New to Conversion Optimizer or perhaps puzzled on how to use it properly?  Give me 3 minutes right now I’ll tell you what you need to know– this should save you a ton of time with bid optimization and, more importantly, increase your PPC profits.

First off, Google’s Campaign Optimizer works at the campaign level.  Find it in your campaign settings here (the tab in green):

Then scroll down a bit further until you get to bidding options and choose “Focus on conversions”.  A big yellow box opens up:

If you don’t see that option available to you, it means that you don’t have enough conversions for the system to be able to optimize.  Google has lowered the stated number of conversions needed to activate this option, though I believe that you should have at least 50 conversion per month to make it even worthwhile. 

You’ll notice that the recommended CPA target is far higher than the actual CPA you’ve observed.  Go ahead and accept that default or perhaps go 10% less.  Don’t be alarmed, this is not Google attempting to get you to spend more.  Remember that the max CPA is not your actual CPA– somewhat like your max CPC is not your actual CPC.  There is one key difference in that your actual CPAs may sometimes be HIGHER than your target.  This often happens the first few days while their system is learning how to optimize bids. Don’t freak out.

Change the settings for each campaign and you’ve now saved yourself a ton of wasted bids, avoided needing to spend money on fancy bid optimization software, and increased your profit with a lot less effort.

Here are some additional tips:

• Separate your search and content campaigns– Yes, you’ve heard this before.  However, you might not realize another reason is that view-through conversions are not taken into account for Conversion Optimizer.  If you haven’t seen the power of a view-through conversion on a banner ad, it’s a conversion that happened where the user saw the ad, but didn’t click on it.  For every direct conversion (last click attribution), you may see an additional 10 to 20 view through conversions, which means your CPA could be 1/10th of what is being reported. Because Conversion Optimizer doesn’t take into account view-through conversions, you’ll want to set the CPA targets a bit higher on content campaigns that have banner ads.
• When you use Conversion Optimizer, your dayparting goes out the window.  See screenshot below, where there is gray text that says “ad scheduling bid modifications are unavailable with focus on conversions”.  I think that it’s silly to not be allowed both, since perhaps your conversion is based on a call– and your call center is open only during certain hours.  Perhaps Google’s ad server, as sophisticated as it is, can’t handle this yet:
   

We’re told by the Google folks that Conversion Optimizer does take into account day of week into the bidding.  However, we’ve not seen that to be true.  For example, if you run online dating campaigns, you know that your conversions are higher between 5 pm and 10 pm local time, as well as on Friday and Saturday nights.  We have not noticed Google’s Conversion Optimizer adjust to bid higher during those peak conversion periods.  Instead, we see the CPAs follow a “sine wave” curve week after week.

As for whether Google can optimize based on placement on the Content Network, we are not sure, but would love to hear your thoughts.

A final tip for you:  Don’t let Conversion Optimizer cause you to be lazy.  In the past, you could literally upload a few hundred thousand keywords in bulk— not organized in any way and with a list of just garbage terms– and then count on Conversion Optimizer to automatically sort through them to find the terms that converted.  That used to be quite effective.  Nowadays, if you do that, you’ll likely get hit with Quality Score penalties, even if you have an aged account.

An example of where you want to group terms properly is on brand bidding.  Your own name will convert better than generic terms, largely because it’s actually navigation as opposed to true search (for people who can’t use the address bar and use the search box instead to get around the web).  Your branded terms on PPC are also stealing from your organic traffic, which also causes you to overstate the CPA if you’re going off the default last-click attribution that Google uses.  The answer isn’t to avoid brand bidding, but to put brand terms into their own campaign and not even have them on a CPA target at all.  Your max CPC on brand terms should be based on the cannibalization rate of organic search- more on how to do that another day.

Are our 3 minutes up?  I hope you got some value out of this article.

One of our new clients was held hostage by a programmer that built a custom CMS, when WordPress would have done just fine.  This programmer also did his own hosting, which failed quite often, allowing him to bill the client for time to fix things.  The client was complaining about being held hostage and here is my response to him.  If you are a business owner, consider whether you have chosen folks who are world class in what they do.  If you service clients, consider if parts of the service you offer are available today elsewhere for free– painful as that may be to admit:

Let’s just say this– your site gets so little traffic that there is no reason for this sort of thing to EVER happen. You should not be in the business of hosting, nor should this fellow.  That’s why there are the GoDaddys, The Planets, and Amazons of the world, who have invested significantly to solve generic issues like this.  It would be akin to you want to get a ride to the airport and the cabby saying that he has to stop to fix his custom-made car.  

That cabby should just buy a car from one of the big auto manufacturers and drive that.  Yet, if he really is a car hobbyist, he should do that on the weekend in his garage, not charge his paying customers.  This is something we see quite frequently in our space– engineers that prefer the fun of building your own when off-the-shelf works great and costs almost nothing.  That’s why this fellow decided to build his own CMS when WordPress does almost everything you need, is the world’s most popular CMS, and is free.

However, it’s more fun to learn how to build your own, you get paid for it, and you can hold your customers captive if you make mistakes along the way.  The problem of custom software is that when only one customer uses it, it’s likely to be VERY buggy, as it hasn’t been time tested by millions of customers. And when there’s only one developer, you’re limited by the time and knowledge of one guy, who is unlikely to be world class in PHP, content management systems, hosting, and whatever other topics.

In our world of website stuff, we see one man shows all the time on a suicide mission to try to beat the world in multiple ultra-competitive niches.  Me, I like to make sure we do a few things world class where we have a unique advantage (such as Facebook advertising and local lead gen) and leave the rest to where we can buy off-the-shelf software or partner with the other companies that are #1 in the space.

hat do you think?  It will be pretty hard to argue this– to say that because of one of two particular requirements for your site, that it justifies doing something completely from scratch versus using something free and easy.  But we see this all the time.

Jack Welch, who used to run General Electric, talked out being #1 in every area they compete or to get out. If you’re not winning or have a unique advantage, you’ll eventually get crushed.

Today, Google announced their integration of Google Ad Manager and DART. Users of Google Ad Manager are “upgraded” to DFP for Small Business.  It’s free, as are most all of Google’s products, provided you have less than 90 million impressions a month. If you’re bigger than that, then you have to pay support on the premium product.

So if you’re in the business of selling ad server software, I believe your goose is cooked.  Your prospects are about as good as Netscape trying to charge you $89 a year for their browser, Omniture charging $250k a year to use their analytics software, or AOL charging you $20 a month to keep your email address. There may still be folks who will buy the black magic of ad serving, but it’s pretty clear that few firms can compete with Google on ad optimization, as arguably nobody is better at this when it comes to targeting, eCPM maximization, forecasting CTR, frequency capping, and so forth.

But there still are niches that Google doesn’t play in– or won’t play in.  One such example is social ads that inject personalized information into ad templates.  So while Google has potentially won the game of deciding which is the best ad to show to what person, they have not  gone down to the level of using social data to create personalized messages– so customized that they might have your name, friend’s images, and other details in them.

Look out for social ad serving companies that go beyond retargeting and BT networks. In the same way that there is unintended personalization on Facebook– expect that to spread to the general web.  And once the wave of spammers have had their fill, expect local businesses to run smart local ads using social data.

As common practice, Google also released a few videos with this product update. Below is one for the DoubleClick For Publishers on trafficking in the UI.  Notice that related videos are “sex trafficking in Cambodia”, “human trafficking”, and the like.  Perhaps Google DOES have a ways to go with their targeting capabilities.

Online Marketing is like Monopoly.

In the game of Monopoly you roll the dice, land on property, buy un-owned property, pay rent, develop property, collect rent and pass go. The problem many people have with this game is that they leave the game to luck and many hate the game because they rely on luck.

“I hate Monopoly, it’s all about luck.”, “It’s about the dice and buying the property first.”

If you feel that way about Monopoly, then I’m sorry, but you are missing some key elements and you are focusing on the wrong things and you will most likely lose.

Get a property.

Fortunately the online game of marketing removes some of those barriers for you. Online you have similar opportunities to buy property and develop property. Luckily you don’t roll a die to buy a property! But if someone else got there first then you are out of luck. Game over. Pack up. Go home. …OR, get the whole picture. The property, while key, is only one element. When I play Monopoly I typically don’t even go for Boardwalk, I go for the two brown ones right after GO. What you can’t recall the names of the cheap brown properties? That would be Mediterranean and Baltic, in the classic version. Internet Branding isn’t everything. There are plenty of people making money off of “Free” wordpress blogs, ebay, squido pages, Blogger Blogs, and so on.

Don’t really wholly on luck. If you really wholly on luck then you will lose when your luck runs out.

Develop your property.

The only way to make money in Monopoly is by collecting rent from visitors and passing Go… okay, minus the chance beauty pageant. FAT CHANCE! There are more beautiful people in the world then there are actors, models, and superstars combined. To collect rent you have to get visitors. To collect more rent you have to develop your property, i.e. target those visitors, direct visitors to goal. Ask Tim Ash about directing visitors, or just read his book. Targeting visitors can be the hunting portion. PPC and SEO fall under targeting practice. Directing visitors is getting them to buy, sign-up, call, or convert. If you don’t have a goal then you are not playing the game. It may be repetitive, but I am going to say it again, “Do you want visitors or do you want customers?” Yes, there is the argument that you must have visitors to get customers… Blah, Blah, Blah, …And what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Clearly you must have visitors to your property to collect rent. But if you are not watching the game and they move on before you collect rent then you lose. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR VISITORS IF YOU WANT TO COLLECT RENT. That’s really what Landing Page Optimization is all about. It’s “Listening to your Customers.” Every great company listens to their customers. …Okay, there are “nice players” that will pay you rent even when you don’t ask them to. So, you can leave your property undeveloped and wait for those nice people that will pay you on occasion. And most people aren’t that nice! So we are not talking about domain squatting here; we are talking about developing your property by optimizing your site.

Make Money: Win the Marketing Game

Never lose site of the whole picture. Don’t get too caught up in a few small details. A sports car is made up of thousands of parts working together. All playing a role. All important. But to go off on just how important the exhaust is and only work on the air flow out, while ignoring air flow in, will only make you look ignorant and or arrogant. So can make money by, speeding around the board in your sports car, or by building your property to collect more rent, or sell later.

Some key elements to Monopoly Strategy.

1- Get a monopoly.

2- Cash flow.

3- Negotiate.

Most people that rely on luck or think Monopoly is all about luck only see the first element and totally miss the second two. How often do the two losers join forces to beat the big guy? That’s negotiation. The two little guys are negotiating. Asking for 3 free stays on their properties to cover their rent, may be better than letting them sell out real cheap to the other players.

Creating a Monopoly Online

Creating a monopoly online usually requires you to find a monopoly waiting to be had and dominating it before it ever appears on the radar. These obviously are rare and like the cheap brown spots, often not worth as much. Take for instance Austin Scorpion Control. Many websites will have more visitors an hour then that website will have in a month. But, it will be hard to take over their positions on Google. And while the positions where cheap when they were undeveloped and unnoticed, the cost now is a bit higher. Not to mention the fact that you would need an exterminator that actually wants and likes to take on scorpion problems. Most exterminators don’t specialize in scorpion control. The second way to gain a monopoly, NEGOATION. Have you tried searching “cheap domain name” online lately? Godaddy and its affiliates own most of the first page of Google. That’s a monopoly. Or you use Godaddy’s other tactic to gain a Monopoly…MONEY. Big super bowl ads. Lots of Money. Big SEO campaigns, lots of money. Going for a monopoly on Atlanta Pest Control is a lot harder than a monopoly on Alpharetta Pest Control, a North Atlanta, GA suburb. Therefore the money required to get there is a lot more. But what about the Negotiation? Hey, if you have a valuable piece of a monopoly that I want and I have a piece of a monopoly that you want, then let’s negotiate. Make a deal and trade. I could care less if you create a monopoly for home security systems in Chapel Hill. All I care about is bug control. I want a monopoly for Pest Control in Raleigh. What do know, we share matching properties… Chapel Hill, NC and Raleigh-Durham, NC. So I help you get your monopoly and you help me get mine. The catch is you have to be willing to let go of your property and link juice in exchange for the monopoly you really want.

There are powers that be that control small monopolies online in Direct TV, local locksmiths, unique travel accommodations, do-it-yourself pest control products, and chicken coops. You laugh, but that chicken coop guru is laughing all the way to the bank!

On the Senate floor in California is a bill to make the white pages opt-in only, reversing a 1995 bill that mandated distribution of these books as part of universal service.  What’s ironic about this bill is that the process of getting it passed and then shared with the California population is that they’ll kill plenty of trees in the act of printing notifications.  That almost as if spammers were to broadcast to their entire email list that they’ll not spam anymore.

Makes you wonder when the next shoe will drop for the yellow pages publishers– though they’re claiming that things are dandy. Notice that RH Donnelly has exited bankruptcy?  The CEO of the new company, David Swanson, now called DEX One, said this:

“There’s a shift to these other media — Internet, search engine, mobile or voice, but it is a slow evolutionary process. It’s not nearly as radical a change as I think many people would like to believe,

And I would have to agree– this shift will take time, as technology is not the limiting factor.  Yell echoes the same sentiments.

So spam is not dead by a long shot, whether it’s those unwanted book at your door, irrelevant email in your inbox, or misleading ads on your Facebook.  These guys will continue to make money and perhaps evolve into more sophisticated players that begin to deliver personalized advertising with enough relevance that people actually want it.  Stay tuned!