Travel Adwords campaigns going north??
June 5, 2007
In recent weeks our Adwords campaign has increased in cost a fair bit. This is without any major changes to the campaigns, all of which have been running nicely and costing very similar amounts month-on-month. The conversion rate hasn’t dropped much but the cost has increased a lot!
I’m wondering what’s causing this? Has competition increased that much in the last couple of months that we should be seeing this kind of increase? Or is our agency missing a trick and not optimising the campaign to their usual effectiveness.
I’m going to deep dive the data over the next week or so to see if anything has gone awry, but I’d appreciate any insights from anyone who has any ideas or experience (especially from the travel industry) of the same?
Froogle no longer…
April 19, 2007
Google has renamed it’s Froogle price comparison product search tool to Google Product Search. The reasons are supposed to be because the brand (Froogle) never took off.
I reckon there’s more than just a name, the results from Product Search will be integrated into normal search and I’d expect to see a much broader selection of products available now. Could this be the first step towards Google launching the long awaited Troogle that the travel industry has been so scared of? I reckon Google Travel Search is only a short way off, I’d expect it to be a direct competitor for the TravelSupermarket and Kelkoo types but without the CPC costs and funded by adverts from Adwords. Integrate it with Maps and the Plus Box and it could kill the other price comparison sites off very quickly (if they wanted to).
Google Checkout launching in the UK
April 13, 2007
Google is launching it’s Checkout payment solution in the UK at last. It’s been in the US for a while and although it hasn’t taken over from PayPal it is making good headway. This has been partly helped due to the fact that they are not charging fees for merchants at the moment.
It’s an easy to use payment solution which stores your credit card details so you don’t have to retype all the time. It’s also been integrated with Adwords which is a really good move, imagine click to buy from the search results in the future, that could be a really powerful tool for advertisers!
Bid on trademark keywords? Not in Utah…
April 3, 2007
This from the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation):
A Bad Idea From Utah: A Ban on Comparative Advertising
March 30, 2007
The Utah legislature has quietly passed a dangerous law allowing trademark owners to prevent their marks from being used as keywords to generate comparative ads. If this law takes effect, a company like Chevrolet couldn’t purchase “sponsored link” space on the Google results page when a user types “Toyota” as part of a search query–at least if the latter term is registered in Utah as an “electronic registration mark.”
As Martin Schwimmer notes, Utah’s own General Counsel warned the legislature that the law was likely to be found unconstitutional given the burden it would put on interstate commerce. To comply with the law, a search engine that received a search request would have to determine whether a user was located within Utah and, if so, check the search terms against Utah’s registry of trademarks to prevent the unlawful triggering of advertising. The cost to search engines would be staggeringly high: “Literally millions of search requests from locations worldwide each day would be subject to verification of location.”
Aside from its constitutional flaws, the law is just bad public policy. It undermines the fundamental purpose of trademarks: to improve consumer access to accurate information about goods and services. Trademarks are just shorthand terms that designate the origin of a product. Comparative advertising uses those shorthand terms to provide more information about the trademarked product and competitive products. That’s why comparative trademark use is clearly protected under federal trademark law. If it weren’t, Pepsi wouldn’t be able to tell consumers that more people think Pepsi tastes better than Coke, and Apple wouldn’t be able to make fun of Microsoft on national television every night.
The good news is that, given the constitutional problems, the law is likely to be challenged in court. But it’s too bad the Utah legislature didn’t heed its own counsel’s advice and save Utah taxpayers the cost of defending this anti-consumer legislation.
Now, as far as I know Google will stop people from bidding on a trademarked term if they are notified of the fact. I have instigated this myself in the past when we’ve found someone bidding on our company name. So quite why these lawsuits are happening is beyond me, I know Yahoo etc don’t apply the same controls over trademarks but with the bulk of the paid search market poured into Google I question the point of trying to ban it (also find it hard to imagine how it could be policed purely for Utah).
Google makes it’s TV ad foray official
April 3, 2007
Google announced on Monday that it is partnering with EchoStar to sell commercials over the DISH satellite broadcaster’s 125 national programming networks, an early indicator of how the Internet giant plans to use its $10.6 billion online ad business to conquer television.
Under the deal, advertisers will use Google’s AdWords automated auction interface to bid on ad spots. Advertisers can upload their TV commercials and select the desired time of day and channel, as well as choose regional or national area coverage. They can also target the ad based on a show’s demographics.
Google also confirmed it has been testing a similar advertising effort with Astound Broadband, a small cable TV operator east of San Francisco that serves about 23,000 Concord and Walnut Creek, Calif. Astound has been testing TV ad sales with Google since the fall, the companies said. Cable set-top boxes track which programs a household watches so that targeting systems eventually could match the kinds of shows the household prefers with ads for products and services that would suit their interests.
Google seem to be becoming more about advertising than about the sharing and transfer of information. All they need to do now is buy Doubleclick, expand the TV trials to the rest of the world and get print and radio working better and they’ll be the biggest ad network on the planet!!
Google trialing cost-per-action
March 21, 2007
Google is trialing cost-per-action adverts on publishers sites in the U.S. I’ve been expecting this for some time as a natural progression for Adwords/Adsense to move to a similar model to affiliates. This will help advertisers avoid click fraud and see more of a return on investment.
More details on the trial are on the Googleblog.
Google Earth gets Adsense
February 5, 2007
Google Earth is now becoming yet another bastion of advertising in the online world. You can now view Adsense adverts attached to pushpins. Google AdWords customers can now place sponsored local ads inside Google Earth. The new feature lets advertisers place contact details and a logo on a map marker in the 3D environment.
Google emailed it’s customers saying:
‘Advertise on Google Earth
If you’ve created Local Business Ads in your AdWords accounts, they’ll now appear on Google Earth in addition to Google Maps. Advertising a hotel in Lake Louise? A neighborhood cafe in Paris? Google Earth users across the globe can zoom in on your business. Don’t forget to add a customized icon to make your ad stand out.‘
A sensible edition you might think, but as Earth is much more about leisure than actually being a tool for finding locations it may alienate some users (although I’m sure it won’t deter the majority).
Google Adwords Quality Score revealed
December 20, 2006
At last Google have published some information on their Quality Score for Adwords which is used to calculate advertisers minimum bids. Well worth a read for all you Adwords advertisers.
It does make things clearer but (of course) doesn’t give away enough to let you know how to play the system.
Google in your pocket…
December 17, 2006
News today in the Guardian that execs from Orange (the mobile company) have visited the Googleplex to discuss the possibility of a tie-up between the two companies to offer a Google based mobile phone. The idea apparently is to bring the full internet to people’s mobile phones using Google software and services as a starting point.
A collaboration of two such well recognised brands could be just what the mobile web needs to really penetrate into people’s lives.
The ‘Google Phone’ would apparently be created by HTC, a Taiwanese manufacturer of smart phones and PDA’s. It would use Google software such as the ongoing work on technology to compress data to manageable sizes for download to portable devices. Of course I’d also expect to see an integration of Google’s Adwords thrown in to the search for good measure.
As long as this effort is an open platform and not the usual walled (or semi-walled) garden approach of mobile operators to date it would be a huge leap forwards for the mobile web. Google’s been on board for a long while offering search to operators portals etc but to have them developing applications to make the mobile web more accessible and usable can only be a good thing!
