PPC Myth Busting! Myth 4: adCenter Isn’t Worth My Time

So, this is a HUGE myth, because I hear it all the time and it’s just so unfounded. The biggest thing that busts this myth in adCenter is lower CPCs, which leads to lower costs per acquisitions if the conversion rate is at least the same as Google. I’ve often found, however, that conversion rates can be higher for Bing and Yahoo search properties only than in Google.

So, let me explain that last bit quickly. At the ad group level, you can select if you want Bing & Yahoo owned search properties only, search partners, and/or Content network. Looks like this guy:

I suggested using “Bing and Yahoo! search (owned and operated) only”. Every time I’ve used the search partners, it’s turned out to be turrible. Especially for lead generation clients. They’ll get tons of leads, and ALL of them turn out to be fraudulent. And then you’ve got all this data showing all these bad leads, and you have to do all this work to sort out the bad ones. Ugh. It’s a mess. Feel free to tell me if your experience has been different!

Ok, time-in! The audience is much different in AdCenter. You have to think of the type of people who would choose to use Bing or Yahoo over Google. The psychology there is different, which should make you want to write different ads, bid on different keywords, etc. than in your Google account. But, to make things super easy for you to set up your adCenter account, they offer an import feature in the adCenter desktop editor that allows you to input your Google AdWords account information and import whatever campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ads you want from AdWords. You can even do a find and replace for the destination URLs if you’re using custom tagging to change the source. Of course, I’d suggest customizing the account for adCenter over time for the special audience that “Bings it”, but the import function lets you set your structures and get everything uploaded quickly. And, if any of you read Sam Owen’s Blog Post “5 Ways AdCenter beats AdWords”, you’ll already be familiar with this bit, but there are several options that come with AdCenter that are better than their counterparts in Google.

Also, here’s Sam’s obligatory Myth Buster ‘shop with Adam Savage’s facial hair and glasses since he’s assisting me in busting this myth.

You’re welcome.

To touch on those quickly, since you can easily click over to Sam’s article, adCenter allows for more in depth Quality Score reporting by offering a historic, downloadable report that will show you a timeline when your Quality Score dropped so you can diagnose it. They also provide a readily available Negative Keywords Conflict Report so you can see when you have negative keywords that are blocking good traffic for you. They provide a Share of Voice report that show you the exact reasons for losing impressions, like budget, rank, bid, etc. This one is my total favorite: being able to target only search partners if you want to, and being able to download a report that shows specific search partner metrics AND you’re allowed to block certain search partners like Display Network placements. It’s super fabulous, and I love it. Lastly, you can set monthly budgets so you don’t have to come back and tweak daily budgets depending on the month and actual account spend to ensure you don’t go over your budgets.

So, if you’re not convinced yet that you should get an AdCenter account STAT, here’s some metrics for one of our clients that run in both platforms: For August, we’ve got 73 sales in Google at $81.11 each. In adCenter, we’ve got 19 sales at $47.74 each. That’s a $.78 CPC for Google and a $.29 CPC for AdCenter. So, while the volume is at 26% of Google’s, the CPA is 59% of the CPA in Google. I’ll take an additional 26% of the volume of Google, but 41% cheaper for just a little extra work all day long!!

Myth BUSTED!

If you’re looking to bust some more hot PPC myth busting action, here’s 1-3!

PPC Myth Busting! Myth 1: Analytics is Complicated to Use.

PPC Myth Busting! Myth 2: Display Is Really Expensive

PPC Myth Busting! Myth 3: Display is Terrible For Direct Response

http://www.facebook.com/mikeytag Michael Taggart

“Every time I’ve used the search partners, it’s turned out to be turrible. Especially for lead generation clients.”

Definitely. For the longest time Yahoo! forced advertisers to take their partners too and it was the same story. However, Yahoo! gave the ability to pick and choose eventually. It was such a step backwards for us when Microsoft took over because they reverted back to all partners initially. However, this feature is one every adCenter advertiser should be aware of and use. At the very least you should be running separate adgroups or campaigns on partners vs YB just to track and analyze performance.

It’s nice to see your metrics showing Binghoo working for you. However, this is not always the case. In our industries year to date, Binghoo’s CPA is 36% HIGHER than Google’s. As you can imagine the ROI is much lower because of it. Just like with any engine, every keyword/industry is its own battlefield and individual results may vary.
- Amanda West-Bookwalter
  
  That’s SUCH a great tip, Michael! Separate ad groups/campaigns for “Binghoo” and their search partners. I might just include it in a top random number tips blog post in the future
  
  Yeah, I would imagine that the unique psychology behind people using Bing could make some markets less successful. I don’t know what you’re doing PPC for, but maybe super high tech stuff would have a harder time? My clients that see better performance there are pretty general e-commerce stuffs.
http://twitter.com/HeerzJonny Jon Fendrich

While I agree that Bing does have significant value for ecommerce advertisers, the sheer difficulty of management using a product like now dubbed “Bing Ads” far outweighs the benefits for many advertisers. It sometimes takes a week to make changes that could be made in Adwords in a day. For example, why is the “Ad distribution” setting ad the Ad Group level!!!??? This is maddening having to click into each and every ad group to change the settings. This would be easily solved by having the setting at the campaign level and leaving it up to account structure to dictate which ad groups those settings apply to. It only ads insult to injury for advertisers that work in an all Mac ecosystem since Adcenter STILL has yet to come out with a Mac compatible desktop tool. At the end of the day “Binghoo” has a long way to go before it makes sense for a lot of advertisers & mangers to spend their valuable time there, instead of tearing their hair out with frustration.

Amanda- I totally agree that this channel is “industry-sensitive” and that advertisers targeting a more “savvy” or “niche” kind of user can struggle mightily compared to more general consumer focused advertisers.
- Amanda West-Bookwalter
  
  Thanks, Jon! I TOTALLY agree with you. I, myself, work on a Mac. We have an entire Mac office, except for one PC we have specifically for the adCenter editor and some SEO stuff that’s not mac friendly. I use a remote desktop connection to access it from my Mac, but I’ve been considering taking the trouble to install a double-boot to put windows on my Mac now that I have more and more clients in adCenter. Plus, they recently did an upgrade to their editor that makes it a lot more like the AdWords editor, so it’s sooo much easier to use. Yeah, the ad group level settings drive me CRAZY. But it’s pretty easy to highlight all of them and change the settings at once in the editor. It’s just the hassle of accessing the editor with a Mac. I can’t believe they haven’t made a Mac friendly version, yet. I mean, I get it, you’re microsoft, but I’ll counter point that with the fact that it’s 2012 and it’s estimated that 93.96 million people in the world use a Mac!
Amanda West-Bookwalter

Thanks for reading, Barb! I think this is a really common experience. The management of an adCenter account is a little more tasking than a Google account, especially if you are using adCenter for the first time or you’re just rusty. But I really think the pay-off you and I experienced are pretty common, so it’s totally worth it! And now the hard part of getting the initial set-up is over!