Display Ads Boost Search Performance

Well, after finishing the post below, I went looking for other things to blog about.

Not only did I find it, the article was written by Jeff Campbell, a former instructor at the University of Chicago. It dovetailed perfectly with my aforementioned need to rejuvenate search campaigns for Collective Interest. His topic is on how display ads are boosting search performance.

Here's a snippet:

Eariler this week, eMarketer finally provided data to what marketers have known in their gut all along: Display boosts Search Performance.

"Search clickers exposed to display advertising were 22% more likely to produce a sale than those who were not exposed."

While these stats may lead to increased Display budgets, I ask you to consider the second nugget of goodness this study/article provides, the U.S. averages & projections of digital budget breakouts:

When I clicked through to the story Jeff was referring to, I saw this awe-inspiring chart, that lays out my strategy for how to move forward with Collective Interest search campaigns:

Collective Interest Test:: Reading the Stats

As I've been telling you, I'm testing campaigns for my website Collective Interest. It's a site on hybrid cars and solar energy. I had experienced some success once I got serious and started to concentrate on the AdWords and AdSense campaigns. I wanted to figure out whether a 49-state strategy was the best thing for me to do, or should I concentrate on areas of the country where hybrids were already hot.

My budget is meager, up to $12.00/day. I'm paying for this out of my own pocket.

After looking at the numbers, I decided to go with the segment called "Collective Interest Good States". This campaign had the 30 best states/metro areas for hybrid car sales.

After looking at the numbers, here's my decision structure:

"Good" represented 34% of the cost, gave me 34% of the clicks, 45% of the impressions, and an average ad position of 3.1.
"Control" represented 34% of the cost, gave me 35% of the clicks, 22% of the impressions, and an average ad position of 4.4.
"Underperforming" represented 32% of the cost, gave me 31% of the clicks, 32% of the impressions, and an average ad position of 3.0.

To recap, "Control" was a 49-state campaign, and "Underperforming" was the 22 worst states for hybrid car sales. All 3 campaigns had the same demographics, the same keywords, etc.

Since this is a content-only campaign, impressions were a little bit more important to me. My ad position was basically the same between "Good" and "Underperforming". "Underperforming" cost less, but really didn't perform with the clicks.

With that settled, the next test is search-based. Previous to the content test, I found that content was giving me clicks, while search was giving me impressions. For every 10 content clicks I received, I got .5 search clicks. Search left me with abysmal ad positions.

So I went to content only.

Now I'd like to look at how to rejuvenate search. I may not have the money to make it work properly, which wouldn't be bad; because it would give me an idea of the threshold I need to be at in order to make it work.

I'll let you know when that one starts up.

Test Update

The test I spoke of yesterday is in full swing now. I'll talk more about trends closer to the end of the week. What is striking me right now is how the control group gets off to a blinding start in the morning; but the test group for underperforming states comes on strong toward the end of the day.

The "day" being 5am-6pm. Why so short? Google Analytics tells that I get less visits (8% of total) after 7 pm. Today I'll configure a report in AdWords to break out impressions and clicks by hour of day for comparison.

The other thing that is striking is with the relationship between the AdWords and AdSense clicks and CTR. I'm digging in a little more to find the relationship. It would be great if Analytics, Adwords and AdSense were rolled up into one package. That would make it easier to see relationships.

But it's not, which is fine.