Anforderungen aus der Praxis

Für jede Unternehmung gibt es gewisse Ziele, die regelmäßig über KPIs gemessen werden. KPI (Key Performance Indicator) bezeichnet laut Wikipedia eine „…betriebswirtschalftiche Kennzahl, anhand derer der Fortschritt oder der Erfüllungsgrad hinsichtlich wichtiger Zielsetzungen oder kritischer Erfolgsfaktoren innerhalb einer Organisation gemessen und/oder ermittelt werden kann.“

Die Erreichung der KPIs  muss unternehmensübergreifend, aber auch in jedem einzelnen Teilbereich verfolgt werden. Entsprechend müssen sich diese Ziele auf jeder Ebene sauber abbilden lassen. Für den Bereich Search Engine Marketing gilt dies natürlich auch. Was liegt nun näher als genau diese indivduellen Ziele direkt bei der Steuerung und Auswertung der SEM-Kampagnen zu berücksichtigen. Geht man noch einen Schritt weiter, dann erwartet man dass die Erreichung dieser Ziele auch über das Bid Management automatisiert möglich ist.

Nimmt man beides zusammen, dann ergibt sich die Anforderung aus der Praxis: Automatische Optimierung der SEM-Maßnahmen auf ganz individuelle KPIs des Unternehmens.

So geht´s mit Refined Ads

Refined Ads bietet Ihnen genau diese Flexibilität. Über die Funktionalität Custom Columns erstellen Sie zusätzliche, berechnete Spalten, ähnlich wie in Excel. Diese Spalten werden stets in der Benutzeransicht mitgeführt und können genutzt werden wie jede andere fixe Spalte auch: sortieren, filtern, reporten, … Im Traffic Control Tab erstellen Sie anschließend eine Regel, beispielsweise die Einhaltung eines bestimmten Verhältnis von Lead zu Sale. Statt nun auf Cost per Sale oder Lead beschränkt zu sein, nutzen Sie einfach eine Custom Column und schon steht der automatisierten Optimierung auf Cost per KPI nichts mehr im Weg!

Für Fortgeschrittene bietet sich auch der zusätzliche Einsatz von Min- und Max-Funktionen an. Hierüber können Sie Minimal- und Maximalwerte definieren, die für die entsprechenden Werte der Custum Colum gelten. Diese Werte gelten dann natürlich auch für den Traffic Controller als Grenzen.

Das ganze beschrieben im Guide: https://guide.refinedads.com/index.php/Custom_Columns. Bei Fragen hilft Ihnen unser Kundensupport gerne weiter.

A new Refined Ads release has been launched on Saturday with some great new features. Please read below for a quick summary on new features and changes in Refined Ads. For further information and instructions have a look in our Guide.

Image Ads

From now on we fully support Image Ads. Like Adtexts, Image Ads are delivered via the keyword selection within the corresponding Adgroup. They can have various formats, like Leaderboard (728×90), Banner (468×60), Small Square (200×200), Skyscraper (120×600), Wide Skyscraper (160×600), Medium Rectangle (300×250) and Large Rectangel (336×280). To manage your Image Ads within Refined Ads via different campaigns, you can use our internal clipboard. Furhermore a File Manager allows you to efficiently deal with these media files.

Guide: https://guide.refinedads.com/en/index.php/Image_ads

Traffic Control Change History

Often asked for, now it is included in Refined Ads: the Traffic Control Change History, showing you the changes Traffic Control did to your campaigns. You can filter the history in various dimensions.

…and a lot of additional features

And of course we did quite a lot minor improvements. For example you can now raise or lower the maxCPC for a bunch of keywords with an absolute value (e.g. every keyword maxCPC 0.05 € higher). This completes the already existing functionality, which did so far allow you to change the maxCPC in a relative way (new maxCPC is 110% of the old one) and to define an absolute new maxCPC (new maxCPC is 1.10 €).

Check out those new features right away in your Refined Ads Account! You will find additional information on the new features in the Refined Ads Guide.

The latest edition of Search Engine Strategies took place in Berlin and Refined Labs was also there. Lots of interesting search topics that were discussed by experts. It was a great event. But what else would you expect with Refined Labs founder Thomas Bindl as chairman? Here’s a short excerpt of what has happened.

Day 1

Covered Topics were the allocation of revenue in regards to long tail usage. This can be perfectly accomplished with a Bid-management tool. A well-chosen and optimized long tail can bring high revenue compared to spend. Take a look at our long tail case study with Google if you want to know more about the long tail and how you can optimize it.

Blue Summit discussed the relevance of brand keywords and how they affect the performance of your search campaign as well as the importance of the content network. The key findings in regards to booking the brand were, that the brand brings quality and history into your account and you get the possibility of an outcome oriented controlling of the customer via sitelinks.

Another session covered the value of the customer. You need to understand customer acquisition and where your customers come from. In addition we got an insight into how the search process is refined by the searcher and that 2 to 3 word queries are getting the highest CTRs in the German market.

In a very interesting session about cross media influence as well as the search process we learned that in the beginning the searcher is an informational searcher who becomes a transactional searcher and finally turns into a navigational searcher. Therefore the separation of brand and non-brand keywords is very important. A detailed analysis of the long tail and hence the funnel is essential. By the way, Refined Ads is a great tool to get the most out of the funnel and to accomplish these goals.

The last session of the day was a very entertaining session on link building strategies. Key findings were that the mixture of links is essential. There should be no pattern within the links – “bad links” are as essential as “good links”. Also the topic plays a key role within the link building process.

Day 2

Bill Hunt kicked off the second day with his keynote about “Getting ready for search 3.0”. What will search marketing offer in the future? Users will get a highly customized experience. The results will be based on interest or intent and there will be an increased opportunity to dominate the results listings. Search is becoming integrated with blogs, videos, PR and much more. This requires different thinking and companies need to evolve. More and more, the customer will become the center of all efforts. To say it with Bill Hunts’ words: “Stop talking start listening”.

The next session addressed the management of campaigns in multiple countries. If you manage campaigns in multiple countries it is very important to consider other search engines besides Google. In addition it is crucial to have an integrated way of controlling the campaign. Centralized or decentralized campaign management has its disadvantages. If you implement an integrated management you can minimize the disadvantages and get the best out of both worlds.

In a later session we heard that image SEO and video SEO is becoming more important since the advent of Google’s universal search, Bing and other search engine developments. But not only image SEO is changing. There will be a major shift in how you approach SEO and SEM. Universal search will change the search patterns. If companies do not adapt to those new developments quickly to gather data and to learn how those features work, they will most likely have major disadvantages within the market.

The following session showed the significance of social media. 700 million people are participating in social media worldwide. 43 million people are participating in Germany. A key message was, that if you want to use social media, it is crucial to know what you are doing. You need the ability to handle this massive power. You have to live social media.

Last but not least there was a very interesting session about the SEM and SEO tools and how you can facilitate the different tools that are out there on the market to get the best out of your SEM and SEO activities. Especially in SEO it is important to have an integrated tool that covers all areas. Some very interesting conclusions were that the value of classical organic search rankings is decreasing, SEO is getting more complex and more important at the same time and universal search again will play a very important role in the future. All told SEO Tools can help you to master these challenges.

So altogether we learned a lot and enjoyed our stay at SES Berlin. If you want to get a closer look and the presentations check out www.searchenginestrategies.de

Zusammen mit Google haben wir in den letzten Monaten untersucht, wie sich die Conversion-Rate in Abhängigkeit von der Einbuchung von Long Tail Keywords sowie dem Matchtype verhält. Die Studie bringt interessante Ergebnisse ans Licht.

Ausgangspunkt ist, dass viele Suchanfragen auf Google eine ähnliche Vorgehensweise der Internetnutzer wiederspiegeln. Zunächst werden generische Begriffe eingegeben, anschließend werden sie in weiteren Anfragen über die Marke bis hin zum Produkt verfeinert. Zum Schluss erfolgt der Klick, der letztendlich auch zur Conversion führt.

Das Ergebnis der Fallstudie ist eindeutig ausgefallen:

• 31 % aller Conversions benötigen mehr als einen Klick
• Die Conversion-Rate hängt eng mit den eingebuchten Matchtypes zusammen
• Je länger und spezifischer die Keywords, umso höher liegen Klick-Rate und Conversion-Rate

Direkt zur Studie (pdf): Fallstudie Google / Refined Labs: Mit dem Long Tail effizient zur Conversion

Was bedeutet das für Refined Ads und unsere Kunden?

• Die Optimierung des Long Tail ermöglichen wir über unsere Matched Keywords: buchen Sie Keywords als “broad” ein und analyieren Sie die Conversions der einzelnen Suchphrasen, die auf das Keyword gematched wurde. Zeigen sich hierbei einzelne Suchphrasen als Conversion-stark, so buchen Sie diese unmittelbar als “phrase” oder “exact” ein und senken damit deutlich ihre Kosten.
• Um nicht nur den letzten Klick zur Conversion zu erfassen, können Sie über Refined Ads die Gesamt-Conversion zusätzlich auch auf alle beteiligten Keywords verteilen, den sog. Search Funnel. Diesen können Sie sich ebenso graphisch anzeigen. So erkennen Sie, welche Keywords am Gesamterfolg beteiligt sind und vermeiden falsche Rückschlüsse über scheinbar unrentable Keywords. Denn: schalten Sie diese Keywords ab, bleibt die Gesamt-Conversion aus!

Customer Lifetime Value ist laut Wikipedia “… der Deckungsbeitrag, den ein Kunde während seines gesamten Kundenlebens realisiert, diskontiert auf den heutigen Tag.” Übertragen auf SEM-Maßnahmen sind dies alle Sales eines Kunden (abzüglich variable Kosten), der initial über SEM gewonnen wurde.

Anforderung aus der Praxis

Als Beispiel nehmen wir einen Onlineshop. Interessenten, die über SEM auf dessen Webseiten gelangen, lassen sich wie folgt kategorisieren:

• Nutzer, die auf das Werbemittel klicken, aber anschließend die Website ohne zählbare Aktion verlassen.
• Nutzer die einen Account anlegen oder Newsletter abonnieren, aber nichts kaufen.
• Nutzer die einen Kauf tätigen.

Letztlich möchte der Anbieter des Onlineshops zum einen wissen, wieviel Profit er bezogen auf die Gesamtlaufzeit der Kundenbeziehung erwirtschaften kann und zum anderen, welche Keywords gerade laufzeitstarke Kunden konvertieren.

Den Ansatz zur Ermittlung des Customer Lifetime Value bietet der Account oder ein Newsletter-Abo. Wann immer der nun registrierte Nutzer wieder kommt und über seinen Account eine Bestellung aufgibt, sollte diese Bestellung den ursprünglichen SEM-Spendings zugeordnet werden, über die der Kunde zum ersten mal gewonnen wurde. Das kann zum einen ein Erstsale sein, der auf ein initiales Newsletter-Abo folgt, oder jede Wiederbestellung über einen bereits betehenden Accont. So lässt sich eine treffsichere Aussage zur Rentabilität der Werbeausgaben treffen.

So geht´s mit Refined Ads

Letztlich geht es aus technischer Sicht darum, spätere Sales einem früheren Lead oder Sale zuzuordnen. Ganz egal wann und wo dieser stattfindet, auch wenn sich der Nutzer an einem anderen Computer befindet, ohne den von uns beim Klick platzierten Cookie, oder der Erstsale erst mehrere Wochen später stattfindet. Dies lässt sich problemlos realisieren, wenn der Shopanbieter, also unser Kunde, und wir eine gemeinsame eindeutige ID für den Webseitenbesucher im System hinterlegt haben und bei jeder Wiederbestellung diese ID mit dem zugehörigen Warenkorbwert an uns übertragen wird. Wir können mit dieser ID den Wert des erneuten Sales dem ursprünglichen Click zuordnen und so in Refined Ads den Customer Lifetime Value ausweisen.

Zur praktischen Umsetzung muss der Kunde in Refined Ads den Redirector-Type “Custom Redirect mit SubID” wählen und die von uns im Rahmen des Redirecting an ihn übergebene SubID in seinem System mit dem Kundenkonto zusammen hinterlegen. Bei jedem neuen Sale übergibt uns der Kunde einen Trackingaufruf mit dieser SubID. Das ist schon alles, um den Rest kümmern wir uns.

Customer Lifetime Value – here I come.

Das ganze beschrieben im Guide: https://guide.refinedads.com/index.php/Subid. Bei Fragen hilft Ihnen unser Kundensupport gerne weiter.

A new Refined Ads release has gone live last week with many practical and useful features. Here is a quick summary of what has changed to keep you up-to-date. For further information and instructions have a look in our Guide.

Placements

Refined Ads now fully supports the use of placements. You can set up a placement campaign just like a keyword campaign. This makes the handling of placements very easy. And it gets even better. We provide you with many features you won’t find anywhere else, like matched placements. You can also use Traffic Control with placements.

Guide: https://guide.refinedads.com/en/index.php/Placement

Custom Columns

The Custom Columns got greatly extended with lots of new functions. You are now able to apply advanced formulas, like Minimum, Maximum and more… Just check it out!

Guide: https://guide.refinedads.com/en/index.php/Custom_Columns

Funnel Exports via GUI

You are now able to export a funnel report directly via the GUI. The report can be aggregated by Keyword or by Funnel for a custom time period.

Guide: https://guide.refinedads.com/en/index.php/Funnel#Funnel_Export

New Account Reports

There are a couple of new Account Reports on Adgroup and Campaign Level which can be scheduled via the GUI. You can choose between Reports for Keywords, Placements, Adtexts, Adgroups and Campaigns.

Guide: https://guide.refinedads.com/en/index.php/Report

Omniture Data Import

Another great extension is the possibility to import and display Omniture Transaction Data in Refined Ads. Just let us know and we will set up for you.

Guide: https://guide.refinedads.com/en/index.php/Trafficprovider

Duplicate Keyword Tool

The Duplicate Keyword Tool just got even more handy. You can filter your results in different ways to get just the duplicate Keywords you are looking for you.

Guide: https://guide.refinedads.com/en/index.php/Duplicate_Keywords

Check out those new features right away in your Refined Ads Account! You will find additional information on the new features in the Refined Ads Guide.

We were launching a small release for Refined Ads two days ago. This release is not a major one, but one that brings along some really interesting options for finetuning your campaigns

Transaction Export

First, we are providing an export functionality for all transactions recorded via Refined Ads. Use this tsv-file to find out about tracking issues, compare with other company internal tracking systems and do special sales reportings.

Restrict rights of subusers

Second, we are providing more ways to work with subusers. From now on you can limit each subuser to certain Client Accounts in Refined Ads.  These users can only see and work on Client Accounts you have chosen for them. For example provide a login for your customers to certain areas of your Refined Ads account to make reporting easier. You can even go further and give them read-only access.  Or split up the whole Refined Ads account in portions for each account manager.

Find duplicate keywords in your account

Using the same keyword in different campaigns oder adroups can have serious impact on your traffic and profit. As the search engine will only publish one ad for this keyword, you no longer can control which campaign is currently delivered.

This is even worse if you have duplicates in different accounts because of a very large set of products or keywords. So you would actually bid against you as only one ad from your domain will show up.

By finding these duplicates you can decide which one to pause and which one to continue. Our new tool in Refined Ads makes finding them just one click away! Very easy, very handy, very very useful! Try out.

Choose between two Transaction Recording Modes

The last feature in this release is a very tricky one. It is about the time when to track a transaction. There are two ways to do so. One is to use the timestamp when the ad was clicked. The other one is to use the timestamp when the transaction actually happened.  As many transactions don’t happen right after the click on the ad but after up to 30 days or sometimes even more, both ways can vary a lot. Using the timestamp of the transaction has the advantage that historic transaction data is not changed every day and the data is reliable for the future. Using the timestamp of the click on the ad allows better comparison between actual costs and income regarding for each day, but comes along with the disadvantage of changing historic transaction data.

Per default Refined Ads ist using the timestamp of the transaction to make sure historical data is constant. If you wish to choose the other option, feel free to. There is no good or bad, it is more what you personally prefer for your business. By the way, Google Conversion Tracking is using the timestamp of the click. So if you want to compare both tracking numbers, this might be the better option for you.

As always, we hope that you enjoy these new features. If you should have any questions about how to use them, have a look in our guide under http://guide.refinedads.com or give us a call.

Last week again new features have gone live. We would therefore like to give you a quick explanation on what is new and how to use it.

Traffic Controller on Strategic Groups

Maybe you are asking yourself: What´s with Stategic Groups, why does Refined Labs keep fussing over them?
The answer is simple: Because it gives you the opportunity to break with the strict rules of account structures. Even more so now:
Traffic Control can now be implemented on strategic groups. If two or more rules apply to one keyword, an average value is calculated. This might be the case if traffic control is already implemented on a keyword via Projects or if there is an overlapping of two strategic groups. This makes handling your account even more convenient as you may now use the traffic controller on elements from e.g. different campaigns just by adding them to one strategic group.

Fast edit in Strategic Groups

We want you to get the best out of your account in the minimum amount of time. Clicking from one tab to the other just to change the status of a keyword takes a lot of time. So we figured it is better if our IT works long hours than if our customers do.
And here is what they came up with: Fast edit functionality. Now you might think: Not exactly groundbreaking, they already have this. We did, but we never had it in Strategic groups before. You can hereby change the status of your Keywords, AdGroups and even Campaigns quick and simple.

Bulk Export for Keywords and Adtexts

The Bulk Export makes it possible to export Keywords or Text Ads as a tsv. file, work on them on your local workstation and afterwards upload the file to Refined Ads.

New Traffic Controller Rules

The Traffic Controller analyzes the data and provides you with recommendations to help you reach your goals. But first of all you have to be able to define what you want out of your Campaigns, Adgroups or Keywords. Maybe you have done this indirectly by defining a custom column, e.g. set a max CPC for your custom column? You can now define this Max CPC as a traffic controller rule.
Maybe your goal is not to have a certain MaxCPC but to reach a certain position or a specific cost/earnings ratio. Now you can do that? Define your own goal via “Optimize for the following value”. Just as you already know it from the custom columns you can define a formula and the Traffic Controller tells you the best way to reach your goals.

We hope that you enjoy these new features. If you have any questions about how to use the new features, have a look in our guide under http://guide.refinedads.com.

As already announced we successfully performed a Refined Ads release . To keep you up to date on the new features, please read below:

Traffic Control for Custom Columns:

As you already know, Refined Ads supports custom columns. For those of you who are not familiar with this brand new feature from our last release, a little repetition: Define your own metrics, just like you would do in Excel. Use any columns in Refined Ads to combine with others, multiply them, add constants and many more possibilities.

From now on you can use your Custom Columns for Traffic Control. How cool is that! No longer just CPC or CPL, from now on it´s CPYou. You define the metrics and Refined Ads controls your success. Instead of using Costs or Leads and so on, choose the corresponding Custom Column in the Traffic Control tab.

Guidelinks:

Mainly focusing on the newbies but also very useful for professionals being in doubt on a certain detail: We provide little links in the application bringing you to the corresponding article in the Refined Ads Guide. Whenever you see a little “RFA-?” just click it and we show you how to use the requested functionality.

Account Reports:

Schedule a report for your whole Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing account on a keyword or adtext level. Meaning you get all performance data not just per adgroup or per campaign but also for the whole account. Go to Statistics and “Schedule Report”.

With the recent release of Refined Ads, which we performed at the beginning of March 2009, interesting new features have gone live.

Custom Columns: Definitely my favorite. Define your own metrics, just like you would do in Excel! Use any columns in Refined Ads to combine with other, multiply them, add constants and many more possibilities.

To give you an example: If you are optimizing on ROAS, just define the column yourself by combining cost and revenue data.Another one: If you would like to know which keywords have a maxCPC that is set much higher than the First Page Bid. Just subtract the maxCPC column from the First Page Bid column and order the grid along this new column. A little outlook: These columns will also be available for Traffic Controller very soon. You could define a column that says First Page Bid + 10% and use Trafic Control to set the maxCPC to this Custom Column. This settings allows you to make sure you definitely show up on the first page.

Minor improvements: Full support for all languages and character sets. If you decide to run campaigns in Korea, Japan, Poland, … Go ahead. Refined Ads now supports all languages and character sets. Furthermore we provide you a history of certain processes that were running between Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing and Refined Ads.

Have a look in your Refined Ads account and get a different view and more out of your data! Customers find additional information in the Refined Ads Guide (https://guide.refinedads.com/index.php/Customizable_columns).