pay per click

In Summer 2020, with the killing of George Floyd and the soul searching many of us found ourselves doing, many brands began increasing their focus on diversity and inclusion. Seemingly overnight the imagery used in social and display ads became more African American, Asian, or Hispanic (if not also more female). Even the cynics among us would have to recognize, though, that this trend should continue and should be taken seriously.   Digital advertising provides an array of options for promoting inclusion, along with an assortment of hazards to navigate. […]

What if your ads could literally stand out? What if your ads stand out so well, they appeared to be touchable as if you could physically interact? Insert 3D ads. These ads help bring an image to life and offer an interactive experience to consumers.   3D ads consist of an interactive 3D model embedded into a banner ad. These ads allow consumers to view and interact with a product from multiple angles in extreme detail. Let’s say you’re selling a pair of tennis shoes. The shoes would appear as […]

Who still uses Bing these days? We do!   We’re pleased to announce that emfluence has been invited to join the Microsoft Advertising Partners Program! Over the last six months, we’ve been prioritizing training and certification for our team, as well as ramping up our efforts on Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads). Results have followed, as we’ve been able to allocate budget from Google to Microsoft for most of our clients.   Tactically speaking, moving accounts to Microsoft Ads is easy – it connects directly with Google Ads to import […]

Another Google Marketing Live is in the books, and we have more insight into the path of Google Ads for the year. Last year was all about automation, and we continue to optimize to those initiatives today: Developing rich and diverse text ad assets for Responsive Search Ads is an ongoing task in our queue. Many of our campaigns have moved to Automated Bid Strategies with improved results for our clients. Attribution past Last Click is gaining adoption. We are making use of Smart campaigns, specifically Smart Shopping, to widen […]

Running successful, effective paid media strategies across Paid Search (Google/Bing), Paid Social (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, etc), and online display can be a challenging task for anyone, even marketers with tons of time. For marketers tasked with dozens of items, it becomes exponentially more difficult even for the most savvy and experienced digital marketer to keep up. Using marketing automation to enhance digital paid media campaigns can create new layers of efficiency and create a more integrated strategic approach. Here are four tricks for how you can leverage marketing automation […]

In some significant news out of the Ads wing of Google HQ last week, it was announced that Google Ads will be sunsetting the Average Position metric. If you’re surprised (like I was) you can relax for now – the change isn’t coming until September. Surprised as I was, upon reflection the change makes a lot of sense. Below I’ll explain the “why” behind the move, as well as metrics to pay attention to moving forward.   Why Did Google Ads Get Rid of Average Position? From my first day […]

You’ve done it! Your campaigns are scheduled and targeted, and ad groups are aligned to your offerings with carefully crafted keywords and ad copy. Time to sit back and watch the results come in, right?   Not so fast! No campaign is ready to go without a full array of Ad Extensions. Ad Extensions are add-ons to your ad copy that can increase your performance, including through improved clickthrough rate and higher likelihood of conversion. Simply put, ads with more information that make use of more pixels tend to perform […]

On November 1st, I will be a part of a 3 person panel at SEMPO Cities KC on the topic of Exploding ROI with Paid Search. As a precursor to this presentation (note to self: work on this presentation!), I wanted to share a few thoughts on what is working in Paid Search…and Paid Social. The reality of online advertising, in my opinion, is that getting yourself stuck in one channel is similar to the idea of putting too much of your investments into a single stock or group of […]

Wondering how to optimize your Google Merchant Center Shopping Feed? As we move into a new year, most businesses are currently going over end of year reporting and planning Paid Search budgets for 2018. This is the boring stuff the VPs are sifting through while the fun is just beginning for your resident Google PPC Geeks who love presenting the facts and building out improvements to their Google Product Listing Ads. If you manage a Google Shopping Feed and utilize programs like BigCommerce, Magento, Shopify and a dozen other CMS […]

Ecommerce paid search has had a renaissance in recent years and now Amazon is looking to use its credibility in the Ecommerce space to build a Paid Search Platform. According to a study by BloomReach in 2017, Fifty-five percent of people start their digital shopping experiences on Amazon. Seth Dallaire, VP of Global Sales at Amazon Media Group, said, “There’s an expectation from people who visit Amazon [that] they’re going to find anything they want.” Amazon hopes to use this credibility to create a paid search product that will monetize […]

Customers are constantly being barraged with marketing messages, often multiple marketing messages from the same company. So, as a marketer, how do you know which message drove a customer to convert?   Recently, I was looking to buy a new pair of shoes. Let me walk you through my buying process: I had been looking at various big brand department stores that I had visited in the last few weeks, and I was finally in that sweet spot of looking to purchase. But after looking for deals on Amazon, Google […]

So, You Decided to Run Terrestrial Radio Ads… Why: You wanted to achieve mass reach, with a low CPM, to reach a captive audience. You know your target demo is there, and 93% of U.S. adults still listen to AM/FM radio each week! It’s a no-brainer, right? Right? Radio listening is quite literally “wireless”. There is no meter to measure actual usage. There are no tickets sold, there are no circulations audited. There is no quantifiable “click-through” to point back to. The ratings systems of Nielson, Arbitron and holding companies […]

If you’re like me, and check Instagram a few (hundred) times a day, you have probably noticed that your feed has included a lot more “Sponsored” posts, aka “ads,” recently. That’s because, in September 2015, Instagram gave access to all brands to advertise on their platform, opening up a new way for companies to engage in the social space. Its no longer just a way to build a brand by having a profile; it now allows brands to push products and promote themselves to just about anyone. Instagram advertising is […]

On September 1st, Google made an interesting statement regarding websites that showcase annoying lightboxes urging users to install the mobile app version of the site (ie. every news site). This has been teased for a while now in the SEO community, but seems the threat has finally come to light. Google claims that top banners for an app install will not be penalized, only full page lightboxes are under attack. Apple and Chrome-supported smart banners (app install banners) should be safe from this update, which will go live on November […]

In this age of data, endless supplies of information can be accessed with just a click of a button. But most of us have no idea what to do with all of the information available. One area confusing marketers is how to grab actionable insights from our site data. Whether you are a Google Analytics pro or novice, we all know that surfing through analytics can be difficult. Let’s do a quick test of our Google Analytics prowess: Are you using Google Tag Manager or event tracking? Have you setup […]

Pinterest is upping their ROI game to attract more marketers (and money) to their platform. Brands have already been playing with Paid Pins and now, we are seeing the Buyable Pins working their way into user feeds. With the paid pin campaigns I have done with clients so far, we have found a good deal of success with clicks and engagement at a relatively low cost per engagement (CPE) and cost per click (CPC). If you know that your potential customers are spending time on Pinterest looking at content that […]

As with any PPC/Display advertising campaign, there are no magic bullets to guarantee success. The best ad-campaigns are crafted through strategic audience targeting, identifying KPIs and objectives up front and tracking/testing performance analytics.  These are the keys to effectively *tweak* social marketing campaigns to see favorable results. Creating a successful video ad campaign is, in many ways, an even loftier task than a traditional static image ad. But the pay-off in audience engagement and viewership is well worth the creative commitment to video.  Define Budget Pacing and Bid Types that […]

In part of one of this three-part series about social video ads, I reviewed the social media industry’s shift towards promoted video ads. The focus was specifically on Facebook, as they continue to emphasize native video content recently announced ANTHOLOGY, their in-house publishing and production shop for advertisers. During a recent client campaign promoting Mobile App Installs for iOS devices, emfluence A/B tested video ads against static image ads (using the same audience targeting). The results of a month long test showed video ads significantly outperform image ads across a […]

As Google relies on a wider variety of link and social sources, content marketing has taken the cake. Yet another Google algorithm was released in early May that laser focuses on quality content. Everyone is in the content game, but few are effectively combining content and search strategy. We need to look into where content is heading and how we can best utilize strategic content creation to both increase awareness and build brand loyalty. 86% of B2B businesses are utilizing some form of content marketing, and 87% of organizations claim […]

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is a great way to target those searching for solutions and products like yours. In fact, at emfluence we often recommend PPC as a way for our clients to find new customers, leads or email subscribers, fast. On Google’s search results page, PPC ads are the listings at the top and down the right side, usually marked “Ad”. This is a pay-to-play game and the company that bids the most per click on a specified keyword usually gets the top spot. PPC can range from a few […]

Technology might have thrown the traditional publishing industry into turmoil, but BookDaily.com is thriving—and helping authors succeed—thanks to a digital marketing strategy, that emphasizes Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. Three years ago, they wanted help reaching a new market and the PPC team at emfluence was eager to help. BookDaily.com, owned by Virginia-based ArcaMax Publishing, offers the first chapter of more than 88,000 books via email, for free. BookDaily.com’s customers are the thousands of authors who use its platform to promote their titles. (A basic account is free and allows authors to […]

Last fall, Google announced that they would be phasing out keyword data in its Analytics toolbox, and replacing it with new features for search engine marketing professionals to use. One of these features is DoubleClick Demographic Data. Google Analytics demographics reports offer aggregated age, gender, and interest data that can be paired with other analytics metrics to help understand the personality of your customers. Are they movie lovers? Shutter bugs? News Junkies and Avid Readers? I know what you’re thinking: “What is the fastest way for me to find this […]

If your paid search ads are seeing great click through rates, but garnering few leads, chances are the problem isn’t with your ads, it’s with your landing page. Here are 5 tips for making your landing pages conversion-friendly

Google recently announced that they are moving to encrypted (https) search in an effort to make searching “more secure” for users. Whether the move actually creates a more secure search experience is up for debate, but for the SEO world, this announcement has created quite a stir.

On April 17, Google announced new matching behavior on AdWords for Exact and Phrase Match keywords. What does that mean in the world of pay-per-click (PPC) marketing? For one, it means that PPC campaign managers everywhere will no longer have to create variations of Exact and Phrase Match keywords, like including both singular and plural versions, misspellings, abbreviations and more…