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Online advertising up 13.5% last year

According to a new survey, carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers, it looks like there was significant growth in online advertising last year. The survey tells us there was a 13.5% increase in advertising spend last year. This figure has exceeded industry expectations.

The survey valued the Irish online market for last year at €110m, up from €97m in 2009.

It said that advertising on social media sites and ad networks contributed to the growth of 'display' spend which has grown from 26.6% in 2009 to 31% in 2010.

Ads for cars is the top performing category, followed by advertising for recruitment and property. The survey also says there are more broadband connections and more time is being spent online.

'The growth in the Irish online audience and in their time spent consuming online media while other media are experiencing fragmenting audiences underlines the phenomenon of online's growing share of media budgets,' commented PricewaterhouseCooper's Bartley O'Connor.

Free Google AdWords Training Course Video

Google (UK) has just launched a series of Free Google AdWords Training Course Videos to help advertisers start with, and then get the most from, their Google AdWords advertising.

If you're interested in creating a stronger online brand presence or drawing a high volume of traffic to your site, the Google AdWords Online Classroom can help you accomplish both by giving you access to the world's largest online video-streaming and -sharing community.

There are a whole bunch of video's to help you get started with Google advertising. The titles of these videoa includes:

Create an AdWords account
Ways to Boost Your AdWords performance
Measuring Success
Beyond the basics

This is an excellent series of video's for beginners.

There is also a video specially for marketing agencies trying to get to grips with the digital advertising world.

Search Advertising Nearly Half of All Digital Ad Spend in Ireland

Spending on online advertising in Ireland has jumped over 12% year-on-year, according to a study from PricewaterhouseCoopers and IAB Ireland. €53.9m was spent in the first six months of 2010 on digital advertising This is an increase of 12.3% over the same time in the previous year. The growth has been attributed to increasing numbers of people going online, and the ability of the internet to engage with consumers.

45% of this was spend on Sach Marketing and Advertising (of which Google recieves the lion's share). The remainder was divided between classified advertising (26%) and display advertising (29%).

Advertising on social media sites and paid-search advertising both performed very strongly according to the study.

Interstingly, during the same period, TV Advertising went down 5.9% and Radio Advvertising decreased by 11.1%.

Your digital marketing will fail if all you are trying to do is move an audience from one place to another rather than engaging with them where they are.

I recently audited a new client’s digital marketing strategy and implementation.
They were frustrated with the results of their efforts so far and wanted some advice and guidance on how to get better return for their investment. Their budget was significant but the return was negligible. Having reviewed their digital activities, I was struck by a common theme in each of the channels they were using. All of their activities had one goal, drive traffic to their site. In trying to explain to them what was wrong with their digital marketing I told them about an Aunt of mine.

I have an aunt who insists that all parties in a house should happen in the kitchen.
She emigrated from Ireland 40 years ago and when she returned last Christmas she stayed with my family for our new year celebrations. She has fond memories of growing up in Ireland and all of her memories are of being with her family in the kitchen. She insists that any gathering or event in a house should take place in the kitchen. Invariably after a few glasses of wine she carves off one of the guests in the sitting room and works them slowly towards the kitchen. Which is always empty and cold.

Much digital marketing is wasted when all it tries to do is move the party.
We try to move people from where they are online to our empty websites. We expend all of our budget, energy and efforts trying to move the party, trying to move the audience from one site to our site. instead of just join the party where ever it is happening.

The solution? Join the party.
Your target audience is active and engaged on the internet. Your challenge is to meet them there.
Meet them where? Meet them where ever they are.
Despite the fact that there are hundreds of TV channels available to us, we all tend to gravitate around 4 or 5. Similarly on line we tend to gravitate around 4 or 5 websites. Trying to move people from one of their haunts or introduce a new haunt is a very expensive and often wasteful activity. Better to find out where the party is happening and interact with your audience where they are rather than expending effort and expense in trying to move them somewhere else.

Understanding Google AdWords Auction

One of the better Google video’s that I have seen (and I show as many folks as possible) is one delivered by a guy called Hal Varian who is Google’s Chief Economist. The video introduces viewers to the wild and woolly area of the AdWords auction. You can watch this Google AdWords video below.

For instance, did you know that the Quality Score of each of the keywords has a massive effect on how much you pay for each click? To learn more about how Quality Score is defined, and how to improve it, you can visit the Search Ads Quality Getting Started Guide.

Finally, remember that if you’d like to understand how bidding can affect your ad’s performance in the auction, you can use the bid simulator. It will provide you with click, cost, and impression data estimating how your ad could have performed over the last seven days had you used a different bid.

New Google AdWords Certification Program - Update

Google recently launched their Google Certification Program (to replace Google Advertising Professionals program). To provide professionals who had previously taken the program time to transition over to the new program, Google is running both programs side by side during a six month grace period which ends in October 2010. To retain certified status and continue using the badge within your marketing collateral, Google AdWords professionals MUST meet the requirements of the new program.

What’s the difference between the two programs? With the Google Certification Program, Google is offering updated learning materials written by Google experts. The company has developed four, separate in-depth exams on AdWords management called Fundamentals, Advanced Search, Advanced Display and Advanced Reporting & Analysis. The exams are designed to prove proficiency in these areas and are being widely adopted by employees of search marketing agencies. To gain qualification, exam takers must pass both the Advertising Fundamentals exam and one advanced-level exam.

In addition to this, Google has also launched Google Partner Search, a directory to help advertisers find agencies to manage their campaigns. Currently, all Google Advertising Professionals who have opted in are part of Google Partner Search, but this will not be the case by the end of October. If you have an employee that already qualified under the old program, this is a great time for them to update their skills through the Google Certification Program. Digital Marketing Institute runs training courses that enable AdWords professional to take the Google Exams. Call us on 01 271 1888 for more details on these Google AdWords training courses.

Facebook Ads Keyword Tool

We have been using Facebook ads for a while now with some success. However, one of the main things that Facebook advertising and marketing has been lacking up until now has been a decent keyword research tool, along the lines of the Google Keyword Tool. Facebook’s online tools are outdated. There are no real keyword tools and the poor one that they do have is a bit on the clunky side.

However, the guys behind a third party keyword tool called Cash Keywords Pro have developed a Facebook keyword tool. What it does is queries the Facebook database and then combines the results with Google-related data to make a truly useful and powerful weapon in the battle for the clicks.

Watch the video here:

Check out the Cash Keywords site for more info on the new Facebook Ads Keyword Tool ….

New Google AdWords Report in Google Analytics

Google has released a new Google AdWords Reporting feature in Google Analytics. With this update, users now have access to 3 new reports, 10 new dimensions, and more AdWords metrics.

Three Brand New Reports

Three new reports give you the ability to dig into all aspects of your AdWords campaign performance.

Day Parts Report

If you want to know the best day of the week for your ads or the best hours of the day for your campaigns, then can now see your ad performance broken down by day of the week and by hour of the day using the Day Parts report. The Day Parts report can help you find the most profitable times of day for your ads. Then pair it with the Ad Scheduling feature in AdWords to automatically adjust your bid to capture the right traffic at the right time.

Destination URLs Report

What are your best landing pages? The Destination URLs report lets you dive into the performance of each of your Destination URLs. You can break out performance at the Campaign, Ad Group, or Keyword level. Apply a secondary dimension like Keywords and see your top Destination URL/Keyword pairs.

Placements Report

The Placement Performance Report in AdWords shows you the performance of your ads on the Google Content Network. With the Placements Report in Google Analytics, you can get rich post-click performance data about your campaigns and find the best sites to target your ads. Or, either exclude the sites that don’t send you engaged traffic or identify the top performers to create a targeted display campaign.

10 New AdWords Dimensions

Dive deep into your AdWords performance using 10 new AdWords dimensions. For example, try Match Type to see performance between Broad, Phrase, and Exact Match. Love the search query report in AdWords? Segment by Matched Search Query to see exact user queries that triggered your ads and post-click performance.

Clicks Tab in Campaigns and Keywords reports

The Clicks tab brings your AdWords performance metrics into Google Analytics. From the Clicks tab you can get an overview of AdWords performance at the Campaign, Ad Group, or Keyword level. Combined with Goals or eCommerce tracking you can see a complete picture of your AdWords performance.

How to Get Started with the New AdWords Reports

To start using the new AdWords reports in Google Analytics you need a linked AdWords account. You also need to make sure that Destination URL auto-tagging is turned on. Start from your AdWords account, select the Reporting tab, then Google Analytics. To access the reports from Google Analytics, select Traffic Sources, then AdWords.

You can see the new reports in action in this video:

AdWords Split Testing - New Tool from Google

Google has announced the AdWords Campaign Experiments, or ACE. This tool helps you to optimize your AdWords account by letting you accurately test and measure changes to your keywords, bids, ad groups and placements. As part of our ongoing effort to improve the AdWords experience, Google is this new tool and inviting advertisers to participate in the beta programme.

AdWords Campaign Experiments is a tool that allows you to accurately test and measure changes to your keywords, bids, ad groups and placements.

Today, the most common way to measure the impact of these types of changes is to do a simple before-and-after analysis. However, this type of analysis can often be complicated by events that occur during or between the before and after, including holidays, weekends or changes to end user behavior or advertiser behavior.

Different ways of using ACE
Use ACE to experiment with any combination of bid, keyword, ad group or placement changes. You can test and measure a variety of scenarios including:

The incremental impact of adding new keywords to your campaign or changing keyword and ad group-level bids
The value of restructuring your Content campaigns to use more tightly themed ad groups
The change in volume by using different keyword match types
The value of using an ad group default bid versus keyword-level bids
And much more!

Visit this page if you want to apply to take part in this beta program.

Top Three Tips for Better Google AdWords Adverts

The Text on your Advert Matters!

Without relevant, compelling ads, you could be missing out on valuable sales. But you don't need to be a professional copywriter to succeed with AdWords.

Great ad text starts with these three tips:

1. Include keywords in your ads: For each ad group, check that your ad content closely relates to the corresponding keyword lists. You can even try placing keywords in ad titles and descriptions - if part of your ad content matches a user's search phrase, that part of your ad appears in bold! So, get to understand how Dynamic Keyword Insertion works!

2. Improve conversions with a strong call-to-action: Phrases like 'Buy Now', 'Sign Up Today', and 'Order Easily Online' encourage immediate action and inform potential customers of what they can expect from your site.

3. Test your ads: Sometimes it's difficult to know which version of a particular ad will appeal to your target audience. The solution? Run similar ads within an ad group, trying different call-to-action phrases and various titles. Depending on your settings, AdWords can rotate your ads, analyze their click-through rates, and automatically adjust to show the highest-performing ad more frequently.

Ready to try some of these ideas? Here's how to edit your ads.

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