46 and 47 » Pay Per Click Advertising

Double Your Click-Through Rate Using AdWords Placement Reports

47 — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 05:07:21 +0000

Here’s a tip that could double your click-through rate when advertising on Google’s content network. Make sure you use the placement reports in AdWords to track the sites showing your ads. Then add exclusions to remove any sites with a bad CTR.

I didn’t start doing this soon enough and wish I had. Here’s an example of how much of a difference it can make. We had a campaign that in January got 94 clicks from 34,011 impressions for a 0.28% click-through rate. Not good but not terrible either. Well, if I had paid more attention to the placement reports, I would have known that MySpace gave us 0 clicks from 19,204 impressions. Just getting rid of MySpace would have bumped the click-through rate of that campaign to 0.63%. Making one simple change can more than double your CTR. Nice!

I’m not picking on MySpace traffic either (it probably works well for some things). The top 10 sites where our ads were shown gave us 0 clicks from over 30,000 impressions. Wipe out those worthless impressions and our click-through rate on the content network jumps up into search network territory.

Now, it’s true CTR doesn’t play as large a role in your Quality Score on the content network. It’s better to be safe than sorry though (just imagine how much Google would love you with a super high CTR). Do whatever you can to keep Google happy.

Saw An Awesome Landing Page On Facebook

47 — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 05:35:04 +0000

My partner in crime, 46, found an awesome landing page advertised on Facebook the other day. The ad headline and picture tied together nicely making a compelling reason to take an online quiz. I’ll leave out the specifics since I don’t want to out anybody too much. Anyway, she clicked on it as a curious Facebook user, not as a part-time affiliate marketing type.

The landing page itself took her through three or four short pages of questions. After you answered the last set of questions, it sent you to a page with a couple of email and zip submit CPA offers. It said you had to complete two of them to get your results. She was like “dang it!”

I started laughing when she showed me the site. It was almost perfect for people like her because, once she filled out the information, she really wanted to know the answer. Unfortunately for the site owner, she went back to being a webmaster and didn’t complete any offers. Even if it didn’t convert well and they scrapped it, that’s a creative spin on the whole “vote for a free iPod thing.”

Removing AdSense Increased Landing Page Revenue A Lot

47 — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 18:35:32 +0000

Should you put AdSense on your landing pages? There’s probably a way to make it work but my experience says no. I’ve noticed a lot of new people do it and so did we. The thinking goes “hey, if I don’t make a sale then I might get an AdSense click.”

Here’s a good example of why you should at least find out what happens without it. We were testing a campaign a few months ago and thought our landing page was the reason our conversions were low. The landing page only had a single AdSense block on it but its CTR was over 10%.

I didn’t really want to give up the Google money but threw caution to the wind and removed it. Our eCPC was higher for conversions than for AdSense clicks (big surprise). I was just hoping some of those AdSense clicker people would convert.

Results

	Dates	Impressions	Clicks	Conversions	Conversion Rate	CTR	Revenue
With AdSense	February 1 to 21 (21 days)	1,413	297	21	7.07%	21.02%	$69.14
Without AdSense	February 22 to March 12 (20 days)	1,633	546	43	7.88%	33.44%	$111.80

AdSense Suckage

We obviously came out ahead (62% ahead). I was most interested in the conversions per impression (rather than the slightly increased conversions per click) when I analyzed the results. After all, I’m paying for those impressions regardless of what action a visitor performs. That’s the part that blew me away at first. We got 105% more conversions from only 16% more traffic. Wow, that’s some serious AdSense leakage.

Building Better Landing Pages

You can deduce a landing page design lesson from this too. Don’t give people too many choices. Funnel them to the action that you really want them to take.

Why I Don’t Use Keyword Spying Tools (Much)

47 — Thu, 22 May 2008 05:00:49 +0000

I’m not using any keyword spying tools. At least not right now. It might be one of the stupidest things ever but here’s why.

First, I really feel that I need to learn how to do PPC effectively. Could I jump start my campaigns if I stole someone else’s? Maybe. But what happens when that stops working? Whether it’s a changing market or a quality score update or whatever, at some point in the future, I’ll have to figure out what I’m doing. Then I’m back to square one and probably behind the curve again.

Second, we’re mainly using the content network. If there are tools that let you spy on content network advertisers then it’s news to me (I’m not entirely sure how you’d even do that). Even if someone took a search campaign and duplicated it on content, it likely wouldn’t work. I know from experience that content and search are often very different beasts at times. I’ve taken the exact same campaign (same ads, same keywords, same grouping, same bids) from one and tried it on the other. Even when I later adjust the bids and groupings we got vastly different results.

Third, it’s probably safe to assume that a competitor turns a profit when you see their ads up for months at a time. Days or weeks is a different story though. I’ve lost money till it hurt for an extended period of time while trying to improve a quality score/quality index. I pity the fool that copied that crap. As Chad from CDF Networks pointed out, you can’t see a lot of what’s going on behind the scenes. You don’t know their campaign structure. You don’t know their quality score. You don’t know their payout. Even small differences there can make a huge difference in profitability.

Mastering search engine marketing and honing creativity are assets. It’s like my professors used to say over and over again. “Don’t just memorize the formulas. You need to understand how things work.” That’s what I’m trying to do. As painful as it may be at the moment.

P.S. To the sad souls spying on us now: You’re wasting everyone’s time and server resources. There’s no secret treasure trove of PPC goodies hidden at this IP address. In fact, we’ll probably make more profit doing our Neilsen ratings survey this week (Battlestar Galactica on Friday – Check) than from any online ventures. Come back in 6 or 7 months. We might know what we’re doing by then. Frak you very much.

Find Websites To Buy Using Pay-Per-Click Data

47 — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:08:29 +0000

A lot of people talk about using your AdWords reports to find high converting sites when running pay-per-click campaigns on Google. Then putting your ads on those websites using site placement to get a higher ROI. I just discovered a similar use for the same technique. Add site placements for those same websites but also approach the owners about selling them to you.

A Nice Accident

Did I come up with this on my own? Nope. It was totally by accident. I just tracked impressions, clicks, and conversions for one of our tiny campaigns.

One website kept showing up in all three places. I took a look at the site and it was really nice. It had targeted subject content, lots of backlinks, and, most importantly for us, was low maintenance (from what I could tell).

As I browsed around, I saw a big for sale sign on the site, and noticed that it looked like it was only monetized using AdSense. A handful of affiliate products immediately came to mind as a way to make even more money from it. Perfect. Well, almost perfect.

Missed Opportunity

The sales information page didn’t have a lot of the relevant stats that we needed to make an informed decision (asking price, traffic, revenue, expenses, etc) so I emailed the site’s owner. Unfortunately, all of this happened too late to help us. Someone else bought it by the time I heard back from the owner. Bummer.

Now, I definitely keep an eye out for this kind of thing and so should you. Whenever you come across something good as an advertiser, especially if it’s obvious the owner isn’t an affiliate marketer, look for a contact page. Test the waters for a potential sale. The worst they can do is say “no” but you could end up with something great.