Your Ad Copy – Make It Shine With These 7 Simple Tips!

By Helen Brown

It’s very common sense practice to regularly review your account to ensure that all is well. We all know that performance monitoring is essential! At the same time, I think it can be easy to become a little complacent with seeing results and thinking that no real further action is required. Whilst things may be looking good with your goal orientated statistics, make sure you remain hands on.

I want to mention my 7 favorite AdWords ad copy tips and tweaks today, whilst these are just basic ad copy rules, it can be surprising how many people don’t take full advantage of what can make your ads really shine out to a searcher. I hope that you find them useful!

  • The Most Common Sense Point Of All – Think Like A User When Reading Your Ads. Be objective here! If it’s not performing, it shouldn’t remain there. The fact that you may like what you have written is besides the point, you are not the consumer. Sounds tough, but it’s the truth!
  • Using Capital Letters To Make All Of Your Ad Copy Stand Out - And I’m not talking about the whole ad obviously, that would be a fast road to ad disapproval! But what you can do is capitalize the first letter of every word in the ad so it stands out more. Remember that all capital letters are allowed for acronyms and common abbreviations eg ASAP. Trademarks and brand names that are registered in capital letters are ok too.
  • Ensure You Include A Keyword In Your Ad Text - You may think this sounds like a ridiculously obvious statement, but think about it. A user performs a search, your ad (and possibly other advertisers ads show in response too). Your ad displays with the keyword in bold, because the users search term matched your keyword, instantly making your ad stand out!
  • Appropriate Punctuation Is Essential! - Adding a simple comma in a sentence can make all the difference to put more emphasis on a specific part of the sentence. Also, use a question mark where appropriate, you could take a basic sentence and turn it into a relevant question (for which your product or service is the answer). An exclamation point can draw extra attention. Using slashes to define different makes of a product can be a good way to showcase your offerings, and you can also use brackets in your ads if required.
  • Give It A Real Call To Action – make sure you include encouraging words that create a sense of urgency. If you really want to engage with consumers who are ready to convert, give them your key benefit and create a reason for them to click through and perform the required action.‘Buy Today For Free Delivery!’ or  ‘Buy Today With 10% discount!’ or ‘Limited Stock, Buy Now!’
  • A Little Full Stop Can Make All The Difference - Do you want to make the first line of your ad copy appear with your title? All you have to do is include a full stop at the end of the first sentence. It really makes your ad stand out!

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Image one shows the ad without the full stop in the first description line, so the ad shows with the title separate and the description lines either as two separate or one combined.

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Image two shows the ad with the full stop in the first description line, so the ad shows with the first description line in the title separated with a hyphen. Much more eye catching!

  • And Finally, Don’t Forget The “Ad On’s” - It can be so hard to fit all you want to showcase into a text ad, so why not try some ad extensions? They carry no additional cost other than a click through which you would expect from your ad anyway. Ad extensions are a great way to get all of that additional information displaying with your ad, this could be all the difference between making or losing a sale.

Good luck! :-)

Posted in AdWords, Google, PPC, Search | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Bing Ads Platform – A Committed Contender In PPC

By Helen Brown

Photo Credit : Bing

Photo Credit : Bing

PPC is such a vital and important aspect of internet marketing, and there are a number of platforms to choose from. We all know Google is a strong leader in the popularity and usage stakes. Bing are also becoming increasingly popular, with February’s search market share figures from ComScore revealing 25.9 percent of searches were powered by Bing (up 0.3 percentage points)*. Bing seem to have really stepped up their efforts in being a serious contender in PPC. I’ve personally observed over the past year various changes to the interface, exam, learning centre structure (thank goodness those dated tutorial video’s are gone!!) Bing are really not in any way shy to admit, they really are up for the challenge. Throughout their blog posts, learning material and interface they encourage users of the Google AdWords platform to try Bing. Bing have made it increasingly easy for users to “migrate”  AdWords campaigns to Bing ads.

* figures from www.comscore.com

The New Updated Learning Centre

When I initially studied to pass my exam, all of the Microsoft adexcellence learning material was still in circulation and I sat through endless video tutorials, most of which I found rather annoying and outdated in many cases. It was difficult to follow even though I already had my background in AdWords and a lot of the logic could be applied to the Bing interface. I’m so pleased that the learning system has been thoroughly updated, the new learning centre consists of clearly categorised topics that candidates can read and apply to their accounts for further understanding. Much better!

Bing Webinars

As anyone working in PPC knows, it’s important to keep up with the changes. I’ve attended many a webinar during my time working in the world of PPC in an effort to stay up to date. I recently attended my first Bing ads webinar, the aim of the webinar was to give some tips and news about the Bing ads network. Right from the beginning, the presenters were keen to point that Bing have a significant share of search and that not advertising with Bing will close users off to potential qualified leads that are vital to business. Any readers who are new to Bing – I strongly encourage you to view the on demand version of this webinar as there is plenty to be learned from it. Don’t be put off by only the first few minutes of competitive speak about Bing and Google, there’s some real good information to be learned from this webinar.

New Interface Features

With the launch of ad extensions within Bing ads, location extensions, call extensions and more recently sitelink extensions have become the latest addition to the interface. Again, the focus here (besides getting extra information to appear with your ads of course) seems to be ensuring that Bing can be considered a key player in Search and demonstrate their interface is capable of more sophisticated features and functions in the same manner as ‘the competition’.

And Finally! Bing’s reaction To Google AdWords Launch Of Enhanced Campaigns

The focus here being the concern from some AdWords users who are not happy about upgrading to Enhanced Campaigns because of the loss of device targeting functionality. Please read “Enhanced Campaigns, Bing Ads and Advertiser Choice” for the official words from Bing about Google AdWords Enhanced campaigns and Bing ads intentions for development of their platform over the coming months. Also, how moving forward AdWords users with Enhanced campaigns can still migrate with a smooth transition process should they wish to do so. :-)

What is your opinion of the Bing ads platform and learning material?

Posted in AdWords, Bing, Exam tips, Google, PPC, Search, Uncategorized, Webinar | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Improved iPassExam functionality for users who study on the move!

By Helen Brown   tablet-phoneipass

A very hot topic at the moment within the AdWords advertising community is how moving amongst a number of devices has become such a way of life for us. We now move between our desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile phones in our day to day routines in a variety of locations and without any of us giving it very much thought.

We are very much aware that this is the case when it comes to your revision time too and we wanted to create a better experience for users of iPassExam when moving between devices. We are pleased to announce that our tech team have created an optimised version of the site so that our users who like to revise using their tablets and mobile phones can now see a more user friendly ‘mini’ iPassExam.

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With a clean and efficient layout, logging in and accessing resources should be easier than ever. We still have all of the same functionality that previous users will be used to, such as our peer responses, full answer and explanation per question and our feedback buttons.

We hope that the new tablet and mobile optimised site functionality will further aid users with their exam preparation, and we welcome any feedback from users. Enjoy :-)

Posted in AdWords, Bing, Exam, Exam tips, PPC, Search, Team update, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Certification Exam – Be Prepared, Changes Are Coming………….

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/opensourceway/5537457305/">opensourceway</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">cc</a>

photo credit: opensourceway via photopin cc

By Helen Brown

Recently there have been some big changes within the Learning material at the Google Learning Centre and the Google Certification Centre. Not that this is unusual of course, given how the interface has changed over the years. If I was to think about all of the changes I have seen during my time so far working with AdWords, the biggest piece of advice I would give a new user is to make sure that you always keep learning. We all know that technology moves and evolves, it would be foolish to think that after passing an exam the learning process is over, far from it!

As our users will be aware, we have recently added new questions to cover a variety of information that is covered in the new certification centre. With regard to our question relevance, our question authors regularly take the exam to keep up to date with the theme and style of the exam to make sure that our resources are relevant to exam candidates.

However, we are all also aware that more changes are coming, specifically with the new Enhanced Campaigns. There’s lots of chatter on the Google AdWords forum about how sections of the learning centre vanish for days at a time, and how the learning material is always going through review and update. But here’s the big question on my mind:

How long will it be before we see questions about Enhanced Campaigns within the Google AdWords exams?

This new campaign type which advertisers cannot opt out of is an important change to the interface. We all know that within a certain period of time, this will be in the exam. What we all don’t know is, when will this take place?

Anyone currently preparing for the exam should take this into consideration, whilst there seems to be no sign of this in the exam at present, we need to consider that:

  • Enhanced campaigns are going to happen on all accounts, there is no opt out.
  • If you cannot opt out, it is vital to campaign management
  • Anything vital to campaign management, will become an exam topic!

It’s very important to ‘get to grips’ with Enhanced campaigns. Current and already experienced account managers who have taken the leap with their legacy campaigns and clicked the ‘upgrade’ button, will be grateful of all the help pages and updated material that has been created to nurture people through the transition process, as am I.
I remember when I was learning for the first time, and how the slightest difference between learning material and the interface threw me.

Exam Study Advice:

So for any ‘first timers’ to this process, I advise the following:

Read the learning material thoroughly, leave no stone unturned: Read the information, apply it to an account, really digest it. It’s in the learning centre for a reason, that reason is, it’s likely to be in the exam!

If you have studied and feel ready, don’t hang about!: Take the exam sooner rather than later, the information is fresh in your mind, and you know there will be no ‘nasty surprises’ given that you have studied the current exam learning material and are taking the exam that the content is based on.

Remember, the exam still has some old questions, as well as updated questions: focus an even attention to all of the learning material, don’t think that the exam will be all about the new as we can advise you, this is not the case.

Ok, I know I could be accused of being biased here, but we work hard at keeping the resources applicable to the exam content, we want our users to pass (actually, we want all exam candidates to pass, whether you choose to study with us or not)

What Team iPassExam Are Doing To Address The Coming Changes

Knowing that Enhanced Campaigns will feature in the exams sooner or later, we have created a set of questions about Enhanced campaigns, and any user with a current subscription to Fundamentals, Search advanced or Display advanced will be able to access some new questions from the ‘Enhanced Campaigns’ category within their chosen study resource. We thought that this would give exam candidates an extra confidence to know that, if it features in the exam, it’s been covered during revision.

Please share your thoughts with us about the following:

Are you ready to take the exam at the moment? How do you feel about the coming changes?

Posted in AdWords, Display, Exam, Exam tips, Google, Mobile, PPC, Search | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Our Top 7 AdWords Revision Tips – Get Ready And Go For It!

By Helen Brown        revisionblog

Exam success, in my opinion can be put down to one thing and one thing only………..thorough preparation. Putting in the time and effort will truly pay off when you know that you have studied and you achieve your desired grade.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail!

This may seem like common sense stuff here, but how many of us actually give ourselves the break that we need when it comes to exam preparation?

Give yourself the best chance of passing and a smooth and stress free revision experience by following these tips -

  1. Allow yourself a quiet, clear and well lit space to study: There’s nothing worse than that feeling of frustration or overwhelmingness that can come from noise and distraction. It will cause your learning process to become drawn out and unpleasant. Also, a clear space can make it easier to concentrate. Good lighting will aid in better concentration too and prevent tired eyes and headaches. I personally find a pot of strong coffee a big bonus ;-)
  2. Plan to revise in a realistic way that works for you: Locking yourself in a room and trying to tackle it all in a single day is going to cause a headache and possibly disappointment too! Plan your revision whether you schedule an hour or two per day into your work plan, or an hour in the evening at home. Take some time to think about your own revision style and focus on maintaining a steady pace but remember to make sure that you take regular breaks with time to relax so that your mind stays fresh and interested.
  3. Note making is essential: We are all individual, we all absorb information at different rates and through different methods. Take some time to think about how you best absorb information, whether you make notes, draw diagrams or flowcharts to remember layout and processes or stick post it notes around your home/office etc. These prompts are going to be a valuable aid in learning and taking the exam. Some people like to use memory techniques such as mind mapping. Others may find that they learn more visually for example and highlighting key points of information with a marker may help to digest it more easily.
  4. Make use of the learning material, time and technology available: There’s a wealth of learning material available between the Google AdWords learning centre, the Google AdWords certification centre and the Google AdWords help centre so you will be sure to find an explanation to your query or study topic. These resources should be used as your main revision guide. Break it down into ‘bite size chunks’, as in, don’t try to digest multiple chapters in one sitting. There are no extra points for speed reading pages of information here! Also, as the information is so readily available online, you could be anywhere with a laptop or portable device and still able to get an hours worth of study done.
  5. Use different learning resources to keep you engaged during the learning process: Listening to a Google AdWords webinar, using the AdWords online classroom or watching the Google AdWords business channel on YouTube for example can be a great way to pick up additional information if you find that your learning style is auditory. However, many of the webinars and Learning video’s contain slides and account demonstrations, these really are valuable if you feel that you are lacking in understanding on certain elements of navigation. Also, having an actual AdWords account is vital to comprehending the inner workings of AdWords. If you haven’t got access to a working account (and this is by far the best way that I would recommend), at least sign up for one and create a campaign, ads groups, ads and keywords etc, explore and make sure you are familiar with the layout and various tabs, that you understand various settings, report types and billing etc. Its so important!.
  6. Communication can be an important factor in learning: If others around you are preparing for the exams at the same time, schedule a study group or meeting. This way you can all help each other with strengths and weaknesses. You could test each other on common terms and best practices and discuss what you are learning to make sure that you have a correct understanding of the information.
  7. Get a feel for the exam: Practice what you have learned, lots of our users say that using practice questions has given them the edge on taking the exam. Knowing you have taken the appropriate amount of time to prepare and also having a good idea of what to expect can take all of the stress out of the whole process. Don’t rush yourself, the exam costs $50 and each of the exams require a different passmark. Make your $50 count!

I hope that these tips provide some fresh ideas about tackling the exams. Wishing you success! :-)

What about you? Do you have an exam preparation story that you would like to share?

Posted in AdWords, Bing, Display, Exam, Exam tips, Google, PPC, Search, Webinar | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How iPassExam.com is used at White Shark Media to Pass with Outstanding Scores

By Alexandra Hermida

Alexandra is a Paid Search Account Executive in White Shark Media specialized in Local Search campaigns, and manages PPC accounts on a daily basis for North American advertisers. Follow @whitesharkmedia for more insights to AdWords or download our free AdWords book for more AdWords knowledge.

You might think this is a good tool for beginners. But actually iPass.com is a great resource for search advertising Account Executives looking to get certified in more advanced areas. Not to mention getting certified in other paid search marketing areas like the Display Network and Bing Ads, which will allow you to provide a more holistic service to your Clients or better manage your in-house advertising efforts.

At White Shark Media, we routinely use iPassExam for new Account Executives to get a feel for the exam and be better prepared.

Helpful for Beginners & Advanced PPC Executives

This tool offers a whole array of preparedness questions and mock tests for all sorts of certifications in the SEM industry.

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Learn at your Pace & Style

Sometimes it is good to look at the big picture and understand how things interrelate within Google advertising. But when it comes to tests, it might be better to dissect each topic so you can actually answer questions in isolated scenarios with a set of multiple choice answers.

So for those who prefer to take one step at a time, the iPassExam program allows you to study by sections:

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For my Fundamentals and Advanced Exam, I was taking the sections I had most difficulty with, several times.

You can also see in which areas you get all answers correct and in which areas you’re deficient. Once you identify your weaker areas, you can even go back to the Google Learning Center and you can refresh your knowledge. Or, if your time is tight, check the right answers shown below the incorrect answers.

For example, here I purposely chose the wrong answer:

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I also monitored how long I took on each section to be sure I could complete the actual Google assessment within the established 120 minutes.

This is a practice I definitely will continue to pursue for my recertification(s) and I recommend you do it as well. It gives you the confidence to know you’ll be able to answer everything within the designated time limits. And you can be assured that not only will you answer well, but will choose the best answers and get outstanding scores that you can brag about.

Some people prefer to study everything at once. And you also have this option. Simply choose:

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Smooth Learning

I have to admit, studying for the Bing Ads Training and Certification can be quite a bore due to the format in which the material is presented. Every time I accessed the material, it was necessary to prepare a strong cup of coffee. So for me, iPass.com was a great way to skip at least some of the videos and get a good understanding about the key features of the adCenter interface.

An Investment that Allows you to be Ready for All your Tests – At a Decent Price

One of the things I like most about iPassExam is the value it provides.

It’s quite affordable. You’ll pay anywhere between $50-70 dollars and your registration will be valid for 3 to 6 months, depending on the package you choose. A six month period is more than enough to study for all the certifications you need to become an official search engine expert.

After a few months of training, most of our new Account Executives are ready to go into the “Certification Stage”. Most take one test and the others are then spread out over 2 to 5 months thereafter. So the time frame a registration lasts is perfect to get all the required tests done without getting burnt up studying or it affecting your everyday work routine.

No matter the size of your team or organization, they have multiuser packages. Of course these have a higher price tag but they all come with available discounts.

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Taking a Resourceful Approach

You’ll be able to study whenever and wherever you want (whether you’re at the workplace, home at night or on a weekend at the beach).

If you enjoy study groups or having someone else to discuss your answers with, another approach is to display the test with a projector in a group. Then you can go through
it with your team, vote for the “best answer” and discuss why you would choose one answer over the other.

I have used this technique with peers. I find it really insightful as you get to hear other points of view and practice “discerning” the best answer (which is a skill you’ll need when taking the real Google AdWords Certification Exams).

Depending on your budget and learning style, the above mentioned can prove to be practical strategies to get the best out of your iPass.com preparation efforts.

Some New Features – Timed Simulator

There is a timed exam simulator that mimics the actual AdWords exam. It includes 110 multiple choice questions and a 2-hour timer, just as Google provides.

If you pass this mock exam then you can feel more than confident that you’ll pass the real AdWords exam as well.

Once you’ve gone through the practice questions, you can take the mock test and make sure you’re not only completely on point with all your answers, but also gain test-taking speed for your next Google Certification Exam.

Finally, if you were wondering whether this study program is up to date with the Google Learning Center’s latest content – the answer is Yes. The interface has recently been updated to match Google´s syllabus content.

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Good Luck with All your Certification Exams!

Please feel more than welcome to add on any other tips you may have when using the iPassExam or in general when preparing for any of the search advertising tests out there!

Posted in AdWords, Bing, Display, Exam, Exam tips, Google, PPC, Search, Uncategorized, User Sories | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Enhanced Campaigns are coming!

By Helen Brown

Any advertiser who wanted to target a variety of devices or locations with their AdWords advertising would have needed to create separate campaigns to exercise effective management for the different bids and settings previously.

In an effort to address how consumers are searching today on a variety of devices whilst being on the move, Google have created enhanced campaigns. This new AdWords feature will incorporate all of these settings to make them work together inside one campaign.

What Are Enhanced Campaigns?

The new enhanced campaign feature has been created to better suit advertisers who are looking to target users with specific criteria such as the device used to search, by allowing the use of bid adjustments across these devices. You can apply bid adjustments for users in specific locations and for the time of day or day of week etc. These bid adjustments can vary between -90% to as much as +900% of the ad group maximum bid. You can also use a bid adjustment of -100% for mobile devices (effectively stopping the ads from showing at all) or a bid modifier of between -90% up to as much as +300%.

An Example Of How Bid Adjustments Work

An ad group has a maximum CPC bid of £1. A -20% bid modifier has been applied if the user is searching on a mobile, a +30% bid modifier if the user is searching at 5pm and a +50% bid modifier if the user is searching on a Friday. If the user met all of this criteria, the resulting bid would be-

Your maximum CPC starting bid – £1.00
Mobile searcher – modifier of -20%  = £0.80p
Time of day – modifier of +30%        = £1.04
Day of week – modifier of +50%       = £1.56

Resulting bid = £1.56

If you feel that maths is not your strong point (eeaaaakkk!), do not fear as there is also a bid adjustment calculator to get a clear picture of what you’re resulting bid will be after applying multiple adjustments.

The new enhanced campaign allows advertisers to show the right type of ad to a user depending on the type of device they are searching with. For example, an advertiser creates an ad group and writes 2 text ads; one with the ‘device preference box’ checked, and one without. When a user searches on a mobile device, the mobile optimised ad will show. If the user searches on a desktop or laptop computer, the standard text ad will show.

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It’s not possible to switch off targeting ads to desktops and tablets with the new enhanced campaign type (this seems to have sparked a negative reaction in a lot of account managers from what I’ve seen so far), but you can switch off targeting mobile devices by adding a bid modifier of -100%, so in effect your bid would be zero and your ads will not show on mobile devices at all.

Upgraded Ad Extensions

Also, with this new campaign type, there are upgraded ad extensions. Ads will still show on various devices complete with the appropriate ad extension or app, but the ad extensions can now be created at the campaign or ad group level. These extensions can be scheduled to run with start and end dates, they can be edited and it will not affect any of their previous performance statistics. Also, each extension will go  through ad approval independently so if one is disapproved, it only affects that specific extension allowing other extensions to run. The old style or ‘legacy’ extensions are still available and can also be used, but they will not run with the same functionality as the new upgraded extensions.

Along with these changes there will be new reporting features, including new report information displaying on the devices, locations and ad scheduling sub tabs of the settings tab.

What Do I Need To Do Next?

With the move to enhanced campaigns, advertisers who have previously managed campaigns separately for devices are being advised to merge their campaigns. Advice on why and how to complete this action can be found on the AdWords Enhanced Campaigns site, as well as the Google Help Centre and a series of webinars that Google are currently running.

The new enhanced campaign feature will be fully rolled out by summer this year, there’s no opt out available. Many account managers will have noticed a button on their individual campaigns to start the upgrade. However, once you click to upgrade, there’s no going back! so if you are not completely sure of how it all works yet, allow yourself a little time to learn more about the settings and techniques for this new campaign strategy before jumping in.

How do you feel about these changes with Enhanced campaigns?

Posted in AdWords, Display, Exam, Google, PPC, Search, Webinar | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Is Remarketing a ‘Nuisance’ or ‘Intrusive’? What Do You Think?

By Helen Brown

Advertising your products and services is the definitive way of getting your message out there, ‘shouting loud’ about unique selling points and offers is what makes sellers stand out from the competition after all. But exactly at what point does this all become a nuisance to consumers? How do people feel about all of the ads that are pushed into their lives every day? and do our consumers understand how sophisticated online advertising has become?

When the ability to remarket ads to audiences became available a few years ago, there were a considerable number of large companies who jumped in to road test the new feature. Many companies reported that they had found the method effective and were receiving a higher number of conversions and view through conversions than before they had implemented the technique. Independent studies, such as the Network Advertising Initiative’s also revealed that behaviorally-targeted ads are “more than twice as valuable, twice as effective as non-targeted online ads”*.

* source: http://www.networkadvertising.org/pdfs/NAI_Beales_Release.pdf

Remarketing – The ‘For’ opinion

This past weekend I was having coffee with a friend, we were also online browsing various clothing sites. My friend was puzzled when, after an earlier conversation on how I had been browsing holidays in an attempt to make my mind up on a destination, she could see ads about lots of holidays. She commented on the coincidence and I demonstrated the point by navigating away from the particular clothing site to a popular auction site where, again she was amazed to see ads at the top of the page showing the outfit we had previously viewed on the clothing site. She was completely unaware that this type of advertising existed and was amazed, she was not at all bothered or offended by it.

Remarketing – The ‘Against’ Opinion

However, I recently read a comment on an online forum from a user who thought that remarketing was ‘creepy’ and invasive. The forum user found it offensive that a marketer could ‘push’ their ads upon him after he had left the site he was previously browsing. I can also kind of understand a person having this opinion too, and I know that this feeling is widespread amongst other internet users. I also happened to touch on the subject with another tech orientated friend who, as it turned out, was rather irritated about remarketing in general. He got very fired up about the whole subject of tracking cookies etc in general (a quick change of subject was needed there!)

It would seem that opinions vary widely on this matter. When you consider it from a users perspective, it must seem a little strange to be blasted with ads relevant to a specific site after visiting it and navigating away. I also understand that users could feel that some sites are not very upfront about this. After all, the law relating to this states that any website using this kind of technique must clearly state so in their privacy policy. How many of us actually stop and read the privacy policy? There is a lot of information on the web about this, and I’m not just talking about remarketing campaign information written for advertisers to incorporate the technique into their strategy, but also information for the general internet browser/shopper. Sites like  http://www.allaboutcookies.org, http://www.networkadvertising.org and http://www.worldprivacyforum.org give lots of general information and perspective about how all of this works and also offer information into opting out of this kind of tracking if a user wants to.

Advertisers would argue the point that they use frequency capping and remarketing lists to control how ‘persistent’ their ads are. I personally don’t see any harm in remarketing when advertisers control the duration and frequency of their ads in a sensible fashion, I think what people find annoying is when they see the ads for months on end. Admittedly, I have an understanding of how it all works and I do find it interesting, but I have personally clicked a few remarketing ads myself and ended up buying after I had originally navigated away from the site. The ads did what they were supposed to do which was to get me to buy, I don’t object to that or feel harassed by it.
I think the debate really starts when people become alarmed at the thought of someone tracking their ‘personal preferences’ and how this could allow advertisers to ‘build up a profile’ over time.

I’ve recently read a piece on The World Privacy Forum about ‘unhealthy cookies’, that is, how ‘persistent’ and ‘profiling’ cookies can be an issue over time.  The article states that these types of cookies can last years on an unaware users browser and can allow big companies to build up quite a personal profile of a user, if the user does not clear the cookies from their browser once every now and then. That in my opinion is quite a scary thought, we all like our privacy and like to know who knows all about us. We are entitled to restrict what information others can collect about us. The page detailed ways that a user can use ‘opt out’ cookies, or ways to prevent such cookies being installed on their browsers.

So, Is remarketing a nuisance or intrusive, what do you think?

Posted in AdWords, Analytics, Bing, Display, Google, PPC, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Discounts on Resource Prices? Yes Please!

By Helen Brown

We all like to save a little bit of our hard earned cash where we can! So we’ve introduced some new discount tools into our checkout process. Users of Facebook and Twitter have the option to get a 5% discount on their total purchase by clicking our Facebook or Twitter buttons and mentioning us in a post or Tweet on their accounts. It’s as easy as that!
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After the post is added to your social network account, our system applies the 5% discount and you can proceed through the checkout process as normal. The discount tools are available for all iPassExam resources.

Enjoy! :-)

Posted in AdWords, Analytics, Bing, Display, Exam, Google, Team update, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

AdWords Exam Revision v’s Learning Centre Structure

By Helen Brown

When initially studying to pass the Google AdWords exams I really appreciated the clear clean layout of the AdWords Learning Centre. I really liked the way I could click the title of the exam and only see the sections that were relevant, and how each section of the categories was easy to access. The navigation was great, it made the learning process a smooth one for me.

With the launch of the Google AdWords Certification Centre, the navigation and layout of this new learning resource has changed somewhat.

I am a frequent visitor to the Google AdWords Community Forum, it’s a great place to engage with other AdWords users, to grow and also share your knowledge. I encourage any readers of this post to take part! One thing I have noticed on the forum however, is some comments about the navigation features of the new Certification Centre. I myself have to admit, I don’t find it so user friendly from a navigation standpoint, you constantly have to drill down to get to the specific sections and I know I am not alone in my feeling that it has made studying for exams more challenging somewhat. Although don’t get me wrong, the Certification Centre is essential as it is rich in information, you must study this if you wish to pass the exam.

At iPassExam HQ, we are as ever monitoring the learning material for changes to ensure that we are delivering exam preparation that is highly relevant. We frequently introduce new questions into our resources. However, at our last meeting we pondered another question and once again we are very keen to get your opinion on the following-

  1. How do our users feel about the layout of our resources and categories in relation to the learning material?
  2. Do you prefer the question banks to be set out according the the Google Learning centre categories or the new Google Certification Centre?

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