With Microsoft announcing that it no longer wishes to persue the acquisition of Yahoo, what promised to be the year’s most talked about blockbuster deal may have ended in a little more than a whimper. But… has it really ended or is it a ploy by Microsoft to wait till the Yahoo stock plunges and then rebid at a lower price?

If major newswires are to be believed, at Yahoo, Jerry Yang is most likely to face several angry share holders who believed that he should have accepted Microsoft’s offer. On his part, Jerry Yang has been quoted as saying, “with the distraction of Microsoft’s unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies on executing the most important transition in our history”. I wonder what that transition is?

From a paid search advertising perspective one only hopes that they improve their own offering instead of selling out to Google’s Adwords program. If they do decide to tie up with Google, then Google Adwords will have a virtual monopoly in the paid search advertising space and that would be quite sad.

Whatever it is that ultimately happens… the future promises to be interesting!!! 

Users using the Yahoo search engine would have noticed google ads showing up on their search engine result pages. While this has just been a test so far, rumours have it that the test has been a success and Yahoo is considering a more extensive deal with Google.

What does this mean to Google, Yahoo & paid search advertisers?

It means that the Yahoo search marketing program may take a back seat to Adwords. It will also mean that Microsoft may have to pay a little more for Yahoo considering the fact that the Yahoo balance sheet may look better with part of the Adwords revenue than it would have with the Yahoo search marketing ad.

Google has made the next logical move after pay per click and pay per call. They have now introduced pay per action. This means that you pay not when someone clicks on your ad but when someone actually completes an action defined by the advertiser. Advertisers can choose to pay when a user makes a purchase, signs up for a newsletter, or completes any other clearly defined action that they choose.

This is very similar to the affiliate marketing model, where the merchant pays a publisher only when a defined action takes place.

As always Google has gone a step further to ensure that the cost per action is automatically worked out by their system. They’ve said that advertisers should have received more than 500 conversions through CPC or CPM campaigns in prior 30 days to be eligible to participate in this pay per action program. This means that they have enough data to calculate the best performing keywords, campaigns and cost per conversion that you’re incurring.

I may be wrong, I guess there may not be a huge change in the cost incurred by an advertiser if he chooses either pay per click or pay per action, all other factors remaining equal.

Yahoo announced the rollout of a new feature that they call quality-based pricing. They claim that this is an ongoing effort to raise the value of their sponsored search and content match products.

So far all traffic for a particular keyword was billed at a certain amount. Now, with the introduction of Quality based pricing the cost per click will differ based on the quality of the websites that are providing traffic to you.

Yahoo claims that “Quality” is calculated based on conversion rates and other measurements of the ability to deliver more interested and valuable customers to you from particular distribution partner sites and discounts will be automatically applied to your account.

They also claim that cost per click should decrease. Its too early to conclude if that is going to happen… Lets wait and watch!

 

We’ve all heard that ranking in the natural results of search engines is much better than using their paid search marketing programs. It is definitely cheaper in the long run (if the organic search engine optimization is done correctly, that is) but there are occasions when a well executed PPC campaign can offer more value than organic SEO (search engine optimization).

Some instances that I can think of are -

1 - Lead generation for an upcoming event -
Organic SEO takes time to show results. You’re never going to get too much traffic if the event is in the very near future.

2 - When targeting specific niche fields -
Going in for a PPC campaign can offer you better value for money if you’re in a niche field and there is not too much competition. Off course, this will be subject to bid inflation as more n more players jump on to the bandwagon.

3 - Testing different site layouts/ product categories -
If you’re not sure if your site layout is conversion friendly or you have a new product category that you’re not sure of? Run a PPC campaign and check for conversions before investing in a full fledged SEO campaign.

These are a few situations where I would recommend a PPC campaign over an SEO campaign. Feel free to add to these situations or share your views.

Vishal.

I, often come across question regarding search marketing in India. The most common question is “how many searches are carried out in India” and “To what extent could I, as an Indian company targeting the domestic market, leverage search marketing to help me increase my bottom line”.

Today, on 7th December 2006, there was an article in The Financial Express that gives a few India-centric figures.

They say that there are 40,000 advertisers targeting Indian we users, who conduct over 1 billion searches a month. Out of this, over 300 million searches carry ads, eventually resulting in 5 million click-thrus every month.

IAMAI estimates 37 million internet users in India and a majority of them search online, making them perfect targets for search marketing.

So I guess, paid search marketing has finally come of age in India.

For those of you who often wondered why Google Adwords did not show your ads for a particular keyword, they have introduced a new feature that they say provides one-click troubleshooting for this problem.

While the magnifying glass that now appears next to the keyword in the Google Adwords dashboard provides basic information about your ad, I believe that Google needs to provide more information than just “This keyword has a low Quality Score, so the minimum bid exceeds your current maximum cost-per-click (CPC).”.

I am sure that over time the Google Adwords team will provide more information using this bubble cause this feature has the ability to make adwords campaign management easier than it is today.

Along with PPC, affiliate marketing is fast becoming one of the more popular methods of promoting businesses online. An affiliate marketing program basically consists of an affiliate and a merchant. The affiliate displays the merchant’s banners and sends visitors to the merchant’s site. In return he is paid by the merchant for every sale that is generated through the visitors sent by him.

So is affiliate marketing a better option to PPC? Well, one of the biggest differences between PPC and affiliate marketing is the action that you pay for. While you pay for every click in the PPC model, in affiliate marketing one only pays for each conversion (sale or lead generated). Hence, the merchant only pays performing affiliates and never incurs a loss as such. In PPC he has to pay for every visitor, irrespective of the final conversions.

On the flip side, setting up an affiliate program is more complicated and takes longer. Further, one needs to continuously monitor their affiliates’ performances and watch for competitors who may try to woo the affiliates away by offering a better commission.

Both, PPC and affiliate marketing have their pros and cons… While PPC can be easier to set up and manage affiliate marketing, if managed well, can lead to much better return on investment.

The title or the first line of a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ad is very important. Wouldn’t it be nice to get the keyword, which is typed by the user to be displayed as the title of your Ad? Google offers you this feature by applying the Dynamic Keyword Insertion.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion is a little known function of Google Adwords PPC service that automatically displays a searcher’s keyword as the title of your Ad.

Syntax of Dynamic Keyword Insertion

{keyword: seo india}

Here “seo india” is the default keyword which will appear in the first line of the Ad if the keyword entered by the user contains more than 25 characters. (The limit of the first line of the Ad is 25 characters)

Consider the following Ad

Let us assume the keyword list consists of:
                                           seo
                                           web marketing
                                           search engine optimization in india
                                           outsource seo

Now if a searcher types “seo” the Ad will be displayed as

Also, if a searcher types “outsource seo” then the Ad will be displayed as

But if a user types “search engine optimization in india” the Ad will be displayed as

Capitalization

Google allows you to improve the capitalization of the dynamically inserted keywords. Your use of capitalization inside the curly brackets will affect the capitalization of the keyword inserted by the searcher.

For example let the keyword under consideration be “web marketing” then

{keyword: seo india}   will display web marketing
{Keyword: seo india}   will display Web marketing
{KeyWord: seo india}   will display Web Marketing

Finally, a word of caution if you want to use Dynamic Keyword Insertion. Make sure that you check your keyword list and the Ad text thoroughly. Incase you don’t you can get Googled by Google.