Does SEM = SEO + CPC Still Add Up?
I’ve found it annoying that over the years, more and more people use SEM to mean paid search, as if SEM excludes seo. That’s not how I defined SEM — search engine marketing — back 2001. I’d still like to see the original definition retained. But I might be swimming against the tide. Below, how [...]
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How Wikipedia Turned PPC / Paid Search Into SEM
What’s search engine marketing? If you ask Wikipedia, it’s currently defined as the act of buying listings on search engines. That’s not how SEM started out being defined. It’s still not how I define it, though that might change, as my Does SEM = seo + CPC Still Add Up? article explains. But in [...]
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The Pitfalls Of Budget-Constrained Bidding
The downsides to overbidding on keywords are both plain and painful: low-quality traffic at a high cost-per-click (CPC) and a limited budget quickly blown away with little to show for it. But bidding too little, or just not properly accounting for budget constraints, also has consequences, some subtle and some more obvious. Here we will consider some lessons that will help you to avoid the pitfalls of budget-constrained bidding.
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Facebook: An Internet unto Itself
Facebook has a lot going for it lately. They’ve got more than 250M users worldwide, they’re the most popular social network in almost every country in the world, they’re hiring in a down economy, and according to a new comScore report, 8.2% of all Internet ads are served on their site.
But, then, maybe this all makes sense. Since Facebook is so popular, it’s not entirely surprising that they serve one out of every twelve online ads. Even better? At least some proportion of their on-site CPC ads lead to another page on the site—so they’re getting money and traffic.
This isn’t a recent development, of course—we’ve all seen ads to “Become a Fan” of something on Facebook. But as smart as it sounds to make your advertisers pay for generating traffic to your site, the underlying logic is pretty much a stroke of genius:
Facebook is an Internet unto itself.
Facebook has long been accused of being a “walled garden”—with its fan pages, apps and other utilities, FB is almost a subset of the offerings of the Internet. If your brand is prominent enough, you’re on Facebook (or you should be!). Driving paid traffic from a personal page (personal) to a branded page only makes sense on that kind of paradigm.
Of course, that kind of advertising is good for advertisers, too, or they wouldn’t do it. JCPenney went from 22,000 fans to 500,000 fans with these advertisements in the run-up to back-to-school shopping (though Bloomberg didn’t say if JCP saw increased revenue from this).
And something seems to be working for FB, too. Last month, Bloomberg said the most popular social network in the world should post at least $500 million in revenue this year.
What do you think? Is Facebook a subset of the Internet, and is internal paid advertising a natural extension of that mentality? Can Facebook sustain this kind of revenue?
<img border="0" src="http://constanthit.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/ce7f9_vertical-leap-seo-234.gif”>
I Coulda Been an AdWords Contender
"You don’t understand. I coulda had Google class. I coulda been an AdWords contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a pay-per-click bum, which is what I am, let’s face it."
Ah yes, those immortal words. Uttered by all of us marketers at some point. Well now, Google wants to rub our sorry little noses in the mess we made of our AdWords campaign, with the launch of its bid simulator.
What does the bid simulator do? It…
…shows you the potential impact of your bid on your advertising results. While it can’t predict the future, the bid simulator allows you to explore what could have happened if you had set different keyword-level bids.
Using data from the past seven days, the bid simulator re-calculates the number of impressions for which your ad could have shown had you chosen a different maximum CPC, how many clicks your ad could have gotten for those impressions and how much those clicks could have cost.
While it’s not a magic bullet for your AdWords campaigns–past performance does not guarantee future results, etc–it’s a pretty useful tool for discovering how you can increase traffic without spending too much more. My memory is foggy, but I seem to recall Yahoo has offered something similar since the Panama launch.
Anyway, this video can explain it a whole lot better than me!
Whoops, sorry. This is the video! 
YouTube Videos Getting Off-Site Overlay Links
Although the latest planned feature for YouTube looks like an ad, for once YouTube’s rolling out something somewhat noteworthy that’s not part of its continue search for revenues. The feature? Overlays, like InVideo ads, that feature off-site links.
As TechCrunch reports, “you probably thought it was already out there.” But to-date, YouTube hasn’t allowed any links embedded in its videos other than a.) ads or b.) links to other YouTube videos. If you needed to link to your website, blog, Twitter profile, etc., you had to do it in the right-hand sidebar, where it would be largely ignored.
YouTube ran a similar promotion in March for charity:water. This video from the organization features the overlay:
The move is unique in that this is the first non-advertising off-site links YouTube has allowed. However, the program will only be open to YouTube’s advertisers participating in the CPC Promoted Videos program. TechCrunch says the program is launching today.
What do you think? Will this result in more people leaving YouTube—or more people signing up as Promoted Video advertisers?
You Know You Work In Search When You…
By <a href="http://www.baseonesearch.co.uk”>Chelsea Blacker
You know you work in search when you:
1. have more logins than you do pairs of socks.
2. friended Danny Sullivan before you met him.
3. don’t think you’re a <a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/the-busy-seos-guide-to-matt-cutts-explanation-of-pagerank-sculpting.html”>Cuttlet.
4. typically have at least 3 different browsers open simultaneously.
5. have considered dating a college student/education professional to get links.
6. grocery shop and think “my average CPC is higher than that apple/steak/wine bottle.”
7. get really excited when your map overlay is light green in a 3rd world country.
8. look for house numbers 404 and 300 with the same enthusiasm as house 69.
9. receive grammatically incorrect emails form India offering to write you copy.
10. cannot convince your friends you do more than surf the web all day.
11. were disappointed to learn <a href="http://www.seobythesea.com”>seo by the Sea is in Virginia.
12. have wondered why seo Quake bothered with an Explorer version.
<a title="seo quake, explorer by chelsea.blacker, on Flickr” href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/31107356@N07/3651549148/”><img src="http://constanthit.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/e1758_3651549148_ce8089a1e7.jpg" alt="seo quake, explorer” width=”346″ height=”138″ />
13. think Gray Wolf was written by Jack London.
14. won’t shop online without looking at the backlinks first. (@DaveNaylor)
15. see yellow sneakers and can’t help but think of Rand Fishkin.
16. hear the term “women in search” and do a mental check list of sphinn avatars.
17. checked to make sure “c14n” was accurate.
18. have asked someone if Sexy seo really looks like that.<a title="sexyseo by chelsea.blacker, on Flickr” href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/31107356@N07/3651575624/”><img src="http://constanthit.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/e1758_3651575624_9184a8d327.jpg" alt="sexyseo” width=”400″ height=”220″ />
19. cannot watch the Wizard of Oz without the adjectives rust, evil, and green crossing your mind.
20. can’t imagine not ranking first for your name.
21. can’t watch softcore without thinking of the opening credits to White Board Friday.
22. never say “I don’t know” instead you say “just Google it.”
23. are annoyed with weather reporters who blame technology when they’re wrong for things “out of their control”.
24. gave up on Chrome because it doesn’t have decent plugins.
25. know the date your blog received the most traffic & what keywords it ranked for.
26. pondered whether facebook groups or fan pages send more traffic.
27. optimized a bad breakup’s name with the term gay, bitch, or sex offender.
28. covet your collection of free memory sticks from SMX/SES/PubCon.
29. think SPAM stands for any Site Positioned Above Mine.
30. see a search party on the news, and get upset you weren’t invited. (@kevgibbo)
31. know people’s twitter names before you know their full names.
32. you mentally prioritize your shopping list with a “Top 10.”
33. can discuss at least 2 custom 404 error pages you found funny.
34. have had at least one username paused by an admin.
35. praise open source but still picked iPhone over Android.
36. Google a potential love interest before you even get to the first date.
37. plot to get family members over 50 years old social media accounts.
38. introduced yourself in person with “That post/tweet you wrote…”
39. don’t understand why you can’t click on an ad in a magazine to get to the product. (@JudithLewis)
40. notice that in late April, seo Book theme colours are everywhere.
This is an entry to Marketing Pilgrim’s 4th Annual SEM Scholarship contest.
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Google Adds Image Ads to AdSense Link Units
Are you using AdSense Link Units? The block of links to related-topic ad pages are getting a new “feature” after testing showed positive results—i.e. increased revenue for publishers.
The old (and in case you aren’t familiar with the jargon—note that the page of ads looks a lot like ten blue links.):
And the new version of the ad page:
See the difference? That 2009 Special Olympics image at the bottom is new—and it’s an ad. The Inside AdSense blog gives a few vitals:
These image ads are contextually targeted, based on the link unit topic users clicked to reach the ads. If no image ads are available for the given topic, we’ll only show the original text ads — in other words, we won’t show a PSA or insert a blank space in place of the image ad in this case. Advertisers can bid on these image ads on a cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM) basis, so you’ll generate earnings for valid clicks and impressions. You can review the performance of image ads on your link unit pages by generating a link unit report on your Advanced Reports page.
What do you think—is this a presage of things to come on the SERPs?
