It’s a question that paid search marketers who seek better performance should ask themselves more often. And who among us doesn’t want better performance?
Unfortunately, a lot of paid search campaigns suffer from a serious keyword bidding problem that most people don’t know about because it hides deep within their campaigns.
This video below will give you the tools you need to find and fix what ails your campaigns.
In just 50 minutes you’ll learn:
- The metrics you need to watch
- What to look for in each
- Strategies to tackle the problem when you find it
Don’t let a keyword bidding problem rob you of revenue and budget.
Do You have a Keyword Bidding Problem? from OptiMine Software on Vimeo.
By now you’ve heard Mozilla’s announcement to set the cookie default to “block” in the release of Firefox 22. With the current version sitting at number 19 it may be a while, but the end is nigh for 3rd party cookies. Looking for response from the industry ADOTAS reached out to OptiMine today and asked CTO Rob Cooley what he thought the impact would be.
You can read his entire answer here, or go with the pasted text below, but the gist is that attention-based advertising has always struggled because it is difficult to place a real value on it using cookies alone. Add the explosion of multi-device usage and the change to Firefox will only only make the problem worse. So, what’s an advertiser to do? Look to impressions:
“Mozilla’s announcement reinforces the risk in relying on cookies alone to value the impact of attention-based advertising, such as display and Facebook. In addition to challenges posed by browsers (among others), cookies fall apart when it comes to tracking across multiple devices. The good news is that there are now ways to use cross-channel modeling to calculate the true value of digital advertising impressions, independent of a specific tracking mechanism such as cookies. In addition to overcoming cookie-inherent limitations, a Value Per Impression (VPI) approach provides advertisers insight into the full-funnel value of their impressions, including the perennially important – but often elusive – brand effect.” – Rob Cooley, CTO
The bottom line: Cookies are nice, but the cookies-only strategy is on life support, and Mozilla’s move to block cookies by default is just the latest nail in the cookie coffin. If you really want to know the value of attention-based advertising, VPI is the only approach.
@OptiMineInc
Google says keyword bidding is the most critical driver of paid search ROI, but to get the best financial results, you have to do it right.
Recently our own Rob Cooley, OptiMine CTO, hosted a webcast that looked at the most common keyword bidding methods, with an emphasis on how to significantly improve paid search financial results by applying the best of these:
- Rules-based Optimization
- Local Optimization
- Global Cluster-level Optimization
- Global Keyword-level Optimization
You can watch the recorded webcast below or download the presentation deck here.
Webinar: Increase Paid Search ROI Through Keyword Bidding from OptiMine Software on Vimeo.
@OptiMineInc
The Fall 2012 issue of Search Marketing Standard magazine features an article penned by OptiMine CTO Rob Cooley. “Bid Testing and Budgets – Optimizing spend without Waste” lays out the case for why bid testing is necessary for maintaining a strong paid search program:
- Normal bid maintenance is a necessity;
- Ongoing bid maintenance is key to remaining competitive, as values shift with increasing speed while search marketing opportunities continue to expand;
- Without ongoing bid maintenance through testing, businesses may find themselves overpaying for a word that has lost monetary value or being unknowingly outbid by their competitors.
Despite a reputation as a “necessary evil”, virtually all paid-search marketers engage in some level of bid testing. The key is to do it in a way that minimizes financial risk while maximizing the generation of actionable data.
Bid testing is critical to paid-search success and it pays to do it the right way.
Download and read the article
By now you know that OptiMine is exhibiting at SMX East in booth 439, demonstrating the world’s most powerful bid optimization software and giving away cash to those who stop by and spin the prize wheel. You also know that our own Rob Cooley – performance-obsessed CTO and co-founder – is presenting bid testing best practices at the Mad Scientists of PPC session on Wednesday, October 3. And that is why I write this today.
Rob penned an article on the very subject of bid testing for Search Marketing Standard. It appears in the recently published Fall 2012 issue and here as a downloadable pdf. If you are attending SMX East and plan to sit in on the Mad Scientists session October 3 at 10:45, the article will serve as a good overview of the wisdom you will hear then. If you are not planning to attend, download it anyway because it’s good reading and will give you a new understanding of the practice of bid testing and what can be learned when it’s done correctly.
If you want more than an article, you can always opt for OptiMine’s white paper on the subject. It, too, is a great resource for comparing and contrasting the three primary methods of bid testing.
Regardless of you get the information, bid testing is a serious subject and a critical practice for any paid search program. OptiMine’s materials will arm you with the information you need to understand how the different approaches can impact your campaigns.
@OptiMineInc
Hard to believe, but SMX East starts just four weeks from today. If past SMX events is any indication, this promises to be three days of power-packed, knowledge-building sessions. If you are considering going you can see the entire agenda here. One of the session you don’t want to miss sure is “The Mad Scientists of Paid Search.” Not only will you get to see OptMine’s CTO and co-founder Rob Cooley discussing the best practices for bid testing, you’ll also get to see Rob and the rest of the panel sporting really cool lab coats.
The official summary of the session is below:
The Mad Scientists Of Paid Search (#smx #21D)
It’s alive! Mwah ha ha ha! Our mad scientists emerge from their PPC labs, where they’ve been assembling keywords, bidding strategies and other assorted parts into monster PPC campaigns. Attend this session to see how they’ve successfully enhanced paid search performance with rigorous testing and trial and error. Their creations are abnormally effective!
As I mentioned above, Rob will be talking about bid testing, a practice that is critical to delivering the best financial performance for your company. That’s not a surprise, but what might be is that there are more than one way to conduct a bid-testing regimen and they are not created equal. That is the crux of what Rob will be discussing.
If you attend, here are the key takeaways Rob will leave you with:
- Understanding the important role bid testing plays in maximizing keyword and paid-search campaign financial performance
- Understand the three most common techniques for bid testing, the pros and cons of each and the impact each can have on your paid-search campaigns
- Understand the key steps involved in implementing a value-based bid-testing program
Whether you make it to Rob’s Mad Scientists session or not, you can treat yourself to our Bid Testing Best Practices white paper. It’s not the same as seeing it live and there is no lab coat, but you’ll be more knowledgeable for reading it.
If you do make it to SMX East, OptiMine will be in booth 439. Stop by to spin the wheel for a chance to win one of several cash prizes.
Great minds – individually and collectively – think alike. To prove the point one need look no farther than two very important posts published this week in two different publications. Both articles, Christmas in July: Considerations for Holiday Planning, penned by OptiMine’s own Rob Cooley, and The Dog Days Of Summer, by Vic Drabicky, offer ideas for how to make use of this “down” time between July the 4th and Holiday 2012.
The bottom line: prepare now for the inevitable.
Sure it’s hard when the mercury is still high and the cold seems so far off, but time moves fast and other things have a habit of getting in the way.
In Marketing Land, Vic writes about the complacency that hits many/most/all of us this time of year:
“Just as this complacency has hit me (and is the sole reason for my article being late), it also hits our campaigns this time of year — causing us to lose money and miss out on opportunities to move our businesses forward.”
Couldn’t agree more. There are still conversions to be had and money to be made. Gazing out the window looking for circus animals in the clouds is like writing a check to your competition.
Keep that up and come Holiday 2012, you may find a little something under the tree with best wishes from your favorite rival.
I know July will be with us for another day and a half, but that doesn’t mean paid search professionals shouldn’t begin turning their attention to the inevitable arrival of the Holiday Shopping Season. Still too hot and too soon, you say. Truth is, now is a darn good time to begin thinking about it and, to prove the point, OptiMine’s CTO, Rob Cooley, penned a piece for PPC Hero called, “Christmas in July: Considerations for Holiday Planning”.
The traditional start to holiday shopping is Black Friday, but, if you follow the Rob’s advice, you may find your online season starts earlier. At the very least, analysis of your seasonal curve may reveal increased activity in October, giving you an opportunity to capture early bird sales with appropriate keyword bidding.
With November and December being make-or-break months for so many retailers, doesn’t it make sense to do what you can to increase your odds of success? Start by reading “Christmas in July”. It’s not the final word, but it is a great first word.
@OptiMineInc
Rob Cooley, OptiMine CTO, has penned an article for Adotas. The subject, choosing the best keyword bidding method, is becoming a hot one among paid search professionals.
The bidding landscape has been evolving for a number of years. What started with rules-based approach has progressed through local optimization to global optimization. Until recently, however, global optimization was only achievable by clustering keyword data. As you move from the head into the tail conversions become fewer and aggregating the data from, potently, thousands of keywords is the only way to have enough to build reliable models.
Until recently.
Read the article to learn why individual keyword-level modeling is driving dramatic financial performance improvement for those who are using it.
OptiMine Bid Optimization Software keeps getting better with a new version that includes improved performance, usability and stronger keyword analytics. We stuffed a lot under the hood and CTO Rob Cooley only scrapes the surface in this 10 minute video on the OptiMine website.
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