Enhanced Campaigns

Ciarán McManus explores
the marketing implications
of diminishing attention
spans.
Get the lowdown on
Google & their recent
acquisition of Waze. By
Ben McAneny.
Hannah Kimuyu reflects
as the countdown begins
for enhanced campaigns.
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Magazine Contents
4
Penguin&Panda who?
- Is Google still really
easy to game?
ARTICLE
Cloaking + Possible Hacking + Foreign Forum
Spam + Blog Comment Spam + Link Wheel
= Position 1 for “Superdry Sale”.
Contents
3
Overview
4
Article - Penguin and
Panda who? Is Google still
really easy to game?
by Adam Bunn
9
Article - The Countdown
to Enhanced Campaigns
Begins.
by Hannah Kimuyu
11
Article - Google/Waze
by Ben McAneny
13
Article - Going Bitesize:
What the everdiminishing attention
span of the modern
consumers means for
Social Media Marketers.
by Ciarán McManus
feature articles
13
The
932
Countdown
Begins for
Enhanced Campaigns
Article by Hannah Kimuyu
11
Going Bitesize
What the ever-diminishing
attention span of the modern
consumers means for Social
Media Marketers.
Catch up on Google & Waze
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Feature Article
FEATURE ARTICLE
Penguin & Panda
who?
IS GOOGLE STILL REALLY
EASY TO GAME?
S
At the time of writing,
drivethedeal.co.uk
holds the top
position for the
keyword “Superdry
Sale”.
01
o far I have resisted writing anything about “Penguin 2.0”,
the latest iteration of Google’s
flagship anti-spam algorithm that
rolled out on May 22nd. Amidst
the sea of SEO’s telling everyone
“it happened” and/or parroting out
the usual information about what
Penguin is and how you can avoid
it/escape from it, I have struggled
to see much point. Fortunately last
week Google came to my rescue
with a real peach of a SERP showcasing an example of Penguin,
Panda, and Google in general really
not working at all, providing me the
perfect pretext to talk about it.
I would like to say I conducted an
advanced forensic SEO investigation to uncover what you’re about
to see, but the sad fact is that it
was really quite easy and took all
of 10 minutes – probably not far
off the amount of time it took to
build the sites in question and set
up the necessary link building tools
before sitting back and watching
the money roll in.
At the time of writing figure 1
(left) demonstrates the SERP for
the keyword “superdry sale”. Superdry is one of the hottest fashion
keywords out there right now, with
various high street stores that sell
the label competing against the
brand itself.
The top ranking page,
drivethedeal.co.uk/shop/superdry.asp
is the one I’m interested in here
(see figure 2). It came from
nowhere to position 1 a couple of
weeks ago and has been enjoying
top ranks ever since.
02
It’s not a spectacular piece of
web design, the grammar used in
the site navigation is somewhat
suspect (including such gems as
“men jean” and “men outwear”)
and let’s just say that the prices for
some of the clothes are particularly
attractive.
But wait,although this is the
site we end up on after clicking the
first Google result, it isn’t the ranking site we’re interested in - the
URL of this site is www.superdryoutlet2013.org. The top ranking
site is a doorway page with some
rudimentary cloaking put in place
to discriminate between search
engines and users to treat them
differently.
Illustrated below (figure 3) is the
delightful page that is actually
Doorway page seen by users
www.superdryoutlet2013.og
ranking – a blatantly manipulative
text heavy monstrosity that has
been “spun” by software designed
to create unique copy that can fool
search engines into thinking it is
good, well structured and readable content....exactly one of the
things that the Panda algorithm
is supposed to tackle! This page
has a simple script that identifies
when a visitor has come from the
Google SERP and redirects them
to the superdryoutlet2013.org
website. Because search engines
will never crawl from the Google
SERP this is an incredibly crude but
effective means of cloaking so that
search engines index and rank the
text heavy page while users are
sent to something more suitable
for driving sales. You can view the
cloaked doorway page by simply
copying and pasting its URL into
your browser.
03 The page visible to Search Engines
www.drivethedeal/shop/superdry.asp
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5
Feature Article
links in a 2 week period starting
just after the launch of Penguin 2.
HACKING
It’s possible that drivethedeal.co.uk
has been the target of a hack by
the spammer behind this ranking.
While the site itself isn’t necessarily that genuine (it has no contact
details, for one) it is obviously
about a completely different topic
(cheap cars) with the Superdry
page being totally out of place.
It’s not uncommon at all for this
kind of discreet hack to be used
by black hat SEO’s, because the
benefit of placing hyper-optimised
content on a domain with history is
that rankings can be gained much
quicker.
LINK BUILDING
Figure 4 below shows new links
accrued to the doorway page over
the last few months, as reported
by majesticseo.com. Majestic has
discovered in excess of 130,000
Figure 5 shows links accrued to
the entire domain
(drivethedeal.co.uk) during the
same time. The profile is exactly
the same, meaning that the only
new links to the site during this
time were the 130,000+ links to
the doorway page.
In fact, forgetting the last few
months and looking at all time,
96% of the links to the site point
to the doorway page!
I find it difficult to imagine a more
unnatural spike in a link profile
than this, and astounding that
Google’s 2nd generation anti-spam
algorithm (i.e. Penguin 2) has been
completely fooled by it, especially
when you consider the sorts of
links being gained; forum spam on
foreign forums that are potentially
more vulnerable to software that
automatically creates profiles and
posts spun content with many
links, and blog comment spam of a
similar nature (See figures 6 & 7).
LINK WHEEL
The spammer behind the Superdry
sale ranking hasn’t stopped at
generating 130,000 links straight
to the doorway page. There is
also a significant amount of cross
linking happening between the
forum posts and blog comments in
a tactic known as a “link wheel”, so
called because it builds a network
of linked sites around the primary
target of the link activity. The
network, rather than linking universally between all pages (which is
easier for search engines to spot),
will typically link consecutively
from one page to the next (providing the wheel analogy) in order to
compound the value of link equity
that is ultimately extracted from it.
(See figure 8).
04
05
drivethedeal.co.uk acquired
130,000+ links within 2 weeks
of the Penguin 2 update.
Feature Article
08
Link wheel
A “link wheel” builds a network of linked sites around the
primary target of the link activity. The network, rather than
linking universally between all pages (which is easier for search
engines to spot), will typically link consecutively from one page
to the next in order to compound the value of link equity that is
ultimately extracted from it.
What can we conclude
from all this?
Investigating this (and again I used
the term “investigating” in the
loosest possible sense of the word)
I have arrived at a list of spam
tactics that reads like the agenda
for a “Black Hat 101” training session. Cloaking, doorway pages,
content spinning, hacking, forum
and comment spam – these things
have been around for over a decade and aside from the mentions
of Penguin 2 and link wheels (the
one concession to a slightly more
modern tactic) this article could
have been published in 2002 and
would have made perfect sense to
anyone reading it then.
I expect Google would argue that
this is just one example of “getting
it wrong” among millions, and read
literally they’d be right. But the
point of algorithms is that they apply universally and I think we have
06
a right to expect that they aren’t
so easily duped. Since Penguin 2
rolled out I’d say the SERPs have
become anecdotally worse not
better, with examples like this
page, which I also saw ranking in
2nd for the “superdry” brand term
(since dropped to 7th or so), some
ranks for “online casino” supported
by clearly paid and hidden links,
and most amusing of all a page 1
ranking for “payday loans” with the
URL paydayloansfrommrcutts.blog.co.uk, just days after Google
announced their new focus on
spammy queries like “pay day
loans” (Matt Cutts, for those who
don’t know, heads up Google’ web
spam team).
I am not going to come out and say
that Penguin and Panda are doing a
poor job, because there’s no way of
knowing how much worse things
might be without those algorithms
in place. But I do expect Google to
take quicker manual action on this
sort of thing. I know the “superdry
sale” and “superdry” SERPs have
been reported to Google a number
of times, in some detail, with no
discernible effect. By contrast,
the Matt Cutts-related “pay day
loans” result lasted just one day
before being removed. To me this
shows a level of cynicism that is
unacceptable from a company that
demands such high standards from
brands when it comes to towing
the Google line.
2 weeks ago we had a potential
customer not choose Greenlight to
do their SEO on the basis that they
were looking for a company that
would just go and buy them a lot of
links. As bizarre as that sounded
initially, I wonder if you can blame
people for arriving at that conclusion when worse things still seem
to fly under Google’s radar?
By Adam Bunn,
Director of SEO, Greenlight Digital.
07
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8
Feature Article
BY
HANNAH
KIMUYU
With the July 22nd deadline
looming, Greenlight shares its
observations since migrating
over to Enhanced Campaigns.
The Countdown Begins for Enhanced Campaigns
For those of you that have
been living underneath a rock
for the past few months, here’s
a quick recap on Enhanced
Campaigns.
Back in February, Google
announced significant changes to its
AdWords advertising platform adding
a functionality it called “Enhanced
Campaigns”. Put simply, it centralises controls for mobile and desktop
advertising campaigns in one place
and offers advertisers more data to
show the real value of their campaigns. Previously businesses have
had to submit individual advertising
campaigns for different devices, locations and times - a labour-intensive
process which, most times, results in
running hundreds of similar campaigns simultaneously.
Following the announcement, there
was outrage from most advertisers &
agencies, including Greenlight. The
main issues highlighted included:
- Google has always been at pains
to stress it is best practice to separate campaigns by device. However,
with “Enhanced Campaigns”, this
functionality is now being removed,
and once it is fully rolled out, all
devices will have to be targeted
within one campaign.
- In the new format campaign budgets will be set at campaign level
and bids at keyword level, allowing
no differentiation between devices.
- Arguably the biggest challenge is
that of third party tracking solutions. Although Google has a fix for
most providers, we have definitely
had issues especially with
tracking mobile. Omniture in particular seems unable to adapt the
tracking in Search Centre to pull
through mobile devices, allowing no
visibility against mobile vs desktop/
tablet orders.
However with all the challenges
we have also seen quite a
few benefits since Enhanced
Campaigns were introduced
1. Ad Placement Focusing your
budget on the context that matters,
including time of day, proximity,
and type of device.
2. Ad Copy Refocusing your bidding
strategy and messaging to reflect
the different contextual situations,
allowing the advertiser to be more
consistent and automated.
3. Reporting (My personal favourite) Being able to measure the joint
impact of where an ad shows up
and what it says e.g. measuring app
downloads, offers, and click-to-call
etc. (Also Google’s first attempt at
joining the dots between different
devices).
So what have been the actual impacts
of Enhanced Campaigns?
1. Although Google has done
a good job in documentation and
explaining why things need to be
done in a certain way, migrating
to Enhanced Campaigns isn’t as
simple as just ‘flipping the switch’.
Planning is essential and therefore
we recommend a phased approach,
taking your best performers/largest
campaigns first, testing them and
then expanding the best approach
across all campaigns. Not only does
this control the potential negative
effects (mainly performance) of
Enhanced Campaigns but it also
makes it easier to identify any duplication (keywords, device, targeting
etc) as part of the transition.
2. The biggest concern for all
advertisers and agencies was
the impact Enhanced Campaigns
would have on cost per clicks
(CPC’s). Unfortunately, no migration has escaped an increase in
CPC. Surprisingly, as we get closer
to the deadline, the CPC fluctuations appear to be more severe
with the newly merged desktop/
tablet device taking the brunt. On
average Greenlight has seen a
steady increase of at least 30% in
CPC’s since migrating to Enhanced
Campaigns. Mobile CPC’s are still
the cheapest, but we are seeing
an increase in tablet CPC’s owing
to more competitors entering the
space and having to compete at
desktop bids, rather than the lower
tablet CPC’s our advertisers are
used to paying.
3. Previously campaigns were
separated by device, with more
keyword coverage on desktop. With
Enhanced Campaigns, this then
opted all desktop keywords onto
mobile as well, with a mobile bid
adjustment of -40%. We’ve seen an
increase in mobile traffic, but at a
low click through rate (CTR) despite
strong positions. With a range of
clients we have also tested increasing bid modifiers to +30% for
remarketing lists (those who have
already visited the site) which has
helped to increase conversion rates
(CVR) and push more qualified
traffic to site. Not having to set this
up in a separate campaign saves
time and allows us to roll this out
almost as a best practice across all
campaigns.
4. Clients using Search Centre
(Omniture) are unable to implement any fixes to track Enhanced
Campaigns. Fortunately we have
AdWords tracking in place to give
us a steer on this, but it’s not a likefor-like, so optimisations by device
are not as accurate.
If you’ve still not taken
the plunge, what should
you be thinking about?
PHASE THE MIGRATION
Test a handful of high volume terms,
then brand terms and then phase
accordingly. Otherwise you will see
huge CPC spikes which are almost
impossible to control. A phased
process allows youto manage the
potential issues efficiently and
highlights any ongoing issues for the
next phase.
Think about your modifiers
You can adjust your bids for mobile,
for gender, for age, for location, you
can increase/decrease based on
whether a customer has already
visited your site or whether they
are close in proximity to your store.
Think about what makes the most
sense and impact to your business
and how you want to test this?
Make sure you phase in the modifiers so you can assess the impact
of each modifier, rather than rolling
them all out together which will
blend the results into each other.
Monitor performance closely
In some instances we have seen
performances improve, but in the
majority of cases we have seen CPC
increases and in some cases, a drop
in visibility. It is important to keep a
close eye on these changes.
Budget control
With the one campaign targeting all three devices, obviously
the original budget needs to be
increased to accommodate this. On
top of that though, as more people
are entering the mobile and tablet
space as a direct result of Enhanced
Campaigns, the CPC’s are naturally increasing, so bids need to be
increased accordingly.
Think mobile
A major factor to the introduction of
Enhanced Campaigns was to get all
advertisers ‘thinking mobile’. Now
we are almost there it is essential
that your page renders well on these
devices, optimise your user journey
and ensure you have a strategy to
increase performance especially on
mobile devices. Up until now, lots of
advertisers have neglected mobile,
but with the growth in mobile traffic
and Enhanced Campaigns developments, without investment and
optimisation in your mobile platform, you will get left behind.
Essentially don’t get caught out and
wait to migrate; get planning and
testing before the 22nd deadline.
By Hannah Kimuyu,
Director of PPC, Greenlight Digital.
Get in touch to discuss your site’s specific performance | www.greenlightdigital.com |  +44 (0)20 33261929
10
Feature Article
Google &
waze
Google’s recent purchase of
Social Mapping Company,
Waze has got Ben McAneny
questioning the potential
rationale as to the reasons
behind the acquisition and
what future implications
this could have within the
marketplace.
What is Waze?
Founded in 2007, Waze is a
GPS based navigational app,
whose content is driven by its
users (currently listed at around
50 million registered). The
crowdsourced app combines
online maps with updates from
other users about traffic jams,
road works and accidents.
Founded in 2007, the Israeli
based company has raised £67
million independently over the
past 5 years (a little less than
the £1.3 Billion dollars that it
was eventually sold for). It
had been rumoured that both
Apple and Facebook were in
discussions with Waze to strike
up an acquisition deal, but
talks appeared to break down
(allegedly the re-location of
its 120 staff to California was
something which eroded talks
with Facebook).
Why?
Whilst an inflated price of a startup tech company is not out of
the norm (considering the recent
purchase of Tumblr by Yahoo
for $1.1billion), there are several
reasons why this purchase has
larger implications than simply
owning the market place.
Competition
Waze is possibly the 5th largest
mapping company currently
in existence (behind Google,
Microsoft, Apple and TomTom).
With Google’s purchase of the
company, it has essentially
blocked its competitors from doing
the same. However, it has now
potentially landed itself in trouble
with consumer groups and faces
an anti-trust probe in the U.S (a
recent U.S pressure group has
requested that the Department of
Justice investigate the takeover).
...Waze is possibly the
5th largest mapping
company currently in
existence...
Content
The content for Google Maps has
been created by spending infinite
sums of money on sending streetmaps cars around the world to
map the roads they drive through
– allegedly the cost of this exercise
has equated to $15 billion dollars
so far (according to Waze CEO
Noam Bardin). Waze differs as its
content is crowd-sourced, meaning
its users passively provide GPS
data (i.e. if a user is driving around
with the app turned on, Waze uses
this data to monitor its existing
maps). Waze’s maps are updated
every 24 hours; whilst Google’s are
updated closer to once a quarter at
its most frequent (this is only for
select areas).
“ 10% OF WAZE USERS
ACTIVELY UPDATE
THEIR MAPS ”
Waze also has the added extra that
roughly 10% of their users actively
update the maps themselves,
and are rewarded with the
same gamifaction mechanic as
Foursquare. This offers a unique
selling point that other mapping
competitors do not have, which
in turn could further help increase
brand loyalty if and when the
application is pre-loaded on
Android devices in the future.
User Intent
Of course whilst content creation
is important to Google, the prime
reason for the acquisition is likely
to be monetisation. With the ever
increasing surge in web traffic, the
key to monetizing this activity will
be to provide users with accurate
ads – which can only be achieved
by understanding why users are
Local Search
using the app. This is why when
users currently use Google maps
on their smartphones, they are
not served ads unless they decide
they want to obtain directions.
The thought process is, if users
of Waze are engaged with
other users, in a ‘social’ aspect,
mentioning where and why they
are travelling somewhere (in
addition to uploading updates
about oncoming traffic jams),
Google is able to potentially serve
relevant ads within the map itself.
This is currently being tested
in the existing Waze interface,
where deals have been struck with
major advertisers such as Taco
Bell, Starbucks and AT&T. Waze’s
CEO, however, says that ads will
only likely work if they provide a
‘reason’ for the user – an example
in the future could be Groupon
style-deals within the map
interface offered to users travelling
to a certain destination.
When travelling to work, users may
want to know which petrol station
has the cheapest petrol, or when
visiting a department store, they
may want to see offers for stores
around that particular location.
The potential for serving such ads
is limited – especially now Google
has further increased geo-location
targeting options with the roll-out
of its Enhanced Campaigns (where
location specific site-links can be
served within the SERPs.
Whilst talks with major
advertisers will likely be the
key in growing revenue, the
growth in local advertising is
also something being explored
by both Google and Waze.
Currently, Adwords is already
giving a ‘keyword-less’ ads
option, where advertisers can
set up an account and run it
themselves, without having to
employ an agency to run their
campaigns on their behalf.
Waze also has a somewhat
similar offering, which allows
advertisers to pitch to the end
user themselves. If this offering
is further developed, alongside
the ‘coupon-deal’ business
model, this could help smaller
advertisers monetize their own
offering and not have to rely
on giant discount sites such as
Groupon.
In Summary
Whilst this purchase has only
recently occurred and may be
impacted by the recent antitrust pressure in the U.S, it is
clear that location-based search
is something which is going to
be further explored by Google.
Google had already foreseen that
the future of Search was going
to be related to mapping, back
in 2003 (when Google maps
was first released), however,
serving users with relevant, noninfringing ads within the mapping
interface is now finally being
realised.
By Ben McAneny,
Senior Account Manager,
Greenlight Digital
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12
Feature Article
Going BITESIZE
What the ever-diminishing attention span
of the modern consumer means for
Social Media marketers.
by Ciarán McManus
“Tony Soprano just
died!” exclaimed a friend
one evening. “In real life,
you mean?” I ask. “Yup,
I’ve just seen it on
Twitter.”
I couldn’t believe it, James
Gandolfini, an essential part of my
university experience (box sets got
me through some tough academic
times) had passed away at 51.
IT MADE NO SENSE.
“How?” I inquired. “I
don’t know,” my friend
replied, “it just says he
died.”
And just like that, we
continued on with our evening.....
I don’t mention this
anecdote as some kind of indictment of the human race, the
media machine or as a comment
on modern society’s reaction to
celebrity death – that horrible race
to the bottom to crack the best
joke on Twitter (having partaken in
said activity, I’m really in no place
to comment anyway). Instead,
I was struck with how blasé we
all were that warm summer
evening about our own ignorance.
We didn’t have time to wait for
further details, we had a life to live.
Similarly, the Twitter account that
had posted the information had no
time to compile the details, such
was their imperative to post the
news in its most basic form.
Simply put, this ultimately speaks
most prominently about our ever
diminishing attention spans, which
is likely to have a huge influence
on every creative industry, and
importantly for us, this most
certainly includes marketing and
social media. In days gone by,
at the time of the emergence
of modern marketing and
commercialism as we recognise
it, copy could be an entire page of
a broadsheet newspaper. Less is
more was barely a consideration as
advertisers had paragraphs worth
of prose to exploit for commercial
gain.
Needless to say, the internet
changed all that. Long before
social media became ubiquitous,
the ease at which information
could be accessed, shared and
consumed at a faster rate was
already beginning to debase the
currency of long form writing
online.
The fear mongering around the
supposed slow death of journalism
is now reaching new heights as the
old guard of the industry diversify
into dating websites, professional
networks and even a fully fledged
coffee shop (sneered at by the
Twitter majority on launch day,
Greenlight certainly weren’t
complaining about #guardiancoffee
– we had complimentary coffees
all round!). But unsurprisingly, the
biggest change has come in how
news outlets are utilising social
media channels, fully aware of the
fact that a large portion of their
followers or fans may never engage
with them past reading their tweets.
Brevity is now King
..The 140-character
limit is what makes
Twitter tick so well...
Brevity is now king. Where once
people who ‘didn’t get’ Twitter
complained incessantly about
the 140-character limit, it is now
virtually a universal fact that
the limitations are what makes
Twitter tick so well. It is the perfect
consumption tool for the new age
user with neither the time nor
patience to read anything that isn’t
in a bitesize format. This has been
clear to marketers for some time,
but the newest trend is perhaps
more unexpected, as brevity is now
reaching much further than textual
content.
YouTube used to hold sole domain
over the short form online video
market, and in contrast to Twitter
which challenged marketers to
reappropriate their message
into a shorter format, YouTube
probably constituted somewhat
of a liberation for marketers used
to having just 30 seconds on
television to sell a product via
video. Few would have thought the
typical content type on YouTube
could be pared down further and
still be of mass interest but the
explosive popularity of Vine, which
limits users to just 6 seconds of
video per post, has shown that
the truncation of video content is
appealing just as tweets are.
Vine, and now Instagram with their
introduction of 15 second videos,
therefore present new challenges
and opportunities for marketers. It
is unlikely YouTube will drastically
fade as a marketing tool when
faced with these new would-be
usurpers, but content strategies for
advertising and social campaigns
will need to take into account both
the long and short forms of video
with equal significance.
With Instagram videos clocking
in at half the length of traditional
television advertising, it may be
more feasible that marketers
harness the benefits of that
channel first, whilst Vine’s
frenetic pace almost means it
is barely definable as a video in
the traditional sense. This makes
Vine the greatest challenge,
and opinions are conflicted
over whether early marketing
applications of the service are good
or bad.
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14
Feature Article
“...Vine is already
populated with all kinds of
out-of-the-box thinking...”
It is perhaps obvious which of the
two services will yield the greatest
examples of creativity. The lazy
marketers out there will be much
more drawn to Instagram where
television and YouTube segments
are repurposed easier, whilst Vine’s
limitations will impose a minimum
requirement level of creativity that
may produce some real ingenuity.
Vine is already populated with all
kinds of out-of-the-box thinking,
and it is only a matter of time
before marketers follow suit and
find their own creative methods
that outperform the mixed efforts
so far.
Our retracting attention spans
may mean we should lament for
broadsheet newspapers, libraries,
art house cinema, interpretive
dance or anything else that
requires a level of concentration
and patience to enjoy but we
certainly shouldn’t lament for
marketers. Marketers can rarely
define the formats through which
they need to communicate with
consumers, and the job itself is
simply maximise the potency of a
message in whatever medium is
required.
VINE
INSTAGRAM
6
SECONDS
OF VIDEO TIME
YOU TUBE
15
SECONDS
OF VIDEO TIME
252
SECONDS
AVERAGE LENGTH
OF VIDEO TIME
A new challenge awaits and we
all need to practice. So tonight I’m
going to make a few Vine videos of
my dog.
By Ciarán McManus,
Social Media Strategist,
Greenlight Digital
www.greenlightdigital.com
Level 14, The Broadgate Tower,
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