Clicks 'n Conversions Blog

This article was originally published on the Tatum Marketing Technology blog on July 29, 2008.

If you’re involved in online advertising, you’re probably using paid search marketing (ie, pay-per-clickadvertising) and I’ll bet you’re adverting on Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and/or MSN adCenter.

All three of these popular search engines have designed in a couple of default settings that I recommend you change.

The first of these settings is an automatic opt-in to a content network. When you’re in a content network, your ad is served on non-search engine websites – presumably those whose content subject matter is a match for your ad. In other words, if you’re advertising software for legal firms your ad might appear on a webpage that contains an article about managing a legal firm.

While content network advertising has its place, it doesn’t belong automatically tied to your search campaign. For one thing, visitors are in two entirely different frames of mind when they’re searching for a keyword and when they’re reading an article. You’ll get far better results using different ads that are geared to each frame of mind.

The second default setting you’ll want to change has to do with how your ad variations are served. You are running multiple ads, right? (In a past article, Why Pay per Click Advertising Wastes Money and What to Do About It, we listed six ways to waste a lot of money on pay-per-click advertising. Running only one ad at a time was number three.)

By running multiple versions of an ad, you’re actually testing to find the most effective combination of headline and offer. It’s a great way to continuously improve results. But the search engines, in their default settings, figure out for you which ad produces the best click through rate and show that ad more often than they show the others. Sounds like a positive service, but it’s not good if you’re trying to run an accurate test.

So, check with whoever is managing your pay-per-click campaign and make sure they’ve changed these two settings. Even if you’re using an outside firm to manage your campaigns, don’t assume they’ve done this. (Unless, of course, Tatum Marketing is managing your PPC campaign. In which case you can rest assured that we’re taken care of it).

If you’re the do-it-yourself type and managing your own campaign, Search Engine Watch has a great step-by-step “how-to” article called Creating PPC Campaigns: the ‘Live or Die’ Settings.This will walk you through changing those settings on all three search engines.

Let us know how your online advertising efforts are going.