“You’re underthinking, dude”:Getting beyond the basics inPPC

SES Chicago OCTOBER 2010ANDREW GOODMAN

Outline:

1. Brain stuff2. Advanced ad testing3. New features4. New formats

Smart vs. rational

Why Smart People Can HaveStupid AdWords Accounts

“In effect, all animals are under stringent selection pressure to be as stupid as they can get away with.”Richerson & Boyd, Not by Genes Alone, 2005

Dysrationalia – term coined by Keith Stanovich, What Intelligence Tests Miss

The “wisdom of crowds” is just a popular way of expressing a pretty old idea in organization

science: RATIONAL OUTCOMES don’t immediately flow from the aptitudes of one

or two seemingly bright folks

Rules, or random? Transformyour routines.

Define “actionable”?

I have a dream

Your rules, your way: note 6 separate custom settings

Google AdWords Conversion Optimizer

The tight leash problem

What if you could program your Analytics software to look for high CPA’s on every conceivable segment, & scale back bids?

The bias would be against volumeYou’d punish randomly bad behaviorWouldn’t be patient enough to benefit from random goodness

Quality Score: Bare bones

Quality Score Promotes Relevance

Ad Position determined by AdRankAdRank = QS X Max Bid, by keywordQuality Scores recomputed each query,

each auctionMakes money for GoogleMakes search users happyNew accounts need to establish history

Dead Simple Takeaways (QS)

Many thorny problems with low Quality Score result from adding keywords that are “just off” the searcher’s true intent

Keyword tools can be misused like any other toolA real pro shapes and moulds keyword selection and account structure to maximize QS

Once the account is mature and generating healthy ROI, feel free to broaden out, seeking volume & trading off (some) relevancy

At this point Google’s “confidence level” in account is high

Ad testing for a prosperous future

© 2010, The Goodman Institute

What makes ads “work”? Multiple drivers of clickthrough and the art of “why”

Beautiful, wonderful ad (and how we got there)

Managing ads to ROI: CTR or CPO?

GENETIC FREAKS

Ad testing: finding the “double winner”

What is the “double winner”? The rare ad that pulls higher CTR’s without hurting ROI

In landing page testing, one of the only ways to hit on the “killer permutation” is to test many variations using multivariate testing

The same goes for ad copy testingMake the big wins firstMove to MV testingHighest possible CTR’s on ads are

paramount; affects all keyword CTR’s; and thus affects account-wide QS

Key steps towards better ads

Better campaign organization = tighter targeting (info scent)

A better ad is a higher-ROI ad? Or not!?Tests must be statistically significantFind initial triggers through A/B/C testsRecord hypotheses & results

Second stage: refinement (multivariate testing)

Keep focused on “double win” genetic freaksMaster the art of “why”

Multivariate Ad Testing SetupFor high volume accounts (manual version)

Quality Score BoosterCreate a micro promotion that boosts QS

Ordinary words like “plumber reviews” get pretty good QSSuper targeted event promos like “Toronto home show”

discounted tickets get very high CTR’s

Even if only a break-even proposition, do more of these to inexpensively “greenlight” entire account (no downside!)--

Account refinement musts

Networks – placements & exclusions

Search query report: exclusions & ideas

New features-Bid Simulator-Campaign Experiments-Remarketing

Understanding the Impact of Ad Position: Bid Simulator

AdWords Campaign ExperimentsYowza!

AdWords Campaign Experimentscont’d

Scenario: Pretty interested… but wandered off…

Remarketing drove the highest conversion rate and the lowest CPA for Nexus One Display Campaign

• Conversion rate for remarketing was 2.3x higher than the account average and CPA was 2.4x lower

• Display ads performed the best. Remarketing display had 3.2x higher conversion rate than the account average for display.

• Due to high performance, the team roughly tripled the remarketing budget in 3 months

Remarketing Case Study

Keepin’ em honest: PZ’s own studyClient in retail food productsInitial test: cautious; brand queries; 5 month testResult:

Conversion rate about half the conversion rate in that search ad group, which is *very high*Conversion rate much higher than avg. for display

Second test on more granular ad groupsConversion rate: 9%. Much higher than typical for display!CPA 80% lower than allowables for those groups!

Conclusion: “nagging effect” works for cart abandoners who still have medium-high intent – remarketing rocks!!

Thanks!@andrew_goodman