2009 was a landmark year for online marketing. The first six months of the year saw online ad spend overtake television to become the UK’s largest advertising sector for the first time. It was predicted that this trend would continue into 2010.

A recent report from the Internet Advertising Bureau, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the World Advertising Research Centre, has found that online ad spend in 2009 went on to surpass predictions, reaching £3.5 billion (a total increase in spend of 4.2% over the year). Online advertising has continued strengthening its position as the largest advertising sector into 2010 and has proven itself not to be just a blip, caused by recession-hit companies looking for cheaper ways to advertise, as was suggested by some academics in 2009.

The report shows that spend on paid search (Pay Per Click advertising) rose by 9.5% to £2.15bn in 2009. One of the consequences of this increase is that businesses using Google AdWords and MSN Adcenter to market a business are now competing against more bidders for advert positions and clicks.

One of the most surprising results from the report was the 140% increase in video advertising. This is partly due to companies using the internet to distribute their television adverts and also due to many hoping that a video released on the internet may go “viral”.

The increase in online advertising is thought to be due to the changing habits of UK citizens. The Internet is increasingly becoming a vital part of 21st century life and people are spending more time surfing. The changes in consumer habits towards mainstream Internet use has resulted in innovative marketing from companies that have had to re-think the way they advertise. As the results of the study show, many companies are completely restructuring their advertising strategies to include far more online advertising and turning their backs on the increasingly expensive, hard to track, traditional means of promotion.

We manage the pay per click advertising campaigns for a number of businesses and often see a problem with the way they have been set-up – no use of negative keywords.

Using negative match means choosing the keywords you DON’T want your ads to appear for. When running a pay per click campaign, such as Google AdWords, it is vital that you include negative keywords, especially if the keywords you are bidding on are broad or phrase matched.

Negative match will stop the advert being shown if the keyword is featured in the search query. By stopping your adverts from appearing for phrases that are not relevant, not only will you no longer be paying for clicks that you do not want, but as your overall click through rate will be higher, your advert quality score will improve. A higher quality score means you will start rising up the advert rankings without having to pay more for each click.

An example of how negative matching can help is for a business that sells DVDs. A look at the Google keyword tool shows these as the top search results for “DVD” last month:

dvd = 24900000
dvds = 5000000
dvd player = 1830000
dvd players = 1000000
dvd recorder = 823000
dvd drive = 450000
dvd for sale = 368000
dvd sale = 368000
dvd software = 301000

As you can see, a lot of the searches containing the phrase “DVD” are not made by people looking to make a purchase. Having an advert appear for the search “DVD recorder” would not be a good way for a DVD disk retailer to get the most out of their online advertising budget. By placing the keyword “recorder” as a negative, it will prevent the advert for ever appearing for this search term again.

Negative keyword match is put in place simply by placing a minus/dash symbol in front of the keywords. The initial list of negative keywords that would help this shop improve their pay per click advert performance would look like this:

-dvd player
-dvd players
-dvd recorder
-dvd drive
-dvd software

Use the Google keyword tool to find the searches that your adverts appear for and see if there are any you would rather they didn’t. Use negative match to exclude these keywords and you’ll soon start seeing an increase in click through rates and an improved return on investment.