Category: SEM and PPC

I have wanted to work with the Google radio ads and was happy to see the detailed station list in my account. The price is right for the advertising, but I wanted to be sure it was reaching an audience.

As it turns out, the station lineup is pathetic!

If you select the Buffalo market, here are the stations where your ads will play.

Adult Contemporary (2)
WMXO 101.5 FM
WWSE 93.3 FM
Country (1)
WHUG 101.9 FM
News (1)
WJTN 1240 AM
Oldies (1)
WKSN 1340 AM

I challenge you to tune one of these stations in when in the Buffalo NY area. I don’t have the best reception in my office, but none of the 5 stations would come in for me.

Even at an incredibly low rate, this might not be worthwhile. I hope that Google is hard at work buying up the excess inventory from other “mainstream” radio stations in town.

Link Here: The Google Audio Ad Creation Marketplace

It appears that the only way to get to the Google audio ad creation marketplace is when you are logged in to your Google account. In any event, the link was not simple to find and I would like to make it a bit easier for the next person who is out there searching. Good luck with your audio campaign.

I will be running an audio campaign for a business in the Buffalo New York area and will post about the process and the results of the audio campaign.

We will be using a unique phone number and site address, so the tracking should be easy to determine.

Microsoft Adcenter has come up with a revision to the way they handle trademarked terms in Adcenter ads. It is essentially saying this

• Advertiser: Get permission.
• Trademark Holder: Make sure you police your trademark.

This policy is essentially like throwing kids into a school yard and asking them to play nice. If you don’t play nice, yell for the teacher. We’ll get there when we can.

Here is an excerpt from the trademark policy email MSFT just sent out.

What’s changing?
It will now be the advertiser’s responsibility to obtain permission from the trademark owner to use a trademarked term in their ads. It will also be the trademark owner’s responsibility to address ongoing incorrect usage of their trademark term(s) directly with third-party advertisers. Microsoft adCenter will no longer intercede to obtain permission for the advertiser wanting to use a trademarked term.

What does this mean for my search advertising?

1. Your ads may display next to other ads that contain your trademarked terms.
2. Affiliates, resellers, and third parties may show up against queries for your trademarked terms.
3. Competitor’s ads may show up in search results against queries for trademarks in certain scenarios, due to match types other than exact.
   For example, if a generic term is included in the overall search query, advertisers who bid on the generic term may show up in the search results.

I can’t say that I blame Microsoft for changing this policy. What will be most interesting is to see how they handle the Trademark Concern complaints.

• What proof will the request to display that you have permission to use a trademark?
• What proof will the require that a trademark holder is, in fact, the trademark holder?

There are a lot of questions. If they were a bigger player in the PPC field, it would matter more. For now, it is just an interesting topic.

Yahoo SM, formerly Overture, publishes coupon and promotion codes all of the time. If you have registered a business, incorporated, or signed up for a free Yahoo Local listing (view the ventureN local listing as an example) you might have recieved a promotional code from Yahoo Search Marketing. If not, try this… USDM0149. This is worth $100 credit on a new account or $100 savings on assisted setup.

Visit using this link and you will see the promo code prefilled:
http://sponsoredsearch.yahoo.com/growbusiness

They folks over at Blogs and Bucks go into a bit more detail and show a simple method to look for a particular code that will give you $100 on a $5 open.

Had to make a note of this. I don’t expect much when it comes to customer service from the PPC companies (Google, Yahoo Search Marketing, or MSN). I am talking about a new account here, not an account that has a large volume with a rep. I was very surprised to fill out a form at MSN and receive a phone number to reach a service rep who has been very helpful. I am waiting on an answer regarding an ad and the rep actually went out of her way to call me and let me know she was still waiting to hear.

A pleasant surprise. Now just get some quality volume and you guys will be in good shape.

I understand when a large companies outsource certain operations, but I usually expect that they are masking the fact that they are doing so. Microsoft is one company in particular that outsources a lot. Heck, outsourcing beats skimping on pay and benefits for part-time employees (permatemps).

I had a question for MSN advertising. We are working a site that sells cigars and accessories. An initial submission of ads in Adcenter were rejected for:

• Tobacco-related content – Content guidelines
• Website contains forbidden content – Content guidelines

This is really 2 topics here.

1) Staffing with Kelly Services Inc and not veiling it
2) Adcenter potentially changing their tune on tobacco ads (this is for a different post)

Check out the screen shot of the e-mail.

Google’s click fraud estimates have been getting quite a bit of press lately. A guy who some of you will know, Joe Holcomb, wrote about this back in December. “Google Click Fraud Less than 2%? BULL“. Joe has a unique perspective since he has seen the fraud from the inside with companies such as Kanoodle and Blowsearch. He is now on the outside trying to build his own search engine that will virtually eliminate click fraud (the big claim).

Obviously, click fraud exists but the definitions will vary from source to source. What is the true definition? What is your definition?

• Some feel that the user who clicks forward and back within 2 seconds indicate a fraudulent click. Have you ever done that? I have. Not click fraud.
• Some feel that a user who clicks your ad ever day clearly represents fraud. This could very likely be a competitor. Is this fraud? Not click fraud. They are free to order your free fabric samples or take all of your flyers from your mall kiosk, do you think the mall refunded the merchant? No, it isn’t fraud. It is an underhanded competitor, but not fraud.
• Some feel that a user that clicks on all paid listings within a result set is committing fraud. You could argue that this could just be someone who hates the ‘meso’ or ‘P.I.’ lawyers and wants to stick it to them. Fraud? Not click fraud.

How does Google define fraud?