YSM Dynamic URL Insertion Parameters

OMG! Yahoo Dynamic Insertion Parameters. Rejoice.

These Kick ass and they are better then Google for exposing this type of feature. I sure hope Google can catch up to yahoo on this feature. Check it.



Insert them in your URL String with a curly bracket: They would look like this:

{YSMKEY}
{YSMRAW}
{YSMMTC:std:adv:cnt}
{YSMADID}
{YSMKWID}
{YSMCAMPGID}
{YSMADGRPID}

They still support the "OV" versions, but I would suggest using the YSM ones because knowing YSM they will change it it in three months, or phase it out. I will write a scathing blog post later about how google sucks for not exposing these types of parameters.

The help link for explaining how to do this is here:

http://help21.marketingsolutions.yahoo.com/helpui/resources/content/us.market/content.source/en.language/16897.html

10 Tips for Choosing Bid Management Software

Posted by David Rodnitzky of Search Marketing Standard, December 10, 2007

During the Q&A section of the panel I participated in this week at PubCon, we got a lot of questions about bid management software. In particular, it seems that everyone in the audience acknowledged the need for it, but no one knew which company to select, nor how to select a bid management software.

So without further ado, my ten tips for choosing bid management software:

1. Don’t even think about building it yourself. I speak from experience here. Building bid management software requires a full-time team, ongoing maintenance, and a lot of trial and error. It will take you at least a year to build a basic version, and at least two to three engineers to maintain and iterate it after that. And it won’t be as good as the software currently available on the market.

2. Assess your expertise and what you really need. Assuming you listened to my first tip, you next step is to understand how you are going to use the software. First, let’s talk about your level of expertise. If you are an expert, you may want to let the bid management software run your tail terms (the 98% of keywords that make up 2% of your revenue) and focus on optimizing the head yourself. If you aren’t an expert, you probably need software that can manage everything for you, with a very simple interface, and possibly the option of full-service bid management combined with the software. Either way, you need to know exactly what you want before you start talking to software providers. Otherwise, you might end up paying for a Ferrari when all you really needed was a station wagon.

3. Understand implementation and de-implementation effort and impact. A lot of bid management software only works if you install a snippet of code on your Web site and if you allow the bid management company to change your URLs on the search engines. This can require significant effort by your internal tech team and changing your URLs in your search campaigns can result in a loss of keyword history (i.e., you will need to pay more to get the same position). Moreover, you need to understand what happens if you end your relationship with the company - will they change your URLs back, or are you stuck with their tracking for the rest of your life?

4. Always do a trial first. I’ve seen some really great PowerPoint presentations from bid management companies. It turns out its easier to make a good PowerPoint than it is to make a good bid management software. Never sign up for anything until you have taken it for a test drive for at least one month and if possible three or four months.

5. Set benchmarks for initial and ongoing success. Before you start any trial, understand the status quo of your campaigns. What’s your current revenue? Profit? Margin? Tell the bid management company your actual metrics and tell them what you expect them to hit for them to win your business. Make sure you factor in the cost of their services. For example, if a bid management company wants to charge you 5% of your spend, and you currently have a 10% margin on your spend, you should demand that they at least bring you 15% margin (and probably higher). By the way, most bid management companies will thank you for this - it gives them something tangible to shoot for!

6. Look for hidden fees. Does the contract include API costs, or do you have to pay these? Is there a charge for consulting and implementation? Is there a minimum monthly bill? Read your contract carefully and ask a lawyer for help if you are at all confused.

7. Ask for performance pricing. I know my co-panelist Kevin Lee is going to kill me for saying this, but don’t be afraid to ask your bid management company to put some skin in the game. If a company’s bid management software is a good as they say it is, offer them 50% of the incremental profit they make you to prove it! More realistically, perhaps ask them to take a slightly lower percentage of spend in return for a performance bonus if they achieve certain goals (see Kevin, I’m not as unreasonable as I first seem!)

8. Get a short contract. If possible, try to get a month-to-month contract (though this will be hard to do). If you can’t make this happen, a six month contract is usual very doable.

9. Be hesitant about handing over your head keywords. For the 50 to 100 keywords that drive most of your revenue, I usually recommend good old human management. Why? Well I believe that a good search analyst just gets an almost intuitive feel for how to grow top keywords, something that computers just can’t do. And managing your top keywords in-house can save you a lot on bid management fees, especially if less than 50 keywords make up 20-30% of your ad spend.

10. Keep testing new competitors. The bid management world is ever-changing. I see new and exciting bid management companies popping up regularly. Always keep a campaign or two available for the next great thing.

What internet marketers can learn from a trucker

I saw this on Shoemoney.com - I liked it. Enjoy.

This is a guest post from Tyler Smith of slybaldguys

I’ve spent a good amount of time around truck drivers and I’m always amazed at the things I learn from talking to them. Here are some of the things that I’ve learned over the years from talking to truck drivers that I think all internet marketers should learn.

1. Keep it simple

When I talk to truckers, I notice that if I try to impress them by throwing out really technical terms or dazzle them with my knowledge of the internet, then I can expect his eyes to glaze over faster than honey baked hams that he’s delivering. Though, when I hear him talk, he usually delivers his message in very simple terms that can could be understood by a 5th grader but be as profound as a world leader.

Many of us that write in our blogs or run our websites are very technical people compared to the rest of the population. We know about things like RSS, trackbacks, scripts and widgets and we’re not afraid to throw terms around expecting everyone to know them. Though, unless you run a website that is targeted directly at other website owners or tech savvy people then you have to remember that not everyone knows what you know. Try to keep your design, terminology, and the overall flow of your site simple. This will help the majority of the population be able to use your site without a having to know how to build a site. If the majority of the population can easily navigate your site, then they are more likely to gain pleasure from using your site and want to tell others about it.

2. Don’t pick up a load that ain’t going to cover your gas

You will never see a trucker take a job to pick up a load that will pay less than it will cost him to actually deliver the load.

When you’re looking to do some marketing for your site make sure you determine what you will get “paid” for doing the marketing and if it’s worth the effort that you have to put in. I often see people do things to market their website that takes way more effort than any reward (traffic) they are going to get from their work. For example, when I first started marketing my site SlyBaldGuys.com I would often spend hours looking for any blog posts that had to do with my subject matter and comment on that post. This is an idea that I read on several forums as a “great” way to market my website. The problem was, most of the blog posts on the subjects of going bald or head shaving were usually on blogs that would only get a couple visitors a day and those visitors were probably not reading the post I commented on. I know because I have yet to see a visitor get referred by any of those sites.

3. Always keep a spare or you may not make your delivery

I’m sure many of you have seen a huge semi-truck driving down the road with a trailer hitched to it. Well, if you look at the back of the trailer and the back of the truck you will often see multiple tires on each side of the axle of the truck and trailer. There is often a spare tire or two on the truck somewhere. These two things provide a backup plan should a tire go out while driving down the road. Without these backup plans the driver has the risk of being late on his delivery and thus having to deal with less or no pay at all when he does arrive with the delivery. This is especially true if a tire goes out and there isn’t another tire on the same side of the axle. This could cause him to wreck and damage the load.

So, what does this have to do with internet marketing? It means that you shouldn’t rely on just one tire, or method of marketing because you never know when one of your marketing methods is going to stop working. I don’t have to tell you that losing your only avenue of visitors ultimately kills your revenue stream.

4. Don’t agree to haul perishables if you don’t have a refrigerator truck

You’re not going to see a trucker agree to haul a truck full out of fresh meat without having the equipment to fulfill his agreement. He’ll show up to pick up the load and get laughed out of the docking bay and never be taken seriously by that company again You see the hiring company is not going to let their load spoil in his truck since they only get paid if their goods get to the recipient in good condition.

I often run by sites claiming they can do this and that, but when you look under the hood they can’t really do what they say they can do. This only causes me to leave the site instantly and to never mention that site to anyone or even return to that site. So, next time you are writing content for your site, say on your blog or your homepage, don’t make claims that you or your site can’t back up. It’s only going to fool people for a bit and then it will ultimately backfire on you as people will not want to waste their time on your site if it’s not going to benefit them in the way you claim it will.

5. Keep your eyes and ears open and communicate with other drivers

A truckers main duty is to get his load from point A to point B safely and on time. In order to do this, he needs to make sure that he avoids all obstacles that will prevent him from doing this. The two main things he can do to ensure a successful delivery are to keep is eyes on the road and to keep his ears open. By keeping his eyes on the road he’s going to be aware of all the other drivers and obstacles on the road that can hinder his delivery. By keeping his ears open, he’s going to hear the calls on the radio warning of potential obstacles up ahead that he can’t see with his own eyes. If he doesnt’ hear anything on the radio a trucker will often call out to other drivers to see if there’s anything he should look out for.

As an internet marketer, you should keep your eyes and ears open for the obstacles that will hinder you from attracting all of the customers that you can. Look at your stats and find out what your visitors are doing. Are they leaving right away or are they checking out multiple pages? What landing pages inspire visitors to look for more on your site? Which landing pages cause people to leave?
Listen to your peers. What are other sites or bloggers doing that is providing them success? What didn’t work for them? Make sure you communicate with others in your arena and see what they are doing. Bounce ideas off of each other and help each other out.

6. Know when to take a break

A trucker knows that if he falls asleep at the wheel then he’s not going to accomplish his task of delivering his load. Knowing that, he knows that it’s good to take a break when he just can’t drive any further without risking himself and others. This break will allow him to refresh and continue on successfully in the morning.

If you’re finding yourself in a rut and you just can’t come up with your next great marketing idea, then it’s time to take a break and refresh. Instead, focus on something else that will improve your site. This break will often help trigger a new idea that you can implement in your marketing efforts.

Next time you talk to a trucker, see what you can learn from him.

Utilize Publisher Account Limits & A little Bit on PPC account Structure

Did you know that Google will allow a maximum of 25 Campaigns, 2000 Keywords per Adgroups, and a limit of 10,000 adgroups per campaign? I think many of us have found ourselves using Google sheepishly. Maybe you have 20 adgroups per campaign and a couple hundred keywords per adgroup. Recently I have been trying to use more adgroups on Google. I am currently setting up adgroups that contain one keyword per.

My thoughts are this will be better on quality score for the following reasons.

1. If the keyword has a good quality score there will be no other words in the group that could bring it down.
2. I can customize adtext direct to that keyword so once again more ability to positively influence my quality score.
3. Strong performers will quickly rise and when looking at adgroup performance I will know that it is only one word that is either making me or breaking me.

Any other ideas out there?

I have found this method more useful in the CPL or Offer marketing scenarios. Generally things that have one landing page where you send all traffic.

The Limits on Publishers is the Following:



On Ecommerce I still prefer the one adgroup per product. Once the exact product adgroups are built out I would build several adgroups for more general queries about the product.

So for Apples an ad group structure would look like this:

Apples General Terms
Red apples
Green apples
Yellow apples
Washington apples
New York apples
New Zealand Apples
(T) McIntosh
(T) Granny Smith
(T) Red Delicious
(T) Fuji
(T) Grapple

The (T) is for "Type" This will allow me to sort through data a bit quicker.

Why Google Owns the World

Stolen From Shoemoney.com:

Why Google Owns The World & The Google PC For Under $200
What Say You?
66 responses..

When Google first went IPO I remember calling up my father-in-law and telling him I wanted to buy $250,000.00 worth of stock. He thought i was crazy… really crazy… He went on to explain to me how stocks worked and how overrated GOOG was even at its opening price of $100.01.

Well now its years later and I still have that stock and its up over $700 per share. I am holding tight. I still don’t know anything about stocks but one thing I do know

Google Gets It.

They learned by watching Microsoft just how far you can push before you are broken up by the government. Google knows where its bread is buttered… Its all about putting as many ads in front of people as possible.

Where Google is smart is they never actually own any of the products that make them the most money. For instance Firefox. Google makes a philanthropic donation to Mozilla for 200+ million dollars. Googles “donation” to Mozilla actually accounts for 80-90% of THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF MOZILLA’S funding (depending on what report you read).

So what does Google get for this philanthropic gesture? Well nothing “officially”. I have made the claim that the reason Google is the default search engine on Firefox is because Google is funding them so much but Firefox developers commented on my post saying they only use Google because “its what the users want”. I am sure they would switch to Yahoo “if the users wanted it”. Regardless of Yahoo’s zero donation to Mozilla compared to Googles 200m+… ya right ;)

So a while back when people said Google was coming out with the Google Computer I was like ya WHATEVER Google will never have their own branded PC. It does not make sense for Google to be in the hardware business. Remember where there bread is buttered? Ya from Advertising… not from making gadgets.

What would make sense and be Google’s style? Well making all the applications web based where people would be required to have a Google Account to use but keep them free. Basically make a office suite and a email program but throw ads at people instead of charging them for use.

Well now ladies and gents I present the unofficial Google PC at Walmart for only $200 It comes equiped with the G-OS with full integration for Google’s web based applications. It also is fully integrated with Google maps and Google411.

So now there is buzz about the Google telephone. IMO Google will not release the telephone. Its just not there style. BUT they might fund the operating system on the phone and build all the applications on the phone in order to control all the mobile advertising. Because after all Google is… A advertising company.

Google Adwords Quality Score

IF you have never read the guidelines on Google Adowrds Quality Score theyn you do not know what you are missing! Check out the Latest Guidelines at this page:

Google Adwords Qaulity Score:

Adwords Embedded Match

Another Useful Tip from Pay Per Click helpers.com(Stolen from E-whisper.net)

Negative Embedded Match | The least used feature of Google AdWords

Posted in: Blog, PPC Info, Google AdWords

Negative embedded match gives an advertiser the ability to show for every variation of a keyword, except for the keyword itself. This negative matching feature is only available on Google AdWords at present.

Why is it useful?

* Allows you to control ad serving for an ad group (resolve conflicts with other keywords triggering your ads).
* Allows your ads not be displayed for low ROI keywords, yet show for all their more specific variations.

How does negative embedded match work:

* Insert -[keyword] into your ad group.
* Insert “keyword” (you could also use broad match) into your ad group

An Example:


For this example, the scenario would be that you sold all types of laptop accessories. However, the keyword ‘laptop accessories’ has a low ROI, but every more specific (3+ word combo) has a good ROI. In this case, you would want your ad to show for all variations of ‘laptop accessories’ but not when the actual keyword ‘laptop accessories’ was searched.

* Insert -[laptop accessories] into your ad group
* Insert “laptop accessories” (you could also use broad match) into your ad group

You should have an ad group that looks like:

Take Control of Your Ad Serving

An advertisers desire should be to control ad serving to the point where their ads are only served on profitable keywords. It’s important to find negative keywords that are not helping you work towards that goal and filter out underpreforming keywords.