tigho is forcery, nyc, real estate, advertising, tech

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In the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen significantly more people reporting they’ve seen AdWords that allow advertisers to collect email addresses directly in the ad unit. Now Google has confirmed it has expanded the trial of the lead generation format to additional advertisers.

We’ve seen the format used by daily deal provider bloomspot, which also collected ZIP codes via the form, presumably to add subscribers to the appropriate city-specific deals newsletters. Email service providers like AWeber and Vertical Response also seem to be trying out the format. Previous versions of the test included the ability for users to request phone calls from marketers, as well.

A Google spokesperson sent a statement reading: “This ad format is still in testing phase, but our team is getting a lot of interest from advertisers and we’ve been slowly expanding the trial over recent months.  These ads help businesses gather new leads and enable users to easily get relevant information and ask for quotes.”

Indeed, the format seems designed for marketers peddling high-consideration goods or services, which often require significant nurturing and follow-up by a salesperson. On the consumer side, one could seem them being useful for car manufacturers and retailers, and business-to-business leads seem a natural use case

Google Buzz is going away, but your posts are yours to keep

In a few weeks we'll be retiring Google Buzz. At that time you won't be able to create any new posts, but your existing content will remain accessible in two ways:

1. You can view it on your Google Profile
2. You can download it using Google Takeout

Thank you for using Google Buzz.

Up-and-coming social network Google+ will soon be integrated with Google’s blogging platform, Blogger, according to a message now appearing in the “Edit User Profile” section of Blogger’s Settings.

The message reads “Connect Blogger to Google+ : Use your Google profile and get access to upcoming Google+ features on Blogger,” and includes links to “Learn more” and ”Get Started.” Unfortunately, the links are dead-ends right now, so we don’t yet know what type of integration is being planned.

The “Learn More” link is currently dumping to this “page not found” message in Blogger’s Help Center, while the “Get Started” link simply redirects logged-in users to their Blogger Dashboard.

 

Google is opening wider a beta test of Dynamic Search Ads, an interesting new type of AdWords ad for larger advertisers that eliminates the need for keywords.

With this ad type, designed for retailers or other advertisers with large, often-changing inventory, Google automatically generates ad copy — based on the advertiser’s template — by looking at the content in the advertiser’s Web site. Google also automatically displays the ad in response to search terms it thinks are a good match, without the advertiser having to select keywords. Google has been using a similar no-keywords approach in its program for small local advertisers, AdWords Express.

For Dynamic Search Ads, advertisers input their Web site URL or the URL of a range of pages on their site — say, a retailer wanted to promote their women’s clothing — and select a bid price based on the value of that category to them. Google then continually crawls the Web site so it knows when inventory changes, and can theoretically respond with relevant ads more quickly than the marketing team that’s manually creating keywords and ads. The system is also designed to keep on top of changes in the types of queries people are performing — Google says 16% of searches every day are new.

In an effort to keep this from impinging on advertisers’ existing campaigns, the system will hold back the dynamically generated ad in favor of advertiser-created copy, if the advertiser already has a campaign targeting the specific search term.

“We want to make sure it doesn’t affect keyword campaigns,” Baris Gultekin, director of AdWords product management, told me. “This is purely incremental.”

Gultekin says the company will provide advertisers with reporting on search terms that generated clicks, the matched destination pages and ad headlines generated, average CPC, clicks and conversions. Advertisers may optimize by adjusting a max CPC bid.

The new ad type has been in development for two and a half years, and “a couple hundred” advertisers across a variety of verticals have already been testing it. Gultekin says advertisers on average are seeing 5-10% increase in conversions with a positive ROI.

One advertiser in particular — ApartmentHomeLiving.com, a real estate Web site with constantly changing inventory — says it saw a 50% increase in conversions at an average cost-per-conversion that’s 73% less than their normal search ads. The company is already a seasoned search marketer with campaigns of up to 15 million keywords.

Dynamic Search Ads are available in all languages and all countries currently, but only to advertisers in the limited beta. The company is soliciting inquiries from customers that might be interested in participating in the beta in order to widen its reach.

Post and access your Facebook feed from Google+ (it's a chrome plugin).

Google just announced a free, templated mobile landing page creation tool called Google Sites.

This has been overshadowed by the Google+ frenzy, but I look forward to checking it out!

Is Social Taking Over Search

Really interesting Page Level Social Metrics from SEOmoz... and a little bit of Seth Godin.