Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

Are you testing new ad copy on Google? Are you trying to see if a new ppc advertising ad will outperform an old ad? One thing you should be aware of is that by default Google will optimize the serving of ads, meaning that over time it will show the best performing ads more often (based on click-thru rate). A vast majority of the time this is a good thing. You want the best performing ads to show more often because this will help keep your click-thru rate up, help keep your quality score strong, etc.

However, sometimes a newer ad never really gets a true chance to prove itself because a strong older ad quickly overtakes it. This leads the new ad to languish and die a quick death because the percentage of time this new ad is shown quickly plummets if it doesn’t immediately outperform the older ad. Of course, sometimes that is okay if the new ad really is that much worse than the older ad.

But what if you really want to test an older ad with a newer ad on a level playing field? Then what do you do? Google does offer the opportunity to rotate ads on a more even basis. If you navigate to the Edit Campaign Settings screen in your Google AdWords account, you will see a Scheduling and Serving category where you can choose to either Optimize the ad serving (the default setting) or you can choose to Rotate and show ads on a more even percentage basis. By choosing to rotate ads more evenly you will allow a newer ad to run 50/50 with an older ad. After a set period of times has elapsed, you can then compare the click-thru/conversion rate of the ads and see how well they have performed against one another. This isn’t necessarily something you want to do all the time, but it is certainly worth taking a closer look at once in awhile if you really want to test ad copy in a true head-to-head battle.

More about Jack

According to Google, “Click Through Rate (CTR) is the number of clicks your ad received divided by the number of times your ad is shown (impressions).”

Every once in a while a new pay-per-click (PPC) advertising client will come in who considers their account CTR to be the benchmark by which their accounts performance is judged. Depending on the keyword strategy, it is most likely not a good idea to use CTR to judge an entire account’s performance.

True, we know that CTR has a big influence on the somewhat mysterious Google AdWords Quality Score(s). It is also a great indicator for comparing performance on your various AdGroups’ different ad copies. There are certainly many instances when Click Through Rate (CTR) is a very good indicator of performance.

Now, what about when low CTR is a good thing?

There are definitely times you want to eliminate a worthless click from a potential keyword, and while this would have a negative impact on the Click Through Rate (CTR) it would certainly have a positive effect on the account.

For example, a strategy that I recently adopted for a client really drives this point home.

One of my client’s competitors has a very common word for a company name. For the sake of confidentiality I will simply call it “widget.” Well, this competitor name “widget” is also the name of a very popular movie, an artist, a location overseas, a highway landmark, and dozens of other completely unrelated things. As you might imagine, the search volume for this popular term is through the roof, while the percentage of people actually using it for the company name we wished to target is extremely small. So small in fact, that it would almost certainly discourage anybody from even trying it as a keyword.

I thought it was worth trying, and to give it the best chance at success I used only the exact match version of “widget” in its own campaign, with a very specific ad designed to only solicit the searchers looking for my client’s services.

The results were surprisingly great. The campaign resulted in my client converting at half of his target conversion cost. The CTR for this keyword was a downright horrible 0.02%, however this was a good thing as it meant the ad was eliminating all of the unnecessary searchers and only targeting the exceptionally small amount of people looking for my clients competitor. In this case, the exceptionally low CTR was a good thing.

The low CTR also had a definite impact on the keyword’s quality score and forced my client’s minimum bid up to $10/click. Even with the the high minimum bid, the conversion cost was cheap and the quality of leads generated tens of thousands of dollars in new revenue for my client. Winner.

Now, the 0.02% CTR dramatically lowered the whole account’s CTR. If that figure had been used as a benchmark to judge performance, it would have been a huge mistake that would have cost my client a considerable amount of revenue. In this case, the actual conversion cost/rate was a far better benchmark than the pathetic CTR.

The bottom line here is that a low CTR can be a good thing in some strategies and is not always the best indicator of an entire account’s performance. Every account is different, just as every marketing strategy is different. Helping to determine the best strategy for your PPC marketing campaign is just one of the many unique skills that JumpFly PPC account manager brings to the table.

What’s your benchmark?

Last week Google AdWords announced improvements to Ads Quality, and today that update went live. Two new changes have been introduced that enhance how Google calculates Quality Score and Ranks Ads.

As you might know, click through rate (CTR) is arguably the most significant component of Quality Score, and ads in higher positions tend to earn better CTR than ads that display in lower positions. Google decided that to accurately calculate the Quality Scores, the “influence of ad position on CTR be taken into account and removed from the Quality Score.”

As a result, Google has now updated the portion of the Quality Score algorithm that accounted for ad position. It is their belief that this new adjustment will result in a more accurate Quality Score and ensure that ads compete fairly for position based on their quality and bid, while rewarding high-quality advertisers with better ad positions.

In the past, here at JumpFly, we have certainly seen the advantage of placing some clients’ new keywords in prominent positions to start, and then pull them down later based on performance. The advantage of the increased CTR from the higher initial positioning would work to their advantage down the road. From the sound of this latest update, this particular strategy may no longer be necessary. It will be interesting to see.

The second update going live today is an “improvement” in the way Google determines which ads show in the prominent yellow region directly above the search results. Google believes that given the prominence of these positions that it is especially important for ads to be high quality. Therefore, to appear above the search results, ads must meet a certain quality threshold.

You may have noticed that sometimes Google chooses not to display any ads in this position. Previously, if the ad with the highest Ad Rank did not meet the necessary quality threshold, they would not show any ads in these positions. With the new update, Google will now allow an ad that meets the quality threshold to actually jump over an ad in a higher position and be displayed in this prominent position. Again, quality plays a very important roll in being able to show in higher positions.

There is no doubt that these new algorithm changes by Google will cause some ads to experience a change in position, spend, and/or performance. Changes in Google’s ranking algorithms can affect even the most stable Google AdWords PPC account. Talk to a professional PPC Management Company today about how this recent update might affect your Google AdWords account.