Over the past few years, when working with clients to improve their pay-per-click campaigns, one of my first pieces of advice was to opt out of the Content Network.

From 2005 to 2007, it seemed the Content Network was just a black hole.   By default, a percentage of your spend was spent in the Content Network. 

Where did that money go?  Some of the traffic showed up in Web reports such as ‘Google Content Syndicated’ or ‘Google Ad Services.’  But, much of the traffic had no referrer information nor any keyword information.

And, if you did create a separate campaign for the Content Network, the traffic almost always proved to be lower quality than search traffic.

Google realized this.  And, back around 2007 … gave you the option to set bids differently for the Content Network than for search.

But, the problem remained. Where was this traffic coming from?  With no referrer nor keyword data, it was impossible to know.

Google realized this was a huge problem to search marketers.  So, while many search marketers were not paying attention … Google listened and made some changes, and the Content Network got good.

Some things you may not know about Google’s Content Network, 2009.

1) Reach – The Content Network reaches 76% of internet users across both mass media and niche media sites.

2) Placement Options – No more is the Content Network the black hole of search marketing.  You can choose where (type of site or specific site) you want your campaign to run.

3) Exclusions – Even better, if a site in the Content Network is not driving quality traffic, you can exclude it from the campaign.

4) Demographics – When you set up a campaign, you can include only the age and gender that you want to target.

5) Reporting – This is my favorite.  The Keyword/Placement report will tell you not only the normal stats for each click including domain but also interesting information about each site. (Parked Domain, Error Page, etc.)

If you are one of the search marketers who opted out of the Content Network a few years ago, it is definitely time to give it a second chance.

Times are tough.  To say that the economy is bad is an understatement.  So, in absence of actually trying to do a good job,  here are seven ways to create job security for you and your marketing team in 2009 using the tried and true method of smoke and mirrors.

1.  Traditional media is dead.   Says who?
You can’t improve what you can’t measure.  Measuring the success of traditional media buys like print, TV, or radio spots is difficult.  Perfect!!  You have done your job by running the campaigns.  Now, it is the sales department’s responsibility.  If no sales come from those campaigns, clearly it is not your department’s fault.

2.  2009 Media Plan = Unwavering
Sure, lots of time was spent in 2008 determining what was working and what was not, and shifting your spend to focus on the most effective campaigns.  But…let’s face it, that was exhausting.  You know that media plan you created at the end of last year for 2009?… commit and stick to your guns. 

You have done the marketing research that you were expected to do and that everyone has approved.  How much could the landscape really change during 2009?  And, if there are problems, hey, they approved the plan.

3.  Google – Are you being evil?
We all know that historically pay-per-click has been one of the most cost-efficient ways of marketing.  But, it is 2009 now.  Think of all of the challenges…click fraud, rising keyword costs, increased competition.  It is certainly the search engines fault now if your campaigns are not successful.

4.  Very, very important – Make enemies with IT
It is MUCH easier to blame the enemy. If executives want to hold you accountable for ROI, data, or analytics stand tall and point the finger at your enemies in IT.  You would have certainly had the proof to show how successful your campaigns were if only IT had helped you out.

5.  ROI – So very 2008
Explain to your executives that ROI is an overused, overrated metric.  Just because you can track things, doesn’t mean you should.  There are many more important metrics (see #6).

6. 2009 – Choose your metrics wisely
There are so many metrics available to you these days, and plenty that most executives will have no idea what they mean (read…cannot question whether good or bad, successful or not).  Hits, bring them back….meaningless minutia with an explanation laden with technical jargon, PERFECT!! 

Geography, another good one… usually pretty inaccurate but everyone enjoys this stat as they can mentally try to figure out who they know that may be causing this traffic.  Mobile Devices….okay you and I know it probably accounts for less than 3% of the traffic, but isn’t it cool that people are looking at our site on their iPhone.  We are so cutting edge!

7.  Analytics – Wait, why bother?
You did not get into the interesting, creative field of marketing to be tied to spreadsheets, come on.  And besides, who really cares about the numbers.  If executives ask for reports or numbers, explain to them that they are not asking for Web design ideas from the accounting department…so, why is there this double standard?

I hope this list has been helpful.  These are just the top ideas that came to mind.  Feel free to let me know if there are more that I have missed.

Good luck in 2009!

In my last post, I referenced a magazine ad from an older issue of Business 2.0 (October 24, 2000) describing how interesting it is to time travel BACK in time to get a ‘gut-check’ of the present and maybe, even look into the future.

Perhaps, more interesting than that ad, in my journey back in time, was the large absence of Google on the business radar back then.

Not only was Google absent from the ‘Internet at a Glance’ page, but there was not even a mention of Google in the article about ‘buying ads online’ called ‘Open for Bid-ness, Round Two.’

The article opened citing a recent report that showed many online media buys took place by old school means: “faxes, phone calls, business lunches.”

The article described the abundant need for business/technology that worked for both ad buyers and ad sellers; a solution that addressed the concerns; and concerns about introducing new technology to automate the process.  Or, on the flip-side, it described the problems with having to beef up a sales staff, concerns about excess inventory, and big concerns with conflict of interest between publishers, sellers, buyers, and agencies.

Hindsight is so clearly 20/20.   Nice job, Google!  You saw the opportunity, the challenge.  And, you solved the problem.

So, perhaps a good resolution for me (and you) for next year (wow, is it that time already?) is to read these articles with a bit more sense of foresight – to try to figure out how the current big problems could be the next big solution.

This started out as a very different post.  The plan was to just explain all of the reasons why using a tool that automates your pay-per-click decisions and changes is a very bad idea.  The plan was to explain using examples of nightmares, horror stories, as well as serious debates we had about the subject at ClickTracks.  That was the plan.  But, then the plan changed.

Recently, I moved to the DC area and spend a good bit of time not knowing how to get where I need to go.  Obviously, the logical solution was a GPS.  So, for the past weeks, I’ve been relying pretty heavily on my GPS…until this past weekend. 

My trip into DC went perfectly (although I will say that I always tend to second guess the routes chosen, knowing that there must be a faster, more efficient way).  After spending the day with my sister, I returned to the parking garage, fired up the GPS and headed home.  Or so I thought.

Navigating my way out of the parking garage, I was prompted with a question to which I responded ‘yes’ or ‘continue’ like I always did.  Or so I thought.

Apparently, the question is different IF you happen to be in a parking garage or anywhere else where the GPS loses the satellite.  The question (if one were to read it) has to do with the GPS going into simulation mode.  And, granted I probably should have read the manual.  But, the best that I can figure is that in simulation mode the GPS serves up the directions in reverse (from where you came from) to help you to ‘Go Home’ using the assumption that a) you know where you are and b) you follow the directions.  Neither of which – for me - happened.

But, the GPS happily continues to provide directions and locations for as long as the car is on.  I know this because as I was getting deeper and deeper into an area I know that I had not passed on the way into DC, I had this sort of false sense of confidence that I was somehow heading in the right direction because the GPS never said ‘Recalculating’ (as it does often when I miss a turn or don’t follow directions).

Then, that gut instinct took over and I realized I was incredibly lost.  You see my point about autopilot.

Of course, there was one more realization that also changed the point of this post.  As I sat on the Metro today, returning from a client meeting (sure, someday, I will trust the GPS again, but not now),  I started thinking about the evolution of pay-per-click:

Its Beginnings – Overture’s pure auction based pay-per-position model
Enter Google – A little smarter auction (bids teamed with history and performance)
Enter the Quality Score – Wow, even better now relevance factors in to what you pay for a click
Evolve the Quality Score – Landing pages, geography, and more stringent relevance considerations

And, I realized that Google doesn’t have AdWords on autopilot.  I imagine that there are teams of engineers, user experience experts, and business analysts who continually monitor AdWords performance – both for the users and for the massive revenue stream that it is.  And, continue to improve and evolve AdWords.

The premise that any technology can completely remove the human brain from having input is completely dangerous.  If Google is not willing to take this risk on something so key to its business model, maybe you should think twice about taking the risk with such a huge portion of your marketing budget.

Over the past few years working with many clients to understand how effective their pay-per-click campaigns are (and often figure out how to get them to perform better), I have compiled my top 10 list of ways that many marketers blow their budgets on PPC.

1. Ignoring Match Type Options – When you just purchase key phrases, without applying any match type, you inherit the ‘broad match’ settings which means that your ad shows up on the results page when any of the words in the phrase are searched on.

This has the two-pronged negative effect of either driving unqualified clicks or driving down your CTR which in turn drives up your CPC.

2. Ignoring Landing Pages – Many marketers feel that creating custom landing pages is just too much work.  Instead they send all pay-per-click traffic to their home page.  This is tremendously frustrating to those visitors who arrive at your site after just searching on specific words on the search engine.  They now have to begin their search again to find what they are looking for on your site.  You will see that many leave your site immediately, unwilling to search again.

3. Not Implementing Conversion Tracking Code – I am still amazed at the amount of companies who just won’t add conversion tracking code to their thank you page (the code provided by the search engines or provided by your analytics package).  Without this information, you can pretty much guarantee that you are throwing away a large percentage of your pay-per-click budget.

4. Bidding Too Little for Keywords – This may sound strange, but if you don’t pay enough for a keyword you will find yourself at best ‘beneath the fold’ (which is disappointing because many people don’t ever scroll down) or worse, on page 2 or 20 of the results.  This is just one more way of driving up your cost per click by driving down your CTR.

5. Using the ‘Set it and Forget it’ Mentality – This may be my biggest pet peeve.  Managing successful pay-per-click campaigns is not a one-time task.
Effective marketers pay attention (analyze, modify and improve) campaigns often.  Campaigns that are dormant, throw money away uselessly by continuing to spend money on keywords or ads that don’t work and don’t optimize spending on what works best.

6. Ignoring Negative Keywords – Unless your offering is free, thinking about applying negative keywords to your campaign is probably a good idea.

I could be wrong, but the last time I checked Omniture was not a free analytic solution.

7. Ignoring Ad Scheduling – Although it takes a little more work to analyze your campaigns and determine when the conversions are happening, it is well worth it.  Armed with the knowledge that your conversions take place Monday – Wednesday between 9 am – 4pm, allows you to modify your campaign so you spend more of your budget when the traffic that you want to attract is online (and pay less for traffic that does not convert).

8. Not Breaking Out Content Targeted Traffic – Okay, I was wrong earlier, this is actually my biggest pet peeve.  Unless you create a separate campaign with separate, unique destination URLs for the Content Targeted traffic, it is very difficult (even impossible depending on what analytics package you are using)
to differentiate the search/search network traffic from the content targeted traffic.  And, even though you can pay less for the content targeted traffic without breaking it out into its own campaign, you still should take the time to break it out into its own campaign.  Because, what you may find is that the traffic may not be as qualified in terms of conversions (sales), but it may generate good leads that just need additional remarketing to eventually convert.  (And, you may find data that leads you to create specific Site Targeted campaigns that really perform great).

9. Ignoring Click-Fraud or Invalid Clicks – I know that researching to determine click fraud can be time consuming, and arguing with the search engines can be frustrating and potentially even a dead-end.  I am not saying that you should spend all of your time or focus on this, but I do think it is worth paying a
little attention.  ClicKTracks has a great Click Fraud report.  But, you must know when it is potentially click fraud versus just a poorly performing ad.

10. Ignoring the Quality Score – The quality score is definitely a moving target and it recently has changed again.  But, if you understand your quality scores by simply improving your ad or your landing page (or weeding out non-performing keywords), you can dramatically lower your cost per click.  And, if you do this across the board for all of your OK or Poor quality keywords, the savings can make a huge difference.

Click Fraud has been a serious concern for careful marketers for a long time now. But, Click Fraud also has become a scape-goat for some poorly performing campaign symptoms caused by laziness or lack of knowledge:

1 – High bounce rate/low average time on site
Most often, you will find this is the case when you have a descriptive ad that takes the visitor to a generic or a content-mismatch page (for example an online jewelry store with an ad about a silver bracelet that links to their home page describing gold jewelry).

2 – Low conversion rate
There are many causes for a low conversion rate – ranging from a user un-friendly checkout process to a bug on your site. Or, your ad may produce traffic that is just not interested in your product (if your ads imply that you are the lowest price online shoe site and you are clearly not).

3 – Traffic from same IP address (with a caveat)
If you find that you are getting a lot traffic to your site from your PPC from the same IP address, go to www.dnsstuff.com and use the WHOIS lookup. Many IP addresses resolve back to the ISP (like Earthlink or AOL).

4 – Expensive CTR (Your initial Max CPC gets you no traffic even though there is a lot of inventory)
This is a common occurrence when you initially get started in PPC. Your CPC is based on not just what you are willing to spend in relation to what your competitors are, but also your quality score, and importantly your CTR history. So, if you are launching your first campaign, expect to bid high until you can get a history of good CTR

5 – Traffic from non-Google sites, even though you have opted out of the Content Network
Opting out of the Content Network does not guarantee that all of your traffic will be a result of Google searches. Not only might your ad still show up in Gmail, Google Maps, or other Google sites - and unless you have manually opted out of the Search Partner option – you will still see results from sites like Ask.com, AOL, and many, many, many other smaller search sites that are Google’s search partners

More common symptoms of Click Fraud generally result around a big change in campaign performance. Some examples below are:

Spike in traffic from a campaign with no spike in spend or logic/seasonality-cause

Drop in traffic from a campaign with no spike in spend or logic/seasonality-cause

Change in ad performance – if your campaign has been running for a time with a high CTR and a high conversion rate, and all of a sudden the performance drops. First check to make sure there is not a problem with your site. If nothing has broken on your site, start the deeper dive.

Traffic from same IP – when the results of the WHOIS lookup shows that the IP resolves to competitor or other non-ISP traffic

No one wants to waste their PPC budget on bad clicks, but before you go to the search engines with the accusation of Click Fraud, make sure that you’ve done your due diligence to eliminate the symptoms caused by a poorly performing or expensive ad.

As more marketers are being held accountable for their budgets, proving ROI on campaigns becomes essential.  In order to track ROI, you must be able to track revenue on your Web site.  This is not nearly as complicated or technically difficult (in most cases) than you may think (or have been told).  

There are three ways to track revenue on your Web site:

1.  Using Analytics
2.  Using Search Engine tools
3.  Using Both – Comparing analytics to search engine reporting

Using Analytics
Regardless of whether you are using a java script based analytics programs or analyzing your Web server logs, tracking revenue is completely possible if you have two things:

1.  A unique ‘thank you’ page that displays only when a purchase is successful 
2.  Access to make modifications to your Web site

Without a unique page that only displays when a purchase is successful, you will always ‘over-count’ revenue.  Often times, shopping carts are built using one form that posts back to itself.  You can tell if this is the case because the URL does not change from one step of the checkout process to the next. 

The problem with this is that you never get an accurate count of successful purchases or cart abandonment since the URL is the same.  If your shopping cart is built this way, it is worth it to ask your developer to either add parameters for each step or implement a unique ‘thank you’ page.

If you don’t have access to make modifications to your Web site, you can still track revenue but it will not be as accurate as you will simply be assigning a dollar value to a goal page.  Here is how it is done in Google Analytics and in ClickTracks

Log File Analytics
To track revenue using log files, you will simply have to pass the order total parameter and the dollar value of the sale into the query string of the URL.  As long as your developer knows .ASP (or .ASPX) or .PHP, this should be a relatively straight-forward, quick change.

Or, you can use what is called a beacon which is an invisible image that is used to capture data that is normally not found in log files.  Here is an explanation for doing this with Google Checkout.

Java Script Analytics
The beauty of java script-based analytics is that you can track anything that you want on your Web site.  You just need to plan for it ahead of time, and have the ability to place custom java script on the ‘thank you’ page.  Each analytics package will have a slightly different method (code) for tracking revenue.  But, it should be well documented in the instruction manual.  (A quick search on ‘tracking revenue in webtrends java script’ resulted in this pdf with instructions on page 15).

Using Search Engine Tools
Both Google and Yahoo generate ‘conversion tracking’ code that you can simply copy and paste onto your ‘thank you’ page.  This article also has good instructions for generating the Google Conversion code.  You just have to scroll down to the section ‘Using AdWords Conversion Tracking.’

Also, Nate had written a good article about the improvements that were made to the conversion tracking earlier this year. 

For Yahoo conversion code, click here.

Using Both – Comparing analytics to search engine reporting
I am always an advocate of this method, using both.  Without a ‘gut-check’ in place, it is way too easy to make decisions with bad data  (which we mention over and over).

Understand first that the data from your analytics will likely never match the search engine data 100%.  In fact, depending on the time frame that you are analyzing and several other factors, the discrepancy may be as much as 15%. 

But, by tying your analytic data in with what the search engines report, you will be able to get a very comprehensive picture of what is working and what is not.  And it will be clear what changes need to be made to make your PPC (and other campaign) efforts as effective as possible.

If you are new to PPC or Analytics, feel free to join us on Wednesdays this month for ‘Webinar Wednesdays.