Introduction Google has made a major change in AdWords. Ads are now shown only in the main column, no longer in the right column. Previously, there were generally speaking eight ads per SERP. For some queries, Google didn’t show ads at all, and additionally they’ve been constantly testing the limit, e.g. running up to 16 product listing ads per results page. But…
We had a great discussion with Mr. Lauri Pitkänen about unfair advantage in business – e.g., a gift card company’s business model relying on people not redeeming gift cards, investment banker’s relying on monopoly to take 7% of each new IPO, doctor’s controlling how many new doctor’s are educated, taxi driver’s keeping the supply low through licenses, governments inventing new…
Introduction Here’s a list of analytics problems I’ve devised for a class I was teaching a digital analytics course (Web & Mobile Analytics, Information Technology Program) at Aalto University in Helsinki. Some solutions to them are also considered. The problems Last click fallacy = taking only the last interaction into account when analayzing channel or campaign performance (a common problem for standard Google…
Introduction In this article, I discuss how the classic VRIN model can be used to evaluate modern web platforms. What is the VRIN model? It’s one of the most cited models of the resource-based view of the firm. Essentially, it describes how a firm can achieve sustainable competitive advantage through resources that fulfill certain criteria. These criteria for resources that provide…
Recently I had an email correspondence with one my brightest digital marketing students. He asked for advice on creating an AdWords campaign plan. I told him the plan should include certain elements, and only them (it’s easy to make a long and useless plan, and difficult to do it short and useful). Anyway, in the process I also told him…
Introduction Startups, and why not bigger companies, too, often test marketing channels by allocating a small budget to each channel, and then analyzing the results (e.g. CPA, cost per action) per channel. This is done to determine a) business potential and b) channel potential. The former refers to how lucrative it is to acquire customers given their lifetime value, and…
Update [24th March, 2017]: In addition to the formula explained in the post, I would add the following general criteria for a good AdWords case: 1) Low-Medium competition (high CPCs force to look for alternative channels), 2) Good website/landing pages (i.e., load fast, easy to navigate, have text information relevant to the keywords. Introduction Google AdWords is a form of…
I teach this very simple formula to my students when they are required to write a pre-campaign report for the Google Online Marketing Challenge (GOMC). You want to report metrics in a table like this: budget ctr cpc clicks impressions 250 0,05 0,2 1250 25000 (The numbers…
Introduction I’ve been doing a lot of Facebook advertising. Compared to Google AdWords, Facebook Ads is missing a lot of features, and has annoying bugs. I’m listing these problems here, in case anyone working at Facebook would like to have an advertiser’s opinion, and that people working with programmatic ad platforms see how difficult it is to create — if…