There have been several threads lately about AdSense publishers receiving letters from Google about their accounts being closed on June 1. The most common reason for the dismissal from the AdSense program has been ‘unfit business model’.

The speculation is that these letters are mostly being sent to publishers who are using arbitrage as their business model, which makes sense as the Google AdSense TOS has included provisions that one should not make pages just to serve ads.

I find it very interesting that this is occurring before Google rolls out their new advertiser report which lets advertisers run stats across the content network.

I’m in the beta program which lets me see click through rates, conversion rates, dollars paid, etc to every site in the content network sending me traffic. It’s a fantastic idea, and one many advertisers will applaud. It will also force content sites to send better traffic since advertisers will have this visibility.

It seems the timing of these two items are mysteriously close to each other.

I was searching for some information on Google’s site today and came across an offer to advertise on Google’s homepage and pay on a CPM basis.

In 2002, there was an advertising program on Google.com which was called AdWords. One could pay Google a CPM rate and have one’s ad appear. Later, Google released AdWords select which is the PPC model we’re familiar with today.

For a while, both AdWords and AdWords Select ads appeared on Google. Later, Google dropped the CPM program and went with just the PPC AdWords Select advertising method.

Very quietly, they dropped the ’select’ and just called it AdWords.

Most people probably don’t remember the days when one could double serve on Google with both a CPM and a PPC ad. However, this page would be a confusing offer to some, and yet an offer others would jump at the chance to take advantage of.

It’s not really available anymore, however, the offer is still on the web.

Do you have old pages still on the web that no longer apply to your business?

A little nostalgia for those of us who used both AdWords and AdWords Select:

Every wonder what your AdWords mobile ad looks like on a mobile phone? How about on a different carrier? Or in a different country?

Similar to the search preview page, Google launched an search preview page, Google launched an ad preview page for mobile (http://www.google.com/m/adpreview).

The really nice part is the on screen segmentation controls. It’s very easy to switch views depending on:

• Country & Carrier
• Spoken language
• Markup language
• Search type

This is a nice tool to be able to see a mobile result to understand what the consumer sees and the advertising competition.

Google is finally allowing advertisers to see where their ads are shown on the content network.

However, Google even goes further and allows advertisers to see the conversion and click through rates by content site.

Google’s newest beta report allows advertisers to run reports that are specific to the content network. Finally, advertisers can have full visibility into the often hidden world of the content network.

This will finally allow advertisers to learn:

• Where their ads are being shown
• What sites are converting
• Understand if they wish to use site targeting
• Which sites to block from displaying your ads
• What smart pricing is really doing for your costs

This will mean very different things for both publishers and advertisers. Today, the focus is the advertiser.

How to find Content Network Information

In your AdWords account, go to the ‘reports’ tab and find ‘placement reporting. Selecting this button will let you run a content network report.

There are several options for segmenting the data under the ’settings section’.

• Level of detail
  • AdGroup
  • Campaign
  • Account
• Domain or URL
• Time View (summary, daily, etc)
• Date Range
• Which campaigns or AdGroups to include

Next is the good part, customize your columns. You can also view conversions! Finally, advertisers will have the ability to view conversions and clicks by site across the entire content network.

Finally, you can filter, save the report template, etc.

While you’re waiting for the report to run, Google displays the following box:

Placement Performance report tips: This report shows performance metrics (including impressions, clicks, and cost) for content network sites displaying your ads. When you review these metrics:

• Don’t focus on clickthrough rate (CTR): Content network CTR doesn’t affect your ad ranking on the search network. Learn more.
• Think in terms of conversions: You can use Google’s free Conversion Tracking tool to determine whether site performance meets your ROI objectives. Learn more.
• Consider the site targeting feature: You can increase your exposure on top performing sites. Learn more.
• Wait for statistically significant data: For sites without much performance data, wait a while before making a final judgment. Learn more.

Some of the above information is very important to remember. One should never worry about the click through rate for content. It’s not one of the quality score factors.

And then finally the numbers. You will easily be able to compare site targeting to pay per action ads to every site on the content network where your ads are showing.

No longer will advertisers be in the dark about where their ads are showing. You can now have visibility into the network, block non-converting sites, and even target sites directly that are converting.

This is a huge win for advertisers. Many thanks to AdWords for finally introducing this report. Next, because there’s always more that advertisers desire, would be visibility into search partners.

The key to a successful AdWords campaign is account organization, visibility into numbers, and then optimizing based upon that data.

Finally, advertisers have visibility into the content network numbers. It’s time for content network optimization.

The newest version of the AdWords editor is now live.

The latest version offers new functionality for:

• Geographic targeting
• Image ads
• Some drag and drop functionality

For those using preferred bidding, you can not change the bidding types through the editor (i.e. switch from max CPC to preferred to budget optimizer). However, if your campaign is using preferred bidding, any bid updates you make to that campaign will function properly (i.e. not cause a conflict and update your preferred bid).

If you use geographic targeting, get the editor - the new interface is quite easy to use and it will save a lot of time from logging into the interface.

Overall, a nice release.

Full release notes.

AdWords editor download page.

Google offers four different bidding methodologies. I detailed the advantages and disadvantages in today’s Search Engine Land Paid Search column.

Here’s a quick compatibility chart to see the functionality of each bidding methodology.

Quality score remains one of the more ambiguous ideas on the web. Google has become much more transparent with sharing information about AdWords quality score.

Microsoft adCenter has also announced it will use a quality score formula to determine placement. I’ve had some discussions with Microsoft digging into the full algo, however, here are some high level facts that will help you optimize for adCenter’s quality score.

• How closely related the keyword is to the ad’s content (single factor)
• How closely related the query is to the landing page (single factor)
• How closely related the keyword is to both the ad and landing page (combined factor)
• The serial chain of query to ad and then ad to landing page
• Uniqueness of the ad to other ads on the page. adCenter tries not to show duplicate ads on the page (this is an interesting one).

Overall, it’s fairly similar to Google’s.

The concept is quite simple: If you are enhancing the search process, then ads rank well. If you aren’t, then ads rank lower.

The search process is quite simple and very complex at the same time. I’m not talking about algorithms and results, but how people going to a search engine actually conduct a search process.

Understanding the psychology behind the search process makes us better advertisers and SEOs.

Let’s examine how people search in order to learn how to connect with them.

The first step is why people go to a search engine.

People don’t go to a search engine to browse the web. They go there because they have a question to be answered.

The question could be how to spell a word, where to buy a book, a nearby plumber’s phone number, or how to back up MySQL. The potential questions are limitless.
The basic reasoning is simple. You don’t know a piece of information, and you wish to find it.

What determines the search query?

Most people don’t think in words, most of us think in concepts and pictures. The way those items are translated into words are known as ‘keywords’ or the ’search query’.

While that sounds simple, this is very complex. Consider this scenario:

It’s February in Chicago and the temperature doesn’t break 10 degrees for two weeks. On Saturday evening, the frigid air causes the pipes in your basement to freeze, and then to burst, which floods your basement. You’d like a plumber to come out immediately to pump fix your pipes and get rid of the water in your basement.

This is a scenario which happens almost every year in Chicago. What are the ways someone could interpret those events to type them into a search engine? This is by no means a comprehensive list, it’s just a small sample set of possibilities:

• plumber
• Chicago plumber
• weekend plumbing services
• broken pipes
• flooded basement
• how do I get water out of my basement?
• emergency plumbing services
• 60626 plumber
• plumber website
• plumber phone number
• emergency pipe repair
• frozen pipe help

The list can go on and on. Each one of us interprets events differently. We also describe the same scenario differently. However, each query is relevant, and each of the above keywords is how people look for answers.

The SERPs - Expectations

The next step is typing your query into a search engine. SERPs stands for ’search engine results pages’.

It is important to remember, as humans, every time we do an action, we have an expectation of what is to come.

In the current scenario, we would expect to see results about finding a plumber in Chicago who can come to our house on a Saturday evening to fix the basement.

If we see ads and websites that don’t connect with our current interpretation (the keyword query), searchers are less likely to click on them. The closer the ad (or website description) matches our query, the more likely searchers are to visit that website.

The SERPs - Connecting with Answers

The query is typed, the enter key is hit, and within seconds the searcher is presented with many possible answers.

At this point in time, there are five possible scenarios:

1. The searcher sees a possible answer and clicks on a result (ad or natural result)
2. The searcher doesn’t see anything that meets their expectations and refines their query
3. The search clicks on another result type (maps, images, etc) looking for an answer
4. The searcher decides to try the search on another engine
5. The searcher abandons the quest for answer

The marketers job is to connect with the searcher. The ad or result should be waving it’s hand and saying ‘I have your answer, come click on me’.

If one of the results on the page connects with the searcher, holds the promise of an answer, and meets the searchers expectation, a click generally occurs.

The Landing Page

You achieved the click, brought a new visitor to your website, now what? The battle for conversions is not over.

You must still meet the searchers expectation. Before the searcher clicked from the SERP to your website, they had an expectation of what information they would see on the landing page.

• Does your landing page meet their expectation?
• Does it contain the answer?
• Does someone know what to do next?
• Should the searcher hit the back button?

The page must meet the searchers expectation. It should be a continuation of the ad copy for the landing page to convert. Any forms should be simple. You aren’t trying to surprise the visitor, you are just simply answer their question and telling them the answer (i.e. the plumber’s phone number) , or how to achieve that answer (shopping cart).

The Search Process is Linear

1. We search because we’re seeking information.
2. We all interpret events differently, how an event is interpreted determines the search query.
3. When one does a search, we have an expectation of the search results possibilities.
4. An offer on the SERP page should connect with the searcher and hold the promise of an answer.
5. When one clicks on SERP result, they have an expectation of the website.
6. The website should direct the visitor to find the answer.

When all of the above are done in a fluid process - conversions happen. Searchers find information. Businesses make money. The process continues.

The concept of search is simple, I have a question and I’m looking for an answer.

The process of meeting people’s expectations is complex.

Understanding the Psychology of Search should put you on the road from simply ensuring your website is on a search result to driving conversions for your business.

Google recently changed their conversion tracking script so that it is now compatible with mobile ads.

Can I track mobile ad conversions?

Conversion tracking is available for both the PC- or mobile-version of your website.

Learn more about setting up conversion tracking for your mobile website.

Source: AdWords help files

Preferred Cost Bidding allows you to set your bid prices to your average CPC and not your max CPC

You can enable this for both CPC and CPM (site-targeted) campaigns.

This is very useful in three different scenarios:

1. You know your value per keyword. If you have the data that says keyword 1 is worth $4.23, and keyword 2 is worth $3.56, then instead of ‘guessing’ what the max CPC should be, you can set your preferred cost at those actual prices.

2. You want more control over expenditures. When setting max CPC, your click cost can vary widely from day-to-day. With preferred bidding, you have much more control over how much you actually pay for keyword. This makes it so your average spend per keyword should be much more consistent.

3. You don’t want to spend all day reconfiguring bids. Since preferred bidding changes your max CPC behind the scenes to reach your actual bid price, there’s a lot less work in adjusting bids with preferred cost bidding.

How does it actually work?

With preferred cost bidding, you can set your preferred click cost at the keyword or ad group level. Behind the scenes, Google then adjusts what your max CPC should be so that your actual click cost comes out to be in your preferred cost bidding range. (More on quality score and ad rank)

So, the same ad rank formula (ad rank = quality score X max CPC) still applies, just Google is doing an addition algo behind the scenes to determine your max CPC.

Incompatibilities

Since Google needs control over your max CPC in preferred cost bidding, it’s not compatible with a couple of AdWords features:

Ad Scheduling advanced features. Preferred cost bidding works with the normal ad scheduling (which is essentially day parting or showing your ads at specific times of the day and days of the week). However, the advanced version of ad scheduling allows you to automatically change your max CPC at various times by a percentage. This advanced feature is not compatible with preferred cost bidding.

Position Preference. This feature allows you to control which range of positions you wish your ad to show. Since Google is changing the max CPC behind the scenes in position preference to determine your ad rank, this is incompatible with preferred cost bidding which is also trying to change your max CPC.

Will you overpay?

The first negative reactions I heard about this feature is that since you are setting a preferred cost, in times when you could pay less for the top positions, you could easily end up overpaying for ads (i.e. if your bid was $3, and it required you to pay $1 to be in the number one spot, the rumor was Google would charge you $3).

This isn’t true.

Google is still running the ad rank formula for all companies involved in the auction for a single keyword, and the ad discounter still applies as well. Essentially, the ad discounter calculates the values for all companies in the auction process and reduces your actual CPC to the lowest possible CPC you could pay to be in that ad position.

Enabling Preferred Cost Bidding

Preferred cost bidding is another bidding option. In the campaign settings, you’ll first want to ‘view and edit options’ under bidding.

Next, choose from one of the three bidding options:

• Set max limits - default bidding
• Set preferred bids - preferred cost bidding
• Budget optimizer - maximize traffic

Finally, choose how to change your current max CPCs to your preferred cost bids.

Preferred Cost Bidding can be very useful for controlling your ad spend, or for those who really understand the best bid by keyword or ad group.

I’ve been playing with it in a few accounts (it’s still in beta), and have been quite happy with the results so far.

It won’t be for everyone (the advanced ad scheduling being the one incompatibility I hope they fix), however, if you want more control over what you pay per click instead of what you bid per click, then it’s worth taking preferred cost bidding for a spin.