Bing – Not Seeing Your PPC Ads?

Don’t be alarmed if you are not seeing your own ads! Here is a great explanation straight from Bing…

“Recently there was a system improvement implemented to enhance our current search algorithms. Part of this enhancement detects the likelihood of a particular user clicking on ads based on their preferences, history, and other quality factors.  The search engine learns about the users and how likely they are to click on an ad.  Users who are more likely to click, see more ads, while users who are less likely to click, see fewer ads.

Advertisers might not be able to verify that their own ads are showing on Bing as easily, due to their usage patterns or history.  Searching for ads without clicking on them may prevent advertisers from seeing their own advertisements when they look for them.  If you are unable to view your ad, please be aware that it does not mean your ad is not serving.  In fact, this helps to verify that the system improvement is in place to ensure your ads are shown to quality users who are most likely to click on your ad, providing you the best value for your advertising strategy.

I understand that advertisers would like to see their advertisements to validate that their ads are showing and to check their competition.  We are hoping to have a tool that allows advertisers to validate whether their ads are showing and where in the near future.“

-Bing Representative

Regarding Google Website Optimizer in AdWords as of August 1^st 2012 It’s gone and Google has provided us with Content Experiments.

Lindsay Keller over at Search Marketing Sage wrote a great article on the subject: http://blog.search-mojo.com/2012/07/31/bye-website-optimizer-hello-google-analytics-experiments/

This move make sense as Google most likely wants to continue to make landing page testing available to the general public… but with one caveat: Install Google Analytics.

This increases the number of new non-AdWords subscribers to Google Analytics.  Meanwhile, for all AdWords advertisers who are not yet using Google Analytics, forcing them to install and utilize their platform in order to a/b testing moving forward.  The brains at Google really know how to herd some cattle…

In their first episode, the Search Marketing Vegetables discuss the importance or proper ad positioning when advertising on the pay per click engines. Watch as the dumb radish is insistent that the number one position is the place to be.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=3a7YbuutYog%26hl%3Den

BSS is back! We are now re-launching as a weekly radio show on Webmaster Radio.

Best Search Strategies is created and hosted by leading search agency Engine Ready. You’ll hear about state of the art search strategies and tools, and pick up on the hottest tips for increasing conversion while lowering your ad costs.

This week’s show will air on Wednesday, July 21st at 2:00pm Pacific Time and will cover “The Hottest Google Analytics Tips to Increase Your ROI”.

Are you taking advantage of all that Google Analytics has to offer?  Listen in to fine tune your website tracking as we’ll review the hottest tips for Google Analytics to help improve your online marketing.

The Hottest Google Analytics Tips will include:

• Setting up Goals, Funnels, & Filters
• Developing Custom Reports
• Segmentation Features

So mark your calendars and be sure to join us for this our weekly program airing every Wednesday at 2:00pm!

Do you ever do one thing the same way every day of your life? Perhaps you always put on socks before putting on shoes and have never thought otherwise. Well I always turn off the optimize ad display feature in Yahoo without thinking twice. Why? Because I like to A/B test two ad creatives. The fun part is writing different ads, running them simultaneously side by side and seeing which one beats out the other.

Well the other day I realized this pattern of mine and thought, why not test out this optimize ad display feature. Who knows, it may save me time.

The Yahoo UI clearly states “ads with higher performance will be displayed more frequently”.

So I called our Yahoo rep and found out that this feature is directly connected to the “Optimization Guidelines”. This is set at the ad group or campaign level.

As an SEM person who looks at and makes decisions off of data samples every day, I wanted to know what criteria Yahoo uses to determine which ad is the higher performer. If you leave the setting as is, then it will determine which ad is the higher performer using CTR. However, if you change the Optimization Guidelines, it will also use conversion data. Of course the rep disclaimed all this information by saying there are several factors that go into determining the higher performing ads, and actually advised to leave the Optimization Guideline settings as the default (Business Objective / Clicks).

With that said I tested it out and quickly found these noticeable pros and cons.

The Pros

• Nothing is perfect when it comes to any search engine “optimization” feature, but this definitely shows the ad that has the higher CTR for the most part.
• It saves time. If your account gets quite a bit of volume or you manage more than one account, this will take the manual labor out of looking at every single ad group and evaluating ad creative data (impression, clicks, CTR, conversions, etc) to find which ad is adding more fuel to the fight between him and Orlando Bloom – he just posted a photo on Instagram in which the actor appears to be crying!The photo was taken on the opening night of Orlando‘s recent Broadway production of Romeo and Juliet. is the winner. But keep in mind it only used CTR to determine the “higher performing ad”.
• This feature is automatically set up (as the default) so you do not have to go into each ad group and change the settings for optimize ad display.

The Cons

• Within the Yahoo UI, it does not explain that the ad which is under performing will be turned OFF. Indeed, Yahoo takes the liberty to eventually turn off the underperforming ad completely. This would be okay, if there was some sort of alert on the campaign summary page that told you this was taking place so you could go write a new ad to take its place.
• As quoted by our Yahoo rep, the feature can “sometimes be aggressive”. Meaning it can turn off new ads rather quickly. Thus your ads are not showing at a true 50/50 split with this feature. The Yahoo rep said this happens due to several factors.
• It’s nice to have the control and ability to set this feature at the ad group level; however it can become quite cumbersome to manually go into each ad group and turn this feature off. It would be more useful to have this setting at the campaign & account level as well.

Please let us know about your own experience with this feature, if you like it or hate it and will you use it moving forward…