Google has added a feature to their display network advertising. The buzzword here is “Viewability.” When bidding on impressions (CPM) in the display network, you can now require that the ad is viewable before you’re charged for it. The qualifications for an ad to viewable is that at least 50% of the ad is on the user’s screen for at least 1 second. This is in an effort to prevent advertisers from being charged for ads that are below the fold on the publishers page. This isn’t especially applicable to us, since we currently bid on clicks, and in remarketing clicks are more important than impressions. source: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2013/12/just-in-time-for-holidays-viewability.html To Your Success, Kevin Drongowski Senior Account Manager Integrated PPC Questions? 425-780-2774 Call or text
Month: December 2013
SEO Insights
Another article had some interesting insight in the evolution on SEO strategy. The article below goes into much more detail, but the gist of it is that having a site that functions well for the end user will get an SEO boost over a site that focuses so…
CraigsList Changes
I wanted to gather a few thoughts about the 1st week in Craig’s List for the dealers. This is a near-perfect ad: 2010 Acura MDX 1) Up to 24 photos per vehicle. 2) No HTML (so no links, color text, etc) 3) Formatted text is available (lists, bold, larger font, etc) What would make this ad perfect (which we are working on as we speak): Adding the state disclaimer (DOC fee, etc). Adding a URL (can’t hotlink, so I have doubts about the value of this) Inventory view: http://bellingham.craigslist.org/search/ctd?userid=10808959 Notice that in the inventory view Craig’s List now identifies your dealer with an unique ID, in this case 10808959 Be careful having 2 companies or even an employee postings ads if you already have the entire inventory posted. Several dealers have called stating that their ads got put on hold for having the same VIN posted several times. The accounts (you as a dealer since they have your tax ID number) will be on hold for one year (this is the time that they have always used in the past … Continue reading →
Sorry Edmunds & Yahoo Autos: Google Added Cars To Knowledge Graph
Google announced yesterday on Google+ that they have added car/automobile results to the knowledge graph. So now when you search for [2013 ferrari ff] (hint, who is your favorite search blogger, would make for a nice holiday gift) you will get the knowledge graph at the top right of the page: Google doesn’t say where the data comes from but there are plenty of free data sources out there for Google to use. As you can see, it shows name of the car, type of car, image of the car, the make, price, miles per gallon, engine sizes, other models, other configurations with a link to other searches related to it. When you click on the other cars under this one, it brings up the carousel effect, which looks like this: The sad part is that it will take away search traffic from Edmunds, Yahoo Autos and other car sites. Here is the mobile result, as you can see, you need to scroll to get to the search results: On Google Glass it is even harder to get to any … Continue reading →
Google’s Knowledge Graph Update
Yesterday’s update to Google’s knowledge graph (The knowledge graph shows up on the right of search results and typically shows relevant information to the search such as a map for a location) makes it so when you search for a specific model, information about the car and its configurations and prices. It appears that the information is pulled from either an internal database or from the manufacturer’s site. There are free data sources that it could be pulling from as well. The images in the knowledge graph also seem like they come from the manufacturer’s site. Prices shown are the MSRP. The important thing to take away from the update, in terms of strategy, is to make sure we target exact match keywords on individual models and year. Since google’s interface for this feature takes up valuable screen space it becomes very important to be in the first position in both paid search and organic search for specific models. If you do a more broad search for the make, or use an older year, this new feature is not activated. … Continue reading →
CraigsList Changing Postings
The change is finally here, today is the first day of CraigsList charging for postings in the automotive by dealer section. You have several choices for posting; Post one car at a time; build the template, add the car, pay the $5. For this you don’t need one of the new accounts with Craigslist, you can post with the old accounts. The only change is that at the end of the process you need to pay the $5 fee. PGI Auto offers a tool that will automate the ad creation and data pushing making the manual process as easy as possible. Our tool is $200/month and you can post as many cars as you want (still have to pay CL the $5 per car). Your second option is to have a posting account with CraigsList. For this you will need to set up a credit card with them, add your tax ID number, address, etc and buy a bulk group of ads (lets say 100 ads for $500). With this type of account we can semi-automate the process so for … Continue reading →