The pay-per-click environment is changing rapidly. Microsoft’s attempted acquisition bid has forced Yahoo! in to an ad-distribution deal that will see Google AdWords appearing in place of Yahoo Search Marketing ads across much of the Yahoo! network. Yahoo! was using PPC advertising delivered by Google to bolster revenues in order to push Microsoft’s bid price higher while exploring the viability of giving Google its PPC ad-space should Yahoo! wiggle away from Microsoft’s control.
Yahoo! ran a test last month in which it displayed Google-driven results beside approximately 3% of US search results. Since Google has a much larger inventory of PPC advertisers to draw from than Yahoo! does, it has a better chance of finding the right ads against keyword queries. The experiment showed that ads injected from Google’s AdWords network converted better and drove higher revenues.
The experiment has led to a short-term deal between Yahoo! and Google, one that served to derail Microsoft’s attempt to acquire Yahoo!.
The HooGoo deal, while driving up Yahoo!’s projected and real bottom line and giving it a lucrative lifeline, has attracted attention from the FTC and SEC as it potentially gives Google over 90% of the PPC market. It’s attracting our attention too.
PPC Assurance is in a unique position as one of the only independent PPC click-stream analysis providers. PPC Assurance was designed to monitor and improve PPC driven traffic and detect invalid click activity. We’ve found an enormous number of invalid clicks caused by explainable mistakes made by the search networks or within the campaign settings of PPC advertisers. We expect to see more very, very soon.
Integration of AdWords into Yahoo!’s content stream is bound to lead to a greater number of campaign placement errors, those that show your ads in areas or at times outside campaign parameters set by the advertiser. While PPC advertisers can expect to see greater traffic as the contextual relevance of pay per click ads in the Yahoo! network improves, we anticipate they will also see a larger number of misplaced ad placements leading to a greater number of invalid clicks.
How long this situation will stay in place or the depth of ad integration with Google is anybody’s guess. Though the maneuvering between Microsoft and Yahoo! appears to be over, industry watchers anticipate Ballmer might take another stab if Yahoo!’s share prices plummet as expected.
As it stands today, the acquisition attempt was unsuccessful and Yahoo! will likely pursue deepening its relationship with Google Ads; so long as the FTC and/or the SEC allow them to. A rejection from the FTC or SEC could reopen the door for a second Microsoft takeover attempt.
Whichever way the networks move in the coming months, the PPC marketing environment is going to undergo a radical makeover. Enquisite’s PPC Assurance will be measuring and monitoring traffic as it does, generating as many invalid click refund reports as necessary. Make sure your PPC campaigns are monitored, especially during this time of network integration.
Posted under PPC Assurance
1 Comment since March 11th, 2008
A lot of people focus in on how to get refunds from Google or Yahoo for Click Fraud issues. Google doesn’t always call it click fraud, they often call them invalid clicks, and when they catch “invalid clicks” they pro-actively discount your bill accordingly. They don’t catch everything, but they do try hard. Yahoo! does the same thing, but less obviously. They don’t actually show you how many invalid clicks you’ve received, they just don’t appear to bill you for every click.
In both cases there are defined processes for requesting refunds or more commonly, credits.
Completing the documentation to request a refund isn’t simple, trivial, or a speedy process, (unless you have PPC Assurance where it’s a one click process). In fact, it’s quite complicated. Rather than confusing matters by outlining processes for both Google and Yahoo!, I’ll focus on Google. They’re the 800lb gorilla which everyone cares about.
In Google’s case, to file a request for credits for clickthroughs you believe you were improperly billed for, you need to identify all the original referrals, which means figuring out which entry in your log file is the original referral, and isolating the unique Google Click ID (gclid). You then need to document everything possible about that click, as in the course of an investigation, Google’s team might ask you for a lot of data. Be prepared. They are just trying to be thorough.
One issue you’ll face is how to claim what. The obvious documentation on the web deals with “Invalid Clicks” Unfortunately, invalid clicks don’t always mean the same thing to you as they do to Google. Not all invalid clicks are Click Fraud. To you an invalid click might be a referral for an incorrect keyword match. These do happen, but you’re unlikely to notice them in a large campaign, as too many terms are flying across your screen. This type of mistake actually gets handled by a different department at Google. Challenging to navigate, that’s for sure.
It’s not that Google actually sets out to make it difficult to claim back a refund, or to get a credit for mistakes. Simply put, Google’ a big organization with responsibilities for different issues assigned to different groups. They are trying to be as efficient as possible, but these efficiencies don’t necessarily make processes simpler for you, or your clients. They simply need to be thorough.
Is it worth your while to manually track down all the errors? It depends on your cost per click, and your volume. Is it worth doing so automatically? Definitely. At a cost of 1% of campaign spend, knowing what’s going on, when things go wrong, and how to deal with them is invaluable. Knowing you can recoup more than that means the ROI is pretty simple to work out.
Posted under Analytics, Click Fraud, Enquisite Search Metrics, Google, MSN, PPC Assurance, Search Engines, Yahoo
No Comments since March 10th, 2008
For the first time, the PPC Summit is coming to Vancouver B.C. later this month. It should be a great event. I’m hoping / expecting to be there, and in that expectation, the organizers of the conference have been kind enough to extend a special offer to people who want to attend. This is a bit special, as for most people the cut-off was March 7, but here, you get the access until the 12th!
I learned from David Szetela over at Clix Marketing that someone who attended one PPC Summit showed up at a second one later and recounted how his sales had gone up over $1 Million dollars, just based on the campaign management skills he’d picked up at the conference. That’s high value.
So here goes - for the PPC Summit in Vancouver, use the promo code: ENQ and save $200 off the two-day rate, plus get your 10% discount http://www.ppcsummit.com/register-vancouver.html?ENQ. Apparently, this discount code is supposed to be good for all PPC Summits to get 10% off the two-day early bird registration. If it doesn’t work, or you have any questions, call 800.507.2958 ext.703 or email registration@ppcsummit.com
Better Pay Per Click Results in 2 Days!
Dallas, Feb 4 – 5 | Boston, Mar 3 – 4 | Vancouver, Mar 31 - Apr 1
London, Apr 14 – 15 | San Francisco, May 19 – 20 | Los Angeles, Sept TBD
Posted under Enquisite Search Metrics, PPC Assurance
I was reading yet another article the other day which referred to Click Forensic’s Click Fraud Index, and was particularly interested in their threat map, pictured below.
I’m not going to bother dealing with the numbers quoted, or commenting on which countries are more threatening, but if their threat map is real, what an easy problem this is for you to start dealing with, at least as far as Google, and Yahoo are concerned. That’s right, using their information, it’s relatively easy to minimize your exposure to Click Fraud, and to make your campaign much more effective at the same time.
How about that? Advice which won’t cost you a penny, but will save you a bundle in your PPC campaigns. The best part of it is, you’ll not just limit your exposure to Click Fraud, but you’ll also increase campaign ROI in innumerable ways.
Here’s how you go about it. If you are a retailer selling only in specific countries, why aren’t you simply geo-targeting those countries? If you only sell, or want to reach customers in the U.S., why would your campaign not have geographic parameters? Simple, isn’t it? But you can’t just simply choose U.S. only in your geo targeting. If you do that you’re simply limiting yourself to people accessing .com, .net, and .org sites. People in India (fiery red hot problem spot according to the Click Fraud Index), and Canada (a much bigger problem than the U.S., with only 10% the population), who use Google.com, or go to read businessweek.com will still see your ads. Why?
Well, if all you do is select “U.S. only” then you’re limiting your ads to anyone in the world using the U.S. default engines. Same thing if you’re running a UK only campaign, people in Argentina (another hot spot!) looking for information about the Falklands (err… Malvinas) on google.co.uk, or theregister.co.uk will see Google ads set to “UK Only.”
The good news is that it’s easy to keep those nasty Argentinian click fraudsters away from your ads, (actually I know and like quite a few Argentinians, and their wines!), so you never need to worry about them causing you grief.
The solution really is simple, go into your campaign settings, and instead of choosing “U.S. only” choose each of the 50 States, plus D.C. individually. Now you’ve just limited your campaign to people located only within the 50 States & D.C. Much better, isn’t it?
So what happens now when Google (or Yahoo or anyone else) serves out your ad to a viewer in Argentina, India, or Canada? Well, now you can go back to them, and file a claim for incorrect billings. These clickthroughs should now be labeled as “invalid”, and you should not be responsible for them. After all, if you rent a billboard in Las Vegas, and the company instead erects it in San Jose, you wouldn’t logically be required to pay would you? Same principal should apply here as well.
So, it’s really pretty easy to cut back on your exposure to potential click fraud, isn’t it?
Posted under Analytics, Click Fraud, Google, MSN, PPC Assurance, Search Engines, Yahoo
1 Comment since January 23rd, 2008
We put out a Press Release earlier today about the automated PPC refund claim submission process that we’ve added to PPC Assurance.
Apart from what’s in the release, here’s what’s notable:
Until now, if you’ve wanted to file a claim with Google or Yahoo! for an error in the way your PPC campaign executed, it was a nightmare process. You had to dig through log files, run whois and geo-lookups against IP’s, check times, etc. In short, it was virtually impossible.
PPC Assurance solves that. One click, and your PPC claim is submitted.
So why did we build it?
When advertising came to radio, a company called Arbitron emerged. They hired scores of people to listen to the radio all day, and mark down which ads ran when on which station. They compiled the data, and provided the information back to the ad networks, and advertisers. They provided an audit and verification service so that advertisers would be able to ensure that they ads they booked to run on particular stations in NYC, at certain times of day, and days of the week, ran as promised. Straightforward business best practices. Buy an ad, have a means to find out that you got what you paid for.
When advertising came to television, Nielsen offered the same service for TV advertisers as Arbitron had for radio advertisers. As with radio, the various networks cooperated with advertisers.
Independent verification is a good standard business practice. In traditional advertising, it’s been around for quite a while. But until now, it’s not been offered to Internet advertisers.
PPC Assurance fills that gap. It’s fully automated, so monitoring your campaigns is easy.
The value in an audit is in verifying what’s happening. We like to say, we help you know every click. We give you an additional benefit. It’s a bonus. Just knowing if things are fine is important. Having the ability to do something about it when things go awry is what the automated refund claim submission process is all about. Press one button, and file the claim with Google or Yahoo! They want to know when things go awry, and this is how you let them know.
In further posts we’ll examine the process after you file a claim. The engines don’t automatically just write you a cheque back, but our clients have been successful.
That’s a key point. Our clients have received money back from claims they’ve filed. We know we can help you too.
Posted under Click Fraud, Enquisite Search Metrics, Google, PPC Assurance, Search Engines, Search Metrics, Yahoo
