Display ad revenue is not as profitable for Google as its search engine business because it has to share it with partner publishers in the Google Display Network. The big success for Google is that the world’s biggest search engine became less dependent on search advertising, the text ads that appear on the search results page. Display revenue, including network ads and YouTube, has become a $5 billion annualized business, said Larry Page. That means it’s doubled in size since October 2010, when Google said display had become a $2.5 billion business.

“I’m most excited by the fact that we improved our velocity and execution,” said Mr. Page, noting that revenue for the quarter had passed $10 billion for the first time.

Google Mobile Advertising Expected to Explode

Mr. Page also said that 700,000 Android phones are now being activated every day, with 250 million now in use.

Bryan Wiener, CEO of digital marketing firm 360i, said he had expected a strong showing from Google in mobile — where its share of search is dominant — after Black Friday and Cyber Monday, when searches on mobile exploded.

“What’s lifting them seems to be a tipping point in consumer behavior,” he said, also noting that he had expected Google’s display business to benefit from YouTube’s redesign and the momentum it generated for brand display advertising.

Google+ May Drive Mobile Search

Mr. Page also reported that Google+ now has 90 million users, up from the 40 million reported last fall. He said that 60% of users engaged on the network on a daily basis, while 80% do on a weekly basis.

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Display Ad Rev. Doubles

This will be a tremendous boost to Google’s efforts to replace the Yellow Pages with local information that is useful to people searching Google Local. Google wanted to use Yelp but was unable to buy the company and has run into difficulty using the Yelp reviews freely. Zagat has a trusted reputation, even if it is not as hot as it once was.

Some New York Times readers scoffed at the acquisition, including Lyle Vos, who claims to be the Democratic candidate for president in 2012 (so consider his reliability). He says:

Nobody has used Zagat since 1997, Maybe Google would be interested in buying my Sony Walkman or my 8 Track collection.

While it may be true that New Yorkers use Zagat more as a directory than a reliable rating source, the rating technique will translate well for places like Santa Rosa which has considerable tourist traffic. There are restaurants with excellent food that will never have great websites because the owners and chef are not writers and don’t want to spend the time updating a blog and tweeting. Nevertheless, they should be able to enjoy new business based on excellent food. Reliable ratings is a great way to do it.

I think Marissa Mayer may find a big challenge in keeping the ratings as honest as possible. I am seeing an uptick in spam mail offering “reputation management” which is a fancy way of offering to revise the reviews. This may turn into an interesting duel.

What do you think? Would you try a place that was recommended on, ahem, Zagoogle?

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Google Buys Zagat

The latest ad innovations to Google AdWords were outlined by Google marketing pros Dan Friedman, Bill Kee and Alex Kenin at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Francisco in August. The “core principles” are Easy, Relevant and Smart. Alex showed how the Opportunities Tab in the AdWords dashboard makes it easy to find recommendations for keywords, bids and budgets. For advertisers using display ads, the new “Interest Categories” launched two months ago shows 100 active audience categories to make selection easier.

The Click to Call mobile ad innovation is that the link is NOT to the website but to the phone number (see photo left). Dan Friedman outlined Google’s efforts to deliver relevant ads including new ad formats including the exciting new hyperlocal mobile advertising which does NOT click through to the website. This mobile-only, GPS-triggered ad format is click-to-call only. Perfect for take-out pizza and towing companies. Dan revealed that many advertisers using ad sitelinks would be be surprised to learn that Google rearranges the order of the links to optimize clicks and he urged advertisers to offer Google as many as 10 site link choices. Google product ads bypass bidding and simply charge a commission on sale that is a percentage of the purchase price.

Bill Key showed how Google is working to make AdWords “Smart” with improved performance and conversion tracking reports available through Analytics. The five new reports on Multi-Channel Funnels describe the path to conversion including activity in social networks that lead to conversions. He demonstrated results from Facebook fan pages and referrals from Twitter and shows how this advanced reporting helped a Thailand resort boost sales 44% by offering special deals on the first click.

Are there ways you think Google can improve AdWords to make it more Easy, Relevant and Smart?

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Search Engine Strategies – AdWords Innovations

Google’s Strategy with Boost

Setting up Google AdWords advertising is wicked hard. Two months ago I taught a four hour class to 20 business owners at Santa Rosa Junior College on AdWords and even though every student left with an active Google AdWords account, the amount of material that needed to be covered in such a short time was brutal. The recent changes to the AdWords dashboard have made it ideal for quantitative analysis wonks and incomprehensible for normal business owners. Boost is Google’s effort to offer something more accessible. Google’s tells businesses that Boost will:

• Attract more local customers to your website or Place page.
• Pay only when people click on your ad.
• Create ads directly from your Places account within minutes.
• No ongoing management is needed after you sign up. Boost runs the ads for you.
• Measure the effectiveness of your ads in your Places dashboard.

The Boost set up takes some of the pain out of setting up Google advertising by making it as simple as 1-2-3

1. select search category from a drop down box
2. write a text ad
3. select a monthly budget amount from the suggestions ($50/mo minimum)

How Did Boost Work For This Client?

The customer had been advertising on Google AdWords for five years but was was slipping in page rank because their budget has not increased as fast as the competition for Google AdWords in their category. I shifted their budget from AdWords to Boost for a one month trial.

According to Google Analytics, traffic to the site plunged 94%. Of course the click charges plunged too, but the total Boost clicks for a month was a puny 14! Worst of all, when people searched on the exact business name, Boost charged $7.50 per click, and there was no way to click on a Google Places/Google Maps listing for the business without paying the Boost click charge. That is, the ONLY listing for the business was the enhanced Boost listing. This is in contrast to AdWords where the organic results appear in the left column and the ad appears in the right column. The two listings complement each other in Web searches.

I think Boost might be good for a bricks-and-mortar business that does not have good name recognition (Boost is designed for businesses with actual locations, not home-based or virtual businesses).

Have you tried Boost? What was your experience?

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Is Boost a Bust?

I can create a sensational ad campaign, but the money will be wasted if the website does not convert visitors to customers. How do you create an effective website that will bring in money instead of wasting of money?

Sell the sizzle. What do you have that your competitors don’t? Why should people buy from you? Put it RIGHT UP FRONT. I teach my Blogging for Business students to use a “sticky post” so that their marketing message always stays right on top.

Make your website easy to find. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is just a fancy way of saying, “make your website easy for search engines to understand.” Your sticky post marketing message is right at the top of the page, in text (not an image) so search engines can see exactly what you are selling. Remember that search engines cannot “see” images, they can see text, so make sure you know the difference.

WordPress makes it easy. Easy for me to say… I have been building websites for years and have been building ad campaigns for LOTS of years. Keep in mind that the Web is still growing and changing every day, and that advertising is a fashion business. WordPress offers lots of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools to jump-start your website.

A blog is the cheapest, fastest way to get good organic page rank on Google. Organic is just a fancy way of saying FREE listing on the left side of the page — the side that people trust. Google likes fresh info, and frequently updated blogs are the kind of content Google likes to favor. So put your blog on the home page! I’ll show you how.

It takes time to work your way up in the page ranking, and it can take years to get to the first page in the organic listings. How do you leapfrog to the first page of Google? All it takes is money. I can get your ad on the first page of Google within a month. Will that make you rich?

Only if your website turns visitors into customers. How much does it cost to get a website like that? It costs less than $100 to take my WordPress Class, and everyone left with a multi-page website. Every single student had a website with a blog, an About Us page and a Contact Us page.

Exciting from the ground up — that’s how the students build their blogs.

The best way for me to help established businesses find new customers through the Web is to:

• Build great advertising
• Send the right prospects to a great website

When they call you, that’s when you make your magic. In this economy, people have more time than money. And websites can look out of date in just a few years because fashion changes so rapidly. WordPress makes it easy to update your website — both in content and in design. Find out more about the Blogging for Business class on Saturday, March 5. Come back the next week to learn how to advertise on Google to attract customers to your website.

To learn more about WordPress, visit the WordPress Links list I developed for a presentation to the North Bay Internet Society. To find out how to get a WordPress website for your business, contact me.

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Why I Teach WordPress

Nick Fox, Google’s Business Product Management Director for AdWords told Barry Schwartz of SearchEngineLand that the policy change is to shut down all advertising on an account, not just the offending campaign. This is a drastic step by Google and may signal that they are getting heat from their search engine users, their customers who are legitimate advertisers, and their lawyers who fear government intervention.

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Lifetime Ban from Google

This is what happened to Viking Volvo. This Santa Rosa auto repair shop specializes in Volvos, but Google would not let me put Volvo in the text ad. I could create ads that came up on the search term “Volvo repair,” but the ad itself could not say “Volvo repair.” The campaign results were disappointing and soon abandoned.

Artistic Wine Cellars was furious to discover that a low-cost competitor was advertising on their name. Their domain is ArtisticCellars.com, so I registered ArtisticWINEcellars.com for them also. They trademarked the name, wrote to Google, and asked the offending party to cease advertising on their name. A few months later, a different competitor contacted them, complaining that the Artistic ad came up on a search of the competitor’s name.

At the client’s request, I removed the competitor’s name from the keyword list (the words that trigger ads) and I was relieved that the owner of Artistic Wine Cellars found it uproariously funny that this competitor was advertising on Artistic’s name! He had a few choice words to say about the competitor’s honesty over the years.

Artistic Wine Cellars does not like the Google policy. They agree with Terrence Ross, a partner at Gibson Dunn, that Google’s extracting higher advertising charges in order to get the top result for your own name, “certainly smacks of a protection racket.”

The New York Times points out that defenders of Google’s practice say it is good for cosumers. People who are shopping for a new camera, for example, will benefit from seeing an ad for a competing, and perhaps cheaper, product that theymight not have known about. A key way for a new business to encroach on the market share of a larger company is to advertising on their brand name.

Is this really different from the Yellow Pages, where all the auto glass repair companies are listed in the same column? The policy change at Google bring it in line with Microsoft and Yahoo, which allow similar uses of trademarks in the text ads. “It is a pretty well established principle in the offline world and in the online world,” said Terri Chen, senior trademark counsel at Google.”

“They are pouring fuel on the fire,” said Eric Goldman of Santa Clara University Law School. “Google is making it harder to control the use of their trademarks online.” Eric Goldman’s blog discusses several lawsuits against Google in this matter.

What do you think? Should businesses continue to use their competitor’s trademarks as keywords to trigger ads?

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Google Sued Over Trademark Advertising

Andy Donchin, director for media investments at Carat, a New York agency for Adidas, Alberto-Culver and Pfizer, said that “18 to 49 is going to remain the predominant buying demographic, but 50 isn’t what it used to be.”

Older consumers today “are not as resistant to change” as in the past, Mr. Donchin said. “Show me something better, and I’ll try it,” is the Boomer attitude and they are “comfortable with digital media,” he added.

Brian Gordon of eBeantstalk.com says his sales are up about 65% over last year, mostly from grandparents who “are our most demanding customers” but are more willing than their younger counterparts are to pay full price. He was stunned to learn from a customer survey that 40% of his customers for children’s learning toys were 50+. Read the NYTimes article. If your business would profit by effective online advertising to people 50+, please call us at 707-575-3446.

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50+ is the New Green

Shares of Yahoo promptly surged 11% after a report surfaced online that the web pioneer’s Chief Executive Jerry Yang was leaving the company and that Yahoo was in late stage talks to sell the whole company to Microsoft for between $17 per share and $19 per share.

Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo for $33 a share in May. Yahoo’s shares were trading around $14 on Wednesday. Google’s shares were down nearly 3 percent, around $356.

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Google Declines to Fight for Yahoo