vertical’s average.
As a result of the POV, the client pushed to get the SEO recommendations put into place. With the SEO in place, the SEM campaign began to see higher Quality Scores; however, the monthly reports were still showing underperforming results which needed further explanations.

Phase 3: Landing Page Testing
When a user arrived on the landing page, they were multiple clicks away from performing the KPI. A landing page test was conducted that would deep link consumers directly to the dealer-locator map URL. Creation of this unique URL was made possible with the recent SEO recommendations in place.

The idea was to connect an in-market consumer to the dealer-locator page directly without any distractions between point A and point B. A landing page test was created that rotated the homepage vs. the dealer-locator map page on a 50/50 split. As predicted, the dealer-locator page outperformed the main page for each of the markets that were tested. Conversion rates increased up to 50% in some markets when directing consumers to the dealer-locator page.

Successes

When the client saw how much a simple consumer experience change could improve results, they began viewing Reprise Media as a strong partner above and beyond just SEM. The combination of a proactive approach to keeping the client informed as well as the gradually improving campaign metrics as each recommendation was carried out lead to a stronger partnership.

As a result of our new partnership, the client agreed to overhaul the websites and a process is currently in place to execute our recommended changes.

Reprise Media successfully used knowledge gained from search marketing data to make website optimization recommendations, which in turn will feed back into future SEM success and a stronger partnership between client and agency.

Chrome 11 Now Available for Download
Google’s browser upgrade includes some bug fixes, integrated translation services, and speech-to-text features. Speech-to-text is especially great for those moments when you are too lazy to actually move your fingers. WALL-E anyone?

Should Your Paid Search Account Care About Bounce Rates?
This article examines bounce rates and things to consider when addressing them. Does that matter in a world where most SEM campaigns are measured based on ROAS or CPA goals?

Google’s Groupon Competitor Goes Live
Google’s Offers promises 50% off or more at the places you’ll love. Signups have begun in 6 cities including SF and NYC (sorry ATL & Boston). How will Google fare in the crowded daily coupon space? Will Groupon live to regret declining Google’s $6 billion offer?

Google Sees Smartphones As Advertising Goldmine
Google conducted survey of 5,000 U.S. adult smartphone Internet users at the end of 2010. The main smartphone uses include Internet browsing (81%), general search (77%), app use (68%), and mobile video consumption (48%). Google found that 72% use their smartphones while consuming other media, with a third while watching TV, and 93% of smartphone owners use their smartphones while at home.

Translated into Googlespeak : “We’re rich!”

What is Instant Preview in Paid Search?

Earlier this year Google reintroduced a feature whereby a Google desktop-end user could preview a web page by clicking on small magnifying glass icons next to organic listings on the search engine results page (SERP) of Google.com.

Recently Google released news that they were extending this preview feature to desktop paid search ads on Google.com.

How Does it Work?

An end user simply clicks the small magnifying glass icon next to the listing they wish to view. A smaller version of the website then pops up into a frame that hovers over the SERP, providing the user a preview of that ad’s landing page, without requiring the user to leave Google.com.

Advertisers do not need to do anything to have their ads updated with this feature. Google shows the previews based on each ad’s or keyword’s (depending on how the campaign is set up) landing page URL.

Neither end users nor advertisers have the option to opting out of or turning off this feature.

Advantages to the End User

End users will have more options directly from the SERP. This increase in options decreases the instances needed for end users to click away from the SERP. In essence, more extensive research of the search listings can be accomplished directly from the SERP environment then what could be done in the past.

Advantages to the Advertiser

Five words: qualified traffic and decreased cost. If more research is available to end users from the SERP, advertisers benefit by decreasing the volume of traffic that clicks onto the site in an attempt to understand whether or not they even want to be on that site. Every advertiser has to deal with the cost incurred from that segment of end users that click onto their site in an attempt to research whether the landing page content is relevant to the information they are seeking.

Disadvantages to the End User

Not many. Since this feature is only currently available to desktop audiences, the only downside might be that the clunky preview frame could potentially take up a lot of space on smaller desktop screens.

Disadvantages to the Advertiser

Advertisers are presented with a whole host of new challenges. At the core of the issues will be landing page quality. While landing page quality has always been a major piece of the puzzle in SEM, it now becomes that much more important.

Advertisers will need to be very cognizant of how their landing page is viewed in the smaller frame. Some pages that rely heavily on flash or other plug-in components may not view well (or at all), as a result falsely convincing end users that the site does not provide the information they are seeking. Additionally, if competitor’s sites view better in these smaller frames, they might have an edge.

Site preview example with Flash:

Actual site example:

Landing page vs. keyword groupings will need to be refined, and possibly more granular. If end users are searching for specific keyword queries, advertisers that choose to show users’ previews of more top level pages (i.e. home pages) may convince those users to look elsewhere. Again, if competitors are showing a more relevant visual preview, they might have the upper-hand.

Finally, advertisers may want to take the preview feature into consideration when designing or their site. Since this preview feature is now available across all listings (both organic and paid search), having clear, comprehensible pages when they are viewed in the preview window may help to move the needle with increasing site traffic. If a user can’t understand the site in the smaller window, it can be just as bad as when nothing is shown.

Recommendation

Advertisers should keep an eye on their metrics, and compare them both prior to and following the implementation of this feature.

Branded keywords should see less of an effect on performance than the more competitive generic keywords. With the additional choices, users should begin doing less research clicking and helping to drive down the end cost, and as a result, both CPA’s and clickthrough rates should see a dip.

On the site analytics side, abandonment rates and bounce rates should decrease. Users should have a better understanding of where they are going prior to the click.

Advertisers should examine their previews for each ad group. They should investigate whether or not their pages are being previewed correctly. If pages are not being shown properly, recommendations should be made to improve the pages.

Summary

Google has been releasing a lot of new features in recent months (i.e. Google Instant, Google +1, etc.), all of which are buzzed to be “game changers”. While each of these updates on their own may not be as monumental as they are made out to be, as a whole they are certainly making advertisers rethink strategies.

Extending the preview feature into paid search is just another step in Google’s quest to provide the best experience possible for their searchers. Advertisers can stomp their feet all they want, but the smart ones won’t waste too much time in doing so.

Recommended Reading

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/11/instant-previews.html

Target CPA bidding is an enhancement to Google’s Conversion Optimizer, a tool launched in 2007 to improve an advertiser’s ROI. With Target CPA Bidding, an advertiser can set a bid that reflects the average amount they’d like to pay for a conversion rather than the maximum they’re willing to pay for it. Marketers have the choice of using the current “Maximum CPA” functionality or this newly offered “Target CPA” functionality.

How Does Target CPA bidding for Conversion Optimizer work?

For a brand to have the ability to use Target CPA Bidding for Conversion Optimizer, they must already be using Google’s conversion tracking, and have received 15 conversions within the last 30 days. This requires a Google tracking pixel to be placed on pages that are deemed a conversion (i.e. thank you pages).

To enable Target CPA bidding, visit the “Campaign Settings” tab in your AdWords account, select “Focus on Conversions” and then click “Advanced Options.”

Based off of these modifications of account settings Google will analyze the conversion tracking data, and then automatically adjust bids to reach the requested CPA target.

Advantages of Target CPA bidding for Conversion Optimizer?

For brands that are interested in a reaching strict ROI goal, have Google conversion tracking already in place, and are not concerned about volume of conversions, Target CPA bidding might be a good fit, given it should ensure that the advertiser is receiving conversions at their requested price.

Disadvantages of Target CPA bidding for Conversion Optimizer

Advertisers will need to add additional code to their page, and as a result share their backend information with Google. Sharing this much information with their partner vendors may not be ideal for all advertisers. If an advertiser has multiple goals for their search campaigns Target CPA bidding (and/or conversion optimizer in general) may not be a very good suit. Conversion optimizer will focus on driving efficient conversion rates at the expense of any other goal.

While conversion optimizer focuses on getting advertisers conversions at their requested price, it prioritizes increasing the quantity of these conversions below the primary “price” goal. As a result of this prioritization an advertiser that is opted into conversion optimizer may lose out on overall conversion volume.

Also, because Conversion Optimizer is automated, the system may not be taking into consideration nuances and seasonality relevant to that specific advertiser. As a result keywords that may not have performed well at one point in the campaign may be designated as ineffective by the automated system, and as a result not tested again in the future when they may have more value.

Recommendation

We recommend testing Target CPA bidding if you are already opted into Conversion Optimizer as Target CPA bidding may prove to be a better approach to obtain your overall ROI goals.

It should be noted, however, that Conversion Optimizer only makes bid adjustments based off of keyword performance, and does not factor in a campaign’s targeting, ad copy, landing page quality and general account settings. Consequently, while Conversion Optimizer adjusts bids, you will still need to continue testing and optimizing other areas of your campaigns.