Google to Report Conversions w/o Click too!

A new metric is going to be shown into your account very soon - conversion of impressions w/o click. Presently, it sometimes shows and then goes off. It will show you the number of conversions from impressions i.e., people who saw your ad on any site and got converted. It would be the last column in your account, after conv rate 1 per click. This figure might speed up competition for impressions on quality websites. People who were shy of targeting by CPM, may find the information compelling enough to do so in future. The move may heat up the war for impressions on quality network. Also, it will reveal something new about display/image ads. Let us see how much of our belief were correct at least we shall get an opportunity to do some corrections in what we believe till now.

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Adwords Double Serving Policy after Diluting Restrictions.

Adwords Double Serving Policy used to be very stringent before the start of 2009.

• Advertisers were required to maintain one single account, to fecilitate automatic one ad per keyword.
• If you have multiple stores all of which could be advertised on same keyword. you could advertise for only one of them.

Google added following exceptions to the otherwise strict rule:

To protect trust in Google, and to provide a quality experience for our advertisers and our users, the double-serving policy is strictly enforced. Exceptions are granted only in very limited cases. Advertisers seeking an exception to Google's double-serving policy are required to contact AdWords Support.

When reviewing requests, we focus on the preservation of a unique user experience for each site, and also take into account the following:

The destination site for each ad offers different products or services (for example, a large manufacturer with two product sites, one solely for stereos and one solely for computers, both running on the keyword 'electronics')

The destination site for each ad serves a different purpose (for example, one site focuses on product information only, and the other site focuses on product sale only)

Any product overlaps for each ad's destination site are not significant enough to affect user experience

The pricing difference offered by each site is significant and based on the same criteria (for example, if one site includes pricing with tax, the other site must include pricing with tax)

while adding these exceptions, Google also maintained preservation of Unique User Experience. Click on the screenshot on this page to find some of the apparent violations. You may also just run a search query on google.co.in for - hotels in delhi, to find some new innovations for compromising this rule. Is it the Global Economic  Recession impact on Google's Policy!

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Attempts to turn Seth's Advocacy for Sympathy Click into Mass Movement

Seth had said - "If you like what you're reading, click an ad to say thanks." in his one of the controversial blogpost Ads are the new online tip jar, Also, see the first person to react via trackback, Cem Sertoglu of Turkey, Seth further reacted in another blogpost - Beating the status quo, that he didn't mean to advocate Click Fraud, as has been misunderstood by the practitioners of click advertising, rather he wanted to beat the status quo of only hardcore click throughs. Seth's Logic - As clicks would increase, Revenue would increase for Publishers and Advertisers would get more Attention, from people who had mild interest in the advertisement. But, converting mild interest into sales is Profitable. Profitable for the advertiser, for the publisher and for the online industry at large. That is seth's Logic, but from the perspective of Pay per click managers who struggles to eliminate these unwanted clicks everyday, through more focused creatives and more focused targeting, it is not a profitable scenario at all. People practicing ppc knows how tough it is to fight unwanted clicks from researchers and seasonal flurry of traffic on even Search Keywords are. On Search, people are typing in the keywords in the search bar to find what they are served actually, yet it may not be profitable all the time. If you add further load of people who have intent to only click on your ads, it becomes worse. So, converting mild interest into sales is not an easy task, it is far from reality. But, think of the situation where people only click on the ad to just say thank you to the publisher! PPC model is not meant for thank you clicks. It works around conversions and cost of conversions in reality, which are not always within such a comfortable margin to accomodate sympathy clicks, in fact it always pose challenges because its an auction, and competition keeps on pushing up the cost of click. Publishers can benefit from Higher cost of clicks by having Remarkable content (Courtesy Seth who made Remarkability the popular concept), which has the ability to attract relevant traffic and hence good advertisers who would like to compete there for grabbing the attention and click of this traffic. 

It is more than a year now since Seth wrote that controversial post, but why I am discussing it now is the reason I saw, someone trying to advocate sympathy clicking via adwords! There may be others too, but this is the site, I came across, advocating sympathy clicking(or Thank You Click), and asking you to spread the message across the web. Who needs sympathy clicks? Those who have failed to generate quality content, and hence quality followers. Why Seth is advocating it, Perhaps because of This - "I can say this because there are no ads here... ".  Well the website I am talking about has no details of its founders and only have a contact email, in contact.  I also checked its whois info , which does not reveal anything. So, the person behind it does not want to come into light. But, Google should be knowing him, because he is running adwords ads! Does he deserve conversion? You would decide. Can you openly display the badge of a website which does not even reveal a valid contact address?

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Multiple Presence on the same Page - It enhances your Conversion Rate Many Times Over!

Once upon a time People thought, since they have good SEO, and presence on quality keywords they don't need Adwords. Some used to think just the reverse, and perhaps still thinks so, that since they have a good running Adwords campaign, they don't need to SEO their website. Just check your stats and focus on adwords stats where, you had presence both in Organic and paid links. You would notice, you had wonderful conversion rate both in organic and paid. Why this happens? Not only it increases your percentage of links on the page over others, it increases the level of trust of visitors in you. People think since you are also present in the paid link despite being present in organic link, you are the person worth doing business with. Google now offers you three opportunities to feature on the same search page. They are 1) organic Listing, 2) Paid Listing, and 3) Local business listing.  Don't discount any of them. If you are running a hotel, or selling flowers or any kind of business, where google offers all three kind of listings, you cannot afford to go for a strategy around only one of them, because all your serious competitors are present there on all three, and  those who are not would soon be biting the dust, because whatever, single track strategy she is following, would become unprofitable sooner or later. What changed this game? There was a time when people used to advertise on keywords where they are not performing well in organic results. After sometime they found, if they advertise on same keyword where they have good presence organically too, they get great result. The practice started infecting other advertiser and this became an indication for user that what they see once is just a chance, what they see more than once is Genuineness. People want to deal with genuine people world around. Those who are present in all three listing in search get a big edge over those who are not. they see conversions flowing towards them while others would find, the keyword is getting costlier to afford every passing day! In industries where local listing matters the most like florist shops, hotels etc., you cannot afford to survive on a single listing on the page. 

Similar is the case with content network. If you are also showing direct advertisements on the website alongwith the adwords ads on the page, it greatly enhances your conversion rate, compared to what you see with only one of them. Present strategy for online marketing should be domination. Try to dominate the placements as much as you can. Don't spread yourself too far and too thin. Choose the areas where you are strong and don't just give others the chance to take a slice away from you of your meal. If you know of a website where you find great number of prospects, just go and have a deal with them. Have your presence there both directly and indirectly through any third party targeting like google adwords, and just see the difference it creates in your returns on investments. 

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Conversion Optimizer: It does something Beyond Conversion Optimization !

Anyone managing a campaign with at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days can use conversion optimizer. This rule is a big relaxation over the previous rule which required a very higher conversion number within 90 days period. In that way only big advertisers could qualify for it. No more now, however, nearly anybody can qualify now with less than one conversion a day. Let us see how it works:

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  It places your ad into historically high converting zone more often.
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  It manages the bid on its own. So, if exhorbitantly high bid is required to occupy a slot, it would place your ad there keeping in view the cost and probability of conversion.
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  If you are not meeting the required number of conversions within cost your ad automatically slows down.
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  When conversion goes down, it starts pushing your ad into low CPC zone. So, you start getting low cost per click.

Some important observations rearding the behavior of campaigns on conversion optimizer with respect to CPC are:

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  If your campaign is meeting the required number of conversions within the specified cost. Cost per click may be pushed up higher in your campaign. your ads would be occupying some highly coveted slots more often in this scenario.
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  if your campaign fails to meet the specified number of conversions within the specified cost. Your Cost per click will show dramatic fall. You may also see some unbelievable figures of avg. CPC.
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  It works better with Content rather than Search campaigns.

Where lies the Trick:

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  First and foremost, you should not believe what system suggests you to bid. Always choose the most comfortable level of cost of conversion. Check your weekly, monthly, average of cost of conversion and accordingly select a figure.
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  Keep conversion optimizer switching on and off, targeting reduction in Avg. CPC. It automatically produces Quality Score enhancements about which I had talked about in some previous post. Yes, the conversion optimizer needs a bit of shake to make it work properly.
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  Conversion Optimizer works well with campaigns which have even flow of conversions throughout the day. It is not advisable in situations where conversion flows are highly erratic. Your campaign may stop at wrong time, or may continue at a high delivery frequency at wrong times.
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  In case of you disqualify in above mentioned condition, consider using a back up campaign, which is not on optimizer. if you don't have all campaigns on optimizer, you may use it even in the case of diasqualification in the above scenario. Mostly campaigns related to stock markets disqualify. Remember, you should not use high cost per conversion bid in such a case.
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  In a branding campaign, you should use it to produce Low CPC, defining your conversion is a real trick here. Try something near to home page (Landing Page), and home page too!!!

When Optimizer produces Low CPC:

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  If your target is to achieve very low cpc through it, make view of a page, which is not too far away from landing page as conversion. Remember, the more difficult it is for the system to get the desired level of cost of conversion, the lower the cpc gets.
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  System should, however, be able to produce conversions, within not too far away of the limit. Otherwise, it would stop the campaign.
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  Keep on reducing the specified cost per conversion, till the system starts increasing the cpc value. You would be able to discover the best bid that way.
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  Always, give your campaign a spell of manual cpc bidding in between. This will help you create conversion history which is helpful for optimizer to behave properly.

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