JumpFly Blog: AdWords, Yahoo & Microsoft Advertising

Now you can reach YouTube’s 74 million U.S. users with targeted pay-per-click (PPC) video ads. This recently launched YouTube advertising interface links directly to your Google AdWords Account for billing and reporting. In order to participate in this advertising medium, businesses need to have three things:

1) A company YouTube “Channel”
2) Video ad/ads production
3) YouTube campaign development, implementation & management

The newness of this platform provides early adopters an exciting opportunity to capitalize on YouTube’s massive user population as well as the current lack of advertisers and resulting very low cost-per-clicks (CPCs).

Founded in February 2005, YouTube was purchased by Google in November 2006 for $1.65 billion in stock roughly 1-½ years later. Today, YouTube is the #2 search engine and the #3 most visited website in the world. YouTube serves close to 1 billion videos every day and its users upload 13 hours of video every minute. According to HitWise, YouTube’s market share in the U.S. video sector is 73.18%.

Right now, advertisers can get started with really low CPCs before the advertising at YouTube gets competitive. I created a simple campaign for JumpFly as a test and was able to attain impressive first page results for as little as $0.15 per click. As YouTube’s growth continues and video becomes more mainstream, YouTube will likely represent a valuable advertising avenue for many advertisers who properly go after this new marketplace. Learn more about YouTube Sponsored Videos or consider having a professional PPC Management firm assist you in developing your YouTube Sponsored Video campaign.

More about Brad
JumpFly YouTube Channel

I like to think of my pay-per-click (PPC) advertising keywords as my sales team. Each keyword, whether it be a broad match variation, a phrase match variation or an exact match variation is a unique sales entity. Each keyword, whether it be a singular or plural, puts a different spin on the sales pitch inherent within the words themselves. Each keyword, whether it be a tightly focused model number, a brand name, or a generic catch-all kind of word, puts forth its own individual call to action.

So, what do you do with a member of your sales team who is performing under expectations? Well, for starters, you can “reduce his pay” by lowering his bid. Note: I’m using “he” just for simplicity sake. If a member of your sales team is underperforming, certainly you don’t want to keep paying him at his normal rate. Bring his pay down to a level that is acceptable to the performance he is delivering. Bring a keyword down in position if it’s not delivering in a high position.

What if you have already “reduced the pay” of an underperfomer? Then what? Well, ultimately you are going to have to fire him. There is no sense in keeping a sales person around if he has proven time and time again that he cannot deliver the results that are expected of him. So, fire him. Shut him down. Pause that stinker. Sometimes it’s hard to let go, but in the long run you’ll be glad you did.

Now, on a happier note, what do you do with a member of your sales team who is kicking butt? What do you do with the guy who’s outperforming expectations? Well, one obvious thing to do is give him a raise. Push that keyword position a bit higher if you have room to grow the position. This doesn’t always translate into more sales, but you should certainly give the keyword the opportunity to shine if it’s proven in the past that it can deliver results.

What if he is already at the top of the pay scale? Then what? Then you might need to start looking beyond raising his pay. Now you need to start looking to him for “referrals.” Does he have any trustworthy friends who need a job? Does that keyword have a few variations that you haven’t considered? Dig deeper into the keyword and see if you can find a few of its “friends” to come join your team. You might be surprised at what you find.

Happy Holidays to all.

More about Jack
JumpFly PPC Account Executive

Earlier this fall, Google changed their alcohol policy regarding beer. For the first time, they allowed the U.S. AdWords advertisement of beer for sale. Monday, Google announced another update to the AdWords alcohol policy. Starting this week, Google now allows the advertisement of hard alcohol and liqueurs that target the U.S.

This is good news to hard alcohol and beer manufacturers who can now take advantage of the increased holiday traffic, as well as the new opportunities for branding in the online marketplace.

The biggest difference between the ability to market beer and that of hard alcohol, is that beer is allowed to be marketed for sale through PPC advertising, while hard alcohol and liqueurs must “promote the information about the hard alcohol and liqueur that their websites contain.” Any ads that directly promote the actual sale of hard alcohol or liqueur are still not allowed on AdWords. This means that the sale of hard alcohol and liqueur cannot be promoted in your Google AdWords ad copy or be the purpose of your website. Ads for the purpose of branding hard alcohol and liqueur are absolutely allowed to target the U.S.

In other words, you can sell beer with Google AdWords, however you can only brand or use the promotion of hard alcohol and liqueur for non-sales related websites.

Its important to note that Google considers beer, wine, champagne, hard alcohol, and liqueur to be products intended for sale to, and consumption by, adults. Therefore, any ads promoting these products will be given a Non-Family Safe status. From a PPC management aspect, this means that anybody who has activated their “Google SafeSearch filter” will not be able to see these ads.