| Google AdSense CPM | | Print | |
publishing AdSense since the ads do not usually have a high click-through rate.
To help compensate for that, and to make AdSense more appealing to large
traditional media buyers, Google also sells AdSense ads on a C.P.M. rate.
Advertisers can buy ads on off-topic sites for branding, but they have a 25 cent
C.P.M. minimum, and will have to compete with the revenue earned by other
advertisements, which could drive the price much higher. This will eventually
cause people to significantly bid up the ads on some of the larger & more
important AdSense partners.
Large publishers who do not want to compete with Google selling direct ads
can optionally turn off the C.P.M. feature.
C.P.M. ads can also be targeted to a specific page or section if an advertiser
does not want to buy ads across an entire site.
A good way to get your ads syndicated to content sites you want to be on
without being forced to pay C.P.M. rates is to bid on common page text or
names of sites you want to be on and only enable that ad to be displayed on
the content network. That should roughly let you target some of your favorite
sites and still only pay when people click on your ads.
Filtering Junk AdSense Clicks:
Click fraud is a huge issue. Google now allows you to filter out sites that you
do not want to advertise on. If a site sends you significant traffic that does not
convert you can block their URL so your ads do not appear on their site.
This tool, which I have not yet tried, tracks which sites your AdSense ads are
appearing on. Sometimes low quality scrapper sites actually convert well since
people only find them via search and immediately click an ad while still in
search mode. You can’t determine how well a site will convert without tracking
it, although if you are getting a ton of clicks and suspect fraud then it is best to
block the URL.
If you enable content syndication (displaying your ads on AdSense) make sure
you filter out regions which have notoriously high click fraud (India and most
of Asia) unless you are trying to target those regions.
Why Lower Ads Often have Better ROI:
The lower ads have a lower bid price. That can help save money if the top placed
ads are overpriced. Another great benefit of having a lower ad is that a user that
clicks on one is more prequalified to make a purchase. By scrolling through a bunch
of ads they have displayed a greater intent to make a purchase.
These two mathematical facts often mean that listing at 5 or 6 often provides a
better ROI than listing at the top. You will need to determine the profit elasticity
for your market to see what ad locations will return the highest overall profits.
Lowering Click Price after Bidding:
After you get 10 or 20 clicks and have a decent click through rate you may want to
slash your bids in half or by 2/3. Often it is best to start off with your ad around
the #1 or #2 positions to collect feedback and then let it fall back after you drop
ad price.
Expanding Breadth:
If you are running your ads correctly the availability of well targeted ads should
be what is limiting your spend.
If your ad spend is limited by a budget and you are ranking high for many of the
search terms lower your max bid to lower the position down to 3 to 7. In doing so
you will be able to show up on more search results and people who are looking at
the lower ad positions are more prequalified to buy.
Dynamic Keyword Insertion:
If you have a group of similar keywords that will still use the same body text you
can enable this feature by writing out your normal body text, and placing
{KeyWord: default keyword} in the title of the ad.
When the keyword matching the search is greater than 25 characters the default ad
title will show. Otherwise the ad will show the search term as the ad title. Also note
how I capitalized the K and W in keyword. This makes the words in your ad title
appear capitalized.
Having keywords in your title can help your title jump out at people and improve
click through rates.
Google now also allows you to pass the referring keyword trigger as a variable in
the actual destination URL. To pass the trigger keyword as a variable use
&kw={keyword}. You can also track whether the clicks came from Google
content ads or Google search ads by adding the following to your URL
referrer={ifsearch:GoogleAdWordsSearch}{ifcontent:GoogleAdWordsContent}.
Use Keyword Rich URL’s to Your Advantage:
Often people view the URL as one of the most important parts of an ad. The ad
title sticks out the most, but many people factor in the URL more than the copy. By
changing your URL to a keyword rich URL you can sometimes raise your click
through rate by 50 – 200%. A new throw away domain name only costs $8 at
GoDaddy.
If you have some high selling affiliates you may want to reward them by giving
them their own keyword rich domain. This can also help some of your affiliates get
their message through to customers since a few bad affiliates can get messages with
your URL in it blocked from being received by people using AOL or similar email
clients.
Bid on Competitors Names or Products:
Trademark laws still have not been firmly set in this field. Google allows US and
Canadian advertisers to bid on trademark names of their competitors. The
competitors trademark names may not appear in the ad, but they can be used as the
ad trigger word. I can tell you from personal experience that these terms are often
super cheap and convert well.
If you use competitor names as the triggering word then you need to group that in
an ad that is not using dynamic keyword insertion or your ad title will put you in
trademark violation.
Keep in mind that since the laws are gray in this area you may run into some
problems if you push the envelope and do not respond to complaints. I believe in
the US trademark owners are required to inform you of the problem and give you a
chance to fix it before they have a chance to sue you for damages (whether or not
they can sue you is still somewhat up in the air).
I did this particular technique and ticked off about a dozen SEOs who made a few
hate threads. I primarily was looking for AdSense ad space in articles, but some of
the SEOs had nasty comments about the technique (although it is a rather common
technique).
You may want to ask people before using their names if you think they may take it
the wrong way. Another good way to appear on many of the content sites is to run
your ads on phrase match for some of the more popular article titles in your
industry.
A way to avoid the controversy associated with bidding on competitors names is to
only bid on their names on content matched ads (ie: disable search ads in the ad
groups focused on competing products).
Viewing Geographically Targeted Ads:
Often people will target ads to a specific country. If you are not in the country you
will be advertising in you can view the country specific ads by adding &gl=country
code to the search string (ca for Canada, US for United States, UK for United
Kingdom, etc).
If Google is mixing in state regional ads it will list the state name at the bottom of
the ad.
Geotargeting can allow you to afford words which may be broader than your
globally effective keywords since they geotargeting only delivers ads to locations
you are interested in advertising at.
You may want to break your ads down by different price levels by country codes.
One of my friends nearly doubled his ROI by placing ads from low converting
countries in their own cheaper ad groups.
Sending Users to a Landing Page:
The conversion process works best when you remove unnecessary steps. By
sending a user to a focused landing page versus your home page you can improve
conversion rates.
Use Capital Letters:
Google will allow you to use capital letters at the beginning of words in the title and
in the description. Using capital letters at the beginning of each word in your ad title
and ad description can also help boost your clickthrough rate. Most people do not
capitalize short words like an, or, and a.
Split Testing:
Google will allow you to test multiple ads at any given time. Every week you should
try to make a new ad and place it up against the best ad from the week prior. If you
have an ad that is getting an exceptionally low click through rate and another
pulling decent you can usually get rid of the bad ad after a few clicks on it.
Perry Marshall created a free online Split Testing tool which will help guide you using
mathematics to determine if it is whether or not you have collected enough data do
stop testing. He said he usually recommends waiting until it is at least 90% to 95%
sure of the results (as determined by the software).
You can also make two copies of the same ad and send it to different URLs to test
different landing pages.
When split testing you will want to turn off the auto optimization tool and you may
want to limit the test only to Google so you can get the most accurate data.
More Advanced Ad Testing:
I do not work with large enough accounts to have put extreme effort into some of
my tracking, but a few other ad testing options are:
• Split Testing: explained above, but you can keep doing split testing over
and over again, creating smarter and smarter ads
• A/B/C testing: make two identical copies of one of the ads and compare
it to another. Run until the CTR of the same ads are nearly identical and
then compare that rate to the other ad.
• Quadrents: use two title sets and two description sets which make 4 ads.
Leave them unoptimized and run the AdWords account until a clear
leading ad is found.
• Taguchi Method: a bit complex for this guide, as I have not deeply
researched it and most people probably will not use it, but the Taguchi
Method allows you to set up a large matrix of variables and determine what
the best combinations are using advanced mathematics and minimal
testing.
If You Are Having Problems with a Word:
For your highest traffic and most expensive keywords you will usually want to make
custom ads specific to each one. If you have a word that is giving you problems in
an ad group, remove it from the ad group and set it out on its own.
Off the start you can try to exact match it for a while. If you try multiple exact
match specific targeted ads for that keyword and still can not get it to run then that
might not be a word worth running an ad for.
Cheap Traffic:
Some AOL users have type search term here in their search queries. Some of them
accidentally run the word here into their search term, such as hereViagra or
hereYourTerm. Some people search for stuff like NBA Basketball.com. There is a ton
of cheap targeted traffic if you are creative.
Affiliate Ads:
Google only allows one affiliate or merchant ad per keyword per URL. This means
that affiliates do not need to identify their relationships in the ads and whoever has
the ad with the highest effective click price between the merchant and all of their
affiliates gets their ad displayed.
Affiliates can still have their ads show up if they create white label affiliate sites with
information about the products.
Creative PPC Techniques:
Mikkel wrote a few good ppc tips in this article. A few pointers he offered were:
• Think creatively.
• Do not point PPC ads at landing pages.
• You may be able to cloak pages that the ad editors see.
• Do not use the budget function.
Someone at ThreadWatch also mentioned that some of your most creative
AdWords ad ideas might be best to try out on a Friday evening so that they may be
able to run a full weekend before being spotted by an editor.
If you have the top premium AdSense position and also rank well in the organic
listings you can help bump the #2 premium ad position down to the right rail if
you edit your copy. It may take up to 3 days for an editor to read your new ad and
raise both ads to the top of the results again.
Getting Quicker Business Feedback:
When starting a B2B account it is often a bad idea to start an account on a
weekend. Monday is usually the biggest spending day for most B2B purchases and
is the best day to start your ads.
Lead generation may be a smarter way to dive into Google AdWords than trying to
sell affiliate products. Since it is common to have a lead generation rate of 10-20%
the feedback loop is about 10 times as fast as selling a product that may convert at
1-2%.
Google AdWords Competitive Analysis Software:
Google does not give its users tons of information about competing sites. Recently
a couple software products hit the market which ping Google and determine the ad
display rate and average ad position for your ads and competing ads. You can use
this information to see which competitors are most sophisticated and what
positions have the most competition and perhaps profits.
AdArchiver is a cheaper lower end product. AdGooroo is a higher end more
sophisticated system. Google also released an API which allows people to build
interfacing software.
Bidding on Your Brand (Important):
If you rank at the top for your brand name should you also buy the associated ad?
My answer is usually yes for the following reasons:
• You can control the branding statement on your ads. You can’t do that
with your regular listings.
• You can point people at your landing pages or make special offers with the
ads. Usually your home page ranks in the regular listings.
• If you are not advertising there then your competitors may be.
• If the top ranking ad is from the same site as the top ranking regular result
then more people may click on your regular result.
• If you have affiliates make sure you are not getting in bidding wars with
them. Create a consistent affiliate marketing plan that makes sense.
Creating Ad Groups:
• Your most competitive or most important terms should usually be in their
own ad groups so they are easy to monitor and so you can write ad copy
that is precisely targeted to those terms.
• You may want to create a group for misspelled terms.
• You may want to create a group for mistyped domain names.
• You may want to create ad groups based on personality types.
• You may want to create ad groups for your most important products.
• You may want to create ad groups for seasonal or special promotions.
• You may want to create ad groups based on personality types.
• If you are bidding on contextual networks as well some people also use
different groups for contextual ads due to different ad value and the desire
to use different ad copy.
There are many ways you can split up your account. By creating and tracking
various ad groups it makes it easier to monitor your return on investment, and
adjust you’re your ad spend accordingly.
Deep Keyword Research:
Using deep keyword research is hugely important.
Yahoo! Search marketing places exact matches ahead of broad matches, so if your
competitor bids $2 for widgets and you bid 11 cents for buy widgets when people
search for buy widgets your ad will list above your competitors ads even though
your ad is a lower price. This allows you to get more targeted clicks at a lower price,
which logarithmically increases your advertising return on investment.
There is something to be said for simplicity and ease of management, but using
targeted permutations of your most important terms should drastically increase
your ROI.
With Google AdWords they allow dynamic keyword insertion (mentioned above),
that allows the search query to drive the ad copy. That increases your chances of
having a higher clickthrough rate and lowering your cost per click if you bid on
many variations of your most important Google AdWords keywords.
Below is a chart of some example term ideas (with the words slightly modified) and
the associated conversion data from an actual AdWords account. Notice how the
cost per conversion drops off when modifiers are added to the root term. By
bidding on these additional keyword phrases I am paying less for higher targeted
leads.
Adding modifiers will split up the traffic volumes to make some terms seem
more profitable than they are and make other similar permutations seem less
profitable than they are. The math from the above campaign was compiled
over a year with hundreds of thousands of ad impressions to help smooth out
some of the discrepancies.
You have to consider the cost of building and managing the account when
building out your keyword list, but I tend to like using various matching levels
and modifiers on my most important keywords.
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Posted by librated mind
07-09-2008 00:21, does my arning rat per click also depends on th country of the account owner or just the country wher the clicker http:// areyousuperficial.blogspot.com » Reply |
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