Pay per click advertising is the star of today’s podcast, with Bruce Clay starting off the show reviewing recent PPC news and updates. Product Listing Ads, which provides richer product info and works on a cost per action basis, is now available to select advertisers in beta. Google has suspended its Local Listing Ad service as it analyzes feedback to improve the product in advance of a full launch. The search engine has updated and expanded the Google Advertising Professionals certification program. And the AdWords campaign management tools have been enhanced with new segmentation options and integrated performance data.

Bruce Clay, Inc. PPC analyst Jim Stratton then joins Virginia to talk about his recommendations for using broad match in AdWords campaigns. Rather than avoiding the option altogether, Jim advises constantly reviewing query reports to identify negative keywords, which help advertisers avoid paying for low-quality traffic. He also recommends tailoring ad copy to pre-qualify the search audience. Broad match also holds value as a tool for keyword discovery. They also consider the effect of broad match on campaign QualityScore.

Finally, Jim and Virginia look at an often-overlooked metric of pay per click advertising, revenue per click. Revenue per click can be calculated through a simple formula, or e-commerce companies can link their AdWords and Google Analytics accounts to have the revenue per click provided to them by Google. Along with revenue per click, Jim advises PPC marketers also look at lifetime customer value, as RPC doesn’t account for LCV — another hidden metric of pay per click.

As summer lingers in its final days, the holiday season is fast approaching. The holidays are a critical time for most retailers, and planning must be done in advance to prepare marketing and advertising campaigns aimed at reeling in holiday shoppers. Virginia and PPC analyst Jim Stratton start the show by reviewing some of his tips for seasonal PPC campaign planning. Internal historical data, buzz generation, special offers and campaign structure are examined.


Then David Szetela, CEO of Clix Marketing and host of WebmasterRadio’s PPC Rockstars, talks to Virginia about his recommendations for PPC management leading up to the holidays. Landing page development, incentives, weighing CPC against ROI, and the effect of a Microsoft-Yahoo! search partnership are topics of focus. David also explains why the partnership is advantageous for search engine marketers.


Undoubtedly, the Microsoft-Yahoo! deal signals changes for PPC professionals, so Jim and Virginia look at what aspects of search engine marketing could see the biggest change. According to Jim’s research, Microsoft’s ad platform will replace Yahoo!’s, while Yahoo! will take over ad sales for both search engines. Search engine representatives will likely shuffle around and, perhaps most significantly, advertisers may be more enticed to invest in ads on search engines other than Google.

A reputable marketing intelligence agency, Interpublic, has forecasted that search advertising will be the only major marketing channel to make gains in market size this year in its report MAGNA Media Advertising Forecast (pdf). Today’s show is about online advertising with a focus on pay per click (PPC). Bruce, Susan and Virginia start off the show with a look at some recently launched online ad opportunities, Google Affiliate Network Product Ads and Yahoo My Display Ads.

Heather Lutze is the author of The Findability Formula: The Easy, Non-Technical Approach to Search Engine Marketing. With the search advertising industry expected to grow, it’s helpful to have a plain-English resource that can help SEM students hit the ground running. Heather talks to Virginia about organizing campaigns to target consumers at various stages of the buying cycle, preparing for seasonal PPC campaigns, and some other lessons, rooted in more than a decade of experience, that Heather shares in The Findability Formula.

At Bruce Clay, Inc., SEM analyst Jim Stratton troubleshoots and manages PPC campaigns everyday. He sits down with Susan and Virginia to explain his strategy for theming keyword ad groups. By theming ad groups within campaigns, a marketer can better see the performance of individual ad groups and more easily identify areas for improvement. Siloing is a cornerstone of BCI’s SEO methodology, and a theme-aligned structure can also work for paid search campaigns.

Last month a Microsoft executive made a prediction. “From a Microsoft view, we don’t believe budgets will go up any time soon, and I’m talking the next three years,” said John Mangelaars, vice president, EMEA, consumer and online, Microsoft. In deliberating this possibility, Bruce, Susan and Virginia agree that ad budgets are still in flux, however, they’re not convinced that online ad spend will drop over the long term. Giving Mangelaars the benefit of the doubt, the hosts concede his prediction may be possible if he’s speaking about one particular online channel. To gauge the direction of online ad budgets, they take a look at a report of expected ad budgets in the next year.

Colby Atwood, president of the media research company Borrell Associates, talks to Virginia about his organization’s findings the subject. Earlier this year, Colby wrote that local online ad spending is expected to “level off and then start declining.” But it’s not because businesses are abandoning in the medium. Marketers are still very interested in the online space, but advertising isn’t the only way to reach consumers. An ad can act like an initial introduction, so once both parties know each other, introductions aren’t needed. Relationship building and keeping customers happy remain the long-term areas of focus. Another report they review is Economics of Search Advertising, which examines how the search ad sales model can be improved.

From the Economics of Search Marketing

In all of this, it’s important to look at a metric that helps search marketers make informed decisions about ad spend: a customer’s lifetime value. Bruce Clay, Inc. SEM analyst Jim Stratton talks to Susan and Virginia about analyzing the lifetime value of pay per click (PPC) customers — a metric that can help a marketer optimize their search ad budget. If you know your average customer’s lifetime value for your business, you’ll know how much you can spend on an ad that caters to him. If a customer comes to your site from a search ad and leaves happy, there’s a good chance he’ll be back in the future.

Interest-based ads made a splash last month when Google announced beta testing in AdSense and on YouTube. Christopher, Bruce and Virginia start off the show by looking at how the development affects the marketing industry. Bruce points out that privacy concerns would likely be moot if interest-based ads followed an opt-in policy rather than the opt-out policy currently in place. However, the likelihood that users would opt-in is low considering the average user doesn’t know interest-based ads exist.

David Szetela is the host of PPC Rockstars and CEO of the PPC-only agency Clix Marketing. He talks to Virginia about his thoughts on interest-based search advertising. A veteran on the conference circuit, he also explains what he does during PPC site clinics and gives listeners a preview of his presentation on black hat PPC tactics at SES New York.

David Szetela

Then Fernando Chavez, a Bruce Clay, Inc. SEO analyst since 2005, makes his debut appearance on the show. Susan, Fernando and Virginia talk about what interest-based search would look like in organic listings. Fernando explains that he wouldn’t do anything differently to cater to personalized search. Susan argues that knowing what interest categories exist could be beneficial to an SEO looking to focus their efforts.

Bruce, Susan and Virginia start off the show by taking a look at a recent FCC ruling to open the unused frequencies between television channels for use as a national broadband network. The fight to open the unused frequencies, known as “white space”, was championed by companies including Microsoft, Dell, Motorola and Google. The ability to extend broadband penetration to under-served areas of the company could help bring U.S. Internet users up to speed. In 2007, the U.S. was ranked fifth in the world as far as high speed Internet access.

Jon Kelly, president of SureHits, then talks to Virginia about managing PPC bids and the challenges faced by large companies. SureHits manages ad accounts within publisher networks as well as on search engines. He shares a number of recommendations, including those from his PubCon 2008 panel Large Scale Bid Management. He says that keyword buckets are not a good method of management because they don’t allow for the necessary level of granularity. He also talks about the three actions that should be part of any PPC campaign: calculate the click value, reward the user’s choice, and watch the campaign data.

Wrapping up the show, Michael joins Susan and Virginia to review industry news. The big news of the week was that Jerry Yang stepped down from the position of Yahoo CEO and will be returning to the position of chief Yahoo. Baidu was in the spotlight for including unlicensed pharmaceutical companies in results and possibly accepting money in return for boosted rankings. And in a popular move Gmail rolled out themes.