Prepare to be green with envy.
I’m entirely jealous of Allison Schwam. She’s the Senior Search Analyst at Backcountry, an outdoor sporting goods operation. Allison guest posted over at the Inside AdWords blog about how in between ski runs down fresh powder, she keeps an eye on her AdWords campaigns.
She gets up at 7am, eats breakfast and checks her AdWords account. If her goals on target, she emails her boss to inform of her plans to go hit the white powder – and I do mean snow.
Her boss is ok with this.
New tool allows you to manage multiple search marketing campaigns offline.
The new Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop is a free tool offering five major tasks:
- Bulk editing: Make mass changes to status, match type and budget settings. Adjust multiple keyword bids. Export to Excel your view of keywords, ads, ad groups and campaigns.
- Campaign transfer: One step to import your third-party campaign data.
- Keyword research: A keyword suggestion engine is included. It allows you to get URL-based keyword suggestions and export the list into Excel.
The San Diego-based company builds on connection between search and display.
At their annual customer conference this week, Covario unveiled their new Display Advertising Insight (DAI), a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution for large advertisers to track performance and spend in display ad campaigns. DAI is designed to integrate with Covario’s existing search marketing tools, Paid Search Insight and Organic Search Insight.
This is a smart move by Covario since data shows that a combined search+display campaign is better than search or display campaigns alone.
It must be partnership announcement day in the search industry. Earlier this morning Jonathan Allen reported on the new deal between Distilled and SEOMoz. Now, we’re getting word of a new partnership between Webtrends and Acronym Media. The two have paired up to provide software solutions to aid search marketers in managing and executing their efforts.
“The need for marketers to easily optimize their content from a single platform while integrating with partners like Acronym Media will be a significant priority in the near future. Acronym Media understands the importance of bringing this philosophy together through search marketing and web measurement,” said James McDermott, vice president partnerships, Webtrends.
AdGooroo is launching a new academic program that provides free resources to educators wishing to teach their students about search marketing. The program provides free academic licenses to AdGooroo’s SEM Insight.
“Supporting the academic community is a top priority for AdGooroo, and we’re offering them free access to SEM Insight, our flagship research tool. Commercial users are paying at least $399 a month to use this tool,” said AdGooroo Founder and CEO, Rich Stokes. “It’s important to AdGooroo and me personally to cultivate the understanding of accountable online advertising and particularly search advertising at the student level. We’d like to serve as a helpful resource to academic departments and professors around the globe.”
Google has updated the Keywords user interface in Webmaster Tools. The update includes:
- Daily data updates
- Details on how often specific keywords were found
- Displaying up to 10 URLs that contain a keyword
- Significance column comparing each keyword’s frequency to the most popular keyword’s frequency
This tool really helps you know how Google sees your site. You can quickly recognize problem areas or address hacked content.
Have you checked out the new user interface? Let us know your first impressions of the update by leaving a comment.
SearchIgnite has released their quarterly search advertising spend report.
The data shows that U.S. search spend flat year-over-year but up 10% quarter-over-quarter. That’s good news as we head into the holiday season.
The most notable increase came from multi-channel retailers, who upped their spend by 40% from Q3 2008 to Q3 2009.
Breaking down ad spend by search engine, Google and Yahoo! traded off percentage points year-over-year, but things were flat quarter-over-quarter.
Microsoft saw a 15% increase in ad spend, but it didn’t help them gain ground on Google. Yahoo!, on the other hand, is seeing an abysmal decline year-over-year with a 24% decrease.
Google has launched a new site called AgencyLand. The site is an answer to requests from advertising agencies for resources to help them manage their clients’ accounts. Originally launched into a closed, private beta in March 2009, AgencyLand is now available by invitation to agencies and third parties in the United States and Canada.
You can request an invitation at the homepage of AgencyLand.
In the meantime, here’s a video featuring advertisers saying why AgencyLand is Awesome Town.
Yahoo! is addressing the post-Microsoft search deal sentiment that they’ve given up on search. Over on their Search Marketing blog, they’re talking about things to come in the paid search space.
Rich Ads in Search – Yahoo! says their initial tests have improved click-through rates as much as 25%. This month, they’ll expand rich ads in search to large brand advertisers. If you do get access, it’s ultimately the conversion rate that matters the most, so keep that in mind.
Ad Delivery Report – Launched last month, the report allows you to see which ads appear on partner sites. It also allows you to block sites that aren’t converting well for you.
