Facebook bought Atlas from Microsoft...

The much anticipated deal between Facebook and Microsoft was closed last month. There are mixed reactions in the market. Some marketers are skeptical about how facebook is going to use the adserver tool. But overall sentiments seem positive. From my point of view, it is a good deal for both Facebook and Advertisers and following are the reasons that corroborate my thinking :-

1) The rumor is that FB bought this tool by paying close 50million for which five years ago Microsoft had paid 6.7 billion. Considering what Microsoft paid, FB got it at dirt cheap. Having said that the question still stands what value ads Atlas will bring to the table.

2) Another good reason to have Atlas is that Facebook can give a holistic view of campaign measurement. Not many people know that Facebook doesn't allow third party tracking (in full) which means advertisers had to depend on FB data to analyse the campaign. And they were manually consolidating the reports. This would definitely help the agencies and advertisers.

3) With this acquisition, Facebook is sending clear signals that they are here to stay. With an important launch last year, graph search, they had clearly showed the intention on where they are heading. Though FB has denied in their official statement that they are not intending to launch ad-network, it is very doubtful they would do that because at the end of the day, they would want to maximise the returns from the tool.

4) With the help of the tool, Facebook could finally prove that their ads work and therefore they commend higher pricing and thus more revenue for them.

Good deal for advertisers :-

1) With this, advertisers can understand Consumer Journey on Web and Facebook's role in that journey.

2) Now Ad dollars can be more justified. Therefore, can plan more Social Media campaigns.

3) Social Media campaigns could be more targeted. So in future less wastage is expected. This may also give rise to Socio-Commerce.

4) This will boost Social Media and Search Co-optimization which means advertisers/agencies will have details like what people intend to buy(through google search data gathered by companies like Chango) and what are their likes and dislikes through FB. If both the data can be brought together, its a huge WIN.

These are more like speculations from the deal, we will have to wait and see for actual results.

Google's Advertising Policies change regarding trademarks..

In case yo haven't caught the news --

"Updates to AdWords trademark policy

Google has made a policy revision that applies to complaints we receive regarding use of trademarks as keywords. Starting 23 April 2013, keywords that were restricted as a result of a trademark investigation will no longer be restricted in China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Brazil.

While we will not prevent use of trademarks as keywords in the affected regions, trademark owners will still be able to complain about the use of their trademark in ad text.

How does the revised policy affect which ads can be shown?

Google will no longer prevent advertisers from selecting a third party’s trademark as a keyword in ads targeting these regions."

Source : -  https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/177578#

This could mean more irrelevant results on Google Search page results.....

Google powered their shopping by acquiring Channel Intelligence

Google continues with its strategy of acquiring smaller relevant companies that would power its offerings. The latest acquisition in news is Channel Intelligence. Google acquired this company to power their Merchant Center and Product listing feature.

In US, it has been tried and tested that Product Listing Ads perform and they are doing extremely well. The only hitch was that advertisers had to allocate a resource to manage their Merchant center feeds. Merchant Center needs to be updated with the latest promotional offer, inventory, price etc. And Google needed a platform that would facilitate the regular updates from client's inventory to Google's shopping list. Big advertisers could hire companies like Channel advisor but not all can afford such companies. Channel Advisor is an inventory management company that provides the platform that google needs for its shopping list. Channel Intelligence is similar to Channel advisor and offerings are same.

By strengthening Merchant Center, Google will open a whole new avenue of earning money from advertisers. Initially Google Shopping was free and now they started charging. And with CI acquisition, Google will provide a free tool (as always) that would ease the inventory management on Google shopping.

The smartest thing Google has done is that for Product Listing Ads (PLA) feature, advertisers should have Merchant center set up. And to run Merchant center, one needs Channel Intelligence. And since PLA is performing better than regular search ads, advertisers are ready to take that extra step. An example below of PLA Ads -

Facebook Using Google data to target Ads

Last Year, Business Insider reported a very interesting news about the ability to use Search data to target Ads on Facebook.. This strengthens Facebook ads which were already generating higher returns for advertisers. Facebook's targeting capability was based on the personality of the audience, their tastes, interests, likes and places but FB didn't have much idea of what people need and are intending to buy. This important info is with Google.

Chango is the name of the company that is key in bringing the two data together. They have gathered billions of cookie pool through Google Searches and they are intending to use this data in Facebook exchange. So now advertisers know what people are searching for and depending on their interests, ads can be targeted. Chango can do the profiling for advertisers and ads can be more targeted than ever before. So its less wastage and even higher returns from Facebook ads.

In my opinion Google doesn't have an answer yet for this type of retargeting. Google's remarketing is based on user's Search behavior within Google network but it has limitations beyond Google n most importantly Google had been trying to integrate their Social platform (Google +) data into Search but failed. In this scenario, FB ads are winning strategies for marketers and they have long way to go.....

Power of making simple changes to Account Structure....

Big clients who are running their campaigns for years, have tonnes of keywords in their account...and as part of optimization, there is constant addition of keywords, adcopy changes, bid changes etc. but few have realised that a simple change in account structure can have a meaningful impact.

Following changes in account structure is recommended :-

1) Review if your site structure matches with the account structure in search. Is there any change on the site that should be replicated in the account.

2) Do we have our adgroups tightly themed and we have not more than 10 keywords in each adgoup?

3) Review all the keywords in each adgroup. Keywords with low Quality Score, low impressions and clicks should be moved to more relevant adgroup or create a new adgroup for them. They may not be getting enough opportunity to perform in current location.

4) Another action for keywords should be -
  i)  Keywords with low impressions and clicks since last 3 months should be paused/removed from the client.
ii)  KWs with high impressions and low clicks need to be shifted to different location.

iii) Keywords with low impression and high clicks are valuable and therefore bids should be up so that they get more exposure.

5) Match Types - are all your Keywords in Broad? if yes then thats not ideal. Broad match types are not always good...though it fetches more impressions than others but there's lot of wastage. And not to mention, negative keyword addition becomes very important. It would be good to do lot of match type testing to see which match types work best for each keyword.

6) Ad-creative - First point sale for marketers in Search advertising. it is important to be catchy enough to grab audience attention and get clicked. There should be at least 3 creatives in each adgoup, having more creative doesn't mean good performance. Not all creative will have equality opportunity to show up. So, its better to do regular adcopy testing and keep the best performing ones. Adcreative should be most relevant to the adgroup.

Just add these simple tasks in regular optimizations and one should surely see the difference...