Clickable Community

Demystifying Quality Score: Introduction

Hanny Hindi — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:04:00 GMT

"Quality Score" is one of the most important and one of the least understood components of a successful Google AdWords campaign. Everything from your position on a search results page to your actual cost per click (CPC) depends upon your Quality Score, and yet the precise algorithm used to calculate it is a closely-guarded secret. There are a variety of theories about what matters most to a high Quality Score: Click-Through Rate (CTR)? Keywords in your ad copy? A quick-loading landing page? We'll get into those details over the next few weeks, but there is one overriding theme you should always keep in mind: Quality Score is a measure of relevance.

Though Google AdWords is far and away the dominant search advertising platform in the world today, it wasn't the first pay-per-click platform. That honor goes to GoTo.com. In a 1998 article for The Search Engine Report, Danny Sullivan described GoTo’s then-new model: “Advertisers can open accounts and bid on how much they'll pay to appear at the top of results in response to specific searches. Advertisers are currently paying anywhere from one cent to one dollar a click, GoTo says.” The top-paying advertiser got the top spot. The model worked so well that MSN and Yahoo both used it to fuel their own nascent search advertising programs. By 2003, GoTo.com, now called Overture, had been acquired by Yahoo.

As successful as GoTo was, there was a significant flaw in their logic: the highest-paying advertiser isn't necessarily the highest-quality advertiser. Once enough users clicked on an ad expecting T-shirts, electronics, or wedding gifts, only to find low-priced pharmaceuticals or some other irrelevant offering, clicks ― and, therefore, revenues ― would drop off significantly.

Enter Google. Beginning in 1998, Google introduced the PageRank algorithm (named for Google co-founder Larry Page) to organize their search results. This proprietary algorithm assigns importance to Web sites based on a variety of factors―especially links from other sites (i.e., votes of confidence from other users). The higher a site’s PageRank (or "importance") the higher it would show up in the organic search results. With that innovation, Google revolutionized online search.

Google quickly became one of the hottest start-ups in history, but it still wasn’t generating much revenue. The next revolution came when they introduced "Quality Score." Just as PageRank assigns "importance" to a site, Quality Score assigns "relevance" to a search marketing ad. The higher an ad's Quality Score (or "relevance") the higher it would show up in the paid search results. This provided users with the offers they were looking for, and advertisers with the customers they were seeking. Keyword bids were still crucial, but they were no longer the only factor.

Keeping that background in mind will help you be a significantly more effective search marketer. Rather than thinking of "Quality Score" as an abstract, black-box algorithm, think about it as a brilliant solution to a clear business problem: how to deliver the most relevant ads. Over the next few weeks, we’ll discuss how to make your ads as relevant as possible. We’ll cover broad points such as copywriting and keyword alignment, as well as more specific tips about maximizing Quality Score over the life of your Google AdWords campaign.

But first, it's important to know precisely how Quality Score affects your costs and revenues. That’s the subject of next week's tutorial.

Clickable Pro New Version Introduces Powerful Campaign Bulk Upload And Report Scheduling

Vernon Steward — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 02:49:00 GMT

We're delighted to announce new innovations and features to Clickable Pro that will help your business survive and thrive by simplifying search advertising. Try it out! Second, join us for a special Webcast this Thursday to learn how to take advantage of the new Clickable Pro (registration details below).

New Innovations And Features In Clickable Pro, Version 2.5:

Bulk Upload is a new spreadsheet tool that makes it easier than ever to centralize account management across Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. It's now a cinch to create, edit, and delete large volumes of campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords and placements -- all at once.
Report Scheduling simplifies your life by letting you schedule automated reports and insights whenever you need them. You can schedule and deliver PDF or Excel reports to yourself, your customers or multiple colleagues at daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly intervals.
Top Features surfaces Clickable Pro's most powerful and popular tools. It's a simple drop-down menu in the Dashboard that connects you with the features most likely to help you improve.
New Conversion Tracking Wizard helps you easily create customer-conversion tracking solutions that align with your business goals. The steps have been streamlined, giving you more control over implementation.
Updated Yahoo Integration maximizes Clickable Pro's performance on Yahoo's new advertising-network API.

Register For Webcast

Please join us for our special Webcast on March 11 at 1:00PM EDT to learn how to make Clickable Pro's new innovations work for you. Email support@clickable.com to register.

Learn More In The Forums

You can learn more about this Pro release and submit your feedback in our Forums . A release summary PDF is also available for download.

What’s Next: Social

We gathered some great feedback about your interest in social advertising in our Forums and numerous discussions. Expect some exciting developments soon.

Warm regards,

Vernon Steward
Vice-President, Product Management

How Web 2.0 Forecasted Clean Technology, Featuring David Schatsky

Max Kalehoff — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:13:00 GMT

Reserve Your Seat Here

Join us March 24 at Clickable NYC headquarters for our next Interesting Café featuring David Schatsky, principal at Green Research and former president of JupiterResearch. Following the sale of his company to Forrester Research in 2008, David embarked on a self-directed "masters program in green."

With a passion for the environment, a professional background in technology, and graduate training policy, David did some deep thinking on clean tech, alternative energy and sustainability in a search for the point where business and environmental interests coincide. Along the way he found that the forces that have reshaped the Internet over the last decade are at work—to a point—in the energy world as well.

Interesting Cafe is hosted by the culture team at Clickable. It's a periodic innovators gathering for our community members to share ideas and meet interesting, inspiring people. As always, there will be intense debate, interesting people and refreshments.

Reserve Your Seat Here

The Basics of Social Media Advertising (Webcast Recording)

Ehren Reilly — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:15:00 GMT

Thank you to those of you who joined us Wednesday, February 17 for our live Webcast "The Basics of Social Media Advertising."

If you missed the live Webcast, be sure to watch the recording here.

You can also download the presentation power point here.

With nearly half a billion combined users, Facebook and MySpace alone are among the world's largest Web sites. Their reach introduces huge opportunities to connect with your customers - including through advertising. If you run ads on Google or MSN, chances are that many of your ads are running on those sites already. However, MySpace and Facebook also have their own proprietary, bid-based advertising platforms that represent unprecedented opportunities to target specific demographics and drive new customers and revenues for your business.

In this Webcast we covered:

The basics of social media advertising's costs and bidding procedures.
What you need to know to make an informed decision about whether to advertise on social media networks.
Strategies for "hyper-targeting" users on Facebook and MySpace.
How to build effective ad creatives that will drive clicks from social media networks to your landing pages.
The right way to incorporate social media advertising into your larger social media strategy, including listening, building and activating your company's social networks.

Poll: Do You Calculate a Revenue Attribution Window for Your Conversions?

Anna Agishtein — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:16:00 GMT

Do you calculate a revenue attribution window for your conversions? Take our newest poll and see how other marketers have responded. We will publish the results in our April newsletter.

Does Your Company Advertise on Mobile Networks? (Poll)

Anna Agishtein — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:15:00 GMT

We recently asked customers and prospects: "By default, Google activates your keyword campaigns across both its search and mobile networks. Have you disabled the mobile option?" Out of 19 respondents, 42% had disabled the mobile option, 32% wanted their campaigns to run on Google's mobile network and 16% were not aware that their campaigns appeared on Google's search and mobile networks by default. 10% said they did not advertise with Google.

We were pleasantly surprised to see that many marketers were quite savvy and aware that it is not enough to let Google campaigns run on the search and mobile networks by default. In fact, marketers should be setting up separate campaigns optimized for the Google mobile network. Check out Clickable Guru Tony Soric's blog post on best practices for optimizing your mobile AdWords ads.

Need help setting up your Google campaign for mobile? Sign up for a free consultation with our Assist team.

Take our new poll:

Burson-Marsteller (Case Study: Clickable Assist)

Hanny Hindi — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:03:00 GMT

Burson-Marsteller is one of the largest public relations and advertising firms in the world, a pioneer that has been in the business for over 50 years. Its online services are provided by Proof Digital Media, one of the first groups to bring a digital component into public relations. David Brooks, director of Proof Digital Media, turned to Clickable Assist in order to help meet his clients' growing demand for search marketing services. The result has been the best performance David has ever seen, including conversion rates as high as 25 percent. "I've been in Internet marketing for 13 years and I've never seen anything like it." Now, Burson-Marsteller can offer SEM to all of its existing clients. "In the case of our largest clients, it's allowed us to sell more services, which is vital in this environment," David said. "This allows us to add PPC into the mix very easily."

Read the full case study

How To Build Landing Pages That Convert: Free Webcast

Max Kalehoff — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:47:00 GMT

Please join us (Signup Here) on Tuesday, March 16, 2010 for a free Webcast on how to build Web landing pages that convert and drive business.

Choosing keywords and writing effective ad copy are both essential skills for search marketing success. But driving users to your site is only one part of the process. The final – and most important – step is converting visitors into paying customers. To do so, you need effective and easy-to-use landing pages. In this Webcast, you’ll learn the most important elements of a search marketing landing page, and tips to immediately transform your own pages and dramatically improve your conversion rates.

What You’ll Learn: Clickable’s purpose is to empower businesses to survive and thrive by simplifying online advertising success. In this session, we’ll cover:

How to identify your user’s problem – even if they don’t know what it is themselves.
The most effective way to clearly and prominently make your offer.
Strategies for providing trustworthy support, from customer testimonials to third-party awards.
Facilitating a frictionless conversion.
The role of your homepage in a search marketing campaign.
Basic design tips for simple and attractive landing pages.

When: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 1:00pm EDT / 10:00am PDT

Speakers: Hanny Hindi, Clickable Search Marketing Guru, and Max Kalehoff (me), Clickable VP of Marketing

Signup Here

Yahoo! Rolls Out Network Distribution Control

Andrew Bernero — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:43:00 GMT

With the forthcoming Microsoft-Yahoo partnership, advertisers may be wondering whether Yahoo! still cares about search. The answer, according to the Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog, is a resounding "Yes." In fact, Yahoo! recently rolled out several new features, one of which provides advertisers with more flexibility to determine where their search ads are displayed through the Network Distribution setting. If used properly, this feature should allow advertisers to manage their ad spend and return on investment more efficiently.

Network Distribution Features
The Network Distribution setting in Yahoo! now provides three options to advertisers:

1.    Display search ads only on the search results pages of Yahoo! owned and operated sites, such as Yahoo.com, Delicious.com, etc.
2.    Display search ads only on Yahoo! partner search sites, such as Comcast.net, WebMD.com, etc.
3.    Display search ads on both Yahoo! sites and Yahoo! partner sites.

Yahoo Partner Sites
The Yahoo! partner search channel only features sites that trigger ads based on internal keyword searches; it does not include Yahoo!’s content network. It is important to note that these partners are not just exclusively large, well-known sites. They also include a number of smaller sites whose quality and volume of traffic can vary.

If you choose to display your ads on both Yahoo! Search sites and Yahoo! partner sites, you can manage partner search bids separately from search bids, but only on a percentage basis. For example, your bids on Yahoo! partner sites can be set to 10% less than your bids on Yahoo! Search sites.

Access the Network Distribution Setting
The Network Distribution setting can be applied at the campaign or ad group level. To apply it at the campaign level, drill down to a campaign and click on the "Campaign Settings" link. Next, click the "Edit" button on the right side of the "Network Distribution" box.

You will now see a page providing the option of targeting one or both channels.

Careful Data Analysis is Important
This page also displays data comparing performance from Yahoo! Search traffic and Yahoo! partner traffic, including impressions, clicks and cost per conversion. However, what you see here is based on 30 days of historical data. There is currently no option to apply a custom date range in this view. This is important to note, because if you see a large difference in performance between the two networks, you may be tempted to exclude partner syndication -- be careful not to jump to conclusions, especially if you have not had a significant number of clicks or conversions in the past 30 days.

To gain more insight over a longer period of time, use the "Ad delivery" report to better assess the performance of partner syndication. Calculate hypothetical ROI by excluding sites with high traffic and low conversion rates. Remember, you can exclude up to 500 domains at the account level.

Also, if you decide to manage partner search sites differently, be careful not to make any drastic bid reductions, as you run the risk of limiting your ad impressions or suppressing them altogether. Instead, consider a more gradual approach to reduction and again, be sure to utilize the Ad delivery report which might even reduce the need for bid reductions altogether.

Andrew Bernero, Clickable SEM Guru

Note: Clickable employees volunteer several hours a week to helping other search marketers succeed. "Clickable Gurus" participate in numerous online search communities to provide straightforward answers to numerous questions, and, each week, one of the gurus posts a search-marketing tip to the Clickable Blog.

The Role of Meta Tags in Your Site's SEO Success

Tony Soric — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:03:00 GMT

At Clickable, our primary services focus on the world of paid search (PPC). While paid search is an extremely effective way to drive qualified traffic to your Web site, a well rounded search engine marketing (SEM) program should be complemented with a strong organic (free search results) presence.

I've put together a multi-part blog post series covering important aspects of SEO. If you are new to SEO, these tips will help you build a strong foundation for obtaining SEO traffic. For those of you who are more advanced in SEO, my hope is that you’ll pick up a tip or strategy that you aren't currently employing in your own SEO campaign.

In the first part of the series we’ll take a look at important on-page HTML elements that can influence your SEO rankings.

META tags
The META tags are arguably the most important on-page HTML elements when it comes to SEO. META tags consist of three tags that reside in the <head> of your HTML code and should be found at the very top of your page.

META title tag – The Title tag acts as, you guessed it – the title of the page in question. This tag helps the search bots understand the theme of your page. For those that are unfamiliar with search bots, bots are essentially scripts of code that the search engines use to crawl and identify Web pages that exist throughout the Internet. In the search engine results pages (SERPs), the title tag is the topmost hypertext link for each search result.

Title Tag Code: (Example)

<title>Apple - MacBook - The $999 notebook, completely redesigned.</title>

META Description tag – The Description tag also resides in the <head> tag of the HTML code. This tag surfaces in SERP results directly under the Title tag and offers you a space to elaborate on the page’s theme. Ideally, the Title and Description tags should follow each other thematically.

Description tag code: (example)

META Keywords tags – The Keywords tag has been largely ignored by the major search engine (Google, Yahoo, MSN) bots for the last several years. In the early days of SEO, the spiders used this tag to help categorize sites and rank them based on keyword relevancy. As you can imagine, spammers took advantage of this loophole and keyword-stuffed this META tag with unrelated high-trafficked terms in order to increase their site traffic. (Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, etc.)

The keywords META tag does not appear in the SERP results (it only resides in the HTML code of your site). So should you completely ignore the Keywords META tag? It’s really up to you – some say there is no reason to neglect this META despite the bot’s propensity to ignore it (search engines tend to be fickle creatures, constantly changing their algorithms to thwart spamming attempts). If you are already making an effort to optimize your Title and Description tags, it will not hurt your site to optimize your Keywords tag as well.

Keyword tag code: (example)

<meta name="keywords" content="pay per click management, ppc software, google adwords, bid management, search marketing tool, ppc management, pay per click, internet marketing, search engine marketing" />

META tags play an important role in your site’s success with SEO, mainly by helping the bots identify the theme of your Web site. The key takeaway when setting up META tags is to remember to be concise and consistent (at the page level). Stay tuned for the next installment in this series.

This post is a summary of Tony’s article “Unloved But Still Important: How to Leverage Meta Tags” published on Search Engine Land by Third Door Media.

Tony Soric, Clickable SEM Guru

Interactive Media Awards Bestows Highest Honor To Clickable

Max Kalehoff — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:54:00 GMT

The most valuable rewards we receive at Clickable are happy customers who remain loyal and co-create with us, and recommend us to others. Still, we're delighted when industry groups recognize our efforts to help businesses survive and thrive by delivering products that simplify online advertising success.

And that is the case today: The Interactive Media Awards (IMA) has selected Clickable's Pro advertising management solution as winner of the IMA Best in Class award for Computer Software. According to IMA, the Best in Class award is its highest honor, representing the very best in interactive planning, execution and overall professionalism. Past IMA winners include Facebook, IBM, Blip.TV, Cisco, Electronic Arts, GE, National Geographic, Philips and SAP, among others.

In order to win the IMA Best in Class award, entries have to successfully pass through a comprehensive judging process and achieve high marks in each of five criteria: design; content; feature functionality; usability and standards compliance; and cross-browser compatibility. According to the IMA, this is an achievement only a fraction of sites in the IMA competition earn each year.

Our official news release is here. Many thanks to my Clickable colleagues and our customers, who've helped us earn this honor.

The Basics Of Social Media Advertising

Max Kalehoff — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:21:00 GMT

If you're interested in opportunities to grow your business by advertising on Facebook and MySpace, be sure to join our Webcast on Wednesday, February 17, 2010, at 1:00pm EDT.

With nearly half a billion combined users, Facebook and MySpace alone are among the world’s largest Web sites. Their reach introduces huge opportunities to connect with your customers – including through advertising. If you run ads on Google or MSN, chances are that many of your ads are running on those sites already. However, MySpace and Facebook also have their own proprietary, bid-based advertising platforms that represent unprecedented opportunities to target specific demographics and drive new customers and revenues for your business.

In our Webcast you'll learn:

The basics of social media advertising’s costs and bidding procedures.
What you need to know to make an informed decision about whether to advertise on social media networks.
Strategies for “hyper-targeting” users on Facebook and MySpace.
How to build effective ad creatives that will drive clicks from social media networks to your landing pages.
The right way to incorporate social media advertising into your larger social media strategy, including listening, building and activating your company’s social networks.

This Webcast will feature Ehren Reilly, PhD, Clickable Social Media Guru, and I'll be moderating.

Seats for this live Webcast are limited, so sign up soon.

Does Your Company Advertise on Mobile Networks? (Poll)

Anna Agishtein — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:40:00 GMT

By default, Google activates your keyword campaigns against both its search and mobile networks. Have you disabled the mobile option? Take our newest poll and see how other marketers have responded. We will publish the results in our March newsletter.

Does your Company Have a Branded Facebook or Twitter Page? (Poll)

Anna Agishtein — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:35:00 GMT

We recently asked a sample of customers and readers: "Does your company have a branded Facebook or Twitter page?" Among 18 respondents, 50% had branded pages on Facebook and Twitter; 28% had just a branded Facebook page; 17% had neither; 6% only had a branded Twitter page.

Branded pages on social networking sites are free, non-intrusive ways to connect and communicate with your customers. To learn how to gain new customers on social networks, join our upcoming Webcast on "The Basics of Social Media Advertising," and read Guru Ehren Reilly's insightful series on PPC advertising on social networking sites.

Clickable Community Poll: January 2010

Does your company have a branded Facebook or Twitter page?

Take our next poll!

Are You Ready To Succeed? Clickable Interview With Professor Srikumar Rao (Video)

Max Kalehoff — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:58:00 GMT

Our culture and acquired mental models predispose many of us to unhappiness, but things don't have to be that way. That's according to Professor Srikumar Rao, our feature guest at the January 28, 2010 Interesting Café, Clickable's innovators and culture event series.

Following a successful career in corporations and then academia, Professor Srikumar Rao eventually pursued a different path: studying the world's great thinkers and applying their knowledge to help people become more engaged in their work and find deeper meaning in it. He conceived the popular course "Creativity and Personal Mastery," and has taught it repeatedly at top business schools including Columbia, Haas (Berkeley) and London Business School. It is the only business school course that has its own alumni association. Not surprisingly, Professor Rao attracted a packed house at Interesting Café. (Bonus: during his talk, Professor Rao cited his award-winning research on attributes required of today's leaders; the paper is available here.)

After his group talk, I sat down with Professor Rao for an exclusive interview to probe his perspectives on happiness and how to achieve it. See the video below.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

You can learn more about Professor Rao at his Web site: www.areyoureadytosucceed.com. If you'd like to sign up for his course, contact Laura Garnett (garnettlaura at gmail dot com). Note: his next course begins February 10, 2010.

Interesting Cafe is hosted by the culture team at Clickable. It's a periodic gathering for our colleagues and community to share ideas and meet interesting people. If you'd like to join a future Interesting Café, send me an email (mkalehoff at clickable dot com) with "Interesting Café" in the subject and I'll add you to our event notification list.

How To Make Super-Relevant Search Ads With Static Keyword Insertion And Narrow Ad Groups

Ehren Reilly — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:38:00 GMT

If you read this blog regularly, you've been repeatedly encouraged to take advantage of dynamic keyword insertion (DKI), a method of including a variable text segment in your ad copy, into which the keyword that the user searched for is dynamically inserted into your ad. The resulting rendered ad copy that is uniquely relevant to the user. DKI is a good idea for ads that appear on search results pages triggered by a specific keyword.

However, not all CPC ads appear on search results pages:

Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft content match ads are not specific to a single keyword -- they are triggered based off the full set of keywords in your ad group -- and so dynamic keyword insertion does not apply on the content network (your default text is used instead).
Non-search engine CPC networks like Facebook, MySpace, AdBrite, and many others do not even offer DKI.

And not all search ad groups can comfortably handle dynamic insertion of ad text:

When the most important keywords in your ad group are very different in length, it doesn't make sense to write a single ad that dynamically alternates between them. Imagine trying to write an ad with a DKI slot to accommodate either "SEM" (3 characters) or "Search Engine Marketing" (23), or an ad to slot to alternate between "ads" (3) or "advertisements" (14). Clearly, these short keywords require one ad, and the long keywords require another.
If your important keywords contain acronyms or other all-caps words, search engines will not dynamically insert them as acronyms. Dynamic keyword insertion supports only proper case (e.g., "Sem"), lowercase (e.g., "sem"), but not all caps or acronyms (e.g. "SEM"). If you want your acronyms to display as all caps, you can't dynamically insert them.

In situations where dynamic keyword insertion is not possible, practical, or ideal, it is still possible to achieve the same level of super-relevance of the ad copy to the user. It just requires a bit more work. With dynamic keyword insertion, you create one ad group with one dynamic ad and n different keywords, which get dynamically inserted into the ad (so the ad is written one time, but has n different surface forms). But with "static keyword insertion", you create n different ad groups with one ad each, and only one keyword. This is obviously more labor intensive, but the result is at least the same, and most likely much better. There are still n different surface forms of ads -- you just need to create them all individually.

Now, let's look at a couple of examples of static keyword insertion in action.

Perhaps you've recently noticed an ad like these on Facebook:

If you click on one of the ads, it will become quite apparent that the offer is not actually specific to your age or location. However, these ads are more eye-catching than non-demographically-specific ones, because they at least appear more relevant to the user. How did the advertiser create these ads? Facebook does not allow "dynamic demographic data insertion" for age, gender, or location. Instead, these advertisers probably created ads for each possible user segment, and matched the ad copy to the ad targeting (probably a few dozen separate ads).

A different issue is faced by companies advertising products and services with acronyms for names, which have both a long form and a short acronym form in common usage. Consider a company advertising on the keywords "SEM software" and "search engine marketing software". In theory, similar ad copy would be applicable to these two keywords, but a single ad structure would not be practical for incorporating these keywords interchangeably. For one thing, "search engine marketing software" is over 25 characters, and cannot fit into the ad headline, so default text would appear if you attempted to dynamically insert this keyword. Writing a custom ad for this keyword would enable you to fit the word "software" somewhere else in the ad, other than the headline. Secondly, the "SEM software" keyword would render into the headline as Sem Software or sem software -- SEM Software would not be an option. Writing a custom, non-dynamic ad would allow you to incorporate the correct acronym into the ad with the correct capitalization. Furthermore, because the phrase "SEM Software" is so few characters compared to "search engine marketing software", there would be plenty of extra room in the "SEM Software" ad for more descriptive and promotional text. In the example below, these two high quality, super-relevant ad creatives could not possibly be derived from dynamic keyword insertion.

Dynamic keyword insertion is a time-saving device that keeps you from having to rewrite your ad many times in order to make it specifically relevant to many keywords. However, it is not always available, and even when it is, it is not always the best solution. The key principle behind the use of DKI is to present the user with the best-targeted, most compelling possible ad. Sometimes DKI is not the right choice for technical reasons, but the basic principle remains valuable, and sometimes this principle can be satisfied by manually inserting the keyword into different versions of the same ad. Do use DKI as a time saver when it makes sense to do so, but do not be bound by it. Never give up on the pursuit of high relevance and keyword-rich ad copy just because DKI is unavailable.

Clickable Pro Release v2.3 Introduces New Customer Resources, and Tune-Ups to Reporting and Location (Geo) Targeting

Vernon Steward — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 13:48:00 GMT

As I mentioned in my 2010 preview blog post, Clickable has adopted an agile development process, with the goal much more frequent product updates. Rather than tackling large projects with several months between delivery, you can now expect a steady stream of monthly releases in 2010. Pro v2.3 is our first release under the new process, and we are excited to kick off the year with something new. Rather than introducing a whole lot of new features, release 2.3 makes several existing features better in a lot of small but important ways.

We also committed to providing our customers with more resources and new ways to communicate and interact with us every month, and we are introducing a few today. We have launched a new forum for Product Releases and Roadmap updates, where customers can take a deeper dive into the details of every new release and interact with our Product team to answer any questions. We will be hosting a customer webinar after every release, and the first one takes place on Wednesday January 27, at 1 pm EST - Please email support@clickable.com to register. A downloadable PDF of v2.3 provides release highlights - one will be available every month with every release as well.

These are the release highlights:

Reporting: Better Support for Large Reports

In our last release, v2.2, we expanded our reporting capabilities significantly, extending custom reporting groups down to the keyword level. Customers who manage millions of keywords immediately jumped at the opportunity to see their whole account in one view, and that stretched our capabilities a bit. To ensure that reporting performs well for all our customers, both large and small, we put in measures to better handle large reporting requests.

Location (Geo) Targeting: Search and User Experience Improvements

In our v2.2 release we introduced a powerful new map-based location (geo) targeting solution. We have now introduced improvements to the location power search, making it more responsive, inclusive and intuitive, so it is easier for you to find the location you are looking for.

Keyword Bulk Edit: Support for Long Keywords

Our Keyword Bulk Edit Tool allows you to filter and change bids for keywords across networks in a single window. This powerful feature had a small issue that turned out to be a big headache for customers with long keywords or keyword phrases: the whole keyword was not visible in the grid at a glance, so it was difficult to scan a keyword list. A simple fix to wrap the entity names should provide the solution and make this unique tool even more functional.

Community: New Clickable.com Home Page

Clickable has grown and evolved significantly in the last year, and it was time for a home page update that reflects our progress. Our new home page provides much clearer organization of content, and direct paths to our Pro, Assist, University and Platform offerings. The design sets a new direction for our brand; this year, we will be rolling out this style in phased design updates to the rest of our community and our products.

What’s Next: Release 2.4, February 2010

Keeping up the pace with our monthly release schedule, we have exciting new features planned for next month. Here is what we are working towards: (Any changes will be announced on our new Product Releases and Roadmap forum)

Bulk Upload: A spreadsheet-based tool to easily add, edit and delete campaigns, ad groups, ads, keyword and placements across networks.
Dashboard Top Features Module: A quick way to view and reach the most popular features in Clickable Pro
Report Scheduling (Internal release only): An internal version of scheduled report delivery, that we will refine, test and release the following month

I look forward to hearing your feedback on the forums or the webinar.

Warm regards,

Vernon Steward
Vice-President, Product Management

Optimizing Google Search Campaigns Through Network Syndication

Andrew Bernero — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:00:00 GMT

When you advertise on Google, you can target many more searchers than those who use Google.com. Over the years Google’s ad serving has grown from search-queried ads on Google.com, to syndicated search results on portals, contextual targeting on thousands of Web sites, and search results on mobile devices.

If your campaign performance on these networks goes unmanaged, efficiency can suffer and opportunities can go unrealized. Many search marketers are familiar with all of these different networks and devices within Google, but few bother to optimize past search and content optimization.

Google Search vs. Google Search Partners
By default, settings in Google AdWords are set to Google Search and Google Search Partners. Google Search Partners are Web sites that show Google search results when searches are performed on their sites. Netscape.com, Earthlink.com, and aol.com, are all examples of larger sites that may syndicate your ads if you are opted in to the Search Partners program. However, there are also many mid-size and smaller sites that syndicate through Google Search Partners – and, as a result, the quality of this traffic could vary.

Ideally, an advertiser would be able to target both Google Search and Google Search Partners independently. However, for search targeting, Google only allows advertisers to opt in to Google Search or Google Search and Google Search Partners. Opting in to both with these settings is fine for most search campaigns. However, over time you may see variance in conversion rates between Google Search and Google Search Partners, at which point you may want to consider changing your approach.

Optimize Your Google Campaigns and Network Settings
One way to optimize your listings is to simply opt out of Google Search Partners, but you would likely leave sales and leads on the table. Another approach is to opt out of Google Search Partners and recreate a nearly identical campaign that is opted in to both networks with lower bid prices based on the historic performance you have seen through Google Search.

For example, let’s say you are selling calculators and your cost per conversion is $.50 on Google but $1.00 with Google Search Partners enabled. Your cost per conversion goal is $0.75. To implement this strategy, you can:

Opt out of Google Search Partners in your existing campaign
Create a new campaign targeting both search networks with a 25% reduction in bid prices

In theory, your original campaign will serve the vast majority of ads on Google.com, given its higher bid. However, your syndicated search traffic will be in line with a $.75 cost-per-conversion goal, given the 25% reduction in bid prices. Not only would you be reducing costs from the optimized search syndication traffic, this would allow you to increase your bids to drive more traffic with your original campaign.

When you create a new campaign using this strategy, you may want to consider making subtle changes to ad copy in the new ad groups so that the history and Quality Score will be less likely to be distributed among the two sets of keywords, given that one set will have lower bid prices.

To compare the performance of the two networks, you can run a campaign report in Google by including:

“Ad Distribution”
“Ad Distribution: with search partners”
“Conversions (1-per-click)” and / or “Conversions (man-per-click)”

As well as clicks to compare conversion rates. Another way you can assess the difference in performance is to customize your view in the interface dashboard.

Over time, you will see that performance between the two networks is typically comparable and usually will not require separation. However, significant variance may occur; if you surface it with these tips, you can manage your budget and volume more efficiently.

Andrew Bernero, Clickable SEM Guru

Optimizing Your Mobile AdWords Ads

Tony Soric — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:45:00 GMT

Google is going mobile in a big way. Following the announcement of Nexus One, the official Google phone, and the acquisition of adMob, Google is ready to make some serious moves on the small screen.

AdWords and Mobile
Soon after the iPhone launch, Google introduced a new feature in the AdWords "Settings" tab. This feature enabled online advertisers to syndicate AdWords ads to mobile phones. With the flip of a switch, online ads could be displayed on browser-based handsets around the world.

Sounds great, right? In theory yes, allowing online advertisers to syndicate pre-existing ads to users on a new type of device with little-to-no work sounds great. Except that these ads were originally designed for users accessing the Web from a relatively fixed location on a screen ranging in size from 10 to 20+ inches.

Of course the ads that you have strategically set up with PC users in mind may not be as effective in AdWords' mobile version. Below are some tips for optimizing your AdWords ads for the mobile browser.

AdWords Mobile Optimization Techniques
1. If you haven't done so already, turn off your mobile ad syndication. You will turn it back on when you are ready.

2. Make a copy of your AdWords campaign and append the word "mobile" or another designation in order to differentiate the new mobile campaign from the standard campaign.

3. CPC Bids - Adjust your bids to a lower value. At this point, few advertisers have enough data to clearly suggest how effective mobile ads are versus their traditional AdWords counterparts. Additionally, few advertisers are opted in to the AdWords mobile option. Why risk a higher CPC if you don't have to?

4. Ads - Review your ads, this variable is less critical, but you want to ensure that your ads are clear and to the point. Remember, most mobile users are accessing the Web on 2-4 inch screens. The goals of these ads should be relatively similar to those of your traditional AdWords ads. However, there may also be additional opportunities for geo-modification due to enhanced targeting capabilities of mobile devices. Also, be sure to take advantage of Google’s new in-ad phone feature. This will allow users to call your business directly from the SERPs for the price of a standard click.

5. Landing Pages - What does your current landing page look like on a mobile device? Review your landing pages and optimize them to be more mobile friendly:
-    Remove non-essential images, these take up space.
-    Be sure to include your phone number. Many smart phones have a tap-to-call technology built in that will allow your visitors to call your directly with a simple touch of the screen.
-    Use contrasting colors and simple fonts. A clean design is even more important on mobile devices.
-    Organize your content in short lists, bold important terms if possible.

6. Keywords – Review your current keywords. Certain keywords may work better than others in the mobile space, testing will reveal their value.

7. Goals - Be sure to revisit your goals and manage your expectations. Mobile advertising is a great way to stay connected to your audience when they are away from their PC. Expectations for your mobile campaigns should be set as users will be less likely to make a purchase on a mobile device. Lower CPCs should help offset the difference in conversions.

Calls to Action to consider monitoring:
-    Direct calls to your business
-    Click-throughs to specific links
-    Sharing features (email a friend, tweeting, SMS sharing)

8. Testing - As with any campaign it’s important to test and monitor your campaigns on an ongoing basis. As more consumers switch to smart phones and our lives become increasingly mobile, expect online advertising to follow suit.
Before launching your first AdWords mobile campaign adhere to the best practices listed above to minimize your risks and increase your ability to control your campaigns.

This post is a summary of Tony’s article “How to Optimize a Mobile AdWords Campaign” published on Search Engine Land by Third Door Media.

Tony Soric, Clickable SEM Guru

Note: Clickable employees volunteer several hours a week to helping other search marketers succeed. "Clickable Gurus" participate in numerous online search communities to provide straightforward answers to numerous questions, and, each week, one of the gurus posts a search-marketing tip to the Clickable Blog.

Event: Free Search Marketing Webcast on Web Analytics You Should Know

Anna Agishtein — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:00:00 GMT

Reserve your spot for the upcoming Clickable Guru Webcast: "Web Analytics You Should Know"!

Cost Per Conversion, Quality Score, Return on Ad Spend, Cost Per Click (CPC), Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM) - the variety of search marketing analytics can quickly become overwhelming. In our next Clickable Guru Webcast, Ben Seslija, Clickable's Senior Director of Acquisition and Analytics, will explain which metrics you need to track, and precisely how they relate to your business.

Our purpose is to help businesses surve and thrive by simplifying online advertising. In this session, we'll cover:

How to determine the key metrics you'll use for daily optimization
How to track friction points and assign costs to each stage of your sales funnel
How to save time with automated tools that can help you diagnose your top risks and opportunities

When: Tuesday, January 26, 2010, at 1pm - 2pm EDT.

Who: Ben Seslija, Senior Director, Acquisition and Analytics.

This Webcast is free, and you can sign up here while seats last.

Growing Your Advertising Agency Quickly and Profitably

Jeff Fernandez — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:12:00 GMT

My name is Jeff Fernandez and I joined Clickable’s sales team in March 2009. Prior to that, I worked in business development and sales at Doostang. Since joining Clickable, it’s been awesome to see the team innovate and iterate, resulting in products and services that deliver greater advertising simplicity and ROI for a growing range of marketers. One client sector I help lead is advertising and marketing agencies, particularly midsized and specialty agencies seeking to grow their online advertising capabilities.

These agencies seek to deliver greater value to clients more efficiently and profitably, so they can spend more time on strategically growing their business. With a handful of clients, fewer employees, and manual processes, these agencies often find identifying and executing appropriate tactics to this end quite daunting. The challenge is to drive top line growth without sacrificing the agency’s profitability or the high quality account management to which clients have become accustomed.

A great example is our customer adVision Marketing, an emerging agency based in Denver, CO. I have worked with Matt Walde, founder and owner of adVision, for the better part of 2009 to learn how we could partner. Matt explains how he is using Clickable to expand his business quickly and profitably:

“As the owner of a small and growing online advertising company, I needed a solution to manage the performance of my client campaigns more efficiently, while freeing up time to focus on new business growth. I chose software over an in-house hire because in my world software is more efficient and more reliable than a person is 98% of the time. I chose Clickable because of its simple integration, straightforward interface, and depth of optimization tools.”

As Matt describes, it all comes down to driving client value:

“The biggest win in partnering with Clickable is the fact that my clients will get a greater return on their investment with adVision. Our expertise will always be the foundation upon which success is built, but it doesn’t hurt to have the best technology available monitoring and analyzing our campaigns 24/7. Clickable has made us more efficient, brought greater returns to our clients, and allowed us to focus on the growth of adVision Marketing.”

Agencies have experienced tremendous success with Clickable Pro, which drastically reduces the time and hassle required to manage clients’ accounts and keywords across multiple ad networks, while providing daily campaign recommendations through our ActEngine, and consistent reporting through our single Conversion Tracking pixel.

For agencies that require more hands-on support managing their clients’ paid search campaigns, there’s Clickable Assist, our managed services offering. Assist features a simple suite of managed services that seamlessly integrate into your agency workflow. Agencies can white-label Assist managed services, on the backend, to profitably deliver pay-per-click campaigns for existing clients, as well as new clients and projects. Agencies working with Clickable Assist own the intellectual property of each account we launch, so they can pass this value along to their clients. The flexibility of Assist, along with owning the intellectual property, are two of the most compelling reasons that agencies choose Assist. Clickable Pro is included with Assist.

If you would like to learn more about how Clickable can help your business, let us know! You can contact us directly, sign up for a demo, or begin a 15-day trial of Pro immediately.

My best,

Jeff

If You Liked Clickable Pro In 2009, You Will Love 2010!

Vernon Steward — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 03:07:00 GMT

Our purpose is to help you survive and thrive, and we are thankful for our strong customer community that inspires us to innovate. In 2009 we celebrated our third year building Clickable Pro, our self-managed advertising solution. We’d like to share the year’s Pro product milestones and preview exciting developments for 2010.

2009 Clickable Pro Milestones
In 2009 we introduced key new features that help our customers be more efficient, effective and profitable search marketers, including Keyword Bulk Editing across campaigns, consistent Conversion Tracking across search engines, highly customizable PDF and Excel Reports, Automated Performance Optimization, Google Image, Mobile and Local Business Ads and enhanced Location (Geo) Targeting. We continue to listen closely to your feedback to create a better product and experience that makes you better, faster and stronger at search advertising.

In addition to Pro upgrades, we invested heavily in supporting areas to make Pro a world-class experience. We introduced Pro Certification, tripled the volume of content in our University, introduced Forums and released our first Guru book. We also expanded Clickable Assist, a managed service for marketers and agencies that delivers just the right amount of assistance to maximize search-marketing success.

2010 Preview
In the coming year, the product team will build on our strong Clickable Pro foundation and deliver significant improvements and innovations, starting with the way we work. Following are highlights of what you can expect, as we transform the way we develop our product and interact with our customers:

More Frequent Releases: Last year we tackled large projects that took several months to deliver. We have now adopted an agile development process, with the goal of releasing something new every month. Expect a steady stream of phased enhancements to come your way in 2010, rather than a few big ones with big gaps in between.
Greater Responsiveness: By delivering smaller updates more frequently, we become a much more responsive product organization. We have always been customer-driven, but will soon deliver on your ideas quicker. We’ll be focusing our product development on what you have told us matters to you the most - enhanced performance data, increased efficiency through bulk operations, enhanced recommendations, and more flexible reporting.
Increased Communication and Interaction: As we move to a monthly delivery rhythm, expect a lot more communication from us and many more opportunities to interact and provide input. In addition to high-level product updates, we will provide more detailed release notes and Webcasts with each release. We also will use our Forums more extensively to get you more involved in our development process.

Finally, later in 2010 we will begin to introduce more personalization opportunities within Clickable Pro, from saved views to a customized dashboard, custom account groupings and user permissions. These changes will empower our customers to make the Clickable experience their own and manage their online advertising the way that best suits their style and their business.

We are incredibly excited about this year, and I look forward to bringing you the first 2010 Clickable Pro release update in later this month.

Warm Regards,

Vernon Steward
Vice-President, Product Management

How To Be Happy And Succeed In Life, Featuring Professor Srikumar Rao (Event)

Max Kalehoff — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:24:00 GMT

We're pleased to announce our January 28 feature guest for Interesting Cafe, Clickable's monthly community and culture event: Bestselling author and acclaimed teacher, Professor Srikumar Rao.

Professor Rao will share his powerful message on personal leadership and success, which has helped thousands of highly intelligent, ambitious people find deep meaning. Professor Rao conceived "Creativity and Personal Mastery" and has taught it repeatedly at top business schools including Columbia, Haas (Berkeley) and London Business School. It is the only business school course anywhere that has its own alumni association and this speaks volumes about the value received by those who were fortunate enough to enroll in it. His course and work have been covered extensively in the media including articles in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Fortune, Times, Business Week and dozens of other newspapers and magazines as well as interviews by CNN, PBS, Voice of America and many other TV and Radio stations.

If you'd like to join us, please RSVP here. But hurry, because seats are limited and going fast.

The Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School: Assistance from Clickable with a Google Grant (Case Study)

Hanny Hindi — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:03:00 GMT

The Center for Public Leadership (CPL) at Harvard Kennedy School is dedicated to advancing the frontiers of knowledge about leadership and to broadening and deepening the pool of men and women who will become leaders for the common good. CPL was founded nearly 10 years ago, and, over the past two years, has digitized its vast library of materials and products accrued over the past decade, including over 100 videos. The challenge today is to make that library available to as wide an audience as possible. “Our current audience consists mostly of folks who know us because they're either students, faculty, or other members of academia,” said Patrick McKiernan, CPL’s Communications Coordinator. “What we're trying to build is an audience outside of our already strong academic and local niche.” To help reach that goal, CPL applied for, and was awarded a Google Grant, which provides free advertising through Google AdWords. To help get the most out of that account, CPL has turned to Clickable Assist.

Read the full case study

2010 Search Advertising Predictions From the Clickable Gurus

Max Kalehoff — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:00:00 GMT

The Clickable Gurus have written dozens of posts for our Blog in 2009 covering everything from new Google Ad Formats to CPC advertising on social media. Their award-winning contributions have been recognized across the industry and an anthology of their teachings has been listed in Search Engine Land’s roundup of 2009’s Best Search Advertising Books . Recently, we asked the Gurus: What are your predictions for Search Advertising in 2010? 1. What is the most important thing that businesses...(read more)