When I’m managing an AdWords account, I can sometimes forget where these ads are going. A whole lot of AdWords isn’t visible from the user interface. It’s easy to look at cost per clicks, conversion rates, bids, and ad positions – without really doing a check on the actual substance behind it. Especially because I’m [...]
Category Archives: PPC
Human vs Automated Paid Search
June 17, 2009 – 9:56 am
There is a question that many newer consumers of paid search products face: How much should I rely on automated tools for management and generation of paid search ads and keywords?
It’s one that can’t be answered with a simple yes or no. Both approaches have their pros and cons, and in my opinion, it’s likely [...]
Click Fraud is NOT Obama’s Fault!
May 14, 2009 – 8:52 am
Click fraud is the bane of my existence. And NOT because it’s actually a problem. The PROBLEM is that every time a fear-mongering article comes out about click-fraud, I no longer get to talk about how we can help businesses grow. Instead, I get to spend my time talking people down out of trees. To [...]
A Change is Gonna Come
April 24, 2009 – 12:17 pm
New AdWords Interface
I consider myself to be all about change (even before Barack Obama) and feel like if I don’t shake things up in my life every few months then things will get boring. So, you would think when I found out about the new AdWords interface that I would be one of the first [...]
Technology Goals, Network Neutrality & PPC Ads
January 22, 2009 – 3:59 pm
The minutia of technology news tends to distract me from the big picture. The specs of the new Macbook, AMD backing off the move to next generation chips, plans for a YSM or adCenter Desktop Editor, the widget that makes you look like Shepard Fairey’s Obama portrait…etc. I’d like to briefly reflect on the big [...]
Mobile Internet and the Future
November 14, 2008 – 4:17 pm
At Tuesday’s marketing roundtable at Spark Central in Ann Arbor the panel had a very interesting discussion about the future of mobile marketing. They talked a lot about geo-targeted ads that are sent to a potential customer’s cell phone who has opted in to receive such message.
mobile-computer
This got me wondering how paid search will work [...]
Who Clicks on Paid Search Advertisements?
October 23, 2008 – 8:00 am
When I started in pay per click marketing in 2005 the first thing I wondered was “who are these people clicks on sponsored links because I sure the heck don’t.” Often when I explain to people what I do at my job they react in the same way that I did, “people actually click on [...]
Will paid search prices be affected by Google – Yahoo search ad deal?
September 18, 2008 – 2:16 pm
hal varian, sam eagle impersonator
Hal Varian, Chief Economist for Google, Berkeley Professor, author of the awesome book Information Rules and amateur Sam Eagle impersonator, tears down a white paper by an SEM company that predicts that the deal Yahoo made to serve Google ads will cause a 22% increase in Yahoo PPC bid prices. Varian [...]
How can your landing page convert visitors that don’t care?
August 27, 2008 – 1:46 pm
Seth Godin posted a couple of thought-provoking blog posts recently about online ads: Ads are the new online tip jar and a follow-up, Beating the status quo.
What Godin proposes is, when you read a blog, “if you like what you’re reading, click an ad to say thanks.” If everybody engaged in this behavior, it would [...]
Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets
July 17, 2008 – 9:30 am
At long last we are thrilled to announce the release of O’Reilly Media’s Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine and Conversion Rate Secrets. This book details search engine marketing best practices: showing readers how to optimize their conversion rates and performance tune their websites to boost the return on any Web site investment.
This is the second [...]
