CAT | Search Engine News
23
Age and Gender PPC Targeting on Bing
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Bing, FAQ - PPC, Microsoft, Pay Per Click (PPC), Search Engine News
One of the advantages of Pay Per Click advertising on Bing is the age and gender demographic targeting.
The Microsoft adCenter has collected data overtime from various sources to create this targeting feature estimating the visitor’s gender and age:
- MSN Messenger
- Previous Search Queries
- Market Research
- Customer Service
- Registration Data from Hotmail
The results are obviously not 100% accurate but various studies in China show that the data collection and algorithms guessed the gender correct 80% of the time and the age of the visitor at least 60% of the time.
The Benefits
Gender
Various products and services that you as an advertiser may be offering, could be better suited to the male or female population. Knowing your target visitors gender allows you to target your ad text and landing pages accordingly.
Age
You can tailor your ad text and landing pages to suit a targeted age group. The system allows you to place incremental bids on each keyword for each age group which will help to limit the amount you spend each month on less targeted traffic.
The Age Groups
There are five different age groups within the Microsoft adCenter demographic targeting tool:
- 18 – 24
- 25 – 34
- 35 – 49
- 50 – 64
- 65 +
Place your Bids
Within each ad group you start with your base bid and then specify a percentage increase that you are willing to pay for each age or gender group. MSN will then automatically raise your bids to gain higher positions when a person within the selected age or gender group is searching for any of the keywords within the ad group.
The targeting can also be done at campaign level which is extremely useful if your target audience is the same for all products and services that you are promoting via your Pay Per Click campaign.
The thought process behind this tool, is that advertisers would be willing to pay more for a click if the searcher matches their target audience as they should in theory be more likely to convert.
When you apply incremental bids to an age group or gender, your ads will still be shown to all searchers but your bids are increased when the ads are displayed to your target audience.
A Quick Example
To explain how the tool works in a little more detail, I thought an example would help:
My website sells ladies lingerie and the bulk of my sales come from females aged between 25 and 50. The age and gender tool should help me drive more targeted traffic to the site but not exclude the other age groups or male customers.
My ad group base bid is £0.20 and I am willing to pay an extra 15% on top of this price per click for my targeted traffic.
This means that if a female searcher aged between 25 and 50 is searching online using one of my keywords, my bid price would increase to £0.23.
If the searcher was male and clicked on my ad my bid price would remain at £0.20.
How to set incremental bids in Microsoft adCenter
Campaign Level (sourced from Microsoft adCenter Help)
- Click the Campaigns tab.
- In the Campaign column, click the campaign whose targeting you want to change.
- On the Campaign selected page, click Change settings.
- Under Target your customers by location, click Edit.
- Click Demographic.
- For one or more of the gender and age groups, specify an incremental bid (A bid that can increase your ad’s exposure to potential customers who meet specific targeting criteria, such as day of the week, time of day, geographical location, age, or gender. A percentage of your keyword bid, the incremental bid is in addition to your bid on a keyword.) by selecting a value in the corresponding base bid + drop-down lists.
- Click Apply.
- Click Save.
Ad Group Level (Sourced from Microsoft adCenter Help)
- Click the Campaigns tab.
- In the Campaign column, click the campaign that includes the ad group you want to edit.
- In the Ad group column, click the ad group whose targeting you want to change.
- To the right of Ad group name, click Change settings.
- Under Target your customers by location, click Edit.
- Click Demographic.
- Clear the Apply campaign settings check box.
If this box is cleared, no campaign-level age or gender targeting will be applied to this ad group.
If this box is missing, there is no campaign-level age or gender targeting. - For one or more of the gender and age groups, specify an incremental bid (A bid that can increase your ad’s exposure to potential customers who meet specific targeting criteria, such as day of the week, time of day, geographical location, age, or gender. A percentage of your keyword bid, the incremental bid is in addition to your bid on a keyword.) by selecting a value in the corresponding base bid + drop-down lists.
- Click Apply, and then click Save.
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23
Microsoft adCenter Introduces new Ad Preview Tool
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Bing, Microsoft, Pay Per Click (PPC), Search Engine News
Whenever you create a new PPC advertisement there’s a temptation to see how it appears on the search engines. This temptation can grow further if it fails to deliver the expected traffic rates or has an unusually high bounce, thus indicating a potential issue.
The only issue with looking for your advert through the search engine itself is that it can create unnecessary impressions and lower the Click through Rate (CTR), which may in turn adversely affect the campaign. So how can you preview your ads without upsetting the statistics and potentially costing yourself more money? Well, Microsoft Bing have come up with a simple solution.
Microsoft adCenter now has its own Ad Preview Tool, giving you the opportunity to see your adverts away from the search engine and without incurring any data issues.
To find this you simply need to login, then click on the Campaigns tab. Once you’re on the Campaigns page follow the Ad Preview Tool control situated in the top right before filling in your adverts’ key terms in the Keyword box. Finally click on the Preview Ads button and you’ll be taken to a Bing SERPs.
Whilst Google have offered a similar feature for some time within their AdWords software, this is the first time that the Microsoft run equivalent has offered the same service. It will certainly be viewed as a welcome addition by most Bing advertisers and will stop you totting up lots of unnecessary impressions when reviewing your ads.
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23
Ad Exchange Heralds New Dawn in Display Advertising for Google
0 Comments | Posted by andy in FAQ - PPC, Google, Google Adwords, Pay Per Click (PPC)
Having already conquered paid adverts on SERPs, Google is now looking to do the same for display ads to. Ad Exchange is a new initiative that is designed to provide a forum for advertisers and hosts to meet and fill websites with wonderful advertisements.
Based around its already hugely successful DoubleClick display ad that Google acquired last year, this updated resource is set to help the search giant gain a tighter grip on Internet advertising. The trade off between the provision of advertising space, provided by the host website, and the advert itself, provided by a sponsor, will now be done in an auction like programme on Ad Exchange. This opens up rafts of opportunities from both sides, and will doubtless be greeted by groans down in Sunnyvale, California.
Just as DoubleClick has been around for some time, both before and after its integration into the growing Google Empire, so has Yahoo’s own display ad platform – powered by Right Media. Yahoo have slowly grown a core group of advertisers and even beat Google to the punch in providing a universal display ad marketplace, launching My Display Ads back in June.
Whilst Yahoo are still a profitable and hugely successful search engine, they can’t compare with Google on most fronts. Until this point though, they had gained a decent foothold in the display ad field, a foothold which could be looking decidedly shaky with this announcement. The head start that they had may well melt away with the coming of their predominant search rival, although it will be interesting to see how this pans out in the coming months and years.
On paper though Google’s advertising formula is peerless. AdWords is the most successful and widely used paid search format and DoubleClick is one of, if not the leading display ad service. All told, this could be topping up the far from depleted coffers of the Google enterprise in no time at all.
Sourc
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