The Digital Lookout

In their latest add campaign Orange use a serious of individuals speaking about the people who have influenced their lives and made them what they are.  Using the phrase “i am” followed by the individual and how they influenced them.  I actually like the adverts but that is not the point of the post.  On top of the television ads they are also running radio spots which, in the final line, urges users to search “i am” on Google.  So I did just that, I went to my Google homepage and I searched on the phrase “i am”, half expecting to see the whole mobile phone industry lining up their PPC ads.  But low and behold, they weren’t there? All that was there was two Orange listings (the main site and the i am microsite) and a sleeping bag seller, lippiselkbag, who have cleverly engineered the i am message into their creative (nice product, check it out!).

Surely somebody associated with tmobile, vodafone or O2 should have picked up on this keyword seeding and have slotted the keyword into their PPC campaign?  All it would have taken is a bit of creative thinking to get the phrase into their creative and you never know, they may have got some business out of it.  yet another example of big businesses (or their agencies) failing to innovate in paid search.

The Google Adwords blog has announced a number of “quality score improvements” (debatable use of the word improvements!) which will come into play for your Adwords listings in the near future.

Removal of min bid - Firstly it is removing the current system of allocating each keyword a minimum bid amount which must be met for you keyword to appear in the paid search listings. All listings will have the chance to appear on whatever keywords they wish with just quality score and max bid amount dictating the position of the listing (essentially a move back to the old system prior to min bid being introduced). The minimum bid system is to be replaced with a CPC estimate for your first page bid, that is, the bid amount Google estimates it would take to get your ad on the first page.

Dynamic/search query level quality score - Secondly the quality score system is going to be changed so that it is allocated at search query level rather than keyword level. This means an advertiser bidding on broad match phrase loan, will have a different quality score on the term secured loan to personal loan and the phrase loan itself. Also accounting for user data such as location (based on IP and Google account details).

What does this mean to Google?

More search listings!- These changes should see the appearance of an increased number of listings on any given search phrase. With people able to appear on any keyword they wish (so long as they are willing to pay) and a large number of previously inactive keywords will suddenly come into play. 

More money! - Essentially what Google are saying is, “You want to appear? Fine, but it’ll cost you!” and I’m sure many advertisers will pay that money….to begin with. Much like the changes in trademark bidding my prediction is a flurry of activity before things die back down and things return back to normal

More competition and increased CPCs! Linked to the above point, by telling people what it will cost them to appear on first page Google are prompting people to increase their bids to get the exposure. If an advertiser is appearing on the second page and sees that they could be first page for an increase of £0.20 CPC, there is the temptation there for them to make that increase which they may not have previously done. Once this temptation is there for every advertiser the whole market for first page listings should become more expensive.

What does this mean to advertisers?

The return of the long tail - Although it has remained beneficial to have a long targeted keyword list for a lot of advertisers the broad match system has allowed them to be relatively lazy. The inclusion of quality score at a search phrase level will mean that it will become much more important in terms of an increased QS and a reduced CPC to have all relevant keywords in your account

Increased brand term CPC? - This ties in very nicely with the removal of brand term protection a few months ago. The function that stopped this from being a long term issue was the minimum bid. Competitors were struggling to make the most of the changes as they were blocked by not having a high enough bid. With the latest announcement this has been removed. So although people will be forced to pay more to bid on a competitors brand, they will not be banned completely, probably producing the same surge in brand CPC as last time (approx 130%) which would equate to a 169% increase since the beginning of the year!

Higher first page CPC - As touched on in the section on Google the likely hood is that these changes will produce more competition for first page listings resulting in higher CPCs. By allowing people to see what it will cost them to appear on the first page you are giving them the push to bid to that level. Some will shy away and save their spend, to others it will be the carrot they need to make the next step.

The changes are set to be rolled out to “a very small set of advertisers” in the next few days according to Google but make sure you keep an eye on your campaigns as I expect the full rollout will follow on from this soon after.

Ebay announced yesterday that it is going to be making significant changes to its business model on September 24th.  The changes which are described by Lorri Norrington, president of eBay marketplace operations in the US, as “the most fundamental change we’ve made, ever, to the marketplace”, will include an overhaul of its site search, and will place more emphasis on fixed price listings.  There is not indication of what this increased emphasis involves but it sounds pretty drastic.  The auction system and the ability to find bargain priced item has been the foundation that eBay has been built on, and this move could effectively remove this completely dependant on the format they run with.  If the changes are drastic enough to prove the end of auction listings then does that not effectively make eBay a price comparison site?  Ok, it would be one where second hand listings appear alongside brand new item, but what else differentiates it from the likes of Kelkoo, Pricerunner and Google Product search.

This announcement worries me, as one of the key beauties of eBay in my opinion is the ability to find a bargain and outbid an opponent at the last minute!  I can see why eBay have done it as they will invariably make more money on a higher cost, fix priced listing but is this at the detriment of what has made eBay so successful to date?   Only time will tell.

A nurse in Sweden has been reportedly suspended for posting mobile phone pictures of brain surgery and major back surgery on her Facebook page.  The nurse apparently did it to “impress friends with her high-powered job”.  I’m sorry, but how dumb is that!  This isn’t the first time somebody has suffered on a professional level for their social media activities, when are people going to learn?  Remember the story of the budding athlete who was suspended for pictures showing him under the influence of alcohol?  Or what about the public schoolboys suspended for being members of a dogging group?

People have got to start waking up to the fact that Facebook and other social networking sites are mainstream channels of information now.  Just because you have to log in to see information doesn’t make it a secure environment.  People have long been punished in their professional lives for actions in the private lives it is just the case now that people put more information about their out of hours antics in the public domain.  If there is anybody you wouldn’t want to know about something, don’t put it on Facebook!  If you do Big brother will most definitely see it!

I have to say I am loving the BBC’s coverage of the Olympics on their website.  I have long been a lover of their live text commentary used for the cricket and the casual, informal language used and their use of this for the olympics has again made it more entertaining.  On top of this, the live text and email feed from viewers adds some interaction and allows for a large amount of sarcastic comedy based on the live unfolding of the games.  Take a bow BBC for producing some live streaming coverage which allows you to flisk between events, view highlights, and doesnt involve stuttering, jerky images.