Ascii Art is an Innovative way to catch the searchers eye.

When planning and implementing a Google AdWords campaign, copywriting is a key factor to establishing a high quality score, relevance and CTR. Not only is persuasive copy a way to stand out among the crowd and include searchers in the buying process while still on the search results page, but sometimes copy can be used to stand out from the crowd.

Search engine copywriting is an art. It may not seem possible to pack creativity and strategy into such short headlines and descriptions, but copy is a tool you need to win the search marketing wars. Make sure you test different creative using the engines rotation of more than one creative to find the best creative for the specific AdGroups. Include the following in your variations of creative; Call to action, Unique Selling Points, Price points if competitive, Promotions, Brand Inclusion, Seasonal Messages.

ASCII Art is a way to form pictures and images using simple keyboard symbols, like dashes or plus signs; which has been used since the days of the Vic 20 or Commodore Pet to show images on a screen.

The company sixt.de used ascii art to create ads including the image of a car.
The folks at PayDay One tested ASCII Art. Google is trying to filter this type of art from being included in their Adwords copy; some of the creatives are still getting through (although disapproved after a while). This is an excellent mix of ASCII Art and creative copy.



To coincide with James Bond Film ‘Quantum of Solace’ and make use of the buzz surrounding the new film Littlewoods Direct advertised the James Bond Box Set:

Is web 3.0 (the intelligent web) nearly here?

Web 3.0 is a way of describing the next step in the internet evolution where websites/applications will be able to link data more intelligently.

Nova Spivack defines Web 3.0 as the third decade of the Web (2010–2020) during which he suggests several major complementary technology trends will reach new levels of maturity simultaneously. This stage of the web is shown in the graph (top left) which illustrates the history/future of the web.

The following websites are developing Web 3.0 ideas and are linking data in a more intelligently way. Subsequetly these websites have been described as the begginings of Web 3.0. Consequently Web 3.0 may be here already.

www.cooliris.com – A streamlined search engine for finding rich media content.
www.peer39.com - Peer39 is the global leader in semantic advertising solutions.
www.powerset.com – Semantic Search Engine from Microsoft.
www.qik.com – Stream live video from your phone. This is very cool (although not on the iPhone yet, should be an app soon though).
www.twine.com – Collect and share all the content you find on the web
www.gnipcentral.com – Similar to twine.

Eric Shmidt on Web 3.0:

Cooliris on the iPhone

Cooliris formerly known as PicLens, is a web browser application made by Cooliris that provides interactive 3D cinematic style views of online images and videos. This online application could be argued as the beginnings of a Web 3.0 search engine for videos and images. Visually it is stunning and is a very intuitive way of sifting through relevant media-rich content.

A free app for the iPhone has just been released by Cooliris, so you can now experience this great visual search engine on the move. The Cooliris way of searching really comes to life on the iPhone, which incorporates the touch screen, zoom function, and the accelerometer, where all benefit the Cooliris iPhone app. It is a very streamlined interface!

Cooliris for the iPhone can also bring you the latest news in a hassle-free manner. All of the Discover feeds and search engines that are available on the web plug-in are available on the iPhone, so you’ll always have the latest current events at your fingertips on the move.

Cooliris aim to bring even more search options to their iPhone app, which take advantage of the iPhone’s unique interface.

http://www.cooliris.com/

Googles Ad Search "more sponsored links"

There seems to be a potential issue regarding the "more sponsored links" button on Google; this doesn't actually lead you to more of the PPC results you would expect to see - it is a different set of results based og Googles "entire ad inventory".

These supposed PPC ads are not activated in the same way as the normal PPC ads. For example I have an ad appearing in the "more sponsored links' even though I don't bid on the keyword.

Google's answer: "Clicking More Sponsored Links on a Google search results page brings you to our Ad Search feature. Ad Search allows users to search through our entire ad inventory for relevant ads and provides advertisers with more opportunities to reach their target audience.

As an extension of Google's search results, these ads are ranked differently from competing AdWords ads. Clicks and impressions accrued by these ads aren't reported in your account, and their performance has no influence on your account or how our system calculates your keywords' minimum bids. Advertisers are also not charged for any clicks that result from these ads.

Please note that ads appearing on the 'More Sponsored Links' page may no longer be active at the time they are shown. In addition, because ads are shown based on a user's search terms (keywords), they are not filtered for language preferences. That means users may see ads in languages other than their own."

The potential problem of Google displaying ads that are paused in your account is that old offers maybe displayed in Google. For example old credit card rate offers maybe displayed, which is actually illegal.

Google says the ads "may no longer be active at the time they are shown". Consequently we have less control over them, but we also don't pay if anyone clicks on them...

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=53502

Bravo to George Sampson, the winner of Britain’s Got Talent 2008. Google didn’t predict his win.

Searches for Britains Got Talent stars in May 2008
George Sampson the schoolboy from Warrington won the hearts of the nation with his fantastic, modern take on the Gene Kelly classic Singing In The Rain.

After an extraordinary final that was watched by over 13 million people on Saturday night, George Sampson was voted by the UK public the most talented after a closely fought battle with fellow dance act Signature (runner up). Andrew Johnston came third and surprisingly Faryl Smith didn’t make the final.

Google trends didn’t predict George Sampson (Blue) to win but predicted he would be in the top three. Andrew Johnston (Red) came third in the final even though more people had searched for his name in Google than George Sampson throughout the weeks coming up to the final. If you went on the proportion of searchers Andrew Johnston look most likely to win. Signature looked like they were going to come second according to Google Trends and this is what happened with lots of searches for front man Suleman Mirza (Green).

Searches for Britains Got Talent stars in 2008

Google Trends indicates that the voters of 'Britains got Talent 2008' were won over by George Sampsons performance on the night. Signitures' and Andrew Johnston's popularity throughout the tournament through Google didn’t mean they beat George Sampson on the final night.

Landing Page Load Time: Google Quality Score:

As you might already know Google has recently included the landing page load time into its Quality Score algorithm. Therefore you need to aim for a load time below 8 seconds.

Page load time is the time it takes a web page to load in seconds. If the load time is slow, Google says this will impact your quality score. Why? Slow loading landing pages are bad for your user.

Here's some info on how it affects your QS: adwords.google.com/landing-page-load-time and what needs to be done to reduce load time: adwords.google.com/reduce-load-time

I have heard that it should be below 8 seconds (which is a long time). However some Flash sites take this long to load.

You can see your QS for the load time in Adwords. If it has a 'load time faster than the average in your servers geographic region', it means the current landing page load time is improving our quality score:

Advertising on the Moon

How about buying advertising space on the Moon?

The beer company Rolling Rock was supposedly going to beam on to the moon on 21st March (they were lying): www.moonvertising.com ....However the concept is feasible.

You would be able to get a massive audience, nearly all countries at night time. All you need is a big powerful laser, which shouldn't cost too much (few million). You can't put the logo over the Suns reflection (too bright), but you could advertise on a new moon: advertising is everywhere and now on the moon.