The Search Monitor Blog

Unless you are completely new to PPC, it is tough to get the big gains that we once saw. As a marketing tactic, PPC has been mature for years and few “easy wins” still remain. Many categories are dominated by large players (e.g., Amazon), long-tail keywords have become expensive, and the most advanced marketers have complex technology and expensive agencies on their side.

Especially with first-page CPC bids on the rise, advertisers are tempted to look for any opportunity possible to reduce costs, and sometimes branded campaigns end up getting the ax. 

If you’re reading this, you’re using Google Ads as an advertising platform for your business or strongly considering it. It’s the search engine that accounts for 93% of global searches. It’s the only platform where you can virtually guarantee your audience to use it.

But that certainty also means that the level of competition is high and getting higher, which in turn means that the cost of advertising on Google can increase with time. That means you need to do more with less unless your budget increases. So continual optimization of your ads is a necessity.

Since as long as we can remember, The Search Monitor has been helping marketers to coordinate SEO and SEM efforts with reporting areas like SERP Share (since 2015!) which grades SEM & SEO performance against competitors, by keyword, to show the entire page real-estate in a singular view.  From these reports, SEM marketers have been able to make optimization decisions such as when to run ads, when to turn ads off, and to grade their overall SOV against the entire market landscape.

As an expansion on SERP Share, in early January 2023, we released a new reporting area called Ad Armor.

The Search Monitor is a powerful set of tools that empowers even the largest brands to stop trademark abuse in online advertising, saving them potentially millions of dollars in ad spend.

Avery Products Corporation, a label manufacturer that generates $175 million in revenue every year and employs more than 20,000 people, started using The Search Monitor to fight back against brand bidders who were abusing their trademark and driving up ad costs.

We are excited to share our latest whitepaper that covers six common challenges in optimizing PPC campaigns and how to solve them.

Optimizing search campaigns is the ‘meat and potatoes’ of every PPC team. However, it is also one of the most difficult to get consistently right. In this 6-step guide we are going to look at some of the most pressing challenges that face the PPC team when it comes to optimizing campaigns, why they’re happening and how to tackle them.

It’s that time of the year when millions of people around the world decide to motivate themselves, dust off their sweatpants and get back to the gym. So this year we wanted to see if the data is reflecting a shift from more ‘at-home’ workouts to people heading back to the gym in-person. Is there a growing confidence to get back to public gyms as lockdown measures ease in the United States?

Using The Search Monitors Lighthouse™ data*, we pulled SERP Share data as well as ad spend and competitive data to discover the detail.

SuperBowl Sunday is almost upon us and with that, a flurry of large wagers will be placed on who will be victorious in Los Angeles after the final whistle has been blown. Experts predict this could be the biggest Super Bowl ever for online betting. No one knows whether the Rams or Bengals will win. But one thing we can be sure of – sports betting companies will all win big.

Sports betting is becoming big business in the United States. It is currently live and legal in 30 states plus Washington DC. Now that legal betting is expanding from online websites to mobile apps, the market is set to expand even more rapidly in the years to come. Just look at the money spent on sports betting in June 2018 vs. October 2021:

In the Spring of 2021, Google and Bing announced a new ad format—Vehicle Listing Ads (VLAs). These feed-based product ads (similar to Product Listing Ads for retail) allow automotive dealerships to expand their reach and conversions. By simply uploading their inventory (make, model, year, etc.) their listings will be served up on Google and Bing search results and give the buyer a better search result and jumping off point.

They also give automotive marketers the ability to own more of the SERP—every advertiser’s dream come true. And, as we have learned with every industry, the more data available around competition and ad performance, the better decisions marketers are able to make, if they can access it.

Q4 2021 looks set to be the most important and eagerly anticipated trading quarters in modern history. Following the restrictions on business due to the global pandemic that has resulted in thousands of brands disappearing from malls around the world, the retail stakes have never been higher. Research conducted by DigitalCommerce360 predicts ‘U.S. consumer spending online to grow 12.1% year over year this 2021 holiday season’, further underlying a renewed consumer confidence and perhaps, a return to the good times.

However, competition for customers online is reaching new heights. Data from Statista for 2020 showed that over 800,000 businesses launched in the US alone. A high number for sure, but in fact it accounts for just 10.7% of the world’s start ups last year. In a marketplace with no borders and boundaries competition comes from everywhere and anywhere.

‘No-Brainer’

Geo-targeting ads is a ‘no-brainer’ for search marketers. It makes sense to tailor your ad copy, offer, and landing page for the user’s location. The ability to see how your marketing partners and search competitors behave by zip code, city, country, and even language give incredible insights into what is happening in the market, and the ability to adapt your strategy accordingly. But geo-targeting has other, often-overlooked applications in the world of search marketing.

Unexpected Benefits

Not only does it make your offer more compelling to the customer, but also conveys the feeling that this company understands me and the things I care about. Seeing a localized ad that ties in with local knowledge and cultural aspects I care about, means I am more likely to have a feel-good factor about the brand and their willingness to connect with me. This ‘customer-centric’ approach to marketing is not new, it’s been utilized in marketing for a long time, but in modern, scalable digital marketing has sometimes been lost in the day-to-day grind for more clicks and conversions. So not only can Geo-targeting your products and offers help secure more customers, it can also give additional softer marketing benefits that cannot be overlooked.