PardonMyFrench

Are You Still Not Using Google's Ad Planner?

I've been directing online advertising campaigns since the mid 90s for very large companies (AT&T, DLJ/Harrisdirect) as well as small companies and political campaigns (ex - John McCain for President). When I've worked for big companies I had access to media planning tools and I've used them all - Nielsen, @Plan, comScore; in fact, I met with some of the current comScore executive team before they became executives. Usually these services are great for planning, but when you actually made a specific media buy these analyses don't match what actually went into market.

These types of services cost a monthly fee that as a small business owner I find a little tough to swallow and it was a little tough to swallow for the political agency I do work for.  So, that's why I'm a huge believer in Google's Ad Planner tool; the new enhancements including actual ad placements make this invaluable to the small advertiser.  This is just another reason why working with Google helps small advertisers operate like big advertisers without all of the upfront costs:

1. Ad Planner allows you to build media plans and forecasts by demo and geographic targets for FREE
2. Ad Planner provides pretty, professional charts for your plans for FREE
3. Build your own banner ads gives you the chance to run flash ads for FREE.  Sure they are slightly better than average creatives, but did I mention they are FREE?
4. Paid search is the great money equalizer because you are rewarded for great relevancy; plus the geo targeting, time of day targeting, creative building, and budget management are all FREE
5. Google's Content network allows you to buy on a CPC or CPM basis across big and small sites all using demographic and content targeting

The actual media buys themselves of course costs money but you can have everything run via credit card which gives you maximum freedom to lower or increase spends or shut it off whenever you want.  Plus, if you spend a moderate amount per month (~$10K) you can get access to one of Google's account teams.

Yes improvements to the Ad Planner are just another reason why Google is your best friend for advertising, especially if you are a small business or small client.  The only complaint I have with the Ad Planner is the lack of ability to geo-target at anything other than Country, State, Metro, or City; plus the City targeting is annoying because they aren't grouped alphabetically by state, but alphabetically by Metro (try looking for specific cities in Virginia).  However, I'm happy with the tool I have because it does most of what I want for FREE and I know Google will continue to make improvements.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Confessions of a 10 Year AT&T Vet - I Like Google Voice

Those of you who read this website might not know that I worked at AT&T for 10 years.  In fact, after my first year of graduate school I started as an intern at an internal consulting group called Business Operations Analysis - kind of a nerd factory of nerds that was even part of Bell Labs for a short while.  After about 4 years in BOA I joined the consumer marketing groups and stayed there for about 6 years progressing up the ranks to Division Manager of a 25 person group called eAT&T or OneRate Online.  I dropped a lot of direct mail (probably about 100 million) and made millions of outbound telemarketing calls over those 6 years of marketing. 

One of those campaigns was for a product called TrueConnections.  TrueConnections is/was a follow-me 500# so that your callers called one number and you could program the number to ring at various numbers you owned.  Of course AT&T charged you for it and back in the mid 90s it seemed pretty cool, but as I recall it was too niche of a product targeted at Road Warriors and we didn't sell many plans.  Personally I didn't really use mine and didn't have much use for a product like that until last week.  That's when I got my Google Voice invite.

Now some of my AT&T brothers and sisters will turn their noses up at this product and when it first came out I didn't care for it either.  However, after setting it up last week I'm hooked.  Here's my experience with it so far:

1. Domestic calls are free.  I get that - no big deal, but if you don't make international calls, what's better than free?
2. Yes there's some issues with making calls on its network using your iPhone but I don't care.  I have one of those all you can eat plans with AT&T and have some rollover minutes.  I want Google Voice for the inbound calling features, not the outbound so the iPhone fight doesn't impact me.
3. It took me about an hour to pick out my number.  You can try coming up with a vanity number but I couldn't come up with one I liked, besides I'm not convinced a vanity number isn't a pain for dialers.  In the end I chose a local number that I think is easy to remember - 908.867.8001.
4. Setting up which numbers ring when you dial my Google Voice # was a piece of cake as is the user interface.
5. Ok - then came the time consuming part which took me about 2 hours.  In order to really get some use out of Google Voice you need to organize your contacts and put them into groups.  Each one of these groups can have different ring options and different voice mail greetings.  For example:

• Vendors that you don't want to hear from go straight to voice mail
• Friends and Family ring my three numbers, but the home phone only rings after 6 PM
• Connell Donatelli and Campaign Solutions co-workers get a special greeting

So after a few hours of organizing my contacts and then a few minutes setting up my voice mail greetings I experienced the last really cool part (so far) of Google Voice.  After someone leaves you a message you get an email or a text message notification that you have a new voice mail.  And, if that isn't cool enough Google does an ok job of transcribing the voice mail into text.  My experience with it so far is that this feature isn't something to rely on but cool none the less.

A single number for people to call you on for free?  Email notifications, transcription of voice mails to text, and individual greetings and call routings by group - those are a lot of cool features.  

I like Google Voice and so will my AT&T brothers and sisters.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google's New View Through Conversions Tracking - About Time

I logged on to one of my political AdWords accounts last night and I saw a new column called View-through Conv. and I was definitely pleased.  Sure it is only for your Content Network campaigns but I'm glad they finally added it because this type of metric has been around for years and as I've written before Google's Content Network is a great platform for display advertising especially for the small business marketer. 

View-through or impression based conversion tracking has been available for a while.  Historically, around 50% of your conversions could be view-through for banner ads with about 80% of them coming through within the first 5 days.  I tested this for search years ago and found that 90% of the latencies come within 1 day so that's probably one of the reasons Google isn't providing this for search.  If you want to read more I've reprinted a short post below that I made almost 4 years ago.  Enjoy the walk down memory lane - I did....

Latency What Is It Good For?

I was asked a few days ago to explain latency or view through/impression sales in a beautiful office overlooking the Potomac River. And, if you don't know either, I'm honored to be the first to explain it to you. Now maybe we can explain a lot of those unknown sales you've been tracking on your sales reports!Have you ever been looking to buy something at your favorite e-commerce site while at work and just before you hit the next button, your pesky boss pops up from behind, so you close your browser. Sound familiar? Well it should. Industry studies (although an old one) show that 75% of all shopping carts get abandoned. Are we to assume that these items are never bought or are they sometimes bought later? Perhaps when the boss is at lunch? 

Let's say (really write) that you are an online marketing manager for a shoe company and you use an ad server to place your ads on your media buy. A potential buyer clicks on your banner, visits your site, and just before they complete the shopping cart, that boss shows up again, and they abandon the cart. However, they show up the next day without clicking on the same banner and complete the sale. Now what? Well, armed with a cookie courtesy of your ad server, a completed sale, and a click on a banner, your ad server should be able to determine which cookie completed the sale and which banner generated the sale. Therefore, you have a latent sale. Sometimes, those pesky consumers never click on your banner and then mysteriously arrive at your site and make a sale; this is called a view through or impression based sale.

Doesn't sound like a big deal to you? Well it should because I've seen average latent sales in the 55%-60% range and the % varies from site to site and from product to product; especially when the product has a long sales process or sign-up page. Several companies that I'm aware only started tracking latents recently and up until then had a large % of sales generated from unknown channels.

Think you know everything now. Well there's a lot more to it especially when it comes to interpreting the number and running campaigns using latent sales. However, that's for another week.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Let's say (really write) that you are an online marketing manager for a shoe company and you use an ad server to place your ads on your media buy. A potential buyer clicks on your banner, visits your site, and just before they complete the shopping cart, that boss shows up again, and they abandon the cart. However, they show up the next day without clicking on the same banner and complete the sale. Now what? Well, armed with a cookie courtesy of your ad server, a completed sale, and a click on a banner, your ad server should be able to determine which cookie completed the sale and which banner generated the sale. Therefore, you have a latent sale. Sometimes, those pesky consumers never click on your banner and then mysteriously arrive at your site and make a sale; this is called a view through or impression based sale.

comScore Shows Google's Nearly Impregnable Search Fortress

comScore released its August 2009 search numbers and while a lot of people, especially Microsoft fanboys, will be jumping for joy as Microsoft gained core search share by 0.4% to 9.3% and Google dropped by 0.1% to 64.6, I for one don't see the joy.  In fact, comScore's report show's Google's dominance is quite secure and for the moment quite safe.  

You see the numbers that everyone reports is a comScore metric called core searches which is basically searches off of the main search site like Google.com.  However, as any Google fanboy (like me) will tell you, Google is much more than searches off of Google.com.  It includes Gmail. Google Docs, Google Books, News, and of course a little known site called YouTube.  And, that's where things get very interesting.

Look a little lower in the report and you'll see something called Expanded search which lists out all search activity including video and search activity on the non-core sites.  It is this report which shows how dominant Google's search strategy is and why Microsoft has a long, long way to go to catch a giant.

1. Google isn't just 7x larger like the core report shows; all Google properties versus all Microsoft properties is TEN TIMES LARGER THAN MICROSOFT.  Why do you think Google gives you all of those products for free?
2. YouTube while losing some share in August is the second largest search property around.  YouTube is so large that it is 28% larger than Yahoo and twice as large as Bing.  Think about that for a second, if Bing is hugely successful they'd have to knock of Yahoo and YouTube before Google even blinks.
3. You can look at the rest of the sites on the list, but they are so small it really doesn't matter much but they are interesting.  For example, eBay and AOL losing share and Facebook is growing quickly probably driven by their huge growth. 

Yes Bing is an exciting product.  Yes Microsoft is spending $100 million in advertising to boost their search but right now all they have generated is a little buzz and some excitement.  I haven't noticed a blip in the amount of paid search advertising that I've run for clients and I've tried.  I also doubt Google has noticed a blip in their search activity.  In fact, I bet Google is more concerned with expanded search and in that case, Google is STILL growing.  Microsoft isn't even close right now.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google's Content Network Just Got Better

With the early morning announcement that DoubleClick's Ad Exchange Network is now available in Google's Content Network, you should be very excited.  Now there are even more sites involved and based on my experience with DoubleClick's network, I'd assume that there are some new high quality sites.

What this means for you is that if you were running a Google Surge, you should now go back and ask your Google Reps for an updated site list.  If you had been using Google for placement targeting against certain demographics you should now go update that list.

I'm thrilled.  This gives you more reasons to shift dollars to Google where you get good placements with great targeting and reporting, all with competitive prices via at worst a credit card where you get maximum flexibility.  This already makes a great product, even better.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Fight The Smears versus The Birthers

(Just a fair warning  - I AM NOT A BIRTHER)

The other day while working on an online advertising campaign for one of our clients I came across the following text ad from FightTheSmears.com.  It's obviously an ad trying to debunk the theories that President Obama is not a US citizen.  However, I found this ad interesting on a number of fronts...

1. It is September 2009 which is almost a full three years before President Obama's reelection.
2. I found another ad in Google's Content Targeting network which suggests either a tactic to massively expand out the campaign and/or garner dirt cheat impressions.  Notice I wrote impressions and not clicks.  Text ads in Google's Content Network woefully under-perform and I always recommend to not waste your time with them.
3. They are also running paid search ads to intercept people looking for this information, but what I find very fascinating is that the Google Search Trends on this topic is slowing down and appears to be limited to a few states in the South and West.
4. The actual text ad I grabbed was an in-text video overlay on top of a YouTube video about a California Small Business Owner ripping into her Congressmen at a Town Hall Meeting on Obama Care.  It takes a little more effort to put this ad inro your AdWords system so clearly this is something they wanted to do.

Is the Obama Administration really that concerned about the birther theories that they will run ads almost 3 years before a massive amount of people will care again?  If you ran the trends back to fall 2008 you'll see that the peak was really October 2008 which of course was right before the election.  However, they are spending time, energy, and money to really blast this message out via Google's Content Network and YouTube.  The in-text video overlay clearly shows that they are ok with a very loose targeting and even though it is really out of context (ObamaCare versus Obama's Birth Certificate) they are getting an impression view of the message.  

Then again there is always the flip side that could be happening.  That's is since the Trends are slowing and it appears that most of the significant traffic is from the South and West, wouldn't they be better off just leaving this alone?  Aren't they potentially fueling the fire by keeping this alive and being defensive?  Heck even risking that the impressions that are being served will leave the reverse message in the viewers mind since the ad isn't really in the right context?

BTW  -  just to drive you readers crazy, is it possible that Obama is ok with the wrong message? Perhaps they think that by keeping it out there that they are making the extreme right side of the Republican base seem a little crazier than normal.  Perhaps by responding in this matter they can keep the issue alive, driving a wedge between potential independent voters who may not want to be associated with birthers?

Unless Obama has data for my last theory, at this point I'd recommend shutting this campaign down.  It really makes them look defensive on an issue that has lost steam.  Then again, I wouldn't be surprised that they have polling data to support my last theory.  At any rate, it is clear that the Obama Administration will be a never ending campaign and unlike past administrations the next election will always be front and center.  That's certainly a change from the past.  

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

How to Run Advertising in Google's Content Network

Those of you who have been reading this site for the past years know how much I love Google for marketing. Even during the campaign season I was a huge proponent of Google especially Google's Content Targeting for branding and messaging.  Occasionally during the Presidential Campaign we'd hit a home-run like the ads we ran for McCain against Obama meeting with Iran's President Ahmadinejah but for the most part Google's Content network was good for getting dirt cheap impressions as well as dirt cheap cost per video view; during the primary season we enjoyed a 7 cents cost per video playrate - beat that TV!  Plus, there's always the use of Google Surge for blasting out ads in a geographic area.

Anyway, I think Google must have made some changes to their targeting  in the content network because as of late I'm seeing marvelous results.  Here's why I'm loving Google's Content Targeting and I'm using my own small marketing campaign to try and rent some space in my Union NJ office.

• Paid Search Can Be Super Expensive - I'm targeting a 25 mile radius around Union, NJ which would include NYC.  The paid search per click rate just to get on the first page is north of $2.00 for the most part and before you jump all over me, I'm talking about a quality score of 7+ in my ad groups; rental real estate is just competitive and with big players. I have to run it, but I'm not happy because it is my own money.
• Building Banner Ads - I don't recommend running text ads in Google's content network because I   believe there is little brand value and you are typically in a 300x250 ad unit with two other advertisers.  So you are probably saying, Eric - I can't make flash ads or Eric - I dont want to pay my agency to build them.  Well don't worry because Google has tools to build your own ads - all you need is a click thru URL, some ideas, as well as an image or two and then go through their library looking for the creative you like.  Make you changes, Google resizes them for you (please evaluate all sizes) and bingo you have a flash ad for FREE.  Here's what one of mine looks like.
• Setting Up Content Ad Groups - I recommend smaller keywords in your ad groups to get maximum exposure.  It also seems to help with the targeting engine as long as the words in the group relate to each other
• Top 3 Position Only - I usually start cost per clicks in the 30 cents range and let it run for a day or two.  Then I adjust the bids to make sure I am in the top 3.  In my example, my actual cost per click is 57 cents with an average position of 2.3.  In search my average cost per click is $1.59 with an average position of 6.8; that's a 64% savings for the same amount of clicks.  
• Site Targeting - once I get going I like to add in actual website addresses so I make sure my ads appear.  I can use the Content Targeting Site Selector tool or Google's Ad Planner which is a personal favorite of mine (did I mention this is free?) to find sites.
• Demotargeting - you can also further segment your marketing using simple demographic targets like age, gender, income, education, and a few other.  Again this is FREE.
• Optimize and Track

Seriously - cheaper rates, free impressions, ability to create your own flash ads for free, add in geotargeting and demotargeting for free, plus a media planning tool that most companies pay $10K per month means that Google's Content Network is a must use for advertisers, especially small advertisers.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google Becomes Bing Only on Chrome?

I went on this morning to research a new client for a meeting I have later on this morning.  I typed in the keyword "energy drink" and low and behold the search results in Google are now very Bing like.  I was surprised to see the new left hand margin this morning which now includes the ability to filter based on time (much welcome) and related searches.  See this screen shot:

It didn't take Google very long to launch a competitive view similar to Bing which either means they have great spies at MSN or their engineers work at lightning speed.  On other searches, Google now includes a section called "All Results" which tries to further refine your search results.  The one thing I'm still waiting for from Google is search previews on the natural search results which I've read somewhere they are testing.

Also of interest is that I tried the same search with Internet Explorer and Firefox and I DID NOT see the same type of new search results.  It seems to be only available with Google's browser Chrome and of course I'm not sure if Google is just testing it out now.

So, for you Chrome users enjoy the new search layout.  If you are an AdWords advertiser you should start thinking about how to reorganize your search to make sure you are buying the "related search" terms for your best performing words.  That's what I'm instructing people to start working on today.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Bing versus Google on Local Search Results

My wife just walked into my office and asked if had the number to our local Long Valley, NJ PNC bank.  So like the smart mouth I am sometimes I said "You know there's this thing called Google" and then I gave her the phone number.  As she walks out she says "I use Bing!" which was an awesome reply. So out of curiosity I went to Bing and then to Google and typed out the exact same search queery "pnc bank long valley, nj". And do you know what I found, Bing's results were organized better.  See these screen shots:

Now we'll look at Bing. Right up at the top is the Long Valley branch phone number.  Now it is hard to find it on their local map, but I know it is Long Valley because of the NPANXX combination (908876).  Of course at the bottom is the Yellow Pages listing.

Now let's pop over to Google and here's their screen shot.  At the top is the main PNC Bank page with some links but nothing there about branch locations and historically those bank branch locators take too many clicks to get the answer.  #2 result is Yahoo's local listing where the phone number is which is what I originally gave to my wife.  #3 is a job listing and #4 is Google's local listing with a much easier to read map and the phone number.

It is almost like Bing knew I just needed the local branch phone number and not everything else.  Google correctly listed the most relevant search for PNC Bank at the top but put the local listings at the bottom which is not quite the order for a local search.  Anyway, Google is still #1 for me but Bing offers a good product - Yahoo and the rest are not relevant.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Revenge of Google Reader and The Blog

About a week ago Google announced major changes to Google Reader.  Obviously you can read the post for more details but here's what I liked...

• Send To Function - while reading your feeds you can immediately send the article to Facebook, Twitter and a host of other sites.  Oddly enough I couldn't get Twitter to work using Google's browser Chrome; I think it has something to do with the pop up blocker, but sadly I gave up.  I couldnt even find the ability to white list Twitter.
• Clear Out Unread Feeds Automatically - Instead of going into your reader and seeing 1000s of unread news and then clearing them out one by one, you can have Reader clear them out every day, week, or every two weeks.

There were other changes but sadly I couldn't find too many friends to follow, but it did cause me to upload my contact list to Google to look for them.  I also rediscovered Google Reader's Share This with comments and loaded that on to my blog in the margin.  

More reasons to love Google.  This is the revenge of Google Reader and probably will help boost blog readership and more importantly blog authorship.  Believe it or not, I think this is a shot right up against Micro Blogging...

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Florida's Archaic Election Laws

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday on a ruling by the Florida Election Commission that St. Petersburg Mayor Candidate Scott Wagman's ads on Google appear to violate state disclosure laws even though exceptions already exist for bumper stickers and buttons and the click thru URL did contain a disclosure.  My friend Kate Kaye also reported on this ruling as did techPresident's Nancy Scola  who supplied a local news video in the article.  After reading these articles plus some of the testy comments left on them, here's my take on what's going on since I've run quite a lot of political paid search, social networking, and banner advertising in the past few years :-)

• According to the video Scott Wagman relied heavily on the internet to get his message out.  That's good for him.
• Scott believed (guessing here) that Google ads and Facebook ads were kosher without the disclosure as per Federal guidelines that gave an exception to these small ads.
• Florida's Election Commission believes the ads violate their state disclosure rules.  They give exceptions for bumper stickers and buttons, yet didn't think about search ads EVEN THOUGH NATIONAL CAMPAIGNS RAN A TON OF ADS DURING THE PRIMARY AND GENERAL.
• When Hillary Clinton finally launched her paid search campaign they used some of the characters for the disclaimer which resulted in this terrible creative. Is this what the Florida Election Commission wants to have running?
• Look, don't try and tell me that Florida's Election Commission never noticed the national ads in the past few years so to not take some time to issue updated guidelines and then flag a local guy using them is well, pure BS.
• A lot of local elections have a lot of, how should I write this, personal issues and some times (not all), a competitor or competitor supporter files a complaint.  I don't know if that's the case here, but it seems strange that the campaign relying on online advertising gets flagged.

Generally speaking I'm a state's right kind of guy but this is a case of where the states are clueless.  To turn a blind eye to what's going on at the national level and rule on a campaign that desperately needs the internet is shameful.  BTW - it highlights that Google has a long way to go in policy education.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Yahoo's Deal with Microsoft Like Eating Bacon Every Day of Your Life

Who doesn't like bacon?  In the short term or in small doses it tastes great and heck it is low in calories (high in fat).  You eat it every day and in the long term it will kill you.  That's what I think about the Microsoft Yahoo marketing partnership.  In the short term it helps Yahoo but in the long term it kills their search business.  The most significant part of this deal to me is that Bing will power Yahoo's search and that's going to kill Yahoo over the long term.

PRE GOOGLE OVERTURE RULED
Back in the early days of search, I cut an advertising deal for CSFBdirect with GoTo.com which would later be rebranded as Overture.  This was before Google had a paid advertising platform.  The folks at Overture were great and so was the platform powering our paid search results for delivering new account openings.  Everyone was happy, everyone that is who wasn't getting screwed on the bid spread. Anyway then along came Yahoo who bought Overture.

YAHOO FAILS TO INVEST IN SEARCH  - GOOGLE GROWTH
In 2003, Yahoo bought Overture and in the beginning things were fine.  The search sales team remained the same and our results were pretty steady.  Google came on the scene and then of course the paid search landscape changed.  However Yahoo held its own for us (then Harrisdirect) but by the middle of 2004, Yahoo really started to tank and Google zoomed past them.  This was a double whammy for Yahoo.  They hadn't invested in the search platform and Google grew which actually ended up hurting them.  Google never looked back and left Yahoo in their dust.

NOW BING
Basically Yahoo is repeating history.  Clearly they were caught off guard by Bing with all of their management shakeups and as I wrote Yahoo was the short term target for Microsoft with Bing.  In fact, Business Week's article on Bing a month back or so highlighted how much damage it would do to Yahoo.  Now instead of being able to invest in their search platform or my likely because of their lack of investment in the search platform in recent history (Lu left Yahoo in August 2008), they can't compete with Bing let alone Google.

Therefore Yahoo pretty much dooms itself in the long term by ceding control of their search technology to Microsoft.  Sure in the short term it is Yahoo's only option to even have a viable search program; plus, combined with Microsoft who gets a huge boost in search traffic, it actuallyt creates a reasonable competitor to Google.  However, this market is driven by technology and the latest improvements to search, now Yahoo removes itself from the game probably forever.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. Copy of Microsoft's Steve Ballmer email below.  BTW - further backing up my post above, Steve wrote 

We will get the resources and scale we need to compete effectively in search and to continue to drive new innovation for customers and advertisers, while Yahoo will increase their focus and investment on their online consumer experiences and other business priorities.

Even Microsoft isn't sure what Yahoo gets out of the deal

Eric

From: Steve Ballmer [mailto:Steve.Ballmer@microsoft.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 7:30 AM
To: Microsoft - All Employees (QBDG)
Subject: Announcing a partnership with Yahoo! to expand search innovation and competition
Importance: High

As you’ve heard me say many times, search is a critical business for us.  We took a major step forward two months ago, when we announced Bing.  Already, Bing has generated huge buzz, great reviews, and early usage figures ahead of our expectations. 

Today we’re taking another important step in redefining search and search advertising.  Later this morning, I’ll be announcing a partnership with Yahoo in a conference call with Yahoo’s CEO Carol Bartz.

This deal is a win-win for Microsoft and Yahoo.  We will get the resources and scale we need to compete effectively in search and to continue to drive new innovation for customers and advertisers, while Yahoo will increase their focus and investment on their online consumer experiences and other business priorities.

As part of the deal, Bing will become the search and search advertising platform for all Yahoo properties, and we will acquire the rights to Yahoo’s search engine and advertising platform technology.  The combination of Bing and Yahoo’s scale and technology will accelerate the improvement of search – we’ll be able to add new features and improve the relevancy of search results more quickly than ever.  And with expanded scale, we’ll be able to offer advertisers greater return on their investment. 

There will be tremendous efficiency gains for both companies.  Microsoft will assume responsibility for constantly improving search and search advertising technology on behalf of both companies.  We see so much opportunity improve search on behalf of our customers – to make search more relevant and more useful to consumers, and more than just a list of blue links.  Yahoo will assume responsibility for search advertising sales to certain premium customers on behalf of both companies.  Given the huge opportunities in search and online advertising, we plan to redeploy most if not all affected employees into new high-priority functions. 

Given the importance of the search marketplace, this proposed agreement will of course require careful review by regulators, which will take some time, but we believe it will strengthen competition and choice. 

It’s been a long road to today’s announcement, but I’m extremely happy with where we ended up.  This agreement will help bring choice and transparency back to consumers, advertisers and publishers.  It will accelerate our efforts to restore competition to the search market currently dominated by one company.  And it’s a huge validation of our strategy to redefine search, and all the great work the Bing and adCenter teams are doing.  This deal will accelerate our efforts toward long-term success in search and search advertising.

You can learn more at a joint website we’ve established, which provides a summary of the deal and the advantages it will provide for consumers, advertisers and publishers.

Steve

Christie Campaign Ignores Paid Advertising with Kim Guadagno Announcement

Yes Chris Christie made a great announcement via Twitter when he announced Monmouth County Sheriff Kim Guadagno as his running mate for Lt Governor.  He's getting good press from it but what I found very interesting is the utter lack of paid advertising around the announcement.  I don't know who Kim is - I live in Morris County so I know my own Sheriff (Ed Rochford) but I bet a lot of people don't know who Kim is and I bet a whole bunch of people don't know what a Sheriff does.

So when I Googled Kim Guadagno I received no paid advertising ads.   None from Chris Christie and nothing from my C- SEM graded Jon Corzine campaign (another reason why he gets a C-).  The problem with this strategy is that the Chrstie campaign is totally outsourcing the marketing of Guadagno to main stream media and bloggers in the short term.  If they expected a bang out of this announcement, they should be running paid search ads to deliver searches to the official campaign site and capitalize on the traffic.

This type of tactic is what we employed for McCain's campaign especially well during the primary season when the campaign lived with announcements and endorsements (our marketing for FL Gov Crist's endorsement probably helped us win the nomination).   We proved how to use the tactic again with Joe the Plumber and Palin's announcement (yes it was during the General which we lost, but still the right strategy). 

It really is the best strategy because people will go to the internet to search on Guadagno's name to learn what she is about.  This type of tactic especially in NJ would not cost them much money, plus every impression they get helps with branding and every click they get to their official pages and videos helps sway voters. That's why I gave Christie's campaign a grade of incomplete for their paid search advertising.

Oh well, better luck next time.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Microsoft's Search Target with Bing is Yahoo Not Google

I saw a bunch of links over the weekend that was touting some small minute gain of Microsoft in the US Search market due to Bing.  Most of these posts promote the $100 million in advertising Microsoft is spending and the rave reviews Bing receives for usability as a reason for Google to worry.  I think these articles are just ways for people to take a shot at Google or folks that really want to cheer for an underdog.  BTW - here's a good synopsis of the recent search postings courtesy of MediaPost.

I've worked with Microsoft for about 10 years.  I also spent a while at AT&T so I know how big monopolist companies think.  Sure would Microsoft like to knock down Google?  Of course.  Do I think that's their short term target?  No.  It is Yahoo.  Here's why...

1. Microsoft tried buying Yahoo and was turned away.  That was the classic telcom move from the 90s.  Don't spend the money buying share, spend the money buying the competitor right above you.  When Yahoo turned them down, now we see what MSN's plan B was.
2. Google has way too many intertwined products that all types of users benefit from.  Google has free tools for publishers, advertisers, and consumers.  Some like Google Docs and Google Reader cut across multiple user types.  Basically thinking about wars fought without computers, Google is an entrenched opponent dug in on a giant mountain - it would require too many battle fronts to take them on.  However,
3. Yahoo has little defenses.  Seriously, how many Yahoo products do you use?  Sure they still have a dominant web presence, but they don't work together that well.  You use Flickr?  Is it integrated with their products?  Do you advertise with Yahoo?  Is their display advertising inseparable from their search?  Do they have intertwined products that all types of users want or use?  Yahoo with its new CEO is a company in disarray right now and their search share is clearly within MSN's reach.
4. Microsoft needs Google to protect them.  Huh?  Yes protect them from the Federal Government.  Let Google be the dominant force in search and let them take any potential heat.  MSN would rather play the David to the Google Goliath and stay out of the Federal Government's anti-trust cross hairs.

Yahoo is the search company in deep trouble because of Bing.  Yahoo once lost their lead in search to an upstart named Google because of internal struggles and an unwillingness to invest in their search platform.  I'm afraid it will happen again.  Microsoft clearly has Yahoo in their sight and Bing was the plan B when buying Yahoo fell apart.  Steve Ballmer will get his revenge on Yahoo.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google The Great Money Equalizer

I just finished a fun interview with Micah Sifry over at Personal Democracy Forum and I used one of my favorite lines which is Google Is The Great Money Equalizer.  I also touch on this subject in my keynote next week in London for Econsultancy's Future of Digital Marketing conference.

Basically the idea behind this is that Google puts so many tools at your disposal there is no reason a smaller marketer can't take on and compete with a big marketer.  I perfected this while at Harrisdirect when we competed with the big players like Schwab and Fidelity and one could argue that we did quite well with Senator McCain's Primary and General Election campaigns.  Anyway, here's why Google is the great money equalizer:

1. Keywords - everyone's keywords are different and depending on your strategy you may or may not choose certain words to bid on or you might even focus just on long tail words.
2. Quality Score - Google rewards your smart, relevant campaigns with good Quality Score so even though you might not have as much money as your competitor  you can out Google them.
3. Free Conversion Tracking - using Google's own tools you'll know how effective your marketing is and once again if you are setting and meeting your own conversion goals, you can be smarter on how you use your marketing dollars.
4. Click to Play Video Ads - have a commercial you are running or perhaps that's too expensive?  You can add click to play video ads on Google's content network where you can have your ad watched for free and only pay per click when they go to your website.
5. Geo-targeting - zipcodes, states, MSA, major cities, or even hand drawn targeted areas, you can dominate a target market for no additional costs.
6. Behavior Targeting - even though Google is not as major of a supplier of Behavioral Targeting as say - Yahoo or Ad Networks, you can use age, income, gender, demos to reach a specific audience.  Throw in content targeting off your keywords and you can finely target for no additional money.
7. Placement Targeting - Again for no additional fees you can hand select sites where your ads appear and then get good placements based on an ongoing auction process.  Are you just looking forward to buying crap impressions on MySpace?  Have no fear you can usually get on that "site" for about 10 cents per 1000.
8. Self Directed - You can turn your campaign off and on or even increase it all with the click of your mouse.  No more calling into an account exec who won't honor a 24 hour cancellation clause.
9. Google Surge - Dominate your competition in a short, contained burst across 80% of the internet.

That's why Google is the great equalizer.  Where else can you get service like that for no increased rates and no commitments?

PardonMyFrench,

Eric 

Dear Google - I Still Have Two AdWords Pet Peeves

About two weeks ago we were involved in some primary races in PA which of course meant a heavy dose of using Google for marketing.  In fact, ALL down ballot races should run Google for marketing.  Anyway, we were supposed to map our Google ad buy to targeted areas in the state.  One of our selling points is that with Google you can target down to a zip code level so we could do an even better job of mapping the targeting strategy than the TV buy.  The sales pitch went this way...

• DM - of course you can target to individuals, but counties and zip codes are also used
• TV - you are usually buying at the MSA level
• Print - county for local levels and MSA for statewide races
• Search - anything right?

Well it wasn't as easy as you'd think.  Sure if the client gave me zip codes I could have loaded them up, but they didn't have them.  What they did have was County targets, but Google doesn't allow for county targeting.  You of course can hand draw for Congressional DIstrict targeting, but try doing that for more than one district. 

It took me about 8 hours to map the buy using the major cities in each county that they wanted to target.  It was a major pain in the seat, but I told the client we could do better targeting than TV.  Sure it was better targeting but without County targeting it took forever which is very un-Google like. 

I don't understand why Google doesn't supply County targeting?  For that matter, I don't understand why Google doesn't supply some population estimate when listing cities.  It would seem so matter of fact to include counties if Google is trying to grab a piece of the local marketing mix.

And, while I'm on my rant, I can't wait for Google to ad click to play video ads into the desktop AdWords Editor.  Once I set the targeting up for this buy, it would have been nice to copy and paste the ads into different ad groups. However, we had to manually load each click to play video ad, ad group by ad group.

Anyway, still a huge fan of Google of course.  AdWords is the best marketing tool available today and even the small marketer can act like a big advertiser with little to no money.  I just wish they'd make a few more targeting tweaks to really go after local targets.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Using Search for Political or News Rapid Response

During the Presidential Campaign season I didn't realize I used search marketing for a very unique tactic - Political Rapid Response.  In fact, while moderating a panel on search marketing at AAPC a lot of folks came up to me after the panel and asked me to elaborate on using search for Rapid Response.  In this YouTube video, you can hear Peter Greenberger at 1:20 singing our accolades using search for Rapid Response. We used Rapid Response in quite a number of very high profile situations including:

• Sarah Palin Defense - Forget about the day she was announced as McCain's running mate which is a whole different story, the story I like to tell is when I was called over to McCain's Hotel in Minneapolis on Labor Day during the convention to fix some search problems.  In particular the truly disgusting blogging stories that tried to say that Governor Palin lied about giving birth to her last baby.  Besides running Rapid Response on that story, we also bought words around the most search on keywords including Palin Nude Photo, Palin is Hot, Palin Vogue Photo and Sarah Palin Photos.
• Joe The Plumber - You can see this post I made watching the search results on Joe The Plumber and you'll see we had a search campaign running within minutes of Senator McCain mentioning Joe The Plumber.  That night I watched that debate from McCain campaign HQ in Crystal City, but had no idea it was going to be mentioned and built that campaign from scratch on the fly.  Not only that, I put in thousands of economic and financial services terms in over night.
• ACORN Voter Fraud - While driving my daughter to a doctor's appointment I had Fox News on when they were talking about a breaking story that involved fraudulent voter registration records submitted by ACORN.  By the time I got home, I built a search campaign around ACORN and waited for the results to pop. It took a few days for the rest of MSM to pick the story up, but when it did, the campaign was already ready to go.
• Countering Joe Biden's Announcement

Rapid Response doesn't just have to be for political campaigns.  Issue Advocacy can certainly use it as well as private companies and even news organizations (ex - Fox Sports).  So how do you actually use search for Rapid Response?

HOW TO USE SEARCH FOR NEWS RAPID RESPONSE

1. Dedicated News Hounds - Of course political campaigns have a war room, but for a variety of reasons I wasn't tapped into it.  I kept Fox News, CNN, and CNBC running in the background of my office so I was very likely to catch breaking stories.  You also of course can use Google Trends multiple times per day. 
2. Google Trends Is Your Best Friend - Even if you get a story elsewhere, Google Trends is helpful because it quantifies how hot a story is and helps get you started with keyword development. 
3. Website Access - The person building the campaign must either have an in-depth knowledge of your website to know where to point the traffic to or access to someone who can build landing pages on the fly.
4. Autonomy - The person or group building the search campaign needs autonomy to build it on the fly.  Sure you might have some legal approvals, but the way to lose out on the traffic is to get bogged down in an approval process.  Don't lose your traffic with a slow approval process.
5. Budget - Some times we were given new budget other times we just used the extra spend available from a very high ROI on search.  This search activity comes and goes and you need money quickly to run a campaign.  Also, keep in mind that some times this search activity is brand new and you might have to suck up a high search bid as Google learns more about the activity,
6. Hire An Expert Like Me

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

How To Run a Google Surge aka a Google Network Blast

My favorite ClickZ reporter and Jersey City native Kate Kaye has been on a roll lately when it comes to writing about a seldom used, yet increasing in popularity tactic offered via Google called a Google Surge or a Google Blast.  First she wrote an article about the New York Congressional Race in which the Democrats used a Google Surge, then she followed up with a profile of the Yes on Proposition 8 race, and a blog post naming me (yes yours truly) as the inventor of the phrase Google Surge.

As you can see in the comments I left, yes I did started calling it a Google Surge but it had nothing to do with McCain's strategy of supporting the Iraq Troop Surge; it was simply a surge in spending and the first time I employed it, it was during Bobby Jindal's campaign for LA Governor which he won.

Since Jindal's campaign I've used it several times including the RNC during the 2008 Presidential Race, McCain's campaign during both the Primary Season as well as the General Election season, and in my own race to gain a seat on my town's Board of Education (just ask some of my neighbors who couldn't log on to their PC without seeing one of my campaign ads).  Since the cat's out of the bag (thanks Kate), here's some more details on how and why you'd use a Google Surge.

  THE INS AND OUTS OF RUNNING A GOOGLE SURGE

1. I didn't invent this process at all and never claimed to have invented it.  All I did was listen to my Google Sales Rep years ago that told me I could have my ads run across Google's search and ad sense networks.
2. A Google Surge can work because Google's network reaches about 81% of the internet according to comScore's February traffic rankings.  Google ranks fourth behind Platform A (AOL and ad.com), Yahoo, and ValuClick. 
3. However, Google makes it very easy and transparent to buy across their ad network as opposed to the other three ahead of them.  You can turn it off and on, switch your creatives out on the fly, use their conversion tracking, and adjust your cost bids by site or overall.
4. The only real catch with Google is that you are buying this Google Surge on a CPM basis not on your typical CPC purchase tactic.
5. The amount of money you are spending on a Google Surge is not for the timid advertiser, but you can of course geo-target and time of day target it.
6. Google supplies you with the site list and you can adjust it.  That makes any Google Surge a proprietary strategy unless of course you don't change the site list.  I ALWAYS DO. 
7.  The site CPMs also need to be adjusted, but don't forget you are dealing with 1000s of individual sites so it really takes dedication and knowledge to make the changes.
8. You need to make sure running a Google Surge aligns with your campaign's goals.

Anyway, I have other tricks of the trade for running a Google Surge, but the most important thing for you to remember is to work with your Google account team when setting something like this up.  As my version of the name implies, this will definitely cause a surge in your daily spending.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google's Expanding Ads Helps Advertisers and Google Too

Google announced March 4 on both their AdSense blog (for website owners) and their AdWords Blog that they are testing expanding ads placed via 3rd party ad servers in Google's Content network.  I've been running expanding and streaming video ads for as long as I can remember marketing online.  My original use with them was the old Enliven product and I've used BlueStreak, Atlas, Eyewonder, and PointRoll.  So I love them.

Google's version is a little different than what I've run in the past, but here's what they've told both advertisers and website owners.

• The ad expands on a click and not on a rollover
• The website earns money and/or the advertisers pays money on a click sent to a website or on a CPM basis.  So like Google video ads, no money is exchanged on the expanding unit.
• The advertiser must be using one of Google's approved 3rd party ad servers
• The expanding ad won't get larger than twice its size.

The reason Google is doing this is simple.  Expanding ads get higher click rates and while they are not huge jumps, based on Google's volume it provides a slight bump.  Based on my experience, I'd peg rich media increased CTRs at about 10% which is enough to make significant changes to Google's bottom line.  Advertisers love it because the interaction rates (% of people expanding ads and doing things within the expanded unit) are in the low single percentages which is awesome.

Are you an advertiser?  If yes, you should be building expanding ad units and now that you can run them on Google's AdSense network, you'll only pay a CPC if you buy it that way.  This is just another reason why Google dominates the online advertising world.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google Tracking Flu Trends - A Public Service

Google announced last night that they will be tracking flu trends and I think this is a public service.  You can find the actual Google Flu Tracking page here.  You can sort by state, roll over the US map by state, find flu shot locations, and recent Google news about the flu.  People - THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE for you.  This isn't personalized to you.  It is aggregated data and publicly available.  If you have flu like symptoms and search on it, then there are other people searching on it in your area.  I'd like to know if there is an outbreak of flu in my area so I can take proper precautions. Don't you?

Does it seem like big brother Google is watching you? Yes, but you use their services for free, they have a customer agreement which you agreed to by usage, and as long as they anonymously aggregate the data than it is OK to make available.  Clearly there needs to be checks and balances on protecting the personal data - but that's just not related to flu searches. 

I watched Fox and Friends this morning and they seemed scared of it?  Me - I think it is a public service.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Confessions from a Google Junkie on Google AdSense's Political Advertising Policy

I got a real chuckle out of this post that Google had to make on their Inside AdSense blog called Political Ads on AdSense Sites.  A chuckle because Google waited until November 7th to make that post which revealed nothing new.  They could have made it years AGO but waited until their revenue dropped down to almost nothing before they made this post.  Basically Google reiterated their policy and reminded blog owners that there are competitive filters in their AdSense for Publisher tool system.  That's why you NEVER saw Obama ads on my site. 

You can read more details on my experiences with Google AdSense in the posts called Go Run Google's Content Placement Report Now, How Reliable is Google's Content Network, and Yet Another Reason to Love Google. However, let me shed some light on the subject for you in my....

CONFESSIONS FROM A GOOGLE AD SENSE JUNKIE:

1. Obama as well as Romney ran a ton of money through AdSense.  The McCain campaign (which I ran the online advertising for as part of CDI) used it a lot as did the RNC (me too) but we focused more on search advertising.
2. Running ads on Google AdSense is a great way to stretch your ad dollars and offers demographic as well as content targeting that allows the small advertiser to act like a large advertiser.  Also, because it can be credit card based and self-servicing you can move the dollars around at lightning speed.  Hence the reason why political advertisers used it.
3. While Google offers up some major sites in their network like WSJ and CNN the vast majority of the impressions come from blogs and secondary sites.
4. I very rarely recommend using text ads in AdSense programs and instead focus on flash and video ads.  I NEVER run text ads when I'm buying on a CPM basis.
5. Google does a great job filtering the content on their partner sites but does a HORRIBLE job understanding the tone.  So that means while you have a site that bashes Republicans Google doesn't know that and might have run RNC, Romney, or John McCain ads.
6. #5 also includes sites that had a URL like www.IHateRepublicans.com
7. I used Google Alerts via a RSS feed to see when people complained about the ads.  Depending on how pressed for time I was I commented to let people know how to filter the ads or I removed them from our Google program.  By the end of the campaign we had thousands upon thousands of site exclusions.
8. We also ran reports in Google to see where the ads actually ran and then we subtracted sites out.  This was particularly important during the primary season when every few hours a new Ron Paul site showed up.
9. While some people think it makes sense to competitively advertise when a reporter, site, etc makes negative comments, that wasn't a strategy we employed.  In politics it was a major problem if our ads appeared on a site that was bashing us and besides, we didn't have enough money to advertise on negative sites.  I'm sure Obama's team didn't care or had a strategy as witnessed by their ads on Townhall and Drudge.
10. Finally, there was a time when we ran McCain ads that said "Surrender is Not an Option on Iraq" and they ended up on The Daily Kos.  That wasn't something we planned to do.  Kos turned on Google AdSense and we didn't have them excluded because they were new to Google; plus it wasn't like I was reading The Daily Kos to see them go live.  As soon as we found out we turned the ads off.

We did what we could to avoid running ads on sites where they didn't belong.  It wasn't a strategy of ours and while Google could do a better job filtering for political tone, you as a site owner should have used the available tools at your disposable to remove ads you didn't want running.  That would have been far more productive instead of just complaining about them or making a post that says "click those ads."

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Watching Joe The Plumber on Google Trends

So I of course heard about Joe The Plumber a lot earlier in the day, but I wasn't sure if it was something that would be needed or wanted in our search campaign.  However, as soon as Senator McCain mentioned it during the October 15 debate with Senator Obama, we knew it would be hot.  Well as I write this post it is the 3rd hottest search term on Google and coincidentally it is behind two other debate topics "congressman lewis" and "repudiate". 

Anyway so within minutes after becoming a debate topic we put it into the search campaign sending it into our Rhetoric versus Record landing pages.  We were the only one there for about 90 minutes and then the advertisers started.  Now you have the RNC (!) and a host of others (see below) but I can't find an Obama ad and I checked in multiple states (correction - I saw an Obama ad about 1AM but that was just as I was going to bed and when I checked at 9AM their ads were gone).

Above is the first Joe The Plumber Google ad and then a screen shot of the other advertisers that quickly jumped on board including a travel company, Superpages.com, and Plumber directories.  The advertising competition around Joe The Plumber keywords is now very very fierce but I wonder if some of these advertisers have th budget to hang in there.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S.  Regarding the Barack Obama text ads when they are live (the ads curiously shut off multiple times per day which is odd considering they have a ton of money) mention "Joe The Plumber's Tax Cut Calculator" and take the clicks to a tax cut calculator landing page.  I find this extremely strange because Joe's point was that if he did upgrade his business he'd be in a different tax bracket and then would get hit with Obama's tax increase.  Sending clicks to this page seems like a bait and switch.  Here's the video...

 

How Google Dominates Online Politics Part 2

Interesting day today.  I received a call from a reporter from OrthoNewsline who wanted to discuss using search campaigns in the Dental business.  Really.  No joke. 

During the interview I said something that really reminded me about a recent National Journal article called McCain Buys His Way to Top of Google and a second one called Online Campaign Ads Come Into Their Own.  What I said was that search marketing and in particular Google, is the great equalizer when it comes to advertising spend.  So instead of being outspent by a large advertiser, Google provides you with advertising tools so you can operate like the big spender without the actual money.  And, if you know what you doing you can actually out market the big spender without the dollars. 

That's in direct opposite to that first National Journal article that said McCain buys his way to the top.  We didn't do that; we did it by using tools, having dollars, and measuring results.  This quote from McCain eCampaign Director and personal friend of mine Mike Palmer puts it straight "We obviously have limited resources in this campaign as compared to Barack Obama, so we have to spend in the most effective way," said e-campaign director Michael Palmer. "We found that form of advertising, where you are getting people who are already looking for something, is a very cost-effective way of getting those people to our site and getting them to do the things we want them to do."

Why is Google the great equalizer?  Because you can't buy your way to the top and a smaller budgeted advertiser can be very competitive if they do the following:

• Think through your campaign and develop well thought out groups of keywords
• Build relevant and creative text ads for each group of words
• Send those text ad clicks into very relevant landing pages with clear calls to action
• Use available tools and your own creativity to build the keyword list; use Google Trends to capture the hot searches and Google Insight to see how people search.
• Add post-click tracking tags to the actions on your site that you want to track
• Set your budget based on objective
• Use ad scheduling, geo-targeting, ad optimization, and other search tools Google provides for free
• Opt into Content if you can; use the site targeting and demo targeting
• Optimize based on your results
• Use click to play video ads to showcase your own commercials and if you pay per click on those remember they watch the ad for free

I have so many other tips and history that if you want more detail click here.  This is why Google is the great equalizer and that no advertiser, Dentist or Presidential Candidate should ever run marketing campaigns without putting significant dollars towards Google.  You don't have to buy your way to the top, you just have to out market your opponent on the way to the top.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Reading Some Moronic Posts Regarding Buying Competitive Names

I saw a post this weekend from some moron saying that the McCain campaign is unethical because it buys Barack Obama's name.  Then I read some of comments and for the most part they are accurate save for one person who thought a competitor shouldn't be allowed to buy a brand name.  For you search morons out there allow me to explain under the Google rules....

1. Google won't allow you to buy a trademarked name
2. If you somehow sneak through when you turn on your competitor name buy you will eventually get caught and have it shut off.
3. Political names (or personal names) are not trademarked.  Sure the occasional name is trademarked but I have yet to find a politician's name trademarked.
4. If you are able to buy a competitor's name you won't be stealing traffic and it is never a "no no".
5. Simply stated you buy search terms because you are trying to find someone looking for information.  So if someone is searching for say "Derek Jeter" they are obviously looking for information on baseball, Yankees, shortstops, and of course Jeter.  If you have a competitor product why wouldn't you want to put a message in front of that person?
6. Buying a competitor's name in search is the equivalent of lining Coke and Pepsi up in the soda aisle.  You know the person is shopping for soda so why not put your message there?

Buying a competitor's name is good business practice when you are allowed to do it.  It fine tunes the traffic and intercepts someone with a relevant message.  You are not stealing traffic and it certainly isn't unethical.  Grow up.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

How Google Dominates Online Politics

As I wrote the other day I was on a panel at GOPAC to discuss online advertising and I thought it was an excellent panel and not just because I presented.  Each one of us had completely different subjects to speak about.  I presented case studies on streaming commercials online, McCain's search campaign, and online advertising.  David Kralik spoke about the marketing efforts behind Drill Here, Dill Now, Pay Less for American Solutions.  And, Robert Willington from the Massachusetts GOP offered a ton of social networking tips for campaigns.  Robert Willington's presentation really had a lasting impressions on me for how Google Dominates Online Politics.

As you flip through Rob's presentation, you see can seen how userful Google's FREE product offerings are for political campaigns and other marketers.  Did I mention that this was ALL FREE!!!

• Blogger for having your own campaign blog.  Personally I prefer Typepad and probably Wordpress, but so what?  Blogger is a decent product and I even started there myself.
• Google Maps where you can track your users and supporters for free
• YouTube for commercials, video ads, and responses from your voters
• Google Analytics to track your marketing results
• Google Docs for sharing information
• And not in the presentation but I mentioned it - Google Alerts to track comments and posts as well as Gmail for email and Google Reader for feeds

Not once (other than myself) did David or Rob mention Yahoo, MSN, or any other online advertising luminaries. It was pretty much Google, Digg, MySpace, and a few other social networking tools and sites. 

This is why Google dominates politics.  They have great free products and then get you hooked with their brand and usability.  When it actually comes time for you to spend money for advertising where do you think you are going to go first?  A company like MSN where you have had little brand interaction or Google?

Google isn't buying political favors or leaning towards any side.  They just have a simple marketing proposition.  Get you marketers into their product line and then upsell you when you are ready.  That's why they dominate Politics and other industries.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google's Peter Greenberger Throws Props To McCain's Paid Search Campaign

While having meetings in Crystal City a savvy sales person (don't get excited that doesn't mean I will cut a deal with you) sent me a link to the latest Kate Kaye article on ClickZ called Clinton Needed More Search: Q&A with Google's Greenberger.  As always you can read the article for yourself but here are my highlights and then commentary.

1. He argues savvy search advertising contributed to the success of both Barack Obama's and John McCain's primary season wins by helping them build supporter lists.
2. Through sponsored links in search results, the McCain and Obama camps have driven users seeking information on the candidates to their official Web sites to register for newsletters, volunteer or to donate money.
3. The McCain campaign was the savviest among the Republican presidential primary campaigns. We think it's not a coincidence that the two savviest primary campaigns with Google are the winning ones.
4. Even in the darkest days of the [McCain] campaign... they never stopped spending on Google AdWords... There were times, corresponding to the political polls, when maybe interest waned in his campaign, but he was ready to capture interest.
5. We saw the use of video and I would highlight the McCain campaign for being ahead of the curve on that...

OK, so why did Peter (and I agree with him) believe that Clinton needed more search?  Pretty simple.  People look for almost an infinite amount of keyword combinations and no matter how savvy you are at SEO you can't possibly optimize for those combinations let alone direct people into new or updated landing pages.  For example, if you were trying to get people to sign a petition for a summer gas tax holiday perhaps you'd buy keywords to send searches into your page instead of either a) letting someone else steal your message or b) letting the searchers fend for themselves via the organic listing.  Notice how the page itself isn't listed on the first page of organic results.  You need a paid search campaign for that. 

#1 is correct, but I'd add in that we get $3 - $4 in donations for every $1 we spend online.  It just isn't about building lists and capturing searchers; we balance generating money for the campaign with other activities.  As Peter said we were ahead of the other campaigns when it came to using using video advertising and while I like to pat myself on the back for that, some times when you have a great TV/media team and when you have money challenges, you do what you can for the limited dollars you have.  That meant click to play video ads on the internet.

The article that Kate mentioned (darkest days) includes quotes from me about our online advertising just when the campaign was switching the team around.  I gave that interview in Crystal City that week and I told Kate that the campaign was more charged than ever and it wasn't doom and gloom.  We just had to focus on the early primary states and focus on the Senator.  During that week I was just formulating ideas for how to approach the primary states and hinted as much in the interview "Whether he's buying keywords specifically to counteract the negative press and commentary about the campaign, however, he wouldn't say specifically. "There is a strategy that I'm' working on….I wouldn't call it trying to counteract negativity," he said"  I can't tell you exactly what we did because that was just a warm-up act for the big show.  BTW - we are in the midst of a new approach right now.

Anyway, I thought the article by Kate was very insightful and Peter Greenberger was pretty much on the money with his interview.  One of the things that amazes me is how far we've come since I started with Connell Donatelli 30+ months ago.  I've met a lot of great people and I'm getting the chance to work on a Presidential Campaign which was unfathomable a few years back.  It still amazes me today to see how many people are now working on the campaign.  And it all started because my Yahoo account executive Adrienne Skinner set up a lunch meeting with Becki Donatelli in the summer of 2004.  I still can't believe that I actually do this for a living.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

The Tobi Steamer Dominates NJ TV at 11AM on NBC

Yesterday I had a dentist appointment.  Nothing serious, but just a cleaning (and for you fans keeping score at home - NO CAVITIES).  When I got unto the chair, playing on the TV was this ad for the Tobi Steamer so I didn't pay much attention to it. After a few minutes I looked up again and saw more ads for the Tobi Steamer which got me a little upset.  Come on I'm a captive audience here so I stopped my dental hygienist and said "Why do I keep seeing an ad for the Tobi Cleaner?"  "Is Dr. Goodkin getting a $5 kickback from every Tobi Steamer that the patients buy?  That's a little unfair because I'm a captive audience"

After she stopped laughing with me, she called Dr.  Goodkin into my room even though it wasn't time for me.  BTW - Dr Goodkin is one of the top 5 nicest people you'll ever meet and a GREAT dentist.  If you are in the Long Valley area you should stop in.  Here's their website.  After I yelled (jokingly), he said "No, we aren't taking kickbacks but I know exactly what you are talking about.  It seems that Channel 4 runs this infomercial  everyday at 11AM."  So after some more jokes we flipped on MSNBC.

So, I was thoroughly confused that this wasn't a one time event and that NBC-NY actually runs this infomercial more than a few times as Dr.  Goodkin told me.  What happened to some game shows or reality TV shows like some crappy judge or some talk show.  Don't tell me that NBC actually figured out a new model for the 11AM slot.  So I consulted the TV Guide and found such behemoths as Price is Right and The View in there but the rest of the channels looked pretty lame.  Well maybe not as lame as a 30 minute commercial in the middle of the day.

Seriously, can't NBC figure out something else other than a commercial to run in that slot?  I know it is probably making money for them, but WHAT's the point of having a TV station if all you do is show a commercial the whole time?  I wonder at what point it costs NBC money to serve that ad for them? 

Wouldn't they be better off putting a show in there, even if it is reruns and then use Google TV to fill their unsold inventory on commercials.  Dr.  Goodkin uses satellite so it might fall back to DirectTV for that, but you understand where I'm going.  Seriously, how lame is daytime TV now?  It is lamer than root canal.  OUCH.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

I'm Bullish on Google TV

Now this is a new Google product I can get into.  At first I thought it was a dog of a product like Google Print or a product like Google Audio that political campaigns couldn't use, but alas I was wrong when it comes to Google TV.  I had a meeting in Crystal City and I came out of the meeting very impressed.  Here's what I liked about it:

1. I can run TV on the Dish network for very little cost ($150 per day?)
2. The Dish network covers like 15% of the US
3. I can pick the channels as well as the content using what amounts to a searchable TV guide
4. It is an auction based CPM model where I get to name my own price and adjust accordingly; of course my ads may not run at the price I choose, but that's ok.
5. You only pay when the ad runs and according to the meeting, DVR playbacks are not included in the cost.
6. You get some great reporting from the TV buy including where and when the ads ran, impressions, paid CPM, # impressions that watched the entire ad, and total/avg seconds viewed.

I walked away from that meeting very excited.  This puts the power of TV, albeit on Dish Network only, into the hands of small advertisers.  And, if you don't have any commercials, Google will give you a $2K credit to spend on building the ads if you agree to spend $2K per week for 4 weeks on Google TV.

If you have the money and don't get the attention you need from your media agency, you should give this a shot yourself.  It is also great for testing content and ads on different shows before you go big nationally.

The only problems I can find with Google TV are that there is limited geo-targeting available today and it is just available on Dish.  The geo-targeting is more problematic since it excludes local markets, but there might be a way to get around it by choosing a specific network (New England Sports Network), but that is a poor method for approximating geo-targeting.  Other than that, I'm so pumped on Google TV that I might run my own ads!

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

BTW - I know I'm about a month behind on this, but I didn't think it was a big deal because of the problems we ran into with Google Audio.  After the meeting last week, I'm a believer.

I'll Pass on Google Health

So Google Health is now out into a public beta based on several blogs I read including the Official Google Blog in the post called A peek into our search factory.   Here's the Google announcement:

In terms of new products, we made Google Health publicly available. It offers users a safe and secure way to collect, store, and manage their medical records and health information online. How many of us have touched, or even seen, our medical records? In this day and age of information, isn't it crazy that you don't have a copy of your medical records under your control? You could use those records to develop a better understanding of your health and ultimately get better care. It's your data about your own health; why shouldn't you own and control it?

There are other great aspects about Google Health which you can read for yourself.  Me?  I'm sticking to keeping this information off the internet. 

Google does a good job of outlining their Privacy Policy and actually making it easily found.  I would have liked it a little more if they actually showed examples of what types of advertising you might see on their platform and on their partner's platforms.  Again I'm assuming you'll see targeted ads based on keywords in your health information and perhaps you'll find that useful.  I think they could have gone a step further to explain to the people that actually need this level of data tracking what types of ads they'll see.

However, this is one Google product I won't test and won't be using.  Some things are better left on your desktop or your home and this is one of them.  I believe that doctors and pharmacists went to different types of schools, spent more time in school, and then onto residencies that they can actually do a better job of filtering the information for me.  Even today, save for paid links it is extremely hard to navigate through a Google search results page to find the right information.

I don't want my information stored on the internet no matter how big and powerful Google gets that they can protect the information.  My medical history thankfully does not change that often that I need constant updates and I can figure out on my own when I need a refill (if you take daily pills you can see when you are running low).    The selling features from Google include the following (my comments to the right):

• Organize your health information all in one place (can't I do that now offline or on my desktop?  Does it change so often that I need instant access to it)
• Gather your medical records from doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies (don't you ask for it now if you can?  If you do, do you need it instantly on an on demand basis)
• Keep your doctors up to date about your health (I'm sure the doctor's can't wait for this especially if they can figure out a way to charge for it)
• Be more informed about important health issues (served up based on your information?)

I really believe Google has the best intentions with this and will protect your privacy to the best they are able to.  Take away my office and store it on the net.  Give me Gmail and I'm happy with it.  Google reader is great as is the search product itself.   These are all trade-offs I'm ready to make for targeted ads, but when it comes to medical records I'll pass.  Perhaps as I get older and need constant health updates I'll change my tune, but for now, I'll keep what I'm doing offline.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

My Tips for Setting Your Google Ad Prices

About a week ago Google made a post called How auctions set ad prices which I thought was very important for you to take a look at.  I would have posted a little sooner, but I was slammed with work last week.  Let's take a look step by step and I'll give you my personal tips along the way.  I figured what's a little online marketing secrets revealed between friends.

1) Each advertiser enters a list of keywords, ads, and bids.  OK, here's where a little art and a little science starts and helps later on when they get to quality score. 

• First you need to come up with your strategy for how you'll organize your words.  Don't just stick them in a single ad group -create multiple groups and organize your words.  This is probably the most important tactic for you.  ORGANIZE YOUR KEYWORDS INTO GOOD GROUPS
• Second, you need to figure out what your daily spend is based on your goals
• Third, use Google's keyword tool as well as other ones to come up with your base of keywords by ad group.  Make sure you use another keyword tool otherwise the words will look like your competitor's words
• Build your text ads by ad group.  Make sure if it warrants, to use the keyword insertion tool
• Start your basic maximum bid at the ad group level to what you can afford.  When Google determines your Quality Score you'll know what to do next

2) Google matches search queeries with keywords - Don't forget long tail words (think three or more keywords); these will probably convert better for you but at much lower volumes and hopefully cost.

3) The list of ads are ordered by bids and Quality Score.  This is where things get a little tougher and separates the search children from the search adults.  Google lists 6 ways it makes up Quality Score so let's examine them but quickly

• Historical click rates on Google's network (which you may or may not have anything to do with).  This will be one of the reasons why you need to pay the mythical $5 CPC bid for an extremely relevant campaign.
• Other relevancies factors again that contribute to a higher CPC which probably upsets you
• Relevancy of keywords in your ad group (see step #1)
• You account's CTR history (that is your quality score changes over time)
• Historical CTR of the display URL in your ad group (see step #1)
• The quality of your landing page.  Make sure your pages are relevant by your ad group

4) Google ranks the ads
5) Once a user clicks on an ad the advertiser is charged the minimum CPC over the advertiser right below it based on bid and quality score.  You can try and optimize these bids by hand or get a bid manager to automatically adjust your bids multiple times per day based on your goals.
6) There are actually two auctions Google runs.  One for the shaded bar on the top left of the page and one for the links on the right hand margin.  To get listed on the top you must have a high quality score for a particular keyword; the top shaded area will cost you more than your normal #1 place.  According to a blog post back in August 2007 your maximum cost per click will be considered to get you in the shaded region.  So what does this mean to you?  You will pay close to your maximum bid and when I personally tracked my best keywords over time I did see a significant increase in actual CPC for my #1 placements.  Basically you must know for sure whether you want that #1 for a certain word; you might be better off with a lower placement at a much lower cost.

That's it.  Enjoy your search tips...

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

So Microsoft Didn't Get Yahoo For Now

Yes you woke up this morning and you can read all of the reports and blog posts on Microsoft removing its bid for Yahoo.  Me?  I still think it will get done, but based on my own personal observations, I think Microsoft should take a long hard look at why they want Yahoo so badly.  I've never been in mergers or acquisitions and I'm sure the folks at Microsoft who are/were running the deal are highly paid and very experienced individuals, but here's why I believe Microsoft should be happy about the deal breaking up.

1. I don't believe the online advertising world is as simple as buy up your competition and Yahoo's ad revenue become Microsoft's ad revenue.  All buyers today know about both companies and make decisions based on audience, content, and price.  The audiences are different and buyers know this.  How much of Yahoo's ad revenue Microsoft would have kept was probably the biggest factor in Microsoft's bid.
2. This isn't like TV in the 70s where there are only a few channels.  Today's online advertising marketplace is very splintered with social networking, blogs, portals, and other sites vying for your time.  Sure a few publishers dominate the top of the pyramid, but there are large audience duplication rates and experience media buyers know this.  Simply buying one of the top 3 properties doesn't mean you are buying up a specific audience.  However, this strategy does work from a search perspective and how much of that revenue Microsoft would keep was probably factor #2 in the bid.
3. Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, and Google all have a different look and feel and people choose these sites to frequent for various reasons.  Google pretty much makes a living indexing and aggregating the information for you in a simple fashion.  The other sites make a living arranging the information, cutting deals with content generators, and sometimes making the content themselves.  People go to different sites for whatever their reasons are and Microsoft probably would have kept some of that unique Yahoo traffic, but how long would have Microsoft kept the Yahoo properties and would they continue over the long haul to invest in it?  My guess is - not very long.
4. So after looking at advertisers, audiences, and content what assets do you have left?  Employees and that is where this deal probably was meant to never get closed.  I have friends at both companies and while I'm sure quite a number of them could work in either organization for the most part there is huge culture clash.  Just visit the NYC offices of Google, Yahoo, and MSN and you'll see what I mean.  Google looks like a huge frat house with gourmet food, Yahoo like a college dorm, and Microsoft, well it looks like a Government office building.  The people who made Yahoo an internet destination and are making changes to their platform are people that I just don't see being willing acquisition pawns.  And, without Yahoo's staff who helped create the content and look and feel, the Yahoo brand would have just whithered away which would have killed the audience and advertising revenues.  When I don't know but you get the idea.

Point #4 is probably the biggest reason why Microsoft should be happy the deal didn't get done.  The rule of thumb in acquisitions is that the vast majority of employees from the acquired company don't stay.  However, unlike a lot of other acquisitions (like E*Trade's acquisition of Harrisdirect) it is/was Yahoo's staff that built their presence and continues to make changes to their platform to keep it fresh.  Unlike other businesses, in the internet if you don't continue to invest in your product people will leave and find the newest site (Overture losing out to Google).  The Yahoos who made/make those changes are probably people who wouldn't have stayed past a retention bonus that Microsoft was nervous to pay out on.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google for Senator McCain

A couple of good stories from the past two weeks that I'd thought you'd enjoy.  I was too busy with the Board of Education campaign and now that it is over, I'm catching up a bit. 

About two weeks back I was down in DC/VA for meetings and the first night I was there I went to a McCain fundraiser with folks from Campaign Solutions, Connell Donatelli, and the campaign.  Towards the end before we scrambled for dinner, I walked up to a true internet legend former eBay CEO Meg Whitman.  Whitman knew about our phenomenal Search ROI and was very impressed with it and that gave me a personal boost knowing how large eBay's search campaign is.  I can't get into much more about what we talked about, except I asked for this picture with her.  Yes I'm in a suit....

Next up was an interview I gave for Mother Jones magazine called Googling for McCain. Believe it or not, I'm always very nervous when I give interviews, but this one scared me the most.  Not because of the magazine, but because the reporter wanted to profile me.  It seems a friend of hers had some McCain campaign ads running on their website and she wanted to know how they ended up there.  So instead of being content after finding out it was Google, she contacted Peter Greenberger who runs politics for Google and then wham - over to me.  I've had a few jobs in between AT&T and Connell Donatelli, but all and all an interesting article.

Finally, iCrossing came out with another study on Presidential Paid search campaigns and guess who came out on top?  No it wasn't the Obama campaign, it was the McCain campaign (surprise).  Kate Kaye from ClickZ had a flattering post on the analysis called Clinton: Bitter About Search Ads? where she looked specifically at paid search instead of lumping in SEO and SEM as some other sites did.  Kate highlighted that we spend about twice as much as the other campaigns put together and buy a lot of issue related words.  According to iCrossing, "McCain is also the only candidate with paid coverage on competitors’ names in addition to his own, including candidate keywords hillary clinton, barack obama, obama, and clinton," and since some of you remember that we have been quoted as saying we generate $3-$4 dollars in donations for every $1 we spends proves once again how remarkable of a job the entire Connell Donatelli, Campaign Solutions, and McCain eCampaign are doing on paid search.  Everybody works on this marketing program and it shows how integrated we really are.  Finally, I enjoyed that Kate called me out as "this guy" in the article.

Anyway, that's it for now.  You have some good reading and a cool picture of me with Meg Whitman.  Of course after that iCrossing study, we'll need to step it up some more.

PardonMyFrench,

Eruc

Google Won't Put Agencies Out Of Business Unless of Course An Agency Provides No Value

I'm still catching up on my RSS feeds but I saw this post by MEDIAWEEK called Google Goes On Charm Offensive at AAAA Media and I really had to laugh; hence the need for a post.  Google's Tim Armstrong went out of his way to point out that Google is not the enemy to agencies, at least in my opinion to agencies that provide value.  Allow me to explain.

As a client and now as a political agency executive and consultant, I've always purchased my media.  Whether that was search marketing or display buys I always had the media buy under my control (for a brief time DLJdirect used Modem Media to purchase media before my time, but I ended up taking it back).  So I think I have an interesting reference point.  Google as well as most online advertising publishers are geared towards a self-servicing  or client centric model; that's the way it was built as compared with TV, Print, DM, and Radio which were built around an agency model. 

Google to me is the premier self-servicing model.  You as an individual, small business, or eCampaign manager can go right in, pop-in a billing option (or wait for credit), pick your keywords, design your text ads, use their targeting, and finally implement their tracking package.  The thing that makes Google so great is that it gives small marketers the tools historically unavailable to you unless you had huge marketing budgets.  Hence the perceived agency threat.

For me there were only three reasons why a client would hire an agency; creative, media, or consultant.  These reasons are:

1. A Guru at the agency that can move your business forward
2. Client does not have the time or resources
3. Client does not have the resident expertise in-house

That's it.  Three simple reasons and if your agency doesn't have a guru you can make a great living at #2 and #3.  And if you continue to provide value and services, you'll keep your clients assuming you don't get lazy. 

Google is not a threat to any of those reasons.  As an agency do you have a digital strategy and search guru you can pimp out?  If yes, then no worries your sales pitch is we have this expert you'll love and then charge your premium.  Isn't that how most agencies started anyway; hence the old agency name with the founder in the company title (my all time favorite agency names wa Messner Veter Berger McNamee Schmetterer).

Agencies should stop being scared of Google and embrace it.  Google helps your business model and even if you have a smart client that runs media, often they don't have the time or dedicated resources to devote to it.  There are a lot more clients in that model than the old Harrisdirect model of buying direct.  This is a time where the agencies should stop being threatened and get on board with the search/digital strategy.  That's where a huge share of the marketing budget is going, so instead of fighting it, join it and get a bigger share of the budget.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Publisher's Ridiculous Logic of Suppressing Ad Buys Via Google

I'm really flabbergasted  at some of these publishers that shut off Google Advertising for certain clients or advertisers. Claiming that they'd like to go direct with us or the client themselves, all they do is drive a wedge further and further between themselves and the end client which is a ridiculous way to run a sales business.  Look it isn't my problem that you hired sales people and now need to figure out something to do with them.  Here's a typical exchange which highlights my frustration with these tunnel vision sales execs.

ME:  ShortTermThinking Website, out of curiosity did you realize that you turned off our long running ad campaign on your site.

SHORTTERM: Yes and I want you to know that the decision didn't come from me it came from my CEO.  He thinks we should go direct with you.

ME:  OK, well the calculated CPM rates I've been paying Google is (made up number) $1 which is 1/10 of your direct price and oh by the way, you've been getting $X thousands of dollars every month from me up until recently.

SHORTTERM:  Well as you know that is non-guaranteed inventory and often below the fold.  I can get you guaranteed inventory that is also premier.

ME:  Well at those prices your premier inventory doesn't perform at the same CPA as the Google inventory, so I'm not sure why we would want to pay more for something that doesn't perform.  Remember about 6 months back we went direct with you and it was unacceptable.

SHORTTERM:  Well when we ran that test with you our inventory wasn't as good and we didn't have as much traffic.  Now, I'm sure you'll see better results.

ME:  Hmmm, but I know the Google placements perform and you've been getting a decent amount of money.  Plus, I can turn the campaigns off and one, change demographic and geographic targeting at a moments notice, and have new ads live within a few minutes of loading them up.

SHORTTERM:  Well we have a great account team and we'll give you great service.

ME: Maybe you didn't understand me, I can do these things at any time of day on the weekends, on a holiday, and look we have to spread our dollars around on many sites and this really is the best way for us right now.  How do you not see this as a win win for both of us?

And that's where the exchange ends until the next time the sales person fires off an email to check in with me or lobs a horrible rate card proposal ignoring the history and the results we've had in the past. 

Look maybe you didn't understand me.  If I'm able to buy at a rate that is 1/10 below your proposed premier guaranteed plan, why would you shut it off for a particular advertiser?  Isn't that the market price?  Also, aren't you more efficient because it requires little intervention on your part?

There are quite a few smart sales execs/publishers that recognized this and offer rates that are very close to what we can buy via an ad network and for them, when we need to we'll go direct and get better inventory.  These smarter sales executives see the advertisers on the site, see where they are coming from, and know the rate they are receiving.  Their sales pitch is better - look you can keep going through the network, but what if I gave you rates that were only slightly higher, but I guaranteed the inventory and made it premier; not our best stuff but better than what you are getting today.  Plus you can have a 24 hour out clause and you can 3rd party ad serve, plus we can move the targeting around within a few hours notice during the day.  That's where the smart sales teams are going.  Better rates, better terms, and in the end better service and more dollars.  And they are definitely trying to build bridges to the advertisers.

Sorry about the rant, but this has been happening a lot lately and I don't get it.  Yes we go direct very often especially when it warrants it and the publisher is big enough, but to cut off advertisers who were gladly spending money on you for deals that are substantially worse by going direct makes NO SENSE.  Finally, thanks to Jackie H who got me going on this subject today.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

More on Microsoft's Bid for Yahoo

I read this article this weekend in Business Week called Will Yahoo! Feel the Love? and I found it very interesting.  The article basically focused on two important aspects of any merger - people and product.  Here are a couple of very relevant points from the article:

• "If I was Google, I'd be thrilled.  I can steal a lot of top talent out of Yahoo" said Norm Fjeldheim
• "Virtually all of the deals from Hell are done by companies that are collapsing into each other's arms like defeated prize fighters" say Robert F Bruner author of Deals from Hell.
• "Google is the single biggest threat Microsoft has ever had" said david B. Yoffie
• The company (Microsoft) is hoping to bring together Yahoo's research and development staff  who've done innovative work in online advertising auction theory and data mining
• "We're the better technology (referring to Microsoft's  adCenter versus Panama)" said Tarek Najim Microsoft's adCenter general manager

Those 5 bullet points outlined the challenges Microsoft has and that's assuming that Yahoo agrees to the deal which is looking less likely at this point based on this other article found on Business Week.  Yahoo has been losing key staffers and management now for almost a year, but there are some very talented people still left like my good friend Richard K.  I wonder how they would feel if they were kept on by Microsoft.  Sure there will be a lot of duplication in staff positions but based on my experience the acquiring company has the leg up on key positions; plus as mentioned in the article the cultures are really different.

Yahoo! well is still that company with the purple chairs, fun loving people and Microsoft is very business like.  Microsoft's attorneys are slow and methodical as is their sales staff.  Speaking of sales staff Microsoft's has always been multi-layered and I could never tell what the chain of command was; for me it was my account person (ex - Dave M whom I like a lot) and then their head of media Joanne Bradford.  Seriously, I can't tell you how many different layers of upper management I've had over the years with Microsoft.  Every few months the new Account VP would want to meet their clients (always a good practice) but I grew tired of the meets and greets because the people would get changed out.  Personally, I can't see how the employees will merge together.

The article referenced Yahoo's data team and I've always been fond of them.  The problem with them going forward is how many of the data folks stick around with MSN's more conservative privacy policies?  Remember I grew up in a data and analytics group in the old Bell Laboratories at AT&T and at the end of the day the data was only as good as the people that managed it and the people who analyzed it.  An old boss of mine in BOA named Rich L once said "information is what smart people do with the data" and keeping those smart Yahoo data geeks around will be a problem for Microsoft.

Finally Microsoft's Najim is 100% accurate when he says that adCenter is better than Panama.  I've had my problems with Panama from day 1.  Panama increased my costs and I saw my conversions drop.  Microsoft I've always been a fan of when it comes to ROI and conversions but sadly there isn't enough volume on Microsoft.  Other than MSNBC there really isn't much traffic and that of course goes for search.

I do think Microsoft has to make this move to compete with Google.  However, they have huge challenges ahead if they are counting on key people remaining through the merger.  When E*Trade acquired Harrisdirect one person told me that historically 90% of acquired employees don't last a year.  I don't know the source and it could only be anecdotal but based on my experience I certainly believe that number.  Sure you can pay people with retention bonuses but they only last as long as that contract.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

McCain and NJ's Morris County Results

You can tell when I'm so busy that I make next to no posts.  I was up very late Tuesday night waiting for the Missouri and California results that it pretty much knocked me out until today. 

Obviously John McCain took NJ, but what got me more excited was to see the Morris County results where we made a ton of calls and put up our fair share of road signs.  Hopefully by sharing these numbers with you, you can see how important get out the vote activities are in your local area. 

• 60,030 out of 96,916 registered Republicans voted Tuesday and that compares with 48,756 voters out of 41,280 registered Democrats.
• No, the Democrat number doesn't mean that people voted multiple times; that means that another 7,476 declared at the polls which is a pretty powerful statement
• John McCain received 55.2% of the vote which translated into 33K votes
• Obama received roughly 22K votes

What these numbers show is that yes you can make a difference.  I didn't tally up the calls we made out of Long Valley, but I'd guess it to be around 2K calls to ask people to vote.  Plus, we probably put up about 200 signs and I couldn't even guess how many people saw these signs.  The calling was very easy and seriously we didn't receive more than a handful of rude answers or hang ups.  Plus putting up the signs and making calls with other supporters is actually fun.

Please join up with a campaign, especially if it is John McCain's campaign.  Don't sit back and assume people will vote for the right person.  With Mitt Romney dropping out today you can bet a lot of his supporters are thinking what else could they have done.  Put up signs, make donations, tell your friends, and join up with other volunteers to participate in GOTV calls.  You won't regret it.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google's Demographic Bidding Helps Little Spenders Market Like Big Spenders

Yes - this is not a political post.  I know some of you readers are excited by that.  Last night Google announced that they are testing Demographic bidding in their content network and there are quite a number of features that get me reasonably excited; however, my enthusiasm is not as high as some recent changes like their new geotargeting tools.  Anyway, here are the highlights:

• Google allows you to bid on specific demographics like age and gender on certain sites in their content network; that's pretty cool
• Google (if you are in their beta) allows you to run a Demographic report to understand the profile of your ad buys and this helps you fine tune your bids by not only including CTR and bid data but conversion data too
• You can also eliminate certain demographic groups from seeing your ads which is also another great feature.

OK, so why am I not doing cartwheels?  Well it is only limited to their content network and not search.  Plus, it is limited to only a few sites that look to be mostly social networking sites and quite frankly other than MySpace and Friendster (who still goes there?) I didn't recognize any of the URLs listed in their beta test.  Plus, while I've grown to like Content Targeting you need to understand how it works to get a good flavor for the process of getting your ads shown, the type of inventory available, and also your ROI in content.  Finally, as we've seen with their CPA bidding process, this really is just a beta and you probably won't see huge results until Google expands the site offering.

In a nut shell, I love that Google is extending their Content network process to include demo targeting.  When this feature is rolled out with more inventory it will help the small budget advertisers act like a big budget marketing firm.  Remember, this feature as is everything else with Google is part of the price of admission (next to nothing!!). 

Think about it.  With Google you can run banner ads on the internet on a cost per click basis using sophisticated demo targeting that other websites would charge premiums for their use (yes some still charge you for each targeting select you make).  Not so with Google who puts the power of sophisticated marketing at the finger tips of small business marketers.  Thank you Google!!

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Hillary Clinton Joins Paid Search Advertising Game

Well it is about time Senator.  Welcome to Google Paid Search Ads!!  Glad you finally figured out that search marketing is a great opportunity instead of just a few tests. One question.  What took you so long? (I actually have an idea...)  Just a reminder, McCain rules in paid search :-)

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

SendTec and MediaWeek Clueless on Presidential Search

On such a great day in Politics I had the non-pleasure to have someone forward me this article in MediaWeek called Dems, Reps Fall Short on Search.  Reading the article it is clear that SendTec and Janel Landis have no concept on how to look for search ads, what works in search politics, and they didn't bother to even research articles that have been written by more reputable publications and companies like:

1. Newsweek
2. CNN
3. Wired
4. Boston Globe
5. Rimm-Kaufman
6. iCrossing
7. Wall Street Journal

What gets me so fired up is when so called "search experts" run a few queries at a couple of times and then draw a conclusion that says "these guys don't get search".  That's just wrong.  If you don't see us running ads on certain words it is because they a) don't perform b) too expensive or c) doesn't make sense. 

Come on people, you have to try harder than this and too assume that real search marketing isn't occurring because political campaigns don't get it is wrong.  Perhaps before someone publishes an article on what the Presidential campaigns are not doing, they should try using search to find articles that have already been published that proves they are wrong.  Sheesh - SendTec definitely needs search help.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google Gets FTC Thumbs Up on Deal to Acquire DoubleClick

The Wall Street Journal today reported that the FTC Clears Google-DoubleClick Deal putting a fork in Microsoft's and AT&T's plans for stopping the deal.  Their claims of it being anti-competitive were ludicrous and from impacting consumer privacy, that was a red herring too.  The deal itself does none of those and as I wrote before, it solves a lot of problems.  Here's why...

• From a privacy perspective if you were already worried about it, it really doesn't cause extra pressure.  DoubleClick has been tracking you FOR YEARS, just look at your cookies.
• All those free things you signed up with at Google because they are cool?  Well, you "paid" for access to those with giving up a piece of your privacy.  Putting it together doesn't impact you that much more, because with Google AdSense, Google sees you on about 74% of the internet anyway.  That's more than enough data to build profiles on you.
• While Google is an up and coming competitor and modeler of click stream and web surfing behavior, I personally believe that Yahoo is the market leader in building profiles.  They have been crunching terabytes of data for years.  Based on my own experience they are the best at building response and cloning models, beaconing users, re-marketing, and building behavioral models.  Plus, they just adding Blue Lithium
• Speaking of Behavioral Targeting, where do you think companies like Tacoda (now owned by AOL) and RevenueScience get their data from?
• Finally, I think Microsoft having access to the data they receive from Atlas scares me more than Google and DoubleClick.  Microsoft has access to millions and millions of PCs and Laptops worldwide with countless personal information, files, pictures and that worries me more than some anonymous cookies.

Being anti-competitive is really even funnier.  The ad serving business has hit rock bottom when it comes to prices and differentiation.  Personally, I've canceled 2 deals with DoubleClick over the years mostly due to poor customer service.  DoubleClick is still around as is Atlas so there are plenty of choices.  Microsoft's argument probably assumes that putting an AdWords campaign with a DoubleClick banner buy makes it too convenient for advertisers.  Sadly they are correct. 

Google has a ton of business because a) their search is perceived to be better than MSN b) Microsoft watched Google grow up and ignored the internet c) Google makes it too easy for advertisers to use them d) they provide good prices and free tracking.  Google shouldn't be penalized for providing a better service when there are plenty of choices out there; plus they'll have their work ahead of them whipping the DoubleClick team into shape.

The deal helps advertisers by integrating platforms and doesn't add to consumer privacy woes.  I'm going to stick with Atlas for a while and may give DoubleClick a look when I start seeing them integrated more with Google.  The FTC made the right choice....

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google's AdWords Editor Starting to Annoy Me - No Video Ads

Google's AdWords Editor is a must have tool for anyone that is serious about running a Google search campaign.  You can setup campaigns, optimize (using data through yesterday), create text ads, set budget and targeting, and best of all:  copy and paste between campaigns and accounts.  The copy and paste is really, really a time saver.  You can copy everything including text ads, keywords, and banner ads.  The only things I don't user AdWords editor for is building out keywords, looking at "today's" data, uploading display ads, and video ads.

What you say?  No video ads?  Isn't that what Google wants us to use and promotes?  Yes.  You can't use AdWords Editor for anything to do with your video ads and that's what annoys me.  The video ad units in Google are a great  tool for any advertiser including the small ones.  You load up your commercials or ad units, create a front panel ("click here to watch video"), and you only get charged when the video is clicked through to another landing page or website, not for someone watching the video.

You'd think that Google would want to make it easier on using video, but sadly it doesn't yet.  I spoke with my Google Account Team and from what they were told, changing AdWords Editor to accommodate video units isn't on the near term horizon.  So where does that leave us?  Hand loading video units into individual ad groups which takes FOREVER.  One of my co-workers, Jackie, told me it took her 3 hours to load up a new video unit into just a few ad groups in one of our accounts.   And then, I couldn't use the AdWords Editor to set rotations of video and display ads because the video ads aren't even downloaded.  Right now using video takes a longgggg time in Google.

I'm worried that Google doesn't see long term value with their video product.  I can't find any other reason why they wouldn't make it easier for video advertisers.  I'm sure that if there were enough advertisers using their video product there would be more demand for updates to AdWords Editor, but sadly maybe I'm the only one that cares for it.  Perhaps this is the start of a grassroots effort to get Google to update AdWords Editor to include video; my luck I'll still be the only one complaining....

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Loving Google's New Geo Targeting Capabilities

Just saw this article posted over at the Inside AdWords Blog called New options and new look for location targeting and I have to say I am mighty impressed.  As you can imagine spending some time in the political advertising world, you really need to come up with local targeting techniques and now Google made the options a little better and jazzed up the interface.  For the life of me I don't get why some political campaigns run ads outside their geo-target.  Ryan and I at Connell Donatelli often talk about where a campaign should run and pretty much now in 2007/2008 if you have a Senate Race your are probably running it national, but House and Governor races you are probably running at the state level.  General rules of thumb and not absolutes; plus the House races you are going to a district level.  Well Google just made it easier for you congressional district targeting folks.   Here's what Google allows you to do now:

1. You can use their newly designed platform to search for your region or target
2. Browse through locations by drilling down country, state, MSA, city
3. Bundles that they made (more on that in a second)
4. Create custom targets by drawing on a map or loading in zipcodes

So let's say you want to work on a search campaign for Rodney Frelinghuysen out of NJ District 11.  You could use Google to load in zip codes but then again the minimum radius you can choose is 10 miles.  That's not bad, but maybe you want to be more accurate.  You can try drawing District 11 in Google's Map and get as close as you can.

As you can see from my screen shots below I don't think I did half bad trying to get close to the actual district and it took me 2 minutes to draw it out.  If you really wanted to nail it, you could zoom in even more with Google and try and really match the lines.  It is definitely a useful tool and one that helps you out immensely if you are in politics, local marketing, or just about anything that needs to get specific geo-customers.

The other search engines like Yahoo and MSN don't have a tool like this today and in fact, one of the annoying things about Yahoo is that they opt you into North American targeting and then you need to go in a remove Canada.  Anyway Google's new geo-targeting tools is definitely cutting edge; I haven't tested loading in a ton of zip codes so I'm not sure if Google has a max setting, but we have just the client to test it out on (and no it is not John McCain for President who BTW - will win New Hampshire).  I'm also not sure how useful the bundles will be, but then I'm splitting hairs.  Google once again shows why they are every advertiser's and especially the small advertiser's best friend...

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Rimm-Kaufman Proves Once Again That McCain's Search is #1

The Rimm-Kaufman group published a study the other day called Search and Politics 2008 and they get this study correct unlike past ones where I was very critical.  What usually gets me fired up is when some knucklehead blogger spends 10 minutes running some search queries and makes erroneous conclusions regarding the extent of politicians running PPC ads.  These wanna be search marketers are very often wrong and have no basis for the "advice" they dish out for free.  This version of the Rimm-Kaufman study is not only more than directionally correct but provides me with a basis for confirming what I've always believed the competition is doing online.

• Less than half of 2008 presidential contenders are using paid search advertising
• Even fewer are advertising searches related to key campaign issues.
  
• More Republicans are using paid search advertising than Democrats.
• Google (YouTube) is a major advertiser on political queries.
• Political campaigns (except McCain which is my observation) lack sophistication as paid search advertisers.

Also towards the back, they offer 6 basic search techniques that the novice search marketer should pay attention to.  Obviously this is search 101 and applies to political marketing but as I personally can attest to is not a full proof plan for running search campaigns; as a colleague once told me marketing politics is not like selling cds.  The 6 search techniques are:

1. Spend ad dollars on search:  Personally I have a minimum spend for local, state, national, and presidential campaigns
2. Advertise on your own name:  Sounds like a no-brainer but it is also a defensive strategy to help combat any "George Allen" problems.
3. Advertise on issues plus your own name+issues:  This is where the faint of heart often bail out.  This is way not as simple as it sounds and where non-political advertisers  fall short.  Not only can you spend a ton of money here you can also get little back in return if you don't know what you are doing.  You must have a well thought out strategy for buying issue words and need someone with some experience.
4. Advertise on Google, Yahoo, MSN
5. Advertise on other candidate's names:  Again not a simple strategy with similar pitfalls to #3 above.
6. Choose good landing pages:  This is where many campaigns fall short by sending clicks into a homepage or a generic landing page.  You need multiple landing pages to not only help with conversions but relevancy too.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the Rimm-Kaufman study and other than our brilliant McCain search campaign, I liked getting some confirmation as to what our competition is doing.  Rudy's team has a good search strategy while everyone else if they have even figured out how to spell "PPC" are still just playing around.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Yet Another Reason to Love Google: Content Improvements

Today Google posted this article over at the AdWords blog called Google content network tips: Part 1 - Recent improvements which goes over some recent changes to their content network.  The highlights for me were:

• Reach.  According to comScore Google's content network reaches almost 70%.
• Transparent reporting of where your ads ran and where conversions occur; this is done at the URL as well as domain level
• Cost per click bidding when you use site targeting

Now those are all fine and dandy, but what gets me fired up lately is more to do with the transparency coupled with the flexibility.  When running ads I can see where they show up in their network and if one particular site is performing well I can drop it into a site targeting campaign to make sure my ads run there.  That also gives me flexibility to move in and out of "deals" with these sites.  And, that's extremely important when you don't have a ton of cash to test and learn.

Just today a great article ran featuring one of my accounts on a well known National News site.  I called my rep to see if I could buy ads just around that article for about a week and they wrote back and said "sure, but our minimum amount is $7500" which immediately canceled the deal.  I went into Google to see if I could buy that page but sadly it wasn't available and the majority of placements on this site in Google's network were text only.  However, it reminded me how lucky we are that Google provides such visibility and flexibility.

Following up on the visibility was a call I had today without another ad network.  As I wrote a few days ago, I'm not afraid of using ad networks and if done properly they can be very effective (comes from running like $150 million in online ads since 1998).  The major problem I do have with them and this includes Yahoo's partner network is the refusal to provide visibility into where the ads run.  These networks are afraid that you might go direct which is really ridiculous; case in point see Google that provides the visibility yet is showing tremendous revenue growth.

The drawbacks with Content are:

1. You need smaller groups so Google can do a better job targeting your ads
2. You need display and video ads to really take advantage of it; especially video where you aren't charged for someone watching your video but when they click (unless you bought on a CPM basis)
3. You have to watch your spending and optimize often because Google can really push through a spend.
4. The Whack a mole problem with unwanted sites, even though Google has made improvements
5. And finally, my biggest issue with Content are that many of the placements are not premier and some of them if you don't pay attention are text only.  There is nothing that irks me more than paying high rates for a text ad.

BTW - one final word to the wise.  Google is letting you buy on a CPC basis in their site targeting, but like other techniques it may not be to your benefit.  You need to pay attention to CPMs, CPCs, and of course CPA no matter how you pay.  If you are smart sometimes a site bought on a CPM basis can have an extremely attractive CPCs and the CPM will get you more visibility.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Newsweek Searches for A Candidate and Finds Our McCain Search Program

Newsweek has a great article in this week's magazine called The Search for A Candidate and it basically goes into an analysis of the search campaign that we at Connell Donatelli Inc run for the McCain for President campaign.  Highlights from the article include:

1. "The national polls don't reflect it, but in one sense John McCain is the clear front runner in the presidential race: he leads in search-engine ads."  Personally I'd rather see McCain leading in the polls and winning states with a smaller Google buy.
2. "Those who've figured it out are cleaning up: McCain's people have stated that for every dollar they spend on this form of advertising, they bring in three or four bucks in contributions."
3. "Right now they're getting the words dirt-cheap," says Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a think tank that helps Democrats. "It's amazing how many people don't buy their name and the name of their opponents. That's a no-brainer."
4. But only a few have realized that buying "competitive words"—meaning your opponents' names —can be even more effective. "It's a tactic, but not nefarious," says Eric Frenchman, a McCain consultant active in buying search terms. "Buying competitive words is a key to getting people information." Frenchman says that such ads often "convert"
5. "Here again, McCain is busy; his people say that at various times they've bought 10,000 different words"

I think that was the most we've seen yet of anyone digging into political search campaigns.  I don't think that keywords are cheap right now in fact I believe cost per clicks are going up.  Besides a change to Google's algorithm which impacts how much you pay to be in the top position, there are more than just campaigns that are bidding on the candidate's name.  Just look to see who shows up on the search results.

Finally, I'm also glad that Newsweek quoted me regarding buying competitive words.  I've written and said over and over again that it isn't some nefarious trick to steal votes or web traffic (stealing traffic that doesn't convert is a waste of time).  Search is built around people looking for information and if someone is searching for a competitive name, why wouldn't you want to have your ad there too?  That's why super markets have a soda aisle and put Coke next to Pepsi.  If you are looking for soda, why wouldn't you want to look at all the choices.  I wish more bloggers and marketers would pay more attention to this tactic.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google Sheds A Little Light on Minimum Cost Per Clicks

Hey, if you read one of my posts this week (besides the Politico one from yesterday), this is it.  Google via their Inside AdWords blog sheds a little light on a common misconception revisited regarding the minimum cost per click bid.  I'll get into why I wrote sheds a little light later, but basically as is the case with most big companies this AdWords post is more about the average minimum CPC cases not some unique ones which I've personally wrestled with.  Ahh before that, some highlights from the post...

• The minimum CPC is not related to the number of competitors but the quality score of the ads/keyword.
• If you think there aren't really competitors perhaps the ads were turned off when you looked or they are geo-targeted.  Google directs you to their Ad Preview Tool which I personally use quite often to see how my ads compare to competitors, how it looks, and who else is bidding on the words.
• And Google explains that they would rather NOT show ads for every keyword especially if it could potentially detract from the overall search experience.

OK, now for a reality check from someone that has bought tons and tons of words.  About 9 out of 10 times what Google wrote is very accurate which shouldn't surprise you.  However, I've run into enough examples where it is a Google glitch which of course requires tons of screaming and emails before you see any results. 

One client recently whose name had no advertisers on it (I know what Google wrote, but we looked and looked multiple times per day over a week), but we couldn't get our minimum CPC below $5.  The ad had the person's name in it and the click thru went to a landing page and/or home page hosted at the clients site.  That url had the clients full name in it at a .com URL.  Of course we were buying the clients name which is where the $5 CPC problem came into play.

Google's answer of course was quality score and relevancy, but as we pointed out to them it was impossible to get any more relevant and there was a glitch in their system.  I think what finally got to them was when I wrote "an ad that only repeated their name over and over again couldn't be more relevant".    Eventually something was triggered in their system that put the bids into the correct range or maybe it was just dumb luck.

That's happened more often than what you would think and especially comes into play when buying someone's name.  Even buying my own name directed to this blog has a minimum CPC of 20 cents for me; I could probably do more to fix the ads but it serves its purpose.  There is one bright spot if you can't get your Quality Score up and really can't find a glitch, at least the ads will run in Google's content targeting network.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google to Facebook: If We Can't Buy You, Then Join You

I thought this announcement by Google in the post called Google News Goes Social was a brilliant move on their part.  Google created a Facebook application that lets users have news and customized searches appear on their profile pages.  Of course it also lets the user share any results page.  As you know, MSN bought the right to monetize inventory and when Facebook opened up to allow new applications, I guess the folks at Google seized on this opportunity to create an application that can help drive some of that traffic back to the mother ship.  Brilliant plus a little evil to boot.

Following that announcement, Steve Rubel posted this today under the title Schmidt Hints AdSense Maybe Coming to Facebook Apps that Eric Schmidt would like to have their ads in those applications so you can bet to see Google monetize more of that traffic without really getting into bed with Facebook.  Clearly Google has a purpose to get at that traffic which doesn't seem to be slowing down as proven by Bill Tancer over at Hitwise.

I wonder what Facebook is going to do about a potential increase in ads and how much will that piss off their users who are still predominately around college age.  Sure a bunch of us 30+ professionals have jumped on board realizing how much more interactive using Facebook is compared with Linkedin, but at the end of the day Facebook is still driven by the 18-30 crowd, right? 

Witness the ads that you find on the small left hand skyscraper.  Most of them are untargeted, network buys, but when they are targeted it seems to be at a macro level and not geared towards any profile data or behavioral targeting data.  Frequently the ads are filled by Virgin Mobile, Dating sites, Pimple Ads and those are the professional ones not the ones made using the Facebook Flyer platform.  The Facebook Flyers at least seem to be more targeted because I saw one for The Rutgers Network and then another one (dating) targeting 30+.  Check out this screen shot of some ads.

Anyway I think the battle over Facebook is far from over and that includes who gets to power ads in their pages.  I wonder how long before MSN starts barking about the Google Facebook App?

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Yahoo's Results Show a Peek Into Their Strategic Plans

OK so Yahoo had what a lot of folks described as a good 3Q earnings.  I saw some good write ups by some of my favorite bloggers/reporters including:

• Kara Swisher with Day 92:  Oh Joyous Day
• Kate Kaye with Yahoo Shows Signs of Display Ad Growth in 3Q
• BusinessWeek with Yahoo manages an upside surprise for now

My key takeaways from these post are:

1. Yahoo's top three strategies are being a top destination for consumers, creating an open platform, and being a killer ad network
2. Pursuing a strategy of increasing out of Yahoo property impressions
3. Revenue per search was up 20%

Couple those with my excitement (really) about getting my first proposal from Yahoo with RightMedia in a plan and you can definitely see Yahoo's ad growth strategy.  The RightMedia acquisition is important because it gets you access to top 100 sites on the internet in your ad buy along with Yahoo properties.  The platform also allows for variable CPM bidding and if you put one of their tracking pixels on your conversion pages, you can have the RightMedia team optimize your CPMs to fit your CPA metrics.  Why is this important?  Well if Google has an Achilles heel it is on the content side.

On the search side, Google is right now almost too dominant and even though Yahoo is making moves to improve both their paid search product for advertisers, for themselves, as well as user experience, they are way behind.  For example, one of those links shows how they just announced that you can block domains on the content side, but can only limit it to 250.  250?  For one of my main accounts, I have over 2000 blocked domains and add more in every week.  On the Panama side, after a sluggish start for my search campaigns, I started seeing nice increases in ROI recently, so I've been steadily increasing spends.  Yahoo still does not allow for video or display ads to run on their content which is a real shame, but that has to be coming right?

While I've become a great fan of Google's content network in the last 2 years especially for smaller advertisers who can't afford to go direct, it is the one area where Google is vulnerable.  Google has some nice sites like YouTube, MySpace, NY Times, Boston.com and many many others.  However, one has to wonder how good those ad positions are and how likely the ad space is going to have a Google ad served there instead of a direct or other network sale.  Most publishers probably have Google as a default ad filler and it is either third or fourth in line behind direct, BT network, and an Ad.com network.  A content buy on Google might get you 80% of the internet if the price is right and if the space is available; even then who knows how premium the position is.

So where can Yahoo attack them?  On the display ad side by bringing better publishers, better inventory, and of course better positions.  Yahoo isn't leading with search, but leading with their strength which has always been display ads, video streams, and now they are adding in out of property inventory.  Once they get search built up to an acceptable level and figure out what their social networking plan is, they'll be right back in the game (from an analyst perspective).

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Where Are Those Online Advertising Dollars Going?

I saw this post today from Steve Rubel called Five Reasons Why A Pay Per Click Recession Looms and it got me thinking about a post I've been meaning to write.  Couple that with the announcement that AOL is laying off 2,000 people (see this analysis by Kara Swisher over at BoomTown) and I think you can see a post forming.  Also Reuters has an article called Ad dollars flood web, but will they go far enough that talks about how web advertising may be over-hyped.  So between those articles and the New York Times article that Steve referenced it got me thinking having we seen this movie before?  Now, I won't get tit for tat with Steve because he brings up a lot of valid observations, but I don't think a PPC Recession is coming, definitely a slow down in growth rates.  I also don't believe CPAs will push CPC aside and that's mainly because I've seen this movie before. 

Steve's 5 reasons are Clutter, Declining Relevance of Traffic unless it results in an action, Rising Costs, Marketers Spread The Ball Around, and Search Ads Are Viewed As Untrustworthy and all of them can be extrapolated to advertising in general, not just search.  Let's use Steve's reasons with my own historical perspective of why a recession isn't looming, but a revaluation of the expectations of online advertising is going to occur.

1. CLUTTER:  Way back in my early days of online advertising at AT&T circa 1998, we had a theory that said "if you bought all of the major portals (aka on ramps to the internet) you can reduce the amount of competitive ads that a user could see" and thus AT&T had deals with Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, and iVillage (AOL had a deal with MCI).  AT&T paid through the nose for these deals and I had the honor of canceling them one by one as the deals didn't pan out.  Basically, advertisers, who only now are discovering the internet, are shifting ad dollars away from more traditional vehicles to online; this means that inventory will tighten, costs will rise, and then advertisers will start to wonder, why did I shift those dollars in the first place.
2. DECLINING OF RELEVANT TRAFFIC:  Back in the old days people wanted to know about eyeballs - how many people saw my ad or how many people visited my website.  Personally because I grew up in a direct response, results oriented world I always wanted to know about conversions and what my CPA was.  In fact, it let me buy on a CPA basis even back in 1998.  CPA dealsc peaked around 2002 when inventory supplies were easy.  CPCs, CPMs, CPAs don't matter all that much because what really matters is whether you are hitting your goals (a poorly performing CPA deal means you get nothing and that includes impressions).
3. RISING COSTS:  See above and I don't just think it is a search problem, but search has probably the most to lose.  When costs rise advertisers will start to turn back to Direct Mail (yes I wrote that) for a segment of customers and even TV ads.  A very smart person (Norm Lehoullier formerly of Grey Interactive) once told me that every medium has its place and for direct mail it might be for an older audience. 
4. SEARCH ADS ARE VIEWED AS UNTRUSTWORTHY:  What ad isn't?  Search just seems to be more trusting probably due to relevancy factors as well as mixing up of organic search with paid search.  That's always been an erroneous observation.
5. MARKETERS SPREAD THE BALL AROUND:  This is probably the most significant problem for any site owner and not just search.  There are so many sites out there that try to have specific content to attract more ad dollars (proof see the multitudes of social networking sites) that it becomes harder and harder to figure out where to place your dollars.  Blogs, social networks, Google, Yahoo, ad networkers the list goes on and on.  Try figuring out which ad network to place your dollars with.  All of them claim they have the best sites, the cheapest inventory, the best behavioral targeting, the best results, etc.  This is a widespread problem for the industry and the way it will shake out will be marketers will stick with the bigger sites and the bigger networks only because they hopefully will control more of a user's time during a day and they have less attention to spend on the one highly relevant site that delivers little volume.   Why do you think MSN, AOL, Yahoo, and Google are gobbling up other sites?  The battle will be not for users but for average time spent on a site.

Really, this movie has been seen before.  It will shake out like it always does which is a few big players controlling as much of the ad dollars as they can.  That's why there is a consolidation occurring and when you can't get enough of your forecasted share of revenue, big layoffs can occur like they are at AOL.  Google, Yahoo, and even MSN will survive because they will make the acquisitions that are needed to keep going.  I'm not ready to forecast doom for Google or search, not when there are still more advertisers to jump into the mix (small business and local merchants).

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Trademarked Names in Google Ads - Not a Liberal Bias

I saw this post over at Google's Public Policy Blog called Our Advertising Policies and Political Speech and I thought to myself, oh boy here comes the same old tired responses from less informed people that Google somehow has a liberal bias.  You can read the post for yourself to get more details but basically Google rejected an ad placed by Senator Susan Collins' re-election campaign which had Moveon.org in the ad.  Of course this becomes a big deal, but really if Moveon.org has their name trademarked they have every right to protect that trademark and have Google or any other search engine reject the ad.

As I wrote in a post recently called Listen Search Marketing Newbies, Buying a Competitor's Name Is Good Practice you need to  understand how to circumvent these trademarked issues and when you can buy the name.  It is good marketing practice to buy competitive names and I've been doing it for a lonnnnggg time. Google will let you buy the name, you just can't have a trademarked name in your ad unless you have permission; Yahoo will most likely reject even buying the keyword and MSN will certainly disavow it.

As you can see from my post referenced above, I'm buying several versions of competitive names, in addition to the the name referenced in the Google post.  When I can, I put the name in the text ad and when I can't, I come up with other strategies.  Even if you can get a competitive name in the ad, that doesn't mean you won't have to pay a high CPC due to lack of relevancy, so you have to ask yourself why you need to purchase this type of keyword.

Regardless of what your strategy is, I do not believe for one second Google has a liberal bias.  Never have and hopefully never will.  I don't know where that started from, but my guess is that it has to do with Google Bombing or the perceived lack of use of the internet by Republicans.  Right now I see more use of paid click ads on the Republican side than the Democratic side and I for one know one campaign that spends a ton of time and money on the internet. 

Personally, I think the Republican base skews older and that our base is less likely to use all available online tools and when the other side embraces technology more than the other, people will scream "liberal bias" when all it is more use of the internet.  Good for the Senator for trying to buy Moveon.org, I'm glad to see such aggressiveness; however, when the search engine rejects it, please people (NOT REFERENCING ANYONE ASSOCIATED WITH THE CAMPAIGN) don't scream liberal bias.  It shows a serious lack of experience. 

PardonMyFrench,

Eric