Blog / PPC

PPC can be an incredible source of web traffic that drives lead generation, direct sales, branding, and overall engagement. The ability to get it set up and running quickly and gain data that can be applied to other digital marketing channels is often a good enough reason alone to justify it.

However, despite the fact that digital marketing has simply become the new “marketing” and there are seemingly limitless case studies on the value of Google AdWords, many marketing decision-makers are not convinced it is worth adding to their mix. Through understanding the true cost of traffic and creating fact-based projections, we can do our part to make the case for evaluating PPC and setting proper expectations on what AdWords can do for the bottom line of our businesses.

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I recently had the privilege of hearing what Larry Kim noted might be his final speaking appearance ever on the topic of PPC due to a career move into a different space. He has been an incredibly engaging and informational speaker and and even more importantly, very influential in the SEM industry over the years through is founding of Wordstream and current company–MobileMonkey. His talk at SEJ Summit in Chicago in May was aptly titled “How to be a PPC Unicorn.”

The concept of being a “unicorn” at anything in digital marketing is important to me as so many marketing channels are being commoditized in ad agencies, marketing firms, and pretty much any other business that feels like they can “throw in” some SEO or PPC with a deal. It still amazes me how many AdWords accounts I see that are poorly structured and don’t even meet the basics of 101-level management. All of that aside, I wanted to share the highlights from what might be Larry’s very last PPC presentation.

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Last month, I wrote about Google dropping right sidebar ads from their SERPs.  While this was a big change, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• This was not a knee-jerk change.  Google had plenty of data suggesting to them that making this change would prove to have positive results from a user experience (and Google revenue) standpoint.
• Right side ads only accounted for 14.6% of paid clicks anyway, according to this article from Search Engine Watch.
• It has been about 5 weeks since the change was made – while there have been several studies done (with updates), we still don’t know anything conclusive.

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