Jul

9

Search Volume Data, How rather splendid

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Based on advertiser feedback, and our commitment to provide useful tools and information for our advertisers, we’ve now added search volume data to the Keyword Tool. Now, when you use the Keyword Tool to search for relevant keywords to include in your keyword list, you’ll be able to see the approximate number of search queries matching your keywords that were performed on Google and the search network. These approximate numbers are intended to provide better insight into keywords’ monthly and average search volumes than previously provided by the tool.Here’s a screenshot of the updated Keyword Tool:

(Click the image for a full-size version)

You can view the new statistics by looking at the Keyword Tool’s Approx Search Volume columns. Search volume data can be useful to you in several ways, including:

Remember, the Keyword Tool also provides several other keyword-related metrics that can help you select highly relevant keywords to improve the overall performance of your campaigns. You can easily view data on advertiser competition, search volume trends, estimated average CPCs, and estimated ad positions for keywords.

To learn more about using the Keyword Tool, please see this article from the AdWords Help Center.

 

Check Check Check Check it out 

Apr

4

Google lets you bid on trademarks

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Google sent us a letter today, regarding PPC. We have strong natural listings thanks to our brilliant manchester seo  So we don’t actually use PPC for Creativesuit. We do look after a number of campaigns for our clients though. And basically today Google has brought the UK inline with our American Friends.

its open season…

We’re writing to inform you that we’re changing our trademark complaint procedure in the UK and Ireland. This change may affect how we handle the trademark complaint you currently have on file with Google.

If you’ve submitted a complaint letter requesting that we prevent advertisers from using certain trademark terms anywhere in their ad text, we will continue our efforts to support your request. However, from May 5, 2008, our trademark complaint investigations will no longer result in Google monitoring or restricting keywords for ads served to users in the UK and Ireland. This will bring our procedure in line with the approach taken in the US and Canada. Complaints received on or after today will be processed under our revised procedure.

You do not need to file your trademark complaint with us again unless you would like to amend it based on the new guidelines. For more detailed information regarding our trademark complaint procedure, we invite you to review our revised complaint procedure, posted online at http://www.google.co.uk/tm_complaint.html.

To learn more about this trademark policy revision, please visit http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=92877&hl=en_US.

Sincerely,

Advertising Legal Support Team

Also discussed here

Which brought it to my attention, so I went and asked the PPC gurus what the score is

Mar

26

Webwise takes over YOUR internet.

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This is from the BBC and is an absolute disgrace if it happens

Two respected privacy campaigners have praised the user protection measures of a controversial online advertising system about to be deployed in the UK.

The tools, developed by US firm Phorm, track users’ online surfing habits.

BT, Virgin and Talk Talk have signed up to trial the technology.

Campaigner Simon Davies said: “We were impressed with the effort that had been put into minimising the collection of personal information.”

Mr Davies and Gus Hosein were invited by Phorm to assess its privacy protection measures.

The two work with campaign group Privacy International but their work for Phorm was done as part of a new privacy start-up, 80/20 Thinking Ltd.

Phorm has said its tools anonymise the data it collects and that users can opt out via their Internet Service Providers (ISPs) at any stage.

But almost 1,000 people have signed a Downing Street online petition saying the system, called Webwise, breaches customers’ privacy.

The Information Commissioner’s office has said it has contacted Phorm to find out more information about how the system works.

In a statement, a spokesman for the office said: “We are currently reviewing this information. We are also in contact with the ISPs who are working with Phorm and we are discussing this issue with them.”

Mr Davies told BBC News: “Phorm does advance the whole sector of protecting personal information by two to three steps.

“The problem is that may not be good enough for consumers.”

He added: “Behavioural advertising is a rather spooky concept for many people.”

Randomised number

Phorm works by placing a cookie on a user’s machine that contains a randomised identifying number. That cookie tracks websites visited and draws conclusions about a user’s behaviour in order to target more relevant adverts.

If firms say this “enhances the user experience”, if that is true and users want it, then make it opt in
Simon Davies, Privacy International

The ISPs and companies who sign up to the scheme take a cut of advertising revenue.

Phorm has said the data collected is 100% anonymous and no profile of the user is ever created, so that no-one could “reverse engineer” the information in order to establish identity.

The company’s website also states that the IP address of a computer, the unique identifying number of a machine online, is not stored, nor are search engine queries.

But the firm does “collect” search terms used, as well as keywords on web pages, which has concerned some web users.

There is also concern that users’ web surfing habits are being handed to a third-party company.

Speaking to Radio 4’s iPM programme, Phorm chief executive Kent Ertugrul said: “It’s a choice. If people think it’s not a choice they will feel it is being rammed down their throat and will react very, very badly to it.

“I understand that and I would too [react badly]. The very first you will see when you go online after it has been deployed is a full-page notice and at that point if you are not happy, you can opt out.

“If you find that wasn’t enough, in the banner spaces as people are browsing you will see banner ads saying that Webwise is on.

“So if you don’t want it, you will be able to click on these ads and switch them off.”

On its website, Phorm’s chief executive Kent Ertugrul, said Phorm ignored form fields on websites, numbers with more than three digits, e-mail addresses and secure web pages.

Mr Davies said the onus would be on Internet Service Providers to ensure customers had enough information about the scheme in order to have “informed consent”.

He said unless ISPs were extremely clear they could run foul of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).

“RIPA is pretty clear that the provision for notification for consent, and informed consent, have to be extremely clear,” he said.

A spokesman for BT said it was confident that Phorm met all applicable regulations and laws.

‘Consumer benefits’

Later this month, 10,000 BT customers will be invited to take part in a trial of Phorm.

The BT spokesman said Phorm offered consumers two benefits.

“Customers will receive more relevant advertising and will get warnings if any of the websites they visits are known to be phishing sites.”

He said research BT had carried out had shown that customers did want more relevant advertising as a result of their surfing habits being tracked online.

“We have gone to considerable lengths to ensure our customers privacy is guaranteed,” he added.

Mr Davies said he remained opposed to services which required users to opt out.

He said: “If firms say this “enhances the user experience”, if that is true and users want it, then make it opt in.

“That will also avoid all sorts of legal problems.”

The spokesman for BT said the firm had made no decision about whether a wider deployment of Phorm would be opt in or opt out.

There has also been criticism that the ISPs have signed up to work with a company that was accused of pushing spyware while it was trading under the name 121Media.

The company distributed a pop-up advert system called PeopleOnPage which collected broswing habits in order to target adverts.

Mr Ertugrul said: “People were unable to distinguish between spyware and adware.

“We went public as the only adware company. The association between free adware and spyware was so strong… that it threatened our core long-term values.

“We unilaterally shut down all of our revenues on that. Nobody pushed us to do that.”

Feb

27

Google Adsense for Video

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In a very short time, watching videos online has become a common pastime, and the imagination of artists and other content owners continues to fuel this trend. Meanwhile, across the industry, advertisers and video publishers continue to look for the best solution that balances the needs of video fans with the need for video sites to generate the revenue that enables them to continue to be creative as they grow.

Enter, stage left: the AdSense for video beta. This approach takes the same non-intrusive InVideo ad format used on YouTube and extends it across video partner sites on the Google Content Network. This enables advertisers to run a single campaign across the largest network of online video content.

Unique to AdSense for video are text overlay ads contextually targeted to a combination of signals in your videos and on your site. With these overlay ads, the user’s experience is not interrupted; users determine how much they want to interact with the ad.

We have two major goals: to make it easier for publishers to monetize video online, and for advertisers to learn how to reach the video community. Towards these ends, today we’re also launching a single destination with an overview of various options to expand online video opportunities called Google Video Advertising Solutions. We hope this will be your starting point to understand how to leverage the Google Content Network and YouTube to make the most out of the online video experience. You can also see our overview videos for advertisers and publishers — because isn’t video the best way to experience video?

We’ve been working with a number of video partners (e.g. popular destinations like BobVila.com, eHow, MyDamnChannel, ExpertVillage, PinkBike, TheNewsRoom, and social video aggregators like Revver, blip.tv, and GodTube). And we’re also working with several key video platform solution solutions like Brightcove, Yume, Tremor Media, and Eyespot Network, who have plugged our ads into their platforms.

 From the Official Google Blog

Feb

20

No more cheating the adsense system

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From Googles Official Adwords Blog

We’d like to give you advance notice of an update to our display URL policy, which will take effect on April 1st. While the majority of advertisers will not be affected at all, action will be required from those who are. Please take a few minutes to read this post thoroughly, as the information below should help you determine whether you will be affected by this change.

In response to advertiser and user feedback, and in an effort to provide more relevant advertising results and a higher quality experience for our users, we have made the decision to no longer allow certain exceptions with regards to our display URL policy. This includes, but is not limited to redirects and vanity URLs. This policy will be strictly enforced regardless of past approvals and will apply to all advertisers, beginning on April 1st.

In line with our existing policy, we will continue to require that your ad’s display URL match its destination URL (the URL of your landing page).

For example, if your destination URL is www.google.com, your display URL must also be www.google.com. The following would not be acceptable display URLs for an ad for www.google.com:

What about tracking URLs?
We do understand that many advertisers utilize tracking URLs within the destination field of their ads. Therefore, if the URL of your landing page matches that of your display URL, your ads will be approved.

For example:

Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
–> Landing page URL: www.google.com would be acceptable

Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
–> Landing page URL: www.trackingurl.com would not be acceptable
Are sub-domains still acceptable?
Yes, the use of sub-domains and additional text within the display will continue to be acceptable provided the top-level domain matches the URL of your landing page.

For example, display URLs such as the following:

sub.google.com
google.com/extratext

www.google.com/extratext

would all be acceptable for the landing page URL below, as the top-level domain of google.com is matched:

http://sub.google.com/miscellaneous

In light of this update to display URL policy, we’d encourage you to make any necessary changes to your ads in advance of the April 1st date to ensure that they’ll run without disruption by future disapprovals related to this policy.

Thanks for reading this far, and please note that more information will be provided before April 1st via alerts in all AdWords accounts.

Sep

10

Google Website Optimiser gets a bt of a refresh

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 From the official Google Blog

Today, we are happy to announce the first major update to Website Optimizer. (For those who are unfamiliar with Website Optimizer, we’ve blogged about it before here and here.)

The first feature that we’ve added is a wizard for creating A/B split experiments. A/B tests are ideal for testing how well different page layouts perform and for pages that don’t get a lot of traffic. Although you can perform A/B testing in Google Analytics, using Website Optimizer simplifies the process and makes it really easy to set up experiments and view results. Watch this demo to learn how to set up an A/B experiment. Read more