PPC Foundations: The Paid Search Auction Flashcards
What is the Auction process?
Paid search is an auction-based system o Advertisers place a bid to show an ad for a keyword o Users click on ads o Advertisers get traffic and pay search engines
Multiple advertisers can advertise on a given SERP
How is Ad rank & Ad Position determined?
Ad position is determined primarily through a calculation of quality score and bid, along with ad extension data
o (Max bid ) x (quality score) x (ad extension data) = Ad Rank
Ad Rank is only useful in comparison to your competition
In most PPC systems, advertisers are charged $0.01 more than it costs to beat the advertiser below them
What is Quality Score?
Quality score is an automated opinion from a search about the user experience of an ad and landing page for a given search query
o Quality score is calculated based on many factors including click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page relevance
Competition and quality score is dynamic and constantly in flux
o Ads are displayed according to region, time of day, day of week, and other factors
Different PPC systems (Bing, Google, etc.) vary in terms of ad rank calculation and quality score calculations
To stand out from your competition, you’ll need to design a high quality user experience
What is conversion tracking and why is it important?
Tracking conversions enables you to determine profitability
o Depending on company goals, you likely want clicks and traffic to convert at a rate that is profitable and sustainable
It’s important to list out all of your goals and determine how much you’re willing to pay to reach each goal
o Goals could include impressions, form fills, sales, clicks, etc
Measure your goals using analytics programs o Online marketing enables you to measure this fairly easy
o This enables you to make sure the advertising stays profitable
Be careful of bidding just to be in position one
You never know your competitors’ goals
o PPC is a blind auction; you’ll never know your competitors’ bids or quality scores
