On April 10th 2009 we wrote a blog entry entitled New AdWords Ads Increasingly Getting Stuck in the ‘Under Review’ Black Hole:

“It seems like every new ad I create takes longer and longer to actually begin running.

Depending on the client, and which AdWords GUI format they’re using, the new ads assume the label of  ‘under review’ or ‘Active’, but in either case the ads exist in a state of limbo, unable to accrue impressions or clicks.”

The entry has 45 comments, almost all of which are in full agreement with the post. Some of the people commenting have since closed their accounts and gone elsewhere.

On July 6th 2009 we wrote another post – Fed up with Adwords ads pending review? Make your voice heard! with 13 more comments.

My open question to Google:

What are you waiting for?

Your advertisers are getting frustrated.

Your “reach the world instantly” idea is becoming laughable.

Resellers of your services (such as ourselves) are having to find workarounds and hacks to work with your system.

The machine is broken. Please fix it.

Pulling-in targeted visitors to your website is relatively easy. There’s Google AdWords, AdCenter, press releases, twitter, blogs and hundreds of other opportunities for jumping in front of the right people and waving your arms around so they don’t forget you.

Getting them to stay, however, is more difficult.

Many small and medium-sized companies make the mistake of too many assumptions.

They assume their visitors understand their terminology. Everyone with a slow windows system understands the need for Registry Optimisation and Defragging.

They assume their visitors know the difference between free download and free trial. Then wonder why their download to sales conversion ratios are low, while their AdWords conversion rates are ten times higher.

They assume their visitors have already researched their competition. When their comparison matrix has the highest exit rate on their website, they don’t understand why.

And they assume they understand what their visitors want and how they go about getting it. This, perhaps, is the greatest mistake of all.

My first tip for 2010: stop guessing what your visitors want and start listening to them.

My second tip for 2010: your server logs contain everything you need to do so and more.

An article on TechCrunch reveals that Microsoft users are significantly more likely to click on online ads than other users.

The article suggests that Internet Explorer users are 40% more likely to click on an ad than Firefox users, 50% more likely than Apple Safari users, and 80% more likely than Chrome users. (Note that this is from a sample of over 130 million impressions.)

The question is why?

Are IE users more gullible? Do they not realise that they are clicking on ads? Or are they genuinely more attentive and tuned-in?

Going on from this, if IE users click more, does that make them more valuable or less?

Web behavioural analysis used to be about finding the data. On today’s data-bloated web, new skills are required – data filtration and selection.

The only way to avoid drowning in data is to develop instinctive quality control.

Are Microsoft Users More Gullible When It Comes To Online Advertising?

Trust is more important an idea than ever before, especially online. And high levels of cynicism and fear warrant taking as many measures to reassure your users as possible.

The people interested in the solution provided by your product need to feel that they can trust you.

They need to believe what you say on your website, to trust that your download doesn’t contain anything unpleasant, to trust your solution enough to part with their cash, and to trust that your payment process will be safe.

I recently came across an application that appeared to be exactly what I was looking for. It was a reasonably priced analytics tool, and a one-day discount through a third-party made it even more compelling. The website looked serious, the product details were impressive, and the video of the product in action was the icing on the cake.

So why didn’t I purchase it? Because I couldn’t find a single comment, review or testimonial anywhere on their website. Not one. Every bold claim was their own.

The company’s own comments and claims weren’t enough to convince me to part with my cash. Whereas one reasonable review would almost certainly have resulted in a sale.

There’s no such thing as too much reassurance.

In days gone by, it was considered good business practice to treat your customers well. They were handled promptly, courteously and with genuine respect.

Thank goodness those days over.

Today’s customers are disposable. As soon as their credit card details have been processed we can cut them off, forget about them, and ignore them when they need our help.

Why? Volume. There are a more people out there with credit cards than ever before. Even if we sell to hundreds or thousands of people a day, do you know how many more are out there?

308 million in the US and 61 million in the UK alone. So who cares? Greet them with a smile, process their payment and push them out of the door as quickly as possible.

And the icing on the cake? Most people won’t even be surprised.

We all have our horror stories of terrible customer service. I still rate Barclays Bank as the worst service provider in the world, but there’s no shortage of contenders out there. And the people who complain? The world is full of them. Their voices will be lost in the crowd.

Embrace the concept of the disposable customer. Pursue, process then abandon them.

We all work hard to create and fine-tune our website content. And an unfortunate reality is that there are a lot of people out there who are quite happy to steal our content for their own purposes.

Take this page on our own website, actually I should rephrase that. Take a look at our Google AdWords Management page:

In particular:

And also:

Greenkoi Design seem to use a similar method to sell their own Google AdWords service:

Incredibly, almost the whole page is copied directly from our website, including a section of text whereby they link to a Google AdWords Report Service that they don’t even offer. Guess who does.

Personally I wouldn’t consider working with a company who blatantly copy other people’s content and present it as their own.

And then there’s SantaClaraSoft whose Google AdWords service also sounds a little familiar:

And SEO Friendly Web Services, whose page title speaks of “Quick Results in Google.com”, and whose content also rings a bell:

At least theirs has a little more creativity – namely a diagram of the SEO Life Cycle, right next to their Google AdWords Management Service. I suspect that diagram may be found elsewhere too.

The list goes on, and there are plenty more websites using our content.

When did it become acceptable to steal other people’s work?

Ten years ago Microsoft were indestructible. Google were operating out of a garage, and Apple were getting ready to release their first iBook. It was a very different world.

Today, the once-mighty Microsoft are facing serious threats from major competition. And while I don’t believe that the demise of Microsoft is going to happen any time soon, I do believe that they have been guilty of focusing all of their efforts on a very clear and unwavering set of goals.

Their online applications and services are basic and riddled with issues, their release schedules have become increasingly dynamic, and AdCenter sometimes looks and feels more like a proof of concept than a rival to Google AdWords.

It’s too easy for a successful business to rest on their laurels, and while unfaltering focus and determination can be a great strength in the short term, in the long term it leads to myopia.

Much has changed in the past two years alone, so starting the next decade with open eyes and an open mind could be very good for business.

WebProNews are reporting that new Twitter accounts are on the decline for the fourth month on the run.

At risk of sounding extremely old-fashioned, Twitter are yet to reveal how they’re actually going to make money.

Yet if or when they do finally start producing revenue, there’s little doubt that only a very small percentage of their user base will contribute.

In other words whether they charge for pro features, sell advertising or offer a decent desktop client that doesn’t look like a Windows 3.1 application, they can expect their sign-up rate to be low.

But let’s look at those figures. Let’s round down to 90 millions users. 1% would be 900,000 people, 0.1% would be 90,000 and 0.01% would be 9,000.

Let’s imagine they introduce a really nice desktop client. And they charge a very reasonable fee of only $1 per month.

Realistically, the vast majority of their users won’t care, even at the low price. So assuming only 0.01% start paying, that will be an income of $9,000 per month or $108,000 per year. Peanuts.

So let’s imagine that they start to sell very targeted advertising through their website. There are a lot of assumptions here, but bear with me.

The article mentions 9.5 tweets per user per month, so around 855 million tweets per month. Let’s estimate that around half of these are through the web interface – so around 425 million per month. And let’s assume than 0.001% of those generate a click on an ad; 425,000 clicks a month.

Let’s take one more estimate of an average price per click of $0.10, and we’re looking at a monthly revenue of around $42,500. Not quite peanuts, but no hint of a return for the Twitter investors.

And pro features? They’re going to have to be somewhere between remarkable and mind-blowing to make a significant number of people reach for their credit cards, so I think we can discount that.

The decline in new users is significant, however the publicity gained by Oprah and the “Twitter Revolution” will have temporarily boosted their signups, and then resulted in a perceived decline as they died-down.

The big issue is how they are going to monetise. They definitely have the numbers, but converting users of a free service to paying customers is no simple task. And conversion rates of 0.001% can sometimes be incredibly optimistic.

So my first prediction for 2010:

2010 be the year when Twitter monetise, or start to die trying. Draw your own conclusion as to which is more likely.

Number of New Twitterers Declines

The word “Optimize” implies a sense that it is a worthwhile or a good idea. For example:

Financial optimization – sounds like a good idea.
Search engine optimization – we know that we should all be doing this.

However, optimized ad rotation is not a good idea when it comes to AdWords.

You may have noticed when setting up an AdWords campaign, hidden within the campaign settings there is an option for ad delivery. The ad rotation can be set to either “Optimize: Show better performing ads more often” or “Rotate: Show ads more evenly“. By default, Google choose “Optimize“.

“Optimize” sounds so much better, however it is not. This method will show the ads which Google feel are the best performs.

The question is, “best performing” for who? Are your goals the same as Google’s?

Is the ad which Google feel is the best performer sending you the most clicks with the least amount of actual conversions?

More often than not, the ad with the best CTR is not necessarily the best performing ad for you.

It’s a classic story of old and new butting their heads against each other. Rupert Murdoch wants to make readers pay for some of their online content, while Google want to make it freely available.

The twist here lies in trying to decide who has the power. Murdoch could simply forbid Google to index his content, but I doubt he’d even consider it. And Google could exclude all of Murdoch’s content, but that wouldn’t be in the interests of their users.

The next few months or years might shape the future of online news, and it’s clear that Murdoch is serious about stamping his feet. Only yesterday, he accused online aggregators such as Google News as “theft of content“. And Google have already pointed out that paid content might not “do as well” as free options.

This is a battle between the new and the old. But it’s also a battle of ownership.

Google’s SideWiki has demonstrated that Google are blurring the lines over not only who owns a website’s content, but how it may be presented.

Maybe there is no such thing as a free news story.