SEM: Paid Search
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 News: Yahoo Shopping Flops with King of Pop
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Written By James Song | July 2, 2009 | Share This
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Unless you were living in an undersea cave, you know that “King of Pop” Michael Jackson passed away last week. As has been reported, websites around the world were affected when the story broke around 4:30pm EST. Visitors per minute to new websites worldwide increased 30% and social networking sites such as Twitter experienced network lag and outages due to the thousands of users simultaneously trying to update their status. The phrase “Michael Jackson died” became the highest search query on Google that day, which was so overwhelmed by the query volume that they initially thought they were experiencing a network attack.
This made me wonder about the impact of current events search queries on search marketing campaigns. On Thursday evening I searched ‘Michael Jackson died” on Google and saw a paid search ad in 1st position for Yahoo Shopping:
Search News: Google Adds More Match Types to Play With – How Not To Get Burned
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Written By Vicky Fudali | June 25, 2009 | Share This
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As you optimize your campaigns and check your settings in AdWords, some new options may seem to have appeared on your screen. Don’t worry, you’re not seeing things. Google has recently made two match type enhancements available to help you manage your campaigns even more efficiently – Broad (session based) and Automatic Matching. Please note these enhancements do not replace the traditional big four match types when setting up campaigns – Broad, Phrase, Exact, and Negative. These new enhancements should be seen as being more for analysis and campaign improvement. Read on to see how these match type enhancements can assist advertisers in campaign management.
Search Innovations: The Branding Value of a Search Impression
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Written By Emil Panzarino | June 17, 2009 | Share This
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What is the branding value of a search impression? While most search folks are trampling over and pushing aside impression data to get to the almighty click and conversion data, I ponder the question: Is there a significant branding importance associated with a search text impression?
When we think of branding within Internet marketing, we typically think of Page Takeovers, Interstitials, Page Skins, and a variety of other intimidating sounding nomenclatures.
In fact, some industry-ers scoff at the notion that search (or any text ad) could have any significant value when it comes to branding or awareness. And because the cost of impression is on a per click basis, some search planners /agencies have gone as far as removing impression data from client reporting altogether.
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:
Paid Search: Are Search Refinement Tools Friend or Foe to PPC Advertisers?
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Written By Vicky Fudali | May 27, 2009 | Share This
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As evidenced by innovations like Google’s Wonder Wheel, and Kosmix the search engines have recently been focusing a majority of their efforts on enhancing their user experience.
The logic is sound - Instead of just returning the traditional list of ten text links, search engines have begun to add related suggestions that the user might not otherwise have thought of, or a list of local vendors that can provide what they’re looking for. These type of innovations clearly benefit users, by helping them to refine their search and get closer to the info they’re looking for.
For advertisers, however, these types of UI changes can be a bit of a double edged sword. On one hand, more relevant results lead to better qualified clicks. However, these refinements can have an unintended negative impact on your paid search campaigns.
Search News: Yahoo’s WOO Much Ado about Nothing New
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Written By Noah Mallin | May 21, 2009 | Share This
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Yahoo this week announced that they see the future of search results as something called WOO. While this raises the strong possibility that Yahoo’s entire search team has been replaced with drunken sorority girls, the video on Kara Swisher’s blog of Yahoo’s Guy Raghavan confirms that there is at least one Guy on the search team. And he’s a guy.
Search News: Spotted! New Google Navigational Search Ads
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Written By Noah Mallin | May 20, 2009 | Share This
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Our own eagle-eyed SEO –oligist Dr. Naveel spotted the latest in Google’s efforts to place an ad anywhere search results are today. So far this is only a test but Google is approaching their clients about participation and looking carefully at the data in advance of a full roll-out to all users. Google is simply monetizing the navigation box itself, leveraging auto-complete as a display space for advertisers. By the way, that splotch that looks like cat vomit at the top of these screenshots is Google’s logo for today celebrating the find of a partially fossilized “missing link” skeleton.
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.
Advertising in a Recession: Help, My Marketing Budget Was Cut!
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Written By Noah Mallin | May 14, 2009 | Share This
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This recession-oriented post comes out of a discussion I had with some colleagues earlier in the week. The talk was prompted by the story that as part of their government backed bankruptcy the Obama administration has cut Chrysler’s marketing budget in half. For marketers like us, that’s like watching a limb get severed. Still, whether government mandated or not, it’s a reality that many businesses are scaling back on advertising and marketing just when they need it the most.