Archive for July, 2010

It was reported a few days ago in the US that users are seeing the top PPC ads on Google Adwords with a pink background and it seems this is now launched in the UK too. Google move from the old blue background to the yellow one in 2007. In the meantime they have tested a lot of different versions. It will be interesting to see if this change increases the CTR!

Search and Display network (or Content network) are two different  …. but sometimes advertisers confuse them. The graph below separates the two and explains the different mindset of the users.

It’s very important to remember that when a user is searching on Google he/she is  proactively looking for a service or products. On the other hand when a user sees a banner or an ad when visiting a website they are not looking for ads. (This explains the low CTR on the display network). In the next few days we will post a few interesting articles on the Google content network explaining in more detail how it works.

A lot of potential clients ask us ” what should we expect from you?”/”how many sales will you generated on month one?”/”can you drop our CPA?”.  Very difficult questions to answer as it depends on so many different factors. For example what  strategy we will follow, (we always discuss with the client and decide when and how to implement) the actual product, the conversion rate and many more.

A few months ago we got a new client that speciliaces in a tough niche market, below are the results so far. We managed to increase the number of sales with the same budget and dropped the Cost Per Sale every month. As a result we got more traffic, more sales and stayed at the same budget.

The last few weeks everyone has been talking about the Old Spice viral videos.  They are pretending he is a real person who will answer questions, it’s taken over Reddit.com and a few other social networking sites: This came first, then this Overall a great campaign that got a lot of attention in the media.

Something though that I really missed was the Heineken video in Italy back in 2009. A great idea with a few good million views and a lot of comments on the blogs. The trap was set in Milan before the big game of AC Milan vs Real Madrid.

Since the launch of iPhone a few years ago everyone was expecting the “mobile revolution” where thousand of sales will be generated every day from mobile. I personally don’t believe we are there yet but we are getting closer. The search volumes on Google mobile are raising and users feel more comfortable surfing the net on a 3G connection or WiFi.

A few weeks ago we did a Google Analytics consultancy for a client and realised that actually they generated 225 transactions in 30 days from mobile. A great number if you consider that the website doesn’t have a mobile version and it’s very difficult for the visitor to navigate through the existing menu.

When we look closely to the actual devices we can see that iPhone and iPad are top of the list. As iPad offers the same experience to the user as a normal laptop or PC the conversion rate is higher. iPhone is still on the top of the list with the most visits and transactions but lower conversion rate. Android/Blackberry and iPod touch have a very low conversion rate.

Overall mobile will eventually become an important channel (not as important as some people predict) and if we add iPad under that channel we will definitely see an increase in visits and sales. It’s important to try and test your site in the devices and if possible correct any issues. Similarly to the web user experience is very important for mobile users too. The trend is here and we have noticed that all our clients have seen an increase in traffic from mobile.

Make sure that you check the your analytics regularly for the number of visitors from mobile devices. For Google Analytics users click  Visitors>Mobile>Mobile Devices.