Search Engine Roundtable is covering the Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago this week, below are some quotes and links to the sessions about PPC advertising.
Compare & Contrast: Ad Program Strategies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft)
Brad Geddes talks about the similarities and differences of Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter:
“Google AdWords supports over 200 countries, with 27 regional targeting options.
Microsoft adCenter supports 200 countries but only shows ads in 4 countries but they will role out more as time goes on. Geographic targeting is determined at the order level (ad group level). He then shows screen shots, all customers (all of the world) or you can select countries or regions.
Yahoo Search Marketing “Panama” is only available in the US now. 23 countries available, DMA targeting (US only), one account per country. Each country may have different editorial considerations. He then shows screen shots from the US based advertisers. You can select entire market versus regions (entire market is a country). You can drill down to state, region, etc and it shows you a highlighted map with your selection. They do have a zip code search, but it is not radius, it just shows you regions that are in or close to that zip code.”
Ad Testing: Research and Findings:
Anton Konikov from Acronym Media’s presentation about advanced topics with testing:
“Covering the fundamentals of ad testing: where can you test? Google and MSN both allow for multiple ad creative testing, where Yahoo has not in the past. Google and MSN both allow for multiple ad creative testing, where Yahoo has not in the past. However Yahoo! Panama will alow for this. He said that they would have to run ads over a certain period of time and then change them. He discussed key metrics: Click-Through-Rate (CTR) allows you to know how attractive the ad or offering is, and which messaging is more effective at driving traffic. Conversion rate is a more desirable metric, and should be tracked by keyword.”
Ads in a Quality Score World:
Josh Stylman from Reprise Media talks about the Google AdWords quality score:
“How is industry defining “quality score?” Method was originally defined by Google. Shows some historical context explaining how PPC started with GoTo. Started with the simple rule that “whoever pays most is #1.” There were analogies to the financial services market since you knew what your competitor pays. “Thank Google” for introducing idea of CPC X CTR, which made advertisers become more aware of the copy they produced, as well as forced bid management. Why did G change the auction? Control over #1 position, minimized less relevant ads, and of course maximized G’s revenue.”
