Archive for the ‘PPC’ Category

SES Berlin 2010: Advanced PPC Techniques

This post is written by Thomas Hertkorn of Ads2people who is guest blogging for us on SES Berlin 2010. Keep an eye on his posts!

Speakers on this panel were Jan Brockmann Senior Account Manager, metapeople ; Sebastian Reischel Director Client Manager, Blue Summit Media; Lorenz Wacker Managing Director Search & Social Media,j jaron

Moderated by Thomas Bindl

Search Funnels

At the Beginning Jan Brockman shows the individual strength of search funnels. Search Funnels show the path users search. Normally searches going from unspecific terms to specific ones. For example a search starts with “Hotel” and ends up with “Cheap Hotel Barcelona”. If you’re analyzing search funnels you would now increase bids on hotel to be visible. The danger is to bid on generic phrases with a too low cost per conversation value. Search funnels going to be criticized as just another way to get more Budget from your customers. (more…)

Google Instant is making us (or Google?) money!?

When Google rolled out Instant Search only a bit over a month ago (feels like its been there forever doesn’t it?) the first reaction of some was that it meant “the death of SEO”, which was rubbish. The second reaction was that it was “the death of PPC”. Which made more sense, but also was said too quickly. Now it turns out that it was rubbish also, Instant is not costing advertisers money, its making advertisers money!

That is at least if we can believe a research performed by Marin Software, one of the larger managers of advertiser spending on search engines. They noticed that the number of times their advertisers showed up in Google grew by 9% and the clicks on those ads grew with 5%. This lead to an increase of 2% in spending on ads. Which makes both advertisers and thus Google as big winners of the launch of Google Instant. (more…)

Google declares trademarks no longer ‘sacred’ in Europe

We don’t do ‘news’ items that much, but sometimes, you just have to make that exception. Google announced today that starting September 14th it will no longer monitor or restrict keywords for ads served to users in almost all of Europe in response to trademark complaints. With this move they will level the procedure with those in the U.S., Canada, the UK, Ireland and most of the rest of the world.

The change is huge because starting halfway September this means that no matter in which country you reside, trademarks as keywords will not be sacred anymore with Google, making it possible for everybody to bid on trademark terms. Before the trademarked terms were blocked from bidding on within the AdWords network. (more…)

Google wants more of your money: showing AdWords ads for related searches

Tonight’s the semi-final of the World Cup, where the Netherlands will compete against Uruguay. As a true SEO I decided to check out the Google SERP for the query ‘uruguay’. There I found Google showing Adwords ads for the related search query ‘uruguay real estate’. I just bumped into this today. I don’t know if it’s really new, but I hadn’t noticed it before.
related search terms adwords Google wants more of your money: showing AdWords ads for related searches

I’d say it’s a smart move from Google to make more money. This search query normally would show me just one ad from Google itself. So there’s not a chance Google’s making any money from me using this query. So why not show some other ads anyway? They don’t know if I’m interested in real estate in Uruguay, so it ‘s a long shot. Heck, they’re advertising for something completely different themselves. But even with the small chance of me clicking on it, chances are higher than with no other ads at all.

(more…)

Brand bidding & Ad-Hijacking insights – Part 2

Yesterday I wrote about the definition of brand bidding and ad-hijacking, on how to prevent it and what „evil“ affiliates do to book trademarks that are „protected“ by Google’s complaint form.

As promised, today I will talk about the methods these affiliates use to hide their strategies and how you can monitor your brand to find out if your brand gets hijacked.

Affiliates have several possibilities to hide their strategies when they are abusing trademarks and hijack ad copies. First of all, most of them will use geo-targeting  for their campaigns. When they know that the trademarkowner’s office is for example in Munich and the agency is in Berlin, they will cover other cities then Munich and Berlin, to prevent them to see the hijacked ads. (more…)

Brand bidding & Ad-Hijacking insights – Part 1

Editorial note: This post is not meant to give tips and tricks on how to do Brand Bidding and Ad-Hijacking, its meant to give insights on what is done and what is going on.

Two weeks ago, at SMX Munich, I was invited to speak on the blackhat PPC panel. I covered the exciting topic of brand bidding & ad-hijacking in Google Adwords. The topic is pretty actual at the moment, because of the decision of the European Court of Law of March 23 2010.

So what are brand bidding & ad-hijacking? The term Brand bidding is probably pretty clear for most: the use of brands as keywords in Google Adwords. Normally this is done not only by affiliates, but also by competitors, e-commerce shops, auction platforms, price comparison sites etc. (more…)

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