Google, Ask & MSN Marketing UpdatesIn recent weeks, three major announcements have been made that effect e-commerce merchants. Google AdWords is changing its algorithm and the way its keyword approval process works. Additionally, both Ask Jeeves and MSN announced that they will be launching new Pay Per Click (PPC) services. As of early August 2005, the two major players competing for your search engine marketing budget have been Google AdWords and Overture/Yahoo Search Marketing. Of course there have been other players as well, the second tier search engines like FindWhat, Espotting, ePilot, Kanoodle and others. The competitive landscape appears to be leveling somewhat and, as a result, providing merchants with more places to spend their marketing budget. According to research firm eMarketer Inc., PPC or Cost Per Click (CPC) sponsored links shown along side of natural search results and other syndicated content are projected to rise 40% this year to $5.4 billion in the U.S. from $3.9 billion last year.
Google is changing its AdWords interface to no longer use the keyword statuses of normal, in trial, on hold and disabled. They are moving towards simply using active or inactive. This allows advertisers to potentially have more words in active status. More importantly, they changed the formula by which Ad Ranking is calculated from Max. CPC x CTR to Max. CPC x Quality Score. Although it is a little too early to say what exactly is included in the new Quality Score algorithm, many factors are speculated to be included: CTR again as well as Ad Copy itself, historical keywords performance, Max. CPC, the number of keywords in the Ad Group and even conversion rate data. As Google AdWords now says: "Your keywords will now either be active (triggering ads) or inactive (not triggering ads). Quality remains the most important factor in your keywords' performance. Each keyword will now have a minimum bid that is based on the quality of your keyword and ad text. If your maximum CPC doesn't meet this minimum bid, your keyword will be listed as inactive." Basically, it allows Google more leeway in deciding which ads get the top positions and rewards marketers who have better written ad copy that is more relevant. It therefore would be a good idea for marketers to focus on including keywords in their titles and copy and/or using dynamic keyword insertion. Those advertisers presenting an ad with a higher quality are regarded as having a higher quality score, thus potentially enabling them to have lower Max CPCs and yet still maintain a high Ad Rank.
Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings allows advertisers to buy, manage and optimize PPC campaigns on Ask Jeeves (Ask.com) and its advertising syndication network. Their syndication partners include MySearch, Teoma, Mamma, MyWay, Excite, CNet, Clear Channel, Motley Fool, Tickle, META SEARCH, InfoSpace, and Dogpile. According to Ask Jeeves, this accounts for a combined reach of 23.9% of all internet users. More of their demographics statistics can be found at http://sponsoredlistings.ask.com/keystats.php. Until now, Ask got its PPC listings from AdWords. That is, if you were top ranked on AdWords for a particular keyword phrase, you'd similarly be top on Ask. Now, as Ask builds its inventory of keywords bought by its own advertisers, it will continue to show AdWords results following any Ask sponsored results. The combined results will be shown bidding against one another for top positions.
Advantages of using Ask include premium placement on Ask Jeeves and its syndication network, low minimum per-bid spend and increased performance, management and reporting. As for basics in understanding how it works, for those of your familiar with AdWords and Overture, Ask follows a similar format in Title, Description and Display URL and the same number of characters for each line as Google AdWord. Again, as in the past, they have editorial guidelines that you must follow in writing your creative copy. Pricing will be set up exactly as Google AdWords was before the release of their new Quality Score algorithm. The bid model will be keyword auctions based on eCPM ranking (CPCxCTR), meaning ranking is based on a combination of your CPC for a selected keyword and the number of clicks your listing receives. Minimum bids for each keyword set will be set at $.05. Also, like AdWords, Ask will allow you to effectively manage your budget with monthly budget caps (per campaign) and daily pacing guidelines. According to Ask, there is no new system to learn, we use the same standards as other search engine providers. Also like Google's new format of simply using active and inactive, Ask uses the keyword statuses: 'Active', 'Pending', 'Canceled' and 'Rejected'. You will also be able to upload multiple listings.
As for submitting keywords, they provide two useful tools, the Keyword Pricing Tool and Recommended CPC for position. The Keyword Pricing Tool displays the cost-per-click (CPC) advertisers need to bid to appear in the top 4 positions for a given keyword and the expected monthly traffic advertisers can expect from such keyword. Enter a single keyword or multiple keywords and select "Show keyword pricing" to view the keyword prices. The "Recommend CPC for position" displays the CPC advertisers need to bid to generally appear in the top 4 positions for a given keyword on the Ask Jeeves network. For example, if the recommend CPC shows .25 in the "1" column, this means they recommend bidding .25 in order to have your listing appear in the 1st position. The recommended CPCs are based on the bids and click-through-rates (CTR) of other advertisers who have purchased the keyword.
Unique to Ask (for now) is the concept of reserve prices. For the most commercial keywords, a minimum CPC will exist based on “market intelligence” and existing Ask.com CPCs. Also unique is that it provides each campaign with a forecast of expected monthly expenses. This represents the expected value of traffic (in dollars) that will be delivered to this campaign during the month based on this campaign's traffic history. Lastly, they also offer an account representative to help manage your account if your expected monthly budget will be $5000 or more.
Noticeably absent is any mechanism for conversions tracking to help e-commerce merchants determine their ROI. Hopefully this will be included in a later release. Customers can contact Ask Jeeves parent company IAC Advertising Solutions at 877-453-3837 or via email at ListingsSupport@AskJeeves.com or visit http://sponsoredlistings.ask.com to read more or get started now.
MSN meanwhile has been rumored to have a PPC product in development for several months now. On August 3rd, the Wall Street Journal announced that MSN's long awaited product would soon be released. The new service will be known as MSN Keywords. Being the third largest search engine and just last year having broken away from Yahoo's Inktomi engine for natural search results, they have remained reliant on one of their foremost competitors, Yahoo, to supply sponsored links in the form of Overture/Yahoo Search Marketing results in their sponsored links sections.
According to Nielsen NetRatings, MSN is third in terms of search engine market share at 12 percent, behind Yahoo's 22 percent and Google's 47 percent. Of significance to note, MSN was the only major search engine to decrease in use over the first half of this year, seeing searches drop by around 6 percent. MSN has been beta testing its broader offering of search advertising products, called adCenter of which MSN Keywords is a part, in Singapore and France and will debut in the US on October 18. Initially it will only be available via an invitation-only test to 500 invitees. After that, it will be rolled out to those expressing interest in MSN adCenter as a "holiday pilot". Currently, MSN already has about 5000 advertisers who have registered with interest.
All of this has incredible significance to e-commerce merchants who want to maximize their ROI when advertising online. Track your PPC conversion from the different PPC sources and allocate your marketing budget accordingly.
