Background:

Google has been getting personal with search results since 2009 customizing and suggesting results based on your web history.

Now Google is getting personal with marketers – stripping the search keyword from the Google organic referred traffic for signed-in Google account users. There is no impact to paid search as this time. Google will continue to provide insight to queries generating traffic via paid search allowing advertisers to optimize to relevant behavior. Google describes this latest announcement as an enhancement to protect privacy of users.

Situation:

On Tuesday October 18, 2011, Google announced on their blog that users logged into Google would see their organic queries default to HTTPS (Secure HTTP) https://www.google.com instead of HTTP.

This change will reduce visibility into why visitors are coming to web properties for signed-in Google searchers. In other words we won’t be able to determine the type of keyword used to arrive to the site from Google organic search. We also won’t be able to track the content viewed or actions taken from that particular organic keyword visit.

This referring information will be missing from all the solutions that track usage on web sites, including Google analytics and all the web analytics vendors (Omniture, Webtrends, Coremetrics). However, according to Google, we will still be able to get to some of this in depth keyword information in Google Webmaster Tools.

Immediate Impact:

At this time it is estimated that this change is currently impacting just fewer than 10% of the referrals originating from Google.

Here is why:

• Queries are only encrypted and noted as “not provided” when users are signed-in to Google accounts and perform a search on Google.com (not a partner site or Google toolbar)
• Google has not fully enabled this change to all Google signed-in users

Why this Will Likely Change:

The adoption of the new social network Google+ (see appendix) got off to a quick start, reaching more than ten million users in its first few weeks of field trial. However, Google+ has struggled to reach the “mainstream” audience and is currently only 10% of Facebook’s audience reach. Google+ also has .01% the level of engagement with the total online population compared to Facebook.

The Google+ adoption rate is a key consideration, as users flock to the network it is likely more users will remain “signed-in” to Google accounts throughout the day. The continued growth of Gmail, YouTube and other “sign-in” Google properties will also continue to influence the number of signed-in users in the future as well.

Strategy

• The best practices for optimizing your site – on-page, backlinks, social, internal linking – are unchanged

Measurement

• To quantify impact, Razorfish recommends benchmarking “not provided” visitors as % of total visits referred by Google Organic to gauge scale of signed–in users

• Available Through Omniture

What performance indicators/views are at risk for secure search signed in Google traffic?

• organic keyword performance (traffic, ROI, bounce rate, engagement, page views etc.)
• landing page keyword targeting and benchmarking growth
• paid/organic keyword click/revenue share
• competitive footprint

Technology

• Ensure Webmaster Tools Account with Google is verified

• Webmaster Tools account will provide top organic queries
• Available referring queries will exclude site interaction such as page views and on-site activities (bookings, conversions, leads, etc.)

Conclusion:

While the immediate impact is limited to less than 10% of traffic this has the potential to scale with stickiness of Google products requiring sign-in such as Gmail and Google+. With scale, blocking this data from site analytics reporting also impacts ad networks that rely on this data to monetize content based on search/user on-site behavior.

An important next step is benchmarking impact and creating proxies for potential loss of insight over time.

Typically Google does not release a lot of details around these types of changes. Razorfish plans to trend data over the next few weeks and develop a formal Point Of View detailing impact.

Download the Google Secure Search POV.

About Google+

In July, Google launched Google+, a new social network poised to offer a more custom experience compared to social network giant Facebook. Google+ is seamlessly integrated with all Google products (Gmail, Google.com, Maps, etc) and virtually any experience you have on the web. With the Google+ Button (similar to the Facebook “Like”), you signal to Google what you are interested in. When this is combined with what you are searching for and the sites you visited, Google has the capacity to aggregate these data points to create an experience just for you. This personalized experience is well positioned to be monetized via “interest based” advertising categories. For more information on Google+, download the Razorfish Google+ POV.

Background

The Google Display Network (GDN, formerly referred to as the Google Content Network) has an extremely large inventory pool of sites across the internet. GDN was initially launched on October 23, 2000, and in more than a decade has grown to one of the largest online advertising properties in the world.  It is estimated that this network reaches 89% of the internet in the U.S., with over 1 million publishers and 211 million unique users per week (comScore Networks machine-based panel). Paid search and display media ads can be served across this network, and audiences can be targeted in several different ways. Ads are served alongside content specified by the advertiser. This brief will take a deep dive into the targeting capabilities of the GDN, and the benefits of the GDN for a paid search advertiser.

GDN and Digital Advertising

Paid search advertising and display media advertising both have the opportunity to advertise within the GDN. The main difference between these two mediums is cost structure. Display media is usually bought on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) basis, meaning the advertiser pays each time 1,000 impressions are served. Thus, each advertiser’s display media impression must be a valuable placement.

Paid search advertising is usually purchased on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis. This means that the advertiser only pays when their ad is clicked on. With this cost structure, there is more flexibility in what sites these ads are placed. If the site is not compatible with the ad, then the ad will not get served and no cost is incurred. Paid search advertising using the GDN is an excellent way for an advertiser to reach a greater audience and still maintain efficiencies.

While targeting is critical for both types of digital advertising to reach the right audience at the right time, the implications of highly specific targeting are usually more essential for display media to ensure that impressions are not lost on an extraneous audience. However, all targeting options in the GDN are available for purchase on a CPM or CPC basis for both text and display ads, depending on the advertiser’s goals.

Types of GDN Targeting

Contextual Targeting - selecting specific keywords and/or topics where the advertiser would like an ad to appear. Contextual targeting is done on the page level, not the site level for maximum relevancy.

Keyword Contextual Targeting – advertisers select certain keywords that are relevant to them, and bid to appear alongside this content. This ad may appear on any site across the GDN where there are those keywords on the page. The scale of this method of advertising could be very large, depending on the keywords that are being targeted. It is usually recommended to layer this type of targeting with another method to increase relevancy and minimize waste.

Topic Contextual Targeting – advertisers select certain topics that are relevant to them, and bid for their ad to appear on pages of these sites.  This ad may appear on sites across the GDN that are categorized under that topic. This method is very broad-reaching as well, and is usually recommended in combination with another targeting method for an advertiser interested in reaching a specific audience.

Placement Targeting – advertisers select certain sites and/or sections of sites that are relevant to them, and bid for their ad to appear on pages of these sites. These sites can be selected by the advertiser using Google Tools such as Ad Planner, which uses Nielson data to index sites in the GDN based on:

• Demographics (Household Income, Age, Gender, Education)
• Online Activity (Other Sites Your Audience Visits, Keywords Your Audience Searches For)
• Interest Categories (i.e. Cooking & Recipes, Women’s Interests, Weddings)

In practice, Razorfish usually finds this method to be the most successful approach to the GDN, because sites/sections that index highly against a target market can be cherry-picked for extremely relevant targeting.

Behavior Targeting – Advertisers select certain topics that are relevant to them, and bid for their ad to appear across the GDN to users who match those interests. This method can be used to reach a large audience as well as a more targeted, niche audience. A user’s interests are either declared interests (through the Ad Preferences Manager), or are inferred based on their browsing behavior, specifically their recent and frequent site visits. This method of targeting is usually used for broad-reaching awareness campaigns or advertisers that seek site visitors that abandoned part of an intent funnel.

Inferred Demographic Targeting – advertisers bid on an audience where Google has inferred their demographic based on their GDN history. A user’s demographic is determined by a number of sources, including user registration data, 3^rd Party data and site composition. The registration data that is used in Inferred Demographic Targeting may come from YouTube registration, or other undisclosed sites in the GDN that capture registration information. Specific targeting sources cannot be cherry-picked, and Google takes all into account when inferring a demographic. The composition index of a site determines the inferred demographic. For example, if a person visits a fashion site, and then visits a parenting site, then Google may infer the demographic as a Female 25-54. If an advertiser uses Inferred Demographic Targeting for this target, then Google will serve an ad in the GDN network to that person. Google is constantly improving the dataset used to determine user Demographics and will incorporate new data sources as they become available. Additionally, this feature is currently in Beta and advertisers must request to be whitelisted by Google to participate.

This newer method of targeting may have benefits for an advertiser that has an extremely specific audience they wish to target, and should be tested alongside other GDN methods. However, because demo-inferred targeting is still in beta and takes very little user self-identification into account, it should not be used exclusively as a preferred GDN targeting method without the support of testing and analysis alongside the other methods.

Below is an example of how an advertiser can use a Google tool, Ad Preferences Manager, to target select audiences.

Remarketing – advertisers bid on an audience that visited their site (or a site which will allow them to implement a pixel) and their ad is displayed across the GDN. This method is often used for CRM marketing, or if the visitor was in the middle of a conversion funnel and then left. In the example given below, Special K can remarket those that visited the Special K Challenge Registration page but did not fulfill registration.

Hybrid GDN Targeting - GDN Targeting products can be combined together to reach a very specific, desired audience. As targeting layers increase, an advertiser will be reaching a more specific audience and a smaller percentage of the total population.

GDN Benefits for Paid Search

With the targeting capabilities and mass reach of GDN, there is a greater opportunity to expand paid search marketing campaigns. Expanding an advertiser’s paid search marketing presence will lead to impactful benefits such as:

1. Efficiencies – It has been established with prior campaign history that paid search is one of the most efficient means of advertising. However, paid search on sponsored search (i.e. Google.com) can sometimes be expensive if an advertiser is bidding on keywords where there are many other competitors, which may increase CPC and overall cost significantly. Including GDN and network targeting can be essential for an advertiser with many competitors who is concerned with efficiencies such as CPC and CPA (cost-per-action).

2. Reach – there are a finite number of searches for a set of keywords, and search trends must increase if an advertiser wants to expand their paid search marketing efforts. GDN offers an opportunity to expand reach beyond basic sponsored search results.

3. Relevancies – GDN is an opportunity for an advertiser to appear alongside relevant content or a target audience efficiently.

4. Testing - GDN is a way test sites and targets with minimal cost commitment (budgets can be set as low as $1 a day for only one day)

5. Turn-Key Implementation – ads are the same format as traditional paid search ads (130 characters) and can be created quicker than other advertising creative.

1. Al Davis

Died this week at the age of 82. Coined the motto “Just win, baby” for his team, the Raiders, building one of the most successful franchises in American Sports history.

2. Yom Kippur

The holiest and most solemn day in the Jewish religion, also known as the Day of Atonement. Lands on Tuesday, September 25th next year.

3. Brewers

A baseball team named after beer, 2 wins away from the World Series? America, #%&$ Yea!

4. UFC

Ultimate Fighting Championship. I have my money on Liu Kang.

5. Beyonce

Tabloids claim her baby bump is fake! A choreographer claims “dance moves” plagiarism on her latest music video! Wait… I know what’s happening here… Beyonce and Jay-Z are about to unveil a single with the hottest, newest dance move out there, the “Baby Bump.” Spoiler alert on the link below…

(link: http://www.gifbin.com/982265)

6. Phillies

The best team in baseball… before the playoffs began. At least they still have one of the best mascots in sports!

7. AMC

‘The Walking Dead’ comes back to life for a second season on AMC. Don Draper says… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsJSRP7cZVo

8. ‎Jersey Shore

In Season 4, they all sleep with each other! In Season 5, Valtrex replaces Murray’s Hair Wax as their Number #1 Product Placement.

9. Redbox

That thing, in front of the grocery store, that nobody ever used, until Netflix shot itself in the foot, ya know? $1 rentals are back in style.

10. iPhone 4s

Williamsburg bars go bankrupt, as hipsters set aside “facetime” with their new devices.

For the past two years, Razorfish has supported charity: water’s digital marketing efforts by managing donated media, providing social strategy consulting and manning their paid search program, funded by Google Grants. charity: water is an NYC-based nonprofit “bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.” As one of the most digitally savvy nonprofits, garnering the loyal support of big name celebrities (Adrian Grenier, Justin Bieber, and Jenna Elfman, to name a few) and thousands of people like you and me, charity: water has helped more than 2 million people in just 5 years. Earlier this month, they kicked off their 5^th anniversary “September Campaign,” the goal of which is to raise $1.2 million for a drilling rig.

The nonprofit space has been an interesting foray for the Razorfish search team. Earlier this year, Google launched the Google For Nonprofits program, which provides a wider range of free or discounted services for grantees.

Last year’s challenge was cleaning up the account in order to increase traffic volume. The charity: water SEM account was managed internally until the partnership began. We worked countless hours on:

-          Reorganizing charity: water’s keyword portfolio into semantic ad groups

-          Refreshing ad copy

-          Updating landing pages

-          Expanding the portfolio to cover geographically-oriented searches

And this year, in addition to all of the wonderful work we do for current clients, the team is focusing on performance optimizations to increase valuable traffic volume. Limits of the Google Grants program force us to be innovative. According to Search Account Executive Hana Lee, “I think our  biggest challenge is the $1.00 bid limit. For some brand exact terms, we are not in first position and often don’t appear at all. That leaves us to heavily depend on CTR to increase our quality score.” Things we search marketers take for granted – for example, conversion tracking – are not available to fully help us gauge the success of our efforts.

In addition to overcoming the bid limit, we aim to:

-          Study where our audience resides so we can effectively utilize geo-targeting options

-          Expand our negative keyword coverage

-          Utilize a stronger call to action

-          Utilize insights from Google Analytics

What are your thoughts on nonprofits in the digital space, useful KPI’s and the role of private sector companies in ‘giving back’?

The Foundational Approach to Facebook CPC Ads

Executing for a Single Interaction

When developing a foundational Facebook media plan, you need to incorporate the needs of the client request and a desired goal into the strategy.  A project brief and planning session can help create the framework of the campaign and answer questions, such as:

• Target audience (demographics:  M (25-49), educated, in GEO, with certain behaviors)
• Product information (price, seasonality, use cases)
• Goal (build a fan base, drive conversions on a website)

 

With this information you devise a marketing plan as usual, while utilizing Facebook’s vast amounts of targeting options to create detailed audience segments and match the right messaging to these segments.  By segmenting your audiences clearly in Facebook (or via a management tool like Marin’s Facebook Management Solution), you can efficiently manage and optimize your segments easily and:

• Measure performance by audience including location, age, likes & interests
• Filter new ads by targeting criteria
• Create automated bidding strategies by segment to desired goal

The execution of a foundational Facebook CPC ads campaign is to support a relevant set of placements for a SINGLE interaction. (Search Marketing minded approach).

Executing on Paid & Social Synergies

Executing for a Series of Interactions

To effectively target different segments that may have different goals (engagement vs. conversion) at different stages of a purchase cycle (or seasonality), you can build a more complex plan that feeds off and builds from its own momentum.    Unlike the foundational Facebook campaign that drives to a single desired action, this approach incorporates a series of consumer interactions.

It all starts with a Facebook ad with the goal of driving Fans and “Likes”.  This is where Paid & Social Media collide and can do powerful things together.  The Facebook CPC ads in a more intricate model take the consumer mindset and social interaction stage into account to drive a multi-stage cycle.

Introducing the Facebook “Like” Cycle

 

Facebook ads have a lot of opportunity to reach, communicate and interact with audiences within its own social environment, or cycle.  Break out of the mold of thinking of simply the foundation but applying a more complex and dynamic campaign execution that speaks to consumers at different stages of their brand engagement.

Let’s break down each segment further and discuss the possible consumer mindset within each:

1. AWARENESS:  Build a Fan Base

This might be the most obvious but could also be shortsighted and capped of its extended benefits.  Serving Facebook CPC ads (Sponsored Stories Ads, CPC ads or Video ads) to increase traffic, are valid ad types to make consumers aware of your Brand.  The capability of directly “Like”ing your brand fuels your Fan base that is not only a pool of loyal customers that can develop and share positive sentiments of your brand, but those positive sentiments can then be turned into your Sponsored Stories ads in your campaign.

Additionally, adding “Fans” to your brand’s Facebook page has more value than just counting the #s of likes.  Driving Facebook Likes can also benefit your SEO program as “Likes are the new Links.”  Further value are mentioned in the next segments of the “Like” Cycle.

2.  dWOM:  Facebook Interaction and Engagement

As the Fan base to your Facebook page grows the fans will inevitably voice their opinions and interact with the fan page.  The positive sentiments and stories (even simple “Likes”) can become Sponsored Stories ads that will show to a Fans’ Facebook Friends which acts like Digital Word of Mouth (dWOM).  This ad type brings a new power to online advertising as it integrates dWOM into its copy that it isn’t surprising to hear Facebook claims Sponsored Stories ads “perform twice as well in engaging users” compared to standard CPC ads on the network.

Facebook recently announced at AdWeek its belief in Facebook WOM and belief “that word-of-mouth conversations among friends are the most influential for getting a brand’s message across.”  They went on to cite comScore research “showing that fans and friends-of-fans of a Page are more likely to visit a store, website, and even purchase a product or service.”  For instance, “Fans and friends-of-fans of Starbucks spend 8% more in stores than the average Starbucks customer and transact 11% more frequently”.  (Source: Fast Company: Oct 3, 2011)

3. ACTION:   Convert Your Audiences

Now that you have an established (and growing) Facebook Fan Base and built out audience segments to target with Facebook you can run a Facebook CPC ads campaign with a direct response message that leads the consumer to a desired action.  This campaign can build off the momentum of the first 2 cycle segments that drove Fans and inspired Engagement with the brand to build demographic targeting segments.

 

4. CRM:  Consumer Retention

As you continue to build the fan base and loyal customers, you need to retain them and continue the conversation and build further loyalty.  From here you have access to the Fans through creating a Facebook email strategy or implement contests and promotions on Facebook.  Additionally, Sponsored Stories ads can be run throughout the year to not only drive new Fans or “Likes” but also to leverage positive sentiments and push those stories and wall posts to Friends of Friends as a Digital Word of Mouth (DWOM) campaign.

Conclusion:

Executing for a Series of Interactions:

The PPC Ads Facebook “Like” Cycle has the ability to continuously evolve, grow and drive results for your Brand.  The “Like” Cycle requires executing placements for a SERIES of interactions that aren’t easily identified in advance, but if planned for strategically can result in more sales.

It is a complex ecosystem that takes the basics of targeting, buying and optimizing to a new level of campaigning that is dynamic, complex and potentially more rewarding.  With Facebook’s movement of viewing the act of online Sharing as an indication of Value, it is a testament of the “Like” Cycle and how marketers should adapt to this new model.

Think through your own Brand’s campaign and how the “Like” Cycle fits your Brand’s needs.

Caveats:

* People can enter the cycle at any moment, not necessarily at #1.

**This cycle has many “legs” to it and doesn’t fully represent Social Media’s engagement and interaction experiences and benefits

***This cycle is a depiction of the number of ways to reach, engage and retain customers through Facebook ads and interactions.  We realize this cycle is not perfect or one size fits all.