Magnus Nilsson on Digital Marketing » Note

iBooks for iPhone 4 Reaches a New Audience

Magnus Nilsson — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:16:04 +0000

Having got my iPhone 4 in time for the holidays it was a perfect opportunity to test its abilities as an ebook reader. My conclusion is that it’s surprisingly good and a great companion for both the frequent traveller and commuter alike.

While the iPad was hailed as the saviour of the publishing industry, my bet is that the iPhone 4’s retina display will revolutionize book sales even more. While the iPad attracts existing book worms that previously luged around with their bags full of paper, the iPhone 4 opens up a whole new market of people that previously didn’t prioritize carrying books on the go but now have a whole library in their pocket.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve read three books using the iPhone 4. The high resolution retina display makes the text as sharp as print and the bright screen is (with sepia setting) still easy enough on the eyes for longer sessions. The fact of the matter is that as someone who is used to a constant information stream and multitasking with text messages, twitter, and email etc while cramping up in a tube carriage, the shorter pages (compared to a pocket book or iPad) makes it easy to interrupt the reading for a moment and quickly pick-up where I left off.

While the iBook store is similar to the famed iTunes Store, it currently falls short in both depth and breadth of titles. Possibly is this also the reason for the current lack of genre top lists which makes it laboursome to browse through categories.

Overall though, I’m thrilled about a piece of technology that so far has made me read more books in a few weeks than over the last six months, and since it’s a book that’s always in my pocket there’s no reason to stop now.

The iPhone 4 retina display makes text more print-like (click for full resolution and imagine it on 3.5 inch screen)

The built-in dictionary is only a tap away in any book (click for full resolution)

AdWords Quality Score – Not all CTR is created equal

Magnus Nilsson — Thu, 20 May 2010 10:43:44 +0000

It’s very clear that CTR is the dominant factor when Google is deciding the adwords quality score. Therefore it’s key to frequently monitor and optimise the CTR. If you’re using the standard Adwords interface, you are however treated to a blended CTR column that doesn’t provide much granular insights.

Google search marketing campaigns can run on either Google or the Search Network (search partners). In addition there are the display properties on the Google Content Network. Since these three networks behave very differently, Google is separating the CTR data to only impact the individual networks. In short, Google CTR only impacts Google listings, Search Network CTR only impacts Search Network listings, and Content Network CTR only impacts Content Network performance.

Regardless, when navigating Adwords, from a search perspective, you are presented with the total CTR from both Google and the Search Network. E.g. if you are looking at keyword level performance, this will be the blended CTR. As we can see below (by zooming in at an Adgroup level from the network tab), they are performing very differently so the blended CTR is not of that much use as an indication of performance for optimisation.

There are two workarounds for this problem:

Create separate campaigns for Google and Search network
Pull a bespoke keyword report

While the first option might seem like a good solution for many scenarios, if this is not an option, here’s how to pull a report to the same effect:

Create a new keyword level report
Tick the boxes for “ad distribution: with search partners”

The resulting report will contain the keyword phrase twice, one for Google and another for the Search Network.

Note, while analysing a couple of reports like this I still haven’t encountered any keywords that are actually having different quality score’s (as presented on the 1-10 scale) between Google and Search Network. What are you findings?

Speaking at SMX Advanced London

Magnus Nilsson — Fri, 14 May 2010 10:31:56 +0000

A quick note to share that I’m speaking at SMX Advanced London on Monday 17th May. I’ll be on the panel for the session Search ad Quality, under the microscope. Looking forward to it!

Mobile Paid Search Marketing – The Wait is Over

Magnus Nilsson — Thu, 06 May 2010 11:51:59 +0000

We’ve heard it several years before – this is the year of the mobile. Whether or not 2010 is it, the fact of the matter is that with the iPhone and Android platform, mobile search is quickly becoming a most-do tactic.

At a recent IAB UK seminar focusing on Mobile search, between Google and Yahoo, there were some really interesting nuggets of data shared. Three stats that caught my attention in particular were:

Smartphones account for circa 22.8% of UK mobile users (comScore MMetrics, Jan 2009)
The average search query length on a smart phone is about 3 keywords, same as for a desktop computer. The exact decimal points varied slightly between Google (2.9) and Bing (2.7).
Approximately 1/3 of mobile searches have a location intent (Michael Schipper, Google)

So where do you start with mobile search?

A first step is to analyse what mobile traffic your sites are currently receiving. If your using Google Analytics, it’s as easy as looking under the “visitors” tab and select “mobile devices”. This will give you some top line information, including the percentage of overall site visitors that arrive using mobile devices.

Looking across a couple of my own sites, they receive anything from 2-9% of their traffic from mobile devices. And most of this traffic is generated via search engines.

For paid search, while it’s easy enough in Google to just tick the mobile boxes, it’s still advisable to create separate mobile campaigns to improve the optimisation process. And if you’re running on yahoo it’s worth pointing out that it doesn’t apply any quality scoring for mobile adverts, but just a plain auction.

A common threshold for going mobile, is the lack of a mobile website. However, I’d argue that if the traffic is predominantly coming from smartphones such as the iPhone or any flavour of Android, it should be fairly straightforward to adapt at least a campaign site.

Are you actively using mobile search, and what are your results?

Is Twitter Search Ads the next Affiliate Gold Rush?

Magnus Nilsson — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:04:53 +0000

While little is known about the impending implementation of search adverts on Twitter Search, one thing is certain: affiliates will be there. The initial roll-out might utilise manual management of adverts and work exclusively with hand-picked agencies and brands, but in my mind it’s inevitable that there will be a self-service model similar to search engines and Facebook. Here are two compelling reasons: it reduces Twitter’s costs, and generates a massive tail of smaller advertisers.

About a year ago, Twitter Search reached almost 2.8 million unique visitors a month performing many more searches. To put things into perspective, Twitter Search overtook Google’s blog search functionality, based on unique visitors.

While you can argue that this was mostly a reflection of the poor quality of Google’s Blog Search, fact of the matter is that Twitter is where people went for social results. I haven’t got any more up to date stats, or know how the integration of tweets into Google and Bing have fared, but think it’s safe to assume that Twitter Search ads is the biggest opportunity yet for advertisers and affiliates to monetize real-time search.

Technicalities aside, the biggest question is how people will interact with the adverts. Are people searching on Twitter in the same way as they are on regular search engines? Are they in the same mindset? Quiet possibly not.

From a direct response point of view, the tough nut to crack is what type of products, services, keywords and messaging will work (if at all). And with the component of real-time, there will be a never ending data stream of new phrases to test against a campaign – exactly the kind of stuff that will entice the the entrepeneurial and analytical search marketer and affiliate.

While that’s great for conversion testing, brands and networks need to make sure that they are monitoring the implementation by affiliate partners to make sure that they don’t damage the brands. Ergo, it’s time to take a look at revising those affiliate T&C’s.

What’s your thoughts on Twitter Search ads?