I’m stoked to be going to Affiliate Summit West this year!

I’ll be getting in late Sunday night but I’ll be there all day Monday and Tuesday. I’ll probably be tweeting a bit – I’ll tweet out my location, etc sometimes so I’d love to chat!!

Ads on this blog

I will be experimenting with ads on this blog in the very near future. I’ll post my findings if they are interesting! I’ll also post my tactics on how I plan to monetize the blog, show screenshots of the results, etc.

This will be a fun adventure!

Oh, wait, why am I monetizing this blog? Because I love to share but I need to monetize my sharing a tiny bit since I do not take on clients anymore and semvironment is no longer an agency but an educational resource for search marketers and affiliates everywhere. I truly want to ‘empower advertisers everywhere’ and I think two of the best ways to do it are 1) solid, real information and opinions from somebody in the trenches all the time and 2) products and services that help those of us striving to make a good living online!

Hope you don’t mind the ads!

And I’ll see you at ASW if you’re going!

Google AdWords for Mobile

If you’re ready to trudge out onto the PPC battleground, AdWords is a logical place to start. With mobile ads integrated into its regular search and content campaign management, AdWords can be a great place for mobile advertisers to begin as well. To enable ads on mobile devices, just indicate so in your campaign settings:

Our advice: Separate your mobile campaigns from your regular search campaigns, just like you should be separating your content network and search campaigns.

Lots of people use Google on their phones, so get a piece of the advertising action by trying AdWords for mobile search!

Yahoo! Mobile Advertising

Yahoo! also has mobile advertising, although it requires a separate application to enroll. (Sorry all you who already use Yahoo! Search Marketing).  The application is short and easy. This is another really great place to start your mobile ad campaigns, as Yahoo is a very large mobile search property.

Yahoo! Mobile Advertising also has a very cool demo, which you should check out:

Admob

One of Fast Company’s top 10 most innovative companies in advertising and marketing, Admob has been serving mobile ads since 2005. These guys specialize in iPhone and Android ads, and they’re really, really good. And, Admob has a pretty impressive mobile analytics beta out now:

Definitely check them out if you’re considering going mobile with your marketing.

MSN Mobile Advertising

Although their tagline indicates that its searchers are “affluent customers,” MSN Mobile is a very large mobile destination. Their ad platform serves banner ads next to their “premium content”, and also now serves ads on Windows Live Mobile search. At over 62 million page views a month from MSN Mobile users, this can be a pretty good place on which to throw your own ads.

Third Screen Media

Third Screen Media by Platform A is AOL’s mobile ad network. Not only do they have some mesmerizing javascript at the bottom of their website, but they also do ads for some large provides Verizon and Virgin Mobile, and partner with some big publishers like Mapquest, Traffic.com, and CBS Sportsline, not to mention AOL.com. Premium pubilshers aside, they have a pretty good sized publisher network, which is grouped handily by content channels for easy ad buying.

Nokia Interactive Advertising

Nokia calls mobile advertising a “medium advertisers can no longer afford to ignore.” Boasting 40% of the handset market, Nokia can really deliver your advertisements to a lot of people. While their program is geared toward huge sponsorships and banner campaigns (noteworthy clients include MTV and Hyundai) rather than PPC for search like some of the other platforms we’ve discussed, if you have a lot of mobile advertising to do, you should definitely contact Nokia Interactive Advertising. These guys acquired enpocket.com, a huge mobile ad player, somewhat recently.

Quattro

Quattro claims to be “North America’s Best Performing Mobile Ad Network,” which is, as they say, pretty awesome. From media planning to analytics to even SMS advertising, Quattro offers really extensive services for advertisers, and they are a powerful company to work with.

Millenial Media

Millenial Media is another huge player in the mobile advertising business. They boast some big publishers like Myspace Mobile, RottenTomatoes, and Fox. They have some huge reach, and are known for their MBrand and Decktrade networks.

Again, mobile advertising is growing at an almost alarming rate. Advertisers are seeing huge returns on their investment, partly because the medium is not as saturated as others. So jump in!

What other mobile ad networks are wicked hot?

As more advertisers are jumping on the paid search bandwagon every day, the ppc marketplace is becoming increasingly emulous. In competitive markets, more and more searches bring up pages full of nearly identical sponsored ads. Here’s an example of a Google search for house painting:

Does anyone else look at this and see the exact same ad over and over again? The only ad that remotely stands out is #4, because the local “Honolulu, HI” makes it take up a little more space.

Does your ad look like this? Well don’t resign yourself to mediocrity. If you think your website is great, but your ad stands out about as well as a single zombie amongst a pack of undead, then you need to keep reading!

(Photo from the movie, Shawn of the Dead, retrieved from Wired.com)

Because of a proliferation of PPC blogs, pay per click tip guides, and “get rich off of Adwords” websites, pretty much everybody has started using the same tricks: capitalization on every word, a call to action that ends in words like “now” and “today” with an exclamation point on the second description line, dynamic keyword insertion, and as many keywords crammed into the ad as possible.

Take another look at the ads for house painters above. Seven out of the eight ads have the word “Free” in them (another common trick), and two of the ads have the exact same call to action, “Get Free Painting Estimates Today!” It might seem counterintuitive, but by employing some of the most “proven” ad copy writing techniques, chances are – these days – that you are going to look exactly the same as everyone else, severely blunting the effectiveness of your ad.

So how can you differentiate your ad in such a competitive space? It seems that by simply writing something unique, an advertiser could seriously increase click-throughs based solely on curiosity or catching the user’s eye. But before you start trying out some wild CTR-increasing gimmick, you should consider your goals. In some cases, simply generating as much traffic as possible is the only goal; however, typically the goal of a paid search ad is to eventually get the click to convert into a sale, lead, or signup. Unique ad copy alone won’t help you in these departments.

Keeping in mind that our priority is probably going to be conversions, and therefore you can’t afford to pay for clicks that have no possibility of making you money, I would like to talk about 3 things that can transform your text ad clone into most attractive ad on the page.

1. Borrow ideas from unrelated, but highly competitive industries

Some industries are more cut-throat than others. Chances are, there are many industries that are more wildly and violently competitive than the one you are advertising in. Think of an industry where competition is fierce and take a look at some of the ads. Take note of the copywriting techniques they use, and use these as a springboard for your own ad copy ideas.

We recently had a client whose ad performance was simply not doing as well as we (and the client) thought it could be doing. A search showed that our client’s ads in certain campaigns were nothing but clones of a dozen other advertisers who had entered the PPC arena in the past several months. We had a brainstorming session to figure out how we could get this client’s ads to stand out. We knew once we got the traffic to the site, we could make the conversion, but we just weren’t seeing any kind of growth in click volume no matter what we did.

So we took a look at some ads in one of the web’s most competitive industries: online dating. Even though our client was in the construction leads industry, we thought online dating ads might give us some insight into techniques we could use in our situation. While these two verticals are highly unrelated, we figured that advertisers in online dating that hadn’t already been driven out of business are likely seeing good results from their ads. And in order to stick out the competition, they would also be forced to write very enticing ad copy in order to snatch clicks from their competitors.

Here are a couple ads that caught our attention right away:

First of all, the ® symbol in the Match.com ad immediately gives it credibility and allows it to stick out. They still use the keywords “online dating,” but they clearly draw attention to themselves. Another attractive thing about this ad is the claim to fame, the “World’s Leading Dating Site.” One of the editorial rules for Google and other major search engines is that all claims in ads have to be backed up on the landing page visitors are taken to. If your business doesn’t have some kind of credibility factor like this, take the time to court some endorsements or enter some competitions. Match.com could be the world’s leading dating site in terms of members, active members, page views, profit, or any number of things. This means that other dating sites could be the “world’s leading dating site” by another criteria. Which also means that your site could be the leader of something in some quadrant of the world. Pursuing something like this can definitely be worth it.

Although we gained some insights from the Match.com ad, we found another one that gave us some material we wanted to immediately work with:

This ad was especially appealing to us for the construction leads market. All of the ads for a search for “Home Remodeling” would show up with the title “Home Remodeling” and occasionally things like “Home Remodeling Quotes.”

So we tested a new ad, based on ideas we got from this one, against our old “zombie-clone” ad. We changed the headline “Home Remodel Bids” to “Top 3 Remodel Contractors,” and guess what?  On that change, our CTR shot up and our conversions consequently increased. Nobody else had a similar ad, and apparently people searching for home remodeling services liked the idea of getting bids from the top contractors (according to us) rather than just getting bids.

You don’t have to confine yourself to pay per click ads, either. Turn on your TV or log onto YouTube.com and watch some ads in another industry. Take note of the calls to action that the ads use. How do they grab people’s attention? What kind of language do they use? Of course, a commercial has a lot more words at its disposal than a paid search ad, but some of the best video ads can condense their pitch into one or two very short sentences.

While you’re at it, go to Barnes & Noble and bust out some magazines. What ads grab your attention? Of course, images can play a big part in attracting you to stop turning pages to look at an ad, but effective copy is essential to print advertising in almost every industry.

2. Write something clever rather than keyword-stuffed

What can cause two ads for the exact same product or service to be light years apart in terms of grabbing attention and invoking action? To stand out in this way, the ad needs to approach the customer from a different direction. A unique angle can give you more than just an edge on your competition. To avoid speaking in too many general terms, here are a few examples, using our same construction leads company:

Instead of:

Start Your Remodel Now
Get Quality Home Remodeling Bids
From Local Pre-Screened Contractors

We tried:

Start Your Remodel Now
Top Contractors So There’s No Delay
Shop Free Bids & Save Today!

What do you think the click through response to this ad was? Well, have you ever heard of the phrase, “through the roof?” Rhyme and cadence are a couple of things that can get your ad to stick in someone’s head. And people like the smooth feel of a rhyme. It may not work in every case, but it’s definitely worth testing.

Here’s another trick we’ve tried: alliteration.

Ready To Remodel?
Compare Custom Contractor Quotes
Click Quickly To Cut Your Costs!

How much friendlier and more clever is this than the generic ads everyone else has, like this one?

Remodeling Quotes
Find Remodeling Contractors
Get Remodel Price Quotes Today

Just a few things to think about. The point is, stop focusing on cramming keywords, and focus on making your ads appealing. Chances are, it’ll pay off.

3. Try something risky

By risky, I don’t mean stupid; I mean do something aggressive. And by aggressive, I don’t mean a call to action like “Order Right Now!” I mean write something that persuades people to click on your ad without looking desperate or the same as everyone else.

This is tricky to do. By studying competitive advertisers in other industries, as discussed in Tip #1, you might be able to find inspiration for ideas if your brainstorming hasn’t gotten you anywhere so far.

Take this example:

Cut The Crap
Expert Remodeling Contractors Are
Ready To Bid. Get A Free Quote Now!

Now there’s an ad that could get your attention. Of course, there are still editorial guidelines to be followed, and taste to be considered, but as the competitive game gets tougher, in order to outshine the rest of the text ad clones, good advertisers are going to have to test risky, aggressive ads.

And that’s the beauty of pay per click advertising. You can test everything, and nothing is permanent if you want to reverse it. If you no longer want to be one of the text ad clones, then start testing some new ads! If they don’t work, then test some other ones!

Search Engine Land questioned why Baidu is taking so much heat for this. Google probably doesn’t validate the medical licenses of doctors who advertise on its search network. Should they be responsible if some advertisers forge their credentials?

A couple thoughts that we thought we’d throw into the mix:

1. If a television station were to air an ad for a fraudulent medical practice, could the station be sued in addition to the advertiser? Most likely, yes. Looking at court precedence, it is very likely that this could occur. But should this be so? Is the channel liable for the 3rd party messages it broadcasts? I think there will be mixed opinions on this, but I imagine that courts will rule “yes” 3 out of 4 times. Why wouldn’t this concept cross over into another medium?

2. In light of these kinds of events, will search engines start doing more due diligence on advertisers within certain verticals? Right now, almost anyone can advertise, posing as anyone. Do you think the big search engines will start to crack down on this? And how would they?

A very useful method of gauging interest when researching a business or website idea is through running test ads on pay per click networks, such as Google Adwords. Because of the ease of entry for advertisers on these types of ad platforms, it is easy to set up a test campaign for a product or industry you are looking into, and then simply sending the visitors to an existing website – a competitor even. Yes, you are paying for clicks for someone else, but you are able to gather data that you can use to help decide whether you should enter a particular marketplace.

This is a fast, relatively cheap way to research. However, if standards for validating your business, identity, and credentials tighten in the future, it may be less possible to perform such tests in the future. Then again, irresponsible advertisers can cause a lot of trouble doing these test campaigns and can even damage a competitor’s brand. Maybe it would be good to have some more regulation? What do you all think?

Previously, data from Search Partners and Google Search was aggregated, so advertisers could view all of their search stats and all of their content network stats separately. Now, however, Adwords allows users to drill down even more and separate the search network partners such as Ask.com and AOL from the regular Google Search. The Report Center will soon reflect this change as well and give users the ability to run reports with search statistics separated or aggregated according to their preference.

How will this change help you as a PPC manager or advertiser? Well, now you can see if the search network is helping or hampering your regular Google search performance. It’s well known that the Content Network can sometimes drive costs unnecessarily high for certain campaigns (and sometimes it can be quite cost effective as well). Now you can see if AOL and the other search partners aren’t converting as well, which enables you to make the wise decision to cut the cord if necessary.

It’s kind like if you’re advertising on cable and you get the results from your TBS and TNT advertising campaigns lumped together. It might be nice to know that TNT is doing awesome and TBS is doing poorly instead of knowing that overall everything is doing average.

Once again, the more information at your disposal, the more empowered you are to make important marketing decisions.

This new tool is accessible from the Create An Ad page within an Adwords campaign. Navigate to your campaign, then ad group, and then click on the Ad Variations tab. On that page, simply click on Display Ad Builder to get started.

Display ads are used on the content network and show up where publishers have enabled “image ads” through AdSense.

You can visit the Display Ad homepage here, or view the video tutorial below on how to use the ad builder, which Google has provided.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Basic Intro to using Google’s Website Optimizer to test your website

To get started with Website Optimizer, first log into your Google AdWords account. Click on “Website Optimizer, just below the tabs at the top:

You’ll be shown a table with a list of your current experiments. Experiments are the separate tests that you are running, for example one landing page versus another. Since it’s your first time, you’ll click on “Create An Experiment”.

Two Types of Tests:

A/B Experiment

If you’re new to Website Optimizer, A/B Testing will be your first task. It’s less complicated than Multivariate Testing, and you don’t have to have a ton of traffic for it to be effective. A/B Testing allows you to test two entirely different landing pages against each other. This is useful if you’re planning on redesigning your site, for example, and you’re not sure whether a blue background or a red background gets the best results. Or if you’d like to know if more people sign up for your service if the form is on the right side or on the left, the A/B test is a great way to find out. It’s also a good way to prove to your boss that things are working. The Optimizer will give you a report of the results from each landing page you do.

A/B Testing doesn’t mean you only get two options, either. You can test several variations against each other. If you’re not getting much traffic, though, you’ll probably want to limit your testing options in order to see quantifiable results faster.

To run an A/B experiment, click “Create.” You’ll continue on to a checklist with the following items:

1.Choose the page you would like to test

Examples of potential test pages could be your homepage or a product detail page.

2.Create alternate versions of your test page

Create and publish different versions of your test page at unique URLs so that Website Optimizer can randomly display different versions to your users. These URLs could be bookmarked by your users, so after your experiment finishes, you may want to keep these URLs valid.

3.Identify your conversion page

This is an existing page on your website that users reach after they’ve completed a successful conversion. For example, this might be the page displayed after a user completes a purchase, signs up for a newsletter, or fills out a contact form.

Once you’ve completed the steps, click “Continue.” You’ll be asked to name your experiment and then identify where your pages are. You’ll need to have already uploaded your variations to your server.

If your pages aren’t on the web, Website Optimizer will say it cannot find them, and you’ll need to check the URL or make sure you have uploaded them correctly. When you’re ready, click “Continue.”

You’ll be asked who will install the Javascript tags that identify your test and conversion pages. We’ll assume that you are doing this:

Continue, and you’ll be given little javascript code snippets to paste into your pages. Whenever it says to paste the code at the beginning of your page, make sure to paste it right after the <body> tag, not before. Whenever it says to paste the code at the end of your page, make sure to paste it right before the </body> tag.

Now, upload your pages with the script in them and click “Validate:”

If the pages don’t validate, check to make sure they uploaded correctly. Sometimes you need to wait a minute for it to recognize the new pages.

Voila! You’re done setting up the experiment! Now, it will gather data whenever someone lands on your landing page from any of your ads. The code will rotate which page users arrive at, and it even keeps track so repeat visitors don’t get different versions of your site (so they don’t get confused!). After a while, you’ll be able to view a sample report like this:

(As you can see, Variation 1 really killed the original!)

To view this report, click on “Website Optimizer” and then “View Report” by the name of your experiment in the table:

Multivariate Experiment

A Multivariate Experiment is taking the A/B test a little bit further. This is the experiment you want to run if you’re trying to change multiple things on different parts of the page simultaneously. You’ll want to be getting 1,000 or more views a week for this to be effective. This is for advanced testing, but Google does a pretty good job of walking you through it.

You start at the same spot as A/B Testing: create an experiment in Website Optimizer, only this time choose Multivariate Experiment. AdWords will walk you through the following steps:

1. Identify experiment pages
1a. Plan your experiment
2. Add JavaScript tags to experiment pages
3. Create variations
4. Review experiment settings and launch
5. View Report

You can see an example of Google’s multivariate experiment on its Adwords homepage in our previous post on the subject.

Constant testing with Website Optimizer can increase your conversions by over 100%. We’ve seen cases where conversions have doubled or tripled just because of the layout – not even the content – of a landing page. Why are users finicky like that? I guess figuring that out is all part of marketing.

As Google users search, a drop-down box appears with 10 suggested queries, along with the number of results. For example, if users type in “UFO” Google suggests “UFOs (8,370,000 results)”, “UFO Sightings (1,430,000 results), and “UFO News (830,000)”, among others.

PPC Discussions calls Google Suggest “the death of the long tail.” With search made easier for users (searchers don’t have to type a full query – they can just type a word and choose a suggestion), many long-tail keywords will likely be less searched or even un-searched. Major increases in search volume for the most popular queries will not only result in more advertiser competition for those keywords, but also much more revenue for Google as bids increase.

Seminars for Success are hands-on training sessions offered in a variety of cities across the U.S., including Denver, Atlanta, Washington D.C., New York City, San Francisco and several others. There will even be a couple of seminars in Honolulu this December. The cost of a session is about $250, but Google gives attendees $50 of it back in the form of AdWords credit so they can get started applying what they have learned at the seminar. Sessions last a full day and are led by what Google calls “independent and unbiased search marketing professionals.”

Two Analytics seminars are also available: “Introduction and User Training” and “Advanced Technical Implementation.”

Click this screen shot to see the details:

Special note: Every single link above the fold for the query ‘loans’ in Yahoo! is paid! Wow!

Check out what a normal business.com listing looks like:

Eerily similar, right? Business.com’s directory feed has been picked up by Yahoo! and stuffed into the organic results for quite some time now…or business.com has been using ‘search submit pro’ for their directory feeds…I can’t confirm anything, just speculating here but I can say for certain that business.com directory listings appear in Yahoo! organic search results…so I wonder if Yahoo! picks up these extra links now as part of the package or does business.com submit them via ‘search submit pro’ as part of their package?

Yahoo!’s Search Submit Pro is a program where you can get ‘organic’ results that are really ‘paid’ if you can spend $5K+ per month. The application process is quite rigorous because the quality level of the pages you want in the ‘organic’ area have to be extremely high – or so they say. These ‘sponsored’ results are easy to spot as a paid search marketer or SEO but the general user probably does not or would not know the difference. You can spot these results by simply rubbing your mouse over the link and looking at what the status bar says at the bottom of your browser.

You might be surprised at how much those ‘organic’ listings could cost – they are profitable for business.com because they cost less than business.com does. I can say that I know from current experience that the top organic result for some insanely competitive keywords only costs .75 to $2 per click while the sponsored ‘non-search submit pro’ side of advertising would cost $5+/click for the number 1 spot.