Category: SEM

Search engine marketing for generic terms in competitive industries can be costly, but columnist Larry Kim has a better way. Learn how to combine RLSA with social ads for high impact at a low cost. Many PPC marketers are frustrated. Why? Because they feel like AdWords is no longer an option. Over the past few years, CPCs have increased by 3X in some verticals — that’s even with a Quality Score of 9 or 10. According to WordStream data, the average cost per click in AdWords across all industries is $2.32 on the search…

Read More

Advertisers and agencies continue to have questions about how potential data restrictions will affect their research efforts. When Google announced last week it was limiting access to Keyword Planner data, it raised more questions than it answered. Will new advertisers be able to get detailed Keyword Planner data before setting up and launching campaigns? As a refresher, the notice from last week (bolding added): Advertisers with lower monthly spend may see a limited data view in the Keyword Planner. For example, you may see values such as 0, 1-100, 100-1K, 1K-10K, 10K-100K, 100K-1M, 1M+ in the…

Read More

Wondering how to get started with automation? Columnist David Fothergill provides a handy primer, including recommended tools and what they can be used for. To varying degrees, my last few posts have flirted with the use of technology in search engine marketing. These posts have resulted in a few great questions regarding tools I’d use, or how to get started with this or that. There was recently a #ppcchat dedicated solely to the role of automation in this field, so I decided it would be a good time to provide a bit of a…

Read More

Google recently announced some changes to the way bid adjustments works in AdWords. Columnist Thomas Stern explains how this might affect your device-specific bidding strategies. Recently, Google began rolling out an update that will reopen the doors to device-specific campaigns — specifically, this change allows you to set individual bid adjustments for each device type (smartphone, tablet, desktop). In other words, you will now have full control over informing AdWords whether desktop, mobile or tablet is the priority for each campaign. With a new way to better control complex account structures and bidding strategies, marketers now…

Read More

Bidding on your competitors’ brand terms could yield positive results, but columnist Jacob Baadsgaard warns that it might cause problems in the long run. These days, bidding on your competitors’ branded terms has become a common practice for paid search advertisers. To be honest, the logic behind this trend seems sound. After all, if someone is typing in a competitor’s business name, they are interested in what your competitor has to offer… which means they are probably interested in what you have to offer. Plus, anyone who is searching for your competition is probably…

Read More

Wondering how to make the most of your AdWords budget? Columnist Brett Middleton shares his formula for calculating search impression share so that you can make ROAS projections based on budget reallocation. Everyone running a PPC account typically has a budgeting question they are trying to figure out. For those with a tighter ad budget, the question becomes, “How do I get the most leads for this limited amount of spend I have?” Larger accounts run into their own problems; finding points of diminishing returns and making small gains in efficiency while maintaining…

Read More

Still, mobile spend increased significantly year over year, and Google product listing ads continue to drive growth. Overall, spend growth on paid search dipped in Q3 to 14 percent year over year, down from 15 percent growth seen the previous quarter, according to Merkle’s Q3 Digital Marketing Report, issued this week. Merkle says the slowdown was expected when comparing to the period last year, when Google significantly increased the number of ads displaying on mobile search results. Click volume growth slowed in Q3 to 20 percent year over year. Click growth has…

Read More

It’s time to rethink the role of the PPC keyword based on changes in user search behavior. It is with tears I write this article. I weep not solely for my loss, but yours as well. I am referring, of course, to what I see as the inevitable demise of a legend, an icon, the darling of all marketing land: The keyword. Joking aside, the keyword is an entity we should pause to appreciate more. In my recent book (Ponderings of a PPC Professional), I devoted an entire chapter to the…

Read More

Google has positioned its third-party cookie replacement squarely between advertisers and users, and both sides are worried. Earlier this month, Google announced that it would not build or use alternate identifiers to track users for advertising purposes. Instead, the company reiterated that its ads will be driven by one of its Privacy Sandbox initiatives, called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). Advertisers have been anticipating the shift away from third-party cookies for years, but now, we have some understanding of the technology that the industry leader will be backing to replace it. Google has positioned…

Read More

Questions about whether a browser assigning users into cohorts counts as a use of personal data, without consent, may be a privacy violation. FLoC, Google’s alternative to third-party cookies, will not be tested in Europe, according to a report by AdExchanger. FLoC is set to open to advertiser testing beginning in Q2 of this year, but countries that fall under GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive will not participate. “During a meeting of the Improving Web Advertising Business Group (IWABG) at the World Wide Web Consortium on Tuesday, Michael Kleber, a Google engineer, acknowledged that…

Read More