Posts Tagged ‘Advertising’

Analysing your Google AdWords Campaign

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

In this series of posts we have looked at a number of the different facets involved in setting up and maintaining your Google AdWords campaign. From keywords to the actual ad text we have explored tips and information detailing what they are and how they work. In this blog post we will look at the other end of the process: Just how do you evaluate the progress of your campaign?

Once you have set up your Google AdWords campaign and spent all the necessary time looking at the products on your site that you wish to promote. Then found key phrases that will perform and are relevant to your needs. And finally taken care to write ad text, and have actually had the campaign running for a period of time. You will soon be looking for some indication of whether your campaign is working effectively. After all, if you can optimise your campaign then you can, not only spend your advertising budget in a more effective way, but you can actually make more sales.

One of the initial components to look at is Impressions. This represents the actual number of times that your ad has been shown. If you find that your ads do not have many Impressions, then this could be for a number of reasons – the keywords that trigger your ads may not be popular, meaning your ads are only being shown to a very small number of people.

Clicks are hopefully the results of Impressions, these represent people seeing your advert and deciding to click on it.

Click through rate, or CTR, is a combination of the two previous factors. CTR is the number of Clicks compared to the number of Impressions represented as a percentage. The higher the CTR the better your ad is performing.

Conversions represent the final goal of most sites: a sale. Although high numbers of Clicks and good CTR’s are desirable, they must all make way for the ultimately essential Conversions.

It may seem like most of the work on your AdWords campaign is over when you have all your keywords and ads in place. But the most effective way to run pay-per-click advertising is by constant revision based on previous results. By analysing statistics such as these you can evaluate how your Google AdWords campaign is performing.

Martin Able is an online advertising authority working with payment gateways and money transfer services for ecommerce stores.

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Mobile Ways to Advertise Online

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

Online advertising is big business: Fact. Google would certainly agree with that, as it’s always been a staple of their business model. In fact advertising is for Google a multi-billion dollar industry. So why is online advertising so successful? Well, unlike traditional advertising like billboards, TV adverts, etc, advertising online is far more direct and infinitely more focused. However with modern changes in how people get online the game is certainly going to change.

If you advertise through Google AdWords for instance you’ll find that your adverts are targeted, making them more effective as you’re putting them in front of the right people. Ads such as these can be configured to fit your demographic; popping up at the right times, and in the right searches. As opposed to traditional blanket advertising, people are actively searching out your kind of service. That’s the beauty of search based advertising. Of course with people getting online through mobile devices you might have to re-think your advertising strategy.

Fortunately there are services becoming available which can help you on your way. Google for instance, has invested hundreds of millions into getting its mobile advertising setup off and running. As an expansion on Google AdWords, Google Mobile helps you to get your adverts in front of mobile users, by providing information to help you tailor your ads for mobiles. Mobile ads are more restricted in the number of characters available for things like the title, and as such copywriters have to be on the ball. There are similar services available from Microsoft and Yahoo, but these are hampered by the fact that there are far less popular browsers available to them than Google, which in turn constitutes a less rewarding platform for businesses to broadcast themselves.

Of course the move into other areas for advertisers doesn’t stop there. Due to roll out in the next few months the iAd platform from Apple is set to be a very different animal. Running on the iPhone, iPod and iPad it’s clearly gearing into a very different section of the market. Advertisers will apparently be charged a minimum of one million dollars when the platform rolls out. Running ads through apps on each device will clearly boost the number of free apps available, as developers take advantage of the new revenue stream available.

Whichever way advertisers go it’s apparent that the online advertising game is changing. The only thing that’s for certain is that it will continue to grow as online advertising takes over.

Martin Able is experienced in web advertising and providing online businesses with money transfer services and security for online credit card processing which has allowed him to see the benefits of effective ads.

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