Thursday, September 08, 2016

Can Adwords Help Sell EBooks? No.

This is a quick summary of my 60-odd days of experimenting with Adwords to promote and sell a series of How To/Reference PDF guides on various skills (Tiny Skills) using Adwords. In the past, I managed Digital Marketing Campaigns for eCommerce companies.

All this happened in the last two months:

1. Good CTR (Click Through Rates) mean nothing. I mentioned in the text and display ads that these were PDF guides.

2. In the 60-odd days period, I got 1500+ clicks, and O conversions.

3. I posted in the Adwords forums about my problem and the internet advised me that only branded content sells well online. This is something worth thinking over. It needs time, some viral posts...it needs exposure.

4. Text ads are the worst. I even tried expanded text ads. I got the clicks. Nothing on the sales side.

5. A lady from Adwords (they call the new customers, and I was using Adwords from my personal account) called. She advised me to use newer kinds of Adwords ads (Gmail ads etc) and promised to check in in 14 days. I started the new ads, got the clicks (the skill guides are really useful), and waited for the lady to call back. When she didn't, I paused all the ads, except the Display and Remarketing ads.

6. I changed the landing page, A/B tested etc more that 5-6 times in this period. More clicks, but no conversions.

7. Thankfully, I got conversions from other channels: Links, emails etc.

What I learnt: Even when I used to do Digital marketing campaigns for ECommerce companies, we knew Adwords/Facebook Ads etc are money-gobblers - good for branding, but if you plan to use these to plan profitable marketing campaigns, after having figured in per-sale margin and all that, you are in for a shock. Yes, yes. Online marketing is supposed to be targetable, measurable and what not...but advertising is advertising.

So, Adwords doesn't help with ebook sales. How about Adwords' effect on other sectors?

Google (India) and Facebook (India) are perhaps the most profitable digital companies, making the most money out of ECommerce in India - Google alone makes more than Rs. 1000 crore each year from India. I am thinking of using Facebook to promote the page for the guides, but I am still figuring out the margins, which is foolish, for online advertising doesn't seem to be about margins/unit economics etc at all.


P.S. The headline should have been 'Can Adwords and Facebook Ads Help Sell Ebooks? No.'

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posted by Pramit Singh @ 5:53 PM 0 Comments

Friday, July 13, 2007

Google: search Company or Ad Company? The debate ensues

The debate over Google’s responsibilities as a search company and as a n advertising company, took a legal turn yesterday when the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has decided to take legal action against Google over the way Google sells and displays sponsored links.

Although, the case points out that lay users (aka noobies, a big source of adsense clickers) are confused by sponsored links over search results, more importantly, the case also throws light upon the practice of duplicity in Adwords, when a company brings out adwords in name of its competitor – think Coke buying Pepsi adwords – user clicks Pepsi ad link and is taken to Coke’s site.

Now Google might reply that it is hard for it to ascertain an adword buyer’s authencity as most of the Adwords service is self-service, Google may increasingly find itself responding complaints.

With bigger status, come great responsibilities.

Bottomline: sooner or later, Google ought to change the way it operates if it is to become the world’s biggest advertising company too.

This may be a landmark case.

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posted by Pramit Singh @ 12:49 PM 0 Comments

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

What will challenge adwords?

Decision makers in most companies still don’t get the ins and outs of the Paid per Click (PPC) online marketing, which is the famous cash cow for Google.

London-based ISM (Internet Search Management) says that most companies overspend while buying paid search results.

So, is ignorance on part of business executives making Google richer?
This is not a simple as this and is only as true as the fact that the web newbie constitute a big part of adsense clickers.

Banner ad campaigns, which were kings of the hill before adsense, are coming back to form. Ebay which recently stopped PPC ads on Google, has opted for banner ads on other networks.

However, this must also be seen in light of eBay’s nervousness vis-à-vis Google checkout and Google Base.

Can Paid Search build brands?
The jury is still out on this.

CPA (cost per action) is new but promising.

Openads, which sells open source ad servers already used by thousands of web sites is fast entering the ‘in thing’ brandspace. Consider Openads as the free version of Doubleclick, which was recently bought by Google.

Then there are those who say that instead of spending huge amounts on PPC, site owners must make their sites as SEO-friendly as possible, going only for now-and-then small-sized adwords campaigns.

Paraphrasing what others have already said:
To defeat Google, you need to defeat it in the ad business.

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posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:21 PM 0 Comments