Hello everyone! Welcome to this week’s edition of PPC News and Views. Per usual, we’ve got a great list of posts from all the wonderful people from the PPC community that we think you would enjoy reading. So don’t be rude, read, share, then read again! Let’s get started.
From the Experts
PPC Hero
Why Are Your Quality Scores Dropping with Improved CTR?: Increase CTR, increase Quality Score right? NO! This is a complete misconception for lots of us within the ppc industry. In this post, Kayla Kurtz discusses how improving CTR for sake of Quality Scores isn’t always the best idea and can sometimes do more harm than good. Great reality check.
White Shark Media
How Mobile Ads Are Making Local Businesses Successful And How You Can Do it Too: It seems like the last 3 years have been “The Year of Mobile”. Well, one of those has to have been right. Mobile is a big part of our culture and missing out on advertising opportunities could be losing your business money. Especially in local campaigns. This post talks about the importance of a mobile optimized site, how to set up a solid mobile focused campaign, and how to use the data to drive higher ROI for your local business.
Unbouce
How to A/B Test Circles Around Your Competitors in AdWords: Consistent A/B testing is widely considered a best practice for PPC. And one of the coolest things about testing is that you can pretty much do whatever you want (within reason, you madman). But none seem quite as fun as the five step process outlined in this post. Basically, let your competitors do the initial work for you, add some of your own flare, and you’ll be generating better ads than them in no time.
Portent
Google Shopping Campaigns Get Results: The title pretty much says it all. Google’s new Shopping Campaigns have been out for a few months now. How do they compare to PLA campaigns? Check out Portent’s results.
Beyond the Paid
Social PPC: A Guide To Getting Started: This is a great round up from Melissa Mackey with links to help sections as well as helpful articles to help you dip your toes into social media advertising. This post covers the big four: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. Check it out.
From the Engines
As a disclaimer, I 100% cheated on this section. Most of the posts below were not written by the engines themselves, but the news was too important not to share. So, snooze ya loose engines.
Google AdWords
Google AdWords Conversion Counting Changes: On Tuesday, Google sent out an email to advertisers outlining future changes coming to conversion tracking. Although this isn’t a massive change, and could be useless to some, it could also be very valuable to the right advertiser. Check out what’s on deck.
AdWords Conversion Optimizer Changes: No More Max CPA: Oh Google didn’t stop there. Nope. In the most silent announcement ever, Google will be doing away with the ability to target Max CPA with Conversion Optimizer. Although we’re not entirely sure when this change will take place, there are a few things advertisers should keep in mind. Check it out.
Bing Ads
Bing Ads January Release Summary: Catch up on all of the changes made to the Bing Ads system during January 2014.
Yahoo Ads
Yahoo Wants Back in the Search Game: Yahoo is making some waves in the search industry and wants to get back to running their own advertising platform as they were five years ago.
Yahoo Strikes Deal With Mocean Mobile to Form New Premium Mobile Marketplace: Uh, in case you didn’t notice above, Yahoo would like to get back in the search game. And their rounding up premium partners to do so. This time, it was the Mocean Mobile Marketplace.
