Archives for the month of: February, 2009
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Top notch PR from Ryanair: lunatic, idiot bloggers

February 25, 2009 //
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In an angry outburst from Ryanair spokesperson Stephen McNamara the budget airline has hit out at the blogging community and stated it is not part of their company policy to engage with “idiot bloggers”.

The outburst comes after a blogger claimed to have found a bug in the Ryanair system which produced a final statement in the booking of £0.00 for flights.  In coming across the article a disgruntled Ryanair employee labelled the blogger an idiot and a liar for his post, picking holes in his methods and questioning his ability and skills as a developer.  your can read the original article here, the full response from the confirmed Ryanair employee was:

“jason!
you’re an idiot and a liar!! fact is!
you’ve opened one session then another and requested a page meant for a different session, you are so stupid you dont even know how you did it! you dont get a free flight, there is no dynamic data to render which is prob why you got 0.00. what self respecting developer uses a crappy CMS such as word press anyway AND puts they’re mobile ph number online, i suppose even a prank call is better than nothing on a lonely sat evening!!”

In the second article on Travolution Ryanair confirms the comment was from one of their employees but states their intention to leave the blogosphere to “lunatic bloggers” and concentrate on “driving down the cost of air travel”.

Great PR work guys!  OK, so your are probably disgruntled someone found a bug in your system and it got a bit of exposure, but is this really the best response?  Surely less damage would have been done by holding your hands up, admitting an error (or not if you don’t believe there to be one) and fixing it.

You clearly dont value the blogging community as a medium, thats fine, but is there any need for such an outburst which is only going to make matter worse?  im sure there are hundreds of bloggers out there right now doing the same as me and writing about this incident.  Through this statement Ryanair have succesfully turned a mild issue of one rogue employee, into a much larger issue worsening the perception of their business.

Well done Ryanair!

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Categories Social Media

Yahoo! Wins Keyword Legal Case

February 24, 2009 //
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Yahoo! has won a legal case in the US which puts a different slant on brand and trademark infringement in PPC, but also goes to show the search engines have covered themselves against such cases.

As reported in media post, Yahoo has come out on top in a case brought against them by Heartbrand Beef, of Yoakum Texas.  Heartbrand, who claim to be the only seller of Akaushi beef in the US, didn’t believe Yahoo! should allow their competitors to appear on the keyword “Akaushi” as it was misleading to their searchers and of the products their competitors provided.  This would have been an interesting judgment had it gone the other way.  It is different to other trademark disputes of past or present as it wasn’t actually a trademark or brand term owned by Heartbrand, just a product exclusive to them.  I can’t honestly see how Heartbrand thought they were going to win this case but the result does go to show that the search engines are covering themselves for any such cases through their practices and T&Cs.  Google, Yahoo and Microsoft aren’t stupid, they aren’t going to open themselves up for potential legal backlash through the changes they make to policies, they are going to be pretty sure they aren’t liable before making such as Google’s most recent changes to trademark bidding.

This is not the first time the search engines have come out in battles such as these, and it certainly isn’t the final say in the argument over brand and trademark infringement in paid search.  But the more cases like this which come out in the search engines favour, the less chance there is of one going the other way, which in turn means less companies will be tempted to try their luck in the courts.

I predict in 12 months trademark and brand bidding in PPC will just be a common practice, give it 2 years and search engine marketers will be reminiscing about the good old days when there was no competition on brand terms and you got all the clicks for next to nothing.

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Categories PPC

Why bid management software can never replace human PPC management

February 18, 2009 //
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Automated bid management software is becoming more and more popular and the technology and algorithms powering it are becoming more advanced.  There are a number of providers who have built extremely powerful software solutions for automating PPC bid management and the functionality they offer is immense.  But I really do not believe they can ever fully replace human management of pay per click campaigns, here are few reasons why.

Conversion Attribution – Beyond CPA

Conversion attribution is something that I believe is at the heart of a truly integrated digital marketing programme.  The ability to allocate conversions and contribution to conversion across multiple digital channels will revolutionise the allocation of digital budgets once a truly accurate method of measurement is found.  It has been the principle of multi-channel digital campaigns for a long time, build brand awareness through display which will lead people to the search engines and conversion.  But very few, if any, tools exist which can effectively prove, more importantly, accurately report, the affect each channel has had on an individual conversion.

Automated bid management software analyses individual keywords in isolation and doesnt account for the impact a click on a non brand keyword might have on a brand keyword for example.  By managing each individual keyword at a set CPA you arent giving them the credit they may (or may not) deserve and you could be seriously limiting the volume of leads available through PPC.

Critical Mass and Sales Volume

Profitability and return on investment is great, and it is the main advantage digital channels and PPC have over our offline counterparts, but it is not everything!  Many businesses have a critical mass of leads or sales they need to keep themselves afloat, I deal with them all the time.  And whilst they buy in to the accountability and measurability of PPC if the phone stops ringing, or the leads stop coming in, this all goes out of the window as their business depends on a certain level of sales each day.  Rule based bidding is useless in this situation and you have to go after the volume.  This is especially prevalent in finite markets where a large research process isn’t undertaken.

Variable Conversion Value

Each conversion is not necessarily worth the same as another, and it is difficult to accurately provide an individual value for each PPC conversion.  In this way it would take a lot of human analysis and intervention outside of the software to manage and maintain profitability.  This often occurs when the online action is an enquiry which results in an offline sale.  One online enquiry might have a resulting sales value of £20 and another might be £2000, in this situation, how can you effectively provide a profitable CPA for these enquiries?

Offline Conversions

Offline conversions happen in every market, telephone numbers on site, visitors to a store, customer service question which result in sale.  Automated bid mangement software can never effectively account for these sales and so will managing the campaign with only half the information.

So what is the solution?

Firstly, I believe automated bid management software has a part to play in managing large and complex PPC and Adwords campaigns.  But there needs to be a large amount of human intervention and management which leads to the statement made in the title, human management can never be fully replaced by bid management software, so how is this best managed?

One option is to employ the 80/20 rule of bid management.  By allowing a software package to manage the 80% of keywords (the long tail) which generate 20% of sales you cand remove a large burden from campaigns with thousands of keywords and focus you attention on the important 20% of keywords.

Another is to use the human element to analyse the offline and supplemntary data which cannot be interpreted by the software and build complex and evolving rules for the software to follow.  I know some of the software providers are frustrated that many of their customers only us a small percentage of their tools functions and no-one really pushes the boundaries.  By using the human element to analyse the reams of offline data, plug it into the tool, or learn the most effective ways of managing things in an automated manor you can ensure that you:

1. get the most the software has to offer
2. fill in the gaps and analayse the data and factors the software is not aware of

In truth, I dont know the most effective solution.  I am sure software is going to play an increasingly important role in PPC and digital marketing but it can never replace the human touch.  So if you are planning to use one of the available tools, or your agency are going to do so, make sure you dont rely solely on technology, it will never know the full story.

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Categories PPC

Comparison Sites Killing Google?

February 15, 2009 //
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Ill be honest, the thought had never crossed my mind, after all, the financial comparison sites are some of the biggest spenders with Google and so contribute a large chunk to Google’s Adwords revenues each year.  But it was mentioned in a conversation the other day with Richard Gregory, Latitude’s Chief Operations Officer, and it actually adds up.

Car Insurance is one of Google’s biggest markets with the number 1 PPC position commanding CPC’s in excess of £10 and thousands of searches each month.  So you would think that these comparison sites, who at the time of writing hold 2 of the top 3 PPC positions, would be adding to, not taking away from, Google’s revenue growth targets.  But when you look at the trend for car insurance searches on Google over the past few years you will see a steady decline since mid 2006.

car-insurance-comparison-killing-google

And if you plot that against searches for the brand names of the major insurance comparison sites you can see that the growth in their search volume could be the cause of this.

car-insurance-comparison-sites-adwords

Prior to the emergence of comparison sites, if you wanted a quick an easy list of insurers online, what did you do?  You searched for car insurance on Google.  But with the amount of branding activity these sites do offline and the awareness it has generated, people are fully aware of the places they need ot go to compare car insurance offers and providers.  So they are now going direct to their site of choice, or performing a brand search for that site instead.  Therefore whilst the comparison sites are spending a large amount on Google Adwords, they are taking away a large chunk of its revenues from this market through their very presence.  And you have to say, as people look to save every penny in difficult times, this trend is only going to continue, and car insurance will become a less and less lucrative market for Google and they will have to find a replacement cash cow for the future.

Maybe this trend was a contributing factor to the decision to allow gambling advertiser on Adwords?  And this is their replacement revenue source, that is of course until someone finds an effective way of comparing odds on the leading gambling sites and we are back where we started!

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Categories Google

twitter’s unimaginative idea for monetisation

February 12, 2009 //

The latest rumour circulating of how the twitter owners plan to monetise their recent surge in users comes curtousy of Marketing magazine, which in itself, is evidence of twitter gaining further mainstream coverage.  In an interview with Biz Stone, cofounder of twitter, Fiona Ramsay quotes Stone as saying, ‘We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts.’

Reading between the lines of the article it sounds to me Stone said it more as an idea than the definitive solution to monetising twitter, but is this the best he can come up with?

Obviously there is value in twitter for businesses.  They gain access to their customers in a conversational manner, something you don’t get outside the realms of social networking.  The ability to push messages at your consumers in real time, and more importantly, gain feedback on your product/service from an engaged audience, certainly has some value.  But how much value?  and is it enough for companies to want to pay for an account?  I have my doubts.  Especially when individuals at said company could set up personal accounts and act on behalf of the company without any associated costs.

A much simpler model would be ad funded, maybe not in the traditional way but in a more flexible, targeted way, as Facebook has started doing.  Everyone on twitter expresses an interest in one thing or another.  Through the small bio they write to accompany their profile, through the website link they choose to list, but more importantly, through the updates they make, some up to 50 a day!  Due to the way in which people use twitter, they constantly refer to products and activities which they use or partake in as part of their every day life.

People tweet about their phones (mostly iPhone and Blackberry at the minute but others will catch up!), they tweet about their laptops, their lifestyles, and just about everything else that is going on in their life.  A search on twitter for “valentines day” for example reveals that hundreds of people who have mentioned it in their recent tweets.  Now imagine being a flower company, wouldn’t you pay to hit these guys with a targeted advert around now?  You could even use smart technology to interpret the senitment of the statement to avoid hitting those with an “I hate valentines day” sentiment so as to avoid compounding their misery!

In fact, keyword level targeting with a sentiment filter could be awesome (can you tell I am writing as I think!?!).  Imagine being able to target those who were mentioned your competition in a negative way.  Hitting somebody who writes “broadband provider X sucks, I have been on the phone for hours!” with an ad for your alternative broadband package with 5 star customer service, priceless!

The continually evolving conversation of twitter could make it a highly exciting prospoect for advertisers (there have been 41 more velntines based tweets since I wrote the above!).  As an advertiser you could track tweet trends in real time and evolev your campaigns to match.  Facebook’s targetting platform is great, but it is pretty static as it is based on profile information more than anything else.  Twitter would have a potentially endless stream of inventory for topical products and services and this would make the advertising platform a hugely exciting prospect.

Im sure the top dogs at twitter are consider these options as we speak, but I sure do hope that charging for commercial accounts isnt the best thing they come up with!

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Categories Social Media
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