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).

Another two new features in Refined Ads that went live in Q4 2008 were the By Time Report and the Keyword/Adtext Statistics.

The By Time Report allows not only a structural but also a time-discrete view of traffic data. You can compare every level of your account, such as the whole account, any campaign, AdGroup or just a single keyword, by day, by week, by month or even by year. By using the Strategic Groups you can also group the elements corresponding to your needs and get a time-discrete view on your individual grouping.

This feature allows you to compare the performance of the respective element in the course of time. Data you don´t get anywhere else. Very useful, i would say!

Second new view are the Keyword/Adtext Statistics, showing the clicked ads of keywords and the adequate keywords of ads.

This view allows you to analyze which Adtext performs best with which keyword and therefore set up a corresponding new Adgroup structure. You will be surprised how the individual per-Keywords-per-Adtext performance differs from the overall Adgroup-to-Adtext performance! Use this information to lower your ad-spendings. Also data you don´t get anywhere else.

You can view the Keyword/Adtext Statistics by clicking on the corresponding keywords. Just the same as you get the Matched Keywords.

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

If you are interested in improving your PPC skills and based in Europe, you should consider blocking March 19th in your calendar. We’re currently working on a nice, free(!) event that day in Munich for PPC Managers. If you’re already a client and using Refined Ads, make sure to also block March 20th for a second day of Advanced PPC knowledge. More details will follow within the next month, but rest assured it will be worth coming to Munich. Also make sure to check back frequently as we have a maximum number of seats and expect them to fill up quickly.

We would like to take the chance to present one of our new – and very strong – features gone live in Refined Ads in Q4 2008: The Search Funnel.

The Funnel allows you to associate one Lead or Sale with more than one keyword if the same user clicked on multiple of your ads with various keywords. It is extremely useful to see how pretty generic keywords lead to a more specific search that converts. The data analyzed for this type of reporting currently includes the last 30 days till the conversion takes place. The best part is that you can set to which extend a click attributes to a conversion and have a percentage set to it that is visible in the statistics and used in the Traffic Controller, our bid management.

Funnel settings can be set under Administration. Check the desired checkbox:

• Traditional setting: The keyword that was clicked last will be credited 100%.

• First and last clicks win the most: The keywords that were clicked first and last will be credited a fixed percentage, other clicks will share the remainder missing from 100%.

• All clicks are the same: The credit will be divided by the number of clicks that lead to a conversion (up to a maximum of five clicks).

• All clicks are individual: You can specify a value to the last five clicks leading to a conversion.

• Last click is the big click: You can set a value for the last click (up to 99%) and the rest will be divided between previous clicks.

The data created by the funnel can be analysed as individual funnels (click history) or as value in Elements.

If the transaction column is underlined, you can display the funnel dialog by clicking on the value. The dialog displays the clicks per line. The first value (left) of the line is the keyword that was clicked first. The last value (right) is the last keyword before the transaction (lead / sale) The column Revenue does not display the proportionate value of the keyword, but the sum of the transactions.

Check out this new features right away in your Refined Ads Account! Customers find additional information on that feature the the Refined Ads Guide (https://guide.refinedads.com/index.php/en:Funnel).

If you’re interested in seeing Refined Ads live, please contact us and we’re happy to schedule a demo of our SEM Management software.

Also Thomas Bindl did an interview about SES London back at SES Chicago a few weeks ago with some more information about the biggest search conference in Europe.

Da wir in den letzten Monaten eine Vielzahl von Neuerungen implementiert haben und neue Kunden von der Leistungsfähigkeit von Refined Ads überzeugen konnten, ist es hier leider etwas ruhiger geworden. Wir planen jedoch für die Zukunft bei jedem Release ein Post zu machen um die neuesten Entwicklungen direkt zu erfahren. Wer noch näher an der Entwicklung von Refined Ads und dem SEM Markt sein will, dem sei ein Blick auf die Refined Ads Twitter Seite empfohlen:

http://twitter.com/refinedads

Wir haben einige tolle Features geplant, die zusammen mit unseren Events die Effizienz unserer (zukünftigen) Kunden noch weiter erhöhen werden. Mehr dazu bald hier und auf Twitter.

Zudem wünschen wir allen Lesern ein gutes und erfolgreiches 2009!

Im Zuge der laufenden Bemühungen um die Technologie-Führerschaft wurde Refined Ads um ein neues Feature erweitert: Über die Spalte “Content Clicks”, die standardmäßig zu jedem Keyword-Eintrag angezeigt wird, können Sie identifizieren welche Keywords einer Anzeigengruppe Klicks aus dem Google Content-Netzwerk bekommen. Die Auswertung umfasst die genaue Zahl der Klicks und vor allem ob diese Klicks konvertieren. Dies erlaubt Ihnen ab sofort eine gezielte Nutzung und Optimierung auch im Google Content-Netzwerk. Die bisherigen Optionen „deaktivieren“ oder „aufsummiert, blind laufen lassen“ sind somit überholt.

Über Refined Ads: http://www.refinedads.com