Not surprisingly, your ability to write effective text ads plays a dramatic role in determining how many people you can reach and whether they’re the right type of customers. Yet, even the most seasoned marketers would fail at guessing which of their ads will be successful. That’s why PPC ad testing is fundamentally linked to profitable campaigns.

We’re big fans of testing and data based decisions, which is why we released Text Ad Zoom. Instead of relying on instinct and guesswork,  Text Ad Zoom lets you pick the best performing ads based on statistically significant data.

To celebrate the release of Text Ad Zoom, I’ve scoured the web to create the Ultimate List of PPC Ad Testing Resources. It’s one stop for advice test design, measurement and a healthy dose of copywriting ideas, so you have something to test.

While I tried to be as exhaustive as possible, I’m sure that I’ve missed some great resources. Please add your favorite articles, videos and white papers/ebooks in the comments section and I’ll add them to the list.

Finally, if you’d like to see Text Ad Zoom in action, and all of the other great ClickEquations features, request a demo or email sales@clickequations.com

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PPC Ad Testing & Measurement

There is an art and science to PPC ad testing. These posts cover the ins and outs of campaign settings, test design, ideas for testing and how to analyze the results.

• Basics
  • Learn the Basics of Testing Ad Copy: A PPC Primer by John Lee
  • Want to Double Conversions in One Month? Split Those Ad Groups by David Szetela
  • Measuring a Text Ad’s Effectiveness by David Szetela
  • Ad Text Testing – a PPC Manager’s Constant Friend and Companion by John Lee
  • Paid Search Ad Testing: Manage To ROI Or CTR? by Andrew Goodman
  • PPC Testing Part 1: The Ground Rules by Josh Dreller
  • Never Odd Or Even: PPC Ad Text Testing Made Easy by Jessica Niver
  • Simple PPC Ad Tests Can Drive Up Your Click-Throughs and Conversions by Andrew Rudnick
  • How To Write and Effectively Test Your PPC Ad Texts by Greg Meyers
  • How to Execute a Flawless Ad Copy Test in AdWords by Ryan Woolley
  • An Easy-To Follow Method For Ad Optimization & Testing by Crosby Grant
• Advanced
  • Secret Truth Series #18: Effective Text Ad Testing by Craig Danuloff
  • The Pitfalls Of A/B Ad Split Testing, Part 1 by Matt Van Wagner
  • The Pitfalls Of A/B Ad Split Testing, Part 2 by Matt Van Wagner
  • The Pitfalls Of A/B Ad Split Testing, Part 3 by Matt Van Wagner
  • Step-by-Step Instructions For Testing Low Volume Ad Copy by Brad Geddes
  • Statistical Significance: Not Just for Geeks Anymore by Brad Libby
  • Visualizing your Ad Test Results to Boost Confidence by Chad Summerhill
  • Best Practices and Text Ad Testing by Craig Danuloff
• Testing Ideas
  • 5 Ideas for A/B Testing Your PPC Ad Text by Amber Speer
  • Ad Text Optimization -- What To Test (And When)? by Dave Greenbaum
  • Ad Text Display URL – What to Test by Dave Greenbaum
  • Google Changes Ad Display Rules & Creates a New Testing Opportunity by Brad Geddes
• AdWords Settings and Features
  • Step by Step Guide for Using Adwords’ Campaign Experiments (ACE) for Ad Copy Testing by Bonnie Schwarz
  • To Optimize or Not To Optimize, Google’s New Ad Setting by Amy Hoffman

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PPC Ad Copywriting

Effective PPC ad copywriting distills every direct marketing principle into a few lines and a far too few characters. These posts were a bit harder to organize. I pulled all of the articles specifically focused on copywriting for beginners into one group. Lists of tips and mistakes to avoid were a popular set of headlines, though they’re not particularly different from the overview & advanced group, though easier to scan. If you’re looking for PPC ad inspiration, there’s not shortage in this list.

• Basics
  • Paid Search Ad Copy: Five Things Newbies Don’t Know by Andrew Goodman
  • A Beginners Checklist for Writing Benefit-Focused Ad Texts by Pete Hall
  • PPC 101 Writing Successful Creatives by Frank Watson
• Tips & Mistakes to Avoid
  • The 4 Keys to Writing a Paid Search Masterpiece by Jeremy Hull
  • 9 Mistakes When Creating Ad Text by Amber Speer
  • 9 Tips to Write Effective Google AdWords Copy by Saad Kamal
  • 7 Ways to Be Sure You’re Writing the Best Ads Possible by Amber Speer
  • You Will Never Write the Perfect Ad Text, but Here Are 2 Ways To Keep Getting Closer by Joseph Kerschbaum
  • The 6 Next Steps After Your AdWords Content Optimization by Joseph Kerschbaum
  • Paid Search Ad Copywriting: 7 Heavenly Virtues by Andrew Goodman
  • 8 Essentials For Crafting Killer Paid Search Ad Copy by Alan Rimm-Kaufman
• Overview & Advanced
  • Secret Truth Series #17: Lament Of The Text Ad Copywriter by Craig Danuloff
  • Effective PPC Ad Copy, Part 1 by Ron Jones
  • Effective PPC Ad Copy, Part 2 by Ron Jones
  • Paid Search Ad Copy: Kicking It Up A Notch by Robert J. Murray
  • Two Advanced Tactics for PPC Copywriting by Josh Dreller
  • The Right Brain Of Paid Search Ads: Tips & Tricks For Creative Ad Copywriting by Josh Dreller
  • Tailor Your Ad Copy to Buy Cycle Stages by Mona Eleseseily
  • Killer PPC Ads: The Final Word by David Szetela
  • PPC Advertising: Art or Science? by David Szetela
  • The Secret Formula for Writing Mesmerizing Headlines by Sherice Jacob
  • How to Train PPC Copywriters: Five Pay-Per Click Copywriting Best Practices by Dave Greenbaum
  • Creating Killer Ads Using Bing Dynamic Text by Jen Barrett
  • Why and How You Should Rethink Ad Writing and Bidding Strategies by Bryon Watson
  • Writing Ads: Bust out of a Rut by Perry Marshall
  • How Can I Make it Better? Part 5: Improving Ad Text by Rob Boyd
  • Kick Your Quality Scores Back Into Gear with a Few Ad Text Changes by Amber Speer
  • Using Ad Text to Find the Right Clicks by Andrew Rudnick
  • Stop Spending Thousands of Dollars on Unqualified Traffic by Writing Smarter Ad Texts by Amber Speer
  • Write PPC Ads that Scream and Stand Out From the Pack by Joseph Kerschbaum
  • How to Write Ad Texts that Promise and Landing Pages that Deliver by John Lee
  • Catch the BEST Leads, Not the MOST Leads by Using Qualifiers in Your Ad Text by Amber Speer
  • The Benefits of Using Benefit-Driven Ad Texts: What’s in Your Tackle Box? by Joseph Kerschbaum
  • Catch More Clicks and Conversions with Better Ad Text: Use the Right Lures! by Joseph Kerschbaum
  • Ad Text Evolution: 5 Changes to Your AdWords Ads & How They Affect Your Bottom Line by David Greenbaum
  • Ad Text Tips and Tricks for the Content Network by Erin Sellnow
  • What Your Text Ads Say About You by Erin Sellnow

Videos, Webinars & Slide Presentations

If your brain is numb from reading about PPC ad testing and copywriting, check out these videos and presentations instead.

• Write Killer PPC Text Ads
  

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNITcjQo97w

• PPC Text Ad Statistical Analysis
  

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l_VObUPeW0

• PPC Ad Text Best Practices from PPC Hero
  

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElciTdAart4

• How You Can Write Killer Ad Copy


• The Van Wagner Ad Sets Optimization Model


• Test That Ad (Panel presentation at SMX)


• Writing & Testing Ad Copy -- Connecting With Your Customers From The Very Start
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• Require Registration
  • Paid Search Testing & Experimentation: Optimizing for Superior Results
  • Writing Killer Text Ad Copy: 1001 Secrets for Success
  • Beyond the Text: Getting the Most from Your PPC Ads
  • Breakthrough in PPC Ad Testing and Optimization: Using Ad Sets to Improve Even Your Best PPC Ad Campaign
  • PPC Testing & Optimization 2010: Best Practices

Related posts:

1. Secret Truth Series #18: Effective Text Ad Testing Text ads are trying to answer questions. Writing text ads...
2. Best Practices and Text Ad Testing The Best Practices feature in ClickEquations can help you to...
3. Video: Improving Text-Ad Results Last week at SMX in San Jose I participated on...

Not surprisingly, the list is dominated by the posts that expanded on our highly downloaded eBook, the 21 Secrets Truths of High Resolution PPC. We’d love to hear what you liked this year and what you want us to cover next year.

Without further ado, here are the 10 most popular ClickEquations Blog Posts of 2010:

#10 -  The Secret Truth Series #10 – Bids and CPC

The AdWords auction is not a purely economic auction. If it were the high bidder would always win.

But in the AdWords auction the high bidder can wind up in 1st, 3rd, or 5th position – or even wind up out of the game with nothing.

In the post, we unravel the role bids actually play in determining your CPCs. Read more.

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#9 -  Match Types and Quality Score – The Truth at Last

Many say that using more exact match within your campaigns is a way to boost quality scores. Others point out that match type has no impact at all on quality score.

Who’s right?

It turns out that the truth is somewhere in between. Read more.

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#8 – The Myth of Single Keyword  Ad Groups

The idea of creating highly targeted ad groups, so that all of the attracted search queries are well aligned with the included text ad copy, is one we’ve written about often.

Some people have taken that idea to the extreme by suggesting you should create ad group with just one keyword.

This blog post breaks down that argument and recommends against single keyword ad groups. Read more.

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#7 -  Keyword Zoom Takes You Inside Keyword Performance

We’ve always been huge believers in the idea that search queries are more important than keywords. It’s an idea woven throughout ClickEquations.

In the July release of ClickEquations queries become even more actionable. We made it possible look inside the performance of any keyword and directly manipulate the queries that have consumed expense or driven revenue and tune the relationship between those queries and specific ad copy.

This was a huge breakthrough, and we call it Keyword Zoom. Read more.

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#6 -  The Secret Truth Series #18: Effective Text Ad Testing

There is only one way to measure success with text ads: Testing.

But testing requires more than simply running a couple of ads simultaneously. It requires the conditions for a fair test, a clear goal, and valid measurement and analysis. Much of what passes for text-ad testing in paid search lacks one or more of these requirements.

This blog post looks a little closer at each to better understand how to properly test text ads. Read more.

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#5 – 43 Paid Search Tools (And When To Use Them)

Day in and day out, we’re all trying to improve results and move from our current profit to our potential profit. As paid search marketers we tend to divide our time into 3 major areas: Research & Planning, Campaign Management, and Analysis & Site Experience.

In order to be able to move from your current profit to your potential profit, you have to be able to do each of these areas more effectively and efficiently. So how do you do that and how do search marketing tools fit into the mix?

In this article, I talk about when it makes sense to invest in paid search tools vs. education and list 43 tools to consider. Read more.

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#4 – The Secret Truth Series #11 – How AdWords Quality Score Impacts CPC

The Max CPC and quality score of a keyword determine its position, and position and quality score drive actual CPC. So exactly what effect does quality score have on cost?

In a follow-up to The Economics of Quality Score, our most popular blog post ever, we diver into how Quality Score applies as a discount or a penalty to your CPCs. Read more.

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#3 – AdWords Search Funnels: The Secret Cost

Google’s announcement of AdWords Search Funnels was an imporant milestone, legitimizing and expanding the visibility, role, and in many cases capabilities of PPC revenue attribution.

In this post, we ask publicly what everyone talks about in private – do you really want Google to see your conversion information? Does it hurt us collectively as advertisers every time someone shares their conversion information with Google? Read more.

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#2 – 6 PPC Analysis Tips

The idea of a good paid search account is a myth. An account is simply an aggregation of campaigns. Campaigns combine ad groups. Ad groups roll up text ads and keywords. Keywords and text ads exist only to attract search queries.

Effective PPC analysis is about finding the segments in your account that deviate from the norm. In many cases, you’re leaving opportunity on the table.

This highly actionable blog post covers 6 ways you can make your PPC analysis more effective, including Internal Benchmarks, Measuring Against Potentials, What’s Changed, Trend Charts, Against Goals, and External Benchmarks. Read more.

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#1 – The Secret Truth Series #6 – Success Through Negative Brand Keywords

A few years ago when asked for the #1 tip to improve a campaign, Craig wrote that segregating brand keywords was the task that he thought nearly everyone should do, many haven’t done yet, and can offer huge benefits in any campaign.

As covered in the discussion of Secret Truth #3 and #4, when the keywords within an ad group or campaign have inconsistent business goals or performance profiles, the quality of your results suffer.

There are probably no keywords in your account that have as distinct business goals or performance profiles as brand keywords – which is why they really need to be isolated. Read more.

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If you haven’t already, subscribe to the blog and Like us on Facebook to get all of 2011′s new blog posts.

Related posts:

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2. The Top 9 Blog Posts of 2009 The distinguished accounting firm of Anderson Cooper & Woods have...
3. ClickEquations at SMX Advanced in Seattle 2010 We’ll be in Seattle this coming week in full force....

This time we’ll looking inside the ClickEquations AdWords account and see how we’ve used the feature to our own advantage.

Query Mining 101

The purpose of the Keyword Zoom feature and the point of query mining is to review the search queries that the engine has matched to your keyword (and you’ve paid for) and change the rules of the game so they’re more in your favor in the future – by adding negative keywords or new keywords (usually of more specific match types).

We bid on the keyword ‘pay per click software’ in several match types. Let’s look at our recent activity in the Broad Match version.

Query 1 : Synonyms, Match Types, and Quality Scores

The most active search query for the keyword is ‘pay per click program’ with a whopping 27 clicks and almost $90.00 of spend.

Most of the time when one specific query dominates a broad match keyword like that that you’d want to at least consider moving it out into its own ad group. The deciding factor on moving it is probably how closely the query and the intent is to the broad match – in this case ‘program’ is a common synonym for ‘software’ so it would be fine to leave it alone.

But $90 is a lot of spend in a couple of weeks, and you’d think that by using ‘program’ instead of software in the ad copy, we could improve quality score and maybe save a few bucks on the clicks.

Surprisingly, you can’t. Or at least we haven’t been able to.

It turns out the keyword ‘pay per click program’ is already in the account, in broad, phrase, and exact match – but have quality scores of just ’4′. Since the keyword ‘pay per click software’ has a quality score of 7, the broad match of ‘pay per click software’ is beating the exact match of ‘pay per click program’ for the query ‘pay per click program’.

In some cases we might want to go work on that, and negative the phrase here, but in this case it’s a synonym – people seem happy to click it, Google likes it better (per the quality score), why fight it?

After seeing this data we decided to pause the ‘pay per click program’ keywords (with their lower quality scores). Future queries will match into this keyword and we’ll benefit from the higher quality score with better positions and lower CPCs plus lower the drag on our account from those low quality score keywords.

Query 2: Keyword Expansion & Steering

The next matched search query that we notice is ‘pay per click automation software’. The word ‘automation’ is one people use to describe what they’d want from a paid search platform, but it seems too specific to belong with the general keyword ‘pay per click software’.

A little checking proves that we do have a full ad group of ‘ppc automation software’ keywords, but apparently neglected to include the longer ‘pay per click automation’ version.

So we’ll click the ‘pay per click automation software’ query, click the green + sign to promote it into it’s own keyword, edit it down to just ‘pay per click automation’ and add it as a new phrase match keyword into our existing ppc automation ad group where the text ad copy mentions automation. That’s a lot of steps to take quickly in one single dialog box.

Query 3: Negative Waste Removal

Next the query ‘pay per click application development’ catches our attention.

When someone uses the word ‘development’ they’re not looking to buy ready-to-use SaaS software. So we wasted $2.99 on this click and would waste 100% of any future matches to similar queries.

So we’ll highlight that query, click the red + to create a new negative keyword, edit down to just the word ‘development’ and set it as a campaign negative. Problem solved.

Eliminating Some Real Waste

Sometimes Keyword Zoom shows you where there is room for tuning and improvement.

Sometimes it makes it clear that a keyword is a bust. Look at what it shows us for a term related to one of our competitors, Atlas Search.

It turns out – not surprisingly – that broad matching that term with two very generic words both of which have common and alternate meanings, gives Google a license to match all kinds of queries that clearly do not come from people looking to buy paid search software.

In this case, the solution is easy: click the edit button next to the keyword and pause it.

100% savings from this day forward.

Summary

The two keywords discussed above are good examples of the kinds of benefit Keyword Zoom provides.

In just seconds we’re able to find some low quality keywords that should be paused, redirect some queries with specific intent to better ads, and avoid wasting money on future irrelevant queries.

Each step is small in the specific queries and volume impacted, but if we repeat this procedure regularly, working on our most-clicked and most-costly keywords, the cumulative effect can be dramatic. Every step should increase CTR which drives up quality score. Most steps reduce waste which drives up ROI. Better match between queries and text-ads produces better conversion rates. There are many benefits and each one compounds from the day you complete it on into the future.

We’ve been advocates of query mining for a long time, but like anything else a  friction-free tool makes all the difference in day-in and day-out execution.

This was a simple initial real-world example. In future installments in this series we’ll examine more ways our clients are benefiting from this great new feature.

Related posts:

1. Keyword Zoom Takes You Inside Keyword Performance Even though we occasionally rail against them, keywords are functionally...
2. Use One-Click Segments to Drive Keyword Zoom The Keyword Zoom feature is best applied to your most...
3. The Match Type Keyword Trap NOTE: This is part of a post series. It’s available...

If you were to attempt to sum up the ideas in this series, you might get something like this:

Paid search is the process of answering questions. Focusing on the search queries that deliver those questions rather than the keywords that attract them makes it easier to provide direct and persuasive answers in your text ads.

The organization of your account is the key to a lot of your success. The way you choose to group keywords into ad groups defines the way your text ads align with the search queries you attract. And the way you place ad groups into campaigns defines the utility of your reports. Segmentation is an equally important part of your organization. Keep brand, head, content network, ego-based, and other keyword groups isolated so that their unique attributes can be understood and optimized.

At the keyword level, a focus on search queries will help you to reduce your reliance on broad match. Mine your search queries for new keywords with more targeted match types and new negatives. And pay attention to click-through rate and the factors that drive quality score. Bidding is important but not omnipotent. Don’t expect too much from or apply too much effort to bidding until your keywords are otherwise optimized. Make sure you’re measuring profit as your goal, not just return on ad spending. And when you’re buying keywords for ego-based(non-economic) reasons, make bidding decisions accordingly.

Writing effective ad copy is difficult given the complex communication goals and tiny available space. The only way to succeed is via trial and error, otherwise known as testing. While gaining the click is your initial goal, it’s what your prospect does after that click ultimately determines your success. Consider and coordinate the entire post-click experience as part of your overall PPC management program.

Reports and metrics are important, but make sure you know what they’re really saying. People can’t click ads that they can’t see.

And finally, although your account is large and ever-changing, there is almost certainly a concentration of revenue within a very small number of keywords. So prioritize your time and adjust your expectations accordingly. Don’t waste time chasing your own tail.

Objections? Extensions?

Before moving on past this series, I want to ask for more feedback. We’ve had thousands of downloads of the ebook, and tens of thousands of page views in this series, and not one good argument yet. And not nearly enough praise

Which of the truths do you think is just an opinion? Are there central PPC truths that were left out? Speak now before the guy with the stone tablets and chisel gets to work.

Get The Free eBook

This post is part of a series extending and amplifying the ideas in our free ebook ’21 Secret Truths of High-Resolution PPC’.

Download Your Copy Today
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Related posts:

1. Coming Soon: The 21 Secret Truths of High-Resolution PPC For much of last year, regular readers of this blog...
2. The Secret Truth Series #3 – They’re Called Ad Groups This series of blog posts goes ‘behind the scenes’ to...
3. The Secret Truth Series #5 – Impression Share We’ve written about the AdWords impression share metrics often in...

Keywords aren’t what you’re trying to optimize, ad groups aren’t for organizing keywords, campaigns aren’t for organizing ad groups, bids don’t determine how much you pay, and so on. So perhaps by now it won’t surprise you to learn that the profit reported by paid search often isn’t real either.

When Making Money Isn’t Enough

The idea of spending $1 and getting back $3 sounds great. If we take in more than we put out, our business is profitable. Everyone knows that.

But as with all the other little-white-confusions, the definitions of ‘cost’ and ‘revenue’ used in the common language of PPC are incomplete and inaccurate.

The trouble is that AdWords, GA, Yahoo, Ad Center, and many other tools have no mechanism for including the cost of goods (or cost of sales) in their reports and calculations. They report Gross Profit, and Gross Return – which they call return-on-ad-spend or ROAS. (Although Google does sometimes stretch and literally call this number ‘profit’.)

ROAS is a ‘better than nothing’ metric. But ROI, a true Net Profit based return calculation is vastly superior and more accurate. Anyone managing substantial paid search programs for products or services that don’t have a flat cost shouldn’t settle for ROAS.

How ROAS Lies

The trouble with ROAS isn’t just that it gives the false or increased appearance of success. It shows positive numbers that should be negative, and high positive numbers where there should be low ones – that is true.

But for most businesses margin levels aren’t consistent. Some products or services are marked up 20% while others 80%. This means that all ROAS numbers aren’t off by the same percentage, so you can’t just adjust them in your head. And even if you know specific or approximate margins by product category, you can’t be sure which keyword drive which item sales. Very often the keyword ‘little black dress’ leads to the sales of shoes along with or instead of the dress.

Looking at ROAS vs ROI at the query, keyword, ad group, or campaign level always leaves a vastly different impression and lead to very different decision making and prioritization.

There are many data elements we use in PPC that should or could be improved, but betterness (I made that word up) is beyond our control. Accepting ROAS is voluntary and generally unwise.

Except

It should be noted, if it isn’t obvious, that there are some businesses for whom ROAS is functionally equal to ROI, and therefore the ROAS problem doesn’t exist. Pure lead-gen with a single type of conversion is one example since there is functionally no cost-of-goods. There are others. So if in your business the gross profit is the net profit (at least excluding fixed cost and overhead which is generally not considered in the ROI calculation, this topic doesn’t apply.

Related posts:

1. The Secret Truth Series #2 – Why Keywords Are Over-Rated This series of blog posts goes ‘behind the scenes’ to...
2. Secret Truth Series #11 – How AdWords Quality Score Impacts CPC The Max CPC and quality score of a keyword determine...
3. The Secret Truth Series #4 – Campaign Reports Of the 21 Secret Truths in the book, #4 was...

But before it does, please go vote for The ClickEquations Blog in the PPC Blog category at Search & Social.

Just click the image to your left. Scroll down to Best PPC Blog, then click VOTE.

Ice cream for everyone if we win.

It’s just an honor to be nominated. Really. Now I’m going home to work on the acceptance speech.

Update: OK forget it. I just went through the process of voting, and I really don’t want to put anyone else through that. Sheesh.

We’ll find another way to feed our ego. But thanks for offering.

No related posts.

They search because they want to learn about something. Or find out where something is. Or discover who has it or knows about it.

They may just be curious. Or the question may have been provoked by an urgent problem. The question could be simple or complex and the searcher might be sophisticated or naive.

But every search is a question.

Search engines deliver answers. They look at the word or words in the search box, assume or infer the question being asked, and then put together a list of potential answers to that question.

Paid search is your chance to offer your answer as a part of that list.

This simple truth – people are asking questions and you’re trying to answer them - is a great way to frame the process of managing paid search accounts.

It makes clear the fact that every step you take along the way should help to either target better questions, deliver better answers, or ensure that you pay a reasonable price for the privilege.

There are many complicated aspects of managing paid search. Accounts are large and business conditions change rapidly. There are confusing options, evolving algorithms, and aggressive competitors. This isn’t going to be easy.

But it’s nice to have a simple mental model to guide us: We’re just trying to answer questions.

Related posts:

1. The Secret Truth Series: #1 – They Want Answers The first truth from our new ’21 Secret Truths of...
2. Quality Score Questions & Answers – Part I In our Quality Score Webinar with Bryan Eisenberg (If you...
3. Quality Score Questions & Answers, Part III We have a few questions left from last week’s Quality...

Some quick initial thoughts on the impact to each player in the game:

Search Advertisers
Advertisers get a single channel with 20-35% of the search traffic (depending on what and how you measure, and who you believe) which is *nearly* enough critical mass to actually spend time on. The core economic problem that Microsoft, and to a lessor degree Yahoo had before was that they didn’t offer enough inventory to justify the effort of managing let alone aggresively managing large keyword accounts on their platforms. Many advertisers have 20% of their keywords or less running on these engines, and spend 10% or less of their management time on them. Bing and Yahoo still need to attract users or advertisers won’t care. But at their current market share, or better yet if they can pickup 5 or 10%, there’s enough there to be worth the effort to equalize campaign sizes and spend perhaps 30% of campaign management time on them.

Microsoft
Proof that being dumb and rich is a far better strategy than just being dumb. Nothing except their money has justified Microsoft’s existence in this market until recently. Bing seems a reasonable search engine, but the AdCenter platform is pure Microsoft, meaning anything-but-cutting-edge and won’t really offer even the baseline of what the market really needs until version 3.0. They seem to be trying, but in management tools, software and API features, and overall ‘state of the art-ness’ the teams over there need to re-triple efforts to deliver a platform and API set as rich as Google’s. If they don’t, users and developers who now have a large enough market share to bother, won’t have enough patience to work around the limitations it takes to do so.

Yahoo
Yahoo can now spend their time and energy on being second or fourth best at a wide variety of internet content and web-app plays, perhaps to eventually sell each of those to richer and dumber rivals. Or maybe the idea was to get out of search so Google would want to buy all their other assets. This is the Sarah Palin move of search – quit and declare victory.

Paid Search Platforms and Tools
For purely selfish reasons, we’re glad to see the Yahoo and Microsoft platforms consolidate. Every feature we add to ClickEquations that had to touch 3 different APIs took two or three times more time (at least) than if it only had to touch one. We can build more cool features to help advertisers faster now. As mentioned above, the AdCenter platform has plenty of Microsoft quirkiness to it, but we’ll hope and assume they listen to the market and evolve. But in the case of API vendors we can do more with less.

Searchers
I believe that search result quality has a long way to go, that the loyalty Google has is to the brand and therefore ultimately could erode quickly. The Bing/Yahoo platform will likely very slowly pick up steam, but MS has to go do some HUGE bus dev deals to buy more distribution (AOL?) and continue to innovate on the results. Over time, they could substantially erode Google share, but the road will be hard and long. In this case, a perfect fit for Microsoft BUT they need to earn it they’re not just going to be able to out-last the competition or wait for them to commit suicide this time.

Google
Enabling very weak competition to become marginally viable doesn’t hurt Google in the short run. The fear of actual competition and even market share loss could very well spur the very smart folks at Google on to deliver even better stuff faster, as competition always does. So in the short and medium terms I’d say this is good for Google (and helps get the Gov’t monkey off their back for a while). In the long run, I’d still bet on Google but Microsoft does have a lot of money and know how to compete.

But mostly, I’m just really happy we have one less API to support.

No related posts.

But the real importance of quality score has been a bit hard to pin down. Not any more – we’re going to reveal the exact $$ value of quality score.

UPDATE: Since this post was written, we’ve learned an important new fact about Quality Score – the numbers we’re shown are reported as integers between 1 and 10, but these are not the numbers or scale Google applies to in their formulas. Rather, they’re representative of the actual Quality Score in terms of 1 being poor and 10 being great. Knowing this, it seems unlikely the specific math and results described in this post are correct. The positive and negative effects of good and bad quality score remain true, and hopefully the numbers are roughly proportional. We’ll update this post further when we get more information.

Why Does Quality Score Really Matter?
The prominence of quality score has been based on it’s role in Ad Rank – the formula Google uses to determine the position in which your ad appears. Ad Rank = Bid x Quality Score.

But Quality Score also plays a very important role in determining how much you’re charged per click. This is a separate application of the value which occurs after Ad Rank is calculated.

The recently released Google Video by Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian helped clarify this point.

In the video Mr. Varian points out that your cost-per-click is calculated using the formula: Ad Rank of the ad below yours / your quality score.

So if you’re in position #1 with a quality score of 5, and the ad in position #2 has an Ad Rank of 10, your cost-per-click is 10/5 = $2.

So What Is Quality Score Worth?
Knowing this is how cost-per-click is calculated, we’re able to determine the specific impact of any quality score on your cost-per-click.

And therefore the exact cost or savings from any single-digit increase or decrease in your quality score.

Yes that’s right – we can tell you the specific change in your CPC that is due to the quality score you’re getting for each of your keywords.

For example, your QS=10 keywords are enjoying a 30% CPC discount as compared to if they were QS=7 and in the same position. And your QS=4 keywords are paying a whopping 75% premium for their position.

The table below contains the complete list. This details the positive or negative impact quality score is having on the CPC prices you’re paying.

These factors are true regardless of your bid, position or those of your competitors. These are the impacts of Quality Score on your cost-per-click, anywhere, anytime.

As you can see, there are serious savings to be had with high quality scores (8, 9, or 10) and very high penalty costs to low quality scores (6 or below).

How We Calculated These Numbers
We calculated these values by comparing the impact of quality score on the price established at a wide range of Ad Rank values. This analysis showed that when QS was applied as the denominator of the equation, the Ad Rank values didn’t matter – the impact of each step of quality score was consistent. (Check out the raw data). So it was a simple task to compute percentage of impact each different QS had on CPC.

Note that we set QS=7 as the neutral value because using ClickEquations to review a wide range of accounts we’ve seen that QS=7 appears to be the mean quality score across a very large and diverse set of keywords.

In other words, most keywords get QS=7, that’s the typical score. So quality scores better than 7 can be considered better-than-average and thereby beneficial, and quality scores lower than 7 are lower-than-average and detrimental.

Two Important Disclaimers

1) Since quality score is used to first compute the Ad Rank and then to influence the CPC, you wouldn’t actually have the position you do if you didn’t have that quality score.

So it isn’t exactly accurate to say that your keyword is paying 30% less for position 1 at QS=10 than at QS=7, because in most cases you wouldn’t be at position 1 if you did have a QS=7. I think the relative value for each QS remains valid and valuable.

2) Google very likely calculates quality score not as an integer but as a real number (you your QS isn’t actually 6 but rather 6.329498) which means the impact would be more linear and not in the big steps the charts suggest. Thanks to commenters for pointing out that this fact was left out of the original post.

What Does A 1-Point Change Cost You?
Based on the same numbers, this next table documents the economic cost or benefit of having your quality score move up or down by 1 point.

As you can see, if your QS=9, then moving up 1 pt (to QS=10) will give you a 10% CPC discount. Starting from that same QS=9 and losing 1 pt (to QS=8) will result a 12.5% % CPC increase.

A Clear New Reason To Improve Your Quality Score
Knowing that your quality scores are saving you up to 30%, or costing you up to 133%, should further motivate everyone to both know and work to improve your quality scores.

In ClickEquations we have a lot of features that can help you improve quality score:

• We list QS (and the related Min First Page Bid) right next to each keyword so you can watch them carefully.
• Our ClickShare metrics tell you which ad groups and keywords aren’t getting as many clicks as they should – and why – which can help you drive up CTR which is by far the largest driver of quality score.
• Our ClickVariance metric tells you when you’ve got keywords in ad groups which are under-performing based on CTR, so you can move them into their own groups and write more applicable ads, or pause/delete them – thereby driving up average CTR
• Our complete search query detailed reporting lets you add new keywords and phrases that users have proven that they click on
• Our multivariate text-ad testing tool is the best possible way to drive up CTR – often by 2X-5X which skyrockets quality score
• The Quality Score Distribution template in ClickEquations Analyst lets you keep a direct eye on how your entire campaign is doing relative to Quality Score – and we’ve just updated it to show the actual $$ saved and expended due to the quality score cost numbers released in this post.

Click To Enlarge

And A Warning
One small word of caution regarding the existing, and likely to continue, flood of tips on improving quality score. Be very suspect of anything which promises to improve quality score by any method other than improving click-through-rate.

Relevance has it’s place. But both the new Google Video and other recent disclosures make clear that CTR drives quality score. You will not have meaningful impact getting your keywords into your text-ads, grouping keywords in better ways, and many of the other tactics getting over-hyped in some quarters. Relevance plays a supporting role, as does landing page to an even lesser degree, but both are trumped and trounced by CTR. Get great CTRs and you’ll get great QS’s. There is no other route.

Summary
We hope you’re as excited as we are about the discovery of the true economic benefit and cost of quality score.

Another small victory for transparency in the paid search process. Which means another tool to help us manage PPC in High Resolution.

To learn more about quality score, read our complete Quality Score blog post series from several months ago, or check out the replay of our recent Quality Score webinar or our SMX presentation on Quality Score Tips on video.

Related posts:

1. Secret Truth Series #11 – How AdWords Quality Score Impacts CPC The Max CPC and quality score of a keyword determine...
2. Chapter 5 – The Impact of Quality Score This series of blog posts did eventually become a book...
3. Quality Scores and Quality Score Drivers A cornerstone of High Resolution PPC is the fact that...

But the use of trademarks to compare or contrast is obviously – to me – legitimate.

It is something that happens naturally in the world every day and cannot be stopped or protected. It can only be stopped and protected in a few un-natural segments of communication and commerce where lawyers can beat sanity into the ground.

The search engines have been one of these places, and trademark holders can file to prevent others from bidding on their brand terms or using these terms in ad copy. Many companies do this, and unfortunately when your competitors block, it’s semi-understandable why your company might block too just to keep the playing field level.

I understand why a company would want to prevent others from competing with them. It’s a nice fantasy.

I even think the search engines, of their own volition, should offer registered trademark holders guaranteed #1 position and some neato ‘certified-official’ icon for their PPC adverts. Just because it sort-of-sucks to have to pay insane prices for your own name. I get it.

But that doesn’t mean others should be stopped from buying the trademarked keyword or using it in their ads.

It’s called ‘free speach’ and if you can understand trademark law it shouldn’t be that hard for you to grasp. Not the technicality, the concept. Anyone can say anything if they’re not hurting anyone else. In this case, if you’re not misleading anyone, you should be able to speak.

So Google has a policy I don’t agree with. That’s their right. (And it’s not the only one).

But should using words in a non-misleading way be illegal? The folks at 1-800-Contacts think so.

That’s right. The same people who could only come up with entirely of generic words as a company name, think that the combination of these terms should be illegal for use as keywords or in advertisements of competitors.

Read about their pathetic actions here. Then call every contact-wearer you know and send them to shop at Lens.com.

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1. Keyword Lawsuit Dropped Another lawsuit aimed and preventing the use of trademarked keywords...

This is the phrase used to begin the announce of our Twitter Contest. Is it true?

During a recent Omniture webinar they claimed (I think it was a Jupiter statistic) that 85% of paid search accounts do not use any tools beyond those provided by the search engines.

If nearly 2 million advertisers can get by with nothing out Adwords itself and perhaps the Adwords Editor, why shouldn’t you?

The Obvious Reasons
The first reason many people think about 3rd party paid search software is the convenience of managing the three major search engines from within a single interface.

Logging into three web sites, navigating three different interfaces, and translating three different sets of terminology gets tiring fast.

The second reason seems to be a desire for some type of automated bid management.

It’s hard to figure out how much to bid, and the problem is compounded by the number of keywords being managed and the rate of competitive and other changes in the market.

The idea of algorithms that put some math on your side of the table is undeniably appealing. A huge amount of data that needs to be constantly crunched and re-crunched – the perfect job for computers and software.

These are both solid reasons – and alone (putting aside the actual quality of most bid management solutions for the time being) could easily justify the effort and expense of moving onto a paid search management platform.

But I don’t think these really capture the most important advantages paid search software currently provides, nor the more exciting benefits which are only now emerging.

Let Me Count The Ways
Paid search marketing campaigns are run to make money.

Their operation requires that you you buy and organize keywords, set bids and write text ads, and then read reports to see what we should change to make it all work better.

Each of those steps – even within this massive over-simplication of the process – takes a lot of time, has a ton of room for error, and can swing your costs or revenues dramatically in either direction.

PPC is a complicated task, both logically and logistically – and you can’t do it without good tools.

The question is whether you want to use the free ones provided by the people who have very little incentive to make you efficient or effective, or the paid ones from people for are only incented if they can do those things.

Now before the comments come in from my friends at Google or Yahoo or MSN (ok, I don’t have any MSN friends) let me clarify and expand that point. It’s not that they don’t build and deliver tools that are designed to both make it easier to use their services and to help you produce better results; I think generally speaking they are trying to do both.

But there are limits. First of all they have to build general purpose tools serving the needs of the full range of users. Most of whom would be generously described as casual users. They don’t want power and complexity and sophistication – they want basic utilitarian capabilities that can be understood and applied quickly and easily.

Secondly, these tools are designed with the idea of making it easier to use the engines to run the ads, and then supplimented with features to help you do so successfully. They’re not designed around the goal running profitable campaigns within the technical constraints of the engines.

This not wordplay. One is task oriented, and one is goal oriented. One is about how you satisfy their needs, one is focused on satisfying your needs. And they’re absolutely not the same.

Which is what’s wrong with the engine tools – it’s easy to complete the task but hard to accomplish the goal.

And it’s why most advertisers aren’t making nearly as much money as they could from paid search.

Let’s get more specific:

Creating and Editing Campaigns
In the nuts and bolts job of building campaigns and ad-groups, the engine web interfaces are fine, with some clear logical/quality differences between the various implementations (ie there are some crazy limitations with both the Yahoo and MSN interfaces.) For one-at-a-time adds and edits they generally work pretty well. The largest limitation they have is with the interface constraints of HTML or even AJAX, which the new beta Google Adwords interface looks to be the first to move beyond.

For both bulk and individual editing, the Google Adwords editor is excellent. It’s the standard to which most third party tools are playing catch up. The interface is fast, the layout intuitive, the features powerful, it’s just a great all around tool. If it supported Yahoo and MSN the third-parties would really have very few advantages in this area.

But this is the core of the utilitarian argument. They engines make money when you expand and tweak campaigns. So they do an excellent job of enabling you to do so.

Reporting clarity
Here the tables turn. The reporting capabilities of the engines are basic and unimpressive. They provide just enough data in their core web interfaces to make simplistic editorial decisions. They offer batch-mode report modules that can provide more data, but without real-time delivery it’s difficult or impractical to use them for serious analysis – unless you have the time to design and request many different reports (each time you want them), export them and then import them into excel, and then sit for hours digesting and interpreting.

The best of the third party tools make you much better informed, both in the midst of their editorial capabilies and with pure reporting and analysis modules. There are simply more reports, a greater ability to customize and save them, and much faster date and data filtering and intra-report navigation. This enhanced reporting enables more review, faster and deeper analysis, and better decision making.

In some cases, the reporting capabilities go beyond better access to the data provided by the engines, with enhanced data collected at the site (regarding user behaviour and conversion), and/or proprietary metrics which offer additional views or insights. Some even provide direct integration into excel for even more advanced charting, analysis, conditional formatting, and one-button updates. All of this enables smarter decisions based on better and deeper information.

But Wait, There’s More
Better reporting and simpler editing are important. They can be huge time savers. And for anyone who spends $10K or more per month and five or more hours or more managing their campaigns these benefits should easily more than justify the cost of paid search software.

But beyond this, what paid search software can and should really do that the engines themselves don’t is to help clarify what should be done and make it easier to accomplish the right changes.

Clarifying opportunity starts with simple alerts that warn you of ‘out of norm’ conditions. It includes advanced data insights such as our ClickShare and ClickVariance metrics and ‘what’s changed’ reports that highlight severe increases or decreases in performance that almost certainly require your reaction.

Getting things done features include keyword suggestions (positive or negative), automatic or suggested campaign re-organizations, multivariate text-ad testing, dynamic match-type assignments, day or geo-parting, cross-engine campaign cloning, and many more.

A range of initial versions of many of these features are available today. What’s it worth to get warned that your campaigns are making money in most states but losing a lot in a few others? How would your campaign improve with an MVT test that boosts your CTR by 350% in your top ad group? And these are just a few examples.

It’s Not If But When
Managing a paid search account without a high-end third-party PPC platform doesn’t make logical or economic sense. If you only use the engine interfaces, you’re agreeing to be disadvantaged in terms of the information you have access to, the pace at which you can make necessary changes, and the range of feasible analysis and improvements.

• You lose by spending money that shouldn’t be spent. In most accounts this is a solid double-digit percentage of your current spend.
• You lose by missing revenue that could have been had. This number is much harder to globally estimate, but it would be a rare account that didn’t have the potential for double-digit improvement due to better structure, CTR, or even bidding.
• You save 2%-5% of your spend – unless your spend is huge in which case you save even less.

Paid search management tools, I need to point out, don’t do these things by themselves. They really just enable better results by enabling deeper understanding and more efficient execution. The ‘battery not included’ in this case is an engaged and intelligent search manager. It’s only in their capable and properly resourced (as in with enough time and even assistance) hands that these tools are advantageous.

It makes sense to work without high-end tools if you only spend a few thousand dollars per month on paid search. There’s clearly no need for a professional tool if you don’t have a professional person using it.

But expecting a full time search manager to wisely carve up and and spend thousands or tens-of-thousands of dollars each month and serve up good or even great returns in this competitive market, with the technical equivalent of a butter knife, is quite a lot to ask.

Which software platform should you buy? How should you decide? That’s a topic we’ll tackle here soon. (Despite my clear bias and preference for ClickEquations.)

Related posts:

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Search queries, by way of definition, are the words and phrases user type into the search box before clicking the ‘Search’ button. They’re often and confusingly called ‘keywords, both in organic search and even within PPC.

In the paid search world we should pay close attention to search queries and the way they’re matched with the keywords we bid on – to determine how we can tune or keyword buys, match types, bids, text-ads, and landing pages.

Most paid search manager don’t have full access to every query for every click they pay for. Yahoo and MSN don’t provide them and Google Adwords provides only a very partial list and not matched at the keyword level.

Providing clear, complete, and detailed search query information is one of the great features in our ClickEquations paid search platform, and a few others provide query access as well.

Recently we’ve talked to a number of advertisers who’ve been mining queries to move to a much higher percentage of exact match keyword buys – a practice we’ve found to increase volumes and lower costs.

And this week Google introduced a new keyword expansion tool which can provide you with lists of actual search queries related to your keywords and your landing pages.

This is a great help. Both as a research tool, as additional insight into the algorithms google uses to contextually relate words and pages, and to get more people to think about the distinction between queries and keywords.

If you find the new Google Search-Based Keyword Tool useful, imagine how great it would be to see nearly every query for every click you’re paying for in your current search campaigns.

Related posts:

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Bryan and I will present and discuss important information on how understanding and managing Quality Score can transform you paid search programs.

Details are reprinted below, or see the post at the GrokDotCom blog.

Google Quality Score
Exposing the Secret Factor to PPC Success

Bryan Eisenberg, Co-Founder & EVP at FutureNow, and Craig Danuloff, Founder and President of Commerce360 Inc, a full service paid search management firm and developed the ClickEquations paid search software platform.

Quality Score is the PageRank of PPC. It’s a number Google assigns to your keywords which determines how much you have to bid, the position in which your ads appear, how often your ads are shown, and due to recent Adwords change it even determines if you can jump to the top of any search results page.

Understanding and managing Quality Score effects how you choose keywords, write text ads, and build landing pages. Knowing how your decisions impact Quality Score, and how Quality Score interacts with all the other controls you have in your accounts, can help you manage to greater PPC success

In this Webinar you’ll learn:

• exactly why the Quality Score in Adwords is so important,
• how Quality Score impacts the amount you spend and the amount you make from your PPC campaigns
• specific things you can do to drive the Quality Score higher for your keywords.

When: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 | 12:00pm EST

Where: Online, register here to receive your invitation

How much: It’s free, but space is limited so sign-up today!

Related posts:

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2. Free Webinar: Recession Marketing: From Pre-Click to Post-Click How can market effectively in this down economy and grab...
3. Free Webinar: Find Profitable Keywords with 2 Unconventional Techniques We’re cohosting a free webinar with our friends at Compete...

Ya, right.

They never mention the two little requirements:

1. Every page must be properly tagged.
2. Every inbound/referring URL must be properly tagged.

(In the broader sense there is of course a third issue – I’m leaving aside for now the vast weaknesses of cookies and the role they play in online tracking/accuracy.)

Why Is Tagging So Hard?

By which I mean to ask two questions:

• Why do people find it so hard to add tags? The requirement (in the simplest cases) is to accurately cut-and-paste. (Yes there are more complex cases where parameters have to be passed, for now let’s leave those aside.) Yet in enterprise environments we often see multi-month waiting times, panels and commissions and committees who need to approve them, and all forms of insanity as prerequisite to getting 316 characters in a single text-block added to the universal footer of a website, or 75 characters appended to a URL.
• Why do the environments make tagging so complex? This is the other side of the coin. Web pages and URLs need tags. This may have been a requirement not foreseen in the mid ’90′s when core web technology was developed, but it has one for many years now. Yet neither web servers nor CMS systems nor email managers nor Google/Yahoo themselves have made tagging anywhere near as simple as they could.

Tagging – A System Requirement

While I’ll fully admit to having no understanding or appreciation for ‘IT Depts’ who can’t figure out how to allocate time to update page tags (and testing them thoroughly) on at worst a weekly or monthly basis, the more I think about this problem the more I think the root of the problem is in the technology layer itself.

Software that builds or serves web pages should have the ability to conditionally add ‘tracking pixels’ or ‘code snippets’ or ‘page tags’ or whatever you want to call them to each page, and provide a single management interface for controlling these included codes, defining the conditions on which they’re embedded, and even to make the parameter passing necessary in the most complicated cases, easier.

Software that creates or delivers URLs should similarly have the ability to simply and centrally administer the appending of tracking codes to those URLs.

In Adwords, for example, there should be Account, Campaign, and Ad-Group level parameters for tracking codes you want appended to every target URL. Why should it be necessary to manually insert them (150,000 times) at the ad-group or keyword level?

Let’s face it, they’re universal 99.9% of the time. Didn’t they teach me in High School that computers simplify repetitive tasks?

And Verify Please

On both sides – the site and the URL – these systems should validate and report on the presence and contents of these codes after they’re served.

Sometimes it seems like 25% of the man-hours of the entire online marketing industry is spent find those situations where pages or URLs were missing tags. And almost certainly a percentage of all our reports are incorrect based on places where these tags are missing and nobody detects it.

This Rant Sponsored By

As a marketing and paid search agency we’ve had our fair share of (which is to say more than humanly endurable) issues related to getting tracking pixels on client websites and managing the tracking codes that need to be placed into emails, affiliate promotions, and paid search ads.

Very often weeks or months of reporting was ruined, never to be corrected, by pending or incorrect tracking code issues. I know this is typical and true in online marketing deptments everywhere.

As we’re rolling out ClickEquations we’re now living through another aspect of this problem.

Clients and prospects that want to take full advantage of our system and use our ClickEquations tags, but they just can’t get their organizations or vendors to support them – at least in reasonable time frames. Or there’s a problem dealing with the complexity and delay involved in having all target URLs updated in the engines (although this can at least be automated via the APIs).

We’re working on ways to make tagging easier for our clients, but the universality of the problem suggests that it really needs to be solved down a few layers in the infrastructure.

I think it’s time the amount of pain and trouble this problem is causing got more organized visibility, so the creators of those lower level systems could start feeling the pressure to add the kind of tagging support we all need.

How have tagging problems or complexities impacted your online marketing reporting? How can we fix or improve this situation?

Will you be at SMX in New York this week? Stop by as see ClickEquations in the Exhibit Area.

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One question the penetrating journalist just had to ask was about the phrase ‘jumping the shark’. Fonzie and Gary Marshall were quick to point out that the show was #1 for two years after that episode.

I guess they wanted to make it clear that they don’t even understand what ‘jumping the shark‘ means.

But later that day, after the 2nd day of the XChange analytics conference, where many of the WA Gurus and a lot of very prominent Analytics customers gathered to discuss their marketplace, it hit me:

I think high end of web analytics might have jumped the shark too. The money may flow for a while longer, but there are some real problems which may be irreparable.

What I Heard At XChange

With a unique conference format – all sessions except for a brief opening event are round-table discussions between 10-20 attendees – XChange is the perfect place to find out what’s really happening. Everybody gets their say, not just a few selected presenters.

And what they’re clearly expressing is frustration. The world’s most prominent web analytics thinkers and professionals seem to have five issues:

• Data Collection - Analytics can only work if the right data is collected. Yet site tagging is hugely problematic because IT depts are slow and inflexible. Managing web analytics in this environment is like driving a race car where use of the gas and breaks requires a ‘request submission form’ that someone else will consider and implement, fully or partially, at some time of their choosing. You slam into a lot of walls this way. Of course, if you do get the site tagged, the circus that is cookies pretty much obliterates the data integrity anyway. Saying it’s the trends not the numbers only goes so far.
• Data Integration - Even if website-based tracking was perfect, the world is no longer website based. From social media to multi-channel to Flash, Flex, Ajax, Video, and Mobile, web analytics is a guard dog with a 10 mile territory and a 100-ft chain tied around its’ neck. That’s a lot of ground not covered.
• Core Capabilities - Supposed you had all the data you dream of – then you could analyze it as you wished right? Maybe not. There were no ‘I Love My Vendor’ buttons at this show – in fact the session on ‘When and How to Change Vendors’ confirmed only that the top analytics vendors have a lot in common with the airlines – everybody hates the one they use the most. The most common story was of executives wanting the cool reports and features they understood to be promised in the sales demos, and the analytics professionals having a hard time explaining why that was completely impossible.
• Competitive Environment - The party line at XChange was a professed distain for Google Analytics because it’s ‘limited and inflexible’, but they aren’t pleased with the growing lack of alternatives at the high end. Several still going concerns are assumed to be the walking dead, and the remaining green giant has a surprising lack of goodwill that would lead you to believe Microsoft had already bought them.
• Damn Customers - This is where the real trouble lies. Because of the issues listed above, analytics folks haven’t been able to educate or satisfy their customers – the managers, marketers, partners, and technical staff that need to consume the information and insights web analytics are supposed to produce. The stories clearly reveal users who want things they can’t have, don’t understand the things they get, ask for things they don’t need, don’t use the things they’re given, and remain therefore un-enlightened as to the behaviour and performance of their online assets. This is making it very hard for the analysts to tell them that what they really need is more time, more staff, and more money for new tools.

Is there success and satisfaction out there? Yes.

The most advanced of the practitioners are doing wonderful things. The smartest of them have generated huge wins from the tools they have. There are anticdotes aplenty. It’s not impossible.

But it’s not easy. Even those with clear wins aren’t living on easy street. Those without them seem nearly defeated. The barriors are just too high and too hard. The few wins are not worth the enormous costs.

It seems like high end Web Analytics is the new CRM, where companies used to spend hundreds of thousand, or even millions of dollars, only to find their sales staff secretly using ASK on their laptops.

What I Think It Means

And that’s the thought that got me. The high-end packages can out-perform Google Analytics in just about every way you can think of or discuss, except in the ease with which basic data and analysis is delivered.

Which leads to a paradox; the high end package can out perform Google Analytics only if they can be fully and properly configured, solve some very serious data integration problems, actually do most or all of what they promise, and become accessible to a very diverse set of end clients. But they’re failing at these four tasks which leaves most end-users getting only very simple reporting out of very complicated and expensive packages.

Wouldn’t they be better off just getting these simple reports from a simple and cheap (even free) package?

PostScript

I wish it weren’t true. I want the full promise of the high end. And it takes a lot to convince me that something possible is impractical.

But if the collective status of the smartest and best resourced analytics users is as it appeared at XChange, I think I just saw The Fonz water skiing in a leather jacket.

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