Dialing it in a little tighter with new reporting in AdWords.

Ask and ye shall receive.  In this case, it’s in the form of a new development in the land of PPC and AdWords that has our team buzzed on a cold and wet Wednesday:  more reporting!

For any paid search manager, their idle dreams consist of more reporting, more data, more statistics to analyze, interpret, regurgitate and otherwise rule our days by.  In their never ending quest to make my job a little easier, Google has recently announced that in just 5 short days, we will have access to Impression Share data at the Ad Group level.  While we’ve had access at the campaign level for quite some time, the granularity of diving deeper is what drives paid search managers and tickles their collective fancies.   No longer will I drive the car from the back seat.  By allowing us to dial our impression share metrics in at the ad level, it allows our team to be even more efficient in our use of time, budget and new strategies, by focusing only on those ad groups where our share of available impressions remains low.  What it means for most of our clients, is the ability to maximize spend and allow us to be more targeted and creative with our use of available budget.  Anytime I can become more efficient in my use of time and resources, my clients benefit.  Google is even willing to back fill data all the way back to May 1^st, 2011, providing an immediate wealth of knowledge we don’t normally see with a new feature rollout.  This is a huge development for paid search managers and ultimately for every one of their clients as well.

In the Ad Groups tab, advertisers will now be able to see:

• Impression share: the percentage of impressions received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to get
• Lost impression share (Rank): the percentage of impressions lost due to Ad Rank. If you were budget constrained — if your budget, rather than your bid price or quality score was keeping you from getting more impressions — this won’t be shown.
• Exact match impression share: the share of impressions you received for searches that were an exact match for your keyword divided by the estimated number you were eligible to receive.

End result, the machine gets more efficient, maximizing a campaigns potential and ultimately keeping my clients happy.

At DFWSEM I had a chance to interview James Moore Chief Revenue Officer of Simpli.fi about the potential of using display ads that are triggered by the users search history.

Transcription
Eric McGehearty: My name is Eric McGehearty, here again and I’m really excited. James from Simpli.fi had a really exciting speech about re-marketing and display. Display has been one of those areas that we’ve used before, we’ve had some success with, we’ve had some failures, but after tonight’s talk I really feel like we’re going to have some big home-runs for some of our clients.

James, can you give me some insight about what you were talking about the keyword level targeting in display? How does that work?

James Moore: The reality is the display space, frankly, is starting to look more and more like search. The integration display and search is really at a fever pace rapidly coming together. Part of that has to do with the fact that publishers are releasing their inventory with real time bidding which is a role that the search people know all too well, bidding on keywords, the highest bidder to get a conversion.

Really what’s happening now is that they’re starting to release keyword data and search re-targeting in the simplest form simply means that when a company does a search on say Google and your text ad comes up. When they don’t click on that, you lost that opportunity for that customer, but not anymore because with search re-targeting, what’s happening is we’re able to build a profile of that user’s search behavior so that you can to me with your keyword list and have a second chance at targeting these individuals with display ads.

Eric: One of the things that you mentioned to me that was really powerful is the cost of difference and the potential to optimize that cost. On Google there’s a lot of different keywords at a very high cost. We have customers that spent an easy $15 on click. You’re telling me that in some senses there’s potential for me to get a customer who searched for that word, I can get a display ad to him for maybe a dollar a click. How does that work?

James: The example I gave in my speech tonight was mesothelioma. That’s a word that’s synonymous with very high CPC, cost per click. The reality is that when you’re bidding on that in a search engine you’re bidding on that keyword. Whenever I’m buying display ad space that may be one of hundreds of keywords I have attached to that user so I’m literally bidding for the price it costs to put that display ad on that publishers side at the time their eyeballs are there.

We’ve got data that basically says terms that could cost $20, $30, $40 a search are 90 cent, $1 terms in display and you’re able to take what was a costly segment and target them very specifically with these display ads at a very low cost.

Eric: In real world, these are a lot of things that big companies deal with but from a small business point of view just think about that roofer during a hailstorm. Roofers will pay a huge amount of money during a hailstorm to get those clicks. We can re-target those people at home improvement websites, or any website for that matter. They have been looking for a new roof suddenly we show them an ad that’s a very cheap cost for that roofing.

James: Actually it gets more exciting, right, because you’re able to take keywords that are important to that roofer that he can bid on at a low cost but at the same time because of the integration of display technology you can even layer that in with contextual. It diminishes the pool but basically you could say I want to bid on roof repair in Dallas, Texas during this time period but only when they have searched for that term and on a page reading about roofing which is amazing. The pool narrows but the click-through rates of conversion go relatively high.

Eric: James, I really appreciate it. We’re going to be bringing this technology to Globe Runner and to our clients so we really look forward to talking to you more about it. It’s very nice to meet you, James.

James: It’s nice to meet you, too.

Google continues to push businesses to use Google+ by promoting profiles in search. Now thought leaders are highlighted in some searches if you are logged in to google+.

Duane Forrester goes over the importance of Schema.org with Eric at DFWSEM.

Dallas, TX December 6, 2011 – The Dallas/Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association (DFWSEM) held its annual board election meeting this evening in downtown Dallas and elected Eric McGehearty, Founder and CEO of Globe Runner SEO, as its new VP of Sponsorship. DFWSEM is the leading organization in the Dallas area focused on education and networking opportunities specifically for internet marketing professionals.

As new VP of Sponsorship, McGehearty will be responsible for attaining sponsorship for each monthly meeting by local and national businesses as well as further enhancing the organization’s reputation as a thought leader. Voting was only open to current and active board members and, for the VP of Sponsorship position, three volunteers including McGehearty were up for election. When asked for his reaction, McGehearty said, “I’m very excited to be a part of such a prestigious organization. DFWSEM demonstrates thought leadership in the online marketing community and has an impressive track record of bringing in some of the best speakers in the country. I’m very much looking forward to helping the organization reach its fundraising goals.”

DFWSEM meetings are held once a month on Wednesdays at 7pm, usually in the middle of the month, and host speakers on topics such as affiliate marketing with Rae Hoffman-Dolan, CEO of Sugarrae SEO Consulting, and new trends in the search industry with Duane Forrester, Sr. Product Manager at Bing. Those interested in gaining an audience with DFWSEM members—who cumulatively represent millions of dollars in search engine and related advertising spend annually—are encouraged to contact DFWSEM at info@dfwsem.org.

Globe Runner SEO is a Dallas-based internet marketing agency specializing in search engine optimization, search marketing, link building, website design and development, and social media campaign management. To contact Eric McGehearty, call 972-538-0260 or email info@globerunnerseo.com.