Good CNN Article on China Censorship

March 24, 2006

I’m not going to go into the politics of evilrank, SEs invading China, and all that fun stuff.

Just an interesting article by CNN about censorship in China broken into 5 parts:

  • Introduction
  • Key players
  • Filtering
  • What’s blocked
  • Circumvention

Full story here.

Posted by Brad Geddes aka eWhisper | Filed Under PPC Marketing Blog | Leave a Comment 

Ask Jeeves Final Video and Future Outlook

March 23, 2006

Killing Jeeves might have been one of the most understated viral marketing efforts in quite some time. The SEM community is not known for giving in to viral marketing efforts and sending links, press, and traffic towards these efforts. However, Ask managed to pull it off for several consecutive months.

By announcing the death of an icon months in advance of the actual undertaking, Ask garnered more press from both the SEM community and from main stream media than it had in the previous year (or more). Their query share did not change significantly, however, there community awareness did.

The culmination of this effort was a video and final farewell party at SES in New York. The party centered around a Star Wars Han Solo encased in carbonite theme (pictures on the Ask Blog here).

Ask has a smart marketing department, and the entire death and new releases seemed to be well planned as they didn’t stop at the death of Jeeves. Shortly after his death, Ask has tried to capitalize on the heightened awareness of their product by introducing:

  • Maps
  • Encyclopedia
  • Kids
  • Desktop
  • Ask Netherlands
  • Ask France
  • Ask Italy

His death was only a few weeks ago – that’s quite a plethora of offerings in a short time span. While Ask might currently have a small query share, they are the player to watch this year. In order for Ask to really capitalize on their new branding, the time todo so is right now.

If you’re going to watch someone attempt to grab query share from Google this year, it’s going to be Ask vs MSN. Google will maintain the lead, Yahoo will continue to ride in second place with a respectable number, but the dog fight is going to be Ask and MSN fighting for every additional query and user they can recruit to their properties.

It should be a fun few months to watch these two maneuver around the web and the additional offerings they bring to users in their recruiting efforts.

Goodbye to Jeeves – The Final Video:

Posted by Brad Geddes aka eWhisper | Filed Under PPC Marketing Blog, Search Engines | Leave a Comment 

Google AdWords Releases New Product – AdWords Starter Accounts

March 20, 2006

Google has released a new version of AdWords called ‘AdWords Starter Accounts’. This program drastically reduces the complexity of AdWords by not showing several features to these account holders. This appears to be an effort to increase the adoption rate of Google AdWords by SMEs (small/medium enterprise businesses). This product is currently only available in the United States.

The basic premise of Google AdWords Starter Accounts:

AdWords Starter Accounts are limited to:

  • 1 AdGroup
  • 1 Ad
  • 1 Monthly budget (i.e. there are no campaign settings)
    • There is no keyword level bidding.
    • The budget optimizer is turned on.
  • All keyword matching options (including negative match) are available.

The Targeting Options Are:

  • Geographic:
    • Country
    • State
    • Driving Distance (this is 100km radius around a zip code)
  • Distribution:
    • The search partner and content match options are on by default and cannot be turned off.

Reports are Limited to 3 Graphs:

  • Clicks per day
  • Cost per day
  • Impressions per day
  • The date range is flexible

Google does provide information about their normal AdWords accounts within the interface, including instructions on how to upgrade. However, there is a warning that if one upgrades their AdWords account, they can’t return to the starter account again.

This AdWords account is very simple. It took me under 1 minute to create my first account without ever seeing the interface before (I would expect an SME to take longer as they have to read all the explanation).

The promotion of this product by Google, and the adoption rate by SMEs is yet to be seen. The possibility is there for SMEs to easily start an AdWords account and begin targeting their prospects is quite straightforward. However, this is what many SMEs still don’t have to be able to take advantage of this targeting:

  • Websites (many SMEs still don’t have websites)
  • Success metrics (without any conversion tracking, seeing how this option converts will be difficult).
  • see a Google charge on their credit card.
  • Sophistication. The majority of SMEs complete their marketing efforts in an hour long conversation with a Yellow Pages rep. If the SME has ongoing marketing, it’s usually handled by the local newspaper. They often need a middleman (i.e. marketing agency) who works with the YPs and Newspapers to promote internet advertising products.
  • Time. SMEs are very busy. While this is a simple product, it is more likely several will open an account, let it run, hope it does well, and then only revisit it when they

This is an interesting move by Google, and one that is needed to bring local marketing dollars directly to Google. For many, this will be their first taste of internet advertising. The first taste of something is often the most important in terms of perspective. If these accounts don’t do well, it could jade many SMEs to forego other internet marketing options.

So, the question is, will this be a product that helps SMEs succeed?
Or a product that just lets SMEs spend money without understanding the return?

Additional Resources:

Posted by Brad Geddes aka eWhisper | Filed Under Google AdWords, PPC Info, PPC Marketing Blog | 3 Comments 

Google’s Responses to Click Fraud

March 19, 2006

Last week, Google and Lane’s are coming to an agreement about Click Fraud:

Google currently allows advertisers to apply for reimbursement for clicks they believe are invalid. They can do this for clicks that happen during the 60 days prior to notifying Google. Under the agreement with the plaintiffs, we are going to open up that window for all advertisers, regardless of when the questionable clicks occurred. For all eligible invalid clicks, we will offer credits which can be used to purchase new advertising with Google. We do not know how many will apply and receive credits, but under the agreement, the total amount of credits, plus attorneys fees, will not exceed $90 million.

The good part of the agreement is that Google more or less admitted there were invalid clicks (which was an issue a few years ago). The bad news is that it’s a class action lawsuit (so only the lawyers really get money) and all refunds are in Google credits.

The Google credits is definitely an issue as not everyone is still a Google advertiser; and if one were to leave the AdWords program due to invalid clicks, why would they want credits? That part seems a bit naive.

If I went toBest Buy and bought a new plasma TV, and then Best Buy overcharged my credit card for that TV; I would not expect Best Buy credits, I would expect a refund on my credit card for those dollars. While this might make sense for Google as it keeps the dollars in-house, it definitely is not in the advertiser’s best interests.

Another issue that comes into play is many of the ‘click fraud’ tests aren’t very sophisticated. In addition, many of these tests only determine how many clicks are invalid – not if the advertiser was also charged for them – a significant difference. I’ve heard stories of people who don’t track clicks at all decide that their a victim of click fraud because their conversions have decreased. Of course, invalid clicks and conversion percentage aren’t necessarily related, and determining click fraud by actions is a meaningless correlation. At best, it’s a warning flag to perform some auditing on your traffic, but by itself, it doesn’t mean there was click fraud in play.

However, the good news doesn’t come from Google, it comes from 3rd party resources. I’ve heard a few stories of individuals running sophisticated click fraud detection services and they’re always amazed at how few invalid clicks actually get through. Of course, that could either be their detection system or their keywords. One really needs a very large sample (and distribution across all of Google’s partners) to determine overall invalid click trends.) to determine overall invalid click trends.

Here are official responses and FAQs from Google about invalid clicks:

Posted by Brad Geddes aka eWhisper | Filed Under Google AdWords, PPC Marketing Blog | Leave a Comment 

MSN adCenter Resources

March 19, 2006

MSN’s new adCenter is still in beta. However, there are already several excellent sources of information for this product.

Here’s my favorite resources to find additional information:

MSN Official Resources:

Unofficial Resources

In the forums, keep on the lookout for the nick ‘adCenter411′. She is an official MSN resource for helping the community to utilize adCenter effectively. (She’s also a very nice & helpful individual who is usually hanging around the conferences).

Posted by Brad Geddes aka eWhisper | Filed Under MSN PPC - adCenter, PPC Info, PPC Marketing Blog | Leave a Comment 

Next Page »