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Imwave Animation Explains Performance SEM and Affiliate PPC

We love talking with new potential partners at Imwave, and have found that many of these partners have the same questions.  What does Imwave do?  How can we work with you when our company does their own search campaigns, etc... 

We recently posted the following video animation that explains a lot of these questions about performance search engine marketing (affiliate ppc / affiliate search) and hope to produce another video in the near future that gets into some of the more technical details that eventually come up.

We hope you enjoy the video, please let us know what you think!

Google Taking Privacy Policies Seriously Now?

 

I've been working with a particular client for several years now doing their SEM on a performance basis.  Early this week, out of the blue, I received an email from Google with the following Subject:

    Your AdWords account: Site violation

Here is a short excerpt of the message:

We've reviewed your account and found that one of your sites is in violation of our Landing Page and Site Policies.

      Customer ID: XXX-XXX-XXXX

      Display URL: <client-url>.com

Please note that ad traffic to the above URL will be suspended and all new ads pointing to this URL will be disapproved.

This is the client's own website that has been running for years.  After reading the Google guidelines....AGAIN... I could find no reason for a site violation.

I contacted Google and was told that the "violation" was due to the lack of a "Privacy Policy."

I know that Google has always said they are in favor of Privacy Policies but I had never heard of an AdWords campaign being shut down for the lack of such a policy.

On top of that, the site in question DID have a Privacy Policy.  However, the link was not labeled "Privacy" or "Privacy Policy" it was simply labeled "Our Policy."

I was able to clear this up pretty quickly, but I thought it was interesting how seriously Google it taking Privacy Policies these days.  Perhaps this was part of some new algorithm?

Anyone heard of anything like this? 

 

 

RIP - Yahoo Search Marketing / Panama / Overture

We just got word today, that the transition from Yahoo Search Marketing to Bing is complete.  Now you can manage all your ads across Yahoo and Bing from your Microsoft AdCenter account.

This combination of a single ad serving platform gives advertisers access to 163 million unique searches and 33.8% of the US search queries on Yahoo! Search, Bing, and Partner sites all from your single AdCenter account.

Starting on Thursday 10/28/2010, Yahoo Search marketing accounts will switch to "read-only state for the next 6 months so that you can view and download your historical data.  Historical data will be available for the past 13 months only.

Yahoo is reporting that no further click charges will accrue, but have not detailed time lines for returning any pre-paid funds.  I suggest you contact your rep and request any leftover pre-paid advertising as soon as possible.

For those of us who have been advertising on the platform since the Overture days, it is with mix feelings we mark the passing of the platform that originated the pay-per-click sponsored listings in search engines.

A moment of silence please...

Now back to your normal marketing activities.  Bing...

Google Forgiveness... hard to achieve?

A few weeks ago I received an email from Google suggesting that 1 or more of the ads in an AdWords account were disapproved.  In looking at that account, I discovered that they were showing disapprovals for ads that had been deleted.

As anyone who works with Google knows, their notices can be somewhat ominous and sometimes suggest that upon any further disapproval that your account will be suspended.

Obviously concerned, I contacted them and was told that this notice was sent regarding ads that were disapproved in 2007.  

Now, I'm no rocket scientist, but I think it's now 2009…almost 2010?  Why in the world would I be getting this email for ads that had been disapproved 2 + years ago?

I dig further......

So these ads were in fact disapproved in 2007, and paused, where they sat until May 2009.  In May 2009, they were deleted (well at least the best delete you can do in AdWords).

So here it is 5 months later and the ads were: paused 2 years ago, DELETED 5 months ago....why in the world would the policy team even be looking at these in a review process?  They are gone, deleted, not active.  Well here is the response I got:

…Thank you for your email. I understand that you are concerned about deleted ads resulting in a policy warning. Please be assured that our policy team and I understand completely that the ads from 2007 that violated policies were later deleted.

Our policy team reviews accounts based on past disapprovals: the fact that you paused and deleted the ads from 2007 does not erase the fact that the ads were submitted and violated policies in 2007.

If our policy team did not look at all disapprovals, and only looked at undeleted disapproved ads, then it would create a situation where advertisers could violate policies and effectively delete the fact that they violated any policies.

Our policy team will look at the full history of an account when issuing suspension warnings as well. The fact that two years have elapsed since the violation does not remove the policy violation from our policy team's consideration….

Never mind, that this was 2 years ago,

Never mind that the ads have since been deleted

Never mind that there have not been not other since then

Apparently any disapproval you may received, just sits out there…forever and at any time, paused, deleted or not, you can be forced to pay for past sins. 

Broad Match Can Cause Unintentional Trademark Abuse

Lori Weiman does a good job laying out an important issue that many search markerters have fallen trap to in her blog post on Search Engine Land called "Does Auto-Matching Cause Unintentional Trademark Abuse?"

"Google and Yahoo, by way of the auto-matching feature, can show your ads on keywords that you did not intend to sponsor."

At imwave we have run into this a number of times.  With Google they will take your broad match terms and display the ads on competitive trademarks you didn't ask for or know they were going to choose.  Running a broad match term like "sneakers" doesn't mean you will only show up under terms like "basketball sneakers" and "tennis sneakers", but they may match your ad up to shoes, boots, sandals, or terms like nike, adidas, etc...  At Yahoo the situation gets even worse!  Not only will they start displaying your ad under these brand terms, they will actually sometimes adjust your ad copy (without telling you) to include these keywords in headlines so that they get higher click through rates!!!  This can be very annoying when you have agreed to follow strict brand guidelines, and then Yahoo decides they know better!

What is the solution?  You can stop running broad and advanced matching, but that is going to leave A LOT of opportunity on the table.  The only other solution I know of is to work with your clients to establish a good list of negative keywords that you know you don't want your ads to appear on.

I'd love to hear your experiences with this issue.

ExitJunction - A Great Way to Kill your PPC Search Campaigns

I got some spam this morning from a new company called ExitJunction offering to pay you to show invisable ads on your website.  When visitors come to your site from a search engine, they will hijack the back button and show ads when the visitors try to click back to the search engine.

One of google's rules for PPC search is that the back button must bring the visitor back to the search page, so there goes any PPC ads you are running with Google, I am not sure if the other search engines demand the same.

If they are checking that for PPC, they might be checking that for SEO as well, so you might just kill all your search traffic to your site.

What a bargain!

Ask.com's Click Fraud Settlement Coupon Code

So ASK as finally settled their click fraud case, and we got a whopping $12.13 back as a coupon code, the only catch is you have to apply the coupon as a credit against the purchase of at least 2 times that amount in advertising.

"Your advertising coupon may be applied to up to 50% of the cost of online advertising purchased from Ask."

With no plans to advertise on ASK again in the near future, I have a $12.13 coupon code up for grabs.  Anyone still advertising on ASK????

Leave a comment below requesting the coupon code and it's yours.

What will happen to Yahoo?

The battle over Yahoo has been heating up!  This report from Fortune Magazine indicates that Yahoo is in advanced talks with Time Warner to merge with AOL.  In this deal Yahoo would also take on some cash and buy back some of their stock to prevent a Microsoft hostile take over.

The article additionally talks about Yahoo testing running Google ads...

"Yahoo is also looking at a possible advertising deal with Google (GOOG). Just hours before the news leaked of Yahoo’s advanced talks with AOL, the Internet portal announced that it would run a preliminary two-week test to run Google’s search advertising."

Wow, the various ways this deal might go down are mind boggling.

I think this industry would be a lot better if we had a stronger competitor to Google.  A Yahoo / Microsoft merger, or even a Yahoo / AOL merger would be ok, but I don't think the market place looks good of all of Yahoo's traffic is monetized by Google ads.  Sure this might simplify the ad buying process, but Google is a moving target, and I don't think we all want to be more beholden to one source of traffic and revenues.

Personally, I would like to see Yahoo and AOL merge, and then see Microsoft buy them, that would increase the traffic and make make an interesting ad buying opportunity and alternative to Google ads.

5% Cash Back on Yahoo Search Marketing!

Do you run PPC ads on Yahoo Search Marketing?

I just looked at my AMEX bill, and now when you spend money on Yahoo Search Marketing, or on other Yahoo Small Business services, American Express will give you 5% cash back (up to $500 per card).

Not too bad, I have been putting a bunch of our Yahoo ads on Visa, no longer!

Ask.com Exits the Search Engine Space

I guess you don't have to worry about running PPC search ads on ASK.com anymore.  CNN is reporting that ASK.com will no longer be a search engine, and will instead focus on women looking for help managing their lives with a focus on finding answers to the basic questions about recipes, hobbies, children's homework, entertainment and health.

That had to be a hard decision for Barry Diller of InterActiveCorp who bought Ask and its affiliated Web sites for $2.3 billion in 2005.  That will be quite the write-off after spending so much on improving the search engine and buying TV ads to promote it.

Farewell ASk.com, farewell Ask Monkeys:

Will this be a trend in the search engine space?

Part of me still feels like this is some kind of hoax story that got picked up by CNN. Tony first told me about this story the other day from this site, and I didn't believe him.  The Ask.com site still looks like a Search engine to me.  Stay Tuned...