Welcome back to another edition of the Clix Marketing Blog’s Weekly #PPC News and Views. It’s kinda rainy here today, but I’m in a super good mood anyway. So let’s have some fun, shall we?
From the Experts
Wordstream & Marketing Land
We’ll start today with an awesome duo of posts that share a common topic: really cool things you can do in Excel to impress the pants off your clients or bosses. (Yeesh, long topic.) Our first post comes from Chad Summerhill over on the Wordstream blog. Here Chad shares a bit of knowledge on PPC Storytelling: How to Make an Excel Bubble Chart for PPC. Chad walks you through a step by step process for creating something that looks like it was created by angels. Well, at least it’s a thing of beauty compared to most charts found in ppc reports.
Our second Excel post comes from Annie Cushing on the Marketing Land site. She’ll show you How to Create Interactive Charts in Excel. Again, another very cool walk-through (this one’s actually in video form, fun!) from start to finish on creating these impressive charts.
PPC Hero
Across the ppc industry, opinions vary on dynamic keyword insertion. Some love it, some hate it, some have no freaking idea what it does. But the question is, Does DKI Really Work? [Case Study]. (Actually, the [Case Study] part has nothing to do with the question.) Cassie Oumedian over on the PPC Hero blog set out to answer just that. She’ll run you through DKI basics, her findings, as well as some best practices for those who use or are thinking of using DKI. Check it out!
aimClear
Who uses Facebook? Show of hands? (Ha! I can’t see you – put your hands down sillies.) As a consolation prize to looking silly, Facebook just launched a huge category targeting expansion. Check out Merry Morud’s post to see the complete list of new categories.
SEER Interactive
A couple weeks ago, Google announced the new Paid & Organic report showing stats for your campaigns broken down by whether an organic listing accompanied them or not. After the SEER team gathered some initial data, they found they had four questions they wanted answers to: how do brand and non-brand terms vary, are search partners included, how are queries with 0 clicks reported, and can we trust webmaster tools to track data accurately? Check out their findings in this week’s post from Harris Neifield in Part Two: Four AdWords Paid & Organic Report Questions Answered.
From the Engines
Bing Ads
This week we only have updates from one engine, but there are multiple updates. Wahoo! First up, on Wednesday of this week Bing announced the launch of Bing Ads Editor v9.9. The new tool features faster bulk uploads, more compatibility with Enhanced Campaigns, as well as some UX improvements that should make your tasks a little easier. Word on the street: there are still a couple glitches for a few select advertisers. Nothing major, but still a nuisance. Be helpful and let Bing Ads know of any issues you’re having so they can solve them for you and anyone else that’s having them. Otherwise, enjoy the upgrades!
Second update, Bing ads launched new and improved location extensions this week as well. Your location extensions will now include a button searchers can click for directions, click to call on mobile devices, and will have the option for multiple locations to show on a single ad. In addition, the process for us advertisers has been improved as well. We now enjoy easier set up and import as well as more detailed reporting. Check out the post for more details.
The third and final announcement this week was for performance comparison at a glance (still in pilot). This new feature allows for a few different pieces: comparing data to the previous period, comparing with your moving average, comparison of weekdays to weekends, and seeing your performance in the context of change history. The post has more details, but all of these tools seem pretty awesome. Want in on the next Bing Ads pilot? Last week Bing announced a new pilot for bulk editing options in the interface. If that’s something you’re interested in (cough: Mac users) then shoot them an email and get yourself signed up!
Thanks for joining us for this week’s PPC News and Views. We’ll see you all back here next week!
