If you haven’t yet started advertising with Google, then by now you’ve got to be feeling like the sorry soul standing on the empty station platform looking forlornly at the back end of your last train home. To catch up, proceed to
HERE where you can listen to and read a presentation which we have prepared especially for people like you.
For the rest . . . in April 2005, Google introduced its new form of ads which allow customers to purchase ads on the basis of cost per thousand impressions (CPM). We’ve been using the ads for awhile now with acceptably good results. They have some advantages and disadvantages over Google’s cost per click (CPC) ads, and understanding your own requirements can help you determine whether they might nicely complement your CPC campaigns.
Efficient Google Advertising Spending Level
One way to determine whether CPM ads might be right for you, is to determine the Efficient Google Advertising Spending Level for your market, then compare this to your Google Adwords budget. If your budget is larger than the Efficient Google Advertising Spending Level, then CPM ads are probably the most efficient way to spend your excess ad dollars. If the Efficient Google Advertising Spending Level for your market exceeds your Google Adwords Budget, then we would generally recommend sticking with the CPC ads, and giving the CPM ads a miss.
For example, right now we think the Efficient Google Advertising Spending Level for a house cleaning company targeting the Denver Metro Area (population 2.4 million) is about $600 per month. That means it costs $600 per month to show an advertisement to each of the 3,900 persons living in Denver who, in any given month, happens to use Google to search for house cleaning services.
The important point to understand about Efficient Google Advertising Spending Level is that there are a finite number of persons using Google in a given month to search for your services. Looking at the matter in this way, the Efficient Google Advertising Spending Level is independent of your own advertising budget, because you cannot force Google searchers to type in your search terms. If your Google ad budget is lower than the Efficient Google Advertising Spending Level, then you likely remain oblivious to this concept. If your budget is greater than your Efficient Google Advertising Spending Level, then you either already understand the concept, or have done some really foolish spending with Google.
For smaller markets, I’ll choose Carmel, Indiana (population 38,000), a random suburb of Indianapolis as an example, the Efficient Google Advertising Spending Level will be much lower, for two reasons. The most obvious is that the population is significantly lower, and therefore the number of persons searching for house cleaning services is smaller. The second reason may be less apparent to those who have not managed campaigns for suburbs of metro areas: Google isn’t yet so good at delineating the where of it all. We don’t really blame them a lot for this, because it remains a difficult task, one which the other search engines are even less capable of managing. One of the most likely place for someone to look for a house cleaning company is from their desks, at work. And quite a lot of the persons living in Carmel, IN work in downtown Indianapolis. For a hypothetical company, Carmel Home Cleaners then, putting together a CPC ad campaign which attracts Google searchers can be tedious and inefficient, and due to this factor, the Efficient Google Advertising Spending Level can be proportionately lower. In our experience, for such a suburb, the Efficient Google Advertising Spending Level may be as low as $5 to $15 per month. That doesn’t mean it’s not possible to spend significantly more. It just means that it’s not possible to spend more in an efficient way with CPC ads.
I should mention here that there are loads of people who don’t actually agree with our definition of efficient ad spending, including the fox itself (Google). We know this because we’ve seen a lot of Google Adword campaigns which merrily tick along earning click through rates of less than 3% (and have seen the results of Google’s jump-start program). Yech!! Stick to tightly defined, relevant keywords. Stick to relevant and logical geographical target areas. Coordinate the two, and there is no reason to pay for deficient click through rates.
Finally, we come around to our conclusion, if you’re still with us on this, and you are one of the persons who are presently under-spending your Google Adwords budget, and especially if you are spending just $6 per month in Carmel, IN, then you might be a pretty good candidate for Google’s CPM campaigns.
We believe for those who can afford it, the two types of advertising should be used to complement each other. And if constructed intelligently, both provide good value in comparison to all other forms of advertising.
The Illusive Generic Visitor
Who visited? What made them visit? What was the result? What was the purpose of their visit? What were they wearing when they visited?
If you intend to mix CPC and CPM ad campaigns, then you are going to start becoming a lot more interested in these types of questions, because the answers determine the amounts you should be willing to bid for your CPC and CPM ads.
If you are a website customer, then don’t worry, we have you covered on these questions. All website customers may sign up for Ripple’s new banner ad tracking, which will allow them to compare their cost per conversion for CPM campaigns to their cost per conversion for CPC campaigns. It takes some effort, but if you are into this sort of thing, the results can provide meaningful information which can help you manage your ad campaigns more efficiently (and if you’re not into this sort of thing, then you should have a look below at “The Big Sales Pitch”).
Wearing Underwear or a Tie?
About visitors’ apparel, you thought I was joking, right? I sort of was, but imagine I wasn’t. Think about our little bedroom community, Carmel. Are the clicks arising from prospects at work or home? Which are most valuable in terms of conversions? And you wondered why Google quit showing us clicks in real time . . .
Free Banner Art
One advantage of the new ad format is that it allows advertisers to post banner ads in the form of gif’s or JPG’s on content sites. Presently all Alliance members with nice websites can request Ripple to create banners for them free of charge. Indeed, all of our own website customers who are using Google already have such banners, and all our qualifying Ad Management customers already have CPM campaigns. For examples of such graphical ads, you can visit the state pages of the House Cleaning Directory
The Big Sales Pitch
If you already have a Google Adwords account, then have a look for yourself at the new site-managed campaign options. If you don’t yet have a Google Adwords account, then you really should consider asking us to create one for you, because if we create it for you, then we can apply one of our Adwords Professional credits to your account, and that’s worth $100-free. If you are a website customer, we’ll set the accounts up for you free, as well. If you are not a website customer, the setup charge is $250, which includes the first month of ad management (minus the $100 credit means that it really costs you just $150).