“184 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in October for an average of 21.1 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience viewed 42.6 billion videos, representing an all-time high.”

According to statistics published by the global leader in digital media analytics, You Tube/Google has an audience of just less than 161 million unique viewers; an impressive figure; and one that is three times that of Facebook, which comes in at second place with almost 60 million unique viewers.  Based on comScore’s findings, VEVO registered in third position with “57 million [viewers], Microsoft Sites with 49.1 million and Viacom Digital with 48.2 million”.

The number of videos viewed online in October broke all previous records, and indicates that the future of digital media marketing lies with the proliferating online video market.  The sheer volume of users, in the US alone, is testament to the increasing popularity of online video sites on a global scale:

“More than 42 billion videos were viewed during the month, with the average viewer watching a record 21.1 hours. Google Sites demonstrated the highest engagement with 7.1 hours per viewer.”

Earlier this year Yahoo was surpassed by YouTube as the second largest search engine, and has the added benefit of attracting users for prolonged periods of time.  The reach of Google’s YouTube platform exemplifies the potential for online advertisements as a platform for marketers to reach potential target audiences, with digital media marketing video ads reaching a growing number of users globally, as more and more people utilise online video sites for extensive periods of time each month.  As comScore goes on to note, 53% of the population in the US accessed online videos 47 times during October on average:

“Time spent watching video ads totaled more than 3.2 billion minutes during the month, with Tremor Video delivering the highest duration of video ads at 614 million minutes. Video ads reached 53 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 47 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 46.5.”

The potential to use promoted video ads as a lucrative digital media marketing platform are vast, and with Google operating their promoted ads in much the same way as their existing search ads platform, it is relatively easy to navigate, and provides advertisers with methods for attracting attention to a video ad, as well as increasing viewers and subscribers to a channel, with the objective of impacting upon downstream conversions.

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By contrast, Baidu is now estimated to host 75% of searches in the Chinese internet market; the worlds largest, when measured by the number of users that access the internet globally.  China has the world’s fastest growing internet sector, with more than 450 million people online.

The success of Baidu has been demonstrated through the exponential leap in share prices, following the publication of the company’s recent earnings report, as well as Baidu founder Robin Li being listed as one of the country’s richest men.  According to Kenneth Rapoza’s investment blog on forbes.com:

“Baidu reported a 123% increase in first-quarter net income to $164.5 million. Sales beat analysts’ estimates due to higher ad charges, helping first-quarter revenue rise 88.3% to $372 million.”

Following Baidu’s rapid growth during 2010, the search engine provider has been linked with social networking site Facebook.  The social media site recognised the potential benefits of forging a partnership with China’s search engine giant, and developing a solution to China’s current censorship laws; both of the worlds most popular networking sites, Facebook and Twitter, are currently blocked in China.

According to reports published on Huffington Post, during a trip to China in December of last year, Mark Zuckerberg attended a meeting with Robin Li; ever since there has been speculation from various quarters about a partnership between the two parties; Facebook have reported that they are: “currently studying and learning about China, as part of evaluating any possible approaches that could benefit our users, developers and advertisers”.

Meanwhile Google’s position appears to be in steady decline within the country.  According to Huffinton: [Google] sees its biggest opportunities in China in selling advertising on behalf of local websites or to companies that want to reach customers abroad through its global sites”.

There is speculation however that the inception of alternative search engine Goso.cn is intended to pose stiff competition to Baidu’s rapidly expanding stake in the search engine market.  Goso.cn has recruited former executives of Google China, and with China’s governing body reputed to be motivating the launch of the new search provider (owned by the Communist Party’s official paper: ‘People’s Daily’) it is anticipated that Baidu’s success is ultimately under threat, and it is only a matter of time before Goso.cn begins to claim a share of Baidu’s audience.

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The event will take the form of an online training seminar for people looking to enhance their knowledge of Search Engine Optimisation, social media and online marketing, and has been developed in order to enable people to learn more about how to optimise their business sites and make the most of web capabilities to increase revenue and develop their knowledge of social media marketing strategies.

The Institiute state that the event will bring a number of benefits to delegates, including the ability to integrate social media SEO into an overall marketing strategy, generate a strong social media following, use social media marketing to improve Google rankings, and learn from a number of SEo experts across the globe who are responsible for carrying out million-dollar campaigns on behalf of their customers.

In addition, the new event will enable people to learn how to track and benchmark SEO success and learn how to attract customers from either a local, national or international audience. The event will provide opportunities to network with other enthusiasts of social media, PPC and digital marketing, using platforms including LinkedIn and a number of private forums set up for the purpose.

The event will be attended by a number of leading experts in the field of online search engine optimisation and marketing, who will be offering their insights in to how to make a success of advertising within the industry.

PPC states: “Based on input from the thousands of advertisers who have attended the Yahoo classes, and recognizing the growing thirst for more information about pay per click we have put together these Summits to foster knowledge sharing about this often complicated subject.”

“We are inviting those who truly want to learn pay per click the right way. Not because they believe it will help to promote their latest get rich quick scheme, but because they recognize the value in always staying one step ahead of their competitors to achieve their marketing goals.”

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In essence, SEO manipulates web content through a series of activities which make the copy appear to be relevant to the most popular keywords, thereby ensuring that users are exposed to the copy when they input the relevant text. However, Randfish has argued that good SEO strategies can make irrelevant material feature prominently, thus potentially wasting the time and resources of the user as they search for their required returns.

However, the article also suggests that making potentially irrelevant content rank highly on user keyword lists is largely a waste of time, as users will not be satisfied with misleading results, and therefore advertisers who manipulate SEO results simply produce unappealing and worthless returns. Randfish comments: “SEO is almost never applied to make non-relevant results rank for unrelated queries. And, I’d go one step further, arguing that if white hat SEO didn’t exist, millions of search results would be far worse, as fewer high quality, relevant results would make their content accessible to search engines and well-targeted toward queries.”

SEO practices are responsible for a major segment of investment finance and marketing energy which is deployed to determine what consumers are looking for, and provide it to them. Companies which deploy outstanding SEO activities are in a position to generate more traffic through the ethical promotion of web content. Without this activity, Randfish argues, our advertising would be compromised as commercials would be less appealing, and less revenue would be spent on attracting visitors and encouraging them to make a purchasing decision.

He concludes: “If SEO is misleading, then so is every other form of influence and marketing (and in many cases, SEO less so than the others). Human beings who were born in the 20th and 21st century recognize marketing and know what it means, how it works and who it serves.”

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Brafton have reminded business owners that the majority of consumers set more store on organic results than paid ones, and a new report developed by research and design firm User Centric has demonstrated that online searchers prefer organic search results. The research was originally intended to illustrate the effectiveness of paid search ads, by showing that users were more likely to favour the adverts placed in paid locations. However, the results of the study actually proved the opposite – that people are more drawn to organic results. One hundred percent of all those surveyed responded more to the natural results.

The research looked at the popularity of adverts on Google and Bing, to see which search engine was favoured by consumers. While Google ads received more attention than those on rival engine Bing, neither search engine managed to attract the attention of consumers when it came to spending time looking at the adverts. Internet marketers are being reminded that SEP strategies should spend more of their time and attention on mechanisms to enhance organic search results, by using strong headlines, high-quality content and regular updates. All of these factors could prove to be a better investment than simple paid search advertising strategies.

According to Brafton, Google have stated that including the dates of results returns is a valuable technique within SEO, as it gives searchers an indication of the newness and relevance of a page, enabling people to measure whether or not the returned content is: “relatively recent or evergreen content … or something that is really stale and out of date.”

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This concept is now being taken and applied to online data, a new research project reports. The research suggests that our online privacy could be enhanced if there were a way of digitally removing or erasing the information we submit online.
Dr Harold van Heerde is a Dutch IT researcher who has been seeking ways to degrade information that we input in to sites, to prevent internet site owners from retaining our personal information and using it for deception, criminal means or other untoward behaviour. Van Heerde is of the opinion that we will gradually be able to change the information we input online, to stop the influx of personal detail that is housed about individual on the net.

This measure will guard against accidental disclosure, in addition to addressing some of the weak elements of online security which currently compromise our online safety, he suggests.

“There are so many weak points in security that you can never be sure that your data is safe,” said Dr van Heerde.
Dr van Heerde hails from the Centre for Telematics and Information Technology (CTIT), at Twente University. He has pioneered research which examined the way in which we input data online, and how databases manage this information, both about customers and surfers.

The way in which databases are currently managed enable organisations to house details about consumers, which make it tempting for them to utilise this information to promote products. This makes it difficult to safeguard ourselves when information is accidentally leaked online through human error.

“People make mistakes, people can be bribed,” he has stated. “You cannot protect this data, you cannot be sure it’s not been disclosed, privacy policies are simply too weak.” Van Heerde is of the opinion that all information submitted by people should be subject to contractual obligations which provide an element of governance over how, and when, it is used for commercial purposes.

His ideas for remedying the situation include using generic location information rather than addresses, and replacing specifics with more general values which still provide an effective indication of consumer profiles and preferences. This means that our data will fade, being replace instead by more general information which will protect our privacy as online consumers. Just as when we wrote our name in the sand, the online environment will soon allow our details to fade instead of being carved in stone.

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According to the survey, 27 percent of respondents said that search engine marketing is responsible for over half of their online sales. 47 percent said that more than a quarter of their web sales stem from search engine marketing. This figure includes sales driven by both SEO and PPC driven sales.

As far as traffic was concerned, 51.5 percent of respondents claimed that more than a quarter of their web site traffic comes from natural search whilst 28 percent said that more than a quarter comes from paid search advertising.

A massive 89 percent of respondents said they get at least 50 percent of their search engine traffic from Google, with 19 percent saying Google sends more than 90 percent of the traffic they get. The survey did not specify if that includes traffic from both natural and paid searches however.
There were some interesting figures that relate specifically to paid search and Google vs. the Yahoo!/Bing partnership.

44.6 percent of respondents said that they were able to increase their budget for paid searches in the last year, and 49 percent said that they are planning to increase it for 2011 too. Almost half, 43.4 percent said they plan to shift some of their paid search advertising to Microsoft’s search Bing in the coming year. And of that 43.4 percent, 17.6 percent said they will be shifting money from their Google advertising budget.

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But will it work? Well, returning to a policy that has already been perceived not to work doesn’t exactly make your brand look strong. On the other hand, Ask has been losing market share steadily for years now, perhaps it makes sense to return to a policy that saw them performing better. 

Also, the portly butler is simply a better branding-wise than the previous campaign, which explicitly tried to mark them out as ‘not Google.’ When you base your whole advertising campaign around a competitor, you clearly mark yourself out as second banana which, even if you are, as is the case with Ask, is a fact you don’t exactly want to broadcast.

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2. Always include your brand name in the listing, preferably in the title. This lends the offer legitimacy and will increase your relevancy score so you’ll be found more easily. For the same reason, you should also try and include one or two of your keywords in the title.

3. Post several different coupons online, changing the title, keywords, specifics of the offers, this will obviously increase the likelihood of people finding your offers.

4. You should also expect to do some of the legwork, use your site, blog etc., to promote the offer. This allows current users the opportunity to forward the link to people they know.

5. Oh, this should go without saying really, but do monitor your coupon campaign, just like you would any other. Bring in new offers regularly and analyse the effectiveness of each one using whatever metric you can, and please, please delete expired coupons, nothing annoys people quicker than being sold a deal that doesn’t exist.

Do all that and you should be well on your way to exploiting the thrift revolution. Good luck.

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Keyword Popularity
Impressions show you the number of times your advert has been displayed.
Clicks show you the amount of clicks the advert has received (and you paid for)
Click Through Rate(CTR) is the percentage of times a searcher clicked on your advert.
By looking at these, you can get a good idea of how often people search for a particular keyword, and when being supplied with your advert, how likely they are to click it.
If you want higher click through rate, you should consider bidding for a higher position or possibly rewriting your advert so this it is as relevant to the search as possible.

Keywords that make money
First click in the revenue column to bring the highest revenue keywords to the top.
These keywords may or may not be your highest ROI keywords.
If the ROI shows you are loosing or not making money, you might want to try lowering you bid price. (this will lower your cost per click and increase your ROI)

Analytics Feedback
Keeping an eye on AdWords reports will let you see how effectively your AdWords campaigns run.
Making these small changes to your account (keywords, bid price, and advert text) and tracking how these changes work for you, you will be able to optimise your AdWords campaigns for maximum ROI.

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5.Marketing: Promotion, Publicity, Socialization. You need to encourage links, this is the cornerstone of a strong PageRank. Keep the content fresh and, above all, good, then get involved in the world of social networking and the blogsphere. You can’t control whether or not someone links to you as a result of seeing your site but the more people who see your site, the better your odds, so BE ACTIVE, participate in the online community. If you’ve done the rest right, you’ll get links.

6.Make sure 1-5 are actually happening: Keep your team on message, make sure everyone knows their job and is up for it. You also need to be confident that the people you’ve got working on the project are nimble enough and equipped to adapt the plan in response to changes in the landscape, this is the internet after all.

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1.Define your Goals: You need to know what you want. This might sound obvious, but you wouldn’t believe the number of people who just want to be vaguely better. Better how? We ask. This is key to defining the scope of the project, are we going for a broad or a narrow strategy here? Where do we need to be in a month, six months, a year? If you don’t have a destination, how do you know when you’re there?

2.Research: Once we know where we’re going, it’s details time. We need to spend time properly researching keywords, weighing up the strength of a keyword against the competition for it and deciding what our budget allows us to go for. Can we barge the competition out of the way and nab the brass ring, or do we need to get a little more creative with our strategy? Are there any keywords that the others have missed?

3.Content: It is King after all. If there’s already a lot of content on the site this phase is about reorganisation; sharpening, focussing, expanding. Is the information arranged in the easiest possible way for the viewer? Does the content address every possible query a viewer may have? Would multimedia content be appropriate, or would it be a case of lilly-gilding.

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Keywords that lose money.

To identifying the keywords that will lose you money, first click on the ROI Column header to bring the lowest ROI keywords to the top of the table.
Are there any 100% ROI keywords? These are the keywords that lost you all your money!Before making any changes to the keyword in your AdWords, you need to make sure have enough data on these. (A lot of the time the keywords that have -100% ROI have only received a few clicks)
If you have only spent a few pence on the keyword you might want to wait to see if pays off.
However, if you have received lots of clicks, and spent a significant amount of money you can increase your overall ROI by deleting it.
If you have a 0% ROI this means you earned in revenue the same amount you spent
If you have a 100% ROI this means you doubled your investment. (E.g. If you spent £10 and made £20)
You can get 500% to 100% ROI, this means that your revenue is much higher than your cost.

Make sure you have enough data

Checking your AdWords reports and making changes daily will not give you an accurate representation of how your account is running. You need to sit back and get more data to get a real perspective before making decisions.
Considering return customers: Think about customers that find you via your AdWords and return at a later date to make a purchase. (You’ll miss repeat conversions if you sent your date range too short.)
It is very important to make sure you set the date range no lower than your sales cycle!
I advise testing out different date ranges to see how this affects your ROI. Test your most recent days/weeks/months and look a whole year’s data. This will give you much more informative information about your AdWords and what you need to change.

Next week i will conclude on ‘Getting the best ROI from Adwords’

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There are many reports to be looked at in Google Analytics some being more important than others.
One report in particular, can show you the ROI for each keyword your bidding on, letting you keep the ones that work and dropping those that don’t.

Step 1:
Linking your AdWords account to your Analytics account.
After you have linked you Adwords to your Analytics, you can then see you spends for each keyword. (as well as other costs) in the reports generated.
Now your accounts are linked together, you can view keyword spending with how your visitors navigate your  site.

Step 2:
Goals:
If you have an e-commerce site, your return will be from sales, however if your selling a product, than what are your goal values going to be?
In this case, you should put an intelligent value down. So for example, if you know that every 100 enquiries results in a £300 sale, than you could put a goal value of £3 for the enquiry form being filled in.

Step 3:
Analyzing Your AdWords:
Under the traffic sources section you will see AdWords Campaign reports, this is how you track your ROI on keywords.
Clicking on the Campaign will open up a view of your AdGroups, and clicking on AdGroup will open up the keywords.
Now you can click the clicks tab to have a look at the ROI data.
Tip: If there is no cost data, make sure you have linked your AdWords correctly, and enabled the auto tagging.
Tip: If revenue is nothing, make sure that Goals have a value, also check that you have enabled your shopping cart reports.

Check back next week when I shall continue this article.

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