Location3 Media

This Question of the Week comes from Jared Schroder, strategic optimization specialist extraordinaire. Jared asks, Which of the following are known factors included in your Google AdWords Quality Score? You know the drill:  Select one of the answers below and leave it in the comment section. Then check back next week for the answer.

A. Click through rate, brand popularity, cost per click
B. Cost per click, ad position rank, number of competitors
C. Landing page quality, click through rate, keyword relevance to ad
D. Keyword relevance to ad, brand awareness, display URL length

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This may be somewhat old news, but I believe it is still quite important and warrants mention on expertSEM. In October 2009, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) updated their guidelines for testimonial announcements, bloggers and celebrity endorsements. These guidelines have not been updated since 1980, well before social media was even an inkling. Mary Engle of the FTC in a video statement on the FTC site: “We’re applying [the 1980] principles to today’s world—in the world of social media—where you can’t always recognize an advertisement just by looking at it.” To be clear, these guidelines are not laws themselves. The guides simply serve as a way to help advertisers comply with the FTC Act.

Following are brief explanations of the updates:

• Any advertisement featuring a testimonial discussing an atypical experience with a product or service (e.g., “I lost 200 lbs. with the FlexBelt alone!”) must clearly disclose typical results.

• “Material connections” between the advertiser and endorser much be clearly disclosed. Materials can mean direct payments, free products or gifts of any kind. This update was made to address bloggers and social media specifically. Bloggers must state their connection to any product/service they endorse if connected materially.*

• Endorsers, not just advertisers, can now be held liable for false or unsubstantiated claims or for not disclosing connection.

• Celebrities have a duty to disclose relationships with advertisers when using mediums outside of traditional advertisings, such as social media or talk shows.

Blogvertising has grown significantly over the past few years. For advertisers, it provides a fresh medium for a fraction of the cost of other ads. For bloggers, it provides an extra source of income, free products/services or cool gifts such as tickets to sports events, concerts, etc. Everyone wins, right? Maybe not consumers. While they may not be harmed by this material connection, the FTC unanimously agreed (it was a 4-0 approval vote for changes) that consumers have a right to know what is going on behind the screens. Personally, I think it’s unfortunate that this needs to be stated. If you write a glowing, ranting-and-raving review, especially of a rather mundane product, it should go without saying, no matter how obvious, that you must disclose your relationship to the advertisers. Just like in grade school though, a few bad bloggers ruin it for everyone else.
As a marketer, how can you be sure that you’re following the new guidelines? Follow these brief tips:

• Err on the side of caution. If you’re not sure whether you must disclose or not, just go ahead and make a statement. Cover your rear so it doesn’t get slapped with lawsuit.

• Watch your bloggers. No one wants to hold their hands, but you must ensure your bloggers are disclosing their relationships.

• Don’t be intimidated by guidelines. Social media’s importance will only continue to grow in the future. Don’t drop out because you’re afraid of violating guidelines. Use good judgment and be honest, and you’ll have nothing to fear.

• Update your own guidelines for social media. Be sure to include these changes in your internal policy and add them to your training.

Read the statement from FTC here or, if your Thanksgiving is looking to be especially boring, the full 86-page guidelines.

*Disclosure: I have no material connection to the FTC. However, I would consider a kickback or two if the perk was right. Call me.

Just because I think it’s funny.

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You may have noticed some additional placements in the Google Sponsored Results recently, particularly when doing a retail type search. Below is a screenshot of an exclusive beta offering by Google called Product Listing Ads. It is a CPA (Cost per Acquisition / Action) model, and it pulls from listings in the Google Merchant Center (Google Base/Google Product Search) so only clients with product listings will be eligible to participate in the beta if it opens up.

In my opinion I feel this is a positive route to go for Google, once again they are leading the way by at least testing out the option for a CPA model search results listing. With the vast amount of click fraud within the search industry a CPA model may be a more feasible route to go than all the lawsuits and resources set aside to maintain a system that monitors and refunds click fraud. Granted it could open up the door for another level of fraud, however if sites are set up in a manner that forms or shopping carts etc. are using validation, the level would be substantially less.

Additional details regarding this beta offering are available on the AdWords Blog.

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While Google does offer the most transparency of the major search engines in terms of reporting available in the interface, a recent Inside AdWords post admitted that sometimes the custom reporting remains cumbersome. And the good news is that they’re working on making it more readily available.

In the geographic performance report, for example, data is only available daily. I ran one recently for a national campaign over a period of 30-days – listing data down to the city level by day required 10,000+ rows of data! This requires manually summing up the desired geo-graphic level (city, metro/DMA, or state) over the selected period of time. Aside from that, once you have the actionable data sorted and summarized, you have to toggle back to the Campaigns tab to make changes. (Thankfully, Location3’s paid search marketing managers have the advantage of two computer screens, so that helps a lot in going back and forth!)

Anyway, hooray that Google is addressing this and moving towards integrating more performance data directly into the campaign management view. The former Search Query Report is available through the “See search terms” option in the Keywords tab, and the old Placement Performance Report is now right there in the Networks tab. I’ve been using these since they were launched and they were my two favorite features of new interface.

More recently, viewing segmentation by day of week was added. In the Campaigns tab, go to the Filter and views menu, then Segment by, and then choose the time frame. Day/date, day of week, week, month, quarter and year are available:

More transparency = more advanced optimization opportunities, and who doesn’t love that?!  What advanced report would you like to see made directly available next?

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Location3: New expertSEM Post: Google Quality Score Factors - This Question of the Week comes from Jared Schroder, strategic o... http://ow.ly/164j41
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Location3: New expertSEM Post: New FTC Guidelines: Bloggers and Advertisers Beware http://ow.ly/164gac
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Location3: Please help us support @sosoutreach. Anything helps! http://www.active.com/donate/pledgesos/location3
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Location3: Question of the Week: What factors does Google use to determine Quality Score? Get choices & answer here: http://ow.ly/FzLD
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Location3: New expertSEM Post: Mobile Marketing Chat with Crystal Ware http://ow.ly/1643QK
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