Pay Per Click.

ZenithOptimedia have predicted that there will be an increase of 15% on paid search advertising this year. Overall internet advertising will increase by around 9.5% in 2009 and about 13% in the next 3 years.

This is really good news, as normally the first thing to be cut in hard times is the advertising budget.

Traditional advertising is also set to increase in 2010 though only by less than 1%.

This shows that online advertising is the way forward, and advertisers must be getting results for them to be spending more and more each year.
So remember, even if budgets are tight, can you really afford to miss out on potential sales and leads from search engine users?  To rub salt into the wounds you’re not only losing the customers, but are potentially giving them to your competitors if they are advertising and you aren’t!

See IAB website for full details:

http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/globalonlineadgrowthpredicted081209.mxs

Google have today announced that they are considering charging users to watch content on YouTube.

Users will be able to watch full length TV shows from the day they are first shown which will cost from $1.99 (around £1.20).  The shows will be ad free.

This comes on the back of a recent partnership between YouTube and C4 and Five where users can watch the TV shows for free, with ads.  Both YouTube and the TV station will take a cut in the advertising revenue.

As you may have spotted Google have been altering their homepage once again!  This time it’s a little more obvious but has still got many people talking.

When you first go to the Google homepage it looks all very minimalist with only the search box visable…then as soon as you move your mouse, the other options fade in slowly; images, maps, mail etc at the top of the screen.

Before and after the fade

The fade in is to not interupt the user for the main reason people go to Google, to search.  If a user wants one of the other services then they will be moving the mouse already, so the other options appear straight away.

Google have been testing a variety of new homepages with tweeks for a while now and are confident they have come up with a new look homepage that everyone will like, though I’m sure it won’t be long before they alter it again!

Twitter is officially the most used word in the English language according to the Global Language Monitor.

The 140 character micro blogging site was more popular than vampire, Obama, H1N1 and stimulus in the top 5 most used words of 2009.  This shows the popularity of the site, and with big stars such as Jonathon Ross, Stephen Fry and Chris Moyles using it, it’s no wonder this site has taken the world by storm. 

Twitter also appears in the top searches on Google in 2009 along with social networking site Facebook.

Google have announced a new app in Google Labs.  Google Labs, for those that aren’t aware is a site with a host of interesting programmes to play around with.  Image Swirl is the latest app to be developed, and is for image searches.  If you search for an image like Big Ben for example, you’ll get a whole host of images that relate to Big Ben, from maps, to pictures during the day, at night, and drawings etc.

What Google Image Swirl does is group related images together. So if you’re only wanting night time pictures of Big Ben then you click the picture you want, which will then expand showing similar images.  Click again and the search will expand further until you’re left with the image you want.

A nice little trick to save trundling through hundreds of pages of images!

Find the Image Swirl at http://image-swirl.googlelabs.com/

Now is the time e-commerce PPC advertisers should think about increasing their budgets.  Not just the daily limits but also the maximum bids.  As we’ve all seen, the Christmas TV adverts have started already, which will mean that people will be thinking about what gifts to get their friends and loved ones.  Search as always will play a massive part in this process and will be the busiest time of year for online retails, excluding boxing day.

Last year we saw massive spike in searches from the second week of November right up until the week before the big day (this drop off is due to last posting dates).  This critical period will see new advertisers entering the mix and existing advertisers biding more aggressively to ensure a good position in the search results.

Make sure you don’t miss out on any online orders by maintaining a competitive position in the results! The average CPC may increase, but so should your orders, can you really afford not to?

Spending spike from November to December

It was only a few weeks ago that some of you spotted that the Google search box was made bigger and the ‘Google Suggests’ box was added.  This is the box that when you type in a search it updates in real time to try and pre-empt what you will search for, a predictive text search if you will.

Well, the Google techies have been fiddling again with the page and the more savvy searchers will have noticed that the sponsored listings have been moved closer to the natural listings.  This now means that a user will see up to 8 paid listings and 4 natural ones.  Some people are suggesting Google have plans for the extra space it has created, maybe a targeted banner down the side? Or another column of paid for ads? Both I think are unrealistic and would make the page look too commercial.

Personally I think they’ve done it just to improve the look of the page.  Before the paid ads seemed disconnected with the rest of the results.  This way they seem more integrated which means they are more likely to be clicked.  It may also mean that being in 4^th or 5^th spot will generate more clicks to those advertisers.  That should benefit not just the advertisers with smaller budgets, but if more people are clicking paid ads rather than natural listings, Google stands to make more money too!

Google have announced that they are trailing a new way to show where in the site the specific page or product is you’ve searched for where the URL normally sits.

Some sites have so many pages that it is very hard to determine what part of the site it is, as the page is buried so deep.  So search results will go from this:

 
To this:

The main part of the URL will remain, up to the .com/.co.uk etc, but the rest will give users a chance to see the path of where that specific page is.  Similar to Windows Explorer or the address bar in the My Computer folder. 

It will show the user how the site is categorised and what’s more, each section of the path will by hyperlinked, so if a user decides to look at the toys & games section then in this example by clicking on the toys & games part of the URL will take them directly to that part of the site.

 Hopefully this will mean a better user experience and another way to explore different websites.

Great news for small businesses or customers who don’t realy know too much about PPC.
The aim of this solution is to get customers with even the smallest budget started with PPC. Our philosipy is simple, to bring big business marketing techniques to small businesses.

Most agencies start there offerings with ” if you have a budget of more than…” But our opening gambit on the QuickStart program is basically, have you got £499! Well, OK you still need to spend some money on placement, but you can decide exactly how much (or little that) is and change it whenever you like.