PPC Chat is off and running as the inaugural event drew many attendees to discuss several prominent PPC topics.  Seven of the ten questions were asked in the hour and ten minute chat as we saw many great points raised.  Among the topics discussed were:

Audience Based Targeting

Many pointed out that Google’s Display Network (GDN) is making good improvements, but still lacks the user volunteered content that Facebook and LinkedIn have at their disposal.  Managed placements are still the best way to target audiences in the GDN.  Gathering user content could be the reason for Google’s recent social ventures, including +1 and better Gmail ads.  David Szetela also brought up the notion of “audience-need targeting” being better than keyword targeting, but again, not as effective as managed placements.

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The success of most e-commerce pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns is determined by the amount of revenue made and the height of the return on investment (ROI).  Sounds like a no brainer, huh?  Ultimately money talks and if you aren’t seeing your desired results the PPC budget will be cut.  Too often companies only calculate PPC revenue as purchases made from the site.  I’m here to tell you that PPC revenue can be made through other channels, but oftentimes these earnings are not attributed to the PPC campaign, which is a huge mistake!

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I am working on a mobile pay-per-click (PPC) blog entry and would like your input.  Please answer the questions below.  I thank you in advance!

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This post was written by Robert Brady from http://righteousmarketing.com. Robert can be reached via email at robert@righteousmarketing.com or through Twitter @robert_brady

Thomas Edison once said:

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Often we evaluate our PPC efforts from the same perspective; looking at keywords that were too expensive, ad copy that had a low CTR and landing pages that didn’t convert for mistakes to avoid in the future. The problem is that by Edison’s experience you may still be thousands of mistakes from the right answer.

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A major selling point of Google AdWords is that it allows advertisers to control their costs. Whether you spend $5,000 a month or $50 the choice is yours. On the surface this is a great model, but as most pay-per-click (PPC) managers would tell you, the smaller your budget the harder it is to compete for more ad impressions. Yes, more conservative budgets look bigger in smaller search engines such as Yahoo and Bing. However, these engines make up very little of the market share compared to Google.

No matter the size of your budget, you have to practice intelligent PPC tactics. These tactics include tightly-themed ad groups, keyword-dense text ads with strong calls to action, and relevant landing pages. Obviously, a higher budget allows you to do more, like bid on more keywords and place your ads on contextually relevant sites, but without knowledge of PPC techniques your budget is the least of your problems.

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As I was adding new text ads to an account in MSN adCenter I noticed the URL:

Is it odd to anyone else that MSN still uses the acronym “P4P”? For the most part this term has been replaced by PPC. P4P, or pay-for-placement, was considered too broad. P4P could mean buying a directory listing in Yahoo! or banner advertising on a site, not just the conventional paid search engine platforms. In fact, P4P could mean buying an ad in a newspaper!

I’ve always found this P4P mention in the adCenter interface to be a bit surprising. I know it is a relatively small issue, but MSN desires to be the number one search engine (the advent of Bing, ladies and gentleman). MSN adCenter is a good paid platform, but it will never eclipse Google AdWords if it cannot keep up with the current lingo.

I am making too big a deal of this issue? Post a comment and let me know.