paid search

Is Google right to group desktop and tablet together in Enhanced Campaigns?

A few months ago Google announced a huge change to the way that marketers managed paid search with the launch of Enhanced Campaigns.

One of the biggest changes this involved was the move to group tablet and desktop bids together, so marketers are forced to make one bid for both devices. 

In the past we’ve highlighted numerous studies which show that businesses shouldn’t lump tablets and smartphones under one ‘mobile’ umbrella, but now Google has decided to do the opposite by claiming that tablets are essentially the same as desktops.

We recently canvassed opinion among PPC experts about Enhanced Campaigns with the general view being that despite Google’s claim that it’s trying to simplify the way AdWords works, it’s actually a ploy to force marketers to increase their mobile spend.

What are the pros and cons of Enhanced Campaigns so far?

It has been a few months since Google introduced its Enhanced Campaigns, which gave marketers a new way of managing their paid search campaigns.

The focus of the change is to enable advertisers to target people at the right time, in the right place, with the right advert and call-to-action. Effectively, the structuring of Adwords campaigns is becoming device independent, removing the ability to have specific mobile, tablet or desktop targeted campaigns.

Up to now PPC managers have had the choice of whether or not they want to switch over to the new system, although the change will become compulsory in a few months.

To find out how the Enhanced Campaigns are impacting the process of managing paid search, I asked four PPC experts to give us some insight into what they’d noticed so far…

Five examples of local PPC best practice

Local search is becoming increasingly important as consumers look to find information about the products and services near to them.

For example, 81% of UK smartphone internet users have looked for local information with their devices, and these people are just as likely to purchase in your store as online.

There’s an extremely valuable amount of traffic available for local queries, so if you are a local business it becomes extremely important to deliver your messaging to these searchers.

Google has focused heavily on improving its local search results experience, and queries that trigger a local results page have increased in number, so that the location no longer needs to be part of the search query.

Google integrates data from Google+ to its map listings, so the easiest way to make sure your business is appearing on a map search is to ensure your Google+ business page is set up and using the correct address.

Here are five examples of PPC ads using location to enhance listings and (hopefully) increase CTR…

Five important PPC trends

The PPC (pay per click) landscape is continually changing as Google introduces new features, and advertisers become more savvy with regards to the customer information that they’re tracking, and more accomplished at processing and extracting insights from that wealth of data.

Here are five key areas that I am predicting will have an increasing amount of impact on our PPC activities in the year ahead.

Is eBay wrong about the value of paid search?

This week, eBay released a study into the effectiveness of paid search ads which concludes that, for the auction giant at least, ‘the efficacy of SEM is limited at best’. 

It’s an interesting study, and well worth a read, but the report’s conclusion applicable to brands in general, is it just less effective for eBay, or is there something wrong with the brand’s PPC strategies? 

I asked a number of experts about the report, and whether they agree with its conclusions….

Three best practice tips for integrating paid search with offline campaigns

Paid search is ‘always-on’ and a numbers game that needs to be aligned with your offline marketing strategy to reap maximum rewards.

In our recent Paid Search Best Practice Guide, which includes over 300+ pages of tips and best practice, we outline how these ads can support cross-channel marketing campaigns.

Read on for three tips from contributor Chris Camacho, Head of Paid Search at Starcom MediaVest Group. 

James Gurd on enhanced campaigns and PPC best practice

As one of the core toolkits of digital marketers, paid search has been rapidly changing. From constant tweaks and updates to the search engine results page, through to consumers changing their habits by using mobile devices, professionals working in this field are constantly trying to stay ahead of the game in order to generate the greatest return on investment.

The recent changes that Google brought out with AdWords through ‘Enhanced Campaigns’ highlighted the need for new, up-to-date material for this critical area of digital marketing. To that end, we have recently updated our PaidSearch (PPC) Best Practice Guide.

Ecommerce and digital marketing consultant James Gurd is the lead author of our updated guide. James worked with leading practitioners from the field of paid search to make sure that the guide (which stands at over 300 pages in length and close to 120,000 words long) was as relevant as possible for all people interested in learning about and improving their paid search skills.

We spoke to James to find out more about the report and discuss how this will be useful for digital marketers today.

71% of businesses plan to increase digital marketing budgets this year: report

Almost three out of four businesses (71%) plan to increase their digital marketing budgets this year, according to stats included in the new Econsultancy/Responsys Marketing Budgets 2013 Report.

In comparison only 20% of respondents said they plan to increase their traditional (offline) budgets, up slightly from 16% last year.

The average expected increase (for those increasing digital budgets) is 28%, slightly higher than the average expected increase of 26% for offline budgets.

Google posts strong Q4 earnings, buoyed by holiday ad spend

The 2012 holiday shopping season was one for the online retail records and that led to a very merry Christmas for Google, which reported its fourth quarter earnings yesterday.

All eyes were on the search giant, which failed to deliver in the third quarter, much to the disappointment of Wall Street.

But there was no disappointment this time as the company delivered $14.4bn in revenue, a 36% year-over-year increase, and earnings of $2.9bn, up from $2.7bn in the same quarter a year ago.

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