I saw this advert on one of my own web sites today :-

One of the big improvements that has been made fairly recently in the life of the Google Display Network is that you can target potential customers based on their interests i.e. sites they have previously visited, or you can ‘remarket’ to them i.e. target them based on pages on your own site they have previously visited.

I just want to state for the record that the ad above must not have been using either of the above methods to appear in front of me!

Update – 30th Jan 2012 – I’m starting to get paranoid now. Here’s another one I’m seeing:-

mmmmm. No Jane, I don’t remember you, sorry…

For reference – this is actually quite a good Display Network image ad. It’s professional looking, engaging, and has a good call to action.

I sat and passed this today with a score of 95%.
There were 113 questions which means that I got more than 5 wrong!
I’ll get over this due to the fact I did zero revision, answered all the 113 questions in approximately 25 minutes, and there are more than a few devious questions where there are 2 answers that are pretty much equally correct.


It is nearly 2 years since I last sat this exam, but from memory (for anyone who is thinking of sitting it soon), there was a lot more emphasis on the Google Display Network than I remember there being 2 years ago. There were also a few questions about Google Website Optimizer, and (amazingly) a couple of very up to date questions, including one which took into account that landing page quality now directly affects keyword Quality Score…

From:

Click here to see the updated Google AdWords Belfast Testimonials Page.

Leaving aside the fact that occasionally, AdWords Experiments Can Be Misleading, on balance, they really are the best thing since sliced bread.

Have a look at the screen shot below for an example of how useful they can be :-

Looking at ‘Google Search’ in isolation, you can see that for for this campaign – the client is getting not only a better ROI, but is also making more profit with an actual CPA of £54.31 compared to a CPA of £82.67.

This sort of information was a lot more difficult to come by before AdWords Experiments arrived, so fair play to Google for providing us with something that allows us to see more easily where we are giving Google too much money!

If you are getting reasonably high volumes of traffic through certain ad groups / keywords, then it is definitely worth looking at AdWords Experiments. Here is some more info from Google :-
http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=168278

And here are some videos if you are that way inclined:-
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/06/5-new-adwords-campaign-experiments-demo.html

PPCNI has another three of these up for grabs for anyone who wants to get a New Year campaign going…

No strings attached.

Valid for use on Google AdWords accounts that are 14 days old or less (and have not already had a voucher applied).

Just leave a comment below about what you would use it for, and I’ll pick the best one during the next few days, and send the voucher by email….


PS – if you are not lucky enough to get this one – then see the following post for details on how you can get a £30 or £50 voucher -

Free AdWords Coupons For Everyone!

See :-

http://www.ppcni.com/top-20-google-adwords-tips-e-book/

There have been a lot of reports around the internet of Google making a massive push to get everyone using Google+.

Here’s a few links for reference:-

State Of Search

Simply Zesty

One more way they are now pushing Google Plus is with AdWords ‘Social Extensions’:-

Google AdWords Social Extensions.

This is a big incentive for AdWords advertisers to make their adverts stand out from the crowd. Of course, to make this work well in AdWords campaigns, advertisers will *have* to have a Google Plus Business page, and will *have* to interact with a lot of other people on Google Plus.

It is still early days for Google+, but I think the odds are that it will succeed at least to some extent.

So if you are a business that spends a lot of money on Google AdWords, then it is certainly something worth looking into (though I wouldn’t spend 40 hours a week on it just yet …)

The great thing about the standard (javascript) AdWords conversion tracking is that it uses a 30 day cookie, so it picks up the vast majority of conversions that would almost certainly not have happened without AdWords.

e.g. If someone clicks on an Adwords ad, then clicks on an organic result and then makes a purchase from your web site, Google Analytics will count this as an organic conversion, but AdWords will show it as an AdWords conversion (provided the conversion happened within 30 days of the last AdWords click).

That is straightforward enough – and covered in the AdWords exams.

But, sometimes it is not practical to get the javascript AdWords conversion code installed, and then you have to rely on importing Analytics Goals into AdWords.

When you do this, there was one thing that was never very clear in my mind. Do the imported goals / transactions still use a 30 day cookie, or are the results going to be different from the standard javascript tracking?

The following blog post tries to answer the question, but doesn’t so so in a clear manner (in my opinion):-

Google Analytics Blog

So….

For those of you wondering if imported goals/transactions will give the same results in your AdWords reports as if you had used the standard AdWords conversion tracking, the answer is…

NO.

If you import your conversions from Google Analytics, then your conversion data in AdWords will almost always look worse than if you had used the standard conversion tracking. How much worse can vary a great deal, but on one account that I work on, the difference is more than 20% !

I have another one of these up for grabs.

No strings attached.

Valid for use on Google AdWords accounts that are 14 days old or less (and have not already had a voucher applied).

Just leave a comment below about what you would use it for, and I’ll pick the best one during the next few days, and send the voucher by email….


PS – if you are not lucky enough to get this one – then see the following post for details on how you can get a £30 or £50 voucher -

Free AdWords Coupons For Everyone!

I have another one of these up for grabs.

No strings attached.

Valid for use on Google AdWords accounts that are 14 days old or less (and have not already had a voucher applied).

Just leave a comment below about what you would use it for, and I’ll pick the best one during the next few days, and send the voucher by email….


PS – if you are not lucky enough to get this one – then see the following post for details on how you can get a £30 or £50 voucher -

Free AdWords Coupons For Everyone!