The changing nature of PPC – development creating understanding
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If you look at the history of pay per click as a medium for online marketing one realises just how rapidly things have changed and are still constantly evolving. |
The good news is that this evolution is positive and making life easier for the PPC specialist (like myself). It is through this ever developing landscape that a harmonious and fruitful partnership between marketer and client can begin.
When PPC first started in the early 1990’s it was a fairly simplistic model of advertising. The more you paid the higher your ad ranked (auction based bidding), along came good click through rates and more visitors to your website. There were no customised reports, no quality scores (I will come to this shortly) and no best practice to speak of, not to mention there were no controls on things like click fraud. There was also no real type of ad variation (text vs image vs rich media) and no unique and focussed targeting (male, female, rich, poor etc). All these sources had to be independently researched from various other authorities on the web. It took so long to set a campaign up and then you still were not guaranteed it would work. A comprehensive report could take two weeks to build and as you know that may be two weeks too late. Paid search almost crashed and burned before it began.
Today things are a lot different. Your ads are not ranked according to the price that you pay for each keywords but based more upon relevancy. Relevancy is determined by your quality score. Quality Score is determined by a few factors namely:
- The historical performance of the keyword and the matched ad on Google – so the click through rate.
- Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
- The historical CTR of the display URL’s in the ad group
- The quality of you landing page (load time, content & relevancy)
- The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
- The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query
- Your account's performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown
- Other relevance factors
Auction based bidding no longer determines your ad rank and things like relevancy play a huge role here. Engines like Google look at your ad text, keywords and landing page relevancy to determine your cost per click and your ad rank. Then and ONLY then, you may have some semblance of a chance at obtaining a good rank at a reasonable price!
Marketers and search marketers alike know that position is key to success. Where you are in any advertising space, be it offline or online is very important. Today paid search inclusion offers you the chance to appear anywhere on the content network with advanced targeting related to your demographic, so gender, age, income bracket and language to name but a few. It allows you to target specific sites and it also allows you to target the search network. Your reach is far wider.
Optimization of your campaign and reporting to the client so that they understand what you are achieving with paid search has become much easier as reporting offers a snap shot of all paid search metrics at the click of a button. Reports can be run so that you are able to make the necessary changes immediately and thwart wasting unnecessary money on keywords that are not working.
Paid Search is still developing and there is a wealth of market intelligence and best practice guides at the specialists fingertips. To keep abreast of all this information and use it is the job of the paid search specialist but it is the job of the client to guide the specialist with the relevant information on budget, demographics, strategy for campaign, deliverables, conversion factors, etc. These things change, markets change and priorities shift. It is also of vital importance that the paid search specialist shares the intelligence they have with their client. That way you can work together and create a lasting and fruitful partnership.
