OK, I’m Officially eating my shorts. Google does run a Super Bowl ad, and it is indeed a generic search focused message. I was oh so wrong.

I like it – not sure why ‘Parisian Love’ was chosen as the theme, but hey maybe they’re trying to appeal to a global audience.

Thoughts?

Here’s the Ad:

Wow! …maybe I won’t eat my shorts for real…

But the rumor from Mashable & Search Engine Land seems to point to a Google TV AD for this year’s Superbowl.

SEL: “A Google Super Bowl Ad? Eric Schmidt Hints At It”

Mashable: “Google Buys Super Bowl Ad? [RUMOR]”

The rumor all started after Schmidt posted a cryptic Tweet saying:

Can’t wait to watch the Superbowl tomorrow. Be sure to watch the ads in the 3rd quarter (someone said “Hell has indeed frozen over.”)

All I can say is OMG – I never actually thought Google would run a TV ad. And to be honest, I still don’t think they will… not for ’search’ anyway…

If there is an ad, I’m with Mashable – surely it’s the Nexus One they’re promoting. Or alternatively Local Search? Or maybe they’ve a Google Tablet to launch as they thought they’d start with a bang!.

Maybe they just want to do a massive brand campaign – Google Kicks ass, connect everywhere and anywhere, search lots, get targeted ads you will love….

Who knows, but it’s got to be consumer focused, and not ’search engine’ consumer focused, if that makes sense…

Update: Eating My Shorts if the Youtube AD Blitz terms and conditions are anything to go by…

If you are  a ‘Do it yourself’ kind of person then this new series is definitely for you. Each week I will be posting new articles on how to manage your PPC campaigns yourself.  It doesn’t matter if you are a small local business, large corporate, or online e-tailer, there is sure to be something here for everyone.

Why am I doing this? Well honestly, I’m pretty tired of all the small to medium business’ out there (quite possibly you!) who are getting ripped off by sub-standard service providers in the online marketing space who charge too much and deliver too little to their clients.

And by too little I mean in some instances only ~ 50% of the money the client spends goes in to actually buying ads on Google, Yahoo, or MSN.

This is certainly not the case across the board, and there are many PPC providers in the small business and Local search space who do a great job, and can justify the ~50% margins that they charge… After all, they too need to pay the bills.

But I’m here to tell you that with a little bit of time, maybe 30 minutes a day, you can actually manage your own Pay-Per-Click for your business and ensure that 100% of you money goes into buying search ads, not just 50%!

So, if you would like to learn PPC and keep up with all the latest and greatest techniques on running PPC campaigns for yourself then please sign up to my newsletter here!

See you on the other side!

Regards

Leigh Hanney

Droolr.com – the latest site from Stateless Systems – has launched!

I may be slightly biased*, but the inner Geek in me just loves this!

The idea is simple. Users find something cool online and then share it with the Droolr community.

Once listed, the users of Droolr then vote for Gadgets that they like via a  Want? voting button.

Other nifty features:

• Sign in via twitter of facebook accounts.
• Create wishlists of gadgets you love.
• Follow other Droolr’s so you can be notified about the stuff they WANT.
• Earn ‘Karma Points’ when other users ‘Want’ items that you’ve added – be the ‘Top Karma’ dude! …so far I have low karma…

You can add comments as well as recommend other sites to find particular gadgets shared by other peeps.

There are a few screen shots below. But do be sure to go check it out!

*Full disclosure: I work at Stateless Systems

You heard it here first, Google AdWords will allow advertisers to independently target the Apple iPad in AdWords!

Ok – so I made that up… completely fabricated… but it’s made me think.

On the 21st of January, Google AdWords blog announced that they’ve now release new targeting options for mobile ads. It’s a good read so go take a look.

I’m going to cover mobile PPC advertising in later posts, but the thing that caught my eye is this image that they posted…

In the ‘Devices’ section above you’ll note how Google now allow advertisers to target specific devices: – Android, iPhone/iPod Touch and Palm WebOS. This is actually huge for certain markets as it will allow precision targeting for platform specific applications.

Anyway, with the launch of the iPad today I thought, hmmm will the iPad just be another addition to the ‘apple’ targeting? eg. iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad, or will it be a device category in it’s own right?

My gut feel, and if what Steve Jobs has said is true, iPad may well open up a whole new level of possibilities for many different market segments. Surely then if this is the case, the iPad will indeed be an individually targeted device within AdWords because ultimately there are going to be products, services and applications that users will be more likely to interact with on a tablet type device than they would on an iPhone. Time will tell.

OK – Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) in AdWords , Yahoo, AdCenter – and how easy it is to get it wrong…

For those of you who don’t know, DKI is when you can add in the search query (keyword in you list that triggered the impression), dynamically into the ad text.

It can be a good time saver if used well, and with a well structured account. However it can also come out the other end royally screwy, so be warned.

Now, we’ve all seen PPC ads that suck, like these ones, yes?

And I was going to go on about how crappy they were ’selling children’, wholesale even from ebay – nice …

…but then I remembered the ad I wrote using DKI 12 months ago…

So – it’s easy to do, even for the best of us, so be careful. DKI should only be used if you’re sure that you’re ads are going to make sense.

Google AdWords Ad Preview Tool is good for this

Best thing you can do is make certain that your adgroups are themed and structured correctly in the first place. DKI may then work quite well.

That said however, if you’ve got the structure right, and nice small ad groups, then you shouldn’t technically need dynamic Keyword insertion, but rather be able to focus on the best possible Headline / ad text for that group.

Anyway – bit of a laugh.

Well, it looks like the ‘Top Commentators’ links at the bottom of these pages has been reset for 2010!’

So it’s a ‘free for all’ now if you want to get your ‘do follow’ link from the ’sem samurai’!

But please make the comments worthy and relevant otherwise I’ll kick your virtual ass!

Naturally, spam, and shite will be be ‘cleansed’

…funny comments get bonus points.

A little nugget here regarding targeting your Google Content Network ads to Gmail,  (thanks to Perry Marshall for the tip!).

This video briefly shows you not only how to placement target gmail (mail.google.com), but also explains how to get into the ‘funbox’, that little space above your messages. (screen shot below). Good luck

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New video from Google UK.  Quick overview of their Search based keyword tool (sktool) www.google.com/sktool/.

I’ll cover the search based keyword tool in more detail in a later post, but if you know nothing about it then this works as a intro…

(animation is.. interesting…).

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