Google Spring Training

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?