This Week in Relevance

We have examined historical campaign data as a first step in the effort to better understand the dynamics of adCenter’s version of Quality Score.  To recap, the open questions we focused on:

1. How does (position normalized) CTR affect the CPC that you pay in adCenter?
2. How much influence does quality of landing page have on CPC (and position)

We reviewed performance data over the course of a 6 week period from Jan-Feb 2011. The Ad Group observed has KW destination URLs so we were not able to extract any signals regarding ad landing page influence on CPC & position in this setting. As a bit of additional context, the makeup of the campaign we observed is as follows:

* 3 unique creatives running against 150 KWs in the same ad group

*The campaign had been live for several months and received considerable traffic prior to the time period  reviewed

*For the period reviewed each ad received several hundred thousand impressions

For the period reviewed, key data points were as follows:

Observations:

We have certainly been intrigued by the results. While it appears there is some correlation between CTR and avg position, we are surprised a delta of the observed magnitude – against considerable volume – did not result in a bigger delta in avg position.  Even more surprising is the near flat avg CPC for each creative and the division of impressions within the ad group. Based on what we have observed here, it does not appear adCenter values CTR in the same way AdWords does when awarding CPC discounts.

Even if adCenter is not discounting CPC based on CTR there is still clear value in conducting ad testing and optimizing campaigns toward creatives with high CTR. Logically a user is more likely to click on an ad with a higher CTR than a lower CTR. Therefore, the more impressions that are sent to higher CTR ads, the more volume the ad group should accrue. That said, if the true campaign success measurement is ROI, CPA or another metric influenced by a conversion, you will obviously want to take any relevant metrics into account as well when making your ad optimization decisions.

It is important to call out that the KW profile of the ad group may have colored the result we saw to some degree. Specifically, ad group contains high & low volume KWs and both brand & non-brand keywords.  Obviously we do not have data detailing performance of specific KW-Ad pairings to understand these dynamics  have controlled for these factors in our follow up testing .

Our more controlled test referenced here is currently running but not accruing as much data as we would like to make an definitive call on results.  Stay tuned as we work through some ad serving issues with AdCenter.

In summary, to this point in our investigation our 2 primary conclusions are as follows:

* Large ad CTR deltas  do not necessarily result in corresponding CPC & Avg Pos deltas

* Advertisers should be cautious about relying on adCenter for adwords type ad optimization (against CTR) at this point

Stay tuned, we are looking forward to analyzing results of our follow up testing and will be sharing our observations.

It depends on whether it is truly brand new or if the agencies client had previously purchased similar keywords directing traffic to the same URL.

If this was the case, then Google will have a record of that advertiser running that keyword previously and then the history that was built up will be applied to the new account. It is often difficult for advertisers to overcome a poor quality score history just by switching agencies.

However, if the account is truly brand new, then all keywords will be assigned a default quality score based on the marketplace’s use of that keyword as well as some relevancy factors that Google can determine by looking at the relationship of the ad to the keyword (e.g. keyword density in the ad) as well as the landing page. This default quality score is typically never as high as you’d like it to be so its important to create relevant ads and bid high out of the gate to get your ads in a position to serve and move your quality score up quickly,

To the second question, it very much depends on your budgets, objectives, and keyword development prowess. If budgets are low, it could be very expensive to run on broad match for a significant period of time, especially on Google. I’d recommend starting your general and potentially expensive terms on phrase/exact and your lower funnel terms on broad to pick up additional ideas without blowing through your budget.

Also, if you’ve done good keyword research, you shouldn’t have to use broad initially and then can experiment with it once your campaigns have hit an appropriate performance threshold.

Do new agency accounts on Adwords initially experience low quality scores until they build some volume and background or would something be wrong?

Its do-able with strong tools and strategy, but you have to be incredibly careful when creating campaigns of this magnitude from a set of product data, as there are a number of mistakes that can be made that can irreparably harm the quality score for your AdWords account.

Some of the major challenges that you’ll face:

1. Ensuring that your data for building the campaign is of adequate quality to generate good keywords and ads. Product titles are often messy and too specific, leading to keywords that don’t get very much traffic and ads that have to use non-specific default text because of character restrictions. Product categories make very poor keywords because they tend to be very general so running a product specific ad against these terms will affect Quality Score in a negative way
2. Massive duplication of keywords — product data is at the individual SKU level and most retailers will have many SKUs that match a specific query, even a particularly specific one like ‘size 6 Jimmy Choo boots’ — if I have 10 different pairs, each in a number of different colors, widths, etc, would all pairs get that keyword? If not, how do I decide?
3. Account scalability issues — in the tools mentioned in above responses, 100k products corresponds to 100k ad groups which starts to push account size limits in the major engines and could slow down any changes to these accounts via API or AdWords Editor. Without a good strategy for managing the size of these product driven campaigns it is very easy to run afoul of Google and make it more challenging to do other tasks in your accounts.
4. Managing frequent changes to the product data — while it is resource intensive to build this campaign once without proper tools, it is prohibitive to actively manage changes to this data without them. Inaccuracies in pricing and product availability in paid search ads can impact relationships with your customers if they find those ads to be misleading — additionally you can increase your bounce rate which plays heavily into your quality score. To do this right, you need to ensure that you have the ability to update keywords, ads, and landing pages as your product data changes.

All that said, having your search campaigns effectively merchandise your entire product catalog is a winning strategy in search. You just need to be sure that you understand the potential pitfalls, and are leveraging scalable tools to handle the complexities mentioned above (as well as some others…).

Our company, DataPop, deals with these challenges every day via our technology and I’d happy to discuss in more detail if interested.

Dave
http://www.datapop.com

How do you set-up and scale Adwords Campaigns for 10000 to 100000 products?

A reminder that you have until 12 noon PT on Friday to vote for a winner in the Data Visualization Contest. If you haven’t yet, check out the great work of the TWIR community at the bottom of this post.

This week we continue to keep a close eye on Search. It’s hard to believe but this week marks the start of October and Holiday season is in full swing for retailers. TWIR takes a look at some initial research on the impact of Google Instant and some forward, keywordless, thinking. Thanks for reading and don’t forget to Vote!

How Google Instant has Impacted Paid Search
George Michie of RKG outlines their recent research on Google Instant’s impact on Paid Search to-date. As usual, the RKG team has built a great case study and measures how Instant has influenced several aspects of SEM. The traffic, keyword data and ad position data is certainly compelling as is the anecdote on how Google Instant was rendering search results for “Toothpaste for Dinner” when just “Toothpaste” was in the search box. Performing this search now, Google seems to have re-ordered priority and serves ads accordingly but it is worth noting that Google may infer user intent differently for somewhat ambiguous terms post in the Google Instant world. As the RKG post suggests, advertisers may be well served to contrast keyword performance pre and post Instant launch and look for any major performance shifts – its possible your message may no longer be relevant to Google’s perception of the Keyword.

Paid Search Without Keywords
This click equation blog post by Alex Cohen examines the prospect of Search Marketing without keywords. Allowing publishers to determine the audience segment your offers are relevant for will require a paradigm shift but the move to a CPA pricing model will mitigate advertiser risk and should ease the transition. Remove KW strategies and tactics from the SEM equation and relevant messaging becomes the biggest tool at an advertisers disposal for differentiating themselves and appealing to their user base. Now that’s putting the Marketing in Search Engine Marketing.

Vote!

While we have continued focus on relevance in marketing every week, we realize that we’ve touched on many aspects of the online world, so this week we’re going to take a page from the book of John Legend and the Roots, and listen to the Fire within. Our roots are in SEARCH!

If there is No Record of a City in Google Does it Really Exist at All?
On the way into the DataPop offices the other day in the same breath we heard:

1. The recession was now over officially as of June of 2009 (Yeah, feels that way don’t it?)
2. Sunrise Florida has been de-listed from Google maps AGAIN and won’t get back into the index for at least a number of months. As an added piece of irony, this article did not come up in Google searches and I had to locate as the third result on Bing. This de-listing has caused businesses like Flowers from the Rainforest, a flower shop in town, to lose out on considerable business simply because people in town cannot locate them in the manner they are accustomed to (as reported by Sherry Tannozzini of Flowers From TheRainflorist).

On one hand this brings up the question on responsibility for the engines to provide the most accurate results and fix problems like this – but here at DataPop and This Week in Relevance we can’t help but think of the opportunity this provides to the most progressive businesses in town. Yes the organic results are gone along with your entire town, but we have to assume that Google would still be happy to allow Sunrise businesses into the paid search auction… Who wants to be the only business in town delivered to a searcher for your products? Were you to build a quality geo targeted and geo modified campaign, this would be the opportunity to take every other business in town’s business! All of these smaller retailers COULD build paid search marketing campaigns to capture the traffic that they are losing due to the database SNAFU at Google. If you were the smartest florist in town and figured this out, how cool would it be to be the only listing that showed up. We’re just saying.

Keeping Up with the Jones’
As long as we’re discussing the topic of relevance in marketing, and how to approach campaigns, we have to consider the changes that have occurred in the landscape now that Google Instant has been out for a couple of weeks and we have a little more insight on what it really means. While pundits felt the need to declare that “SEO is Dead,” without any data on what was happening, the first analytical reports have started rolling in. Laurie Sullivan reported in Mediapost that companies supported by Covario saw a 15% drop in organic traffic across the board when Google initially introduced Google instant a couple of weeks ago. That implies a pretty sizable improvement in relevance for Google, although it also means that there’s a lot of businesses losing significant traffic. Do you think it affected conversions as much for those advertisers? Probably more relevant. Yet this assertion is called into question by Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, who shows considerable data (and supporting articles) indicating little to no change in traffic for Google Instant… who’s right?

Advertising as a Consumer Choice
Even if things bounce back to some degree, like Laurie Sullivan’s article says there’s been some sizable changes in our world recently and not just in Google so it’s understandable that people are talking about change. Specifically, we here at This Week in Relevance have to agree with Joe Marchese who purports that Advertising Is Becoming A Consumer Choice. The long and short of it, is that advertising is going to get more expensive no matter how relevant or engaging it is, and we agree! If that plays out ads will have to be both engaging AND relevant or money will be wasted and value will be left on the table. Why pay for impressions, and ultimately clicks, that don’t move perspective customers down the purchase funnel, and in search that means creating highly targeted ad groups with copy and landing pages tailored to the user’s queries. God knows that could save some businesses in Sunrise Florida right about now.

When Two Become One
In line with these changes, and major hoopla over world changes before any data has come out, Nick Saint has reported in Business Insider that the Yahoo – Microsoft deal is about to Wreak Havoc in the Search Market. It’s all well and good to be concerned but there seems to be a bit of over-reaction everywhere by pundits. How could you not know who your competitors are if you’ve been running campaigns on Yahoo and Bing – that’s not changing when they merge their traffic. All that’s changing is the format and breadth of the auction. While this could mean that there is more competition across the board, it’s hard for us to imagine keyword costs to soar 73% on average. But I’ll bet it got them a good amount of readers this week. While people are freaking out about keyword costs, we would be worrying about the message that is being delivered to consumers when they search for your products, as a lot of advertisers have historically neglected their Bing campaigns.

WHEN WE DO A SEARCH FOR A 42” Magnovox lcd Flatscreen TV this is the results provided on Bing:

There certainly seems to be significant room to raise the relevancy bar in this marketplace…

Orienting Around Customer Behavior
As long as we’re talking about the changes in the landscape, it’s worth bringing up the Walgreens Transformation as reported by Linda Ireland. They are the perfect example of a company that took a hard look at the framework for business and evaluated how they could do financially as a retailer vs a services company and made a hard shift towards being the latter. With the shifts occurring in consumption of media there is an opportunity to re-imagine companies and brands. Our favorite take-aways are working hard to identify a customer need and make sure you have an outcome in mind. With these ideas in mind and some good product data you can build a solid relevant and differentiated marketing campaign that is specific to your products, categories, and the head that gets clients to click through when they are ready to purchase.

Hey, by the way… have you put together any submissions for our contest? It’s almost closed… here’s another great Heat Map example for anyone looking to find a bargain in the CA housing market:

By now, nearly everyone in the industry, and many others who aren’t, have blogged, commented, tweeted, liked, and railed on Google’s new Instant Search feature. So what could we, the humble TWIR Staff, possibly add to the conversation at this point? Well, here goes…

So What’s The Big Deal?
We see Instant Search as a big step forward for Google in its core business of search. Many people, ourselves among them, have been wondering when Google was going to start innovating again in core search to match the flurry of changes that Bing has rolled out over the past year or so. It definitely looks as if they have done it, as this represents a pretty significant change from their previous SERP experience.

By significantly lowering time to produce results (who even knew we were wasting precious seconds waiting for search results to load?) Google is enabling users to filter content and get to their destination more quickly (i.e. click on something). In turn, this will likely improve their already high customer satisfaction and revenue generation potential, but will it also enable them to more effectively compete in the market for real-time information distribution? The fact that I get weather results for my location by entering “w” into a search box certainly has us believing that this will be the case.

As of right now, users have to be logged into Google and be searching on Google.com to leverage Instant Search. While there is still a significant portion of the searching population who accesses Google in this way, many of the key influencers and thought leaders in the space access Google through toolbars, direct URL entries into Chrome, and the mobile web. It will be interesting to see how Google addresses this in the coming months in order to make “instant searching” more ubiquitous. However, given the fanatical interest which accompanied the launch of this product (some created by Google, and some organically generated), it looks as if adoption won’t be an issue here.

The End of SEO?
Many have portended the end of SEO with this launch by Google. iCrossing has even compiled a list of brands that are exposed in search results as you type each letter of the alphabet. While there may be an initial boost that comes from being that lucky (or ubiquitous) brand that has its results displayed on that first typed character, we don’t feel that the principles that drive user search behavior or SEO will fundamentally change. Users will not be swayed from their intent to search for “San Diego Hotels” because a “Sears” result is displayed to them while they type. Additionally, those brands that vie for traffic on the term “San Diego Hotels” still need to ensure that they stay relevant for that term via tried and true SEO practices.

However, while the fundamentals themselves won’t change, tools such as Instant Search and Search Suggest do serve to guide the users in certain directions and also enable them to more easily refine their queries. The resulting gradual shift in user behavior and query patterns will not go unnoticed by sites, both big and small, who are strong in the SEO game. They may have to adjust their keyword targets and create new content to meet user demand, but this is nothing new to SEO. Understanding shifts in consumer behavior and adjusting strategies accordingly should be part and parcel to every strong SEO (and SEM!) program and this will continue as long as users are searching for information on Google and other search engines. We think Matt Cutts would definitely concur!

Quality Score
Will more impressions equate to lower quality scores across the board? This is likely a question on many search marketers’ minds with the advent of Instant Search. Google has tried to mitigate the flood of advertiser impressions by necessitating 3 seconds of searcher inactivity before logging an ad impression, but overall ad impressions will still likely climb as a result of these changes, potentially dropping CTRs across the board. Theoretically, ad quality scores should not change as a direct result of Instant Search, since they are a relative and not an absolute measure of relevance, but it will be interesting to see if Google makes everyone pay up initially to account for lower CTRs. Let us know if you learn anything here over the coming weeks and we’ll do the same…

Raising the Bar for Relevance in SEM
One thing we do know about these changes is that they will raise the bar for relevance in search. By allowing users to filter/alter their search results so quickly, organic and paid search listings will have to stand out that much more in order to generate a user response. A search session which in the past generated only 1 or 2 unique SERPs before the traffic left Google, may now generate 5 to 10 or more unique SERPs in the same amount of time. If marketers could not make their unique offers stand out previously (and many could not, delivering static and often irrelevant copy that did not match user intent), then they will really struggle to deliver relevance in this new environment. Additionally, users will more easily be able to refine their queries with additional attributes and qualifiers, taking them deeper into the long tail. Marketers who have rested their laurels on targeting only the highest volume queries in their category might be surprised to see their traffic drop until they adopt more comprehensive long tail strategies. As with the SEO case referenced above, marketers who can quickly adapt to the changing behaviors borne of these changes will most certainly benefit from them.

Design a Cool Heat Map, Win an iPad
A reminder that we accepting entries for TWIR Data Visualization Contest through 9/24. We have seen some great entries thus far and are looking forward to seeing the TWIR community continue to push the envelope. For anyone new to this blog, contest details can be found here and we are available at twir-contest@datapop.com to answer any questions.

The TWIR team spent a couple days in Beverly Hills at an off site last month and have been eying the calendar in anticipation of today ever since. Turns out the proud folks of zip 90210 have organized themselves a party in celebration of the date that matches the zip code made famous by mid-twenties high schoolers. Much like the fine residents of Beverly Hills, we strive to embrace our community. As such, this week we take a look at this week’s big news in search, Target’s new approach to weekly digital circulars and some cool new technology for the upcoming 2010-2011 ski season. Happy 9/02/10 everyone.

The (second) great migration
Hold on to your hats. Yahoo and Mr. Softee announced that they are ready to begin the (second) great migration. Exciting times. It feels like Yahoo learned quite a bit from the last time they did this (the arduous Panama project that some of the TWIR crew worked on), and they have a good handle on how to get it done quickly without totally killing their business. We are looking forward to playing along. Now the process might be orderly, but we do know that the post migration world will look very different for some advertisers. Based on our experience, we expect the relevance bar is going to be raised when all the campaigns are in the Bing systems – a great thing. And TWIR favorite RKG has a couple posts by George Michie that give you a sense of the difference between the two systems and their traffic, and how it might take a little time for advertisers to figure out how to deal the new world. We aren’t kidding when we say we are excited – we like it when search campaigns get shaken up a bit and we get the chance to re-tune to the signals coming from our customers.

Keywords as the Guiding Light
We love keywords. When you really look at them closely they give the most beautiful signal of user intent that a marketer could ever want. Razorfish has a nice bit on the importance of keyword research, and how useful it can be even to non-search marketing pros for market research. Its a straightforward piece that does a nice job of laying out the basics of how you can learn from looking at how people search. But our favorite part of the story is what comes next and he didn’t cover in the post: when you figure out how to put the right messages in front of the users on the other side of those keywords.

Target Weekly Ads Get Personal
Bruce Horovitz at USA Today covers Target’s approach to letting users customize their weekly digital circular ad experience. Jay Baer of Convince & Convert raises an interesting question about how much time and effort users will invest into tailoring the weekly ad experience but personalized content certainly tugs at the heart strings of this blog – especially when there is money to be saved on favorite brands, products, etc. One can see how the evolution of personalized ecommerce could quickly lead to some very interesting digital partnerships for retailers and manufactures. Now if we could just once make it through a Target shopping trip without buying 3x the items on our shopping list.

Capturing and Sharing from High Above
Vail Resorts has announced a partnership with EpicMix that will allow skiers to digitally track their 2010-2011 ski season. Much like Nike+ for runners, EpicMix allows skiers to share their statistics and accomplishments and create special EpicMix leader boards for their friends. Pretty cool to think about the different travel, retail and hospitality advertising experiences that could be built off the EpicMix data. What better time to show a Swiss Miss hot chocolate or Baileys Irish Cream ad than at the bottom of a Breckenridge run?

Lastly, in celebration of this historic day and the opening week of the 2010 US Open, we present a flashback to Matthew Perry’s incredible 90210 cameo. The clip is a little long and Perry’s character turns a bit dark but the opening minute’s ground stroke montage (and Jason Priestly’s all denim look) is not to be missed. Thanks to Kelly West of Television Blend for alerting us to Perry’s cameo – we had no idea (we swear). Hope everyone enjoys the final long weekend of summer.

Welcome to TWIR week 7. This week our never ending hunt for all things relevance leads us to examine the increasingly prominent role Data is playing across the web. Data is becoming more and more central to everything, not just marketing and measurement, but content development, navigation, personalization, etc. Here’s hoping TWIR week 7 will help you look at boring ‘ol data in a new and exciting light.

The Ad Campaign as Data Asset
We loved this Clickz article by @andrew_goodman which asserts that a paid search campaign can be a data asset which enables marketers to reap much greater dividends than using it strictly as a customer acquisition source. Search campaigns are “response engines” to quote Andrew, and as such, within a few short weeks marketers can get a great understanding about how consumers respond to offers of different types, at different times during the week, in different areas of the country, etc. The article also brings us a fantastic quote by Seth Godin when discussing clothing company Zara: “Zara is an information business that happens to sell clothes.” Here’s hoping that more marketers embrace this approach!

Data as Marketing Content
Scott Brinker, @chiefmartec, writes an interesting article on his blog, Chief Marketing Technologist, around emerging capabilities enabling marketers to publish data to the outside world. This starts with search engines with technologies like Rich Snippets and Search Monkey but ultimately extends out across the Web, where there are thousands of data APIs available for organizations to create amazing content. In fact, even the stodgy world of newspaper publishing is getting on board. As of this year, The New York Times is offering its data in RDF these days, which should make for some pretty incredible mash-ups and improved content experiences on the web. Now we can really figure out which was the best Yankee team in history…

Twitter Knows What You’d Like to Read
From Search Engine Land, Twitter has launched a new feature to suggest followers for you based on your interests and current list of followers. Twitter is using its massive data resources to get in on the personalization act and drive more engagement from its already passionate user base. To us, Twitter is looking more and more like a utility to enable content and information discovery across the Web and beyond. Lookout Google…

When Online Truly Drives Offline
From the early days of the Web, shopping comparison engines were central in helping users navigate the murky and often polluted waters of online retail, to discover products and deals. Over the last few years, some of those sites have struggled a bit and new tools for online product discovery emerged, such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Gilt.

Per a Search Engine Watch piece this week, it seems the next battlefield for shopping engines maybe offline, yes offline. With the vast majority of commerce still conducted in store, it does seem like a natural next step to enable in-store shopping comparison through the use of data and intent – it will be interesting to see who jumps out to a lead here. We know that if we had a dollar for every time I couldn’t find what I was looking for at the supermarket….you get the idea.

Bringing It Down a Notch
While we are talking about mash-ups, we thought we’d leave you with a fun, somewhat disturbing, and visually stimulating infographic on American’s consumption patterns.

While we are floored by the actual data in the piece, what is more interesting to us, as @chiefmartec mentioned in his piece referenced above, is how boring old data is getting very exciting again, especially as companies such as Factual and Freebase are enabling marketers and publishers alike to create engaging content to excite users. Just try not to think about this too much when you head out for lunch today.

Kim Kardashian is Over-exposed AND Over-priced?
An AdAge article authored a few months ago on to the economics of social influence caught our eye this week. Edmund Lee covered a talk by Yahoo “Principal Research Scientist” Duncan Watts at the Ad Age Digital conference where he presented a study on whether it made more sense to spend a big chunk of money to have Kim Kardashian send your sponsored tweet or to spread a budget across a bunch of smaller, but less expensive social influencers (short answer: Kim’s not worth $10k a pop). We have no idea if his methodology was sound, and even Watts leaves the door open to being off the mark (“I’m assuming a lot of things in this model”), but it sparked a fun conversation around the TWIR water cooler: what are all the ways we are going to measure and map influence in the brave new world of social media? How could you quantify the difference between Kardashian, Shaq O’Neal, and Barack Obama, for example? The tools are likely to be crude for a while, but we have no doubt that one day we will have all the necessary knobs and dials to ensure our messages are properly harnessing the power of all sizes and kinds of social network influencers.

In the meantime, we are hoping Watts takes the next logical step in breaking the problem down – a study on why Kim Kardashian is famous in the first place.

(Somewhat Related) Be Careful of Self-Inflicted Social Media Saturation
A short MediaPost piece by Kaila Colbin covered a few good points on retaining an authentic and personal social media voice. Colbin cites how easy it is to connect and combine content from all of your different social media channels, but notes that doing so can create a lot of noise and repetition. Instead, Colbin aruges, you should be figuring out how to create a more personal experience at all of your touch points with consumers. Clearly she is preaching to the choir – we are strong advocates for resisting the urge to carpet bomb your way to results in social media. But how to actually execute still appears to be an open question.

This sounds like it could be the start of something big…
As covered by Leena Rao at TechCrunch, TWIR idol and e-commerce juggernaut Amazon.com launched their first integration with Facebook this week. Obviously this could be really powerful if done well. We’re guessing even if they happen to miss the mark this time it wont be long until we see something pretty cool using collaborative filtering across your social networks to drive better personalization.

Search Still Moving Product
Enough about social media – let’s get back to a good old fashioned “why search is great” article. Matt McGee at Search Engine Land obliges with a look at how search dominates social media in online shopping. Not many surprises here (at least to us grizzled search veterans), but the compelling data referenced serves as a reminder of the importance of search.

Nobody “Messes” with the Jesus
Since you’ve read this far here’s a fun and totally irrelevant link for all the Lebowski / Turturro fans out there (note: The Big Lebowski is a TWIR Top 5 of All Time Movie). Hat tip to @pkedrosky.

Stop B.S.-ing:
And finally we will sign off with a quote of the week from legendary communicator and trailblazing former President of the Philippines, Corzaon Aquino:

“One must be frank to be relevant.”

Amen. (And yes, we are foreign policy buffs here at TWIR too.)

Advanced or Needs Sophistication? You make the call.
In Josh Dreller’s recent piece on advanced PPC copywriting techniques, he calls out Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) as a commonly used technique for scaling great copy across a search marketing campaign. In fairness, Josh calls out potential pitfalls of this approach, but we feel that marketers can actually get into quite a bit of trouble when leveraging this approach too broadly as the below example shows – hate to kick a wounded animal when its down, but for the query “oil spill disaster” we see this ad:

Oil Spill Disaster
Stay Updated On BP’s Gulf of Mexico
Response Efforts. Learn More.
www.BP.com/GulfOfMexicoResponse

Clearly BP’s strategy to influence the flow of information surrounding the spill is a sound one, but they’d probably prefer not to echo the public’s sentiment that it truly is a “disaster.” This is just one of many DKI pitfalls – we’ll explore more in later issues.

UPDATE:

BP has now changed their ad on the term “Oil Spill Disaster” to a static Title — great move on their part, starting to understand the potential pitfalls of using DKI.

Location, Location, Location
Wired offered a piece this week on the growing momentum behind Zip+4 targeting online, which would add an incredibly powerful tool into marketers’ arsenals. However, as the amount of data available explodes, the tools and technology required to accurately message to and engage these audiences grows as well. We like the sound of that challenge!

Search Meet Social, Social Meet Search
For years we have heard the somewhat trite but always buzz-worthy phrase, “social drives search.” Finally, with the launch of the “Like” button, Facebook may actually be unlocking the true underpinnings of that phrase. The folks at Business Insider take an in depth look at Facebook’s social search aspirations, and while it is still very early, there are definitely some promising (and relevant) results driven not by crawling algorithms, but social ones.

Relevance Doesn’t Just Matter When You’re Paying
Search Engine Land published some great tips on how to use PPC Copy and relevance scores to drive SEO copy (Page Titles and Meta Descriptions). A simple reminder that relevance should drive every marketing copy decision that we make, not just the ones where there is a monetary penalty for not doing so. We also love the test and learn approach!

Start Thinking About Longer Queries
A new study from ad network Chitika provides some interesting insight into query length and its effect on SEO volume and conversion rate. We all know that query strings are getting longer as users get more sophisticated in their searching, but this study ties actual value towards optimizing meta content towards longer queries. Additionally, in the context of the above story, search engine marketers should be using results like these to help drive their campaign content.