Performics Performance Marketing Blog: SEM, SEO, Social & Display

Optimizing Paid Search Campaigns for Tablets

Posted by Craig Greenfield, SVP, Performance Innovation

This blog was originally posted on eMarketing & Commerce

Tablets are the fastest-selling consumer technology device in history. According to eMarketer, 24 million U.S. consumers will own a tablet by the end of this year. By the end of 2012, 12.8 percent of people in the U.S. will own a tablet.

As of June 1, Google AdWords began separating “tablets with full browsers” as a distinct device within AdWords reporting. Previously, tablets were grouped with all “mobile devices with full browsers” (i.e., smartphones). Thus, June gave us our first look into tablet paid search impression and click volume. Impressions and clicks were immediately high in June, showing that tablets have likely been materially contributing to Google mobile paid search share for a number of months.

For Performics’ aggregate client base, 12.1 percent of all June desktop and mobile paid search impressions came from mobile devices. Of this 12.1 percent, 14.3 percent came from tablets. Based on these numbers, tablets now compose 1.7 percent of all paid search impressions. Additionally, tablets contributed to 13.3 percent of all mobile paid search clicks. Tablet cost per clicks track at about 50 percent of PC cost per clicks. The bottom line is that consumers are now on tablets searching for your brand, and it’s not expensive to engage them.

It’s time to think of tablets as a distinct device and devise performance marketing strategies to engage tablet users. Advertisers must take advantage of the ability now offered in AdWords to target smartphones and tablets separately. At Performics, we’ve seen that tablet usage patterns resemble mobile patterns — people do most of their tablet searching in the evening. However, people use tablets differently than smartphones, which reveals opportunities to optimize your paid search campaign for the third device.

TREND: Spotify and the Digital Age

Spotify, the music streaming service that has taken Europe by storm, is now available in the United States.  With so many other music services out there, how does Spotify compare?

 
Though each service has unique features, Spotify outshines the competition.  With the most songs, access, and social sharing—not to mention the flood of chatter and positive feedback—Spotify is well on its way to becoming the music market leader. 

Spotify also demonstrates a shift in behavior, showing the preference of access over ownership.  Movies and books have also displayed this trend.  With today’s technology, like cloud storage and streaming online content, people pay for instant access instead of physical products.  In our digital age, people expect to receive what they want, when they want it, without ever actually owning it. 

Performics Weekly Research Recap

Posted by Cristina Lucero and Christina Mannarino, Performics Research & Insights Team

Highlighted below are emerging trends and insights from the week of July 18, 2011:

United States

Channel Insights

Social

- Twitter is gearing up for bolder advertisements (Reuters).

• Twitter is predicted to extend an API to advertisers in Q4. This API could really change the way advertisers interact with Twitter, both for the good and bad. Advertisers will potentially have the ability to automatically deliver Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts, without working through a sales team.
• Read the full story here.

Search

- More people are turning to online and mobile platforms to find local business information (Local Search Association and comScore).

• Local searches now account for 13% of all core search activity on top web search portals as of March 2011.
• Local content now dominates mobile usage behaviors, with subscribers increasingly turning to mobile for information on maps, weather, traffic, retail and other local content.
• The increasing growth of mobile to local search provides opportunities for local businesses to engage with potential customers via mobile.
• Read the full story here.

- Mobile changes search in 3 ways: Devise, Desire, and Demography (Yahoo! and Reprise Media).

• According to the report, the Device is feel, touch, mobility and its form factor are changing – and that’s changing search; Desire is changing as people’s goals in life and on the internet change; Demography is who buys advanced mobile devices is different than the device itself.
• The future of mobile and the future of devices are important to the future of search.

A Report on Tablet Usage, Tablet Conversation Analysis & How Tablet Users Interact with Search Ads

Posted by Performics

What’s the big deal with tablets?  Are your customers using tablets?  And are your customers likely to interact with your display and cost-per-click (CPC) ads on tablets?  Performics created a research report (1) highlighting the rise of tablets, (2) analyzing what your customers are saying about tablets on the social networks and (3) describing exactly how tablet users are interacting with advertising.  The report also outlines the advertising implications of tablets and explains why marketers should think of tablets as a distinct device from smartphones.

Download the full Tablet Revolution Report July 2011 (PDF)

TREND: Interactive Preview Windows in Natural Search

Have you ever clicked on a link on a search engine results page only to discover that the site is not at all what you wanted? A new innovation prevents this dead-end clicking.  Instant preview windows have been available on Google and Bing for months, but new add-ons now provide for a more interactive pre-click experience.  Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome have adapted these add-ons:

Cool Previews for Mozilla Firefox: mouse over any link and a preview of the site pops up.  Unlike an instant preview snapshot, these previews actually allow for an interactive media experience.  Fully customizable, searchers can control the settings of preview pages.  Bookmark and stack the preview pages for convenient searching:

 

ezLinkPreview for Google Chrome: an “EZ” icon pops up when you mouse over a link.  Clicking on it shows the page in a separate, dragable and resizable box or a split screen.  These pages can then be bookmarked or sent to a Google Reader: 

 
 
As interactive preview window add-ons gain popularity, search engine marketers must consider how their pages are appearing in the windows.  This is often the difference between whether searchers visit your site or not.  Marketers should marry landing page optimization best practices with SEO to engage searchers to interact with a page.

Performics Weekly Research Recap

Posted by Cristina Lucero and Christina Mannarino, Performics Research & Insights Team

Highlighted below are emerging trends and insights from the week of July 11, 2011:

United States

Channel Insights

Mobile/Tablet

- Mobile Social Media Usage Affects Shopping Habits (eMarketer).

• A Knowledge Networks and MediaPost Communications study found that 27% of US mobile internet users turned to social media to compare or check prices before, during or after shopping.
• 37% of US social media users trust what their friends and family members say about a brand or product on social media, compared to only 10% who trust what strangers say.
• This is an added challenge for retailers and marketers, as they must focus on keeping customers happy on the go and remember how much influence a customer’s social media posts can have on their friends and family members.

Video

- Netflix Hikes Pricing Plan by 60 Percent (Netflix).

• “[Netflix recently announced a change in business and pricing models by] separating unlimited DVDs by mail and unlimited streaming into separate plans to better reflect the costs of each and to give [their] members a choice: a streaming only plan, a DVD only plan or the option to subscribe to both.”
• The price hike has spiked an outrage amongst Netflix customers, and press reports that many current users are threatening to cancel their membership because of this decision.
• We anticipate that this will encourage many customers to start re-evaluating better options, and for video focused competitors to take advantage and capture market share.
• Several in-market competitors who we feel are likely to capitalize on this change are:  Redbox, Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, Blockbuster by Mail, Vudu, YouTube Rentals, CinemaNow, GreenCine.

Search

- Mobile SEO: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (Search Engine Land).

• “Mobile SEO” doesn’t truly exist but creating great mobile content should still be part of your SEO strategy.
• With mobile, we have to be looking to the near future and thinking how the search engines will adapt to cater for this quickly developing niche within an industry that is developing at a million miles per hour.
• Read the full story here.

- WhitePages Gets “Localicious” With Android Search App (Search Engine Land).

• To further simplify neighborhood search, Localicious has analyzed millions of businesses searches across WhitePages web and mobile platforms to create 25 highly relevant categories to help users quickly narrow their search to find relevant local businesses based on their specific interests, including a “Popular” view which automatically suggests popular businesses nearby.
• Read the full story here.

Mobile Now 12% of All Paid Search Impressions; Tablets 2% of All Impressions

Posted by James Beveridge, Senior Analyst

Performics has aggregated AdWords mobile paid search impression, click and cost-per-click (CPC) data for our clients during the first half of 2011.  We found that mobile paid search traffic is now 12% of all paid search impressions (mobile + desktop), while mobile clicks are about to cross the 12% threshold.  Tablets now account for 1.7% of all paid search impressions (mobile + desktop), which is 14% of all mobile impressions.

Impressions

Mobile continued to gain share in Q2 2011, lifting impressions to fully 12.1% of total paid search impressions (desktop + mobile) in June.  This figure now distinctly includes mobile and tablet devices.  As of June 1st, Google AdWords began breaking-out “Tablets with Full Browsers” as a distinct device within AdWords reporting.  Until now, tablet traffic was grouped under all mobile traffic.  Initial tablet data proves that tablets have been materially contributing to mobile traffic for the past few months.  In the first month of separate tracking and reporting within AdWords, tablets contributed to 14.3% of all mobile impressions.  Thus, tablets already compose almost 2% of all search impressions (desktop + mobile) across Performics’ clients:

 
Clicks

Mobile click share also continued to rise—to 11.9% of all paid search clicks (mobile + desktop) in June. Tablets contributed 13.3% of all mobile clicks:

Performics’ Common Sense Guide to Conversion Optimization:

5 Steps to Setting Better Expectations

Posted by Timothy Smith, UX Designer, Conversion Optimization

The key to designing a successful conversion path begins with defining the expectations that you hope to fulfill.  Don’t just be aware of the expectations you are setting pre-click; be decisive and blatant about the promises you make and have a plan in place to follow through.

Typically, the most powerful expectation setters are text (ad/link copy) and imagery (thumbnails, banner ads, icons) but many visual pieces like navigation, background color, font size and other global elements can play a large role in keeping the user confident and comfortable. A drastic change in the next page’s design is just as jarring as misaligned headline copy.

5 ways to insure you are setting user expectations correctly:

• Message match
  Is your ad copy reflected in your landing page headline or sub-headline?  Write a headline that reinforces the user’s decision to click into your path.
• Branding alignment
  Does the color scheme of the page match the banner ad upstream?  Insure the user doesn’t have to second-guess if they’re in the right place.
• Be honest
  Are you getting clicks with tricky link text or deceiving images?  The quality of the click is more important than the click itself.
• Uncover the details
  Is your page cluttered with extra navigation and unintentional bailout links?  Eliminate any elements that don’t support the next step in your path.
• Outline what's next
  Is it obvious what the user is committing to do?  Make clear what’s about to happen, “Get a quote in less than 10 minutes” or  “Sign up now to start your free trial” or “3 easy steps to register”

TREND: Mobile Shopping Apps Change Shopping Experience

With the back-to-school season quickly approaching, shoppers can take advantage of a variety of mobile apps to enhance their shopping experiences.  Innovations in mobile shopping apps include:

  
Barcode Scanners - Comparison shoppers delight in smartphone apps such as Google Shopper or eBay Mobile.  These apps include a barcode scanner so people can actually scan the barcode at the store and find product reviews and deals online. 

Virtual Mannequins - Why waste time trying on clothes?  The app Divalicious allows shoppers to upload an image of themselves and try on products virtually.  This app serves as a “personal shopper” as it also suggests outfits and accessories.

Location Based Deals - Don’t go far for the best deals.  Using your phone’s GPS, apps such as Groupon, Placecast, and WHERE Deal Alerts determine the user’s location and display relevant nearby deals.     

Self Checkout - Never wait in a line again! Sounds too good to be true, but the app AisleBuyer actually allows for shoppers to checkout anywhere in the store using the scanner on the app. 

Rewards Programs - Get rewarded for just walking into a store. Shopkick gives you “kicks” (rewards) every time you shop.  Redeem these kicks for gift cards, restaurant vouchers, movie tickets or donate the money to a cause. 

 

Performics Uses the Building Blocks of Search to Drive Revenue Through Content and Display for a Technology Company

Objective:

Performics drove year-over-year search sales growth for a technology client for over a decade even with direct revenue goals aggressively growing. The client sought to grow its performance marketing program out­side search in order to:

• Increase sales
• Increase brand visibility

Performics needed to find efficient content advertising opportunities that allowed enough scale to drive incremental revenue and immediate results.

Solutions:

Performics recommended utilizing bid-based text and display ads across the content networks and display advertising exchanges. Focusing on expanding the size and reach of the content program, Performics imple­mented a full suite of tactics including:

• Testing content programs to determine efficiency
• Adding image ads and creating geo-targeted and audience/interest campaigns to drive awareness and revenue
• Refining ad placements with the intent of driving fewer, but more qualified clicks
• Enhancing CPC bidding to better control spending and increase premium placements
• Employing remarketing campaigns using Google’s audience targeting