Improving your online advertising

Let customers know you have what they are looking for. If you compare your ad to competitors’ ads on Google, does your business stand out? Your ad text should highlight your unique selling point at the current time, whether it is free delivery, discount prices, or quick service. There are also advantages to mirroring keywords in your ad text. If a user searches on a keyword you’ve included in your ad, that phrase will appear in bold, highlighting that you have what the user searched for. Learn about creating great ads.

Your keywords are the terms you have chosen that, when searched on Google, trigger your ad. The more specifically your keywords relate to your product or service, the more likely you are to see results. Review options for your business by visiting the keyword tool for suggestions. For example, if you sell a range of hiking shoes, ‘men’s hiking shoes’ will out-perform the more general ‘shoes’ or ‘hiking’ as a keyword, yet it is still broad enough to be a term users will search on. You can also use keyword matching options to further refine what searches your ad shows for.

Users do not spend long on a website if they cannot immediately see what they are looking for. Choosing a landing page with content relevant to your ad text and keywords will mean visitors to your site are more likely to turn into paying customers. Often your homepage is not the best place to link to: edit your destination URL so that it links straight to a product or service specific page, where customers can either buy from you or contact you.

Your ads will show in a higher position based on their ranking. Did you know that how much you bid for your keywords is only one factor considered? We reward relevant ads by showing them in higher positions according to their Quality Score. In general, the more that users searching on your keywords click on your ads (clickthrough rate) the better your Quality Score and ranking will be. Choosing relevant keywords and ad texts helps you manage costs and improve your ad’s visibility. For help reviewing and optimising your account, see best practices from Google advertising experts.

If sales and leads, rather than clicks, are your focus we’d encourage you to set up conversion tracking. This free tool allows you to track which keywords lead to user behavior you find valuable on your site: such as a purchase or submission of an enquiry form. Once you set up conversion tracking, you’ll be able to see this information alongside your clicks and impressions each time you log into your account. You can edit your keywords and bids to focus specifically on those you know are generating most business for you.

You can gain useful insight into your advertising performance by using the AdWords Report Centre. Schedule custom email reports that show your click statistics by campaign, Ad Group or keyword. If you have conversion tracking set up, your reports will also include information on sales and leads from your AdWords advertising.

Find out about our free online seminars that can help you learn more about your AdWords account.

Get simple Optimisation tips with example keyword lists and screenshots that are relevant to your business.

Learn how to improve the ranking and visibility of your site on Google’s free search listings with a whole range of tools. Webmaster Central provides you with information on how Google indexes your website. You can see how your site is doing in our index and tell us how you would like your site to be crawled and indexed.

Millions of people search Google Maps every day for information about businesses in their area and beyond. Once you’ve added a listing to our Local Business Centre, users will be able to find your business details, from your address and hours of operation to photos of your shop front or products.

Google AdSense matches ads to the specific content of your site. Whether you already have a team selling your advertising space, or whether you’re new to monetising your website, AdSense is a flexible option. Choose where on your site text or display ads show, so they fit with the overall look and feel. It’s easy to start generating additional revenue from the web pages in your current inventory.

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Save time and money and increase the focus on your core business by outsourcing to the Cloud. Google Apps lets your business save time and money by outsourcing email, calendar and desktop productivity tools to Google. This provides your employees with universal access to essential applications at low cost, and there is no hardware or software for you to install and run locally.

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Source: Google

Despite tough trading conditions, internet advertising expenditure grew to £1,682.5 million in the first half of 2008, a 21% year-on-year like-for-like increase, according to the latest online adspend figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) the trade body for digital marketing. The research was carried out in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the World Advertising Research Centre (WARC).

Marketers demonstrated overwhelming confidence in online advertising at a time when all major advertising mediums – TV, press, outdoor and radio – experienced falls in expenditure. The total advertising market was £8982.5 million, down 0.7% year-on-year, during the period January to June 2008. The advertising market would have experienced a 4.6% decline without the internet’s growth.

In real terms internet advertising added £348.2 million to its bottom line when compared with the same period in 2007. Online exceeded expectations to increase its market share by four points to 18.7%, only 0.6% behind total press display (19.3%) and 3% behind TV (21.7%).

All formats experience better than expected growth

Paid-for search continues to lead the way, growing by 28% year-on-year and was worth £981 million in the first half of 2008, with its market share marginally up to 58.3% of total online advertising (57.8% in first half of 2007). Search has become a staple on the media schedule and is increasingly integrated into traditional and online advertising campaigns.

Total internet display advertising spend rose 16.3% year-on-year to £333.8 million. This was boosted by a 36.6% increase in spending on ‘embedded’ formats such as banners, rich media and video. Internet display ads are still the only major display medium to be growing so this increase reflects confidence in its ability to engage consumers, build brands and drive sales.

The majority of online display ad spend is still via major portals and online publishers, but sales networks – representing thousands of smaller sites – have increased their volumes and accounted for 41% of all display expenditure. Sales houses and networks are growing the ‘long tail’ of internet advertising – smaller and niche websites – and offer advertisers a streamlined ‘quick sell’ for direct response campaigns.

Technology, finance and entertainment & media top categories

An analysis of display advertising revenues in terms of sector split reveals that Technology is the top category with a 17.3% market share, followed by Finance at 11.9%, Entertainment & Media at 10.7% and Recruitment at 9.9%.

Classifieds grew by 30.2% year-on-year to £361.6 million as recruitment, property, automotive and small ads continued their migration to the internet from print classifieds, which declined 10% year-on-year.

Guy Phillipson, chief executive officer of the IAB UK, said: “Online is not immune from the economic downturn, but while other sectors see falls in expenditure the internet is still experiencing an incredible increase and is propping up the entire advertising market.

“The growth in internet advertising spend is beating all expectations as advertisers look to maximise their budgets, and take advantage of new display advertising formats such as video. They are also increasing their investment in paid-for search marketing because it delivers measurable returns on investment.”

Paul Pilkington, director, entertainment and media practice, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, said: “Overall, we believe online will perform better than other media during the downturn, but expect to see differences in performance across the various online segments.”

Key drivers for growth

Advertising networks boost long tail. The rapid rise of advertising networks as efficient, streamlined warehouses that sell display advertising to the internet’s ‘long tail’ are opening up the internet to more advertisers.

Online audience. There are 31.6 million people now online in the UK (Source: BMRB Q2 2008). The online population now reflects the demographic make-up of the UK as a whole, with a 52%/48% male/female split. 21% of internet users are 25 to 34 years and at the other end of the spectrum, the over 50s now represent 30% of total time spend online.

3G, wireless and cheap laptops. 3G ‘dongles’, wireless and laptops are no longer a luxury item or confined to business. Mobile network ’3′ sells more 3G dongles than mobile phones, T-Mobile offers a £10 per month 3G dongle, which coupled with a powerful cheap laptop, perhaps given away free by AOL or Carphone Warehouse, substitutes for a traditional broadband contract on a fixed-based PC. In Q1 2008, 6% of adults used mobile broadband and in the five months from February 2008, 511,000 mobile broadband connections were sold by the UK’s five mobile network operators. 75% of those with access to mobile broadband use it at home, 18% do so at work and 27% while elsewhere/on the move. The number of 3G connections (including mobile broadband connections) in the UK increased by 60% during 2007 to reach 12.5 million by the end of the year, amounting to 17% of all mobile connections (source: Ofcom). More machines mean more people, more eyeballs, more impressions, and so more advertising.

Broadband commoditised. Faster, cheaper broadband, with deals as low as £4.50 per month from Virgin Media are attracting more people online. The proportion of homes taking broadband services grew to 58% by Q1 2008, a rise of six percentage points on a year earlier. By the end of 2007, 58% of UK households had a broadband connection, up from 52% a year previously and from 41% two years ago. 70% of UK broadband users have more than 2mb speed (BMRB Internet Monitor, May 2008). This compares to 47% in May 2007.

Catch up TV. Launch of services such as BBC iPlayer and Channel 4′s 4oD are breaking the barrier between video entertainment and the internet as a communications or shopping tool. The Beijing Olympics was the tipping point for BBC iPlayer with a broader demographic profile using the online service. Consumers are responding to this increased supply. Twenty-seven per cent of those aged 15-24 claim to use the internet for ‘watching TV programmes’ in 2008, up by 17 percentage points in 12 months. 45% used it for ‘watching video clips/webcasts’, also up by 18 percentage points over the same period.

Social networking websites. Social media continues to have a massive impact on the market, especially as an audience driver. In the first half of 2008 ad spend for this area was relatively low and coming off a small base, yet looks set to grow steadily in the coming years. CPM values for user-generated content are lower in this sector and they are generally bought through networks. However, the premium channels such as MySpace Music and MySpace Film are sold at a higher CPM rate as they do not contain any form of user-generated content.

Summary of ad spend during first half of 2007 During the first half of 2007 online advertising spend was £1.3 billion and the medium grew by 41.3% from £917.2 year-on-year. During this period online overtook direct mail.

Source: Amy Kean – IAB – http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/internetadvertisingspendup21071008.mxs