Google has released a new type of Ad extension in the form of a contact form. This feature is still fairly new and is only available to certain advertisers in the US to try.
Basically, with this extension activated your PPC ad will have a plus sign next to a call to action. After the user clicks on the plus sign, a drop down of your contact form to be submitted will appear within the search results. This is only available if your ad appears in the top position and the leads are priced at the maximum cost per click bid.
So how are the leads collected? Google will be collecting the phone number and name from the contact form. You will then receive an email from Google with the lead ID and information requested by the user. The catch is, you can’t contact the user directly, you have to call a special Google phone number and provide them with the lead ID.
This has the potential to really benefit some advertisers as one whole step in the conversion process is skipped. The searcher doesn’t need to click and go through the landing page to leave their contact details, which in effect, shortens the conversion process and could lead to an increase in conversion rates.
On the other hand, there will also be those that will be reluctant to leave their contact details without knowing more about the company, service or product. If this is the case, the contact form may not make a difference for the advertiser at all.
In the attempt of providing users with the most useful results, Google has been rolling out different types of Pay-Per-Click Ads. These not only include normal text but also support the user with further informative elements such as videos, maps, links and even images with prices for specific products.
Ad Sitelinks, Local Extensions, Products Extensions, Ads with video support feature and Comparison Ads are amongst the latest inventions in the world of Pay-Per-Click advertising, as far as PPC Ads are concerned.
It appears like the aim of these new Ads, most of them available in the US market only, is to change the type, quality and depth of information provided from Sponsored Links to consumers before they make the decision of clicking on the Ad and actually land on the website. With consumers spending more and more time in researching products online and competition becoming increasingly aggressive on the net, being able to stand out from the crowd is significantly important.
Although this strategy is going to reinforce Google’s user friendly and consumer oriented image, I wonder whether the above Ads will actually receive more clicks than normal ones. No proven results have been released yet from the biggest player of the online search industry. After all in online marketing it is all a matter of testing, testing and testing.
From today, Google has started testing a new AdWords feature that is currently available to a selective few in the US called AdWords Comparison Ads. It allows users to compare multiple, relevant offers within your sponsored link on Google.
Even though AdWords uses a number of things to show relevant ads to users when they send through a search query, sometimes the ads aren’t targeted enough to provide the right information for the visitor. This is where comparison ads comes into play.
With Comparison Ads, you can also target your offers at a more granular level, leading to more valuable, qualified leads…If they click the promotion, users are taken to a page with more detailed sponsored results. They can choose directly from the offers listed on that page, or they can further refine their search by providing additional information like income and home value. By giving users the ability to refine their search on a number of relevant attributes, we are able to show more targeted ads and provide you with more valuable leads.
Here’s what a sponsored results page could look like:
It’s hard to say when this feature will be available to Australian advertisers as it is still in its early-stages. But if Ad extensions was any indicator, it could take up to 2 years before we get our hands on it. Stay tuned! If you’re a US advertiser and would like to know more, click here.
In the coming weeks, Australian advertisers will be able to conveniently drive more viewers to their YouTube videos with the use of their AdWords account. Known as Promoted Videos, it was launched as a search advertising program on YouTube so that you could promote your video to users. But in the past year it has expanded to a level where Google will now make it easier for you to set up and manage your campaigns through AdWords
This integration will allow you to create campaigns and buy ad space from the one place, with the assistance of familiar campaign tools. From today, this will be available in Canada, the U.K., France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. You can learn more about this here.
To get a better understanding of Promoted Videos, watch this!
Anchor Intelligence has identified and eliminated over 200 click fraud rings involving at least five million distinct IP addresses with the help of its partners and clients. By identifying suspicious overlaps in audience segments and behaviors across its network, Anchor Intelligence uncovers new click fraud rings and applies its insights to its entire customer base. Fraudulent publishers are removed from a network’s system before ad fraud can impact advertisers.
The fraudsters known as “DormRing1” received its name as many of the perpetrators involved were students operating out of dormitories at Shanghai Technology Institute and other Chinese technical universities. Working in conjunction with one of its ad network customers, Anchor Intelligence tracked the operations of DormRing1 masterminds by gaining access to exclusive bulletin boards on various Chinese social networking sites. Anchor learned about the various tactics used by this fraud ring and was able to link many of the publisher sites to students living in dormitories on campus.
“Click fraud rings are active across the Internet and constantly evolving their tactics while trolling for vulnerable networks and advertisers,” concluded Ken Miller, CEO of Anchor Intelligence.
Every buyer or seller of online advertising that uses the Anchor ClearMark system becomes an instant winner in the battle against bad actors. Rather than fighting the arms race against the fraudsters alone, Anchor customers have chosen to leverage the collective intelligence of our network to develop a super strong line of defense against these rings.
Anchor Intelligence also indicates that while DormRing1 was shut down, similarly architected rings have emerged out of India and parts of Southeast Asia.
This definitely poses a challenge to all internet marketers who use paid advertising on ad and content networks on social networking sites as search engines do not seem to have a better way of preventing such fraud on a mass scale. That is why it is important to:
Set up a structured Adwords campaign which allows you to geo-target your campaign to a specific region only or country and
Track the location of your clicks and irregular clicking behavior via Google Analytics.
If you haven’t already checked your email, last night you would have received an email from Google AdWords, telling you that you have at least 30 days before they permanently switch over the current interface to a new version that has been designed to make life easier for you.
If you are like many out there that have been working with the current AdWords interface and have become comfortable with it, in particular those who have tried doing PPC themselves instead of through an agency, this new change can be daunting to say the least. It sort of looks familiar, yet it’s completely different and you wonder why they changed it in the first place when the current interface was working fine. Welcome to the ever changing world of AdWords!
Some of the changes include:
- The way you add/edit ads and keywords
- The way you edit budgets
- The way you create/edit campaign settings
- The layout in reviewing your campaign
Previous Interface
New Interface
If you have started using the new interface, you’ll notice that there are still a number of things missing in it, along with it taking significantly longer to load than the current interface. It will take some time getting use to the new interface (even with it’s similarities to Google Analytics). With this transition, it’s a good opportunity for those who have been thinking of outsourcing their PPC management to do it now rather than later once this change becomes permanent, and you are forced to invest in time that you may not have to learn a new system.
For more information about the new interface, click here.
E-Web Marketing is a Google AdWords Qualified Company and a Yahoo Certified Local Ambassador. If you are interested, please contact us on 1300 785 122 to discuss maximising your campaign to meet your objectives!
Google is keen to help SME’s with their online marketing exposure during the economic downturn.
What does this mean for your business?
The Google campaign known as the “small business stimulus” is to provide SME’s with a $75 budget to run their own Pay Per Click Ad campaign.
Google’s general manager Karim Temsamani states:
“Clearly search is a very important part of Google’s products, and we’re putting resources into that and making sure people are using Google products in search. Search is a very key product for us, and we will continue to invest in it.”
This is a great incentive for SME’s to become involved in online marketing however the question now remains “how effectively
can these campaign’s be managed to maximise a return on investment.”
A handy tip for any SME who intends to take up this offer: It’s all about ensuring that you spend on the keywords returning your investment and of course have a dedicated landing page with great content for each of your keywords to maximise conversions.
The incidence of click fraud has reduced to 16 percent of all clicks industrywide in the second quarter; this is down from 16.2 percent. Even though it has dropped, the figure is still a significantly high number and remains a concern for search advertising businesses along with Google, which owes much of its success to pay-per-click (PPC).
… the use of botnets to perpetrate click fraud continues to rise, reaching almost 28 percent of all fraudulent or invalid clicks, up from 25.2 percent in the second quarter. This is a very concerning trend, according to Cuthbert.
A botnet is a network of computers that have been secretly compromised by malicious hackers who use them for a variety of tasks, such as sending spam and, in this case, perpetrating click fraud.
More stats on the status of click fraud can be found here.
When someone says ”geo-targeting”, we think of targeting a region and having your product/service being advertised for the searches in that area only. In turn, limiting your focus area to fewer clicks to more qualified users. But Yahoo! Search Marketing has implemented a new feature that will bring more traffic to your site.
Previously when you wanted to target United States, you had to either select the entire market - both the U.S. and Canada - or individually select each of the 50 states. Now you have the ability to pinpoint your market!
… some advertisers need even more focus, especially in more populous regions. Yahoo! now lets you zoom in on targeted cities and, in a beta feature, ZIP codes as well.
In July 2005, Google introduced minimum bids for keywords based on their Quality Score. And since then there have been further improvements; the inclusion of landing page quality and landing page load time as factors in Google’s Quality Score.
In the coming weeks, Google is set to unleash further improvements to Quality Score based on feedback from advertisers:
Quality Score will now be more accurate because it will be calculated at the time of each search query
Keywords will no longer be marked ‘inactive for search’
‘First page bid’ will replace ‘minimum bid’ in your account
What does each of these changes mean to your PPC campaign? (more…)
