Flash Banner Requirements for Google Adwords
Posted on 15. Jan, 2009 by ComCorp in Pay Per Click Marketing
Please let this be a guide of requirements that Google Adwords has for uploading flash banner ads. The following is can also be found in the Adwords guidelines.
Sizes
468 x 60 Banner
728 x 90 Leaderboard
250 x 250 Square
200 x 200 Small Square
336 x 280 Large Rectangle
300 x 250 Inline Rectangle
120 x 600 Skyscraper
160 x 600 Wide Skyscraper
Acceptable formats: .gif, .jpg, .png, .swf
However if flash then .gif
Animation Length: Animated ads are restricted to a maximum of 15 seconds (at a 15-20 fps frame rate), after which point they must remain static. These ads must also comply with the other animation policies.
Image ad files must be 50K or smaller.
—→ ClickTags: All Flash ads should support the clickTAG variable. The clickTAG is the tracking code assigned by Google to an individual ad. It allows Google to register where the ad was displayed when it was clicked and helps advertisers determine the effectiveness of their campaign.
* On any click, Flash ads should redirect to the URL specified in the clickTAG argument; there should be no other redirection in between.
* The variable name must be spelled ‘clickTAG’ (upper-case TAG; no space between click and TAG) and not ‘click tag,’ ‘Click Tag,’ or any other form.
* This is the proper code for the clickTAG parameter:
on (release) {
if (clickTAG.substr(0,5) == “http:”) {
getURL(clickTAG, “_blank”);
}
}
* Note that is not necessary to specify the destination URL for the ad anywhere in this code; this is taken care of through the usage of clickTAG. Also, depending on the structure of your Flash ad, it may be necessary to prepend “_root.” or “_level0.” to “clickTAG” above, resulting in “_root.clickTAG” or “_level0.clickTAG”. It is strongly recommended to upload the ad into your account and verify that the ad is behaving normally prior to it going live, allowing time for any necessary changes.
Pay for Placement
Posted on 22. May, 2008 by ComCorp in Pay Per Click Marketing
The old saying that goes “you get what you pay for” has been applied to the field of marketing and public relations with the web marketing strategy called “pay for position” or “pay for placement”. In practice, the pay for placement concept is similar to the pay per click concept. Operationally, under a pay per click campaign, the advertiser pays for the number of times a potential customer clicks on a paid advertisement containing significant keywords chosen by the advertiser. The pay for placement strategy uses the same concept of paying for clicks, but the advertiser pays for a high-ranking placement on the sponsored links list that typically appears to the right of or above the search results.
The most successful of the pay for placement search engines was Overture, eventually acquired by Yahoo in 2003. Overture’s original successful strategy was to order search results according to the amount paid by the respective advertiser for placement. Under the Yahoo model, the search results are presented separately with the sponsored links appearing beside the relevant search results.
Pay for placement marketing is different from pay for inclusion tactics. You may choose to pay for including a web page in order to get it indexed sooner, to include web pages deeper in the web site that may not have been index otherwise, or because your content on a web page changes more often that normally indexed by the search engine spiders. These pay for inclusion techniques while helpful for the specific purpose do NOT make any representations about the placement of the ads, which they sell.
Pay for placement ads on the other hand provide a commitment that your specific ads keywords will allow you a specific ranking or placement among the sponsored links which typically appear beside the search results. Almost all search engines in use today feature some type of pay for placement arrangement in addition to the unpaid results.
The advantages of a pay for placement campaign is that you are can set limits for the amount you are willing to pay to be in a particular position amongst your competitors. You are essentially participating in an online auction for advertising space. The more you are willing to pay for a particular keyword or phrase, the higher the position you will hold when search engine results are returned and your ad appears on the page results.
The expertise involved is in choosing your keywords wisely, building your website content around your chosen keywords and making sure the web pages which appear in the paid links are related to the keywords queried. Pay for placement campaigns require fairly consistent monitoring and updating if they are to be successful. If you want a web marketing campaign where you set and forget, probably this is not the strategy for you. Alternatively you could hire an Internet marketing expert to run such a campaign for you.
As with any other marketing strategy, there is no guarantee that a first place search engine placement will result in increased market share, or even in increased traffic to your site, only that your advertisement will be seen more often when your particular search words are typed in by a potential customer.
Conversion Tracking
Posted on 26. Oct, 2007 by ComCorp in Pay Per Click Marketing
Conversion tracking is a numerical method of determining how effective your web marketing is. Originally, the number of visitors arriving at your web site was used as the measure of success for the advertising. However, if none of these visitors purchase your product, your advertising is essentially wasted. The term for the purchasing the product is defined as conversion, stemming from the concept of ‘converting’ a casual visitor to a customer.
However, not all visitors are ready to purchase your product on the first visit. It’s important to keep the visitors coming back to the web site and to eventually purchase your product or service. In order to encourage the visitors to take at least one step toward the eventual purchase of your product, the concept of interim goal pages was introduced. Conversion tracking is a form of web site analysis that defines how well the source is delivering the desired action.
The source is defined as where the visitor arrives. This could be another web page, or a referrer, a directory, a search engine or other means. It can also be a characteristic of the visitor, such as age, nationality, or other defining feature. The goal can be measurable results such as completing an order form or signing up for an email newsletter. It can be important information for more than one of the web pages at a site to have page goals. This well help to determine which pages are most effective in attracting visitors and in getting them to take action.
The conversion tracking methods are determined either by log analysis from the web server for the page being studied or by tracking script included on the web page itself. Authorized personnel can access these reports in order to calculate the page conversion rate.
To determine the rate of conversion for a page, you simply divide the number of requests for the page goal by the number of visitors to the page and multiply by 100 in order to get the conversion rate expressed as a percentage. Obviously the higher the conversion rate, the better it is for your business.
Because of the realization of the importance of conversion tracking both Overture and Google Adwords have added free conversion tracking software that can be added to your web page. The few lines of JavaScript track such things as sales leads or contact information, which pages are visited and sometimes how often, if the viewer signs up to receive your newsletter or your Ezine, and of course, whether the viewer actually buys your product or service.
This tracking tool can help you determine where visitors are landing in your site, which internal links they are using once they arrive, if any, and whether the goals on one page are garnering higher results than on another page within your site. This will allow you to tailor your marketing to use only the most effective means.
It’s important to realize that even the best conversion tracking tools in the world only collect the information. What you do with the information once you’ve received it is what makes your conversion rate improve.
What is Pay Per Click?
Posted on 18. Aug, 2007 by ComCorp in Pay Per Click Marketing
Pay per click is a type of advertising medium used on advertising networks, search engines and websites. The advertiser selects certain keywords related to his or her product or service that are expected to be used as query terms by people using search engines. The advertiser agrees to pay some minimal amount, ranging from $.01 to $.50 for each time a searcher clicks on ads containing the selected keywords placed by the advertiser.
The expectation is that pay per click ads which appear within the top few listed to the right of the search results are more likely to be seen by and used by a searcher. In theory, a top pay per click ranking will result in increased web traffic and by extension more sales revenue visitors.
Popular keywords placed on one of the well-known search engines will cost more than more unusual key words. The three largest search engines who provide pay per click advertising at present are Google Adwords which captures about 50% of the market, Yahoo Search Marketing with about 22% and MSN Search which just completed beta testing.
A primary problem with the use of pay per click advertising is the potential for click fraud. Click fraud is illegal in many jurisdictions and search engine companies are the target of increasing litigation since they are the beneficiaries of the revenue generated by click fraud. The usual tactic of click fraud is for an unscrupulous merchant to click on his competitor’s ads even though he has no interest in purchasing a product. Depending on the price bid for the pay per click ad, such methods can rapidly deplete the competitor’s advertising budget with no real benefit in sales.
Search engines including Google and Yahoo have indicated their programming can detect and eliminate fraudulent pay per click transactions, but in fact, it’s difficult to determine if a transaction is genuine or not.
Pay per click engines usually are of one of three major types, product, service and keyword. Product search engines use databases supplied by their advertisers. When a customer uses the search engine to inquire about a particular product, the search engine pulls the appropriate information from the database of the advertiser and displays it as a search result ranked by the amount the advertiser pays per click.
Service search engines work in the same manner as product databases; only the feeds provided to the search engine are those of services rather than products. Search results are returned to the customer ranked by bid price, with the highest price paid by the advertiser at the top of the list.
Keyword search engines are the most commonly known and used of the search engines. This is the standard pay per click methodology where the advertiser selects and pays for keywords and the placement of the keywords on the search results list.
There has been some consideration to obtaining revenue from advertisers for displaying the pay per click ads, but at present revenue is generated only when the consumer actually clicks on the ad in question.
Please view the Pay Per Click Management services provided by ComCorp, Inc.
