All posts in Google Adwords

Dennis Yu is CEO of BlitzLocal.com, a leader in local search engine marketing. He can be reached at dennis@blitzlocal.com if you have any questions. We went to the Google Spring Training together in San Fran and he was nice enough to write a guest post on what was covered. He’s done some crazy things with PPC campaigns, so I’d take his advice.

Paul, Larby, and I attended a spring training session for large advertisers at Google yesterday. Besides the free Google goodies, we learned some interesting facts and ways to grow our campaigns:

• 54% of all content revenue on the web comes from just 4 sites: MySpace, Yahoo, AOL, and YouTube. But these sites comprise only 22% of all pageviews. Niche site traffic is not only cheaper, but far more engaging to users and more likely to convert.

 

• 15 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. In fact, based on searches, YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the US. Have you tried sponsored videos and overlays on YouTube? You can’t buy it via AdWords and there are unique ways to target. For example, you could potentially target an artist’s video and show a ringtone ad for their name in an overlay. YouTube Insights will even tell you how engaged visitors are at each point within your video.

 

• 36% of searchers who see a display ad then did a search on line. In other words, if you are building a brand, using display and search in combination will lift sales. Further, using paid search to augment organic brand traffic on average drives 23% more visitors than using organic alone. Thus, there is measurable value to brand bidding. Google’s Display Ad Builder will help you create static and flash ads in minutes– easy and powerful if you don’t have the money to hire professional designers to make ads in multiple formats. Try it!

 

• 30% of people who are watching TV are also on line at the same time. Use what’s popular on TV to gauge what may be popular on-line, too– you can ride that wave to your advantage.

 

• 193 million folks in the US are on line. Of these, 64% have broadband. The average American now spends 16 hours on line per week.

 

• Though the overall economy is hit like never before, 25% of companies say they are increasing their spend online, while only 13% say they will spend less on line now.

 

• The unspoken statistic– how much did Google spend on this training event? They had free booze, food, shirts, books– plus had on hand product managers from Google Local, YouTube Insights, Google Analytics, Google Classifieds, Search Insights, and other groups.

If you’re an affiliate, you’ll want to grow your knowledge beyond Affiliate Summit and Ad-Tech– come to events such as these. Build your relationships with folks at the search engines, too– as they can help you improve your campaign performance. I met other advertisers there who market health supplements, insurance, and online dating. What are you missing out by not being there?

Popularity: 6% [?]

I haven’t really written an article on how I’ve been dealing with Google lately, and PPC ad networks in general. My progression of where I advertise has been pretty simple :

Four Months Ago - 70% Facebook / 30% Google
Two Months Ago - 40% Facebook / 60% Google
Two Weeks Ago - 0% Facebook / 100% Google

Now looking back already, the biggest mistake was relying 100% on Google…and I’m feeling it via slappage.

Now my experiences with Google in these past four months? They’ve slapped more and more, and faster and faster. How have my strategies changed?

Early Strategy : 3 Accounts, Lots of Campaigns in Each, Use Redirect Trick

I had 3 accounts that I’d make 5 campaigns in and use the redirect trick (make your ad so the display URL and destination URL is Geico.com, they scrape Geico to determine your QS, then set the individual keyword destination URL to your landing page. this gets any site through and gives it a good quality score).

It took Google maybe a week before they’d catch on and slap everything. Matt would then just make 5 more campaigns in each account and repeat and wait a week.

Eventually they stopped sending a lot of initial traffic to the campaigns and slapped them right away.

Mid-Way Strategy : Mass Accounts, 1 Campaign Per Account, No Redirect Trick

The redirect trick was getting snuffed out right away so we ditched that and went onto mass account building. Matt made 20 accounts in a day and added campaigns to all of them. We linked right to the site as well. I think because we didn’t use the redirect trick, none of the campaigns got any traffic. I think five of the accounts spent $100 or so, and the rest didn’t do anything.

We ditched that and are moving back to…

Late Strategy : Single Account Rotation with Mass Campaigns, Redirect Back

Now we’re going to use 1 account. Make 10 or so campaigns in that with the redirect trick and see if they all get traffic. Once it gets a burst and gets slapped, we rotate the account out and use a new account and make 10 campaigns in that. Rinse and repeat.

This clearly isn’t the textbook way to use Google and it’s not anything that’s going to generate a long-term profit, but we’re making money on it now and that’s what matters to me. As long as I can keep finding ways to make a lot of money fast, 1-2 good years is all I need.

Anywho, just wanted to openly share exactly how I’m promoting things right now.

I’m planning on getting back into Facebook, MAYBE Myspace, and definitely media buys.

Happy April Fools Day ya’ll.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Just a heads up it looks like almighty Adwords changed something.

When you create a new campaign, the default targeting is now United States AND Canada. I think it used to just be US, so now if you’re running a US only offer, make sure to un-check those bloody Canadians. Oh also…

Dear Google,

When I’ve spent 5 minutes writing ads, picking placements, and adding keywords, please don’t ask for my bid, and then when I click continue log me out of Adwords and log me back in. I lose everything I just did. And it happened to me about 5 times in the last hour. Plz fix this <3.

kthxbye,
uber

Popularity: 9% [?]