Earlier in the year, Gareth was approached by an online publisher to write a book on Pay Per Click advertising. Bookboon publishes short textbooks for students, professionals and business owners to download from their site.

They mentioned that there is a demand for easy to understand books in the world of online marketing and they wanted a title on Pay Per Click and Google AdWords. They needed a new book where the advice would fall somewhere between an introduction to the topic and a step-by-step guide for those new to search engine advertising.

A few month and 15000 words later, Gareth had written the book. Chris, who heads up the Liberty Pay Per Click team (and knows Google AdWords and Analytics inside and out), contributed on some chapters and made sure the book was up-to-date following the numerous AdWords changes.

If you want to learn about Pay Per Click advertising, in particular Google AdWords and Facebook Ads, then you can download your copy of How Google Changed Advertising and How to Master AdWords here.

Social network ad spend has been rising steadily over the last few years with marketers extending their online pay per click and banner advertising beyond the seach engines to include the social networks as well. It is estimated that during 2011 marketers in the US alone will spend £3.08 billion on social network advertising. eMarketer predicts that US ad spend will be up 55% on 2010 when marketers spent $1.99 billion, and that worldwide social network spend will be up 71.6% in 2011 to $5.97billion.



Facebook, by far the largest social network, is clearly having the greatest impact on this growth through a year-on-year increase in Facebook advertising. Facebook therefore contributes up to 65% of the 2011 prediciton. eMarketer predicts that advertising spend on facebook will hit $2.19 billion in the US alone in 2011 and over $4 billion worldwide. That's more than double the total spent in 2010!


So as we move further into 2011 social networks are poised to absorb an even greater percentage of all online spending making them difficult to ignore for any business serious about their online marketing. We will be watching eagerly to see what developments Facebook has planned for the forthcoming year.

Whether you are a fan of Google's new Instant search or not, if you are running a PPC campaign then this post will be of interest to you.

There appears to be a glitch in Instant search that could be costing top spot advertisers dearly. Whilst Instant search is turned on, if a search returns Adwords ads above the organic SERPs and you hit enter twice in the search field you will automatically open the number 1 Adwords result. This costs whoever is in the top spot, but the user won't have made the choice to click the ad, so what will they do? Click back, because they were expecting a Google search results screen.

This will have a detrimental effect on top position bounce rates and could be wasting a great deal of advertiser's budgets.

Currently running in Beta test mode, Google are testing video extensions that will be shown with their Adwords ads.

The plan is to have an "expandable plus-box" directly beneath the normal PPC text ad in which video extensions will play. Users will be able to watch the video before deciding whether or not to click-through. This sounds interesting for users, but the current cost of this service for advertisers is less appealing.

Once viewers reach the 10 second mark the advertiser will be charged the same maximum cost per click as if their ad had been clicked, regardless of whether it is clicked. So will this lead to a flurry of 10 second ads or are the search results becoming more and more cluttered, as with Google Preview?

Google has suggested that video extensions could be of particular use for product demonstrations, previews and trailers.

At present, there are no plans to roll this service out in the UK.

Google has now launched “Instant Previews”, which provides a preview of the organic search results without a searcher having to click through to the site itself. These previews appear on the right hand side of the Google search results screen when you click the little magnifying glass icon next to the search results.

This new addition comes hot on the heels of Google's launch of Google Instant. Unlike Google Instant search, Google Instant Preview is by default turned off, the magnifying glass must be clicked to activate this new feature. The preview istself is a graphic overview of a search result that highlights those sections which are most applicable to the search term used making it easier to see whether a site is worth visiting or not.

Google Preview will start showing up from today, 9th November 2010 and should be available in 40 languages and to all users within a couple of days. Google claims that during the testing of Google Instant Preview, those using Instant Preview stated that they were about 5% more likely to be satisfied with the results they clicked. This new visual comparison seems set to change the way visitors evaluate websites and choose whether or not to visit them.

At this point Google Preview doesn't extend to Google Ads, even though every Google Ad ends up at a web page. Google has thought about the option, but isn’t including it in the initial launch. Although incredibly fast and powerful, Google Preview still finds including sites created in Flash difficult with the majority of flash sites not yet being turned into a preview. Unlike Google Instant, which shuts off when your web connection slows, Google Instant Previews is available even on poor internet connections.

With Microsoft Advertising adCenter now providing all paid search results for Yahoo! Search and Bing in the US, and Bing supplying the organic search results for Yahoo! Search, they have just announced that this will be rolled out in select markets across europe and the UK in early 2011.

The european transition will begin with the UK, France and Ireland with all of europe expected to be completed by early 2012.

Current advice is to continue using adCenter as normal but to expect further information regarding the pending changes approximately 3 months prior to any changes taking place.

In a report published today it was revealed that the internet in the UK alone is worth £100 billion to the economy, representing more than a 7% share of total national income.

The study, carried out by the Boston Consulting Group on behalf of Google, the internet’s most successful company, places a value on the UK internet market for the first time.

If it were an industry in its own right the internet would be more than twice the value of the UK hotel and restaurant market and nearly as big as the financial sector, which accounts for 9% of Gross Domestic Products in 2009.

However, the research did find that there is a digital divide in the UK, with certain parts of the country – namely Scotland and Northern Ireland – lagging far behind London and the south-east.

In an interesting twist in the report, it turns out that British consumers are more willing to spend money online than can be typically seen elsewhere. E-commerce drives a large section of the internet’s expansion; as a proportion of retail sales, online transactions in the UK are high.

To emphasise this point, the UK has the largest e-commerce market in the world when measured by the amount spent per capita. The popularity of buying goods and services has also fueled a boom in the amount companies are prepared to pay for online marketing as heavy spending can help attract users to their sites.

The online advertising market in Britain is worth £3.5 billion and is the biggest anywhere outside the US.

It is forecasted that the internet economy is to continue to boom with 10% year on year growth projected for the next 5 years. If this trend comes to fruition then the internet economy will contribute up to 13% of GDP by the year 2015. For an idea of scale the current internet economy is already larger than the utility and transport industries put together.          

The report also highlights the success of small firms using the internet to increase global sales. The UK now exports goods and services which are worth £2.80 for every £1 it imports. Google’s annual turnover was £23.6bn last year which encompasses very nearly a quarter of the £100 billion contribution the entire internet made to the UK economy in 2009.

Writing AdWords copy has become a modern day art form, one that many SEM’s have refined over years to take advantage of the 4 line structure. I’m sure we have all slaved over that phrase or line which is just 1 character too long! Well, Google have recently made things more challenging – thanks very much - by adding variable line lengths to the equation.

In the past we have written ads which fit within the following structure:

Title: 25 characters max
Line 2: 35 characters max
Line 3: 35 characters max
Display URL: 35 characters max

This strict format has often seen punctuation omitted in favour of that last character and to date we have been able to get away with it because we know exactly how our ad will appear in Google. Variable line lengths change this by expanding or contracting the line length in relation to the size of a user’s browser.

The result is that an ad you may have spent ages over will now appear in a completely different way to different users thereby losing some of its advertising appeal in the process.

So what does this mean for future copy?

Good copywriters won’t be fazed by this change. A good copywriter will create dynamic copy which reads well regardless, but the correct use of punctuation will now become critical to ensure your advertising message gets through the way you intended. Reviewing existing ads and altering them accordingly would also be advisable.