Advertising Day

Here’s Why You Should PPC Advertise on Your Brand Keywords

Tad Miller — Wed, 15 May 2013 12:44:50 +0000

There have been multiple studies about the incremental lift in search traffic that Pay Per Click Advertising provides in recent years. I’ve been quoting to clients the Google Study that said that search ads provide 89% incremental traffic. The studies essentially say that when ads are shut off that the natural search results will only pick up for 11% of the lost traffic.

The study results, are almost in every case met with doubt and skepticism by the clients because the clients don’t trust that the information is valid because Google did the study. The issue is particularly doubted with regard to advertising on the companies name or brand names that they already rank number one for in natural search.

Our Test

We recently started a test for a retailer that had not previously utilized PPC advertising on its brand names before and monitored both the impact on natural search when those ads were turned on and the impact on PPC with the addition of the clicks on those specific brand keywords.

The results pretty much backed the premise of the Google study. The study said:

…even when advertisers show up in the number one organic search result position, 50% of clicks they get on ads are not replaced by clicks on organic search results when the ads don’t appear.

Naturally, people think of their brand keywords when they think of their number one rankings. Our client’s search traffic (both paid and natural search combined) on their company name increased 88%. Paid search on that word obviously was the major contributor to that increase, but natural search clicks on that same word increased 26% also. The appearance of both paid and natural listings at the top of the search results increases click through rates for both mediums.

Merely adding brand keywords into the PPC mix had a huge impact on overall search traffic. It increased 27%. Paid search traffic increased 118% with little to no changes in budget spend.

Those are just traffic numbers and they are great. But, I’m more interested in what the traffic does in terms of conversions. We track multiple conversion actions for this client and the volume of that conversion increase was an incredible 370%. Store locator search conversion were up over 360%. Inventory Searches were up over 430%, Coupon Views went up over 450% and Site Registrations went up over 320%.

The costs to advertise on the brand keywords are incredibly low. The Exact Match version of the company name is costing only $0.08 per click. All of the combined brand keywords are costing on average less than $0.20 per click.

You literally pay a few pennies per click on brand keywords. They convert more effectively than any other keyword type and those conversions turn into sales. What are you waiting for?

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PPC To Strengthen and Support Social Media

Natalie Revell — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 12:43:26 +0000

Pay-per-click (PPC) and social media are very diverse digital marketing approaches. While pay-per-click (PPC) is based on immediate calls-to-action via push marketing, social media is based on brand awareness via pull marketing. Use this to your advantage. Utilize paid search data and metrics to strengthen and support social media marketing efforts. In this sense, they really do work hand-in-hand.

First, remember to stick to the 80/20 rule when creating content for social media channels. This content should be 80% thought leadership, tips, industry news, resource shares, etc., while only 20% of this content should be promotional.

Social media is no place for push marketing, hard sales or spammy links. However, make the 20% you get to be promotional count. You do want assisted conversions from social media, right?

Look at your PPC data to determine what is working for your target audience at large to help determine how to reach your social community:

What is getting clicked?
How is that content written?
What are the topics?
What are the keywords being used?
Are the keywords capitalized or lower case?
What calls-to-action are getting the action?
What demographic engaged the most with your ads?

Use that knowledge to create great social media content. Then test and experiment with different post types. Implementing these PPC strategies into your social media strategies, as well as any content marketing effort, should yield more likes, comments, shares and links clicked. Your analytics may show the increase in assisted conversions and social value you’ve been looking for.

Also utilize the strength of PPC’s ability to get the clicks on short-term campaigns and promotions. Just as PPC is a traffic driver to your website that also increases conversions and visibility, it can also do those things for your social media campaigns and channels:

Set up PPC’s to drive users to your social media promotion through a strong, appealing call-to-action that yields some sort of benefit to the searcher. Use PPC ads to:

Direct users to your social media promotion
Build awareness for your social channels
Grow your social communities with an incentive
Direct users to a multimedia resource, such as a video on YouTube

Now turn the tables. Use your social media analytics to strengthen paid search efforts. With Facebook ads you can specifically target your desired audience. Use the analytics from that to determine what audience you can now target in paid search.

Use both social media and PPC for remarketing purposes. Use the analytics from PPC, such as identifying the audience of users who put items in their shopping cart but never checked out and create a targeted social campaign for them. Sometimes it’s just the extra nudge and additional exposure to your brand that converts the user into a customer.

Use some of the same strategies across both PPC and social media to remind users they have seen your brand before. This eventually builds trust. Use some of the same images and echo some of the same words in your ads. Offer something similar to what they have viewed before.

The key takeaway here is to use what you know. Stop thinking of PPC as a whole other world from social media and vice versa. Instead, realize they are both working on the same overarching goal of reaching your target audience(s). Use what you know from one to identify new strategies and secondary audiences for the other. Use both the remarket appropriately across the mediums. Test and refine. Rinse and repeat. This should yield some very targeted and streamlined marketing efforts across the board, giving you a win in multiple areas.

Feel free to reach out to us for help with any of your PPC Marketing or Social Media Marketing needs.

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Not Advertising on Bing? 3 Reasons Why You May Be Missing Out

Casey Davenport — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:23:01 +0000

I will be the first to admit it – Bing and I don’t always get along. But despite our quarrels, Bing has always held a special place in my heart (as demonstrated in this year’s Bing-nerd Halloween costume to the right). I don’t know if it is because they are the search engine underdog,..or if they won me over simply with their ability to consistently pick awesome background photos for bing.com.

Whatever the case, if 1965 taught us anything, its that what the world needs is LOVE, sweet love. So I would like to take this opportunity to change the conversation up a bit and highlight some reasons why, when it’s all said and done, you may be missing out by not taking advantage of Bing’s advertising platform.

1) 70 Character Ad Text Limits

Google requires two 35-character lines for ad copy text, while Bing simply requires one 70-character line. Although both engines provide the same amount of overall text, there is a lot more creative freedom in not having to cut off full words on line 1, as seen in the example below:

alt title: reasons I am a search marketer and not a professional poet

2) Lower Costs-Per-Click

This will definitely depend account to account, but I tend to see better cost-per-clicks on Bing than Google. I believe this to be the case because generally there is less bidding competition to reach that coveted position number 1 position on Bing. Again, this may be different with different accounts.

3) Easy Google Campaign Integration

Some advertisers might already have campaigns set up in Google, but be hesitant to set everything up all over again in Bing. The good news is that Bing makes it easy to import your Google campaigns – either by importing straight from AdWords or from an Excel file.

With this easy integration, there is no reason not to try advertising with Bing Ads. Like everything else in search marketing, the best results are found through testing, testing, and more testing!

Does Bing offer any tools that you wish Google AdWords would integrate? Have you found stronger performance on Bing than on Google? Let me know in the comments below or find me on Twitter @CaseyDavenport.

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Facebook Ads vs. LinkedIn Ads: Which Should You Choose? [INFOGRAPHIC]

Kari Rippetoe — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 12:52:14 +0000

If you’re like many marketers, you may have wondered about the value of social media advertising on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, and even viewed it with a bit of skepticism. You may be asking questions like, Do people actually click on them?, and the all important, $64,000 question, Will I actually see ROI from social media advertising? These are not uncommon questions, but the fact is there’s actually a growing trend towards paid social media advertising. In fact, a recent Nielsen report showed that 75% of advertisers are using paid social media advertising, and 64% are increasing their budgets in 2013. And here at Search Mojo, we have actually seen where social media ads have delivered not only clicks, but conversions.

Are you convinced yet?

If you’re still a bit skeptical about the efficacy of social media ads, consider this: they could actually be more effective at generating leads and conversions than PPC keyword search advertising. The targeting capabilities of social media ads, compared to even the most niche keyword, can help you yield more better quality leads. LinkedIn Ads, for instance, are particularly effective for B2B brands because ads can be targeted to very specific job titles, geographic locations, business interest groups, and even companies – something covered in more detail in the webinar LinkedIn Advertising: The Key to More (and Better) B2B Leads.

Facebook Ads offer very granular targeting as well, including interest targeting based on not only specific hobbies and interests (like cats or snowboarding), but TV shows, movies, bands, music genres and Page Likes for other brands. Think about if you were a local restaurant near a concert venue, and a particular band were playing at that venue. You could target an ad to people located in your city or region who are fans of that band – people who would more than likely be going to the concert, and may be looking for a place to grab some dinner beforehand.

Facebook Ads or LinkedIn Ads – which should you choose?

This will depend on your target market and goals. LinkedIn Advertising is typically used for B2B audiences only, since it’s a business social network for professionals. Facebook Ads, on the other hand, is more suitable for B2C audiences; however, professionals have personal lives, too, and there are ways to target your advertising to a B2B audience on Facebook.

If you’re still unsure of which social network to advertise on, this handy infographic might help you choose:

Do you advertise on on social media sites? What has your experience been? Feel free to leave a comment below or tweet me @KariRippetoe!

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How Great Clips uses Twitter advertising to drive awareness, business

Arik Hanson — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:47:54 +0000

When it comes to social advertising, most of the chatter online is around Facebook. Why? Because Facebook ads are accessible and affordable to damn near everyone. Heck, you can run a promoted post for $5!

But, advertising on Twitter? That’s a whole different ballgame. Rates are higher. And the perception is only the big brands can play–which isn’t entirely true.

So, I thought I’d talk with someone who’s using Twitter advertising on a regular basis to drive actual business results. I sat down with Kasey Skala at Great Clips (biggest salon franchisee in the world–based in MSP) and asked him a few questions about how his company is using Twitter advertising to drive business results, his thoughts on Facebook advertising vs. Twitter advertising, and the value of Twitter Promoted Trends.

At a time when most are upping their Facebook advertising spend, you’re planning to up your Twitter advertising spend instead. Why?

Both are effective, if done properly. In my opinion, the options Twitter presents allow for a more conversational tone. In my experience (and this is just based off what I have personally seen), I haven’t seen the greatest results with Facebook (in terms of advertising). While some brands are seeing good results (it’s hard to know without being in their shoes), I don’t find that people notice or click on ads in Facebook. Twitter allows for a more natural, less spammy approach. From a brand perspective, I like how consumers use Twitter compared with how they use Facebook. Twitter has advanced their offerings and I think I get a better understanding of who my followers are and what motivates them. In the end, they’re doing what I’m hoping they’ll do and I feel it’s because they want to act, not because I’m asking them to. That’s not to say I’m walking away from Facebook. It’s still a part of the process, but the use and purpose is shifting.

You’ve used both Promoted Accounts and Tweets in the past with good success. How did you use each and what were the results?

The key is to use a varied approach and use Twitter’s options to compliment each other. At Mutual of Omaha, we were in the infancy stage. We had a Twitter account, but weren’t active. We used it in conjunction with Life Insurance Awareness Month. The results we saw, compared to the spend, far exceeded our expectations. I’m no longer with the organization, and while they currently have just under 5,000 followers, if you take a look at that industry and where they started, it was well worth the spend.

At Great Clips, we’re using both platforms to build owned assets and drive our overall digital landscape. We do want to drive activity on Twitter, but we’re more interested in Twitter’s products to drive offline activity. We know that people will take action online, that’s easy. But what allows me to keep my job is making sure social gets people to visit our salons.

You don’t have the biggest following on Twitter (5,996 followers), but yet you see great succes with Twitter advertising. Why haven’t you seen a lift in terms of followers?

I’ve been preaching against this from day 1 — it’s what I call “fuzzy metrics” because they hold little value, in my opinion. You have to take a look at your consumers and understand their habits and the way they use the platform. If you take a look at the basic data, we lead our category. We have more overall mentions than our competitors and our positive sentiment trends higher. So if people are talking about us and the positive sentiment is higher, does it matter if those people follow us or not?

Second, it’s important for brands to know why people follow and talk about them. For Great Clips, one of the biggest reasons people follow us is around NASCAR. If you take a look at our assets around NASCAR, the drivers we sponsor have huge followings. Activation is also significantly higher when it comes from our drivers. For example, we ran a promotion last year and we had one of our NASCAR drivers tweet it out. That single tweet drove more engagement and activation in one day than an entire week of paid advertising across both Twitter and Facebook. So sure, we focus a little on increasing our own following, but we also know what drives results and where to focus our resources.

You also noted in a recent post by a mutual friend that you believe Promoted Trends on Twitter to be a bit over-priced. Can you talk about why you feel that way?

The way I look at Trends on Twitter is that they’re supposed to be organic and and reflection of people’s conversations. I also look at Trends as sort of worthless. Take a look at the top Trends each day…a lot are silly and not something, from a brand perspective, that have any relevance. You also have no control over the direction of the conversation — take a look at McDonald’s and Walgreens, for example. Now, both brands say they see success with Promoted Trends, but I’m no dummy and I find it hard to believe that their #mcdstories was a success. I know, that’s just one example, but I think the risk/reward of forking out that kind of money isn’t worth it.

You work for Great Clips–the largest salon franchise on the planet. So, some would say, of course you’re using Promoted Tweets–you have bigger budgets. But, do you believe Promoted Tweets can work for midsized and smaller companies, too?

There’s a big misconception that you need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make advertising on Facebook or Twitter to work. Well, I can tell you that Great Clips is far from spending hundreds of millions of dollars on Facebook or Twitter. If you take a look around your organization and how budgets are being spent, Twitter is actually fairly competitive, if not more competitive, than some of the other options. The key is to do it intelligently. Put out good content, put some budget behind stuff that makes sense, and you’ll see great results.

What advice would you give to those considering advertising on Twitter vs. other social networks (Facebook primarily, at this point)?

Ask yourself what you’re trying to accomplish. Why are you wanting to spend money on Facebook or Twitter. For Great Clips, social is just one small part of the overall digital landscape. I was having a conversation with Adam Kmiec the other day, and we both noted that email and SMS are both highly successful. At Great Clips, email and SMS both outperform Twitter and Facebook. But you have to have an integrated approach. You have to understand why you’re using each platform. I’m using Facebook to drive owned channels. I think the biggest problem marketers have is that we’re still trying to build third-party assets, when we should be focused on building owned assets. You spend a bunch of money trying to build up your Facebook “Likes” or Twitter followers and then Facebook alters Edgerank, causing the industry to complain. Ask yourself why, ask yourself why a second time, and then be smart.

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On Fostering the Long Tail Effect of True Brand Loyalty

Danny Brown — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 14:09:15 +0000

One of the things I’ve always been a huge proponent of is fostering true brand loyalty for the long tail – strategic and continuous and growth – versus getting quick buzz hits then using the rinse and repeat formula.

This stems from various reasons but the core overall one is simple – create a loyal army of consumers-turned-customers-turned-advocates, by providing solutions that meet their needs, and much of your marketing will be done organically.

This creates three benefits:

You have a true two-way relationship with your customer;

You have word-of-mouth from trusted resources that no amount of money could buy;

Your brand has an immediate advantage for new innovations, feedback and growth through shared ideas.

Loyalty also has another added benefit – more often than not, the cost of new customer acquisition versus existing customers satisfaction is much higher. Not always, but mostly.

If you can reduce the spend on acquisition, you can re-allocate that to reducing churn of existing customers, enhancing the loyalty and appreciation factor immensely.

Two brands that understand the implementation of long tail loyalty are BlogOnCloud9 and Livefyre.

Brand Loyalty: BlogOnCloud9

When I switched over to WordPress hosting experts BlogOnCloud9 back in 2010, I wrote a post then on how happy I was with the move and service. Almost three years later, nothing’s changed – except the service and approach of Dana and Karen, the founders of and partners in the service, is even better.

Last weekend, on a Saturday evening, I was tinkering with my blog to add some CSS code in order to change the email sign-up box I have at the end of every post.

Because I’m not a CSS guy, I messed up the copy/paste and completely borked my blog. Since I’d changed some code in the functions.php file, it messed up the rest of the site and all I had was a scary blank white screen of death.

I resigned myself to the fact I did something stupid on a Saturday night, and pinged Dana and Karen an email saying what had happened, and if they could help resolve. This was done not expecting anything until Monday at the earliest.

Not one hour later, Dana emailed to say he had found the bad code, fixed it, and that the site was now fully operational again. This was at 8.00pm on a Saturday night!

I was floored. BlogOnCloud9 isn’t a massive hosting company employee-wise, but that service and response at the weekend outdid competitors far “larger” than Dana and Karen’s baby.

Brand Loyalty: Livefyre

Ah, Livefyre. Regular readers and subscribers here will know I’m a huge fan of the Livefyre comments system. There’s just something about the platform that behaves like a true comment system should.Social integration; real-time chat functionality; community fostering, and more. It’s just an awesome platform.

Recently, I moved away from Livefyre and reactivated Disqus following a crowdsource survey of my subscribers, who preferred Disqus over Livefyre (although Livefyre had a huge amount of fans in the responses too).

But I began to have issues with Disqus. Mobile load time could be slow; Reactions (how your post has been shared on Twitter) were unreliable; and valid comments were getting caught in the spam filter.

I knew Livefyre were working on a major update to their platform, Livefyre 3. The beta version is on this blog, with the public release due imminently. And I knew that I still loved the platform, even though I’d made the move away from them recently.

So I emailed Livefyre support, and the awesome Dhara Mhistry was immediately on the case. No reprimanding (even in jest) for being “disloyal”, simply happy to help get Livefyre back on the blog.

Not only did Dhara and the Livefyre technical team ensure none of my Disqus comments were lost, she also answered all my questions regarding styling the comments to be more in line with the colour scheme here.

And, just like BlogOnCloud9, Livefyre was there testing the comments on the weekend to make sure the change back over had been a smooth one.

The really impressive thing? I’m not even a paying customer – Livefyre Comments is free, although it does offer premium features for businesses and media properties.

Building Loyalty Really Isn’t That Hard

What’s key in both these examples are two things that both BlogOnCloud9 and Livefyre clearly understand:

Customers (and/or users) mess up, and being able to clear a way through that mess together fosters trust and loyalty;

Losing patronage for a while doesn’t mean the brand has lost an advocate or loyal user – you have to find out for yourself why you loved that brand in the first place when compared to someone else.

A lot of brand struggle to understand loyalty – true loyalty. Offering discount vouchers and early usage of a new product may win you favours – but what you do after that to build on that quick-hit loyalty is what will define your long tail success.

BlogOnCloud9 and Livefyre already know this. Now it’s up to your brand.

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Online advertising: Looking beyond the obvious

Jim Connolly — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 13:43:22 +0000

Today’s post is about an element of online advertising, which gets very little attention. I’m referring to the longer term impact of a successful advertisement.

Mercedes and the longer game

I recall Seth Godin talking about the way Mercedes look at advertising.

Mercedes’ head of advertising said that if he focused on showing people advertisements for Mercedes the day before they were about to buy a new car, it wouldn’t work. Instead, Mercedes focus on getting their advertisements in front of us when we are children – so that when we’re 35 and looking for a luxury car, we buy a Mercedes.

Understandably, that’s a longer term approach than most small business owners are interested in. I mention it, because it highlights an element of online advertising that is often overlooked. I’m referring to the lifetime value of an ad and the need to look beyond the obvious, immediate, trackable results.

People are still hard to track

When we decide to advertise, we need to look beyond the obvious and beyond the short term. Yes, there are some people who only use one device, only use one Internet connection and have cookies enabled on their one device. However, most of us use multiple devices and multiple ip addresses (connections) to connect.

For instance, I use half a dozen different connected devices and access the Internet from lots of locations, such as; home, work, coffee shops, hotels and my phone provider’s data connection, etc. If I were to access your site via an advertising link, using my phone from a coffee shop’s wifi connection, I will not show up as coming from that ad a week or a month later, when I Google you from home using my notebook. I will just show as a new visitor, accessing your site with a new device from a new IP address for the first time.

Beyond the obvious

If online advertising is part of your marketing mix, don’t make the mistake of only looking at the immediate, obvious metrics. Look for an increase in sales and inquiries, related to the advertised offering. Look for an overall lift in visitors to your site. Oh, and never miss the opportunity to ask a new customer or client, where they first discovered you. The trackable metrics matter. In fact, they are essential, but they are not everything.

It will become possible at some point for all online advertisers to trace people across multiple ip addresses and multiple devices. Until then, I believe it pays us to look beyond the obvious.

I would really appreciate your feedback on this. What have your experiences been, either as a provider of advertising or as someone who buys online ads. Please share your thoughts with a comment.

Would you like to Pick My Brain for the answers and ideas your business needs, with a 100% money back guarantee? Well, now you can!

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5 LinkedIn Ads Best Practices for the B2B Market

Sarah Lokitis — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:05:59 +0000

LinkedIn advertising has been top of my mind lately as we have seen incredible results by targeting specific personas for B2B industries that are hard to nail down with search ads. I’ve written a few blog posts about LinkedIn here, here and here, but in this post, I’d like to tackle some specific questions about best practices for LinkedIn advertising.

1. How can I target on LinkedIn?

Unlike with search advertising, LinkedIn ads are not based on a keyword, rather specific information within users profiles. LinkedIn ads can be targeted to users by the data provided in their profile, specifically company size, company name, job title, group name, skill, industry, location, age, and gender. I’ve seen wonderful performance from campaigns targeted to as few as 14,000 people, but LinkedIn won’t let you target to less than 1,000!

Take a look at your current customers: what are their job titles? Industries? The information you glean from your current customers may help identify who your future customers could be.

From the LinkedIn ads website, this image captures an idea of the targeting options for a particular industry on LinkedIn.

2. How many ads should be in each campaign?

I am a huge proponent of always testing ad copy throughout the duration of a campaign. LinkedIn allows up to 15 ads per campaign, but initially I recommend starting with 2 or 3 ads per campaign with only one change different per ad. That way you can set up an A/B test to see which call-to-action or image performs the best for the target audience.

3. Are there any best practices for LinkedIn ad images?

Out of these 3 images, which image grabs your attention first?

In my experience, bright colors and smiling faces do extremely well on LinkedIn.

Try to have a clear, uncluttered image, so it’s easy for people to understand what is going on. There is so much happening on LinkedIn pages, so it’s important to grab the users attention quickly. The best way to know what image that is doing the best in your campaign is to test a couple images with the exact same ad copy and have the ads rotate evenly within the campaign. Unless you are a very well known brand or trying to gain brand awareness, your logo might not be the best way to attract attention.

4. What kind of CTR should you expect?

LinkedIn ads are display ads, so the click-through-rate will be much lower than your paid campaign most likely because of the frequency your ads are delivered. LinkedIn says that a healthy click-through-rate is at least 0.02%.

When the click-through-rate of an ad drops to 0.02% or below, it’s time to get a new ad variation in there. Note that you can set your campaign to rotate ads evenly or to optimize for clicks. Depending on your goals and timeline, choose the option that best fits your needs and then set the campaign to optimize for performance when a clear winner is determined.

Ads may perform very well for several weeks or a few days, so remember to monitor performance and have several ad copy variations and images ready to rotate in fresh ads when the time comes.

5. What is important to know when managing a LinkedIn Ad account?

If you are used to the options available using Google Adwords, you may be in for a surprise. The LinkedIn ads self-serve platform is not as user friendly and there are fewer features available at this time. (Hopefully this will change soon since it is such an effective ad channel!)

At this time, there is no option for any day parting and the advertising day is set in GMT. This means that my advertising day in Charlottesville begins at 7PM and you can’t schedule the ads to turn off throughout the day based on performance found in Google Analytics or another analytic’s program. Also, each campaign needs to run with at least a $10 budget per day, so if you like to get very granular, you may want to wait until you have more data if you are working with a limited daily spend before splitting your account up.

Do you have any questions about LinkedIn ads best practices, or any best practices of your own to share? Discuss them in the comments below, or find me on Twitter @lokitis!

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Pay Per Click Problems

Sally Ormond — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 13:38:31 +0000

At the start of your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign you would have done a lot of research to create powerful PPC adverts, including:

Research into your audience

Which keywords to target

Focusing your advert message

Devising a strong call to action

But that’s not where the hard work ends, because if you do start to slacken off and don’t regularly review the performance of your adverts you could start to see problems.

Reducing number of impressions or clicks

There could be several reasons for your number of impressions or clicks to be on the decline.

First of all, check out your daily budget; it could be that you’ve reached it. If so, you can either increase it to get more impressions, or reduce your Cost-Per-Click (CPC) for some of your keywords to see how they perform at a lower position.

Secondly, it could be negative keywords causing a problem. These are words that can help you reach the most interested customers by ruling out potential related searches. For example, an Optician selling glasses could use negative keywords such as ‘wine’ to stop people searching for ‘wine glasses’ being shown their ad. But, if you use too many, your ads may not be reaching many people.

Low quality score

Your quality score is a measurement of how relevant your ads, keywords and landing pages are to the person seeing your ad.

If your score is low, or it’s declining it could be due to:

Your ads not getting enough clicks, so refresh them and consider using negative keywords to limit unrelated searches

Your landing pages may not be relevant enough to your ads and keywords; it’s always best to have a landing page for each ad group

Your keywords not being relevant

Average position

Your average position statistic describes how your ad typically ranks against other ads, determining which order ads appear on a page.

If your keyword bids are too low this will result in a low position. Another factor is if your quality score is low, because if Google thinks your ads (keywords and landing pages) are not relevant, it will cost you more to keep a higher position.

CTR dropping (click through rate)

If your click through rate is dropping it’s time to review your ad’s wording. Give it a refresh and make sure it’s highly relevant to your keywords. This would also be a good time to rethink your call to action to make sure you choose something that’s commanding and effective.

Running a PPC campaign is not a one-off deal – you have to constantly monitor your results and refine your ads if you want them to preform for you.

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Facebook’s Ad Network Might Be A While

Chris Crum — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 10:00:31 +0000

It appears that Facebook is prolonging the inevitable. The industry has been waiting for Facebook to launch an ad network that would rival Google’s AdSense for years at this point, and finally since the company went public, it was starting to look like it was going to happen very soon.

In fact, Facebook has been testing ads on third-party apps, and has has indicated that it could run ads on third-party sites as well.

All Things D’s Peter Kafka reports that Facebook is shutting down the test, at least for now. He shares a statement from Facebook’s Brandon McCormick:

“We are pausing our mobile ads test off of Facebook. While the results we have seen and the feedback from partners has been positive, our focus is on scaling ads in mobile news feed before ads off of Facebook. We have learned a lot from this test that will be useful in the future.”

So, it sounds like they do intend to move forward with this at some point, and the way Facebook has been cranking out the ad-related efforts, I’d be surprised if it turns out to be the distant future.

In November, Facebook introduced Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities changes, which included changes that would make it more clear to users that Facebook can use their data in ads off of Facebook.

In other news, online advertising has hit a new record in the U.S.