According to recent forecasts, the first time that the number of global users who access the Internet via a mobile rather than a PC will be in 2014. The comparable numbers are currently 900 million from the former device and 1.4 billion from the latter. Assuming that if the annual growth rate in mobile phone subscriptions is about 2% between 2010 and 2015, then there will be approximately 6.35 billion of those within the next 3 years. Of those, a third will use that device to access the web.

The 2011 edition of eMarketer states that of those, 33% are looking for local content relevant to their current GPS position. Now, the young generation that has never known life without the Internet are increasingly using their mobiles like the older generations used Yellow Pages to find local information. So if you’re targeting young people in a localised market, it’s essential to have a mobile compatible site.

You can read some more data measuring the global smartphone impact here.

Is Your Site Mobile-Friendly?

There are a number of websites and online tools that can be used to check how your website performs on a mobile – if you don’t have a smartphone to do this in the first place! A very useful initiative by Google is the GoMo site that aims to change the way the web works on mobile devices. This project is primarily for mobile phones but could be aimed at all forms of mobile devices, like iPads and other tablets.

GoMo helps you build a site for all of these mobile platforms and it provides case studies and statistics to support why you should go mobile. By offering a comprehensive resource for websites who may not have gone mobile yet, webmasters can learn why they should go mobile, the best practices for mobile and how to get the process started. Webmasters can even test their sites from GoMo to see how mobile they really are to visitors.

There are more useful mobile website emulators that allow you to check if your website is mobile-friendly.

The accuracy of some of these tools have been questioned however, as some sites that receive low scores still look fine on mobiles. The problem is the wide variety of makes and models of smartphones, on a variety of different platforms. So although testing tools may be a useful resource, it’s worth also getting feedback from users of mobile devices about what they are actually seeing.

A recent study found that 61% of mobile users are not likely to return to a site that does not provide a good mobile experience. In response, Google initiated a shift in their policy that will reward mobile sites with good optimisation and they have offered a few priorities to get your site optimised for mobile usage:

• Keep the layout and design simple
• Prioritise your content
• Use markedly mobile features
• Make your site easy to convert

This may sound easy, but as mobile usage increases and web developers offer mobile design options, the implementation and testing of good mobile websites will become a more common process.

Using Mobile Marketing Features in Google AdWords

Due to the unprecedented growth in the use of mobile devices to access the Internet, Google recently announced some new mobile targeting functionality for AdWords. This enhanced feature allows advertisers to target to specific versions of mobile operating systems, to ensure the ads are going to the right users.

It’s now also possible to target according to the whether a faster Wi-Fi connection is being used as well as by mobile carriers. Google says targeting by Wi-Fi will let advertisers expand their reach, and will be particularly useful if the campaign or landing page features high-bandwidth content like video.

The mobile specific ads have had the ability to include ‘click to call’ phone numbers below them for a couple of years now as an Ad Extension for adverts appearing on mobiles. In addition, the segmentation reports in AdWords now show mobile interaction down to keyword level, which is a great feature to develop these type of campaigns. If you’re using an iPhone, Android, or other smartphone, you just click the number to call the business and if it’s a local store or restaurant with multiple locations, the integration with Google Places listing will allow you to call the nearest one.

In addition to this, Google also included more specific click-to-call advert extensions, which enables the ability to use bid-per-call (currently only in the US and UK) and view data on mobile calls.

The importance of these enhancements will rise rapidly in the near future, so it’s essential to create a separate, mobile-targeted AdWords campaign now to gain a significant competitive advantage. Not only will this give your business a better reach, but also a lower cost-per-click and higher click-through-rate in this early period, while the adoption of the technology isn’t too widespread.

Tracking Mobile Use in Google Analytics

In November 2011, Google announced the launch of enhanced Analytics reports that include mobile ad performance metrics. All AdWords metrics available in Google Analytics can now be segmented by the new mobile and tablet dimensions in the form of: “All”, “High-end Mobile” and “Tablet” ads.

This again highlights the growing importance of these devices and the increasing significance placed upon them by Google, as the shift towards mobile makes an adoption of an updated marketing strategy necessary. It’s highly recommended that you view your Analytics data over the past year to see this increase in mobile activity. You can segment your data just by mobile usage which makes it easier to identify any potential issues your site may be having when viewed from these devices, as well as the increasing potential number of visits and conversions from them.

So this new access to the mobile device data will help businesses get a better understanding of how mobile advertising will interact with them in the future and how the specific targeting of them can be very effective.

As we predicted in last month’s newsletter, mobile marketing is likely to become a significant issue for many business websites this year – so is your strategy in place? If you’d like to know more about how mobile marketing could impact your website, and how to get the most from Google AdWords and Analytics for mobiles, please contact us now for more information.

At the start of November, our Australian office was approached by Google to take part in a new pilot program for AdWords agencies. As one of only 5 agencies selected in Australia, this gives us and our clients in Australia and the UK a great opportunity to make the most of the increasing range of tools and techniques that have been added to AdWords.

Web Marketing Workshop is already a Google AdWords Certified Partner, which reflects our qualifications and experience in running a wide range of Google AdWords campaigns since the service first began in 2002. We have now been selected for this new pilot program due to our ability to develop and grow our clients’ accounts. With this new program, Google is testing new ways to support agencies, such as ours, to enable advertisers to make even better use of this powerful form of online advertising.

Over the past few years, and particularly in 2011, Google has been adding new tools and reporting functions to AdWords – some of which have been covered in previous issues of this newsletter. What’s more, the ongoing development and usage of Google Analytics helps to add an extra layer of data and analysis to AdWords campaigns, which leads to improved targeting and performance.

Getting the best from AdWords

Google’s own marketing and the relatively ‘user-friendly’ AdWords interface can make it appear to be a simple self-serve system for new advertisers, yet there are some increasingly complex requirements and techniques now available to help users get the best from this form of search marketing. Many new advertisers can therefore get caught out – including by some of Google’s default settings – so that they can quickly spend their advertising budget with little return, and therefore get disillusioned by AdWords not working for them.

Of course it’s in Google’s best interests to make AdWords a success, both for advertisers as well as searchers, because this in turn will help make Google more successful as well! That’s why Google is now looking for ways to better support agencies and to make AdWords campaigns a cost-effective method of marketing online for as many advertisers as possible, over a long term period.

As part of this pilot scheme (which Google is also running in the US and UK), we are receiving additional training, advice and insights across the full range of AdWords opportunities, which will help our clients develop their campaigns and provide a competitive advantages when using this increasingly popular service.

Enhancing AdWords results

As part of this new program, some of the techniques that we will be addressing in depth include:

Quality Scores – this is one of the key factors to help improve the cost-effective of any AdWords campaign, based on relevancy and content factors. Although there is some element of a ‘secret formula’ behind these figures at the keyword level, we will use Google’s insights to refine these for our client accounts and so achieve a lower average CPC whilst improving ranking position and conversion performance.

Landing Pages – the point where searchers land on a website from the AdWords advert has always been important but has recently become a more significant factor within the Quality Score. We will use Google’s input to identify ways of further improving the performance of these pages within AdWords.

Remarketing – this is a powerful way of displaying adverts to searchers who have previously visited a website. Conversion rates from remarketing can be impressive and we are continually testing this opportunity for our clients.

Ad Extensions – these offer additional ways of attracting visitors from AdWords, such as through location details, direct phone calls or sitelinks. We are also testing the use of Product Extensions through Google Shopping for ecommerce sites and will be implementing social media extension linked to the new Google+ service.

Mobile Marketing – mobile is becoming increasingly important for website traffic and AdWords offers a range of services to target this sector. We will be building on our experience of these campaigns and advising clients on the best opportunities for mobile marketing in 2012.

Display Network – Google is continually refining and expanding their network of sites that carry AdWords adverts, either in text, display or video format. We will be looking at new opportunities for advertisers using the range of options available, including audience and topic targeting.

We’re looking forward to working closely with Google over the next few months to help our advertisers improve their campaign performance and advertising spend through AdWords. We are also providing a review service for other AdWords advertisers who may feel that they’re not getting the most from their account, so that we can provide advice and recommendations to help improve their campaigns.

To find out more about this new initiative and how it can help your Google AdWords campaigns, please contact us now.

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) in the UK publishes annual figures on Internet advertising spend and trends in the online market. Gone are the days when these summaries were published quarterly, due to cutbacks, but the annual figures continue to provide an insight into how this sector continues to grow whereas most other forms of marketing spend decline or stagnate. The last figures, for 2010, show that UK online advertising spent just over £4bn in the year, which was also an impressive 12.8% growth on a like-for-like basis.

The IAB compiles these figures with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and values the total UK advertising spend in 2010 at £16.6 billion, which shows that the Internet’s market share has reached a record high of 25% (up from 23% in 2009). This also means that £1 in every £4 invested by advertisers is now spent online.

The IAB says that these findings demonstrate that, despite the recession, online advertising continues to perform well and shows healthy growth. Marketers are increasingly using online channels to drive their brand building campaigns, with consumer goods and retail advertisers increasing their investment in online to become two of the top four big spenders in display advertising. This is to capitalise on the medium’s core strengths of reach and engagement as well as accountability.

In 2010 the biggest gain in spend came from display advertising, thanks to a nearly 200% surge in display advertising in a social media environment (on a like-for-like basis) and 91% year-on-year (absolute growth) in video formats. Overall display grew by more than a quarter (27.5%) on a like-for-like basis to a new high of £945.1 million, representing 23% of total online spend (up from 20% in 2009).

Paid-search continues to perform strongly with growth of 8% year-on-year on a like-for-like basis to £2,346 million, representing 57% of total online spend (61% in 2009).

Despite pressure on the housing, recruitment and automotive markets, online classified advertising bounced back in 2010 recording 9.7% growth on a like-for-like basis to £751 million – a share of 18% (19% in 2009).

Mobile advertising has experienced a staggering 116% year on year growth (on a like for like basis), up from 32% in 2009. Advertisers spent £83 million on mobile advertising in 2010, led by the entertainment and media sector, but with encouraging growth from finance, telecoms and consumer goods advertising.

The IAB tracks many drivers of market growth, such as more people being online – according to data from the UK Online Measurement Company (UKOM) and Nielsen, by December 2010 the UK’s active online user base had grown to 40.3 million. Also the penetration of broadband access in internet homes is now 98% (source: Kantar Media’s Internet Monitor, December 2010) and 47% of at home UK internet users access the internet with a connection speed of between 2Mb and 8Mb, with 14% accessing online with a connection speed of over 8Mb. (source: UKOM APS/Netview December 2010). In addition to this, social networks now account for 25% of the time spent online in the UK, which is reflected in the growth of display advertising spend as brands are able to tap into the social nature of the web.

If you’d like more information about these figures and the implications for your online advertising plans, please contact us for details.

Have you ever wondered how Google calculates how much you pay for a click on AdWords? And how your advert ranking position is determined? Here we explain this often misunderstood element of AdWords advertising, namely the relationship between Quality Score and cost-per-click.

Ad quality is a very important element for Google’s advertising – users want to see relevant ads; advertisers want to present relevant ads to users; and Google wants both users and advertisers to have a good experience so they come back and continue to use the system. So Google is mainly concerned with ensuring that the ads shown to users have a high ad quality, which is represented by a Quality Score.

There are 3 components to the Quality Score which is allocated to each search term, with the most important one by far being clickthrough rate. This essentially allows users to vote with their clicks and gives Google good feedback upon which to make its decision to determine which ads are the most popular for a particular search query / keyword.

Relevancy is the second largest factor in determining Quality Score. Google determines relevancy by analysing the language and context of an ad or query and determining how well it relates to a keyword. Google uses relevance to ensure that only useful ads are displayed to users.

The final Quality Score component is landing page quality. An ad is only useful to a user if the ad they click upon goes to a landing page that helps them find the information they’re looking for. A high quality landing page should have relevant, original content, be easily navigable with quick load times, no pop-ups (or pop-unders) and be transparent about the nature of the business.

Quality Score then affects the way in which the auctions are run, through the concept of Ad-Rank. This is the bid price set by the advertiser, multiplied by the Quality Score of the ad. These two numbers multiplied together results in the Ad-Rank figure (N.B. not to be confused with the advert position).

The adverts are then positioned in descending order of that resulting Ad-Rank figure. This is done so that advertisers cannot simply buy the top advert position if their Ad-Rank figure and hence, relevancy to the user’s search, is lower than their competitors. So Google’s priority for the user’s experience comes before the amount an advertiser is willing to pay.

The amount paid per click is then only the minimal amount that is necessary to retain the advert position above the next competitor. This amount is calculated by the Ad-Rank figure of the advertiser directly below (in the advert positions on the results page), divided by your Quality Score.

The main point to remember is that by increasing Quality Score, it’s possible to reduce the amount that is paid per click. So adverts that are more popular with users and more relevant, that land on decent pages, cost less for a higher position than competitors’ adverts that don’t score so well on these factors.

This is a useful video where these concepts are clearly explained and demonstrated by Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist.

If you’d like more information about how our professional Google AdWords management can help increase your Quality Score and reduce your average cost-per-click, contact us now.

Google has recently introduced a new data segmentation report within the AdWords interface that allows advertisers to compare the performance data between ads that appear in the top 3 ads above the main search results, against those that appear down the right hand side. This is often a key question for advertisers and this new analysis may help clarify the impact that a top placed advert may have.

According to Google, ads that appear above the search results tend to get substantially more clicks than ads that appear on the right-hand side. This is understandable as these top placed ads have a prominent position on the search results page and users may either not realise these are adverts, or will click on them automatically as the first placed results. However, the question is also whether the cost-effective of these positions are as good as those that appear down the right hand side of the search results.

There is no doubt that this enhanced reporting capability is a benefit to the management and optimisation of campaigns, but independent opinions and experience indicate that although more clicks may be accrued from having adverts in the top, rather than side positions, it is not always the best strategy for advertisers. The proportional difference in bid rates between these positions can be large and the return in the increased investment, in terms of conversions, is not guaranteed. If a website isn’t converting visitors from any position, there is clearly no benefit in having the adverts consistently at the top, even if that does encourage more visits.

The new data segmentation by Google allows advertisers to get some greater insight into the impact of the top ranking position. This data has previously been available through linked Google Analytics data, but only at a single search term level, so this new report gives a cumulative overview of clickthrough rates and conversions between these advert ranking positions.

Having said that, the initial results that are being shown in the reports looks heavily skewed towards the top ranking positions, both in terms of significantly higher clickthrough rates and therefore visits and also conversions. At this stage, we have some reservations about the reports and a cynical view would be that Google is over-emphasising the top ranking positions to encourage advertisers to bid higher into these positions.

We are therefore running a series of tests over the next month to check the validity of this new data segmentation and to see how reliable this data might be across a number of different campaigns and clients. Hopefully this information will be providing reliable and relevant insights into the performance of the campaign, which will allow the ad positions to be managed accordingly, although at this point we remain to be convinced and are monitoring the online discussions about this new report.

If you would like more details about this new segmentation and how the data could help your AdWords campaign management, please contact us now.

A common question from Google AdWords / PPC advertisers is whether they should still run their paid ads alongside search terms that also rank well in the main search results, due to the SEO on their website. A recent study by Google may help to answer this.

Google’s report concluded that paid search ads can give advertisers an 89% lift in site visitors above that which would normally be expected from organic listings. This is a very high increase and poses the question of whether or not the study is biased, considering Google is commenting about its own search properties (and again, trying to get more advertisers to pay for an AdWords listing).

Independent views, however, support the search industry’s opinion that it’s important to manage and bid on brand name terms in paid search ads when you already have good organic positions, even if it’s to keep your competitors from dominating the paid ad spots. Using paid search ads in addition to the organic listings can compliment those with brand building and controlling messages, that aren’t so easy to portray within the organic listings.

However, there may also be benefits from running simulataneous adverts alongside natural SEO rankings for more generic terms, since 2 listings in the search results can support the brand awareness for a business, increase the likelihood of a click, and block another advertiser from appearing in the results. Ultimately, though, the activity for a search term through PPC advertising has to remain cost-effective.

Coming back to the Google study, the main result of more visitors – as defined by their research – can be enhanced with sensible brand building through PPC adverts. The 89% increase in visits can be treated sceptically though, as the research was conducted on US AdWords campaigns in the holiday period, so that the figure is not likely to be as impressive if the research was conducted over the period of a full year.

The most definitive way to test the findings would be to stop a currently running brand-building AdWords campaign that your business is running and see what impact that has on traffic and conversions. The likelihood, however, is that many businesses that rely upon this method of paying for clicks in addition to the free ones from the organic listings would not be willing to trial this. This indicates that the additional clicks and brand awareness that the PPC ads create do support Google’s finding that it’s worth running PPC and organic campaigns concurrently with the same keywords.

To find out more about the cost-effectiveness of running a PPC advertising campaign alongside an SEO strategy, please contact us now.

Google’s AdWords Editor is an essential free application for managing AdWords campaigns. It enables users to download the account, update campaigns offline with powerful editing tools then upload the changes back to AdWords. A recent update to the software has added additional new functionality to this tool.

Anyone using Google AdWords should consider using this tool, although it provides most help for those with large or diverse accounts. Users need to download the software from Google, and the program allows users to make changes offline to the individual keywords, adgroups or campaigns – as well as the adverts – before loading the amendments back into the live account. It’s also invaluable for filtering parts of a campaign and making bulk changes, structural changes and edits (such as find & replace).

Another key feature is the ability to edit keywords across multiple campaigns, making it possible to cut or copy them from one to another, which isn’t possible to do online. The back-up function is another very useful offline-only feature and is essential when performing multiple amendments. In addition to being able to edit data offline, it allows control over multiple accounts by allowing fast switching between them.

There are many other benefits to using this tool, such as the way in which historical data can be retrieved and assessed. A specific time period can be chosen and data downloaded for numerous statistics. These include the number of impressions and clicks, average cost per click, click through rate, total cost, number of conversions and cost per conversion, which provide a useful insight into the way in which a campaign has performed over that period.

Other useful data that is accessible includes negative keywords, placements in the display network, keyword match types and destination URLs. There are still some functions that are only possible online, but the functionality of this excellent application is regularly improved by Google, through frequent updates.

The latest one, which upgrades AdWords Editor to version 9 was released at the beginning of May. This includes new features designed to help make changes across accounts more efficiently and to manage new ad features, such as Ad Sitelinks and high-end mobile targeting.

It also includes good changes to make it easier to locate and make bulk changes to placements, audiences, or negative keywords. It’s now possible to select duplicates for negatives and another useful addition is an enhanced spreadsheet import tool.

If you’d like more information about the Google AdWords Editor and how it can be used to improve the management of your campaigns, contact us for more information.

Google has recently made changes to the way in which sponsored listings (or Google AdWords adverts) are displaying their headlines in the search results. This has been done by merging the original headline with the first line of the advert’s description copy, giving a longer and more prominent text link, separated with a hyphen.

Google has done this because it has found that the top placement ads with the longer headlines get a higher clickthrough rate when displayed in the top positions above the main “organic” search results. Highlighting more information in the advert also improves the user experience, according to Google.

In order for the headline and the first line of the descriptive text to be merged, the first line of text needs to be a distinct sentence and end with correct punctuation, as well as being highly relevant to the content in the headline. The merged headlines will only appear in the adverts in the top 1-3 of the listings when they appear at the top of the page and AdWords advertisers can now see how their ads might appear when editing the content in their AdWords account.

There has been some sceptiscm amongst AdWords users who claim that these new ads with longer headlines may make it less easy to distinguish the sponsored listings from the organic results that appear below them, so it will result in yet more revenue for Google as they’ll get the revenue from those clicks. It’s also likely that the increased competition between advertisers for these new format ads appearing in the top positions may increase the level of bidding for those positions and so will in turn increase Google’s revenue in this way.

Google will no doubt benefit from this change, but so should advertisers if it helps to increase visits to their website from relevant, interested searchers. It’s certainly worth testing this option if you’re running an AdWords campaign, and compare how your advert content is displayed against other advertisers for each search term.

If you’d like more information about how this new format of longer headlines for ads selected by Google can improve the marketing of your business, please contact us now.

In another development for Google AdWords, the search engine has enhanced the control over the targeting of local adverts. At the end of the month, Google announced that it’s now possible to target adverts based upon a user’s physical location or the location of interest.

What this change means is that advertisers can now target users by the place where they are actually situated, compared to those that just include a location in a search query. In addition to this, extra options have also been included for advertisers to exclude locations that are not required in their local targeting.

Previously, advertisers who were using a regional or local targeting setting would have their adverts appearing to all users who searched for “restaurants in newcastle” for example, regardless of their physical location. Now the adverts can be set to appear to those searchers who are only in Newcastle, by using the new target physical location option.

It’s also now possible to target where the adverts appear by excluding by physical location and search intent. For example, an advertiser with a chain of restaurants throughout Devon but not in Exeter doesn’t want his adverts to appear to users that live there, or others that don’t but are looking there anyway by including Exeter in the search query. He can now prevent that group of searchers seeing the adverts, but still display the ads to people in the area that should see the ads.

Another feature is the ability to exclude by physical location only, so if he only wants to advertise his restaurant in Newcastle to people who don’t live there and are just visiting, this is now possible. Previously, if Newcastle was excluded from the targeting, it would prevent adverts appearing for those living there and those not from there using it in the search query.

So this is a very useful new addition to Google’s ever increasing functionality in AdWords. It reflects the recent emphasis that Google has been putting on local search results and will greatly enhance the precision of the targeting of Adwords adverts.

If you’d like more information about how this enhanced AdWords location targeting can help to improve the cost-effective marketing of your business, contact us now.

We made 5 predictions for 2010 last January, so here we review these and assess what actually happened during the year:

1) Pay-per-click advertising opportunities increase: there was probably no question that PPC advertising would continue to grow at a rapid rate, and in Australia this largely means Google AdWords which continues to dominate the market. The quarterly IAB figures showed double-digit growth both quarterly and annually, with the search marketing sector showing a strong upward trend – however, this data is estimated as Google doesn’t release these figures and much of their turnover is ‘hidden’ within their Eire billing office. In some ways the PPC opportunities increased through reach and advert formats, but the core of the AdWords offering remains much the same with the main search space becoming increasingly competitive as more companies use this medium. The Yahoo! PPC service continues to be low-key and covers a much smaller share of the market, but this may change once the merger with Microsoft is completed (see below).

2) The Bing-Yahoo merger takes effect: the ongoing acquisition of Yahoo’s search service by Microsoft developed during 2010 and both the natural search and PPC services on Yahoo! started to display Microsoft’s results by the year end – at least in the US. This rollout will continue into 2011 and is expected to happen in the UK during the first half of 2011. Early reports from the new merged PPC model in the US have been limited, and although Microsoft / Bing appears to be gaining some market share there, there is still some way to go before they significantly challenge Google.

3) Personalised search impacts search marketing: there has been no data published by Google into the level of adoption of personalised search, although this is likely to be more extensive now than a year ago through a gradual ‘creep’ of this facility for anyone using a Google account. Although some of the tools that were originally provided to searchers to personalise their results have disappeared, Google is undoubtedly tracking individual’s search behaviour and site’s visited to help adapt search – and paid search – results. The more notable change during 2010 was the introduction of Google Instant results, which is likely to change the way people search by generating suggestions and instantly displaying changing results as users type or adapt their search on the screen. Changing search behaviour is also likely to impact search marketing activity, although the underlying targeting of relevant search traffic remains the same basic aim.

4) Twitter’s make or break year: 2010 really didn’t go either way for the popular micro-blogging site. Twitter certainly survived any acquisition activity, at least for the time being, and became ever more popular as a communication tool, although many companies have still to see the real benefits of this. Twitter signed deals with Microsoft and Google to integrate content within the search engine results, and also started to offer ‘Promoted Tweets’ as a first move into generating advertising revenue from the massive user base. However, this balance between commercialisation and the whole premise of this service has yet to be met but a recent funding injection of $200m may herald the launch of further new services in 2011.

5) Local search options see new developments: local search has certainly gained more opportunities in 2010 and is expected to grow further in 2011 through the use of social networking tools (see below). The biggest change from Google in the past few months was the way in which local search results are now presented, with a closer integration between the Google Places listings and the optimisation of a website. For locally-targeted business, search remains a huge opportunity for many and the new features in Google Places (including Google Hotpot) as well as the use of mobile technology is something that should be a core part of their marketing strategy.