Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

Recently, the FTC has been urging the Web industry to come up with tracking protection from online advertisers.  Similar to the “Do Not Call” list that the public can put themselves on to avoid telemarketing, people will soon be able to opt out from having advertisers track their web surfing with a “Do Not Track” function in their browser.

My question is:  Do internet users really want to opt out?  According to the Los Angeles Times, 67% of internet users are opposed to targeted advertising – in my opinion this is a shocking statistic!  I would much rather see advertisements that are of direct interest to me as opposed to random ads that have little or no relevance to my life.

Of course, there are those annoying advertisers who do not restrict the amount of times that you see their ads and appear to be web stalkers.  Instead of promoting a “Do Not Track” browser, does it make more sense to just promote an easy one-click way to clear your cookies and cache?

So what effect would a “Do Not Track” browser have on the pay-per-click (PPC) advertising industry?  It is possible that it would be detrimental to many aspects.  Google AdWords Remarketing, conversion tracking as well as analytics to name a few will no longer be completely reliable tools for advertisers to accurately measure the success of their campaigns.

However, I believe it will have less of an impact than people are speculating.  The “Do Not Track” browser option seems similar to the launch of Google Instant which caused quite the uproar in the PPC industry at first, but seems to have fizzled out with little damage.  For the average, every day user, I believe it will go unnoticed and the PPC industry will see little to no effect.

It will be interesting to see the reality of the “Do Not Track” browser once it is implemented.  But as for myself, I happily agree to be a focused target of PPC advertisement.

A big thank you to whoever at Google came up with the idea for the Broad Match Modifier. You made my day.

The broad match modifier is a new keyword targeting option. (The existing match types are broad, exact and phrase.) I’m a firm believer in using exact and phrase match terms in an account, but am very leery of using broad match. Broad match allows Google to show on searches that they think are related to your keywords. I use this example when I’m explaining broad match to clients: you are a fruit seller and all you sell is apples, so you advertise on the keyword apples. Google decides that an apple is a fruit, therefore they could show you on searches for oranges or bananas. Not a good use of your advertising dollars.

A couple other examples from my clients at JumpFly: how about finding out one of your clients ads is showing on the term “nudist camp?” (My client runs a kids summer camp.) Or how about a moving company spending thousands of dollars on what turned out to be the term “movie” because Google was mapping to the word “moving.”

So broad match has not been my favorite match type, unless a client has a large budget and wants huge amounts of traffic.

But with the new broad match modifier, I can try more broad match terms for my clients because it gives me more control. Basically, when I put a plus sign in front of a keyword, Google will know that that particular term has to be in the search or will match on close variants. (Close variants include misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms, and rood words, like “floor” and “flooring”.) Here’s an example: if the term is +golf +shoes, your ad will show for “gulf shoes” or “golf sport shoes”.

Broad match modifier just came out of beta testing in the UK and Canada. I’m looking forward to seeing how it works for my clients, as I’m doing my own beta testing for a few clients. If it works, I’ll start adding it to more of my clients accounts. If you are interested in seeing how the broad match modifier might be able to work for your business, contact a professional PPC Management Company.

Google AdWords Remarketing was recently launched to all AdWords advertisers after successful beta testing since last March. This powerful new technology enables advertisers to place ads in front of visitors who have already been to their website and are now surfing websites that are part of the Google Content Network.

For example, let’s assume that you own Randall To Go, a local restaurant delivery service. Let’s also assume that through various forms of advertising, you attract hundreds of visitors per day to learn about your service. If you have setup Google Remarketing, you can now re-reach these visitors when they are searching websites that are part of Google’s Content Network, which is an incredibly large number of websites. In fact, according to Google, the Google Content Network reaches 80% of global Internet users. So after potential new clients visit Randall To Go, they can now be re-targeted with a new set of ads if desired when they are visiting any number of websites, including Gmail. So a potential visitor can visit Randall To Go, and then be targeted in their Gmail account for a remarketing ad. This remarketing ad can then offer coupons of incentives if desired. The potential for this technology seems rather staggering as it benefits both advertisers and website publishers as well.

You can also run a number of remarketing campaigns at the same time. This can be especially powerful. For example, back to the Randall To Go example, this business can use Google AdWords Remarketing to effectively place unique ads in front of visitors that were potential customers, and can place a totally different set of remarketing ads to appear to visitors who visit the “Become a Partner” page. Previous visitors looking to dine may see a remarketing ad with a coupon while visitors who had previously looked to partner can be exposed to ads explaining the benefits of partnering.

Google states that, “Remarketing is a great way for businesses to reach users who are likely to be highly receptive to their ads and special offers… It helps advertisers and websites get higher returns. It also means more relevant and useful ads for users, and more opportunities for your customers to receive special offers and discounts that may be of interest to them.” I tend to agree. Here at JumpFly, we recently implemented Google Remarketing for various clients, but it is still too early to determine the direct impact from these efforts. Time will tell how powerful this new feature really is, but if used properly, it sure seems to make a lot of sense for everyone involved: advertisers, publishers & users. Thanks Google for providing yet another great tool for your advertisers. Contact a qualified PPC Management Expert to learn more.