Google made this update to description line 1 placement after performing tests and coming to the conclusion that it not only improves the user experience by providing searchers with more, relevant information easily and rapidly, but also improves the performance of the ad for the advertiser.  After doing some A/B ad testing with and without the punctuation at the end of description line 1, JumpFly’s account managers have seen the clickthrough rates (CTR) of the new ads with punctuation at the end of description line 1 skyrocket over the old ones without punctuation.  So much so that the JumpFly pay-per-click management teams now make sure that description line 1 ends in punctuation as often as possible.

Another change that Google recently announced is that top position ads will now be showing the display URL domain in the headline.  This update to how ads are displayed will allow Google searchers to be able to see and identify what site they will be taken to after they click on the ad and will help them decide whether or not they want to go to that site.  For AdWords advertisers, this is another huge change that is going to be great for them, especially for branding.  With the display URL being more prominent in the headline and still being shown in the display URL, your company name and web address exposure is doubled.  Sounds good to us!

Now, the question is:  How will Google AdWords decide whether to show the display URL or description line 1 after the headline?  Well, according to Google, BOTH can be displayed as long as the resulting headline is sixty-eight characters or less.  Imagine having a sixty-eight character, attention grabbing headline.  The amount of information you can get to potential customers in bold, blue text is unheard of and something all advertisers should try to capitalize on.

These changes to how Google AdWords ads are displayed are hugely important for advertisers.  In order to capitalize on them, you might want to call a professional PPC Management company like JumpFly.  We know the ins and outs of Google AdWords and we love implementing new, innovative ideas for our clients.

Google allows AdWords customers to advertise on trademarked terms in the U.S. & research indicates that U.S. courts have so far agreed that it is not illegal to advertise on competitor names, as long as the message is not misleading. However, the rapid adoption of the Internet as a tool to find products and services has resulted in trademark law getting challenged and changed on a regular basis, so there is still uncertainty in this area.

I would like to start out by making it very clear that I am not a lawyer. However, per Jeffrey A. Babener, who is an attorney with Babener & Associates, “Generally, a seller or imitator may use a competitor’s trademark when advertising the seller’s product so long as the competitor’s trademark is used in a truthful way, such that its use is not likely to create confusion in the consumers’ mind as to the source of the product being sold”

“Over the years, many different legal theories have been used by competitors in an attempt to stop the use of their name or product … Actions have been brought for disparagement, trade libel, defamation, trademark infringement, unfair competition and misappropriation of a name. The successful cases have, for the most part, involved false advertising and unfair competition through the misrepresentation of one’s product, causing consumer confusion… A seller may be held liable for unfair competition under federal and state laws where the seller misrepresents either the seller’s, or the competitor’s products. ”

Some U.S. courts have upheld that advertising on a competitor’s name is legal.  For example, In J.G. Wentworth SSC Ltd v. Settlement Funding LLC, 2007 WL 30115 (E.D. Pa. Jan. 4, 2007), the court granted summary judgment to the advertisers based on the lack of evidence of consumer confusion. There are other examples as well.

Businesses can partially protect themselves by trademarking their name so competitors cannot use their name in ad copy, but again, this process does not prevent competitors from using trademarked terms to advertise on. Advertisers can click here to review AdWords Trademark policy detail and access their Trademark Complaint Form.

Interestingly, when it comes to advertising on a competitor name, large companies basically have the ability to bully smaller companies into submission, and here is why. If Business A is upset about Business B’s decision to advertise on Business A’s name, Business A can then have their lawyers issue Business B a Cease & Desist Letter. If Business B decides not to listen, they may then be setting themselves up for potential litigation. I am trying to simplify something rather complex, but the bottom line is that even if Business B has done nothing illegal, they may still find themselves in a position where they have to defend themselves. The cruel reality of litigation is that it can easily cost $100,000 in legal fees. Furthermore, a company cannot defend itself as an individual can, so a lawyer must be hired to defend a business (with certain exceptions that might apply to small claims court). Again, I am not a lawyer, but this is my understanding.

In the end, it appears that advertising on competitor names is legal and usually OK to do. If a competitor is upset, they will usually have their lawyers provide a Cease & Desist Letter, at which time you may want to comply with their request as litigation is incredibly costly. It must be understood that advertising on competitor names has the potential to result in unforeseen grief, litigation & legal fees, so it is important to understand your risk.

At JumpFly, we leave the choice of advertising on competitor names to the client. For those that have done this, it has often proven valuable and provided a very favorable ROI. However, this action can certainly lead to grief if a competitor is infuriated and willing to try and litigate, even if they would likely lose. So if you choose to go down this path, it must be done carefully & without confusing potential customers. Sadly, businesses advertising on competitor names that find themselves in litigation will likely find that even a victory in court still results in defeat in the pocket book.

Have you looked at your PPC ad copy lately? Now is the time to take a look at your ad copy and make changes. If you have multiple ads running, is there a clear loser that you can pause? Is one of them performing really well? Can you test a variation of it to see if you can beat it, or use it in other AdGroups to improve performance elsewhere? If you are planning a Winter Sale, go ahead and do new ads to highlight it.

One thing I really wish the search engines had was start and end dates for ad copy. It would be wonderful to know a client was going to start a sale on a certain date, create the ad to start running on that date (instead of creating it and pausing it, then going in to make it live when the sale starts) and then having it end when the sale ends (instead of manually having to remember to pause the ads). In fact, Google is usually so far ahead of the curve on things like this, that I’m amazed they don’t have that feature already.

But until the search engines add this functionality, you’ll just have to remember to end your holiday ads and start and end your sale ads.

Another thing to check is your PPC advertising budget. Did you raise it for the holidays? Do you need to bring it back down to a lower level? That’s another thing you can look at. Did you do a new marketing budget for 2009? Now is the time to make changes to your PPC budget to be in line with your overall marketing strategy.

I wish you much success in your PPC marketing in 2009. If you are managing your own PPC accounts and spending over $1,000 per month, you should definitely consider starting the new year with a free PPC account review from a qualified PPC management agency. Many advertisers needlessly and unknowingly waste a large portion of their budgets by improperly using the constantly changing PPC platforms. Don’t be one of them.

 More about Nikki

1. Researching Starts Early: 31% of consumers planned to start shopping before Halloween, and 57% are researching right now, before Thanksgiving.

2. Research is Increased Due to Economy: 43% of consumers say they plan to spend more time this year shopping and researching gifts because of the state of the economy.

3. Online Research is King:54% of people go online to research than go to the store to buy, 49% research online and purchase online and another 28% research online, go to the store to check out the products and then go back online to actually buy the products.

4. The Internet is Key Influencer of Holiday Purchases: 86% of users will use the Internet to plan their holiday shopping and 63% of users plan on paying attention to advertising while planning or doing holiday shopping.

5. Post Holiday Sales Are Important: 63% of consumers say they plan on taking advantage of holiday sales.

A few other key nuggets of information, online shopping will gear up right on Cyber Monday, which is the first Monday after Thanksgiving, or December 1st for 2008. It continues to climb until right before Christmas.

And what are consumers looking for when they are online? 86% of users are looking for and plan on taking advantage of price discounts and sales, while another 75% of consumers are looking to taking advantage of free shipping. What does that mean for you? Unless you are the only player in your market, you better be offering some kind of special like a discount or free shipping or you are going to miss out on customers, plain and simple. Now is a great time to adjust your pay-per-click (PPC) advertising ad copy to reflect any available incentives.

The holidays are coming, so be ready. Plan now because waiting even a bit longer will be too late.

About Nikki

As you might know, click through rate (CTR) is arguably the most significant component of Quality Score, and ads in higher positions tend to earn better CTR than ads that display in lower positions. Google decided that to accurately calculate the Quality Scores, the “influence of ad position on CTR be taken into account and removed from the Quality Score.”

As a result, Google has now updated the portion of the Quality Score algorithm that accounted for ad position. It is their belief that this new adjustment will result in a more accurate Quality Score and ensure that ads compete fairly for position based on their quality and bid, while rewarding high-quality advertisers with better ad positions.

In the past, here at JumpFly, we have certainly seen the advantage of placing some clients’ new keywords in prominent positions to start, and then pull them down later based on performance. The advantage of the increased CTR from the higher initial positioning would work to their advantage down the road. From the sound of this latest update, this particular strategy may no longer be necessary. It will be interesting to see.

The second update going live today is an “improvement” in the way Google determines which ads show in the prominent yellow region directly above the search results. Google believes that given the prominence of these positions that it is especially important for ads to be high quality. Therefore, to appear above the search results, ads must meet a certain quality threshold.

You may have noticed that sometimes Google chooses not to display any ads in this position. Previously, if the ad with the highest Ad Rank did not meet the necessary quality threshold, they would not show any ads in these positions. With the new update, Google will now allow an ad that meets the quality threshold to actually jump over an ad in a higher position and be displayed in this prominent position. Again, quality plays a very important roll in being able to show in higher positions.

There is no doubt that these new algorithm changes by Google will cause some ads to experience a change in position, spend, and/or performance. Changes in Google’s ranking algorithms can affect even the most stable Google AdWords PPC account. Talk to a professional PPC Management Company today about how this recent update might affect your Google AdWords account.

Here at JumpFly, we frequently hear from advertisers who share examples of successfully running Google AdWords ads that were modified for one reason or another, and could then never recapture the results previously achieved. I am sure this can be incredibly frustrating, but fortunately it can be easily avoided!

Secret #1: Never initially delete successful ads in Google AdWords accounts!
If ad changes are needed, initially pausing successful ads and creating new ones, rather than deleting ads, is a really good idea so you can just turn them back on later if desired. Unused ads can always be permanently deleted later.

Secret #2: Change destination URLs at the keyword level to prevent disrupting ad performance
This is a critical concept to be familiar with and understand. Ads can be redirected to a different destination URL at the keyword level without changing the destination URL in the ad itself. This feature enables advertisers to change destination URLs without losing the ad’s performance history. This is a valuable tool, but depending on the size of the AdWords account, might seem like an overwhelming task. Fortunatley, AdWords Editor is here to the rescue.

Secret #3: Use AdWords Editor to update destination URLs
Once again, Google AdWords Editor enables advertisers to manage accounts much more efficiently. In AdWords Editor, users can easily upload a new destination URL to all the terms in an account in an instant. Amazing. Time saving. Powerful. Using AdWords Editor for managing Google AdWords accounts is a must.

Now go download AdWords Editor today! You won’t regret it.

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The Case for Rotating Evenly
If you are going to truly Split Test your ads, you must show them evenly and randomly to a wide range of visitors.  The ability to rotate two ads with only one small difference allows you to run a true Split Test.

Additionally, Google’s optimize feature works on CTR and not your conversion rate.  So you could have an ad that is “winning” the split test on CTR but not converting nearly as well as the other ad.  Since Google’s optimization doesn’t consider the conversion rate, the true winner starts showing less and less.

The Case for Optimizing to Performance
When you rotate your ads evenly, you could be adversely affecting your business.  Showing an ad that does not pull Visitors to Your Site – even for a little while – is causing missed traffic and missed opportunity.

Google’s Optimize feature allows you to automatically show a winning ad more often to your visitor.  This increases overall CTR which we know increases the performance while decreasing the cost of a campaign.

So what is one to do?  You need to look at your business goals and decide between the two based on both your goals and your time available to monitor ad group progress.

One option we use quite often is to start out a new campaign using rotate while we closely monitor the performance over a short period of time.  Once we are sure we have strong, pulling ads, we turn it over to optimize to be sure those ads are doing their job.  Most of our customers want to focus on the most targeted traffic at the lowest cost which is achieved through the optimize feature.

Don’t assume that your current finely tuned bids and positions are going to get you the business you want for the holiday buying season. Take a look at last year’s holiday data if you were running campaigns last holiday and compare where your bids and positions were then in relation to where they are now. There is often room, and often a need, to get a bit more aggressive during the peak buying season.

Check your old ad copy. Did you have a special ad running during the holiday that drove good conversions? You may want to re-visit those ads and run the same kind of holiday special with an even more aggressive call to action. If you didn’t do anything special last holiday season for your ad copy, you may want to consider trying some holiday-flavored ad copy this year. One word of caution, though. If you are trying out some new ad copy, I highly recommend PAUSING your existing ad copy instead of re-writing it and losing all of its click-thru history. Then, once the holiday season is over, you can resume your existing ad copy with its history preserved.

Here are last years Holiday tips from Google AdWords.

Santa Clause is coming. Are you ready?

However, if your prices are very similar to your competitors, you may want to try some pricing in your ad copy. You could very well bring in a higher converting crowd by letting them know upfront what their cost is going to be. You may get a lower CTR on the ad because the price might scare some folks off, but those people probably would not turn into buyers anyway, so you could say you have successfully screened out some of the “tire kickers.”

Now if your pricing is clearly the lowest on the net, then by all means you should consider shouting it to the heavens and letting everybody know it. So many buyers are price sensitive these days that your lower price proclamation may be your saving grace. Your competitors might take notice and could try to undercut you, so that is definitely a risk you take, but if you truly believe that they cannot last as long as you can at your price point, then let them try and take you on.

Tough economic times sometimes require bold moves.  To learn more about using your pricing within your ad copy, read what Google has to say in their blog on ad copywriting tips.

For example, your AdGroup is Blue Widgets, your keywords focus on variations of “blue widget,” “blue widgets” and your URL is www.WidgetWorld.com. Your display URL could then be www.WidgetWorld.com/BlueWidgets or www.WidgetWorld.com/BestBlueWidgets. Or What about WidgetWorld.com/FreeBlueWidgets – there’s no rule that says you have to include the www (but you do have to use an extension like .com, .net or .org).

In fact, there are just a few rules to follow with your display URL:
1. You have a maximum of 35 characters.
2. The display URL has to agree with your ‘host domain’ destination URL. You can’t have the Display URL of www.BestBlueWidgets.com and the destination URL of www.WidgetWorld.com.
3. There cannot be an automatic redirect on the destination URL. You can’t have www.BestBlueWidgets.com as the display and destination URL, with a redirect to www.widgetworld.com.

Use the display URL to your best advantage. When used properly, they can give you a little more edge over your competitors. In fact, display URLs are a great thing to test. Take your best performing ad, copy it and try out one or two different display URLs. We do this frequently for our customers at , with very good effect.

In addition to the Ad Words performance statistics that I wrote about, they have made some changes to the Editing features available.

Spell Checker
By far, my favorite new editing feature is the spell checker.

This one is a huge timesaver.

We all know that correct spelling is crucial to your ad’s success, but before this change you needed to rely on manual verification.  I would go one step further and download the ad copy into Word to be sure the spelling was 100% error free.

Now this step can be eliminated, still knowing you have error free ad copy.

Drag & Drop
Another useful feature is the ability to drag and drop ad groups within the tree view.

There are many situations when you want to move or copy an ad group between campaigns or into new campaigns.

There are several settings that are available at the campaign level that would lead you to put an ad group in its own campaign.  For example you may want to control the daily budget of a particular ad group separately.  You can also control geo targeting or ad scheduling at the campaign level.  There are other settings as well, but these are the settings I use the most.

As an example, I just had a situation with a client where we noticed their campaigns were maxing out budget on a daily basis.  We were working to manage the ad groups and keywords to maximize their traffic without raising the budget, but there was one Ad Group that converted so well that it didn’t make sense to limit the daily budget in the same way.  We were able to quickly break the Ad Group out into its own campaign with its own daily budget separate from the rest of the groups.

We’ve been able to copy and paste or cut and paste ad groups between campaigns, but this just got even easier with drag and drop.

If you’d like more information or training on using Ad Words Editor, check out this release announcement from Google.

Correctly targeting the different audiences is the key to success.

Rather than having just one catch-all PPC Advertising campaign for all of the European countries; I recommend a different campaign for each individual country or language.

While many of our European friends are well versed in the English language, it’s important to remember that many are not. With this in mind, it’s always a great idea to set the campaign’s “Target Audience Languages:” to both English and the countries native language. For example, if I was to create a PPC Advertising campaign targeting Germany, I would set the Target Audience Languages setting to show ads to both English and German.

I also recommend placing versions of your ad copy in both English and the native language. I have personally found that while the English ads receive a surprisingly decent response, by adding the foreign language versions the response increased 10 fold. As you might expect, the foreign language ads often out perform the English equivalent.

There are plenty of companies and individuals who offer translation services at reasonable rates, and this course of action would most likely provide the best possible translation for your ad copy. If your looking for a quick and free solution, Google Translate offers the ability to translate English phrases into several other languages. I suggest using small phrases and double checking the translation results prior to launching the ad copy. Different languages have unique terms and phrases that are often missed when using textual translation tools, so be careful.

Besides the usual ad copy requirements, I suggest that your ads address the fact that you ship or service that specific country, as well as promote the potential for great savings and value. Including the line, “We Ship Daily To Germany” will confirm to your customer that you are experienced and capable of sending merchandise to their location. “Save up to 50%” will certainly help get their attention.

Marketing your business to European customers can open the doorway to a whole new audience of potential clients and customers. JumpFly account managers are experts at correctly setting up Google Adwords campaigns. Which country does your next customer live in?

Case in point: I have a long-time client who has a new web consultant that is cleaning up their site, improving the navigation, creating new pages, and really doing a nice job for my client. I got a message on Friday that some of the URLs were going to change over the weekend and that the webmaster would pause the AdGroups that were affected. Once the changes were made, on Monday I’d be able to go in and fix the URLs.

Unfortunately, this well-meaning web person caused a major negative impact without his knowing. He did the seemingly logical thing of changing every single ad in this client’s Google account instead of waiting for me to take care of things on Monday. See, the problem is if you change an ad, you lose that ad’s data, its CTR, its history – you basically wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. Had he not done this, I would have been able to made the changes for the client so that the ads went to the correct, new landing page, but without changing the ad. He had no idea that this could be done. Now the client has to deal with potentially higher bids to maintain position in an already competitive marketplace with a small daily budget that’s already stretched thin; or be in a lower position until the ads rebound.

This isn’t an unrecoverable error, but it is one that did not have to happen.

When someone who doesn’t know the ramifications of what they are doing in a PPC account starts making changes, bad things can happen. Hiring a PPC management company like JumpFly, where the account managers know the best way to make a change without negatively impacting an account, can really pay off. The fastest or easiest change isn’t always what is the best, and an experienced PPC person can help you navigate the crazy, intricate nuances of the search engines.

Aggressively Market Overseas if Applicable:

Everything in America is cheap overseas. One benefit of the weakening U.S dollar is that it causes international prices of U.S. products to drop, allowing others around the world to purchase our products at a reduced price. Hey U.S. manufacturers, you guys are particularly well positioned to take advantage of this unique opportunity. If you are not marketing overseas, now is the time to start, and PPC advertising represents an incredibly powerful platform to reach international customers. Furthermore, international online users represent a significant and growing number of potential customers. Per Patrick’s recent blog, it may be wise to start by using Google AdWords in the European market.

Create New Targeted Ads:

Appeal to the public’s increased sense of urgency to save money. Offer a possible solution or consider ads focusing on new lower prices or special incentives. For example, a car dealer might want to create ads that focus on their hybrid cars that provide better fuel efficiency or a DVD rental business may mention the value of saving fuel and watching videos from home. Use your ads to make the most of a bad situation and call attention to the fact that you are doing something to help, like reducing prices or offering free shipping.

Shift Advertising Budget to Mediums that Can be Tracked:

Now is a great time to ditch costly and difficult to measure traditional advertising mediums in order to increase advertising where results can be measured, like PPC advertising, where advertisers can control their budget and track conversions. Many businesses are already headed down this path as TV and newspaper ad spending in the U.S. has been declining since 2005 while online advertising continues to rise.

Consider Professional Assistance:

Now, more than ever, it is critical to maximize advertising results. The only way to determine if you are properly managing your PPC campaigns is to let the professionals take a look. At JumpFly, a free analysis & consultation are readily available, and results are guaranteed. Letting the pros take a look at your PPC campaigns will likely yield some startling findings.

Now is NOT the time to turn off online advertising! In fact, various sources reveal that companies that increased marketing efforts during a recession realized dramatic long-term benefits. Additionally, rising fuel and food costs will likely translate into increasingly cost-conscious consumers searching for deals more frequently online.  

Survive today & thrive tomorrow.

First, we always recommend creating a separate campaign for content network advertising. This allows you the freedom of keyword selection and ad copy variations. It also keeps your analytics separate so you can manage both search and content easily.

Selecting the Right Keywords for Content Placement

Google decides which ads to place on a particular page based on the theme of the page (i.e., what is the article or site about?) and the keywords associated with the ad.

Using keywords, you are telling Google where you want your ad to appear based on the content or theme of a site.

So, the keywords you use to trigger your Ad placement need to be based on the type of content you feel would match your offer. Think about your target market and what they may be interested in at the time they would be open to your ad.  Start with the types of sites or articles you feel would be relevant and work backwards to figure out the keywords that you could use get placed on those sites.

Going back to the child-proofing example from last week, you might use keywords related to parenting, safety in the home or even expecting a baby.  Some keywords will overlap with the search campaign, but there are many keywords that would not be relevant in the search scenario that would be very useful getting you placed on a pertinent article.

Writing Ads for Content

In addition to using different keywords, you also need to write your ads differently when you are interrupting your reader as opposed to responding to a request.  Your ad needs to create a connection to what they are thinking about but also needs to have a call to action to encourage a response.  You have to convince them that they should stop what they are doing and take a detour that will benefit them instead of just sidetracking them.  Not an easy task, which is why you see such low CTRs in content network campaigns.

For example, if your ad is displayed next to an article about keeping children safe in the home, you want to use ad copy that identifies with the parents fears and guides them to visit your site to find products that will create a safe environment for their kids.  You are interrupting their line of thought and convincing them to take action but it’s all within the context of what they are thinking about at the time.

Find the Right Audience. Interrupt. Call to Action.

There are three main “take-aways” from understanding content network advertising:

1. You need to focus on your target market and the theme of target sites and articles in order to find your customer at the right time and the right place.
2. Your ad needs to meet the customer where they are mentally (i.e., thinking about the article they are reading) and be strong enough to interrupt them.
3. You need a strong call to action to convince them to take a detour from what they are doing.

Next week we’ll talk about some of the tools Google AdWords has in place to help you with your content network campaigns.