PPC Chat Streamcap – PPC in 2012

This week Matt Umbro (@Matt_Umbro) came up with a question set, reflecting on the year, titled “PPC in 2012.” The following is the transcribed Streamcap from the live chat:

Q1: What was your favorite PPC Chat of 2012? Why?

• Mine was Recent one on Product Listing ads. – Manoj Pandey (@_MAN0J)
• My favorite chats related to Google Shopping – lots of great info shared during these chats and awesome discussion. – Matt Umbro (@Matt_Umbro)
• I’d have to say the Google Shopping PLA week. Learned a lot, good conversations. – Ginny Marvin (@GinnyMarvin)
• I think the one about Dynamic Search Ads was very helpful. Great to get a feel for a brand new feature. – Martin Rottgerding (@bloomarty)
  • Utilizing this feature a lot more because of this chat. – Matt Umbro
• Every #PPCcusschat – Neil Sorenson (@iNeils)
• Don’t have a favorite. I learned from many. But the ones abt PLA are prolly least fave b/c we have no client who qualifies 4 that. – Eric Bryant (@GnosisArts)
• I enjoyed the perspectives on bidding on branded terms. – Nicole Mintiens (@Tregesy)
• Conversion attribution. (Add me to those who don’t have a PLA client.) – Theresa Zook (@I_Marketer)
• The last #ppcchat about PLAs was very helpful, too. Missed this one and was thankful for @PaulKragthorpe‘s work once again. – Martin Rottgerding
• Remarketing was very intriguing as well – that’s been a tough nut to crack for us. So has DSA. – Eric Bryant
• I got a lot out of the holiday#ppcchat ’s both for holiday and post-holiday strategies. – Mark Kennedy (@markkennedysem)
• Google Shopping was good, but I really thought the one on Dynamic Search Ads was very insightful. – Brian Gaspar (@BGaspar)

Q2: What do you believe was the biggest PPC story of 2012? Why?

• Probably the product feed going to a paid platform. – Mark Kennedy
• Google rolling Local Places into G+? I think the impact of that is yet to be really felt, though. – Theresa Zook
• There are so many elements now: Youtube ads, remktg, DSAs, PLAs, TVads & all becoming more specialized in themselves. – Eric Bryant
• Have to say paid Google Shopping. – Ginny Marvin
• Changes to Adwords Display Network targeting. Bidding now available at the KW level… fundamental change. – Luke Alley (@LukeAlley)
• Paid inclusion in Shopping results – biggest shift toward a pay to play system. – Timothy Jensen (@timothyjjensen)
• Google Shopping going to a completely pay per click model…by far the biggest story IMHO. – Matt Umbro
• Definitely PLA & Shopping to a paid platform. Anything that effects budget, CTRs, posiioning, etc etc is HUGE. – Jeff Loquist (@jmloquist)
• Totally agree with you@timothyjjensen - the shift has been tremendous this year with analytics & google shopping. – Logical Media Group (@LogicalMediaGr)
• Definitely rolling YouTube into AdWords. – Doug Thomas (@ferkungamaboobo)
• For me the main reason PLAs was so huge was the conv impact. Without the results it wouldn’t have been as big a deal. – Ginny Marvin
• Have to say Retargeting is at the top of my list as well. – Ginny Marvin
• Google’s continued emphasis on promoting established brands, and transferring all historical free services to paid. – Jesse Semchuck (@jessesem)
• PLAs have definitely been a game changer. Huge search inventory swing. – Jeremy Brown (@JBGuru)

Q3: What 2012 PPC prediction of yours came true? What did not?

• I really thought they would do the adgroup-level sitelinks this year. – Rick Galan (@RickGalan)
  • Currently in beta, FYI. – Neil Sorenson
• Don’t recall making predictions, BUT we should do that at the start of ’13 and look back at it in Dec. ’13. – Luke Alley
• Didn’t come true…. yet. Targeting advertising (through Adwords) to Google+ profiles. – Jesse Semchuck
• That revision of PLA campaign helped to increase overall non-branded profitability. That DSA’s at launch were not successful. – Brian Gaspar
• No ad-group level geotargeting yet. One major advantage Bing Ads holds. – Timothy Jensen
• There are many betas I would’ve expected to go public already: search partner bids, adgroup sitelinks, product retargeting, Scheduling ads – that’s what automated rules and scripts are for. – Martin Rottgerding
• Sitelinks/Ad Extensions. Little brother is growing up fast! – Nicole Mintiens
• I don’t predict–when I do, I fall in love w/some imaginary feature or ability and have to cry when I don’t get it. – Theresa Zook
• The fiasco that ensued when Google initially eliminated the rotate ads evenly option. – Brian Gaspar
• Youtube adwords – super beneficial for a lot of our clients! Geotargeting not being available has been upsetting. – Logical Media Group
• The ability to schedule turning on and off certain ads. – Brian Gaspar
• That it would be near impossible to get a true ROI on facebook advertising. (also my prediction for the next few years) – Jeff Loquist
• Still disappointed that we don’t have greater visibility into Google Search Partners… time to provide more transparency Google. – Matt Umbro
  • And separate bids for search partners. – Melissa Mackey (@Mel66)
  • I think the transparency is *mostly* there, it’s just a giant pain to sort out. – Jesse Semchuck
    • Yes, you can setup a hack in GA to find the partners, but you can’t do anything with the info. – Matt Umbro
  • I just wish I had the option of having a campaign run on JUST search partners. – Robert Brady (@robert_brady)

Q4: How did PPC evolve in 2012 (good or bad)?

• Overall for the better. More features, ways to capture real estate, images, etc. – Mark Kennedy
• It seems like Bing Ads gained some ground this year. – Tom Wright (@tomwri)
• I think it evolved positively for@BingAds . Not so sure about AWds. – Eric Bryant
• More real estate to show ads, putting an importance of organic rankings. More supply can mean more demand and higher costs. - Brian Gaspar
• PPC is stealing a lot of spotlight from organic. I love it. – Robert Brady
• This year showed us (more than ever) how important PPC is compared to organic. In fact, PPC may now be even more important than organic. – Matt Umbro
• Definitely think with the Analytics upgrades the visibility in PPC has improved, so definitely a good thing this year. – Jeff Loquist
  • Agree, analytics integrations have been big this year for ease of visibility/reporting. – Ginny Marvin
• Bing a bigger player; search ads without keywords; lots more data to use for optimization & insight. – Melissa Mackey
• Google listened to the professionals and quickly reversed a change – That’s a serious evolution IMO. – Rick Galan
• 2012 made me thank my lucky stars I didn’t choose SEO almost 5 years ago. – Neil Sorenson
• Progress not perfection. Both platforms rolled out helpful updates to test/adopt. Progress not perfection. – Nicole Mintiens
• We even got our very own PPC conference in 2012! – Matt Umbro
• I feel it’s more a necessity to integrate campaigns cross-platform as opposed to “this is social, this is organic, this is ppc” – Doug Thomas
• Facebook is doing remarketing now which is definitely huge. – Logical Media Group

Q5: What was the most important tip/tactic you learned in PPC Chat in 2012?

• Creative ways to use negative keywords to capture the most relavent traffic. – Nicole Mintiens
• (1) How to use multichannel funnels (2) (and I’m embarrassed to admit this one) How to use pivot tables. – Melissa Mackey
• Honestly, when in doubt trust your network…especially those within. – Brian Gaspar
• Using Calls to action in the sitelinks was a good one. eg – Sitelink = 20% Off All Products. – Mark Kennedy
• @CarrieHill ’s fixing kwd position based on revenue was without a doubt the most valuable @Sew blog post for me in 2012. – Eric Bryant
• You’re never more than a tweet away from help. – Robert Brady
• I can’t think of a “specific”, but definitely how to look at data in different ways. – Jeff Loquist
• Creative ways to use negative keywords as well as knowing there’s a community to query when in doubt. – Nicole Mintiens

Q6: What updates and/or improvements can be made to make PPC Chat better in 2013?

• Getting rid of the spambots. – Martin Rottgerding
• Would love to see Google designate a knowledgeable rep to participate. – Robert Brady
• Google Meetups. Video chat is where it’s at! – Nicole Mintiens
  •  I’ve always thought regional#ppcchat meetups would be cool. – Brian Gaspar
• Perhaps advance polls to determine future topics? – Brian Gaspar
• Honestly I wouldn’t change much. I’ve learned so much this year! – Melissa Mackey
• The more people the better. Perhaps figuring out ways to get our name out more?? – Luke Alley
• How about a raffle each week to a participant for a prize for taking part? I see #ppcchat T-Shirts, Mugs and Mouse pads oh my. – Brian Gaspar
• Ocassionally going past 1 pm on the east coast. – James Svoboda (@Realicity)

Resources

• Google AdWords Editor (version as of today’s PPCChat 9.9.0)
• Microsoft adCenter Desktop
• http://www.google.com/ads/answers/
• PPCChat Member List (Twitter)
• adCenter Feature Suggestion
• Bing Keyword Research Too
• PPC Tuesday – 3 PPC Predicitons for 2012

More PPC Chats

Don’t forget to stay tuned for the next #PPCchat on Tuesday at 12 noon Eastern, 9 am Pacific and 5pm in the UK. Same Chat time, same Chat channel.

Participants

Check out the PPC Chat Twitter list to see and connect with all current and prior participants.

All 2012 Streamcaps Completed By

This is a guest post by Paul Kragthorpe; WebRanking SEM Manager in Minneapolis, Minnesota, #PPCChat Streamcap Grabber, SEO Blog Author. Connect with me @PaulKragthorpe, and Google Plus.
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Tags: 2012, Pay-Per-Click (PPC), ppcchat

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2012 at 6:12 pm by Paul Kragthorpe and is filed under Pay-Per-Click (PPC), PPC Chat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.