The Paid Search world was in a tizzy last week over the announcement of Google’s beta testing for its new Automatic Matching (AM) feature for AdWords. Below is Google’s explanation of the tools’ functions, and just for fun, see if you can guess what two words triggered the uproar.
“Automatic Matching automatically extends your campaign’s reach […]

After more and more evidence that an economic downturn is coming, marketing departments and firms everywhere are bracing for a hit. Marketing has historically been on the receiving end of lay offs once a recession kicks in, but will this ring true for those in search engine marketing? Withstanding the dot com bust, SEM has […]

In a courageous show of unity against the oppression of Base 10 numbering systems, here is our list of a dozen predictions for the search engine marketing industry this year.
1. Management tools become the cost of having a seat at the paid search table, rather than a competitive advantage.
In past years, advertisers in competitive spaces […]

We extended the previous test for Client B so that the data for the same time period was pulled down over a number of days. The hypothesis is that the data might change over time as Google performs analysis on invalid clicks and such. This theory did not hold up in the test:

Day
Time
Clicks
Cost
Impr

1st
2am
199
$759.52
128,242

1st
3am
200
$759.52
762.14

2nd
4am
200
$759.52
762.14

3rd
4am
200
$759.52
762.14

3rd
11am
200
$759.52
762.14

4th
4am
200
$759.52
762.14

4th
11am
200
$759.52
762.14

5th
4am
200
$759.52
762.14

6th
4am
200
$759.52
762.14

7th
4am
200
$759.52
762.14

8th
4am
200
$759.52
762.14

9th
4am
200
$759.52
762.14

10th
4am
200
$759.52
762.14

11th
4am
200
$759.52
762.14

12th
4am
200
$759.52
762.14

13th
4am
200
$759.52
762.14

We also ran […]

If so, you most likely still missed the WSJ Online article about our pay-per-post marketing efforts. The article highlights the growing interest in sponsored reviews, and also draws attention to some of the issues businesses can come across when paying for honest, 3rd party reviews of their services.
Below is a quick blurb from the article […]

One little known, yet potentially salient fact about Google AdWords and bidding on trademarked terms, is that it’s not always the advertiser that chooses to bid on the trademark. We have seen cases where, depending on the match type chosen (and, perhaps, depending on how much money Google’s Algorithm predicts it can make for […]

Continuing our series on Google AdWords API Data Consistency, we repeated yesterday’s test this morning, this time with a B2C lead generation client (hereafter Client B). Unfortunately, the results from this test were infinitely worse.
Fortunately, the results were still pretty darn good:

Time
Clicks
Cost
Impr

2am
199
$759.52
128,242

3am
200
$762.14
128,715

4am
200
$762.14
128,715

5am
200
$762.14
128,715

6am
200
$762.14
128,715

7am
200
$762.14
128,715

8am
200
$762.14
128,715

9am
200
$762.14
128,715

10am
200
$762.14
128,715

All the stats had settled out completely by 3am, and were quite close to […]

For some time, we have seen a rumor floating around that data downloaded via the Google AdWords API can fluctuate for the first day or so after it is created. One theory is that it takes time for all the data to be registered from the various data centers.
To test the validity of this theory, […]

Yesterday News.com made mention of a horde of postings and literature that had been written by Google Veep, Adam Bosworth. One piece of information they focused on in particular was Bosworth’s interest in the development of the next generation of personal health records, or—Google Health. It’s been theorized that Google Health would be a web-based […]

Last week while bellying up to the SEO Roundtable I came across a small blurb about Google’s new Ad Text Ideas tool. With this tool an advertiser can plug in a variety of unique descriptions for their product or service. By selecting a combination of predetermined words, phrases, and locations the tool churns […]