Since the launch of Panama, Yahoo has instituted a new metric within its interface and reporting functions: assists. YSM’s help section lacks a definition of this term so I will clear the air on what an assist is and how this information is helpful for your PPC campaign.

Definition: An assist is an action that does not generate a conversion, but contributes to a conversion (or assists with a conversion). Here is the breakdown:

• Network Solutions and Ingenio, Inc. present a unique advertising method called Pay-Per-Call which will be launched at the end of the month. It allows Network Solutions customers to create a text ad, place a cost-per-call bid, and those ads will be advertised to consumers who are searching for local businesses and wish to interact with a live person.

• This article from Search Engine Land discusses some common pitfalls when integrating SEO and PPC …
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According to an article written in Newsweek called, Hi-Tech’s New Day, 75 percent of Americans use the Internet and spend an average three hours a day online. So why is it advertisers and marketers feel they have to dumb down their marketing ads with huge, sometimes really ugly buttons telling customers what to do? “Buy here, Shop Now, Subscribe Here, Click Here”, etc. Why? Because it …

Tonight is the premiere for Season 2 of the very popular TV series, Heroes. Being the PPC “Hero” that I am, I thought it fitting to see how well NBC has used paid search in their advertising efforts gearing up to the new season. Are they ranking for key terms? Are they dominating the “big three” search engines?

My first test was to search on keyword: Heroes. NBC crowds the #1 spot in both paid and …

Last week I noticed a keyword within one of my Yahoo ad groups had accrued only 2 clicks on a given day but generated a whopping 7 conversions. However, only 1 conversion was tracked through the client’s database for that day. I soon realized that I was dealing with a ghost in the machine, or phantom conversions within my Yahoo campaign. But there is no reason to be scarred; these phantoms will not physically harm you, but they may haunt …

Creating relevant and effective ad text is one of the most difficult, yet influential things you must do as a PPC advertiser. Within this daily management duty are a myriad of sub-tasks or “flavors” that can affect the outcome of your click-through-rates and conversion rates. Along with this wide world of ad text possibility also comes a flurry of disagreement on tactics. Today I’d like to talk about one of the most taboo tactics - the use of phone numbers …