Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2005 Sessions

SES Chicago 2005 Session : Dealing with Contextual & Other Non-Search Ads

I finally made it Chicago – and it’s snowing! It’s really beautiful, but freezing cold. I’ll be blogging the sessions that I attend at Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2005. Here’s my blog for the first session:

Dealing with Contextual & Other Non-Search Ads

Moderator: Andrew Goodman

Speakers:

Brad Byrd, NewGate
Barry Chu, Yahoo! Search Marketing
Andrew Goodman, Page Zero Media Inc.
Peter Hershberg, Reprise Media
Hillary Hoover Keller, Google, Inc.

The session kicked off with a presentation from Peter Hershberg – here are some notes from his slides:

What is contextual advertising? Peter shows an example of a contextual advert from Google (if you look at the top of this page, you will see a lone advert, powered by Google, which should be contextual to this page).

Benefits for Networks:

Contextual advertising allows networks like Google to access more users than their existing search programs will offer.

Benefits for Publishers:

Ability to monetize their pageviews by showing relevant advertising

Benefits for Advertisers:

Greater reach & more branding opportunities.

Contextual advertising in the past was sold as Search, which was an initially flawed model, piloted largely by Google. In the past, and up until recently, engines made the following errors, de facto:

Campaigns were linked to Search in the system
One bid price for both contextual and search – even though there are different conversion rates.
One single creative message targeting both search & contextual advertising, did not allow advertisers to differentiate and split the demographic.
There was no differentiation in tracking results.
You could not be selective within the contextual network.

As Peter put it, “a lot of heavy lifting” was required by the advertiser to make the contextual work. From his views, Google abused their dominant position and not make the changes to enable smart advertiser to use content. I agree with him on this point, and he had some nice slides relating to what advertisers asked for and what Google delivered, for example differentiated pricing, was fulfilled (and poorly) by Smart Pricing.

In 2005, Yahoo made their move into the space and Google countered by delivering on some of the requests made.

Evolution of the channel (what is currently available):

Place separate bids per AdGroup
Track separate at an AdGroup level
Choose sites you’ll run on and advertisers can now buy Adwords directly from sites in the network.
Pay a CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) and build you own custom network.

Peter believes strongly that Yahoo has been the main catalyst for these changes and the sleeping giant, MSN, is going to raise the bar to advertisers.

What’s next for contextual?

Better targeting (in particular, MSN), for demographics & behavioral targeting.
Better specialization – the engines are beginning to recognize the fact that contextual & search are decidedly different.
Improved Distribution – RSS, Podcasting, Videocasting, Google Print, etc.

That was Peter Hershberg’s piece. The next presenter is Andrew Goodman.

Contextual Advertising Update

Andrew did a brief overview of contextual, similar to Peter.
He suggests that you break your keywords down into very precise groups for contextual traffic. Andrew also shows the keyword tail of search, where there are very few keywords in a category with 2/3 terms in the phrase, but a lot more traffic on 5-6 keyword phrases, due to the variations.

Andrew also shows some stats from one of his campaigns, and the numbers do not look great. Contentextual accounts for 16.5% of clicks, 6.2% of spend but only 4.4% of their revenue – not great stats.

He also mentioned that Google drops the site targeting minimum bid – but again, not a great strategy to pay CPM, in my opinion.

Who’s better of targeting, computers or humans?

The most successful content matching programs are doing so not because you choose where to place ads, but because a computer does.

To be successful:

Be granular, precise, and bid separately
Use site exclude features where available
Be proactive on suspected click fraud
Bow out if you need direct response, consider graphical ads for better targeting.

Next up is Brad Byrd with Optimisation Strategies for Google Adwords Contextual adverts.

1. Overview of How AdSense Works
a. Google matching process is about matching themes with adverts
b. The goal is construct an ad group with an inherent theme

2. The Basics of Campaign Creation
a. Separate Content and Search Campaigns
b. You can opt-in or opt-out of content distribution during campaign setup, or by editing your campaign-level setting
c. Don’t just duplicate your search campaigns as poor contextual campaigns bundle diverse keywords into a single AdGroup.
d. While duplicating your search campaigns as content campaigns may be easiest, it’s not ideal.
e. Create smaller AdGroups around consistent themes.
i. Build smaller AdGroups, with keywords grouped by similar concepts
ii. Ensure thematic consistency between keywords and the ad copy.
f. Track your Content Campaigns uniquely
i. Use different tracking URLs for each keyword, distinct from URLs used for the same keywords in you “search” campaigns
ii. Define a unique tracking URL as the “default” URL for your content AdGroups – don’t share it with other groups or ads.
g. Use “Fast Track” (aka “ValueTrack”) tags for all your URLs, to learn more about your traffic:
i. {ifsearch:x}{ifcontent:y}; identify search/content clicks
ii. {creative}:identify which creative was used
iii. {placement}:identify which website generated the click
3. A few words about Google Reporting
a. AdGroup reports do not report on content clickthroughs by individual keywords, in either the campaign management interface or the reporting section; aggregates only.
b. AdSense does however send clickthroughs to a specific URL
c. The URL report does NOT report sending traffic to these URLs. Instead, traffic is reported against the default URL assigned to the AdGroup.
4. Bid Management Basics
a. Per keyword CPC prices are only a reflection of search related price distribution
b. Default bids are just that: default. Set content bids if you plan on having both Search & Content bids together – then default bids will apply to search, and content bids will apply to content.
c. To simplify content campaigns, manage bids at the AdGroup level.
5. Campaign Refinement and Optimization
a. Don’t use dynamic keyword insertion
b. Use the site exclusion tool to improve ROI and targeting.
c. It works on a domain, sub-domain, or directories only – not specific pages. Use your internal reporting, and the {placement} tag, to identify sites and evaluate conversion metrics.

A good session and Barry Chu from Yahoo! Marketing now takes over with a very brief overview from Yahoo.

Yahoo’s approach is around quality distribution, coupled with advanced algorithms, and editorial oversight. Yahoo also offers Ads in RSS, and are testing this out with some Beta publishers, such as Search Engine Roundtable.

Hillary Hoover Keller from Google now takes the floor.

She starts off with the Consumer’s Decision & Purchase Cycle. The growth of Search since 2000 is no longer a secret. Search is incredibly effective at the instant consumers that are ready to buy. The growth of contextual is driven by marketers’ needs and desires to the target consumers who are still in the research phase of the buy cycle. She emphasizes Google’s reach of 80% of users.

Smart Pricing – Performance Update

This slide uses 3rd party data from Atlas, which contradicts what Peter said earlier (and I still agree with Peter). I wish I had my camera, but alas, I can’t show you the slide – maybe I can get a copy of it later.

Site Targeting:

Target by affinities – Reach your target audience by only showing your ad on the specific sites they care about.

Flexible Bidding Options & Dynamic Pricing (finally) – CPM bidding and automatic discounting.

Content Bidding

Content Campaigns – AdWords ads that will only run on the content network.

Content Bidding Controls – The new controls that are available for the interface.

Ok – that’s it for this session – I’m going to put my laptop down so that I can give them some hard questions!!

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