If you have every managed a campaign on Google AdWords, you will have come across a little button which asks you whether you would like your ads to display on ‘all devices’ or have the option of deselecting ‘mobile browsers’. Have you ever considered the real implications of choosing yes or no to mobile browsers?

The world of mobile browsing is a very different kettle of fish to what we see in the home or office. Whilst in the desktop browser war Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer dominate, we see two alternative browsers taking the top positions. Apple’s Mobile Safari, which runs on the iPhone and iPod Touch, competes head-to-head with Opera Mini, the mobile version of the Opera browser. Statistics vary, but these two browsers remain clear leaders, with Apple being the winner when numbers for the iPod Touch and iPhone are combined - view here.

Opera Mini by default, uses Google search, and Apple itself, though not the biggest fan of Google at times, integrates some Google products in it’s iPhone/Touch offerings. In October 2009 Opera Mini just about hit the 40 million user mark, which is an impressive number. According to sources this has helped Google achieve well over 90% of the mobile search engine market share, much higher than on desktops - view here and another source here.

Change is afoot and both Apple and Opera will need to step up their games in the next few years. Mozilla is coming to the party soon, Fennec, the codename for the mobile version of Firefox, is just over the horizon, with a stable 1.0 release on the way. Firefox has developed a strong user base in the desktop market over time and a mobile version of the browser might do the same thing on portable platforms.

Chrome OS is however, also on the way, and there is already talk that Chrome OS and Android will merge. Developed for mobile devices by Google, Android is an open source operating system that has none of the constraints enforced by Apple, who place limitations on what is sold at their App Store for example. Though having a slow initial uptake, there are already predictions that Android will overtake the iPhone in coming years - read more here. For current mobile metrics data relating to Android uptake read more at AdMob here. There is already integration of Google Maps in Android, making the purchase of a GPS redundant, whilst the official Google Mobile Blog continues rolling out new ideas, features and updates. So, with a tightly integrated, free and open source operating system available for various platforms an Android/Chrome OS combination could put a spanner in the works for Apple.

This can only mean good things for Google, though Mobile Safari and Opera Mini use some Google features, they lack the full integration of Android or Chrome OS with Google services. More mobile platforms switching to a Google OS will mean many more Google specific pageviews and hence more places to display advertisements. Though Apple is assured of continued market share, Google seems to be slowly chipping away at the foundations, and looks to hold a much more significant mobile user base, not just in mobile search, in the future.

Just before for the peak shopping days of the year Google released a new feature called Ad parameters. This feature, which was initially know as Live Ads enables advertisers to update numeric fields in their ad copy without actually deleting the existing ad and creating a new one (which is how the standard Adwords ad editing works under the hood). So why is this such a big deal?

Well it is very important for performance driven marketers since previously every time they updated an ad they would:

a. Have the new ad go through a review process again which could delay the campaign

b. lose the Quality Score and performance history related to that ad copy

With the new ad parameters, one can write really compelling ad copy highlighting real time pricing and stock levels without losing the ad performance history which is perfect for aggressive marketing.
There are however two important caveats to using this issue that affect a lot of advertisers:

1. Your product data needs to be up to date, i.e. don’t advertise a price or product that is not on your site or you will get plenty of dissatisfied customers. Sure, this sounds like common sense, but you would be surprised how many companies cannot provide this functionality

2. If your campaign is overly reliant on broad match terms (as more and more companies seem to do these days) you cannot control which ad is shown next to a search term. In effect, by having the wrong ad displayed you might actually be harming your campaign more than by showing a very generic, less targeted ad.

At the moment, Google is only releasing this feature via the API which means the people using it should be technically able to also use it correctly.

Clicks2Customers have been using this feature for a few retailers and the results are very promising, especially when the retailer is able to compete on price, and responds quickly to his competitors’ prices.
Updating tens of thousands of ad copies with cut throat live pricing has proven to lift CTR and CVR significantly. It will give an even bigger edge to savvy marketers, which is why we like it so much.

After using Google for so long we have become quite used to an almost ‘psychic’ search. You type in something and Google will return a match, even offering suggestions if you make a spelling mistake, and you generally find what you want quite easily.

This ‘comfort zone’ we have developed can however lead to problems, as the Google search algorithm is far superior to what is used internally on many sites. When finding landing pages on client’s sites we are often forced to use search queries. Issues arise when there are a large number of products, landing pages and hence keywords. Checking all these search terms can be a time consuming endeavor. So, often it is assumed the keyword will generate a good enough search on the client’s site, landing on an appropriate enough landing page without having to check thousands of queries.

If client’s sites all employed more predictive algorithms then this methodology for generating destination URLs would be fine. Realistically many client’s site DO NOT have this feature. Take a large car parts site for example, a search for “ford hubcaps” produces a results page with 7 ‘matches’ which include 1 hub cap remover, 3 sets of hub cap screws, and 3 other items, not exactly a well focused results page! Just by adding a space between ‘hub’ and ‘cap’, the search query will return 27 results that are much more focused…

A more glaring example of this would be a search with keyword “power windows” (implying automatic, electric car windows), which returns zero results, however if this keyword is ‘reverse engineered’ and the query is instead “electric window motor” the query returns 1,422 results!

So, next time you are dealing with a client that has a large site, and you intend using search queries as your destination URLs, be sure to either check the keywords before hand or research how predictive the site search algorithm is. It may not necessarily be true that your high traffic keyword list will automatically generate good landing pages on your client’s site, if the site search is not up to scratch! In a circumstance like this your click-through-rate might be great but your conversion rate might be less than expected, due to improper ‘engineering’ of search queries related to base keywords.

What is a GOOD example of predictive search? My favourite is CDUniverse whose internal site search I think is excellent.

Google recently (and quietly) introduced a new match type in it’s Search query Match Type Report that gives advertisers a bit more insight into a user’s search behavior. For a long time Google has been personalizing the adverts shown to a user based on the other (previous) searchers that user made during a session. Although this could give an advertiser wider exposure to their potential target market, it also took away control over their keyword portfolio as Google would show ads that technically wouldn’t correspond directly to the keywords the advertiser is bidding on.

At least now with this addition to the search query report, advertisers can see what extended search queries Google thinks are relevant to their campaigns and you can either add those keywords or negative match them if you think they’re irrelevant.

A quote from the official help page:

“A feature of Broad match also looks at other queries that the user has entered durng their current search session to target ads — these queries are marked as “Broad Match (Session-Based).” If you like the query, consider adding the query to your account as either a Broad, Phrase, or Exact match keyword. If you don’t like the query, you should consider adding it as a negative keyword to prevent your ads from appearing on that search query.”

Read the complete Adwords help page here.

When Google introduced the concept of a minimum bid into the Adwords platform, I guess few advertisers and perhaps not even Google realized the effect it would have on their business.

Publicly, Google always maintains that relevance and user experience take priority over revenue generation and so the minimum bid was introduced to ensure that search engine users would not be bombarded with poor quality advertising. By raising the bar, Google forced advertisers to reconsider the ROI of their Adwords campaigns rather than spam the search results with ads by bidding en masse on cheap, non-commercial keywords in the hope of getting a few extra clicks.

Noble as the minimum was intended to be, most Adwords advertisers will be able to tell tales of being ‘slapped’ with minimum bids of up to $10 per click. Needless to say that very few businesses would be able to pay those prices and Google was never very forthcoming with a helpful explanation in order to lower them again.

On a bigger scale, the minimum bid also completely negated Google’s argument that it does not behave as a monopoly in the search engine advertising market. By setting a bottom, the free market auction for keywords becomes a whole lot less free and Google theoretically can tweak the minimum bids to squeeze the most out of its advertisers and boost its revenue. That is a factor the company cannot ignore as it keeps increasing market share and attracts ever greater scrutiny from governments and competitors.

By abandoning the minimum bid for a ‘first page’ bid Google hopefully will introduce again greater transparency into its advertising platform. More practically, Google’s move will reactivate a sizeable portion of ad inventory that currently sits dormant on its platform and give the company a boost in revenue in time for the upcoming holiday season.

So although as an advertiser we welcome the perishing of the opaque minimum bid, we will be keeping a close eye on our costs as a mass of previously inactive keywords comes back online.

At SMX advanced in Seattle the question was put to the attendees: “how many of you use bid management tools?”

And that was the most surprising part of the session: nearly everyone in a room with hundreds of people raised their hand. Of course technically speaking using Excel to increase your prices by 10% also makes it a bid management tool. Nevertheless people in the industry seem to take bid management really seriously - as they should. I couldn’t help shake the feeling though that the panelists conveniently touted all the wonders of bid management without touching on its many shortcomings. Only David Rodnitzky from PPCAdBuying.com played the devil’s advocate and warned against the dangers of being sold an expensive, complex system that may not actually offer a return on investment.

I have to agree with David that bid management tools often over-promise and under-deliver and for a very simple reason. bid management makes sense for large PPC campaigns where it is unwieldy to set prices manually. But it is exactly for those large campaigns that the data you have available for each keyword is very sparse. Long tail keywords may contribute a significant portion of your revenue but by their very nature each individual keyword gathers information in a fairly random manner. No matter how smart your bid management system, it cannot make assumptions from data that doesn’t exist. To get around that most system group long tail keywords in clusters and aggregate their data. How you cluster the data though will greatly influence of the system and as far as I know there is no one optimal way of doing it.

A comment made by search marketing veteran Kevin Lee (and with which other panelist Chris Zaharias from Omniture agrees in spirit) also illustrates another difficulty faced by automated bid management. Kevin said that half of the paid ads in top positions are put there by idiots, not rational beings. How would a bid management system incorporate the behaviour of an irrational market into its decision making algorithm?

When choosing a bid management system be careful not to over-complicate things. For small to midsized campaigns you probably don’t need any fancy systems. Choose a tool that is flexible and that lets you override its bid adjustments. That way you can control for events such as special promotions or sudden increased competition in the market. And remember, bid management tools are only an aid, not a solution.

Finally. That was my first thought when Microsoft announced the existence of an MSN Adcenter desktop tool at the SMX advanced conference this morning. We knew something like this was in the pipeline but never knew when it was supposed to become publicly available. Well now it is, almost. The tool will initially only be launched in a private beta so you better apply quickly if, like me, you dread working with the Adcenter web interface. In combination with with the other initiatives MSN has taken recently, such as their cash-back program and the deal to pre-install Live Search on all new HP computers, today’s announcement sends a strong message that Microsoft is determined to go after Google head on.

Google dominates the PPC market not just because it has the most users, but for a large part because it is so easy to advertise on its Adwords platform. But many advertisers don’t like Google’s grip on the market and are just waiting for an opportunity to move a larger part of their budget to alternative search engines. Hopefully Microsoft’s tool will facilitate this.

update: you can signup for the adcenter beta here  

Some merchants are still not convinced that they should be bidding on their own brand keywords when running a PPC campaign. I believe they should, but don’t take my word for it, take Google’s. When searching recently for some of Google’s applications, i noticed the following ad:

One could argue that it doesn’t cost Google anything to advertise on its own site but there is still an opportunity cost involved in not having someone else’s ad displayed there. Yet Google obviously thinks it is worth it because the ad stands out a lot more than the organic listing and they are able to control the message they convey to the user a lot better. When you are looking for a place to download Google talk, which link would you prefer?

If you are running PPC campaigns in the UK or Ireland and you’re a believer in open markets and healthy competition, you will love Google’s AdWords Trademark Policy Revision. However, as with most of Google’s recent changes, it will cost you.

The changes are nothing new to US advertisers, as Google has been allowing advertisers to bid on their competitor’s US trademarks since 2004 but the UK market up till now has enjoyed more protection.

Advertisers unsure how this will affect their PPC campaign can read up on a previous post on brand bidding but basically i foresee the following impact:

•  ’small’ companies will use this opportunity to aggressively start bidding on their competitors’ trademark in an attempt to gain market share
•  dominant advertisers will have to spend more money to defend their brand from their rivals.

The stronger your brand, the more you will be (negatively) affected by this change as well known trademarks are a big driver of traffic and others are going to want a piece of it. This is a time for UK advertisers to evaluate their PPC campaigns and their brand bidding policies. They last thing you want be is unprepared when the changes come into effect on May 5 2008.

And Google? They benefit because in all likelihood advertisers will spend more money on Adwords (although the official line is that they’re are just doing it for the sake of improving ‘relevancy’ to the user).

Since the introduction of Adwords, Google has been rolling out new features regularly. Most of the time, these additions were aimed at helping advertisers to create more targeted and relevant advertising campaigns. Even though the introduction of the Quality Score (QS) algorithm and the associated introduction of minimum bid prices boosted Google’s revenue, the underlying principle was that it would weed out irrelevant ads from the Adwords system.

Last week however it emerged that Google is beta testing a feature called ‘Automatic Matching’. What this will do is match your ads to keywords you’re not actually bidding on but which Google deems relevant to your campaign, in order to ensure that your monthly budget limits are reached.

Some analysts see this feature as a sign that Google is feeling the pressure of Wall Street and is (desperately) looking to maintain its revenue growth.

As an Adwords professional I do know that this feature offers no benefit at all to a knowledgeable advertiser although there are three parties which could potentially benefit from it.

1. Google: there is no denying that Google will increase its revenue implementing this feature. Most advertisers set their budget above what they actually expect to spend to ensure that their campaigns are sufficiently buffered and don’t run out of money during the month. What Google is proposing is creaming off that surplus budget.
2. Corporate advertisers: Not all search engine advertising is ROI based, an increasing portion of spend is dedicated to branding. This is mainly the case for large corporates who can afford not to generate direct revenue from online marketing. Automatic Broad Matching allows them to spend their money without the hassle of running a large PPC campaign.
3. Advertising agencies: For agencies that charge their clients a percentage of spend, Automatic Broad Matching offers the same benefits as it does to corporate advertisers. It enables them to spend more of their clients’ money (and increase their revenue) without the additional effort of running a large campaign, just sit back and let Google do the work for you.

Would I ever use this feature (luckily you can opt-out)? Definitely not.

As a company, we believe in adding value for our clients and based upon years of experience, we are of the opinion that running a campaign using large scale broad matching is not the way to go about it. Not only because broad matches are a poor indicator of a user’s intent and often have a poor ROI but also because you lose control over your marketing campaign. Even when you’re only interested in branding, you should be concerned about which keywords trigger your ads. Having seen Google’s broad matching in action, I would say it is far from perfect and not always in the advertiser’s best interest.

Search engine advertising is increasingly becoming more complex and competitive. All the more reason to take charge of how and where to spend your budget and not to rely on the ‘easy’ options being offered by parties who are incentivized to increase your costs.