Online Advertising with Google AdWords

Many years ago, we frequently designed and created online banner ads at Newfangled Web Factory. Many of our clients needed those old standard 468 x 60 pixel banner ads for various online advertising campaigns. Unfortunately, the results of these ads were rarely worth the money. Our banner ad work was killed off by high cost combined with a lack of effectiveness. Following the dot com bubble burst, disinterest in anything internet-related ended what little online advertising activity remained.

Things are beginning to change. Online advertising has matured; it is becoming much more common. Advances in technology have also made certain forms of online advertising more affordable, more effective, and easier to do. Before we describe some of the new online advertising possibilities, we're going to point out some of the reasons why the old way of online advertising failed. The reasons for its previous failure still hold true today, so while there are solid ways of advertising, mistakes can still be costly.

Online advertisements have a lot of work to do. As with any form of advertising, before an ad can even begin to accomplish its purpose (persuading you to respond to or buy something), it has to get your attention. In today's world of information overload, that is not an easy thing to do! The ability to grab a consumer's attention is fundamental to all advertising; however, the amount of work required to do so (aside from how well an ad accomplished its ultimate purpose of positioning, branding, offering, and selling) differs between media. For example, those annoying advertisements that run before the previews at the movies don't have to work very hard in this regard. Assuming you're not running out to grab a package of Jujubes, these particular ads pretty much have your undivided attention. Television commercials have a bit more work to do since they have to compete with the refrigerator and the result of going to the refrigerator. Otherwise, television advertisements pretty much have a captive audience as well (unless you've been freed by the TiVolution like me, in which case TV ads have very little chance of getting any attention at all! - I digress...) Magazine ads have a bit more work to do because they have to stop you from flipping by as you peruse a magazine. Depending on whether you are seriously engaged in reading the magazine or simply flipping through as you wait for a doctor appointment, your reading activity will have a greater or lesser inertia. This reading inertia will be harder or easier to stop depending on how focused you are on what you are reading. The relative scale of how hard it is to stop a consumer's inertia is what makes online advertising so difficult. Unlike most of the other forms of advertising that tend to take advantage of captive attention, online advertising has to stop someone from active internet surfing, which has a lot of inertia. This is because nobody sits and watches their computer passively as websites pass by. Rather, they are online because they are pursuing a specific task or active interest. If someone is online to make travel arrangements, they are not going to easily change gears to respond to a banner ad selling a magazine subscription.

Even before the dot com burst, online advertising venues came to realize that click-through rates of standard banner ads were abysmal. The first effort to solve this was to make ads flashier and more intrusive. This only served to annoy consumers. Finally, the solution was found. Using the inherent benefits of a computer-based environment, advertisers began to display banner ads contextually. In other words, if you typed "airline" into Yahoo, a banner ad for a travel agent would pop up. Such contextualized ads saw a huge increase in click-through rates. The most successful online ads were ones that not only purchased "impressions," that is, a certain number of times that the ad would be displayed, but also purchased keywords. Such campaigns were much more successful than generic banner ad placements. Another way of making an online ad successful was to place the ad in a highly targeted venue, thereby ensuring that it was contextual. For example, placing an ad for bio-medical research equipment on a bio-medical research journal website would be highly contextual, and therefore more effective. Such highly targeted online media placement functioned successfully for the same reasons as keyword buying when placing ads in search engines. Unfortunately, while this technique was more effective, it was also much more expensive. Companies who did not want to spend a minimum of $5,000 for a banner ad campaign had only the option of buying general ads based a number of impressions--which was ultimately a complete waste of money.

Today there many more opportunities to place contextualized online ads with a very small budget. One of the best ways is through "bid for placement" advertising such as Google AdWords.

Google's AdWords allow anyone to run contextual advertisements. Google's AdWords are the links that get displayed in the right column of a Google search results page. Additionally, Google runs "Sponsored Links" at the very top of the page before the search results. These dominant ads are displayed in a light blue box along the top of the page.

• No minimum buy
• Easy and fast creation
• Almost immediate implementation
• Pay only for clicks
• Bid for placement
• Set maximum cost per day
• Stop or pause campaign at any time

No minimum buy - Before options like AdWords and Overture existed, buying a highly targeted ad or a keyword buy could cost thousands of dollars. AdWords allows you spend whatever amount you want--no minimum. You can run or test a campaign for $10 a day or less.

Easy and fast creation - Once you set up an account at Google, you can begin to create ads whenever you want. Simply log in, name your campaign, and enter the headline, short body copy, and destination link. Finally, you can pick your keywords and phrases. Google's keyword selection tools help you to identify alternate words and phrases and provide you with some data on how frequently certain phases are searched. TIP: This can also be a useful tool for researching your website's title tag's potential effectiveness--see April's newsletter "Search Engine Optimization Strategy.."

Almost immediate implementation - To give you a sense of how fast and easy this can be done, I just paused in writing this newsletter and set up a key phrase ad using the phrase "agency alliance." It took me less than 10 minutes to set up. If you go to Google and search for "agency alliance" you will see our ad in the right hand column. It began appearing within 20 minutes of having set it up.

Pay only for clicks - When you view our ad, we pay nothing. If you click our ad we pay for the click. Now don't get any crazy ideas like going there and depleting our checking account by clicking all day. Google's system protects against multiple clicks from the same user. It also sets a maximum amount of cost per day.

Bid for placement - How much does a click cost? That depends on what you're willing to bid and on how much you might have to bid based on the key phrase popularity. If you list an obscure phrase such as "agency alliance," you don't have to bid very much. A popular keyword like "travel" can cost as much as $55 per click to bid for top placement! When you bid on a term or phrase, you are telling Google the maximum you're willing to pay for the click against others who have bid on that term. If the next highest bidder is much less than your maximum bid, you will only pay slightly more than the lower bid for top placement.

Set maximum cost per day - Additionally, you can cap your AdWords campaign spending at a predefined amount per day. If you get a lot of activity, you can tell Google not to display your ad after a certain amount has been spent. Once this threshold has been reached, your ad will not display until the following day.

Stop or pause campaign at any time - If you want to make adjustments, you can edit your ad at any time. You can also pause or stop a campaign at any time.

Because Google AdWords are so quick and easy to buy, they allow you to test, change, and adjust them as much as you want. Aside from the primary purpose of driving traffic to a website, Google AdWords can be a fast and inexpensive way of testing messages, offers, and positioning to be used in other advertising mediums. Not sure if people would respond to an offer worded one way or the other? Try using the different phrases in a couple of Google AdWord campaigns to see which one performs better. This a fast and inexpensive way of testing, and it also creates value as you test, since the test will be sending visitors to the client's website!

Last month we wrote about our advanced tracking tools. Using Google AdWords in conjunction with our alias system allows you to be instantly notified whenever someone clicks on a Google Ad. Additionally, you can track these sessions and find out what the visitors looked at on the website having responded to the ad. Again, the testing and refining aspects of this kind of activity can be extremely helpful.

Google AdWords have reinvigorated the online advertising world. Learning to use this easy and inexpensive advertising option can add to your agency's offerings, refine your current services, and multiply your existing efforts. Online advertising is definitely worth a second look!