As well as being time consuming, a strategy that works one day can fail the next.

This is why so-called ‘experts’ such as myself have a job optimising and analysing masses of data, trying to recognise changes before they occur.

One of the most challenging aspects to deal with when running a PPC campaign is trying to recognise seasonality trends. One of the hardest industries to recognise such trends in detail, is the travel industry.

Working alongside various travel organisations, it’s interesting to see they have years or even decades of data, collected to formulate their marketing plans. With that said, it’s really no surprise that Google spent $700 million dollars on Travel data aggregator ITA software INC.

On a basic level, if a travel company focus’ on selling holidays to summer destinations, then you could think seasonality is easy. People want to go away during the summer months, so your peak months for sales are going to be during the spring and the months running up to the summer.

However, from past experience, there is also a massive peak of interest in January this can be seen with any search using ‘Insights for Search’ for travel related keywords.

Studies also show that people are more likely to make travel purchases on a Monday or Tuesday. Day parting so all your money isn’t spent on the weekend can therefore, massively help with this.

The travel industry is also one of the main industries where people do not make impulse purchases. On average, 40% of online holiday transactions are made on a different day to when a user initially conducted a search. Industry averages show that a user could actually visit your site twice before making a purchase.

When running reports and attempting to analyse data for clients, this is a huge factor. There have been several times where I have formulated a strategy based on the previous month’s data, only to run the same report, a few weeks later, and discover that the conversion data looks like a completely different set of results!

Why? Well it can take up to 29 days between the first time someone searches for a holiday, to when they actually make a transaction. So, if a user visited a client’s site in January, but didn’t make a purchase until February, conversion tracking would assign the conversion figure and value back to January’s data.

So what does the future hold?

Search is always going to be one of the fastest moving industries in terms of development. In 2010 alone we saw the launch of Google Instant, Google Previews, the revamp of Google Places and the start of meta-search functionality with live pricing.

With the introduction of a number of great new features such as remarketing functionalities, Google has enabled advertisers to target users in an even more direct way on the Display Network.

With industry studies showing that up to 95% of users are only on your site to ‘browse’, Re targeting allows you to make highly targeted ads that can appear when that user is looking at another, completely unrelated site. Seeing an ad from a familiar site that they have already visited has been shown to increase the chance of a user making a purchase by up to 70 percent. What makes this statistic even more important is that 50% of these retargeted users have then spent MORE than they initially would have* (study carried out by Criterio, 2010).

As already stated, search is changing. More and more of my clients hear the word ‘Social’ and realise that they are missing out on potential market share that their competitors could be taking advantage of. Many remember when they first started seeing their competitors appearing in the Sponsored Listing search results back in the early 2000’s and don’t want to get that same feeling again!

Although, on its own, Social Media is never going to be enough to generate sufficient sales, the fact that the travel industry relies so heavily on recommendations and user experience (as do all industries), makes it a marketing practice that can’t be ignored. With the advent of ‘Social Search’ (such as Google’s + 1), which allows users to directly influence their friends search results, times are definitely changing!

We also can’t ignore the importance of mobile devices in the travel industry. ‘Mobile Consumer Trends’ predicts that, in 2012, there will be more than 25 million mobile internet users (aged 18-64 years) in the UK. In my experience, it has only been until recently that the clients I have worked with have begun to understand the importance of having fully rendered ads that appear across ALL mobile operating systems.

One statistic that usually peaks interest for those still unsure of optimising their websites for Mobile, is that of July 2010; 11 percent of those that go online through their Smartphone, have made a purchase. You may also be interested to know that research has found that Mobile traffic reaches its highest levels during lunch breaks (1- 3pm), and just after work when people commute home. From my experience, when adjusting mobile bids to be more competitive during these times of the day, we have seen significant increases in conversions.

This is only a blog, so it’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to analysing how seasonality can affect a campaign. There are a huge number of other factors that can come into play such as competition, pricing, and even changes to airline tax that can affect those in the travel industry.

When running a display campaign, first you build it; then Google recommend the following:

‘’Leave it alone, let it run for two weeks with a decent budget so you can determine where the most suitable traffic will come from’’

Make sense, but being the cynic I also think that means:

‘’Let it run for as long as possible on with as much budget as possible, and DONT alter it.. Then we can take as much media spend on irrelevant sites as possible – No questions asked!’’

Once the GDN campaign has run for its 2 week ‘introductory’ period, the next process is to have a look at which sites on the network generated the most bang for your buck – i.e. the most conversions.

Once these are identified, add them to ‘Managed Placements’ and ensure the GDN campaign is running on ONLY Managed Placements in the Network settings tab.

Great in theory, but how do we determine which sites across the network have performed well and should be kept? The most obvious way if you have conversion tracking is to see which site generated the most conversions – Any sites without a conversion get deleted.

Simply tracking number of conversions and using that as a measuring stick to determine the effectiveness of a site is pretty basic. Of course, you’re going to want to know what sort of revenue those conversions have generated; Especially when working with clients with very specific Profit Margins.

And here lies the problem; Using the MCC, we are only able to see the Total Revenue generated from a GDN campaign, NOT the revenue generated per site.

That’s great if we want to know if a GDN campaign is effective (i.e. profitable), however, we literally have no idea using the MCC which sites on the Network are responsible for that profit.

Without going into detail, one of my clients had 12 conversions in a week period on one particular site – looks fantastic, until we eventually found trawling through analytics that the 12 conversions had generated a smaller revenue than media spend on that site. Luckily the rest of the GDN campaign had performed well!

Since this happened, I’ve spoken to Google’s own Display Network team and no one there knows why the Revenue per site/placement is not available? They gave me the company line of ‘we are making changes all the time’ – which I pretty much read as ‘can you get off the line so I can speak to people who want to spend money with us, not poke holes in our platform’.

So if Google do eventually allow revenue per placement available on the MCC, you now know where they got the idea from!!

Firstly we need to address what the competitive factors are between Google and Facebook. Yes Facebook now has more overall web traffic than Google in the UK but people use the 2 platforms for different activities.

People use Google to search for information, products, news, services, addresses, images, videos and more. Where as Facebook is a social networking platform used to communicate and engage with friends, family and communities who share your interests.

Therefore how can we start to compare Google to Facebook and suggest that Facebook have stolen Google’s top spot?

We need to understand what this means? A more pertinent question on this for me is that Facebook are becoming, if they are not already, a bigger brand than Google? With this comes power within the market and they are able to influence advertisers and users to engage with them over and above other platforms.

Facebook currently has 59% of the social network market in the UK (StatCounter)

In regards to search Google has 92% share (according to StatCounter) and completely dominates the UK market.

These figures clearly show the domination of the Facebook and Google within Search and Social media and both have different offerings however as advertisers we are looking for the online platforms which will allow us to generate the best results. Google offers tools and reporting which are far superior currently to the Facebook reporting, but Facebook in comparison is in its infancy. There are more and more examples of how Facebook can generate ROI and cost effective results for business so maybe this is where Google needs to be cautious. Can Facebook start to win bigger budgets and steal some of Google’s ad revenue?

Once the likes of Twitter and Facebook have a more established advertising platform for agencies and advertisers to manage and report on they could defiantly become a threat. Something I am sure Google has a close eye on.

Like the Super Bowl every year, where the ad business is as talked about as much as the event itself, major sporting occasions tend to draw the largest budgets from major advertisers out the best work from those responsible for putting the ads together.

Now, with the 2010 World Cup now upon us, there are a number of great commercials which have become incredibly popular on YouTube. Let’s look at a couple.

Nike Football: Write the Future

Uploaded: May 17th, 2010
Views to date: 15,576,055

adidas Originals – Star Wars™ Cantina 2010

Uploaded: June 4th, 2010
Views to date: 3,297,285

To be honest, I don’t know too much about how the success or failure of traditional TV commercials are judged, however my feeling is that the extent of how they are shared and distributed across the web is certainly becoming a factor.

This process has now changed and now all Google professionals must have passed the Adwords Fundamentals exam plus one of three advanced exams.

• The Google Advertising Fundamentals Exam covers the most basic aspects of AdWords and online advertising, including account management and the value of search advertising.
• The Search Advertising Advanced Exam covers intermediate-to-advanced best practices for managing AdWords campaigns.
• The Display Advertising Exam covers intermediate-to-advanced best practices for advertising on YouTube and the Google Content Network.
• The Reporting & Analysis Advanced Exam covers intermediate-to-advanced best practices for maximizing account performance using Google Analytics, Website Optimizer, the AdWords Report Center, and other analysis techniques.

Find out how the new criteria differs from the old legacy certification
https://adwords.google.com/support/select/professionals/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=176294

The exams apparently have been designed to assess the understanding of an individual rather than the regurgitation of information they have read. Essentially trying to establish whether an individual can actually manage and understand fully a Google AdWords account as well as have a strong knowledge of the available tools and how they can help provide advertisers with a good service.

Having worked in Search Marketing before Google AdWords even existed I have had to sit their GAP exams every 2 years in order to keep my profile as an individual up to date. Now having to sit at least 2 exams both consisting of 2 hours of multiple choice questions I can say was quite a painful process!

There have been several changes made to the exam process which have been an improvement including a simpler format, better review process as well as being given slightly more time to answer all the questions. However the pass rates are higher and the structure of the questions is extremely similar to the old exam. It didn’t seem to me to be any different in trying to assess those who run campaign to those who have just read the learning center training notes and help.

The second exam incorporated much of the first yet at a slightly more in depth level. Most of the challenge was to understand where they are trying to catch you out in the question rather than testing your knowledge. Anyway I soldiered through to complete my 4 hours in total of multiple choice questions with a sense of relief and ended with 2 exams an AdWords Qualified Individual certification, a pair of very sore eyes and the need for a stiff drink!

Overall I am pleased to see that Google are raising the bar for agencies and AdWords professionals and I feel the new certified partner scheme is beneficial for advertisers looking for a partner. However whether I agree with the process and exam questions through this whole process I will have to reserve judgment for now.

1. Keep the number of keywords per ad group to a minimum. If you have more than 20 keywords in one ad group, this should be reviewed. All keywords in an ad group should be very similar. By taking this approach, you will be able to make your ad copy as relevant as possible to the users search.

2. Experiment. Success in paid search can only be optimized by testing and analyzing results. Make sure that you run multiple ads per ad group and remove those that perform poorly. Since a major component of quality score is click through rate (CTR), poorly performing ads will drag it down. This also applies to keywords, so use negatives and consider dropping keywords that do not generate clicks.

3. Use Keyword in headline AND body of ads. Providing that it makes sense, this is something worth employing. Make sure that the ad copy does not look spammy. This approach also provides the additional benefit of more of the ad being shown in bold type and therefore more eye-catching.

4. Landing Page Relevance. Make sure that when a user clicks on your ad that they are taken to the most relevant page on your site, even if it’s not the home page. In an time when humans are bombarded with more information and white noise than ever before, it is important that the page that the searcher is taken to is the answer to their question, or solution to their problem. People do, or should not tolerate having to spend time searching when they do not have to.

5. Landing Page content. To take landing pages a step further, If possible, make sure that the keyword is mentioned in the page heading, the main body of text (in context) and even in the URL after the domain name).

Let us know how you get along!

Key points

• The correlation between brand awareness and search efficacy;
• How search engines are changing consumer behavior;

These initial finding are split into 2 distinctive groups and show that user profile and Search Engine loyalty delivers different results.

1. The demographic and psychographic profile of each loyal search engine user is different. Bing users, for example, tend to be mostly from the tip of the adoption curve (innovators and early adopters) where Yahoo! and Google’s passengers tend to be middle majority.

2. Each search engine delivers a different result, whether paid for or earned. In the brands and vertical categories studied (automotive, travel, retail, and wireless), each search engine demonstrated different degrees of consumer engagement ranging from visiting to finally purchasing.

The research finds that the search experience on different search engines yields different results, with some being more relevant to the consumer than others. This, according to the research, contributes to overall customer and brand awareness. If the results of the search satisfy the needs of the consumer, then the search engine has greater appeal to that potential customer and he or she will have a deeper connection to the brand and the search engine. Therefore, the research indicates, search engines provide different degrees of a “brand lift” to the destination site.

See the original release here: http://bit.ly/bRYuyN

Times have certainly changed and though the route to market may be blurred at times, what is clear is that the mobile space is one in witch Microsoft must show more urgency.

Having been slow on the take up and growth of the internet, the Seattle based company doesn’t want to be seen to be napping and has pulled the stops out on interesting and dare I say engaging advert that is currently doing the rounds in the US.

The most interesting element of the spot is the inclusion Microsoft has made of all the various brands it once saw as a rival. This, to me, sees the company maturing to the brave new world of collaborative engagement and giving the customer what ‘they’ want as well as endearing Microsoft to its existing user base a little more.

Advertising aside, Microsoft have a big mountain to climb with most phone manufactures going with the more popular mobile OS systems out there. Symbian, Android, iPhone and Blackberry platforms will make sure that Microsoft’s ad agency has its work cut out

As the company from Mountain View looks to start offering a wider array of services to compliment its search advertising business, the need for a dedicated marketer to position the brand into new waters is a sensible move as well as showing maturity by a company that many still see as a young gun.

Torsten Schuppe joings Google from from online auction company Ebay which he started at in February 2006 as head of internet marketing. Torsten’s role will November and his responsibilities will span marketing of the search business, Apps, Chrome and possibly other Google products recently launched.

See more at: http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/News/MostEmailed/943513/eBay-marketing-director-Torsten-Schuppe-joins-Google-UK-role/

The company has launched a campaign for its 1969 premium ‘Born to Fit’ jeans range with the centre piece being a Facebook fan page as part of its push to promote its reinvented line of jeans.

Quite ironic that the brand has chosen to use what is probably the newest ad platform for something that came out back in the 60’s. The times, they are certainly a changin’…