Articles in Pay-Per-Click

Competition is good, especially when it pushes Google to improve the features they offer to advertisers. Last fall, Microsoft began testing its new MSN adCenter, a competitor to Google AdWords. Though the adCenter rollout was marred by bugs, one feature generated a lot of positive buzz: demographic targeting. Always sensitive to the competition, Google recently introduced similar demographic targeting for their AdWords program. Now when you run site-targeted campaigns, you can choose websites based on...

A lot has been said about pay-per-click management since its introduction in the late 1990s by GoTo.com, now known as Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google jumped on the bandwagon as first-generation “paid search expert” Kevin Lee was fueling education and general enthusiasm for a brand new form of online marketing known as pay per click (PPC). I remember the day it became clear to me that in order to get the most out of every online...

Our friend Paul Colligan would be a retired multi-millionaire today if he had thought of this at the time. MTV’s Spring Break Weekend 2000 was sponsored by the folks over at www.GotAJob.com. Back then Paul owned www.GetAJob.com – only one letter different. He hit pay dirt. Nearly naked bodies cavorting around on the screen, and MTV was telling viewers, “Go to www.GotAJob.com!” By the time those people got to their computers, they couldn’t remember which...

Whether you’re new to paid search or it’s old hat, two things every marketer quickly realizes today is that pay-per-click costs are expensive and they are on the rise. With the current strain of finding strategies to profit from click charges ranging from $1.50 to $20.00, one becomes nostalgic for the Goto.com days of $0.05 and $0.10 bids for top keywords. Bygone days aside, today’s high click cost environment requires a stronger strategic mindset.  It...

Once upon a time, advertising on the Google Content Network was like playing Russian roulette – it was impossible to know whether your campaign was going to be massively successful or deadly. As a result, most marketers were extremely wary of investing much money or time on Content. Click fraud was rampant, targeting tools non-existent, and predictability thrown out the window. I suspect that many of you out there – once burnt by Content –...

Is having more data ever a bad thing? Advertisers and publishers have asked themselves this question since the June 2008 launch of two new Google tools. The first, Trends for Websites, is an extension of Google Trends. Like similar tools from Compete, Alexa, and QuantCast, it allows you to research Internet traffic volume for one or more URLs. Google Trends provided search volumes by keyword only, but this tool calculates a site’s audience via a...

Most advertisers using search marketing are looking for more volume, better efficiency — or both. And many advertisers are well aware of the potential of search marketing to help achieve volume and efficiency goals. There is less agreement, however, about the usefulness of content targeting — running on Google’s content network, for instance. Clients often tell SEM professionals, “we tried that,” or “the conversion rate just isn’t there,” or “the content network just doesn’t work...

Companies spend billions of dollars each year on pay-per-click campaigns — and for good reason. It’s a given that traditional paid search and search engine optimization are efficient and effective elements of a company’s overall marketing campaign. Even during this period of economic uncertainty, online advertising continues to capture a greater share of marketing spending, while traditional advertising budgets are whittled away. More than a few industry sources predict continued and significant growth of online...

Asking a search marketer for his opinion on Google’s Quality Score (QS) is pretty much a rhetorical question — we all dislike it. One might go so far as to say that we all hate it. We hate it for its lack of transparency, the often random nature of its penalties, and the utter helplessness we feel when QS prevents a perfectly good keyword/ad group/campaign from showing up on AdWords. To continue reading, subscribe now.Already...

Many people are scared of the content network. Too many horror stories or nasty personal experiences involving wads of lost cash. Turn on Google search, maybe Google’s search partners, and call it good. Content network? Horrible traffic quality. Huge numbers of wasted clicks. This mindset is understandable enough. Since it consists of all Internet sites that show Google ads, it’s a tumultuous and ever-growing, ever-changing landscape. Content has always been much more of a “wild...