Category Archive: SEM

When does it make sense to view a marketing program holistically, and when does it make sense to look at it in increments? In other words, if a program is working as a whole, does it matter if some pieces of it are inefficient? Does it depend on how inefficient?

Harry Joiner shares his insights on hiring top-notch online talent, and how he uses online marketing techniques himself to grow his recruiting practice.

The ad spend share situation by engine is essentially unchanged since last month.

As Joel experienced in the 58th St. Starbucks, going to extremes can lead to suboptimal outcomes.

Our thanks to the MSN engineers for the many calls and emails clarifying the V5.1 API docs. These are places we hit snags.

Part 3 of a 10 part series on the attributes of top-tier bid management systems. Today we focus on the power of feeding post-sale information into your bidding system.

Looking at our agency’s client base in aggregate, last month Google received 79% of our clients’ ad dollars. Yahoo received 17%. Microsoft received 5%.

George Michie wrote a solid SEL post on the perils of overly-automated keyword generating systems.

Mia Brennan, a Senior Analyst at RKG, shares research on the impact of today’s turbulent economy on PPC campaigns for her clients.

Here’s a new RKGDuck video showing how in a couple minutes you can write a powerful filter to assist with cleaning up keyword lists.

Keywords, bids, and matchtypes — those are the big levers of paid search. To get your PPC programs generating maximum profit, focus there first.

Last week Google and Yahoo announced an agreement by which Yahoo would be allowed to selectively serve Google ads along side search results on Yahoo.com and Yahoo’s partner sites, and take advantage of Google’s Content ad platform as well.

Measuring new customer acquisitions and lifetime value calculations applies not only to traditional marketing, but paid search too.

May 2008 search engine share results aggregated across RKG clients: steady, no big change. Google at 81%.

Google’s Ad Preview Tool (APT) provides you more information about your search campaigns than you’d have otherwise. But some advertisers mistakenly believe APT reveals more than it actually does.

The first installment in a series on critical technology and know-how associated with bid management in 2008.

Interesting news items from SEL, TechCrunch, and SearchEngineJournal: screenshots of internal Google pricing metrics slipping out onto public SERPs. Stale news, perhaps fake, but interesting!

NYT reports online display advertising having a tougher time than paid search in weak economy. “The new advertisers are more cautious about requiring some sort of proof or evidence that something is working,” reports GM of WeatherChannel.

More thoughts on Microsoft Jellyfish CashBack.

Microsoft will offer cash back to users who make purchases after using Live search. IMHO, you can’t buy user loyalty.

Will defaulting automatic match to “on” help or hurt the bulk of Google advertisers?

Ryan will be presenting some key tactics for managing an effective paid search program.

Looking at Q1 numbers for our client base, Google continues to gain paid search market share.

A small mathematical model to help understand the relationship between never-mails and the bottom line.

Sometimes, we take technology for granted. That can be perilous in the search game.