SEM: Ad Creative
Paid Search: CARS Lifts Boats, but Not the Ones with Holes
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Written By Sean McDonald | August 13, 2009 | Share This
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I have always been fond of truisms - particularly the one that goes “a rising tide lifts all boats.” According to the elves at Wikipedia, this concept “is associated with the idea that improvements in the general economy will benefit all participants in that economy.” Search marketing is affected by macro-economic shifts just like most other sectors of the economy, and sometimes we are foresighted enough to anticipate the tide coming in.
Search News: Branded Search Marches On with Google Video Plus Box
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Written By Emil Panzarino | July 22, 2009 | Share This
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Google released (or I should say re-released) a new product earlier this year for paid search results called the “Video Plus Box”. This is an interesting opportunity for advertisers who focus less on an absolute conversion and have more interest in the branding and awareness possibilities that search holds.
It also makes sense for advertisers who have a strong visual component to their product or pitch – film and television promotion comes to mind. On the other hand advertisers that are more focused on e-commerce- getting people to their site and converting and/or monetizing their paid search traffic in some way- might find this feature to be counterproductive to their core goals.
The Video Plus Box allows a searcher to watch a video within a paid search ad by expanding the plus box {+} link. An early form of this product had been released last year as one of Google’s many alpha tests. It went away for a few months but came back earlier this year as (you guessed it) one of Google’s many beta tests.
Users of Google are no strangers to the general concept of “expand plus box” links in their search results. Google has been showing this feature in their organic listings for quite some time. In 2006 Google introduced the feature that would allow a user to see maps for local businesses within the organic results:
In May 2007, it was blended into their universal search, allowing users to watch videos from YouTube and Google Video inside the organic search results. It was a quick way to play videos without having to load the entire page of a video hosting site. For whatever reason, Google only limited the plus box to its own video sites (YouTube and Google Video), while showing thumbnails and metadata for other sites:
Here’s what the Video Plus Box looks like before activation by the user:
Here’s what it looks like expanded:
Here’s a quick rundown of how it works:
- A paid search ad shows up on a Google as normal, but also includes a small link to preview a video.
- If a user clicks on the headline link as normal and goes to the brands website, as cost per click is incurred.
- If a user clicks on the (+) and expands the ad to watch the video, a CPC is incurred.
- After clicking to watch the video, if the user clicks through to the brand’s website, an additional CPC is not incurred.
- Only 1 CPC is ever incurred per 1 impression
What the “video plus box” does on the user end is encourage the searcher to find out more about the brand and its offerings by having them interact more with the actual paid search ads. Obviously this can deter the user from clicking through to a landing page. The upside of this is branding. Users can still have a chance to interact and learn about a brand without leaving the Google search environment. The downside is that users might abandon the process before a more valued ROI action is completed.
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Search How-To: Marketers Need to Understand Google’s Share Of Voice (SOV) Reports
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Written By Stephen DeAngelis | June 9, 2009 | Share This
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Last year Google introduced Impression Share reports to their list of reporting options, giving AdWords users greater insight into the performance of their Search campaigns. Fully understood, these reports can be invaluable in calculating projections, measuring the impact of offline advertising on online campaigns, as well as in day to day optimizations.
Currently, Google offers four types of Impression Share reports: Impression Share, Lost IS (Budget), Lost IS (Rank), and Exact Match IS. Here’s a breakdown of each report:
Search News: Untangling Google’s New Trademark Rules
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Written By Noah Mallin | May 19, 2009 | Share This
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Google’s announcement this week that they are revising their trademark rules to allow more flexibility for advertiser’s to use other brand’s trademarks in search ad text caused quite a round of hand flapping and hair pulling. The gist of many of the takes on this, including the New York Times and BroadPoint’s Ben Shacter was that despite the possible legal ramifications Google is opening the door to say, Coke calling out Pepsi in search ad text. Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!
Our reading of the changes are a bit more subtle and nuanced though surely, the great Google will be making more moolah as a result.
Search News: Search Marketing Using Two Screens at a Time
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Written By Noah Mallin | April 28, 2009 | Share This
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Last week, Ad Week reported on an interesting study involving TV and online traffic. According to Integrated Media Management (IMMI) more people go online and watch TV in tandem later in the week than do so earlier. While I’m not entirely convinced by the methodology behind their findings there were two points that I thought were important from a search marketing perspective.
Search Marketing: We Are All One Marketing Campaign
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Written By Noah Mallin | October 30, 2008 | Share This
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Last night Barack Obama’s campaign set up what folks in the TV biz call a “roadblock” – running paid programming simultaneously on almost every major network and several big cable nets. Viewers who were determined to avoid Senator Obama could run the roadblock Smokey and The Bandit style by steering a course through the narrow openings on the few outlets that weren’t running the ad or could simply turn off the television and curl up with a good book (Dreams from My Father, perhaps?)
Search News: Election ‘08 - Obama Uses Search Engine Marketing to Manage His Reputation Like a Pro
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Written By Andaiye Taylor | October 7, 2008 | Share This
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On the heels of a New York Times article on the subject, the McCain campaign over the weekend, primarily in the person of Governor Sarah Palin, eschewed talk about the ailing economy and instead talked up Senator Obama’s purported “palling around” with former Weather Underground member and Chicago area civic fixture William Ayers.
To their great credit, the Obama campaign launched a gold-star search engine marketing response to the attack, one that hit all of the best practices outlined in my previous post – and then some. In the evolution from a campaign that was phenomenal on social media but behind his opponent on search marketing to a campaign that is nimble and proactive we can see the basis for a first-class search reputation management campaign.
Search News: SMX East – Search Marketing Happiness is a Warm Churro
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Written By Noah Mallin | October 6, 2008 | Share This
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The Javits Center is a cruel place at 8:30 AM – especially when Search Marketing Expo East is sharing the cavernous steel and glass girdered barn on the far, far west side of Manhattan with a few other shows. I’m not sure that I had enough coffee in me yet to properly express my horror at being asked “Are you here for the kid expo?” “Christ, no!” is apparently not the standard response.
Happily I did find my way into the SMX side of the hall after picking up the requisite backpack full of swag to slip into a comfy chair for the opening panel: “Search Integration: Are We There Yet?” James Lamberti of ComScore quipped that he wanted to prep a powerpoint slide with a giant “No” on it.
SEM: Wachovia and Wells Fargo Miss Out on Windfall from Search Engine Interest
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Written By Noah Mallin | October 3, 2008 | Share This
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Millions of consumers and business who have accounts and dealings with Wachovia and (last week with Washington Mutual) found themselves wondering some pretty basic questions: Is my money safe? Do I have to switch banks? Is the other shoe going to drop?
Increasingly the first place Americans go to when that want answers fast is a search engine. It makes sense – this is when the ability to deliver a relevant result out of the vast sea of information available online truly shines. So why does corporate America still not get it?
Wachovia just announced their purchase by Wells Fargo in the latest in a series of dizzying financial defensive moves by debt saddled institutions. Even more confusing, this comes barely a week after a government arranged shotgun wedding between Wachivia and Citigroup. So what happens when consumers did a search for “wachovia” or “wachovia” and “financial crisis” or “wachovia” and “wells fargo”?
SEM: Election ‘08 - There’s No Debate When it Comes to Optimized Landing Pages for Search Engine Ads
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Written By Andaiye Taylor | October 2, 2008 | Share This
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Successful search marketing campaigns require marketers to execute a multi-pronged strategy the right way. For a political campaign (and any campaign that is impacted by rapidly shifting events) search campaigns must be 24-hour-news-cycle-ready, and if the landing page isn’t spot on it may as well not be run at all.
As we noted earlier this week, the Obama campaign appears to have become a lot more aggressive and quick on the draw with their search marketing strategy. Yet there are two areas where the campaign can build on their improved search presence. First, the Obama campaign could employ a much more tactical landing page strategy. Secondly, and particularly because this is a political campaign, both campaigns could do a better job of pivoting between evergreen issues, those that will always be of interest, and flare-ups, those all-consuming – if sometimes temporary – issues that rule news cycles until another flare-up overtakes them. (Sometimes the two merge as with the always important but, of late, direly important economy in recent weeks.)