E-dreamz Company Blog

Google took another step towards enhancing their AdWords user interface with their new Keyword Diagnosis tool. This is a great little tool that quickly scans through all of your keywords in an account, campaign, or ad group. The tool, which is found on any keyword level page in AdWords under the "more actions" tab, checks all the selected keywords to see if they are properly displaying your ads.

If your keyword is not displaying properly the Keyword Diagnosis tool will tell you why, (unless you are like me and it says “reason: other.” I like this tool because there are lots of filtering options and you can geo target your test. It is also nice to have Google consider its advertisers for once!

I know, I know short post. But it's Friday afternoon, time to start winning the weekend!

Thanks to Brent at SEW for his post, "Google AdWords: Ad Preview Marries Ad Diagnostics" that brough this new tool to my attention.

Last year on March 25^th Google released a marketing ability called Retargeting to all Adwords accounts. I had read thru the grape vine of blogs that the beta was really successful for many advertisers who had early access. I remember seeing my retargeted ad from Zappos – it was terrible, but I saw the potential. This was a tool I’d really like to offer and push out to my clients.

At first clients and even consumers were very reluctant about how the technology worked. Google would be tracking them around the web??? Of course they’ve been tracking us since the start, but this gave some ‘physical’ presence that you were being tracked. After explaining it in more detail to the clients majority jumped on board. Nearly a year later the results have been phenomenal in multiple ways.

The first and most mentioned to me is smaller brands customers start thinking they are bigger then what they really are.  When those customers browsed to sites like Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal, and many other highly reputable websites they saw advertisements for a brand that typically couldn’t afford or even think of a Media Buy. This created instant trust and branding directly into the customer. If ‘Joe’s Apple Shears’ can advertise on they must be doing something big, right? This could potentially squash any second guesses in the customers head and get them directly to convert.

Secondly internal employees themselves start get retargeted due to the fact they visit their brand’s website and get stuck on that list. When your CEO is sipping his or her daily cup of coffee and reading the NYtimes.com and he spots his own brand glowing in the advertisement section – that’s big. Someone in marketing almost gets a raise until we explain it’s personalized to him or her. Even after the excitement of thinking everyone sees it on the site dies down there is still a lasting impression knowing that potential customers are seeing the same thing they just saw.

Another benefit is the cost. Since everything runs on the content network and typically has a lower CTR and super high impressions you don’t spend a ton. I have multiple clients with 500,000+ banner impressions via retargeting at a fraction of what a media buy would cost. Plus you know the potential consumer viewing the ad has to be somewhat targeted due to the fact they visited the clients site.

Here are some simple tips I have acquired since launch:               

1.       Place a negative on adsenseformobileapps.com(for now) – Very few people click mobile ads on purpose currently. As technology and usability grows this will change. Lifehacker had a recent public poll supporting this – Do You Ever Click On Mobile Ads On Purpose?

2.       Make multiple lists. Customer visits the Ceramic Yahtzu 1000 Apple Shear product page? Make a banner/ad specific to that product. Use your sales data/analytics to start a priority list of products or pages to make unique ads for. With this unique ad the potential customer is more likely to click and convert. Higher CTR=more impressions and conversion=money in the clients pocket.

3.       Place converting customers on a negative list – Obvious here, but often forgotten. If you sell to a customer every 5^th year then there’s no reason to keep showing them your ad. There are exceptions to this – if you’re doing it for branding or have a consumable product you might potentially keep rolling.

4.       Target specific sites – Google’s Managed placements is pretty detailed now. It shows you a rounded amount of impressions, what ads the site accepts etc, the category of the site, etc.

5.       Watch out for sites with super high CTR – typically these have ads placed too close to navigation controls or are just cheating the system. No need to give them $$ and ruin the customers experience by having them accidently click an ad.

6.       Be creative! – Remarketing itself is a very unique way for us to market. Make it fun, snazzy, and unique!  No one likes boring ads.

This morning a few of us stumbled across some big advertisers using special characters such as the checkmark and an arrow in their sitelinks.

Little shocked because I assumed this was against the TOS. It's a huge distraction to that top paid ad. Organic results are slipping away faster and faster each day!

Screen shots:

What are your thoughts/comments? Leave a reply below.

By the end of the day every Google user will see a light purple background behind the paid search results instead of the previous light yellow. The first purple backgrounds became visible to a select group back in May. It took a few months but today marks the end of light yellow and the beginning of light purple for all paid search results for the foreseeable future.

Why the sudden change after three successful years of yellow? Google’s official response is that light purple was chosen purely for aesthetics to update the look and feel of their current search results page. Google is known to be private at best so the color rumor mill has been working overtime since the Monday statement.

Eight years ago the first AdWords advertisements appeared with a light green background. Green seemed an obvious choice considering it is most associated with money. Green has also been proven to improve reading ability and is the color of nature, tranquility and health. The Google brand and lifestyle has always been that of social responsibility, employee wellness and moderation, so green seemed to be a perfect fit.

Five years later the paid search background changed to a light yellow. Yellow seemed to be based on economics for Google’s highest revenue generating product. Yellow is the most visible color in our spectrum and widely used by advertisers and sign makers to grab the attention of passing drivers and potential customers.

By the end of the day the third sponsored search color change will have been fully implemented. Like the first two colors; purple has economic implications as it represents wealth, power and royalty. Seems like a good strategy, get searches in the mindset of wealth and status while they browse ads targeted at returning an investment. Unlike the previous colors, purple has deeper meanings than greenbacks or canaries.

Purple is the primary color of the NBA Champion team, the LA Lakers. Google might not be as nerdy as we thought, using their search results to represent their native California team. They might be avid literature fans referencing the classic novel, The Color Purple, by Alice Walker.

Politically, a completely bi-partisan state is called a Purple State, equal combinations of Red (Republican) and Blue (Democrat) create the perfectly bi-partisan purple. Is Google expressing their frustrations of a split bi-partisan government? Or are they saying political cooperation is the answer to our countries’ issues.

Another theory is that absolutely no thought goes into color choice at all and they are just cycling their logo colors of blue, red, yellow and green. The only thing we know for certain is that the color choice is here to stay. So, regardless of deeper implications we better get used to the change since that is what we’ll see in search results for the next few years.