As always, it was a special privilege to be featured on Certified Knowledge because the website’s founder – Brad Geddes – authored what I believe to be the most insightful and comprehensive book on Google AdWords. Entitled “Advanced Google AdWords” I encourage anybody within the digital advertising space to check it out.

Back to the post – Here’s a small excerpt:

With the efficiencies RTB (real time bidding) offers in acquiring online ad inventory for Google display advertisers, it’s fair to question when it makes sense for advertisers to purchase direct (or guaranteed) inventory. Google display advertisers can target 99% of websites plugged into Google AdSense (and other partner sites) to compete to generate impressions paying potentially fire sale rates; all while increasing their chances for high impact impressions using Google’s sophisticated technology for audience/geographic targeting, scheduling, etc. This combination, along with the ability to launch a campaign and get it live within a matter of seconds offers a very complete and efficient solution.

Please check out the rest of the article here.

The post Online Media Planning – Buying Remnant vs. Guaranteed Display Ads appeared first on Longview Sources.

It was a special privilege to be featured on Certified Knowledge because the website’s founder – Brad Geddes – authored what I believe to be the most insightful and comprehensive book on Google AdWords. Entitled “Advanced Google AdWords” I encourage anybody within the digital advertising space to check it out.

Back to the post – Here’s a small excerpt:

I’d like to give readers of this blog some insight into how I approach display advertisements on a strategic level – something I’ll demonstrate by creating a fictional campaign. Although I usually stick closely with the mind-set of allowing data to speak, there are numerous amount of other factors that need to be evaluated for correct branding purposes – factors that won’t reflect in mere metrics (at least in the short term). Therefore, this write-up may seem very stream of thought, but they all have elements that will ultimately influence the decisions advertisers should make in preparation of a campaign launch. Additionally, as I believe many circumstances warrant a combination of both display & direct platforms for advertisements, I will follow up with this post with a part II of when display advertisers should take that next step to negotiate directly with publishers.

You can catch the rest of the article here.

The post How to Research & Launch a Display Ad Campaign appeared first on Longview Sources.

As you already know, there are plenty of cities within the Los Angeles Metropolitan. If you want to get really specific, go beyond this and create more campaigns to begin targeting other cities within your zone. For example, you can create separate campaigns for Long Beach, Santa Monica, Venice, Brentwood, Bel Air, etc. Each subsequent campaign will be a complete mirror to the one shown above except the zoning and ad copy.

You can catch the rest of the post here.

The post Optimizing Google AdWords Advertising for Local Businesses appeared first on Longview Sources.

I had my backpack on throughout the entire convention. When the convention began to draw to an end, my friend and I picked up what we needed and started heading towards the parking lot. When we approached my car, I took off my backpack to toss it into the back seat when I noticed a promotional sticker slapped onto the front zipper compartment.

After seeing the sticker, I asked my friend if he saw it there the entire time. My friend nodded and said “Yeah, I thought to myself ‘ Delbert must really like Fish Hound…’” Seeing the look of bewilderment on my face, my friend started cracking up and said “Dang Delbert, you got owned!”

I did get owned. The Fish Hound exhibitors must’ve slapped the backpack on while I was browsing their inventory, and their devious deed accounted for probably about 50 people who took notice of the sticker – 50 impressions.

I then began thinking – Did Fish Hound make a good investment on their advertising spend? These promotional stickers don’t come cheap. The price is always dictated by the amount of stickers a company orders. For the sake of this convention, let’s say Fish Hound ordered 1,000 of these 4×4 promotional stickers for $100, or $0.15 per unit.

If the average lifetime impressions per sticker happened to be 50 (which I think is a very generous number), then the average cost per thousand impression (CPM) would be $3.00. Also, keep in mind that in this case, like every other case, the quality of the impressions will differ. The 50 impressions Fish Hound got by slapping that sticker onto my backpack were quality impressions because I was at a fishing convention. However, the 50 impressions that other stickers will receive may fall on disinterested eyes.

With the CPM at $3.00, let’s say 10 people will find the promotional sticker attractive enough to visit the website. If we were thinking in terms of digital advertising, that’s a 0.10% click through rate (CTR), and a $0.30 cost per click (CPC).

So in essence, Fish Hound is paying $3.00 for ten people to visit their website. Will these ten visitors account for at least one conversion? Well, if I could answer that, then I’d never have to worry about money for the rest of my life. But a sticker listing only the home page of a website listed calls for the reader to explore the website herself. There wasn’t one product or one call-to-action which guides the customer through a buying process. So the promotional stickers do not place Fish Hound in the best spot for conversions.

But not all campaigns are designed to generate hard sales. Promotional stickers are mostly campaigns aimed towards building brand. And I’m certain Fish Hound ordered these promotional stickers for just that.

This write-up wasn’t to assess whether promotional stickers are effective or not. I doubt I’ll ever suggest promotional stickers to clients because I think it’s a traditional form of advertising that is difficult to manage and scale. But I will never dismiss the effectiveness of this form of advertising because I know that many prominent companies spend big budgets investing in it. I also can imagine that in the right hands or situation, promotional stickers can be a very effective way to advertise.

Lastly, I can’t say for certain that it was Fish Hound who slapped that promotional sticker onto my backpack. It could’ve been some random kid, or maybe my friend caught amnesia and forgot he did it. But it tickles me just imagining some Fish Hound executive without a conscience sneaking up behind me like a ninja and placing it there to generate some business.

The post Promotional Ownage: Becoming a Walking Advertisement appeared first on Longview Sources.

This rule of relevancy and attention to detail is the secret sauce behind the billions that flow through AdWords each month and the foundation that it’s all built on is a hybrid auction system and a strong emphasis on what Google calls quality score and ad rank. There’s not a whole lot of real-world information on how all of this works within AdWords, so I’ve decided to explain some things I’ve figured out with the ridiculous amount of time I’ve spent using the system.

You can catch the rest of the post here.

The post Understanding Google AdWords, Quality Score and Page Rank appeared first on Longview Sources.