Again, this is going to be very brief.  I didn’t have time for a longer post and didn’t want this to become stale.  You should see the terrific post I had going for how Herman Cain was handling online reputation management…and then he dropped out before I could finish and post.

Quick Beginner Notes on How Google AdWords Works

For those of you not intimately familiar with paid search marketing, a couple important notes that can be difficult to grasp:

1. Ads don’t necessarily display all the time.  With Google AdWords – and Microsoft adCenter for that matter – you may be advertising on a particular keyword, but not see your ad.  This can happen for a variety of reasons, but one of the most common is due to budget.  Usually you’ll set your account spend to be spread out evenly throughout the day, meaning that if you can only afford 100 clicks and Google estimates you’d get 150 if they ran you full force, you may only see your ad 2 out of every 3 times you check.*  To counteract this, I did run test searches multiple times, but that doesn’t mean I saw everything.
2. These are New Hampshire results.  Using Google’s Ad Preview Tool, I pulled searches specifically in the state of New Hampshire.  It’s possible candidates are targeting just certain districts (as we’re familiar with from running political search marketing campaigns).  So, if they only care about a particular part of NH for whatever reason, they could just be targeting that region and I wouldn’t be seeing their ads.  Also, the Preview Tool doesn’t let you open up links – I’d normally comment about landing pages as well.

   Update: Assuming he’s using the same tactics in NH as he is across the US, give Romney’s team credit.  Their landing pages are taking people to a donation page.  Click here to see (I stripped the extra tracking parameters from the url).

* Advertisers should also use Google’s Ad Preview Tool to weed out any personalization effects of search.

2012 NH Primary Search Engine Marketing

Alright, here we go.  In the interest of time, I ran only on exact candidate names (first name, last name) and just a couple phrases pulled completely at random.  Any proper AdWords campaign concerned with anything other than branding will have much larger lists of keywords.

The following is the search term and who I could see advertising on them, in order of Iowa results for candidates.  I’m including Michele Bachmann even though she ended her campaign just now because…well I already did the searches.

Update: Now two days after the primary, some more sites are cashing in.  New advertisers noted in green to distinguish.

• Mitt Romney: himself, followthemoney.com on a couple searches, then CSPAN later, then finally Rock the Vote. Now add gopmall.com.
• Rick Santorum: none the first day.  Now people jumping on board: Rock the Vote and livefreeordiealliance.com.
• Ron Paul: therealnews.com a couple times.  Later the Endorse Liberty YouTube channel (youtube.com/EndorseLiberty). BTW – did you notice the YouTube layout changes Google stealthily made over the holidays?
• Newt Gingrich: himself (newtgingrich360.com).  And now a new one, also from Gingrich – the awesomely named newthampshire.com.
• Rick Perry: followthemoney.com
• Michele Bachmann: followthemoney.com, Minnesota Public Radio (minnesota.publicradio.org).  Later CSPAN.  Now,the Endorse Liberty YouTube channel – seems like odd timing.
• Jon Huntsman: followthemoney.com

Takeaways

Here are a few things I found interesting, in no particular order:

• Interesting that in most cases the ads were showing at the bottom of the page, rather than the top where Google was showing Iowa Republican Caucus results in most cases (its own, bug with credit given to AP) along with news results and sometimes image results.  Speaking of which, some of these candidates are just getting destroyed still by Googlebombing image results.  Unless, of course, the Newt Gingrich photo of him posing in tinfoil hat with Nazi flag is an official campaign photo that I’m not aware of.
• Mitt was going strong earlier this morning, but now I’m having trouble triggering his ads at all.  Maybe he ran out of money in that campaign due to higher search volumes?
• Interesting how CSPAN has jumped into this advertising so heavily this afternoon.  They must be paying a pretty penny.
• 

  "Really, guys? C'mon!"

  No love for Rick Santorum?  Seriously?  The guy lost by 8 votes, which I can, like, count on my hands.  Quality Score issues aside, isn’t there an entrepreneur out there that can take advantage of the lack of competition and make some money here? Photo Credit: AP Photo/Eric Gay.

• Although, CSPAN surely hasn’t paid as much as followthemoney.org.  Fortunately for them, they’re paying only on a per click basis and not per impression.  (This assumes they’re not doing cost per acquisition bidding, which should be a safe assumption).  Curious why they’re not on all the candidates – would love to know if that’s a budget issue, oversight, part of their plan based on who they think has a shot at winning, or other.
• I know it’s early with Iowa just wrapping, but really surprised not to see more PACs there.
• Equally if not more surprised the political campaigns aren’t advertising on their opponents’ names.  Perhaps there’s a gentleman’s / woman’s agreement as being part of the party?  You wouldn’t guess it by some of the talk by the candidates themselves.

What stood out to you?

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

What Is Retargeting?

Before we get into some of the neat ways people are using retargeting for extended reach and conversion, let’s start with the basics.  Skip to the next headline if you’re already familiar.

I like to refer to retargeting as a second bite of the apple.  Some other people call it ‘cyberstalking,’ while still others call it ‘creepy.’  Some online marketers just call it “effective.”  Here’s how traditional retargeting works:

Friendly Visitor (or FV as she will now be known) visits your site.  FV has a cookie uploaded to their browser.  FV leaves your site.  As FV goes along her merry way, she visits other Web sites who sell remnant ad space through a third party network.  Utilizing this third party network for retargeting, your ads continue to follow FV across a variety of Web sites.  You have control over a variety of factors.  Depending on who you’re using for retargeting, these include:

• Bid
• Bid type (CPC, CPM, CPA)
• Ad type (image, text, video, dynamic) and variation
• Length of time the cookie remains on the browser, assuming FV doesn’t wipe it clean.  Varies from instantly up to 30 days.
• Different messaging based on what page was visited
• Different messaging depending on whether the person has converted or not
• Which sites and types of sites are eligible to show your ad (brand protection).

How Well Does Retargeting Work?

Like with all forms of internet marketing – and really, life – your mileage may vary.  But all things being equal, advertisers typically see a ton of ad impressions at a very low cost.  Often times we see that they pick up a number of conversions at a good conversion rate and low cost per conversion, though the scale often isn’t there unless the site has huge traffic volume.

Retargeting or Remarketing: What’s the Difference?

One of the platforms offering retargeting, Google AdWords refers to it as remarketing?  Why?  I have no idea – ask whoever is in charge of their branding.  There’s no difference.  It’s kind of like if Pittsburgh were a company that produced rubber bands and they called them ‘gum bands’ while the rest of the world just kept calling them rubber bands.   But, what is really nice is the ability to run retargeting campaigns directly out of your paid search account with Google.

Creative Uses of Retargeting

With the basics out of the way, let’s talk about some interesting ways retargeting is being used today:

• Rectifying shopping cart abandonment. Lose people during the shopping cart process?  Target just the people that added items to their cart (or made it to a specific page), but didn’t complete their order.  Offer them a coupon or free shipping or however you want to entice them to finish their purchase.
• Saving the lead. Similar to shopping cart abandonment, but for lead gen.  Encourage persons who made it to one of your offer pages, but didn’t sign up.  Just be aware that the person may have chosen to give you a call instead of filling out a form.
• New ad offering for publishers. One of our truck dealer clients forwarded us an email from a publisher in their industry offering their own retargeting.  Randall Reilly is offering their advertisers and truck dealers whom they’d like to become clients a pretty cool deal.  They will serve up an advertiser’s ads to people who have visited their site.  I don’t know any specifics so I can’t endorse it, but love the idea.  Kudos to Randall Reilly!
• Search retargeting. Here’s a really fun one.  As mentioned above, traditional retargeting when someone has visited your site.  How else would they get the cookie on there?  If you have a strong click through rate, maybe you’ve captured 5% of the people who have searched. The other 95% is lost forever – or are they?Well, some enterprising platforms have come up with a solution and allow you to retarget people who have searched for a particular term, but not visited your site.  I’m pretty sure it’s done with magic cookies – which one would assume are different from magic brownies – but the possibilities are endless here.  We especially love retargeting folks who have searched for your competitors.The three search retargeting industry leaders  – Chango, Magnetic, and Simpli.fi – offer key differences from one another.  Their minimums range from $5k to $30k per month.  As of right now, Simpli.fi is the only one offering a self-service platform, although Magnetic has one in beta that is supposed to launch Q1 2012.
• (Update) Cross Channel.  Standard retargeting is not limited to just your Web site.  You can drop cookies anywhere where people are using the internet to reach you, including email and social media properties like facebook.  Hat tip to Caroline at Retargeter, a self-service retargeting platform, who mentioned these in the comments.

Update 2: Chango reached out to provide a nice graphic called the 7 Types of Retargeting. You can click on that link to download, or read more from their blog post on the same subject.

Hope this recap is helpful.  As with most of the topics about which we blog, if you want a firm to handle your retargeting efforts, let us know – we’d love to help!

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

One question/objection I get surprisingly often is in regards to doing stand alone landing pages for paid search programs.  And in terms of actual page element objections, #1 is probably our wanting to not use site navigation for these landing pages.  You can still add in a link or two to the home page or other parts of the site, but these should be minimized and under no circumstances – if lead gen is your goal – should you use your site’s regular navigation menu bar.

Reduce Friction, Increase Incentive

There are some pretty cool formulae out there for conversion rate optimization (we still like Marketing Experiments’), but the short version is that to get someone to convert on your page – i.e. complete an action you want her or him to take – you have two competing forces to deal with: Friction and Incentive.

If your incentive is high enough, the amount of friction almost doesn’t matter.  If a page is giving away a free pound of gold – and the visitors believe your word is bond – you’ll get people giving you their social security numbers and mailing in their children.

Courtesy of the excellent Physics4Kids.com.

If the friction is unbelievably low – meaning it’s really, really easy for people to perform your desired action – then you don’t need nearly as great an incentive.  This is where navigation menus come in.  They make it easier for people to click around your site and then go away without ever converting.

Which is why it’s nice to see this WhichTestWon experiment showing an example where the landing page without the nav menu got 98% more downloads.  That’s almost double to you and me.

Ultimately, the objections I hear are good ones from clients as they need to understand reasons behind suggestions.  Having data like this WhichTestWon experiment should make overcoming them even easier in the future.

Bottom line for you readers: don’t take my word for it; listen to WhichTestWon and ditch the menu navigation on your landing pages.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

What Does this Mean for My Account?

Well, in the immediate, it means that old ads that you have paused in the accounts (or even new ones if you uploaded them on pause) are subject to getting disapproved.  This could be mildly annoying if you keep standard / seasonal ones on pause for later use, but if you’re on the up and up, it shouldn’t be a big deal.

Having written that, anybody working with AdWords for any period of time can tell you about how the ad approval process fouls up some basic stuff sometimes and it can take some time to get legitimately compliant ads back online.  But, if you weren’t running them actively any way, urgency should be low.

What you should be more concerned about is that if you use multiple domains or have changed domains since opening your AdWords account, you may have paused ads pointing to the old domains.  AdWords only allows you to use one domain per ad group.  If they re-run old ads through the approval process, it could cause conflicts with your active ads.

To be safe, we’d recommend you do a little fall pruning and delete or update any old, paused ads to old domains to make sure you avoid this potential problem.

Why No Pop Culture Referential Pic on this Post?

I’m meeting with a prospect in 20 minutes and it’s too early for my synapses to make a connection between Public Enemy’s Rebel without a Pause and this announcement.  If you have any good ideas, comment below and I’ll do a quick photoshop job and update later.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

1. When you use Google forwarding numbers in your ads and someone from a desktop or laptop dials that number, you’ll get a flat $1.00 charge.  This was free before, so enjoy it for a couple more weeks while it lasts.
2. Reporting gets better.  You’ll now get your detailed stats like duration of call and the area code from where it was placed in the Dimensions tab.  Yes, they continue to move more data here.  Previously it was in the campaign tabs.  The good news is that you’ll get the info broken down by both campaign and ad group.
3. It doesn’t sound like this will be ready right on May 16th, but you will – at some point – be able to bid more than $1.00 if you’d like.  Just like your CPC bids, that bid will influence your Ad Rank, which if you’re not familiar is the basics for two of the factors you care most about: how much you actually pay per click and how high your ad appears.
4. Click-to-call ads where someone rings you from their mobile phone (at least high end ones like iPhones and Droids) will not generate any additional fees.  You’ll just be charged for the click based on your bid and Ad Rank, just like old times.

Late Friday Google announced some more changes regarding phone numbers in ads.  Since a few different clients reached out with some questions about the announcement, I figured it would be worthwhile to write up the changes here on the Found blog.  Or rather, change.  There’s only one, but it could be significant depending on the ads you’ve been running.

All phone numbers in your text ads will be converted to click-to-call numbers and you will be charged for these clicks.  Before, you were charged if someone clicked on your phone number if you created a Call Extension. You’ll be charged the same as you would if someone clicked on your ad and went to your landing page.

Here are more details from the announcement:

If you currently have a phone number in your ad text or have plans to start adding your phone number in an ad, this is an important notice that in the coming weeks, we will be launching a new enhancement to AdWords ads that will impact charges on clicks to these numbers.

To help our mobile users connect more easily with advertisers, all non-clickable phone numbers displayed in AdWords ad text will be automatically converted into a Click-to-call number. Currently when advertisers enter a phone number directly into their ad text instead of using Call Extensions, the phone number is not clickable and will not generate a call. This can be a frustrating experience for mobile users who attempt to initiate a call to this phone number. [Ed. note: and a revenue opportunity for AdWords.  I don't begrudge them that at all, but it's used bar of Neutrogena clear* that's the case and a motivating factor.]

The new Click-to-call enhancement ensures that all phone numbers shown in AdWords ads are clickable and allows users to easily place calls from their mobile device. If your ad text includes a phone number, you will begin to receive clicks and calls on this number once the enhancement is enabled in your account. As with phone calls placed via a Call Extension, you will be charged for clicks on your phone number that result in a call.

Please note that AdWords policy does not allow for phone numbers to be inserted into ad headlines. As with all Click-to-call ads, advertisers will be charged when a user either clicks on the headline or the phone number listed in the ad. Please see below for additional information regarding this change.

Which phone number shows?

If you are currently using both Call Extensions and a phone number in your ad creative, only the newly clickable phone number in your ad creative will show. This is designed to help reduce user confusion from seeing two potentially different numbers. If you would like your Call Extension number to display, simply delete all phone numbers from your existing ad text by following these steps. You’ll also receive an additional line of ad text displaying your phone number if the Call Extension is used.

Measuring results

You’ll be able to review how many calls you receive on the clickable phone number listed in your ad text for each campaign, ad group, keyword and ad on the “Campaigns” tab in your AdWords account. Just select the “Click-type” option under the “Segment” drop down and view your report. Please note that since these are not calls generated from a Call Extension, they will not be reported in the Extensions tab reports.

Recommendations for featuring a phone number

You can simply leave your phone number in your ad text and benefit from this change which will automatically make your phone numbers clickable and enable users to call you. However, to get the most value from click-to-call, we recommend that you remove your phone number from your ad creative and create a Call Extension with your phone number directly. This has several benefits. With a manually created Call Extension your number will appear as an additional line of ad text which frees up space in your ad creative for other promotion. In addition, when you create a Call Extension, your phone number appears on a separate line in the ad, and you’re able to take advantage of other powerful enhancements such as Vanity Numbers, Call-only and Call Metrics reporting.

* I don’t think we could go a month without my high school biology teacher saying he could see through one of us like a used bar of Neutrogena, so that reference is for you, Doc Mallow!

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

I logged out of everything and still got the same result.  Then I made sure safe search was on (it wasn’t – this should be the default in my opinion, but whatever).  Ran the result again, same result.

Here it is with Justin Less Offensive Search™ blurring:

And, yes, I’ll keep ranting and posting these examples as I find them.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

We'll get there - promise. Picture courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

Let me start off by writing I’m not going to give you a simple “yes” or “no” answer to the title question because there isn’t one.  Instead, let’s take repair our chopper Zen-style and discuss what you need to know to make the decision.

The Basics of Advertising on Competitor Brand Terms

Just to make sure we’re on the same page here, let’s define what we’re talking about.  The concept is buying a competitor’s name and other branded keyword phrases (e.g. branded product  names, executive names) so that your ads will show up when someone searches for those terms.

The process works the same as bidding on any other search term.  You select the competitor term(s) you wish to bid on, set how much you’re willing to pay, and set up ads for that ad group. Voila, you can have your ad appear when someone searches for your competitors.  There’s no cost to you until and unless someone clicks on one of your ads.

The Search Engines Let You Buy Competitor Names?

Yes, although it wasn’t always that way.  You didn’t used to be able to do it with Yahoo! Search Marketing, for example.  And the search engines have changed their trademark advertising policies several times.

Since Google and Microsoft are the only major players left in the US, let’s look at their current trademark policies.

Google AdWords Trademark Policy

Google AdWords only blocks use of trademarked terms in the ad copy and does not prevent advertising on the keywords themselves*.  If you’ve filed a general trademark complaint with them (or a specific trademark complaint against one or more specific offenders), they can block and/or remove ads with the trademarked terms.

* There are currently 9 mostly Pacific region countries where Google will actually investigate and possibly block competitors from advertising on the trademarked keyword.  These are Australia, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Macau, New Zealand, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan.  Additionally there are slightly different rules for European Union and European Free Trade Association members.

Be aware that Google made changes awhile back to allow resellers and informational sites to use your trademarked term in their ad text in the US, UK, Canada & Ireland provided that the ads:

1. Use the term in a descriptive or generic way and are not referencing the trademark owner. Or,
2. Use the trademark in a “nominative manner” to refer to the trademark owner in one of the following 3 ways:

• Resale.  The landing page must sell or facilitate the sale of the trademarked item.
• Sale of components, etc. that are related to the trademarked term.
• Informational sites, which do not sell the product itself.

Read the full policy.

Microsoft adCenter Trademark Policy

Microsoft adCenter made a major change to the intellectual property guidelines in March.  The history is a little confusing to follow because they used to have a more restrictive policy, then switched to Yahoo! Search Marketing’s trademark policies when it took over their system as part of the Microsoft-Yahoo! Search Alliance, which consummated in 2010. This Yahoo! policy they carried over was extremely friendly to trademark owners as trademark terms were automatically disapproved for competitors in most cases.

Then in March of this year, they switched to a new policy much more in line with Google AdWords.  That is, they don’t get involved with keywords.  Like AdWords, they also will investigate your trademark complaints over use of trademarked terms in ad copy.  They will, however, allow trademark terms to appear in ad text in “fair use” cases such as:

• Use by resellers
• Informational Web sites like product review sites
• Ordinary “dictionary” use
• Comparative advertising, as long as a 3rd party backs up your claims

Read their full US policy.

Is It Legal?

Who’s to say what’s legal?  Oh, I guess courts can.  Well, so far, courts have pretty much backed Google on this one when companies have sued them over their competitors buying their names.  The most reasonable argument that the courts have considered is whether or not it creates confusion.  Since the search engines don’t allow you to (or at least have a policy in place to say you can’t) use the trademarked term in your ad*, then it shouldn’t be confusing, right?  Well, the courts have found that pretty compelling.  And if your competitor’s name or other branded term isn’t trademarked, then there’s no issue at all as far as the search engines are concerned.

* Be aware there are ways to get around this with keyword insertion and display urls.

So, since the courts have basically backed Google and because they have more attorneys than Romania*, companies mostly just sue each other now.  So how’s that working out?

* may not be true, but my money’s on Google.

Turns out, pretty good for the poachers.  Here’s a very recent decision:

A judge in Wisconsin appears to have given the greenlight to search marketers who want to use people’s names to trigger pay-per-click ads.

Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Charles F. Kahn, Jr. this week dismissed an invasion of privacy lawsuit by personal injury lawyers at the firm Habush Habush & Rottier against attorneys at the rival firm Cannon & Dunphy. The privacy claim stemmed from allegations that Cannon & Dunphy used the names Habush and Rottier to trigger search ads for its own firm.

The law firm’s claim was based on a Wisconsin state law allowing suits for invasion of privacy if their name is used for commercial purposes without their permission. If that use is “unreasonable,” a judge can issue an injunction banning it.

Kahn ruled that Cannon & Dunphy’s use of the rival attorneys’ names wasn’t unreasonable for several reasons, including that it wasn’t likely to confuse searchers. “Internet users, and consumers in general, have learned to be skeptical about the first impression they may receive from a web page or commercial advertisement,” he wrote.

By the way, if you’re really into this sort of thing, check out Eric Goldman’s Technology & Law blog.  It’s the single best source on the Web for following these types of lawsuits regarding search engine marketing.

Should I Bid on My Competitor’s Name?

From personal experience, I can tell you that advertisers have really strong gut reactions to this question.  Some find the thought offensive and would never do it.  Others think all’s fair in love and war.  And some straddle the fence – only doing it when it happens to them or for that one competitor they really, really can’t stand.

If you feel very strongly one way or the other, just go with that.  But, if you’re on the fence or haven’t made up your mind, here are a few things to consider:

Pros

• It can work.  A lot of times people are interested in that competitor for a specific reason that won’t help you at all: trying to get hired, a vendor looking up directions, etc.  But for the consumer doing research – or maybe a current, unsatisfied client looking up a phone number, the pay off could be handsome.
  

  Maybe not this handsome.

• It will jerk their chain.  Double edged sword here (see Cons), but after seeing your ad on their name, internally they may devote a lot of executive resources figuring out what can be done.  Plus, some people just really, really like ticking off their competitors.
• More competition should drive up their prices to bid on their name. While this means they’ll be spending more money they could be devoting elsewhere, their Quality Scores will likely be so much higher than yours, that the additional cost may not add up to much.  Unless they weren’t advertising on their name at all before and decided to start doing so because of your ads.

Cons

• Your time.  Your competitors may call you up and chew you out about this.  Trust me, I’ve seen this time-suck happen and had advertisers flip their feelings about bidding on competitor names 180 degrees.
• Money.  They may sue you or threaten to do so.  While you could just adhere to their cease-and-desist and potentially be done with it, most companies will at least consult their attorneys about this.  And if they don’t happen to be experts in search – and virtually none are, this can get really expensive.  (BTW, we have consulted with attorneys about this in the past.  If you’re an advertiser or lawyer needing help with this, give us a shout at 800.979.3177.  We can also advise on how to broker a fair peace accord without the courts).
• They may start advertising on your name, which could send up your costs somewhat and also decrease your click throughs.

What ends up happening sometimes is that – whether mediated expensively through attorneys or done from President to President – a truce is called.  The downside is that it needs to be brokered with each competitor as it can’t be done through the search engines (other than if there’s a legitimate trademark complaint to be filed).

Are My Competitors Advertising on My Name?

One final note – you may be interested to know if your competitors are advertising on your name.  The first place to start is just to do a search and see.  But there are some complications with that, such as:

• They can block your ip if they can figure it out.  If you have a dedicated, named ip, this would be extremely easy to do through their analytics.  You don’t want to do all the searches from home at night, do you?
• They may only show during certain times of the day – or days of the week – by design.  Or, because of how budgets get spread out if not on an ‘accelerated’ spend, Google and Microsoft will spread out the impressions.  That makes for a decent chance you simply won’t see their ad even if they’re trying to advertise at that time.
• Unless you’re both selling locally only, they may very well be showing their ads throughout the US (or world) everywhere except for your location.

For these reasons and others, if you are extremely concerned about monitoring competitor bidding on your name and other trademarked terms, you should look into outsourcing this issue.  Search engine marketing agencies should be able to handle this service whether or not they are running any paid search campaigns for you.

For example, we will create a custom reporting system for you to ensure we’re catching competitors bidding on your terms and alert you to what’s being done.  We can also evaluate the ads to see if a trademark violation has in fact occurred and, if so, file a complaint on your behalf to Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter.  If you’d like to learn more, please give us a call at 800.979.3177.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

Actually, it's just a "wood block game." Apparently Jenga is copyrighted, which would mean Google would be benefiting from someone else's intellectual property. Wait, that can't be right.

One of the perks of being a Google AdWords Certified Partner – besides the goofy gifts like the Google-branded lava lamp and Jenga games – is that they’ll intermittently send you advertising credits for new accounts.

While I was out of the office Google Engage (a new / rebranded service for search engine marketing agencies) sent us a box with a hat, thumb drive, and some Willy Wonka golden tickets. Except these golden tickets don’t get you into a magical world of Gene Wilder hijinks. These get you $100 worth of free advertising on Google AdWords.

Unlike some of the credits we get, these are specifically meant for self-serve to try and get more small businesses involved. We’ve set aside a few for some local organizations we know, but have some left-overs that we’re giving away on a first come, first serve basis.

How to Get Your Free $100 worth of AdWords Goodness

Email us or call us at 800.979.3177 before they’re all gone. That’s it – we’re doing it on a first come, first serve basis. Some footnotes:

1. You must be a US- or Canadian-based business. Although, we have some other types of credits that may be eligible for companies outside the US and Canada, so feel free to reach out.


Oompa Loompa doompadee durther. If you want free AdWords credits look no further.

2. For a brand new AdWords account only. If you’ve opened one in the last two weeks, you’re still okay, but the golden ticket turns into a pumpkin on midnight of the last day of the fortnight. The code must be entered during this period
3. You must comply with all Google Terms of Service, naturally. Coupon terms here. AdWords Terms of Service here.
4. The accounts must be active (i.e. actually running and showing ads) by July 15th.
5. One per company.

What Strings are Attached?

Just two of which we’re aware:

1. Google’s strategy here is a cross between the old Columbia House cd club subscription model and crack dealers. I truly don’t say that negatively – crack dealers are great marketers. You know, if you take out the whole crack part, which Google isn’t selling*. You’ll enter a credit card when you sign up. You’ll have to pause / cancel your account when you’re finished if you don’t want to start getting charged.
2. We really don’t want to waste these, so we want to verify that the ads are running by July 15th by having temporary access to your account. And if Google AdWords seems daunting to you, we’ll even help you get everything set up and running before turning over to you.

* that I know of.

So, that’s it. Nothing to lose here as it’s free money. Just stop the campaign if it’s not working for you.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

AdWords Call Metrics Changes Boiled Down

1. When you use Google forwarding numbers in your ads and someone from a desktop or laptop dials that number, you’ll get a flat $1.00 charge.  This was free before, so enjoy it for a couple more weeks while it lasts.
2. Reporting gets better.  You’ll now get your detailed stats like duration of call and the area code from where it was placed in the Dimensions tab.  Yes, they continue to move more data here.  Previously it was in the campaign tabs.  The good news is that you’ll get the info broken down by both campaign and ad group.
3. It doesn’t sound like this will be ready right on May 16th, but you will – at some point – be able to bid more than $1.00 if you’d like.  Just like your CPC bids, that bid will influence your Ad Rank, which if you’re not familiar is the basics for two of the factors you care most about: how much you actually pay per click and how high your ad appears.
4. Click-to-call ads where someone rings you from their mobile phone (at least high end ones like iPhones and Droids) will not generate any additional fees.  You’ll just be charged for the click based on your bid and Ad Rank, just like old times.

Neither here nor there, but I was kind of hoping the minimum charge would be $2, just so I’d have a chance to embed something from Better Off Dead.  What the heck:

Anyway, here’s the full email they sent to AdWords clients currently using call metrics:

Important AdWords call metrics changes coming soon! Please read.

Dear AdWords Customer,

Since one or more of your AdWords campaigns has call metrics enabled, we wanted to notify you about important changes related to pricing and reporting that are planned to happen on or after May 16th.

New pricing for phone calls to Google forwarding numbers
We will begin charging $1.00 USD per manually dialed call completed to your Google forwarding numbers. These calls occur when potential customers who are using a desktop or laptop computer see your ad and dial the number shown.

Charges for calls from click-to-call ads on a high-end mobile device are not changing. Such calls continue to be charged as ordinary mobile search ad clicks. Learn more.

Reporting changes
Detailed call statistics, including call duration and origin area code, will be found on the Dimensions tab rather than the Campaigns tab (how to review reports on calls). And based on advertiser feedback, call summary reporting will be available at the ad group and campaign level.

What’s next
In the near future, calls to your Google forwarding number will be factored into Ad Rank calculations, which determine an ad’s position and cost per click. You’ll be able to influence your ad position by specifying a bid per call greater than $1.00 USD — similar to increasing your max CPC bid today.

We’ll contact you again in a few weeks to confirm the timing of these changes and provide any additional details. In the meantime, the latest FAQs for call metrics are available at the Help Center.

Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

Google AdWords Introduces Media Ads

As you’re probably aware, AdWords offers a number of different ad formats for advertisers through extensions in their search network and as the ads themselves in their display network.  This includes various forms of video advertising on both networks.

Well, Google is now releasing a new ad format related to videos: Media Ads.  Their description:

Media Ads is a new ad model that introduces new ways to target, pay for, and experience video ads on Google.com. Unlike Video Extensions, which simply attaches a video player to your existing AdWords ads, Media Ads is an entirely standalone format designed to put your videos front and center.

How does it work?  Well, the video appears in the ad itself, which because of its top position – more on this in a bit – appears with the light yellow background, below the title, to the left of the description like this:

Then when you click on the video, it does that cool lightbox thing where the background grays out and the video gets huge without opening up another window:

AdWords Media Ads Pricing Model

Pretty cool experience when you’re just paying for a click, right?  Lee Corso says, “Not so fast, my friend” and ducks behind the booth to put on some mascot head.  I know it’s his shtick, but I seriously expect that guy to show up at the Pittsburgh furry convention every year.  Although, I’d have to hear about it on WDVE to know about it because I totally don’t go to those.

So the model is flat-fee.  I don’t know how crazy I’d be about that compared to the traditional pay per click formula, but it is a pretty cool experience and – here’s the key – you get guaranteed top ranking.  You also don’t actually put in any keywords, so it’s dependent upon Google to determine that the search is related to your brand for your ad to show.

Just for the Major Film Studios

Having missed the announcement yesterday, this news caught my eye because of a Search Engine Land tweet mentioning an AdWords offering specifically for “Major Motion Picture Studios.” Film marketing is of personal interest to me because of my wife’s careers as a literary agent and producer and because of a close writer/director/editor friend with whom I regularly discuss the topic.  And you probably know that SEODog is a major film star now.

When you scroll down to the original Inside AdWords post you’ll notice the last paragraph; both sentences are key, so let’s take them one at a time:

Media Ads is still in limited release to major motion picture studios promoting new release features.

That means if you’re one of the big boys like Sony or Paramount, you’re set. If you’re an independent, you’re out of luck, although my sense is that you wouldn’t have the budget for this flat rate offering any way. Anyone outside of the film industry, it doesn’t matter, so you can stop – wait, what?

Over time, we plan to offer Media Ads to more advertisers in more industries to help them promote their videos on Google.com.

That’s why I mentioned brands earlier instead of films when talking about search queries.  Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see where this is going.  How long before guaranteed top listings is offered to all brands…for a (high) flat price?

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?