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Hit Search Online Marketing: Paid Search Predictions for 2010by Andrew Redfern @ 8th February 2010 12:07 pm adWords
It is widely expected that the amount of money invested by businesses into the paid search market will grow significantly over the next 12 months. This means that the need for campaigns to deliver an ever-increasing return on investment (ROI) is greater than ever. Digital marketing community Econsultancy has posted its predictions for the paid search market in the next 12 months. • High keyword prices will force marketers to try new strategies According to research carried out in the US, two-thirds of marketers see their biggest challenge in the paid search market as high prices for keywords. Despite the growth of paid searches beginning to slow down, advertisers are continually pumping more money into the industry, and as a result, keyword prices are becoming more expensive. Because of this, marketers will need to focus on careful keyword management, testing, and targeting, in order to increase the ROI on their campaigns. Quality Score optimising will become a priority; this will bring costs down whilst simultaneously driving conversions up. Geographic and demographic targeting will also be more widely used this year, with these strategies reaching out to national advertisers and retailers. • Paid search will be more integrated Although search marketing accounts for more than half of digital marketing budgets (representing tens of millions of pounds for the larger companies), most search marketing programmes are still managed separately from traditional marketing departments. This year, organisations will look to integrate their paid search operations more tightly into the business, rather than running them as a standalone unit. Integrating systems will make search marketers change the way they report and organise their KPI’s, leading to a big shift in how this information is communicated upwards in the business. Search marketers will therefore need to adjust to new processes, using dashboards and proposals for investment. In return, they will be looking to see more executive support and therefore larger budgets. • Paid search will go multichannel Google recently found that over half of online shoppers research their purchases on the internet before eventually buying the products in-store. On this basis, search marketers are currently missing out on credit for half of the revenues their campaigns are driving. However, the tools for measuring across channels are now much more accessible to businesses, whether it’s linking phone numbers to keywords, or taking in-store surveys to see how the customer learnt about the products they’ve purchased. These tools will make it much easier for firms to make properly informed decisions on the allocation of their search budgets, and also make sure that they are driving both online and offline conversions. Learning how offline buyers are researching their needs will allow multichannel traders to find new, low cost keywords to drive profitable expansion of their paid-search programs. • Facebook and Twitter Will Give Google a Run for Its Money Social networking sites like Facebook, which currently has over a billion queries on its site every month, will extend their own search technology to allow users the ability to query the content in their news feeds. This will make it much easier for users to get recommendations from their friends on anything from restaurants and mobile phones, to films and TV programmes. Advertising money for keyword placements is sure to follow suit, therefore search marketers will need to alter their campaigns to account for a more social set of keywords. This will enable them to catch consumers earlier in the consideration process than they could on traditional search engines like Google or Yahoo! And since these users will still in the research phase of purchasing a product (ie, placing a lot of value in word-of-mouth recommendations) these clicks could be very valuable. While it will be difficult to incorporate all of these changes into campaigns, those marketers who can capitalise on some of these trends will most likely be a step ahead of the competition. Ref: HSLP0101AA206 Managing Brand Online: Eurostar miss the AdWords Boatby Andrew Redfern @ 22nd December 2009 6:04 pm adWords
Eurostar’s nightmare Christmas continues. First it was the fluffy French snow causing it problems and now Eurostar’s marketing that is coming under the microscope. Eurostar’s competitors are seeing there own Christmas joy and reaping more misfortune by bidding on the companies Adwords adverts. The screen grab below shows Eurostar are not bidding on there own brand leaving the only paid advert to appear from Sea France.
Naturally this means that Eurostar are missing out on future business through not bidding on their own brand - What is the lifetime value of customer worth to Eurostar? Also praise to the PPC team who run the Sea France campaign. If you are interested in learning how protecting your brand online then contact Hit Search, Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click experts, on 0845 643 9289. Spotlight falls on Bing’s PPC policies after report on online drug paid adsby Andrew Redfern @ 6th August 2009 11:05 am adWords
Interesting report on SearchEngineLand today. They quote a report by LegitScript and KnujO that reveals that the overwhelming majority of pay per click ads featured on Bing for online pharmacies lead to what official guidelines would term “Rogue” sites. This controversy has echos of the furore in November 2008 when Baidu was found to be carrying, and in fact favouring, links to bogus hospitals in China. The report claims that of the online pharmacy ads featured on Bing’s adCenter Pay-per-click advertisting system almost 90% were for drug suppliers that fall into the categories of:
This study was carried out in the last two months and shows how disreputable companies can simply side-step all the excellent work carried out by the search engine’s alogrythms in weeding out sites like this from the natural organic listings. Interesting this report comes out on the same day that Facebook announced it was tightening up it’s advertising guidelines. A few weeks ago Hit Search were asked to contribute to an ongoing BBC investigation into how the Google adWords listings were being used be bogus ticket agencies. It show the a PPC budget is, in some cases, the perfect shortcut. Whilst it is extremely difficult for disreputable sites to climb to the top of the natural listings without resorting to an expensive, time-consuming black-hat link building campaigns. Google has always steered clear of allowing sectors such as online pharmaceuticals and adult website to use it’s paid search system, Google adWords. Until recently it would not allow any advertising to do with alcohol and gambling however it relaxed these rules in certain geographic areas last year. Microsoft and Yahoo Look Set To Anounce Online Search Marketing Dealby Andrew Redfern @ 29th July 2009 11:15 am adWords
The year long rumours look to have been well-founded as industry speculators expect an announcement within the next 24 hours. The news has been broken by Kara Swisher who cites confidential sources. It is rumoured that the last sticking point was a request by Yahoo for an initial payment of several hundred million dollars in addition to a guarantee of a certain revenue for years to come with the potential to run into the billions. A resolution was found and the agreement has now been drawn up. Yahoo’s search bar will be powered by Bing, with a sweatner resulting in 110% revenues for Yahoo in the first year. A huge commitment on the part of Microsoft. Online Ad PPC Spending Stabilises : Bing Showing Improvementby Andrew Redfern @ 14th July 2009 9:37 am adWords
A new report released suggests that although online ad spends may have decreased over the past 18 months, the green shoots of recovery are becoming more and more promising. Specifically the recorded ROI, return on investment, for a surveyed group of large American advertiser has shown an increase in ROI of 12% up to 129% in the past quarter. Based on 81 billion impressions the research shows real positives for the future of the online advertising industry. Online advertising was hit hardest throughout 2008 with a 23% drop, this gap has now been reduced to 21%. The second quarter of 2009 is down only 3% against the previous year demonstrating a stabilisation of the industry spend, which many speculate is the precursor to a return to growth in the industry. It appears that the group hit the hardest by the “credit crunch” are the SME advertisers. Advertisers spending less than $50k pm spending is down 41% from Q2 2008 to Q2 2009. It is thought that this decrease spend overall has lead to a natural increase in ROI as advertisers concentrate far more on the efficiency of their campaign in lieu of the larger budgets available in 2006-2007. By far the largest gainers are Bing and yahoo, who unlike Google are actually taking a larger percentage of online spend than in Q2 2008 . Bing are up 0.1% and Yahoo 0.9% from the previous year, while Google have slipped back 1%. If you are interested in learning how Internet Marketing can work for your website and want more information then contact Hit Search, Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click experts, on 0845 643 9289. Fighting Online Ticket Fraud. BBC teams up with Hit Searchby Andrew Redfern @ 13th July 2009 1:58 pm adWords
The internet isnt just a place where the regular businesses trade, it is also a place where fraudsters try to make an awful lot of money. One of the hottest topics for those concerned with internet fraud is online ticket sales. There has been a huge rise in the number of sites taking money for tickets for sporting and musical events but never actually delivering them to the customer. Internet marketing fraud can be very hard to trace as there are a number of ways to get websites noticed. The path being used the most is currently Google adwords where people have sponsored adverts appear in natural search engines. Unsuspecting users then click these links and buy tickets to sold out or high demand venues although their tickets never actually arrive! This is becoming an increasing problem as huge stars across the world announce further dates, and although there are guidelines in place to help stop this happening, there are still a number of people slipping through the net.
BBC Radio 4 are currently running an investigation through their flagship consumer affairs show “You and Yours“. Their aim is to help consumers spot the difference between genuine and fake ticket distributors across the internet. Recently Hit Search have provided assistance to the BBC in order to help reduce the number of online marketing fraudsters. We were contacted by their reporter Shari Vahl and asked to provide an insite into how exactly these sites, despite being relatively new, can achieve such prominent positioning in the Google listings. She has been working tirelessly to expose the dangers posed by these sites and the people behind them. At Hit Search we feel that clearing the internet of these rogue traders will help make the internet a safer place and make it easier for legitimate traders to run their businesses. Also we are aware that these ticket rip-offs create an atmosphere of “once bitten twice shy”. If a large number of these fraudulent sites were closed down then this will help increase the trust of consumers who may use the internet in the future. New Regulation Guidelines For PPC (Pay Per Click Advertising)by Andrew Redfern @ 10th July 2009 9:38 am adWords
A set of self-regulating guidelines for the online PPC and Google Adwords advertising has been proposed by a US group of advertisers. The aim of the group is declared as “protect consumer privacy in ad-supported interactive media” The guidelines come down to 7 core principles: 1. Education 2. Transparency 3. Consumer Control 4. Data Security 5. Material Changes 6. Sensitive Data 7. Accountability Many speculators are unimpressed however as the code is voluntary and as such has no real legislative teeth to bite any offending advertiser.According to the guidelines many types of personal and sensitive information can still be gathered, such as financial information and searches on sensitive subjects, and this information can be (ab)used by advertisers and other parties. For behavioural targeting to work we need to gather data on customers, from their online behaviour to their lifestyle choices.Where exactly this data goes from public to private is a contentious issue. Whether this attempt at self-regulation will prove to be sufficient to ward off legislation for the online advertising industry remains to be seen. Ultimatley consumer confidence in advertisers will not return until guidelines become law, until that time, it is a step in the right direction. Other Related Stories That May Be Of Interest:
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