Search engine advertising

Display advertising

MBA 563 WEEK 5

Today’s class will cover:

• Search Engine Advertising: Methods of pay-per-click contextual advertising used in search engines• How to set up a Google AdWords campaign

• Display advertising• Demographic and behavioural targeting• ‘Native” advertising

SEARCH ADVERTISING – PAY-PER-CLICK

Search engine marketing recap – distinguishing the two

elements • Search engine optimization – managing

organic search engine placement by optimizing html pages and devising an inbound link strategy (covered in Week 6)

• Search engine advertising (Pay-per-Click)– Paying the search engines to get the results you

want (TODAY’S CLASS)

Paid listings

Organic listings

Paid search versus SEOPaid search• Results can be seen immediately

through increased traffic.

• But : no spending = no results

• Greater control over which keywords are most associated with their company, brands, products or services.

• Additional metrics are available, which means more detailed Web analytics that yield sophisticated knowledge from the data.

SEO• Results are gradual – can take months• But the results can persist –

maintaining position over time• Searchers find it more acceptable

than advertising• Can be complex and may require

external expertise• One process – many results (tends to

bring results across many search engines, not just one)

http://www.iab.net/insights_research/947883/1675/708987

DO BOTH!

Internet advertising formats (IAB report for 2014)

Why is search engine advertising still so popular with marketers?

• Search engines allow marketers to bid on specific key words that trigger an ad when a user types those words into the search engine

• Bought on a Pay-per-Click basis (no click, no payment) – performance model means easy measurement of success

• Less consumer resistance that other forms of advertising – people are actually looking for those goods or services(but remember that CTR still quite low – about 2%)

• Print directory versus search advertising for SME?– Effectiveness can be directly measured– Speed of execution and “tweaking” of advertising copy– Speed of consumer response– Usually more cost-effective

Search engine advertising• Position is purchased as part of an advertising campaign -

guarantees instant visibility• While SEO and PPC advertising are separate techniques,

a well optimized page with good content will also influence the placement of a PPC ad (via Quality Score)

• The website owner has control over:– Position in search results (BUT not always complete control –

depends on AdRank/Quality Score in Google)– Keyword choice– Ad listing copy– Landing page– Geo-targeting– Daily budget and maximum cost-per-click

How is the ranking decided in practice?Google uses a combination of the bid price or cost per click (CPC) and the ad relevancy or click-through rate (CTR) and the Quality Score of the landing page

– CPC x CTR = Google AdRank– Advertiser sets the maximum CPC per day– If an ad with a lower bid per click gets clicked more often, it will rank

higher.– Result - CPC can decrease as an ad becomes more popular, even

though a competitor may be prepared to bid more on the same keyword: more clicks = more money for Google.

– Ranking can be improved by:• Increasing the set daily CPC• Trying to improve relevancy (and therefore CTR) – How? … Tweak the ad text

• AdWords Video: Understanding Ad Rank and Quality Score

Keywords / key phrases

• Just as in SEO it is all about what people are actually typing into search engines

• Create a list of keywords / phrases just as you do for SEO– The big difference is that for search advertising

you can target as many as your budget will allow– Research the advertising that your keywords

actually trigger– Get sophisticated (think long-tail key words and

phrases as in SEO)

Elements of an AdWords campaign

• Google AdWords “Campaign”– Each campaign is made up of one or more

AdGroups – each relating to a separate “theme”, product group, marketing campaign etc

– An AdGroup consists of a set of keywords, bids, and individual advertisements that are managed together

The elements of a basic text-based search engine advertisement

Headline (25 characters max)Click to go to destination landing page

Display URL (35 characters max) not clickable

Description: Two lines of text (35 characters per line max)Include a call to action

What makes up a text ad? (Google)

Think about your ads….

• Better ad text, better performance – some tips on writing better Adwords advertisements

Language and Geo-targeting

• Very cost-effective and highly targeting method of using search engine marketing – cost-per-click will vary according to the geographic target

• Especially useful for:– Small businesses whose target markets are in particular local

areas– Bricks and mortar businesses

• Allows you to target your advertisement to – Particular geographic locations– Particular languages

• Geo-targeting - Bob Nicholson (4 minutes)

Setting goals for an Adwords campaign

• Before you begin to create an Adwords group you need to set goals and metrics (performance indicators so you know you have succeeded)

• Adwords Video: Define Success, then Achieve it

Advertising metrics: ROI and CPA

• ROI = Return on investment• CPC = Cost per click (for performance-based search

ads)• CPM = Cost per thousand (impression) – for display

ads• CPA = Cost per (customer) acquisition

• Google Analytics and AdWords are very strongly tied together

Keyword targeted advertisementsalso served to sites other than the search

engine itself

• The keyword-targeted advertisements appear not just in the search engine results pages, but on the “content network”

• Major players in PPC search engine advertising– Google works with an affiliate network

• Google search engine• Google maps• Mobile devices• Content partner network• AdSense publisher network

• Google Adwords Advertising types – don’t forget that Google offers Display ads as well as PPC ads

Advertising for web publishers

• Google AdWords – for marketers

• Google AdSense – for publishers – Google’s content network - % of CPC paid– Ads are matched to page content, not search

terms – – Different ad formats available, including video ads

– Publishers can choose between PPC ads and Display ads

• How AdSense works

Click fraud

• PPC lends itself to click fraud because of its structure– Advertiser pays the advertising network, which in turn

pays the publisher

• Click fraud = clicking on a paid advertisement for a fraudulent or non-legitimate purpose– By a human, an automated script or a computer program –

an example

• The advertiser pays, the search engine company can be said to benefit (apart from paying out a % to the publisher)

Why click fraud?• Two main types of click fraud:

– Search engine click fraud: artificially raising a competitor’s marketing costs or exhausting their budget to remove them from their position in the listings (usually on very high cost or competitive key terms)

– Publisher click fraud: artificially raising a publisher’s income from AdSense

• Estimated 10% to 15% of ad clicks are fake, representing roughly $1 billion in annual billings (Business Week, 2006).

• Search firms have put tools in place to detect and prevent click fraud (but have still been sued by advertisers) Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center (Google)

• Mobile clicks made in error are now an increasing problem (fat finger syndrome)

• Click fraud is now a social media problem and next class we will look at the problem of fraud in display advertising

Advertising using other firms brand names as keywords

• Type in Molson beer and you might get an ad for Budweiser

• “Tofino hotel” sometimes gets you ads for Ucluelet hotels

• Legal in the US and Canada? Recent local case Vancouver Community College v Vancouver Career College (Burnaby)

• Ethical?

– Google Trademark Complaint process

Hands on practice

• Explore Google AdWords, research a PPC keyword campaign, and get some practice in designing text advertisements

• AdWords Home• Google Adwords

: How to create a campaign, set up ad groups, and types of advertisements

DISPLAY ADVERTISING

Today’s class will cover:

• Display advertising• Demographic and behavioural targeting• ‘Native” advertising

Definition of display advertising

• "a form of online advertising where an advertiser's message is shown on a destination web page, generally set off in a box at the top or bottom or to one side of the content of the page."The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB)

• “Interactive” display advertising means that the display ads actually do something in response to a user action

• Display advertising is usually purchased on the basis of the number of “impressions” (CPM) that an ad has (not on the basis of performance or CTR)

Internet advertising formats (IAB report for 2014)

Web site advertising formats• Display ads began in 1994 with static banners on Hotwired.com for AT&T

• Then in the search to catch people’s attention added animation, then moved to the use of “rich media”

• Interactive formats, including:– Banners– Buttons– Skyscrapers– Pop-ups, pop-unders, interstitials– Pre-rolls– Video

– For examples of web advertising formats, go to• DoubleClick Media Gallery

• IAB Guidelines for interactive advertising

A couple of common sources to buy display ads

• Google – Adwords for Display

• Facebook – Advertising on Facebook

How are ads bought and sold?• Shift from Ad Exchanges to “Programmatic

Advertising”• “Programmatic” ad buying typically refers to the use of

software to purchase digital advertising, as opposed to the traditional process that involves RFPs, human negotiations and manual insertion orders. It’s using machines to buy ads, basically.” Digiday

• The Evolution of Online Display Advertising (3 minute video from IAB)

• 200 milliseconds: The life of a programmatic real time bidding (RTB) ad impression (Media Crossing)

Problems with web advertising• Seen as more intrusive - consumers complain more about

web advertising than about other forms of advertising– Related to the nature of the medium

• Spyware and tracking cookies• Privacy concerns

– Social networking sites– Behavioural targeting and retargeting – may be subject to regulation– Use of cookies by advertising networks

• Opting out – Network Advertising Initiative• DoubleClick Opt-Out• Do Not Track initiatives

• Pop-up blockers and Ad Blockers• Very low click-through rates…..

http://www.businessinsider.com/its-more-likely-you-will-survive-a-plane-crash-or-win-the-lottery-than-click-a-banner-ad-2011-6?op=1

How successful is online display advertising?

• Click-through rates are very low– Average is around 1 click every 1000 impressions– Research from Dave Chaffey on

variance in CTR for display ad types– Click-through rates on Facebook and Twitter (from Larry

Kim)

• Beyond demographics : Behavioural targeting and re-targeting are being tried in an effort to improve CTR

Types of ad targeting• Search targeting – based on terms typed into

search engine – marketers bid on search terms. Ads appear on SERPS. Costing is PPC

• Context targeting – based on textual content of the webpage on which the ad appears (often plus demographics). Costing is CPM (impressions)

• Behavioural targeting (and retargeting / remarketing) - monitors online behaviour and serves ads accordingly

Ad targeting

• Online advertising is creepy; it doesn't have to be. David Stillwell

• Facebook Ads – How advertisers target you with their ads online (Steve Dotto. 2015)

Ad blockers – the people fight back• A report last month from Adobe and PageFair,

an Irish start-up that monitors ad blocking, projected that the software would lead to nearly $22 billion in lost revenue for advertisers this year.

• Roughly 200 million people globally now use ad-blocking software; global usage increased 41 percent in the last year.

• Apple’s latest OS for mobile iOS 9 will include ad blocking software

http://blog.pagefair.com/2015/ad-blocking-report/

http://blog.pagefair.com/2015/ad-blocking-report/

http://blog.pagefair.com/2015/ad-blocking-report/

Ad fraud – Bots inflate monetized audiences by 5-50%

Final thoughts about web display advertising……

• Advertising is less and less about interruption and trying to grab attention – make ads that people actually want to watch

• More and more about attempting to engage a willing audience

• Big shift to the use of mobile by users so advertisers are following

• Advertisers cautiously shifting to paid social media – useful survey from Neilsen (2013)

Integrated campaigns

• Campaigns that use a variety of marketing tactics that work together in a campaign (just like your team project campaign)

• MIXX Awards 2014 – a variety of interactive advertising featured as part of integrated campaigns (get some ideas for your team assignment campaign from here!)

“NATIVE” ADVERTISING

“Native” advertising• Also known as “content marketing” – basically it is

paid content (marketing messages) masquerading as organic content on news and other publishing websites (Buzzfeed is often named as the primary example) – it differs from the traditional “advertorial” because it is designed to blend in with the “real” content

• Increased use of native advertising is a response to the fact that traditional display ads don’t work at all well – but it is very controversial

• Native Advertising Examples: 5 of the Best (and Worst)• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Native Advertising (HBO)

(11 minutes)