Argos. Clearly doing well as the UK’s most popular ‘catalogue showroom retailing’ store in the UK. More than 700 stores, 130m customers and £4.3b in sales in 2008 isn’t bad. They also take 26% of their sales online, aided by an Argos catalogue found in 18m households across the country. Not bad for a chain who relies on a strictly ’self-serve’ philosophy that doubles as a business model… but they could do it so much better. (more…)
Announced yesterday on their official AdWords blogspot that the algorithm used in determining a paid ad’s quality score is changing very soon. TechCrunch covered the same story today.
In a continual push for ‘bettering’ their services (including enhancements made to their content network), Google have said that 3 main components in AdWords are changing, in an effort to provide the advertiser with more complete, real-time information that impacts their quality score, and the ability to make it to the front page easier (at a higher cost, of course). In all cases, changes are clearly ‘win-win’ as advertisers get more flexibility and Google gets more money.
(more…)
A bit late on this one, but Google announced on Thursday (Aug 7th) that the content network has (finally) been upgraded to offer a better experience to users, and a better value for us publishers & advertisers.
In summary, Google’s enhancements are as follows:
(more…)
Lately I’ve noticed a rise in creative ways to use PPC for personal or corporate gain. Whereas I use PPC daily to market B2B or B2C products the ‘old-fashioned way’ – selecting and bidding on a keyword, using appropriate ad copy, and directing B2C traffic to a tracked landing page – savvy marketers seem to be going one better. Here are some top examples:
Their mantra is ‘don’t be evil’ right? Isn’t transparency Google’s middle name?
So why is it that after installing a real-time site tracking tool (statcounter.com) to my PPC landing pages, I see several (50-60%) of all inbound, paid clicks being referred from websites or pages of questionable quality? Did I mention that, as always, my content network option is most definitely set to ‘off’?
It’s tough trying to determine whether or not the AdWords crew have finally lost the plot. Over on their blog they’ve just announced that Frank the Hand Turkey is officially the new GAW mascot (complete with new bowtie), and with his new position comes great responsibility. He knows this, and has already started pushing his weight around by introducing a new ranking algorithm – FrankRank(TM).
It looks like Frank is set to become the new cock of the walk at Google, and I wish him the best of luck, and look forward to hearing more about him!
It’s finally here – Google Adwords have introduced (to beta invite users only in the US only) TV advertising from within the Google Adwords interface. This is on the tail-end of Google announcing on their official ‘Inside AdWords’ blog that they’ve integrated Google Audio Ads into Google Analytics, allowing users of the Audio ad platform to track all relevant KPI’s from within their GA account.
Categorized in: Best of, Online Marketing, ideas