Vipul’s blog

In continuation to improve the quality of it’s text advertisement and make it more relevant and efficient, Google is adding another dimension to it’s famous attribute Quality Score.

It’s very critical from user point of view and very important for advertisers to know that Google will be introducing into the quality score component of your ad rank, the landing page load time i.e. the time taken for your landing page to load. If you have a slow landing page load time, your Google AdWords ads will cost your more or you could even see a sharp decrease in your ad position i.e. ad rank if corrective actions are not taken. So, be ready for it.

Google AdWords has started showing your landing page load time at keyword level in your Google AdWords keyword detail section. Here are the quick steps on how to see your landing page load details:

• Sign in to your Google AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com
• Go to Campaign Summary tab
• Click on any AdGroup
• Click the Keywords tab above the Ad Group Details table
• Take your mouse over the magnifying glass icon beside any keyword and then click Details and recommendations link to launch the Keyword Analysis page. You can also see an overview of your Quality Score and ad visibility by pointing your cursor over the icon.

At the time of this writing, Google has still not started using this for quality score. And it is showing you this data so that if your page load time is poor, you can take corrective action to speed things up and improve your quality score. Per reports, sometime in mid-June, the landing page load time score will start impacting your overall quality score and may cost you a lot of money. So be prepared and start monitoring your landing page load time.

Another important point to note, Google will also be looking at your demography before really assuming whether your page load time is poor! This is to make sure you don’t lose out because of slow connection in your location. Sounds trivial? But it’s a very important factor.

It’s another feature from Yahoo! search marketing copied from Google AdWords! Yahoo! religiously follows whatever Google comes up with. Yahoo! has started displaying geographical locations for geo-targeted ads in it’s search advertisements.

Geographical targeting has been a unique offering from Google AdWords. It provides a tighter control over the location where an advertiser wants to display the ads. Thus more targeted ads. Google has been using geographical display for search advertisements since 2004. Infact, Google has even experimented with displaying city names beside the advertisements.

I hope this has got nothing to do with Google-Yahoo ad deal! What say folks?

Online marketing offers various channels for advertisement with each one of them having their own pros and cons. So, it becomes very important to understand the usage of each one of these thoroughly before employing them. The most challenging could be making a choice of pay-per-click and/or display ads.

See my earlier post to get an overview of all the advertising channels.

Lets try to find the answer to this question, What kind of online advertising should I use: pay-per-click (search), banner (display), or a combination of both? Before we dig into this we need to understand the basic use of these two online advertising channels:

• Pay-Per-Click (Search) This channel is primarily used for driving qualified traffic, generating leads and sales. Remember, this channel is more towards driving traffic than the brand building or brand awareness.
• Banner (Display) Ads This channel is primarily used for brand building and to support other search marketing strategies. This channel is costlier compared to search channel if employed just to drive traffic and generate leads.

So the conclusion is:

• Run pay-per-click (ppc) campaigns if the primary objective of running online campaigns is driving traffic.
• Run banner campaigns if the primary objective of running online campaigns is brand building.
• Run a combination of both if the objective is to drive targeted traffic to your site, build brand awareness and increase sales.

Do write your experience or view on this.

Google Analytics is a very powerful tool to analyze metrics of a website. It’s easy to track your Google AdWords campaign using Google Analytics but what if you want to track yahoo campaigns.

The obvious and a common question which any internet marketing professional will have is: How do I track the data for my Yahoo! Search Marketing PPC campaigns in Google Analytics?

Herewith, I am explaining this process of tracking yahoo PPC campaign data in Google Analytics in a very simple and comprehensive way.

Google Analytics allows you to capture lot of parameters/information as mentioned below to provide a detailed analysis:

Landing Page: This is the base destination URL for your campaign.
Campaign Source: Source of the above campaign. This will be ‘yahoo’ is this case.
Campaign Medium: Another parameter to track your campaign separately and very important if you are running the same campaign using various channels of internet marketing e.g. Email, Banner, CPC etc.
Campaign Term: Keyword for the campaign. Use this parameter to add keyword level detail for data capturing.
Campaign Content: To track ad versions separately. A very important parameter for ad copy testing i.e. you can define multiple copies for the same group of keywords and then analyze and see which one work better for your keywords.
Campaign Name: If you have multiple campaigns (I am sure you would have!) you can track each one of them individually using this parameter.

The first step is to zero in on the detailed information (parameters mentioned above) you want to capture in Google Analytics. Open the Google Analytics URL Builder. This tool will let you input your landing page and variables mentioned above. I would suggest you to execute this step carefully. After you manually input your data, the URL builder will provide you with a full tracking URL that you can copy/paste into your Yahoo! ads. Here’s a quick example:

Landing page: www.SomeLandingPage.com/page1
Campaign Source: yahoo
Campaign Medium: cpc
Campaign Term: study in uk
Campaign Content: study in uk ad 1.
Campaign Name: StudyInUK
Custom Tracking URL: http://www.SomeLandingPage.com/page1? utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=study%2Bin%2Buk& utm_content=study%2Bin%2Buk%2Bad%2B1&utm_campaign=StudyInUK

This is a very simple example for a single keyword and a single ad copy/text. What if you have to perform these steps for each of your keyword-ad text combination! Don’t get scared as there is a way out to simplify this task. All you need to do is modify the Campaign Term, Campaign Content and Campaign Name variables. You need to insert Yahoo’s identifiers into each of these variables to pull the auto-tagged information into Analytics.

Following are most common variables:

{OVKEY}: Paid Keyword i.e. Term
{OVRAW}: Actual Search Query entered by user
{OVADID}: Ad text ID number
{OVCAMPGID}: Campaign ID numer. Here’s another quick example:

Now, your old tracking URL will look like www.SomeLandingPage.com/page1? utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term={OVKEY}& utm_content={OVADID}&utm_campaign={OVCAMPGID}

You can use this customized tracking URL for the entire campaign and pull detailed information into Analytics.

Special Note: I should reiterate that you need to turn ON auto-tagging in your yahoo account to produce real data! Otherwise, all of your Yahoo PPC visitors will register keywords as {OVKEY}.

Microsoft Corp may be running out of time with respect to it’s bid for Yahoo! if one goes by the latest developments (one may read as bonding!) between internet company with Google Inc.

Yahoo may agree to use Google’s Web advertising software within a week, the Wall Street Journal said yesterday, citing people familiar with the matter. The decision would build on an experimental program the companies ran last month.

After three months of constantly pressing Yahoo to give up looking at alternatives and agree to a deal with Microsoft, Ballmer faces a potential setback. A deal with Google may strengthen Yahoo’s sales and give it a chance of enjoy independent existence, or it may also result in pressuring Microsoft to raise its $44.6 billion bid.

Ballmer said yesterday he would walk away from the purchase before he overpays for Yahoo, the Sunnyvale, California-based owner of the second-most popular Internet search engine.

“I know exactly what I think Yahoo is worth to me, exactly,” Ballmer said in a meeting with employees, according to remarks provided by spokesman Frank Shaw. “I won’t go a dime above, and I will go to what I think it’s worth if that gets the deal done.”

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft may make a friendly deal with Yahoo, start a proxy fight to replace Yahoo’s board or abandon the bid, Ballmer said at the meeting. The company will make an announcement in “very short order,” he said.

Yahoo has repeatedly turned down the $31-a-share acquisition bid since Microsoft first made the offer Jan. 31. Microsoft, the world’s biggest software maker, would use the takeover to bolster competition with Google, the leader in the $41 billion online advertising market.

Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s CEO, has said the offer is too low. Ballmer, who gave the company until April 26 to agree to a deal, let the deadline pass without taking action.