]]> What a title, right? When I say Googl’s AdWords free coupon is not free, I don’t mean like you’ll probably spend some of your money afterwards (which is also probably true) kind of not free. I mean literally, if Google gives you $100 free coupon, Google will earn $100.

There is no trick, no small hidden text, it’s all out there, perfectly clear. The thing is, it’s not the person who is receiving the coupon that’s going to pay Google $100, it’s other already existing advertisers that are going to do so.

Google AdWords is bid based system. Once you inject more money into it (free coupon), you are automatically raising the keyword bids needed to advertise. So when Google hands out a $100 coupon to a new advertiser, this advertiser’s competitors who are already Google’s most valuable paying customers are going to loose $100. Unbelievable, right? Google didn’t just attract a new customer for free, Google actually earned money by hurting its longterm customers. Do no evil… right.

Now that you know this fact, you’re probably not really happy about Google’s new campaign in which they will give $100 coupons to first 1 000 000 small businesses that sign-up for local search advertising. Yes, you got the numbers right, Google will take 100 million from our pockets for this campaign.

]]> If you use Google Adwords advertising for your Magento web store, you will probably need this module. This module will be very useful, because Magento doesn’t have functionality for tracking Adowrds conversion. Feel free to download module and use it on personal responsibility. I’m using this module on web store without any problems.

You need to know that this module will track Adwords conversion over checkout/success page. At checkout/success page will be executed javascript (this is code of Block for checkout/success page):

< ?php
/**
*
* @category   Inchoo
* @package    Inchoo Google Adwords
* @author     Domagoj Potkoc, Inchoo Team
*/
class Inchoo_Adwords_Block_Block extends Mage_Core_Block_Abstract
{

public function __construct()
{
parent::__construct();
$this->setGoogleConversionId(Mage::getStoreConfig('adwordsmodule/inchoad/google_conversion_id'));
$this->setGoogleConversionLanguage(Mage::getStoreConfig('adwordsmodule/inchoad/google_conversion_language'));
$this->setGoogleConversionFormat(Mage::getStoreConfig('adwordsmodule/inchoad/google_conversion_format'));
$this->setGoogleConversionColor(Mage::getStoreConfig('adwordsmodule/inchoad/google_conversion_color'));
$this->setGoogleConversionLabel(Mage::getStoreConfig('adwordsmodule/inchoad/google_conversion_label'));
}

protected function _toHtml()
{
$html = "";

if(Mage::helper('inchoo_adwords')->isTrackingAllowed()){

$this->setAmount(Mage::helper('inchoo_adwords')->getOrderTotal());
$html .= '
<!-- Google Code for Purchase Conversion Page -->
<script type="text/javascript">
/* < ![CDATA[ */
var google_conversion_id = '.$this->getGoogleConversionId().';
var google_conversion_language = "'.$this->getGoogleConversionLanguage().'";
var google_conversion_format = "'.$this->getGoogleConversionFormat().'";
var google_conversion_color = "'.$this->getGoogleConversionColor().'";
var google_conversion_label = "'.$this->getGoogleConversionLabel().'";
var google_conversion_value = 0;
if ('.$this->getAmount().') {
google_conversion_value = '.$this->getAmount().';
}
/* ]]> */
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion.js">
</script>
<noscript>
<div style="display:inline;">
<img height="1" width="1" style="border-style:none;" alt="" src="http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/'.$this-/>getGoogleConversionId().'/?value='.$this->getAmount().'&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;label='.$this->getGoogleConversionLabel().'&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;guid=ON&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;script=0"/>
</div>
</noscript>';
}

return $html;
}
}
?>

Module has some config options which you need set over Magento admin section. Go to admin System -> Configure -> left tab: “Inchoo Extensions” -> Google Adwords.
You need set some data as: Google conversion id, Google conversion label and so on, if you use Adwords advertising I hope that you know this

Download Magento – Google Adwords module

]]> The recent comScore’s study shows that people are using long tail keywords when searching major search engines much more then they use to. The total number of search queries have grown 3 times faster then the number of paid clicks since the beginning of 2007.

The number of keywords that trigger the paid ads in major search engines have actually declined lately. The reason is not so much the world recession or paid search budget decrease. The real reason is that average users started using much longer keyword queries to find the content they want and advertisers are yet to adopt to these massive changes in search engine’s users behavior.

To illustrate what I’m talking about, I will make an assumption that you are an internet power user since most of our readers are. As a power user you had to be at least a several times in a situation where some of your friends or relatives asked you for help in finding some data online they couldn’t find. The reason why you were able to find something and they couldn’t using the same search engine was in fact that you used much more accurate and longer keywords to find the content you needed. The more you use the search engines, the more experienced you get and understand how to get the best results as quickly as possible.

Now, what happened here is that with time, an average internet user evolved into what we used to call a power user. They can search the web much more efficiently now and use much longer queries in search engines.

Most of the advertisers in Google AdWords tend to use pretty restrictive keywords, often exact phrases or even exact matches in order to have better control over who will see their ads. Unfortunately, the good old days of driving lots of traffic with short exact match keywords might be over. This means pay per click campaigns (especially Google AdWords ones) will now have to be made out of broad matches with lots of campaign negative keywords tied to them, or else you might not be able to drive your targeted amount of traffic to the website.

]]> If you are into internet advertising you probably already considered or already tried out advertising on some popular or targeted blogs. Blogs can be valuable traffic generators however in most cases you will see that conversion rates and click through rates of advertising on blogs will be much worse and more expensive then advertising on search engine’s search results (Google AdWords and similar). The reason for this is pretty obvious, the content surrounding the add can not be as targeted as the keywords you can target via search engine advertising.

Why would one buy add space on blogs if search engine advertising is more cost efficient?

Sometimes, if handling a very targeted and low search volume niche, search engines just don’t fill your marketing appetite. You want more visitors then search engines targeted keyword volumes can provide and thus for you turn to targeted or semi-targeted blogs to serve your adds.

Also, if your product is something completely new on market and there is absolutely no search volume for your product, you can’t use search engine advertising effectively. Instead, you should try to find semi-targeted blogs, related to your product or service to push your marketing message.

Blogs are also in many cases very good for branding your company, product or service. The branding effects are often much greater then the branding effects resulted by search engine advertising campaigns.

How can one advertise on blogs?

There are many ways to advertise on blogs. Most bloggers, however, are joined into some advertising programs where you can view more blogs (their stats and prices) at once and decide to buy adds on any of them. One of such networks is BlogAds. Once you register for an account there, you will be able to purchase add space on 1500 of America’s most influential blogs (according to their website). Some of the worlds most influential blogs are available on BlogAds such as PerezHilton, CuteOverload, Dailykos and many others.

]]> The most common reason for using Google AdWords is trying to sell more. People tend to use search advertisement more than content as it usually brings more results which is actually logical since you are targeting people who are actually searching for things you want to sell.

However, during the past few years Google AdWords has evolved into a powerful tool which enables you to do much more then increase targeted visitor traffic to your site – it can help you brand your business.

If you are working with large daily budgets and are trying to raise awareness of your brand in online environment, you might consider using AdWords image ads.

AdWords allows you to place image ads into content in formats of .gif, .jpg, .png and .swf. It supports most of the common standard ad banner sizes including:

• 468 x 60 Banner
• 728 x 90 Leaderboard
• 250 x 250 Square
• 200 x 200 Small Square
• 336 x 280 Large Rectangle
• 300 x 250 Medium Rectangle
• 120 x 600 Skyscraper
• 160 x 600 Wide Skyscraper

Let’s take a closer look at the .swf ad format. This ad format actually gives you quiet some flexibility and allows you to be much more creative in advertisement messages you serve to your potential visitors.

You should keep in mind the fact that the ad size can not exceed 50k limit, however, 50k is more then enough to deliver a good, creative and informative ad. One of the best .swf AdWords content ads I’ve seen so far was the ad for Croatian site called njuskalo.hr. While limited with 50k file size they managed to deliver a content rich ad which left an impression of looking at 10 seconds long video ad.

Few tips on using .swf ads in Google AdWords content advertisement:

1. Carefully think about concept of your .swf ad concentrating on how it will fit into different ad sizes.
2. Create the .swf ad for every ad size available. You don’t wanna end up losing a potentially great place to advertise at just because you were to lazy to create an ad in format the site displays.
3. Make ads rich with both motion and content. There is no point in creating a static img and serving it as a .swf ad when you can do so much more.