PPC Search marketing is a huge, and still growing, area, which grew by almost a third between 2006 and 2008, according to IAB estimates. Almost 60% of all online ad spend is spent in PPC search – with the vast majority paying for smoothies and massage chairs at Google HQ.

While PPC search remains one of the most cost-effective ways to gain conversions, the landscape is changing as the discipline begins to mature. Historically, any PPC search campaign – even one which was poorly organised – would still be likely to work well.

These days, due to increased competition, costs per click (CPC) prices are getting higher and higher, and PPC campaigns need to be a lot more competitive to succeed, particularly with non-branded keywords.

The integrated approach

Advertisers need to think more broadly to ensure that their online campaigns are up to scratch. As well as considering many more online advertising arenas, they must also leverage their interconnectedness.

While PPC marketing will aid a company’s ability to acquire new business and may generate a reasonable ROI on its own, its potential can be increased by using the best performing keywords as anchor text links when carrying out link building exercises. If search terms perform well in a paid search campaign, you would be well advised to improve your natural search listings for the same terms where possible.

Similarly, competitor and customer analysis can inform all areas of your thinking by giving an idea of where you stand in the wider market, and potentially gaining first person feedback from the very people you are targeting with your online marketing strategies.

A more connected online marketplace...

Here is a brief explanation of some of the areas businesses need to invest in to compete in today’s more connected online marketplace, and the reasons why they mustn’t be neglected. It’s important to remember that whilst each of the below is certainly a specialism unto itself – the real value is from a cohesive blend of them all seamlessly working together with common cause.

Social

In August 2008, Facebook reached the auspicious landmark of 100,000,000 users. Social spaces are booming, and anyone marketing their site needs to get on board. Social bookmarking sites such as Digg and Reddit, social networking such as Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, social tagging such as StumbleUpon or Flickr, blogs & online discussion forums that target your audience, all of these are important portals which, used correctly, can improve your presence online.

Online Advertising

New developments in technology are creating a world where online advertising can be increasingly targeted to relevant consumers. For example, as a result of behavioural advertising, it is now possible to target users according to their actual behaviour online, not only by what page they are looking at. Tracking this customer behaviour can once again inform your thinking in other areas of your campaign.

Tracking & Analytics

The tools now available to us to enable advanced tracking and analytics are like gold dust to savvy marketers. Not only is it fascinating on a human level to try and decipher the moods and habits of your cherished visitors, it is also crucial work if you want to leverage the information available to you.

Email & CRM

Gaining new business is always great, but it’s often a lot easier to sell to those customers you have already won. Opt-in email marketing and email newsletters are two useful methods of keeping the relationship you have with your customers fresh and up-to-date. It also allows for you to communicate with users on their own terms, allowing for a two way communication – rather than simply enforcing on them your generic, default marketing messages.

Natural SEO

Search Engine Optimisation is a term incorporating a huge range of activities, including link development, improving the code and content of a site and article and press release distribution. The importance of using these tried & tested methods to gain and maintain good rankings on the major search engines cannot be underestimated, as many a business is made or broken by their positions on the search engines.

Content

The written word is the lifeblood of the internet, so content is always a major part of an online marketing strategy. Using the keywords and phrases your target audience is already searching for when they are looking for your products or services in all areas of your campaign, as well as on site, will reduce bounce rates, increase targeted traffic and ensure the right people engage with your brand.

Usability

Once you’ve done all that hard work bringing in the right people to your site, it really would be a shame to put them off with poor usability. No matter how many visitors you get to your site, you may as well not bother unless the site itself is capable of gaining conversions. Therefore making sure the design is uncluttered, the navigation easy to understand and there is a clear path to checkout is vital.

Impressions on Google’s Content Network have increased by more than 300% in the last year, according to the latest research.

The Google Content Network allows website owners to include ads on their site, using the advertising application AdSense. The ads generate revenue for the site owner on a PPC or CPM basis.

Content Network impressions surged by 308% year on year, accounting for 6.4% of UK search impressions, according to Efficient Frontier’s UK Search Performance Report Q4 2008.

Meanwhile, and in stark contrast to Google’s success with Content, Yahoo has recently closed its Content Match, its text-based version of Google Adsense.

These events provide yet more evidence of Google’s seemingly unstoppable rise against its main competitors, Yahoo and MSN.

How do we know that ‘cupcakes’ was the most searched-for recipe of 2008? Because, at the end of the year, Google is kind enough to give us a round-up of all the world’s most popular search terms.

Looking down the various ‘top 10s’ can give you a real glimpse into the zeitgeist - the spirit of the times. Here are some of the highlights from Google's round-up of 2008.

Top ten searched-for terms in the UK:

   1. facebook
   2. bbc
   3. youtube
   4. ebay
   5. games
   6. news
   7. hotmail
   8. bebo
   9. yahoo
  10. jobs

Fastest rising in the UK:

   1. iplayer
   2. facebook
   3. iphone
   4. youtube
   5. yahoo mail
   6. large hadron collider
   7. obama
   8. friv
   9. jogos
  10. wiki

Fastest rising globally:

   1. sarah palin
   2. beijing 2008
   3. facebook login
   4. tuenti
   5. heath ledger
   6. obama
   7. nasza klasa
   8. wer kennt wen
   9. euro 2008
  10. jonas brothers

While we credit the readers of this blog with being fully aware of the sites in the first list, a few of those in the second and third might need a little explaining.

large hadron collider: Remember back in September ‘08, when (if you believed the hype) we were all about to be swallowed up by an man-made black hole? Well, the LHC, the world's most powerful atom-smasher, was to blame. Now, due to an electrical fault, this mammoth project won't be ready to go ahead until spring '09.

friv: a free online games site, showing the most popular games on the homepage and removing the least popular when new ones come along.

jogos: another games site - 'jogos' is Portuguese for 'game'.

tuenti: a Madrid-based social networking site which has been referred to as 'the Spanish Facebook'.

nasza klasa: the Polish Facebook (yes, another one)

wer kennt wen: the German Facebook (zzzzzzzzz)

jonas brothers: an American boyband who became famous after starring in Disney movie 'Camp Rock'.

What might make it to the top in ’09? We’re hedging our bets on hip social arena ‘Twitter’ which has enjoyed a good dose of publicity lately, payday loan, debt, discount voucher and UK holiday sites for the strapped-for-cash, and some fun escapism while we all try to forget our troubles. Lady Gaga, anyone?

In October, Google got well and truly onto the Youtube bandwagon, introducing click-to-buy ads to the site which are intended to be directly related to the Youtube video being watched.

The ads, which are placed beneath the video, are intended to entice the targeted Youtube audience to click and buy products such as sound tracks and video games connected to the clip they have just watched.

‘Just as YouTube users can share, favorite, comment on, and respond to videos quickly and easily,’ said Google, ‘now users can click-to-buy products -- like songs and video games -- related to the content they're watching on the site.’

On May 5, Google made a significant change to its policy regarding ‘brand bidding’ - the ability for a company to bid on another company’s brand name.

This was a surefire way for Google to increase its revenue, but also one which has led to difficulties between certain companies who are battling for the same customers.

Last week, Interflora announced it was suing Marks & Spencer over their decision to bid against their brand name.

Just because Google allows companies to do this doesn’t mean the courts will, they reasoned.

According to news reports, the dispute could change the way companies advertise on the internet.

In yet another revenue-boosting move, Google has altered its policy around alcohol-related advertising in the US.

‘This fall, we changed our policy around beer, for the first time allowing advertisements of its sale in the U.S. via AdWords. And starting today, in response to advertiser feedback we've received over the years, we'll permit the advertisement of hard alcohol and liqueurs that target the U.S’, Google explained last week.

Google plans to roll out these changes to other locations in the coming weeks. Cheers!

Some of us online marketeers recently found a very upbeat offer from Google in our inboxes. It started off like this:

‘I'm excited to tell you that you have been selected to participate in a beta for our new Automatic Matching feature.

‘Automatic Matching automatically extends your campaign's reach by using surplus budget to serve your ads on relevant search queries that are not already triggered by your keyword lists.’

Unfortunately, we at atom42 are not quite so excited. While we can see the benefit of Google being able to pick up on potentially profitable keywords which are not already in our account, we have been stung before by Google’s Expanded Broad Match system, and Automatic Matching sounds suspiciously similar.

Both offer to serve ads on keywords which are linked to yours but which you have not bid upon. This type of system can throw up odd keyword matches, though, which are so tenuously related to what you are selling that there is only the slimmest chance of most of these types of ads actually working for you.

The one company they definitely do benefit is Google, because they give Google the opportunity to use up your surplus budget each day, even when your keywords have not generated enough traffic to do this by themselves.

In our opinion, Google should concentrate on their new Search-based Keyword Tool which tells you if there are any keywords which Google deems ‘relevant’ that aren’t already in your account.

This gives the marketeer complete control over which keywords they want to add to their campaign, rather than Google automatically doing it on your behalf. It may not be as profitable for Google in the short term, but in the long term they will have much happier customers!

Unless you took part in a recent study to measure the effect of Youtube advertising upon brainwaves, your brain is probably safe from Google’s probings – for now. However, measuring the brain’s response to advertising, a process called ‘neuromarketing’, could soon become a common way to develop ads which will capture our imaginations like never before.

Google employed a firm called Neurofocus to measure the impact of YouTube overlay advertisements. The firm uses biometric measures such as brainwave activity, eye-tracking and skin response to gauge the impact of ads.

Based on criteria including attention level, emotional engagement and memory retention, it then comes up with an overall ‘effectiveness’ score for ads.

The idea is that by discovering how the brain responds to the ads, companies can find out whether or not the ad will be memorable to the viewer in terms of creating long-term brand awareness.

The psychology of marketing campaigns has long been of interest to advertisers. This new way of measuring the effectiveness of ads reduces the traditionally ‘hit and miss’ aspect of advertising, creating ads which have a more measurable impact on the viewer. Sceptics have labelled the new technique ‘a little spooky’.

At atom⁴², news of Google’s recent surge in profits has not come as such a big shock. Over the past few months, we have seen plenty of evidence of Google attempting to keep revenues high, with Adwords practices and policies continuing to change in Google’s favour.

Expanded broad match, the lifting of a previously strict trade marking policy and the reintroduction of gambling ads are a clear sign that Google are desperately trying to beat the crunch. For now they are succeeding, but what does the future hold for Google?

Obvious strategies will include the improvement and increased take up of current products including local search (via Google Maps and Local Business Search), mobile advertising and product search.

Display advertising will also undoubtedly form part of Google’s long term strategy, with Co-founder Sergey Brin admitting ‘We see this as an area that is ripe for development and innovation, and we think we can create great tools for...display.’

Google TV Ads are also an exciting development, with partnerships already forming with cable networks to support this venture.

Increased transparency in reporting along with new tools should also take a front seat if Google are to truly battle the storms ahead. Just today, Google released a new tool in the US which will allow for the easy creation of display ads, and also announced that separate reporting for Google and their search network will soon be available.

Atomic is looking forward to seeing what will come next...

Google today announced its revenue figures for Q3 and, despite the global economic crisis, along with the recently reported dip in share prices, the company has reported revenue of $5.54 billion. This represents an increase of 3% on Q2 of 2008 and a 31% increase on revenues for the same quarter in 2007.

This announcement has surprised analysts, many of whom predicted that Google stocks would fall below $300, the lowest level since 2005 (share price in fact rose 4% to $353.02 by the end of trading on Thursday).

One explanation for such positive results is simply that advertising on Google is simply too effective for the recession to cause companies to pull out of their Google PPC advertising campaigns. With search continuing to be one of the most transparent and cost-effective advertising mediums for the majority of businesses, it makes sense that advertisers are pulling spend out of traditional media ahead of PPC.

Nevertheless, Google Chairman Erik Schmidt remained cautious following the news, admitting Google is not immune to economic conditions and stating that the company is in 'unchartered conditions' and should plan for the long term.

Well, there may be no place like Chrome if things continue the way they have been for Google’s new browser. Despite drumming up a fair amount of interest on its first few days, it seems as though now the experimenters have exited there have been fewer willing to make a real commitment.

Chrome’s share of the market peaked on September 4 at 1.16%, but has now dwindled to 0.81%, according to E-Commerce Times.

Despite these discouraging statistics, however, we still think Chrome has some very interesting features which could make it a success if some improvements were made in areas such as performance glitches and privacy issues.

These are the features liked:

-    Imported user information: Chrome automatically imports bookmarks, passwords and settings from your previous browser. Handy!

-    One search box for everything: Instead of a separate menu bar and title bar.

-    The ‘most visited’ sites page: Great if you’re fine with everyone seeing which sites you’ve been looking at, a bit of a hassle if you’re one of the more sneaky internet users among us.

-    A simple, minimalist layout: Chrome is distinctly lacking in fussy paraphernalia around the edge of the page you are viewing, which can be a welcome relief.

Have you used Chrome yet? Email us your opinions at news@atom42.co.uk

The the first phone to run on Google's new technology Android, the T-Mobile G1, will go on sale some time before Christmas in the UK.

Industry insiders can’t wait to find out if this seriously-hyped product will be a success, but Android is going to mean far more to the industry than simply a new phone.

Android is an open source operating system for phones and, as such, provides huge potential for innovation in the industry.

Being open source, handset manufacturers and wireless operators will be able to customize any phone running on Android with more exciting new features as and when they become available.

In theory, this should mean that innovative new products can be brought to market faster and at a lower cost. Watch this space!