Tag Archive for: pay per click

An Update on Recent Vantage Life

This past month has been, despite a few spots of rain, a beautiful July in Vancouver. The team at Vantage Search Marketing is happy to report that the weather has improved overall company efficiency. We’ve never been working harder or more happily! Okay, maybe we’ve wanted to get out a bit more than usual and the sun-baked lunch’s outside might have slowed us down just a tad, but we’re definitely happier!

A New Hire

With all that happiness, good weather, and very good work being done (yes, very), Vantage has decided to add an additional staff member! Maybe the sun’s doing funny things to our heads, or we’re making progress. Either way, Vantage is jumping with anticipation at the prospect. We’ve already received multiple strong and interesting applicants.

Who will join the prolific sun enthusiasts that make up the Vantage team? If you’re interested and think you’ve got what it takes, then have a look here.VANTAGESM Logo

Worthwile Information

In other news, Vantage has also found some worthwhile information to share. We’ve been keeping our arms open to new ideas and, in this case, to the reinforcement of old ones. We read this informative post on the value of the frequency & reach report AdWords offers. It was written on SearchEngineLand.com It’s a good briefing on how to learn when or if you should be setting a frequency cap on your advertising. We thought it was worth a share. image for AdWords frequency

What Paid Search Should be Aware of This Year

Another important post we’d like to share is this one, also from the aforementioned site – good job Search Engine Land, you’re keeping us coming back for more. This article is a nice informational recap, it provides some insights into the developments of 2014 that paid search advertisers should be aware of. The most interesting, and possibly the most important has been the Shopping Campaign updates that AdWords is replacing PLA campaigns with. This revamp has made product listing advertisements somewhat simpler and easier to handle. It was a bit awkward having to set up everything in the online interface for these bad boys. Thankfully, that’s been solved too and Shopping Campaigns are supported by the Editor now.

top 10 paid search developments

 

Computer Education

And finally, Vantage made sure to share this educational video on the benefits of computers in the modern era. It’s either educational or a representation of our capabilities at the end of a Friday.

sesame street computOR

Compu-TOR

Vantage hopes everyone enjoys the sun as much as we do, and encourages fellow and aspiring search advertisers to keep on learning and laughing!

 

Written by Michael Pendreigh.

 

 

Social Conscious Internet Marketing

As an internet marketing company in Vancouver, you don’t often come across a project that actually tries to make the world a better place, but I think I have found one. Sumaq Rugs is a company based in Vancouver that sells custom alpaca rugs from Peru. The thing that makes them unique is that the rugs are made the traditional way by using looms and 5% of every sale goes directly back into the weavers community.

When I talked to the owner’s Collis Verdicchio and Derek Beech, I asked them how they work the logistics of finding these families. They said that it was difficult finding Peruvian families with looms because only the wealthier families could afford them. There are no large manufacture plants for these rugs to be produced in, as they are all produced in family run workshops. Sumaq’s program is designed to increase the number of looms in each village. However, this would seem like a good business investment if it wasn’t for the fact that they pay “living wages”. This means that all the weavers are paid fare prices which allows them to provide for their families.

Another factor that makes this program a real success is the fact that it allows families to stay together. If these weavers didn’t have their own workshops they would be forced to leave their families and work at low paying manufacturing jobs in the large cities.

Getting back to the internet marketing side of things, for this project we are pushing social media, article submissions  with a small PPC campaign to try to get the word out about this awesome socially conscious company. I have only just begun on this project but I will keep everyone posted on their progress.

Google Display Network

The Google Display Network, formally known as the Content Network, will separate the men from the boys when it comes to managing PPC. Honestly there is no easy way to do well on the display network other than test and spend money. I have spoken to a few pay per click gurus lately and they have admitted that you have to set high CPCs to break in and get impressions.

Here are the best practices for setting up a display network account:

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Google Instant and its Effects on Adwords

So Google is changing up the search game by giving you instant results (or so they claim). This is how it works, when you start to type in a search query the search results will change right before you eyes. The idea is that you will only have to partially type in a query and Google will predict what you are looking for. This feature will probably be tied into your search history, in the near future, which will make the predictive nature even smarter and more useful.

I find it funny that Google thinks that someone would spend 30-90 seconds to type in a search query and that was their reason for the innovation. See their page on Google instant.

Any ways lets look at how this will impact Pay Per Click advertising. I was very nervous when I first heard that Google was going to show numerous search results for a single search result. This could really hurt your quality score and drive up costs. But Google has spelled it out that it shouldn’t effect your PPC campaigns at all, which is a relief.

The following is from the Adwords Help:

New predicted query

Although Google Instant won’t change the way ads are served, ads and search results will now be shown for a new “predicted query.” For example, if someone types “flow” into Google, an algorithm predicts that the user is searching for “flowers” (the predicted query) and therefore displays search listings and ads for flowers. Those results will continue to show unless the next letters that the user types lead to a different predicted query.

How impressions are counted

When someone searches using Google Instant, ad impressions are counted in these situations:

  • The user begins to type a query on Google and clicks anywhere on the page (a search result, an ad, a spell correction, a related search).
  • The user chooses a particular query by clicking the Search button, pressing Enter, or selecting one of the predicted queries.
  • The user stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of three seconds.”