Search Marketing Sage

Advertising with Google AdWords’ Display Network is a great way to entice potential customers who are browsing the web. The Display Network is a collection of Google partners and affiliates who allow Google to show ads on their websites. According to the Google Help Center, the “Google Display Network reaches 92% of all Internet users in the U.S,” so it’s definitely something worth looking into. The Display Network has useful targeting options so advertisers can capture interested users. Advertisers can target ads to specific sites, based on website content, or to specific audiences based on user interests. Ads on the display network can include text, image, rich media, or video formats.

Contextual Targeting

Contextual targeting uses a keyword list to show ads on sites that are relevant to the keywords. The goal is to show an ad that is relevant to the content on the page, and thus relevant to what the user is looking for. Advertisers can use keyword level bidding and exclusions to make certain ads are showing in desirable locations.

There have been multiple studies about the incremental lift in search traffic that Pay Per Click Advertising provides in recent years.  I’ve been quoting to clients the Google Study that said that search ads provide 89% incremental traffic.  The studies essentially say that when ads are shut off that the natural search results will only pick up for 11% of the lost traffic.

The study results, are almost in every case met with doubt and skepticism by the clients because the clients don’t trust that the information is valid because Google did the study. The issue is particularly doubted with regard to advertising on the companies name or brand names that they already rank number one for in natural search.

Our Test

We recently started a test for a retailer that had not previously utilized PPC advertising on its brand names before and monitored both the impact on natural search when those ads were turned on and the impact on PPC with the addition of the clicks on those specific brand keywords.

The results pretty much backed the premise of the Google study.  The study said:

Multi-Channel Attribution is a pretty big topic in our industry, and most of us aren’t as knowledgeable as we would like to be on the subject. Attribution modeling attempts to solve the problem of which channel gets credit when a user touches multiple channels prior to converting. The problem with attribution models historically has been that they segment attributes at the single channel level: paid search, social media, direct traffic, organic search, etc., and often lack the ability to simultaneously compare various models across a multi-channel format.

Enhanced campaigns for Google Adwords were introduced just over two months ago now, and are Google’s answer to the increase in searchers using mobile devices to search for products and services online.

Why Advertise on Mobile?

With the increase in searchers using mobile devices, it has become clear that businesses need to adapt their online strategy. Businesses should commit more of their resources to mobile advertising; specifically pay-per-click search advertising or they will lose out in reaching their target market in the ever changing world of online advertising.

Google is continuing to add new features to entice advertisers to make the switch to enhanced campaigns sooner rather than later. The new enhanced campaigns have been met with varied reactions, but advertisers would be smart to adapt to enhanced campaigns soon, as Google will begin to automatically upgrading all Adwords campaigns to enhanced campaigns starting on July 22th.

Are your pay-per-click ads stuck in a rut? Are you finding it difficult to to stand out from the crowd of competitors constantly outbidding you on your most crucial keywords? Are you lamenting the continual decline of clicks on your ads, let alone conversions on your website?

Never fear! Google and Bing have an array of ad enhancements to help supercharge your PPC ads and boost their performance, and this week’s webinar Getting More Clicks and Conversions From Your PPC Ads will show you what these features are all about.