What is a view-through conversion?

Simple, a user sees a content network ad and makes a mental note of the details, but does not click on it.

At a later stage the user visits the advertised site and converts.

You will now see this conversion recorded as a view through conversion within your Google Adwords campaign.

Currently (28/10/09) Google Adwords will not record View Through Conversions for text ads, or conversions that occured more than 30 days after the initial adview.

How is this metric useful?

The key word (sic) here is Context!

Because someone who sees a content network ad is actually doing something else i.e. watching a YouTube video, or reading the Irish Times online, they are not as likely to visit the advertised site and convert immediately as a Google searcher (who is actively seeking something) would.

The context of what the content ad view and search ad view are quite different, unlike the searcher, the content viewer is not actively seeking something, but never the less is open to advertisers messages.

The View Through Conversion Metric enables you do identify which ads left your message imprinted on somebodies mind and spurred them to visit your site and convert within 30 days of seeing your ad.

It also enables you to identify which websites are gluing your message to peoples minds and generating conversions on your site.

Vital info for Content Campaign Optimisation!

And never forget, effective optimisation is critical to successful Adwords advertising.

I think I get it, can you give me an example?

OK – Johnny is watching YouTube footage of Katie Taylor winning the European Boxing Championships on his Iphone. While he is watching the You Tube footage he sees an inVideo Ad for Sporty Als’ Deoderant socks. Although Johnny’s feet reek and he needs to do something about it he does not click the ad as he does not want to interrupt his viewing of Katie kicking ass.

The next week all Johnny’s 5-a-side football teammates are slagging him because his feet reek! After training he gets out his Iphone and searches Sporty Al’s Deoderant Socks. He finds the site and orders 2 pairs of size 10s.

Google Adwords will now record the view through conversion for the display ad on YouTube for this sale. Sporty Al now knows that YouTube is an effective advertising medium for reaching his target market.

The Sunday Tribune published details of our Cyber Sunday study.

Read article here

I recently came across the term “Cyber Monday”. It’s the name used in the States to describe the Monday after Black Friday, which is the the traditional start of the holiday shopping season Stateside. Cyber Monday is based on the assumption that after 3 days plundering the shops like rabid T-Rexes, our US bretheren choose to cyber shop from the comfort of their computer come Monday.

So I decided to research our own pre-Xmas shopping binge habits here on the Emerald Isle.

Using Google Insights for Search and analysing data from Oct, Nov and Dec 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 (Irish data only!), I made to the following fascinating findings as regards searches on Google in Ireland, which include the words “Buy Online”:

1. Sunday was overwhelmingly the biggest day of the week during the research period for Google searches which included “Buy Online”.
2. In each and every year studied, the first Sunday in December was the peak, followed by the last Sunday in November.
3. This year (drumroll), Ireland’s Cyber Sunday will fall on December the 6th. November the 30th will be Cyber Sunday 2.
4. Searches for “Christmas Gift” will grow throughout the first 2 weeks of December and then peak around about the 15th of December (there are no day of the week trends here). This is most likely people researching purchases online prior to consummating them offline.

3 other interesting facts about online shopping in Ireland:

1. In 2008 36% of Irish people made an online purchase. We are ranked 10th in the world for online buyers.
2. 54% of Irish consumers research offline purchases online first.
3. In 2008, only 20% of people said they would not use the internet for Xmas shopping at all.

So online stores, stock your shelves or prepare to drop-ship like Contepomi, Cyber-Sunday is trundling your way!

Congratulations to Count Me Out who won the OnlineAdvertising.ie sponsored “Best Social Media Campaign” award at the Irish Web Awards on Saturday night.

The top prize for “Best Website” went to RTE.ie while the “Most Beautiful Website” award went to Organic Supermarket, and “Best E-commerce Website” went to Curios Wines.

The event was very well organised and the stand out feature of the night was undoubtedly the craic and informal atmosphere.

Well done to Damien Mulley and everyone who organised the super event.

According to IAB UK: Online Advertising expenditure grew 4.6% to reach £1.7 billion in the first 6 months of 2009, overtaking TV for the first time.

63% of this online expenditure was on paid earch (Google Adwords et al). Which is viewed by many advertisers as “recession friendly”, leading it to grow 12% from the same period in 2008.

In the UK 23% of advertising expenditure goes online.

The European average is approx 11%.

Last like figure for Ireland is from 2007 when a whopping 3% of advertising expenditure went online. Let’s pick up the slack Ireland!

For info on our Google Adwords PPC services click here.

For info on our Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) services click here.

What on Neptunes Nineth moon is it:

While your Adwords campaign will tell you which of your existing keywords are triggering your ads, the Search Query Report (found in the reports section of your Adwords account) will tell you exactly what the user was actually searching when they saw your ad!

Why it’s great:

1. Saves you budget by enabling you to add negative keywords and weed out irrelevant clicks (i.e you might be advertising “The Hilton Hotel Swimming Pool” but dont want to see “Paris Hilton Swim Suit” searches ruining your CTR and bringing costly irrelevant traffic).
2. Increases relevant traffic by highlighting profitable keywords you are missing out on (believe it or not, misspellings can be really profitable, we have a credit control client who generates a lot of enquiries for the search term “dept collector”).
3. Increases your Quality Score (free money!) by introducing exact match keywords where you previously had inexact broad match keywords which infrequently trigger your ads.
4. It gives you a real insight into what people are thinking when they search for you.

Recent Developments:

• Google recently expanded the scope of broad match keywords. If your ads are showing for a wider range of keywords you need to manage your visibility carefully.
• The Search Query Tool itself is becoming more efficient. 3 months ago if you ran a report in the Keyword column you would often see “147 other search queries” which was a pain in the arse. The appearance of this ….. other queries has been minimised making the tool much more effective.

All in all a great tool! You will be amazed by the amount of different search queries that brought traffic ot your site, and there are some fascinating insights into what your potential customers are searching for!

For information on our Google Adwords Services click here.

Optimize your Bling

Hi folks,

Google have announced that they have reduced the requirements for an AdWords campaign to be eligible to use the wonderful “Conversion Optimizer” tool. AdWords Advertisers previously needed 30 conversions in the last 30 days to qualify to use the tool, the requirement has now been reduced to 15 conversions in the last 30 days to qualify to use the tool.

Why did Google do this?

Google AdWords services “the longtail” of advertisers. What this means is Google’s most important clients are not the advertising world’s big fish such as Coca Cola or American Airlines, but the massive ecosystem of small to medium-sized businesses such as flower delivery companies, insurance brokers, yoga studios. In reducing the requirements to access the AdWords Conversion Optimizer tool Google are better servicing their most important market, the small (to medium) guy!

What does the Conversion Optimizer do?

With the Conversion Optimizer, you bid using a maximum Cost Per Acquisition, which is the most you’re willing to pay for each conversion (such as a purchase, enquiry or signup). Using historical information about your campaign, the Conversion Optimizer automatically finds the optimal equivalent cost-per-click (CPC) bid for your ad each time it’s eligible to appear. You still pay per click, but you no longer need to adjust your bids manually to reach your CPA goals and can benefit from improved Return On Investment.

To calculate the optimal equivalent CPC bid, the Conversion Optimizer first calculates a predicted conversion rate for each auction. The Conversion Optimizer takes many factors into account, including your ad’s conversion history, the keyword’s broad match query, the user’s location, and the conversion rates of Google’s search and content partner sites. The feature then generates an ad rank by combining your CPA bid, quality score and predicted conversion rate.

How does the Conversion Optimiser help me?

Simple:

1. Greater control of Return On Investment by enabling you to select your maximum cost per sale/enquiry.
2. More Sales/Enquiries. Double digit growth in conversions is common.
3. Reduced cost. Your cost per conversion will often decrease.
4. More time. Bid management is one of the most time consuming activities within AdWords optimisation. Enabling the conversion optimiser gives you more time to optimise other equally important elements of your campaign such as adtexts & keywords.

Sounds great! Does this mean if I turn on conversion optimiser I wont need to optimise my AdWords campaign anymore?

Conversion Optimiser will have a positive effect on your campaign performance by managing your bids.

It won’t:

• Optimize for Quality Score
• Create and test new Adtexts
• Split test landing pages
• Add new keywords
• Insert negative keywords
• Develop new Adgroups
• Manage your Impression Share
• Identify new markets to target
• Keep an eye on industry trends
• Audit the competitve environment
• + much more

For best results, it is still essential you, or an Adwords Professional, optimises your AdWords campaign on an ongoing basis.

Where can I learn more?

Here’s a great video from Google which explains the Conversion Optimiser Tool. Surf’s Up!

For information on our Google Adwords services click here.

OnlineAdvertising.ie wish to congratulate recent recruit Ed Murphy on successfully passing the Google Adwords Professional exam. His score of 85% means Ed has become Irelands newest Google Adwords Professional.

Ed is coming from an underwriting background and was recruited for his strong logical and analytical skill-set.

In addition to engineering Adwords campaigns to deliver results above and beyond expectations for OnlineAdvertising.ie clients, Ed will be contributing to the continuous enhancement of our in-house Google Adwords Campaign Optimisation Process. This process is our blueprint of optimisation tactics for continuously improving campaign Return on Investment.

We pride ourselves on delivering superior results by getting under the skin of our clients business and marrying this insight with our indepth knowledge of, and passion for, Google Adwords.

One of OnlineAdvertising.ie’s campaigns was recently selected by Google to be published as an official “Google Adwords Success Story”.

Which we are naturally dee-lighted about.

For more info on Google Adwords check out the following links:

How Google Adwords Works

Why Google Adwords Works

Our Google Adwords Services

This post is for you if you are, or plan to be, an online advertiser. It will explain how Google users interact with the various positions and listings on the Google search results page. We have identified 3 types of interaction; Eyeballs (Adviews), Fingers (Clicks) and €€€s (Conversions which are enquiries, sales etc) for this post.

Eyeballs (Adviews):

Mulley Communications released an important study last month entitled “Google Search”. One of the key findings of this study was that 70% of the sample group look at the top result first whether this result was a sponsored link or not. So if your sponsored link is in position no.1 on the left hand side of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) you are in the most viewed position on the page.

Fingers (clicks):

Our internal stats for the first 6 months of this year across 20+ adwords accounts show that average Click Through Rate is 4.6% when an ad is in the top 2 positions (left or right of SERP) for a relevant search. Click through rates decrease as your ad moves down the positions on the page.

When the search term is specifically relevant e.g. “laser eye surgery Dublin” matching keywords have click-through rates upwards of 20%.

€€€ (Conversions):

Our internal studies have also shown that people who click on sponsored links are more likely to enquire or buy. Here are recent Google Analytics stats from our own site, the goal is an enquiry:

As you can see the top converting traffic source was Microsoft Live, but with one enquiry the data is not statistically significant.

When you compare Google Organic to Google Cost per Click (AdWords traffic) we see that AdWords traffic is twice as likely to enquire as it’s organic counterpart. This is a trend we have been seeing again and again over the past 2 years.

We believe the reason for this is that people looking for information on a subject will click on the organic list. Whereas a shopper, who want to make a purchase or enquiry and they want to make it now, is more likely to click on the sponsored links, it’s logical.

Conclusion:

The top of the Search Engine Results page is prime position for ad views with 70% of searchers looking at the top listing.

When a sponsored link is in the top 1-2 positions it benefits from a CTR of about 4.5%. Considerably lower than the 70% ad views, why?

This is because the majority of searchers are info seekers. So the wiki’s, forums and news sites on the organic list best suit their informational requirements. However the minority of searchers are shoppers, who want to make a purchase or enquiry and want to make it now, so they are more likely to click on the sponsored links and convert from there.

From an advertisers point of view:

Organic Clickers = Tyre Kickers

Sponsored Links Clickers = Shoppers

For info on our Google Adwords PPC services click here.

For info on our Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) services click here.

Paul wonders can Bing really become a major search engine player?

AdlandIreland have a great post (especially if your an internet marketer!) on a PWC report on how online advertising in the UK will double to 36% of overall spend over the next 3 years. Digitology has further commentary on the same story.

If you enjoyed our post last week on Web 3.0 you’re gonna love the following links:

The good folk at web2Ireland have noted the release of locle. You can learn more about this fab irish-made app here.

Also from web2Ireland here is a brain-whirring, lightbulb-moment-a-minute interview on “What will Web 2010 be?” with Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson (Im a geek! Are you a geek?).

If you were interested in our previous Google Adwords Quality Score Explained post, then check out this Quality Score post from Dave Davis of Red Fly. Its an oldie but a goodie!

Richard Hearne of Red Cardinal has authoured a very comprehensive post on Google’s local business listings.

Tom Doyle of 2bscene has interesting comments on Microsofts new search engine Bing. Further Bing chatter can be found on Rev2.org.

What a win for the Lions on Sat (nearly!).