-
Why Ad Agencies Have Only Dipped Their Toes in Crowdsourcing…
by Lance Hollander,
co-founder of Ad Factory
At first it sounds like a crazy notion that a professional ad agency would start using crowdsouring to solve their problems. If they’re overbooked, or have tough creative problems, they should hire more staff, right?
Well, perhaps they are just looking to find the best way to get the work done, or more than likely they are in a spot and need a solution yesterday. I think any agency that has tried crowdsorucing has done so more in desperation than plan of attack mode.
There are certainly a lot of different sites that allow you to crowdsource your work, but most are not working right for agencies. First they focus on creative conceptual, which is exactly what the ad agency does best. It’s what the big boys are paid the big bucks for. They create the brand, the ad, the message and of course the original creative.
This is not where the pain point lies for the ad agency. Just like the saying goes it’s the economy stupid, in this case it’s the production stupid. It’s the hundreds of banners that have to be produced after the creative is approved. It’s the deadline that is written in stone because of a media buy regardless of when the client finally says, “it’s approved.” It’s not the original creative, but the hundreds of tweaks that need to be tried and tested to get the best conversion rates on the banner, landing page, email, etc.
This is why we created Ad Factory. It’s not the typical crowdsourcing site. In fact that’s the last thing we want to be. Hundreds or thousands of designers telling me what is best is like sitting in Giants stadium and having the crowd tell me how to use Photoshop. This is not why ad agencies exist. They are the creative muscle and they like nothing more than to flex it in every ad they create. Where they fall short is where Ad Factory comes into place. Ad Factory takes the beautiful prototype and puts it into mass production. It takes the landing page and makes many different versions you can use and test. It takes an email idea and applies it to every holiday in the calendar, or demographic you are targeting. It takes the pain away from your creative department that is eating cold pizza at 11PM because the banners must be into to Double-Click by 9AM.
Yes, this post is plugging our new start up, but duh… there is a serious problem for ad agencies and we think we have the answer. We think they spend way too much time looking for the freelancer, giving out the assignment and then praying to the Adobe gods the person they hired will do a good job. If only they could limit their risk, put tens of people to work at once, and of course only buy the work if it’s right. Well, in about 10 days they can…pretty cool stuff says this agency guy.
-
Yahoo Search Marketing Now Transitioning to Microsoft adCenter
by Paul Byrne,
Member of the Ad Factory CommunityThe transition of Yahoo Search Marketing to the Microsoft platform is here. Organic searches on Yahoo are already being run by Bing, and the transition from Yahoo Search Marketing to Microsoft adCenter has now begun. But what does the Yahoo! Microsoft Search Alliance mean for users and marketers?
Many, if not most, Yahoo! Search users may remain unaware of the back-end changes already in place. Bing search results appear seamlessly on your Yahoo Search page, with the only reference to Microsoft being a tiny “Powered by Bing” notice in the footer.
Google’s share of searches in the U.S. stood at over 71% in July 2010. Bing accounted for less than 10%, Yahoo Search more than 14%, and Ask.com managed to capture over 2%. Bing had been on an upward trend, increasing its share of searches for three months straight at the beginning of the year, but that trend reversed itself some time in March and seems to have flattened out.
Microsoft has promised investment in their expanded search business, which we hope will lead to innovation and ever more relevant search results. Time will tell whether Microsoft can maintain their combined 25% share of searches now held by Bing and Yahoo, and whether they can innovate their way to 30% and beyond. Google’s empire seems secure for now, but the search superpower may need to introduce innovations of its own in order to maintain search superiority. All this potential for innovation is good news for users in the years ahead.
The Yahoo-to-Bing transition affects advertisers in more immediate ways. While you can still use the Yahoo Search Marketing platform until some time in October, you can start transitioning campaigns right now, and you’ll need to be using Microsoft adCenter thereafter for both Bing and Yahoo advertising.
Judging by comments on the Yahoo Marketing Blog, some marketers welcome the change, but there are plenty of existing Yahoo advertisers not thrilled with the switch. A major concern is the merger’s impact on CPC – with more people bidding on the same keywords on the same platform, CPC could increase.
Complain though we may, switch we must. Yet, the simple act of opening an adCenter account is not as simple as it may seem. This writer experienced a series of glitches as I set up my adCenter account earlier today. I’m on a MAC, so I’ve come to expect annoying issues in the Microsoft world, but the customer rep I spoke to got the same error messages. Clearly, there are still some bugs to be worked out.
For those of us new to adCenter, many will find that it’s not as easy to use as Adwords, which does a better job guiding you through your campaign set up and providing easy reference along the way. Whether you’re new to adCenter or not, now is a good time to review the Bing Webmaster Tools Page, as well as the combined and revised Editorial Guidelines effective as of early August.
Perhaps the people feeling the greatest impact of the Yahoo Microsoft Alliance are the Yahoo Search engineers and other staff who are now, or soon will be, out of a job. Let’s hope that they find new homes, or start new search companies that can someday compete with the two remaining big guys in search.
-
Google Streaming Search
Late last week this video depicting a possible new Google search feature was leaked on YouTube:
The video, recorded and uploaded by Rob Ousbey, shows the Google search results updating every time new characters are entered. It appears to work similarly to Google’s current auto-complete feature, except instead of a dynamic drop down menu providing changing options as the query evolves, Google actually runs new searches as you type.
First, this begs the question is this necessary? Sure it looks cool, but imagine the potential for irritation. Have you ever gotten home from work in the evening and turned on your computer only to find that your internet has slowed to a crawl as every one of your neighbors is simultaneously doing the same thing? Usually in these situations Google searches still run very fast, taking a couple of seconds instead of their normal fraction of a second. But imagine dealing with that couple-of-seconds load multiple times before you even finish typing.
More relevant to the focus of this blog is what impact it will have on Adwords advertisers. The most obvious is an inflation of impressions. Say a user is searching Google for “Chinese history.” By the time they’ve entered the word “Chinese,” the first auto-complete suggestion that has popped up is “Chinese food.” That’s not what the user is looking for, but that’s fine, they can just continue typing. With streaming search however, by the time the user has entered “Chinese,” Google may have already displayed the actual search results for “Chinese food.” If you are running an Adwords campaign and “Chinese food” is one of your top performing keyword phrases, your ad may have just been shown to someone who had absolutely no intention of searching for “Chinese food.” This has just artificially raised your number of impressions. This hasn’t cost you any extra money, but by raising your number of impressions without raising your number of clicks, it has in essence lowered your click-through rate. CTR is an important piece of data for measuring the success of an Adwords campaign. If streaming search is implemented across the board, it could completely change the reliability of that data.
As Yahoo! and Bing melt together into one search engine, they will form a very real, although still very outmatched, competitor for Google. It’s possible that with this looming threat on the horizon, Google is working harder than ever to add new features in an effort to protect its throne. However, care has to be taken not to go too far overboard. When billions of people are used to doing something a certain way, arbitrarily changing that (especially in a way that may impede those people’s ability to do it quickly and efficiently) very well might backfire. Users were overwhelmingly nonplussed by Google’s makeover of Image Search last month. The possibility of creating a similar backlash against Web Search, the bread-and-butter of Google’s business and the very backbone of its existence, might not be worth the risk.
-
The Pros and Cons of Facebook Advertising
by Paul Byrne,
Member of the Ad Factory CommunityWith more than half a billion users, Facebook is an increasingly attractive destination for advertisers. Like any marketing channel, however, advertising with the social media behemoth has both its pros and cons.
Let’s start with the bad news:• First, your advertising audience is limited to “only” Facebook users. Not everyone is on Facebook, believe or it not. And of the 500 million Earthlings with Facebook accounts, many are infrequent users.
• People are not shopping or researching products when they’re on Facebook; they’re not “searching” in the Google sense of the word. Users are typically looking for updates, what’s up with friends, favorite bands, etc., and while they may be willing to shift attention to your ad on the right of their screen, it had better be something really cool, useful, or relevant to their interests and needs.
• A big challenge for some advertisers is “likeability.” Facebook is about sharing, and ads that perform best are for products that people “like” and want to share with their friends. It’s much easier to promote things such as coffee, TV shows or a local restaurant, than it is to promote things people might just need, like kitchen remodeling, wristwatches or debt relief – who wants to share these things with friends?
• Beware of creepy personalization. It’s funny how Facebook users readily share intimate details with the world, and are then so freaked out when advertisers use the info to try selling them products. When people change their status from “single” to “married,” for example, many are turned off to find themselves targeted with ads for newlyweds. See article from NY Times.
Now for the good news:• It’s easy. Easier than pie. The self-service ad platform can be used by anyone with an idea and a credit card. But as easy as it is to set up ads, you’ll still need a good writer to create effective ads.
• Facebook users generally provide a great deal of data about themselves: what they like; things they find interesting; their ages and life stages; whether they are in high school or grad school; even where they work. When creating your ad, you can target people based on what they tell you about themselves. It’s ad heaven. But again, you need to be wary of turning people off by making it seem like you’re invading their privacy.
• Facebook ads can be especially effective for small businesses with small advertising budgets. A small biz, such as local pizza joint, can get great results spending as little as $1 or $2 per day on ads targeted to local users.
• Facebook provides easy tracking of your ad’s performance. Stats are updated daily (in the middle of the night actually), and provide cumulative updates on impressions, clicks, costs per each, and total spent on your ad.
• Testing is simple. Facebook’s ad platform allows you to easily create test campaigns, based on creative, copy, or any of the numerous targeting segments available. You can also set up ads to run only on specific dates and/or at defined times of day.
No matter where you advertise, it all comes down to your product. If you have a great product that people want to tell their friends about, you can do very well on Facebook. Although it’s not necessarily the best place to promote specific offers linked to landing pages designed for immediate conversions, Facebook can be very effective in spreading the word about your product, service or cause. Many if not most ads are not linked to offers at all, but are designed simply to get users to “like” you. By doing this, they join your Facebook page, and once they do that, then you can advertise to them and other fans of your product for FREE with daily posts to your page. There’s the real gold mine. -
Banner Ads in Focus
by Lance Hollander,co-founder of Ad Factory
Online banner ads are still a great way to grab customers’ attention and give them more than a few lines of text to look at. There’s amount of online advertising options that allow you to showcase your brand, and PPC ads surely don’t have the same voice as a banner. First things first: while there have been many sizes out there, banners nowadays come in 18 standard sizes for use on your standard advertising platforms like Google or Yahoo. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has developed guidelines for industry standard banner sizes. Check them out here. To start off right, take a quick look and understand the basic standards when you’re choosing what’s right for your banner ads.
As with any ad, a lot of thought should be given to where on the web it’s placed and who it’s trying to reach. There’s a lot of really practical online marketing principles that apply here, and a quick Google search will bring up lots of tips on banner placement. But it’s very important to remember that just like any other ad, customers probably won’t even notice if they’re not sold on the creative. There’s a ton of things that can be done to make banner ads attractive and attention-grabbing.
Just like text ads, the copy of a banner ad is an important consideration. Poorly-written ads don’t convert as well as well-crafted ones. Give customers something that they can believe in and give a clear call to action- tell them right off the bat what they’re getting and why it’s better than what everyone else out there has. You’ve got to consider the details in your banners. Everything matters: the copy, the colors, and where it’s placed. Check out this post from Google AdSense for some useful hints about choosing the right color palette for your ads. A banner that clashes with everything around it is going to be more of an eyesore than an opportunity for a sale.
Overall, just remember that good creative means better results.
-
Twitter Search Ads Roll Out
by April Toche,
Member of the Ad Factory CommunityThe long-awaited Twitter ad model is out, and it’s meant to serve online marketers by letting them bring greater attention to their tweets. These tweets are shown to more people, the first phase being shown only on Twitter’s “search results” page. Advertisers involved in this initial phase include Bravo, Red Bull, Best Buy, Starbucks, and other big brand names.
This stage is being implemented in the hopes that marketers will be more than happy to pay for the chance to bring in more people that are interested in their products or services, since their potential customers have already shown interest through searching for relevant keywords. These are called promoted Tweets, and Twitter’s co-founder and creative director Biz Stone said they will be trying to filter out Promoted tweets that do not appear to resonate with consumers by using analysis of retweets, favoriting, and replies. The ads that lack resonance will be taken out of the loop, and advertisers will not have to pay for them.
Initially, advertisers will use a CPM basis to pay for their ads, and later, payment will be decided based on the way users and advertisers utilize Promoted Tweets. If all goes well with the first phase, Twitter wants to expand their promoted tweets to user’s normal Twitter streams, as well as Twitter clients like TweetDeck, Seesmic, and Tweetie.
So, should marketers be jumping on the bandwagon? While some marketers are having a difficult time understanding the potential value of Twitter search ads, others are embracing the concept. Although Twitter has always been about pushing information out, it can very conceivably be used to bring searchers running in. Just like with any other type of search ad, someone searching for a specific item will see promoted tweets for that item. This can work for online marketers and well as brick-and-mortar stores, since Twitter does emphasise locality. It can be a great way for tangible store owners to meet existing and potential local customers.
To make Twitter ads work, though, tweets need to be made as interesting and engaging as possible, allowing you to receive retweets, clicks, and replies, so that your ad stays in the system. Put in some more money when you have a particularly important tweet to send out to insure your ad is seen by as many interested parties as possible.
We all know that the future of marketing is in social media, and with Twitter ads, the future is already here. Using Twitter ads can enable businesses to reach a targeted and diverse market that’s actively looking for what they have to sell. There’s still plenty of ”traditional” avenues for online marketing, but Twitter ads (and social media sites in general) deserve a look.
-
Choose Expertsourcing, Not Crowdsourcing
by David Herscott,
co-founder of Ad FactorySome sites promoting creative crowdsourcing have made the argument that anyone can become part of a crowdsourcing community – the “more the merrier,” as they say. In fact you can be an accountant by day and a designer by night. All you need to become a member of this elite club… a username, a password and a valid email address. No diploma, no portfolio, no references. Does anyone else agree with me that this sounds absurd?
If I said to you that I would like to be a start-up CEO by day (which requires no credentials, but don’t tell anyone) and a brain surgeon by night would you think I was crazy? Or better yet, I’ve always wanted to be an architect in my spare time. Look out Frank Lloyd Wright and I.M. Pei. I’m sure my buildings would pass all the standard structural integrity tests.
Ok, so maybe graphic design isn’t quite brain surgery, but any professionally trained designer knows a heck of a lot more about color theory, design and typography than your average accountant, that’s for sure. And what most of these crowdsourcing sites aren’t telling you is that 99% of these accoutants-turned-wanna-be-designers are being exploited. Most of them never get paid for their time and equally unsettling is the fact that the advertiser (buyer) needs to weed through hundreds of poorly designed logos, web pages, brochures, and more to find the “diamond-in-the-rough.”
Bottom line: crowdsourcing may work in certain situations. For example, ideation and open innovation projects (Victors and Spoils) or for mass-collaboration. If you are interested in learning more about leveraging the wisdom of the crowd, I highly recommend the book The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki.
However, when it comes to developing creative, I think it’s time that we all start considering a slightly different model – something I call “expertsourcing.” Expertsourcing is about connecting talented creative professionals with buyers and doing it in a way that is not a “cattle call.” I’ve heard it referred to as focused crowdsourcing (the blur group) which I think makes a whole lot more sense for all involved.
What do you think? -
Is Google’s Above the Fold Advertising Necessary?
by April Toche,
Member of the Ad Factory CommunityDisplay advertising is huge now for PPC marketers, and the search engines have their targets set on them as well. Google is strongly pushing its Above the Fold Display option that lets advertisers choose if they want their ad shown above or below the fold. Why? This is being done because so many people, including Google, think that searchers are too lazy to scroll. They say that if the ad isn’t right there at the top, it will not be seen nearly as often as those that fall above the fold. While Google seems to believe it is an awesome way to increase conversions, there is no proof of that at all. Nope. None. However, there is proof that ads do not have to be placed above the fold to create conversions, and that users really aren’t as lazy as we once believed.
In her article Blasting the Myth of the Fold, Milissa Tarquini elaborates on a study done by ClickTale that studied page scrolling and fold locations of viewed screens based on the browser and screen resolution used. It says that the single highest concentration of fold location, about 600 pixels down, accounted for less than 10% of distribution. This stresses the unimportance of the fold line in relation to the amount of visitors you will receive. In fact, the cutoff point actually causes many users to want to scroll on to see what goodies are hiding lower down.
The three main reasons this seems more like another tactic to bring in extra revenue, and less like an extraordinary advertising aid are:
1. Network sites are continually altering where they place their ads.
2. For many sites, some of the most viable information is actually below the fold, depending on the content of the site.
3. Google can in no way control where their network advertisers will place their Adsense Code on their site, so how can they ascertain that above the fold advertising is better? The answer is, they can’t.
The bottom line is that if a person is looking for something, they will keep on scrolling down until they find what they are seeking. They aren’t too tired, bored, or lazy. While scrolling can really take it out of a person, I am certain that people have the energy and fortitude to scroll, especially when they are looking for a particular item to purchase. Good try Google, but I can’t find the magic.
-
Understanding Your Quality Score
by David Herscott,
co-founder of Ad FactoryGoogle AdWords has pretty much set the benchmark for PPC advertising platforms, and one of its innovations was (and is) the Quality Score, a ranking system that determines how much you will pay for each click and what position your ad will occupy. The exact process of determining an ad’s score is something of a mystery- but since it’s obviously important, Google has kindly provided its customers with a simplified explanation. What are the factors that are evaluated in each ad? From the official AdWords website:
-
The historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on Google
-
Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
-
The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group
-
The quality of your landing page
-
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
Of course, other search engines besides Google need a way to rank their ads and therefore use systems similar to Google’s. Yahoo has a Quality Index, while Microsoft adCenter uses a Quality Score comparable to the other two. Regardless of what system you are using, what does your score mean for your pay per click campaign? Obviously, a low quality score (or equivalent) will lead to significant problems: falling position, high click prices, and less impressions overall. Obviously, none of these things are going to help you get conversions, so you need to optimize your campaign. Take a look at the quality score formula and see if there’s a specific area you’re not performing well in. Google knows that better ads are going to get more clicks (which means more revenue) and if your ads don’t have relevant, well-written copy that leads to a well-crafted landing page, your quality score will be be lower. Even page loading time is taken into consideration.
In the end, the factors that give you a high quality score are the things that are also going to attact buyers to your product. Make it a point to check your Quality Score and ensure that you’re getting the full benefits of your PPC campaign.
-
-
Choose the Right Match for Your PPC Campaign
by April Toche,
Member of the Ad Factory CommunityAd Factory co-founder Lance Hollander recently wrote about the inherent dangers of not knowing the differences between broad, exact, and phrase match in Google Adwords campaigns. In other words, if you select “broad,” your ad could come up when the search terms entered have nothing to do with your business, resulting in a tremendous waste of time and money. Google, in its attempt to customize the PPC advertising model, has added more options that make the entire process more confusing to everyday people who just want to get more sales. One way to avoid falling into the trap of getting large numbers of impressions but few buyers is to know the difference between broad, exact, and phrase match. In this post we’ll take a look at those differences.
- Broad Match- In Google Adwords, this is turned on by default. For example, if you had an ad group that had the keyphrase baseball bats, your ad could show up when someone types in baseball or the word bats, in any old order they want. It might even show up if they use other related terms. They could show up for both the singular and the plural forms of the words, other related variations of the words, or their synonyms. While you are granted a much larger reach with broad match, search engines often return keywords that have no real relevancy to your ads. This means they could get tons of impressions, but the people who are being shown the ads won’t be tempted to buy, because that just isn’t what they are looking for. If you choose to use broad match for your campaigns, try making the key phrase at least four words long; this will cut down on the amount of unrelated search terms being spit out of Google’s expanded broad algorithm. Another thing you can do with broad match is to discover which keywords will show up when your ad displays, and simply add them to your negative keyword list. This will stop your ad from coming up if someone runs a search using one of your negative keyword phrases.
- Phrase Match- When your keyword is put into quotes, your ad will be displayed when someone types in “baseball bats,” only in that order. This is phrase match. Your ad can be found in other search terms as long as “baseball bats” as an exact phrase is included. So if a searcher enters “aluminum baseball bats,” it can trigger your phrase matched keyword, but if they just enter “aluminum bats,” it will not. You will get more targeted results with phrase match than broad match, and it has greater flexibility than exact match does- which is good if your product has widespread appeal.
- Exact Match- If you enter [baseball bats] using brackets, then your ad can appear whenever a searcher puts in that exact phrase, in the same order, and without any other search terms. For the phrase baseball bats, your ad would only show when someone searches for baseball bats, and nothing else. Thus, “aluminum baseball bats” or the singular “baseball bat” will not trigger your keyword. Although the amount of clicks, conversions, and impressions are likely to be much less than when using broad match, with the proper keyword list, you will probably find that traffic to your service or product is more highly targeted, meaning better conversions and a higher ROI.
For the majority of small business owners, staying away from broad match is probably the easiest and least complicated choice. If you’re using the right keywords, phrase or exact match are usually all you need to run a successful PPC Ad campaign.
Follow Us
