Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion | U.S. | Reuters

February 1, 2008 at 7:06 am · Filed under Internet Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Yahoo

Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion | U.S. | Reuters

Look out Google:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Technology giant Microsoft Corp said on Friday that it had offered to acquire Internet media company Yahoo Inc for $44.6 billion in cash and stock.

Microsoft said it had offered to buy Yahoo for $31 per share, which it said represented a 62 percent premium above the company’s closing stock price on Nasdaq on Thursday.

“We have great respect for Yahoo, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market,” Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said in a statement.

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Hearst-Argyle Television and Google Agree on Reseller Agreement

November 29, 2007 at 10:31 am · Filed under PPC Campaigns, Internet Marketing, Adwords, Search Engine Marketing

Hearst-Argyle Television and Google Strike Reseller Agreement

This deal as of yet hasn’t caught a lot of peoples attention. It did catch mine though and I expect to see a lot more deals in 2008. In order for Google to expand it’s reach as fast as the predicted local search spending is expected to grow then it is going to have to rely on resellers to connect local companies that do not have the manpower, skills or time required to advertise online.

The press release points out:

“Boston, MA-based research firm Yankee Group recently projected that local search and Internet ad spending will grow from $1.9 billion this year to $9.3 billion in 2010. According to research by New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc., more than 50% of U.S. small businesses believe they can use the Internet for sales, marketing and customer support.”

And to think I am busy now… 9.3 billion in two years is mind boggling considering the amount of work that is required to reach your market effectively using PPC advertising. Running a PPC campaign is not a set it and forget process. You have to do just as much leg work as you do with any other type of advertising sometimes more. But the payoff (ROI) can be huge if you do it correctly.

A lot of accounts that I see waste a lot of ad spend by not managing the accounts correctly. Bidding on terms that they think are relevant when there in fact they hardly ever bring in a conversion. I always take the position of let’s see what is working now and improve upon it. That gives me an idea of the campaign is performing and what should or shouldn’t be looked at in the clients other campaigns.

Back to the press release. Of the 2010 projected spending over 25% of that will be wasted. Yes you read correctly, WASTED. Why ? Simply too fast of growth to keep up with the learning process in order to stay competitive. Especially when you take Google’s ad quality score algorithms that seem to be changing on a monthly basis now. Example, one client I have just witnessed his campaign minimum bids increase and his conversion rates drop drastically. Why? It seems Google didn’t like the landing page we were using. Even though it had a good CTR ratio, and excellent conversion ratio. We used this page for several months after having the exact same problems just a couple of months earlier. We are now faced with having to make new landing pages again for the third time in six months. The saddest part is every time we abide and make the necessary changes we are forced to do it again.

To get back to my point, do you think that all these new small businesses that are not web savvy (remember I have been online marketing for 10 years) are going to be able to keep up? That is why I know a VERY LARGE percentage of that projected growth will be wasted. It simply isn’t feasible.

There is a silver lining though. Those that do not have their campaigns fine tuned will still see a better ROI than what they get with traditional advertising. I just hate to see all that money go down the drain on poor performing campaigns.

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Google AdWords Help Center: What is the One-Page Campaign Setup option?

November 7, 2007 at 9:01 am · Filed under PPC Campaigns, Internet Marketing, Adwords

Google AdWords Help Center: What is the One-Page Campaign Setup option?

I logged in this morning to create a new campaign for one of my clients and noticed a new feature in the campaign creation process. It is called the One Page Campaign Setup option. Basically it will allow you to copy an existing campaign and edit it on one page. Very useful indeed.

From the Google Help Center: “The advanced one-page setup wizard was created for AdWords advertisers who often use similar settings in many campaigns and asked to have a simpler way to create new campaigns. Once created, the campaigns look and function exactly like other AdWords campaigns created by the standard multi-page wizard option. (One-page setup is available only for keyword-targeted campaigns, not for site-targeted campaigns, at this time.) As always with AdWords, you can edit your settings or pause the campaign at any time.”

Thank you Google. I wished you would have done this a couple hundred campaigns earlier.

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Google AdWords Help Center: How do I use keyword insertion? (tutorial)

November 7, 2007 at 8:49 am · Filed under PPC Campaigns, Internet Marketing, Adwords, Adwords Quality Score

Google AdWords Help Center: How do I use keyword insertion? (tutorial)

Have you ever heard someone mention the term Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI)? Well Google has finally decided to spread some light on the subject. They have a full tutorial available and if you are not familiar with the practice I advise you to take a close look at it.

In brief it will allow you to dynamically insert the search term into your ad.

So if your ad says:

Cheap MP3 Players
Browse our large
selection of MP3 players.
cheapmp3.com

You can use DKI to do this:

{keyword:Cheap} MP3 Players
Browse our large
selection of MP3 players
cheapmp3.com

and if the search term that was used was Low Cost MP3 Players
your ad would replace Cheap with Low Cost dynamically when the page loads so it would look like this:

Low Cost MP3 Players
Browse our large
selection of MP3 players
cheapmp3.com

If the search term they use cannot fit into allowed number of spaces for the headline then your default term (whatever is after the colon:) will show in the headline.

Cheap MP3 Players
Browse our large
selection of MP3 players
cheapmp3.com

There are a number of variations that can be used because DKI can be utilized in the whole ad and not just in the headline.

To very important notes. Be careful because you do not want funny looking ads showing. Secondly while this technique will definitely improve your CTR ratio it will actually lower your conversion ratio.

The reason for this is because your headline is matched so well to what the person is searching for you get more browsers than buyers.

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