The Google Adwords blog has announced a number of “quality score improvements” (debatable use of the word improvements!) which will come into play for your Adwords listings in the near future.

Removal of min bid - Firstly it is removing the current system of allocating each keyword a minimum bid amount which must be met for you keyword to appear in the paid search listings. All listings will have the chance to appear on whatever keywords they wish with just quality score and max bid amount dictating the position of the listing (essentially a move back to the old system prior to min bid being introduced). The minimum bid system is to be replaced with a CPC estimate for your first page bid, that is, the bid amount Google estimates it would take to get your ad on the first page.

Dynamic/search query level quality score - Secondly the quality score system is going to be changed so that it is allocated at search query level rather than keyword level. This means an advertiser bidding on broad match phrase loan, will have a different quality score on the term secured loan to personal loan and the phrase loan itself. Also accounting for user data such as location (based on IP and Google account details).

What does this mean to Google?

More search listings!- These changes should see the appearance of an increased number of listings on any given search phrase. With people able to appear on any keyword they wish (so long as they are willing to pay) and a large number of previously inactive keywords will suddenly come into play. 

More money! - Essentially what Google are saying is, “You want to appear? Fine, but it’ll cost you!” and I’m sure many advertisers will pay that money….to begin with. Much like the changes in trademark bidding my prediction is a flurry of activity before things die back down and things return back to normal

More competition and increased CPCs! Linked to the above point, by telling people what it will cost them to appear on first page Google are prompting people to increase their bids to get the exposure. If an advertiser is appearing on the second page and sees that they could be first page for an increase of £0.20 CPC, there is the temptation there for them to make that increase which they may not have previously done. Once this temptation is there for every advertiser the whole market for first page listings should become more expensive.

What does this mean to advertisers?

The return of the long tail - Although it has remained beneficial to have a long targeted keyword list for a lot of advertisers the broad match system has allowed them to be relatively lazy. The inclusion of quality score at a search phrase level will mean that it will become much more important in terms of an increased QS and a reduced CPC to have all relevant keywords in your account

Increased brand term CPC? - This ties in very nicely with the removal of brand term protection a few months ago. The function that stopped this from being a long term issue was the minimum bid. Competitors were struggling to make the most of the changes as they were blocked by not having a high enough bid. With the latest announcement this has been removed. So although people will be forced to pay more to bid on a competitors brand, they will not be banned completely, probably producing the same surge in brand CPC as last time (approx 130%) which would equate to a 169% increase since the beginning of the year!

Higher first page CPC - As touched on in the section on Google the likely hood is that these changes will produce more competition for first page listings resulting in higher CPCs. By allowing people to see what it will cost them to appear on the first page you are giving them the push to bid to that level. Some will shy away and save their spend, to others it will be the carrot they need to make the next step.

The changes are set to be rolled out to “a very small set of advertisers” in the next few days according to Google but make sure you keep an eye on your campaigns as I expect the full rollout will follow on from this soon after.

Ebay announced yesterday that it is going to be making significant changes to its business model on September 24th.  The changes which are described by Lorri Norrington, president of eBay marketplace operations in the US, as “the most fundamental change we’ve made, ever, to the marketplace”, will include an overhaul of its site search, and will place more emphasis on fixed price listings.  There is not indication of what this increased emphasis involves but it sounds pretty drastic.  The auction system and the ability to find bargain priced item has been the foundation that eBay has been built on, and this move could effectively remove this completely dependant on the format they run with.  If the changes are drastic enough to prove the end of auction listings then does that not effectively make eBay a price comparison site?  Ok, it would be one where second hand listings appear alongside brand new item, but what else differentiates it from the likes of Kelkoo, Pricerunner and Google Product search.

This announcement worries me, as one of the key beauties of eBay in my opinion is the ability to find a bargain and outbid an opponent at the last minute!  I can see why eBay have done it as they will invariably make more money on a higher cost, fix priced listing but is this at the detriment of what has made eBay so successful to date?   Only time will tell.

A nurse in Sweden has been reportedly suspended for posting mobile phone pictures of brain surgery and major back surgery on her Facebook page.  The nurse apparently did it to “impress friends with her high-powered job”.  I’m sorry, but how dumb is that!  This isn’t the first time somebody has suffered on a professional level for their social media activities, when are people going to learn?  Remember the story of the budding athlete who was suspended for pictures showing him under the influence of alcohol?  Or what about the public schoolboys suspended for being members of a dogging group?

People have got to start waking up to the fact that Facebook and other social networking sites are mainstream channels of information now.  Just because you have to log in to see information doesn’t make it a secure environment.  People have long been punished in their professional lives for actions in the private lives it is just the case now that people put more information about their out of hours antics in the public domain.  If there is anybody you wouldn’t want to know about something, don’t put it on Facebook!  If you do Big brother will most definitely see it!

I have to say I am loving the BBC’s coverage of the Olympics on their website.  I have long been a lover of their live text commentary used for the cricket and the casual, informal language used and their use of this for the olympics has again made it more entertaining.  On top of this, the live text and email feed from viewers adds some interaction and allows for a large amount of sarcastic comedy based on the live unfolding of the games.  Take a bow BBC for producing some live streaming coverage which allows you to flisk between events, view highlights, and doesnt involve stuttering, jerky images.

Here is a classic example of how mis-management of PPC affiliates can cost a brand dearly.  The screenshot below shows listings on the search term bet365.  All of the first page PPC listings are taken up by (presumably one) rogue affiliate who has registered a load of domains containing bet365 and will be earning commissions on the back of all sign ups.  Not only does this mean bet365 will be losing out on cheap sales through their brand it also gives a very bad brand experience for the searcher and could confuse the uneducated Googler.  I know bet365 are hot on their affiliate scheme and so I cant imagine the affiliate in question will ever see any of the commissions they were expecting but it still isn’t good to see this sort of thing going on.  The industry has a bad enough name in some circles and this sort of thing doesn’t help.  what it does highlight however is the need to have stringent programme guidelines in place and a solid affiliate management process to allow you greater control.

Following hot on the heals of the rumours of TV advertising through Adwords, it is reported that Google may introduce the ability to buy in game advertising through their online portal.  Dubbed Adsense for games, it is reported that Google “has developed an in-game advertising technology that allows it to insert video ads into games.”  Whilst there are a large number of other providers offering in game advertising, most notably Microsoft through the acquisition of Massive Incorporated, this would make Google the first to simplify the process and increase its viability for inclusion in a standard media plan and their purchase of Adscape in February of 2007 certainly gives them the expertise.

If all the rumours and news stories are true about Google’s plans, coupled with the recently launched Adplanner tool, Adwords could be on its way to becoming the holy grail of advertising platforms, incorporating online offline and in game into one web based portal.  Whether they can pull it off or not remains to be seen but they seem to be putting a lot of effort into achieving the same dominance in other media that they have in search.

The creators of Facebook have given it a facelift!  I have just logged into the new version for the first time and so have probably not seen the full extent of the changes but thought Id post my initial findings.  On logging in for the first time you are displayed a message from Facebook explaining the changes to their interface, nothing  mentioned but I have posted the message below.  Apparently the three goals of the facelift were:

1. make everything clean and easy to use, reduce the clutter.
2. give the user more control over their profile (what, you mean make it more like myspace?)
3. show the most recent and relevant content

Apparently this is all based upon recommendations made by Facebook users although Im sure I was never asked my opinion!  Anyway to the initial observations.  The main change appears to be the introduction of tabs on the pages, both profile and home page.  On the homepage they have separated out top stories, status updates, photos and posted items.  Obviously aimed at objectives 1 and 3.  On initial use I actually think this works really well.  I do agree that peoples profiles were getting far too cluttered and this enables you to see more easily the information you want.  The first page is the wall and minifeed, and expansion on the original minifeed which includes photos and actual wall postings rather than just notifications.  This will satisfy the avid facebook user who wants a snapshot of what everybody is up to and in a way brings Facebook and the status updates function closer to the Twitter concept.

The page layout has also changed slightly, with a reduction of content in the left hand margin whilst keeping the 3 column format.  They remove this in the photos tab though and you get more of a full album view which makes photo browsing easier.  It is also removed when viewing group and fan pages and the navigation which was once on the left has now moved to the header bar.

If I notice anything else interesting I will be sure to post it but the initial observation is that the objective of clean, clear, uncluttered layout has been achieved.  I just hope to god that the point about profile control isnt going to lead to the flourescent flashing profile pages that make Myspace so annoying.

WPP owned 24/7 Real Media has been suspended by the IASH for failing to comply with an a audit of ad placement in July.  This news follows hot in the footsteps of recent evidence of ad misplacement by networks, the most high profile advertiser being Orange. 

Ad misplacement is a key issue when considering the use of blind networks as part of a display advertising programme.  Although these networks offer certain “guarantees” with their placements and you can select to appear on certain channels, by the very nature of the channel, you can never be 100% sure that misplacement isn’t occurring.  You have to rely on the regulatory bodies like the IASH conducting regular audits and clamping down hard on any offenders, which thankfully they appear to be starting to do.

The temptation is always there, due to the rock bottom CPMs, to utilise a network within your media plan but cost is not always the best way to plan display advertising.  After all, the primary aim of any display campaign should be to build brand awareness within your target customer base.  Blind media buys achieve neither of these objectives as you open yourself up to the risk of negative brand association with unsuitable sites, and you don’t know who is seeing your ads. 

Blind networks are becoming a thing of the past as companies expect more from their online advertising and this can only strengthen the position of intelligent media planning agencies.  My advice is to avoid them when planning other than in extreme circumstances.  Get you lower cost impressions and clicks from paid search and focus your display advertising on reaching the right people at the right time with the right message.

Yahoo sent out an email last week to its partners announcing some changes to the way it will be mapping keywords from July 29th.  In the past Yahoo has mapped certain keywords to others within its paid search listings much in the same way as Google broad match works.  As a former pay per click campaign manager this often caused me head aches as their mapping, which was supposedly done to improve the quality of their search results, seemed to penalise the professionals willing to spend the time building high quality keyword lists.  Funnily enough, it also had the affect of reducing the keywords available in their market by mapping low cost keywords to higher cost ones, hence making them more money.  Strange that isn’t it.

The other issue with their system was that they just weren’t very good at accurately mapping keywords together.  One specific example I vividly remember is when they decided to map all the listings from the keyword “home loan” to the keyword “mortgage”On the face of it these may sound like pretty similar words, but in the finance market a home loan is another way of describing a loan secured against you existing property, not a mortgage to buy a property.  What this meant for advertisers (I was working on secured loans campaigns at the time) was that overnight, you started to receive a large amount of costly, irrelevant clicks and aso ended up displayed irrelevant ad text.  There was no warning with these changes and at the time went they were gong through this mapping process it was a case of keeping a very close eye on keyword level spending to understand when a change may have been made.

It seems that no Yahoo has seen the error of its ways and is unmapping an initial list of 772 keywords, although they havent disclosed how many this leaves still mapped.  This is good news for professional PPC managers as it makes the job more complex which brings more need for their services.  It is easy for an advertiser to manage a keyword list of maybe 100 keywords but if this keyword list becomes 1000 or even 10000, with targeted ad text needed for all, it becomes a lot harder. 

A fill list of the keywords to be unmapped can be found here