It seems nothing is sacred in our AdWords tool chest anymore! Hot on the heels of changing how Exact and Phrase match work,    Google have now updated ad rotation settings to, quite frankly, ensure they maximise overall ‘clicks’ on their network.

‘Facepalm’ as Search Engine Watch have also said

So what exactly have they changed on us?

As advertisers we have long had the ability to define how our ads are rotated within ad groups:

1. ‘Optimise for Clicks’,
2. ‘Optimise for Conversion’, or
3. ‘Rotate’.

I’m assuming you know where to find these settings (campaign settings > advanced settings > Ad delivery: ad rotation…) but essentially they have, for a long time, allowed us to align out Ad delivery with basic campaign coals or tactics.

eg. After traffic – optimise for clicks, after sales – optimise for conversion, want to scientifically improve CTR & CR – rotate them!

No surprises here.

However Google have now said the following:

Starting next week, the “rotate” setting for ad rotation will change. Instead of rotating creatives for an indefinite period of time, this setting will only rotate for a period of 30 days. After that, the setting will then optimize to show the ads expected to generate the most clicks.

After 30 days (when there have been no edits to any ad within a particular ad group) the ads will begin to optimise for ‘clicks’. Each time an edit is made, the counter is reset for another 30 days.

There is no doubt here that Google have run the numbers and see a great opportunity to drive increased clicks (revenue) from advertisers who may be using the ‘rotate’ setting with minimal actual testing an optimisation going on. There will also be many advertisers with far too many ads in their rotating ad groups, diluting impressions across all and potentially hindering the account’s ‘performance’.

This however brings us to the crux of the issue. Google is defining performance for all as ‘clicks’. I don’t know about you, but for most advertisers, performance is about conversion, not ‘clicks’ alone.

This change will enable us to provide users with the most relevant ad experience and should help advertisers improve the performance of their AdWords accounts.

I don’t have a problem with Google making money, and we can pretty safely say that this change will help Google achieve more clicks from certain AdWords campaigns. What I am concerned about is the way Google have given us no option to opt out, or change, the behavior that occurs after he 30 day period.

Whya can’t we choose to default to ‘optimise for conversion’ after the 30 day period?

So,  Who will be most affected? What can we do moving forward?

Any ad group that does not receive a statistically valid number of clicks within a 30 day period is impacted the most – eg. there will not be enought data to make a call on the winning variant before you neet to reset the test by making an update.Those where volume is high can, at a minimum, produce a winning variant.

However the problem extends father than this.

Even with high click volumes, you will still have to remember, (after 30 days) to either reset the test (by changing something), set to optimise for converson, or pause all but the winning ad in a ad group, until you are ready to test again. This could work – but the challenge is scale. If you’re working in an agency on multiple accounts, get ready to fill up your calendar with ‘campaign ad setting reminders’ because no matter what your strategy is from this day forward, once those ads stop rotating, you’ll be optimising to the highest in CTR / click volume.

One last point – apparently, once this change is live, ad groups that are set to rotate, but have not had an update in the last 30 days, will start optimising to ‘clicks’ automatically.

When you hover over the status icon in the Keywords tab, you will now see a rating for each measure, ‘Expected clickthrough rate”, “Ad Relevance” & “Landing page Experience”. The ratings are:- Average, Above Average or Below Average.

This should be a welcome addition for most advertisers (direct and agency) as it takes away a big chunk of the guess work and may actually save you time!.

This scenario may sound familiar to you:  You may be  (or have a client or a manager who is) obsessed with the QS for a particular group of terms. You may have them sitting at 7 or 8 out of 10, but no matter what you do, you’re cannot get it any higher…

STOP, breath slowly, and listen to me… As far as QS goes, NOT ALL KEYWORD TERMS ARE CREATED EQUAL. If the intent of the query is not all that commercial, QS will likely never get to double digits. So now you can stop wasting your time.

Check out the new rating for your keywords, and get a more accurate read on the Quality Score potential. If you’re getting Average to above average on all three measures, but your QS is only at 7, then perhaps this is close to as good as it gets for that term.

Image credit: Inside Adwords blog.

Attack the low hanging fruit first – look for terms that are performing well for you (CTR ,CR, CPA – whatever your goals), but have below average ratings for one or more areas of the QS and focus on at least getting those to Average or above average.

Don’t waste your time obsessing over why you can’t get a QS 8 keyword to QS 10. if the ratings are telling you you are above average, then perhaps it’s as high as it’ll go.

Let me know what you think of this new reporting feature in the comments.

## Update: It’s worth being clear that this IS NOT a change to the way Quality Score or Ad Rank is calculated, It’s simply a change to the way Google are reporting it.

Gideon Sundback celebrated in Google doodle

Editor’s Note: I now know who to curse when the zipper gets stuck!

Interesting move for Google as it will no doubt increase impressions inventory and clicks revenue for certain keyword / account segments, but I would be careful when deciding whether to actually turn this on as it may not be the right move for all account types and verticals. Especially if you have already invested time in building out a kick-butt exact match campaign!!

If you’re only running broad match campaigns at the moment, then no stress, Google already love your money you long time.

Naturally, this will actually work well to help expand exact match impressions, but will it maintain a laser focus on intent and relevancy???  err. no. (which is why you built an exact match campaign – right?)

I’m seeing the setting available in AdWords now – But Google have said that the feature will not go live until mid May.

What was not clear from the Inside Adwords blog post was whether this setting would actually be the new default campaign setting, but looking at a live account now, the modified exact and phrase match (MEXPHAM for short!) looks to be disabled by default. phew, but do check your own exact / phrase match campaigns.

Screen shot of the options in campaign setting tab FYI!

## Update: I just checked another account and an exact match campaign defaulted to ‘Include plurals, misspellings and other close variants’. Cheeky Google.

To “celebrate” this momentous occasion, Search Engine Land and BlueGlass have collaborated to bring us this shiny new infographic.

If you’re interested in more detail regarding the Panda update I also encourage you to take some time out to read the full post on SEL.

Google Panda Update - One Year On

Basically, 99designs aims to connect a passionate design community from around the world with customers seeking designs… This community then ‘compete’ to produce the best design for a given job. The winning designer gets paid, and the customer receives quality, and affordable, design services. win win.

In essence, 99designs allows you to ‘crowd source’ designs from all over the world, and then only pay for the design you actually like. Very different from the ‘old’ model and certainly rubs some of the purists the wrong way, but hey, it works!

I recently read that in just 3 years, 99designs has paid out an amazing $25 million to their designers and grown the business to the point where over 1,000 new design contests are launched every week. At present they are paying out around $1.2 million dollars to designers every month.

I’m going to briefly discuss the logo design side of the business but you can get pretty much anything designed with these guys from web sites, banner ads, business cards and stationary, right through to T-shirt designs.

Now, I’ve a confession to make, I personally have not yet used their design services (you can tell by my lack of logo!) but I’ve been recommending them for ages to friends and co-workers as I’ve constantly heard good things about the results.

About 3 months ago a built a site for my father’s finance broking business – CapitalBrokers.com.au (using Genesis Framework from Studiopress – best. wordpress. framework. ever.)

Now you can jump ahead and see the final logo if you like, but you’ll miss the story…

David (my father) has been running his own commercial finance broking businesses for the last 27 years and has rebranded probably about 5-6 times throughout this period.

However after running his competition on 99designs it’s pretty safe to say that this was probably one of the least expensive logo / stationary designs, but also the most  rewarding, he’s ever done!

How successful was David’s logo competition? Try over 150 designs from close to 40 individual designers! David’s logo competition was so successful in fact that a customer service rep at 99designs actually asked him how he’d done it!

The key, it seems, was communication.

David didn’t offer any more money. It was a standard $295 logo comp. What he did do however was offer continuous feedback to the designers who had already engaged with the project. For this effort he was rewarded!

Crowd sourcing for logos, web sites or other design needs may not be for everyone. But if you are in the market for a new look or identity then for a few hundred $’s it’s definitely a sound investment.

Give 99Designs a try today!

Pro Tip:

• If you want to maximise the number of logo entries you get, it’s not always just about the $’s, if one designer is submitting solid logo’s but you have ideas for how they could be better, let them know. Not only will they submit more variations. But the end product will probably be of an even higher standard as a result.

And here’s Davids logo!

Capital Brokers Australia's winning logo

Disclaimer: Some links used in this site are via affiliate networks which may reward me for purchases made after someone (you know you want to) clicks on these links. So thanks in advance.

Will 2012 be the year of even more consolidation in the digital performance agency space? I think so, but we will have to wait and see!

Here’s FirstClick’s press release…

FirstClick Consulting, Australia’s leading independent search marketing consultancy specialising in SEM, SEO, Conversion Optimisation and Digital Strategy, has acquired MediaMax, a digital performance agency that services clients including STA Travel and Schering – Plough.

MediaMax, founded in 2005, will operate under the FirstClick brand. As part of the acquisition, FirstClick welcomes James Tait, founder of MediaMax, who will join FirstClick as Client Services Director.

Grace Chu, CEO of FirstClick says, “We saw a fantastic opportunity to expand our reach into the travel sector by acquiring MediaMax. Not only are the MediaMax clients strong, premium brands but the MediaMax team, headed up by James Tait, allows us to grow our team rapidly and to an extremely high standard.”

FirstClick has also added three more premium brands to its impressive portfolio of clients. Medibank, Fuji Zerox and Amaysim have all appointed FirstClick Consulting to manage their search marketing campaigns. All three brands join the likes of ANZ, realestate.com.au, news Digital Media and seek.

Grace continues, “I’m thrilled with the rate of growth FirstClick is experiencing. We’re really excited to be working on such strong brands that are committed to leading the way in search marketing. We’ll continue to do what we do best – and that’s make money for our clients through strategic search marketing.”

Although specialists in search, FirstClick also provides the latest thinking and out-of-the-box solutions across ROI strategy, Local Search, Social Optimisation, Mobile Search, Video Search, Performance and Display Networks, Analytics and Training.

Wow. 13 years old.

Welcome to your teenage years. Angst, anger and rebellion to ensue.

I got interrupted by my 3 year old during the set up process so I’m sorry if you visited and the site looked a bit.. err… odd!  All should be well now.

Please let me know what you think in the comments!

(And… that link above is a our affiliate link. So if you’re thinking about buying a studiopress theme then please buy through that link and help support semsamurai.com!)

So, what is f-commerce? Essentially it’s the buying/selling of goods via social networks (specifically Facebook). In a broader sense we are  talking about Social Commerce, buying and selling via social networks.

Sales can either be through Facebook directly of via Facebook/social  integration with an external site (eg via the social graph).

I’ve embedded the slidshare slides below but I also wanted to highlight a few key points of interest, expecially for the Asian market. (thanks Socialcommercetoday for the summary!)

• Global e-commerce is set to grow to $963 bn (19.4% p/a growth) in 2013
• By 2013 the largest regional e-commerce market will be Asia ($323 bn vs $235 bn, vs Europe $283 bn)
• The Web will be involved in 53% of total retail sales by 2014
• Currently e-commerce on social networks is small – 27% of consumers ready to buy physical goods on social networks.
• The 5 Benefits of F-Commerce: Customer Insight, Customer Experience, Customer Loyalty, Customer Advocacy, Facebook ROI

There are two types of F-Commerce:

• “On Facebook” (F-Stores, Facebook Credits, Facebook Deals),
• “With Facebook” (Facebook Ads, Custom Apps, Facebook Places)