Archive for December, 2009
What adjustment should be made to record expired advertising on the firm?
On Decemeber 1, 2007, a firm signed a contract with a local radio station for advertising that will extend over a one-year period. The firm paid $5,400 in advance and debited the amount to Prepaid Advertising.
It should be expensed as it is used. That is, a twelve-month contract costing $5,400 should be expensed over the twelve month period. That’s $450 per month.
Each month a credit of $450 would be made to the prepaid advertising account and a debit of $450 would be made to the advertising expense account. At the end of the contract period, there will be no remaining prepaid advertising balance related to this contract.
Click Fraud: A Guide To Protecting Your Pay-Per-Click Campaign
Click fraud is the latest ‘hot topic’ circulating the online marketing arena, but what is it? And how does it affect you as a merchant running a pay-per-click campaign?
Spending on Internet advertising is growing faster than any other sector of the advertising industry and is expected to surge from $12.5 billion last year to $29 billion by 2010 in the U.S. alone, according to the researcher eMarketer Inc. With around 50% of this spending being spent on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
Here we offer you a complete guide as to what this phenomenon is, who is likely to commit such an act, how to identify & prevent click fraud and how to best report instances of suspected click fraud on your PPC campaign.
What is Click Fraud?
According to Wikipedia “Click fraud is a type of internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad’s link”
Click Fraud is estimated to range from 5% – 15% of pay-per-click traffic (some estimates are as high as 20% – 35%) although Google estimates click fraud at only 2% due to the rigorous detection methods they claim are in place.
In a recent study by Click Forensics, click fraud reached a new high of 14.2% in the last quarter of 2006 with the average rate of click fraud on ‘content networks’ as high as 19.2% for the same quarter.
So who is likely to commit Click Fraud?
The click fraud villain is most likely to fall into one of three categories:
- Online vandals with nothing better to do than cause a nuisance
- A competitor clicking on your search network PPC ads, with the sole intention of increasing your cost-per-acquisition (CPA). This could be interpreted as click fraud, although currently the search engines do not consider this kind of activity as click fraud
- Search Engine advertising affiliates who generate self-income from fraudulent clicks on ‘content network’ adverts displayed on their own websites. This practice, at it’s extreme, involves the use of unscrupulous ‘paid to read’ or PTR sites, which are basically click-fraud rings, some with hundreds or thousands of participants, paid to click on your ads with no regard for your return on investment (ROI) as the advertiser
What are the Search Engines doing about it?
Both Google and Yahoo claim that they filter out most fraudulent clicks. The costs involved for these clicks are either not charged or are reimbursed to advertisers who have been wrongly billed.
To combat click fraud Google applies four layers of fraud detection:
1. Automatic detection – this filters clicks from both the search and content networks in real-time with the goal of removing them before their existence is ever shown to the advertiser
2. The “Flagging system” – an automatic process to remove invalid AdSense clicks
3. The “Manual review” – this process has more than two-dozen Google employees tasked with manually reviewing and removing any suspicious AdSense clicks
4. If the first three layers of protection fail then the fourth and final layer of click fraud detection falls to the advertiser and 3rd party click fraud detection companies. Google refers to this layer as “requested investigations”
Googles main aim is that the first three layers of filtering will identify all invalid and fraudulent clicks. These layers currently filter more than 98% of invalid clicks.
And should you be in any doubt, both Google and Yahoo have, in the past, released the following statements:
“We think click fraud is a serious but manageable issue” says John Slade, Yahoo’s senior director for global product management.
“Google strives to detect every invalid click that passes through its system” says Shuman Ghosemajumder, the Google manager for trust and safety. “It’s absolutely in our best interest for advertisers to have confidence in this industry.”
As a positive for the future, Google is currently testing a cost-per-action (CPA) platform, which should effectively deal with click fraud. With CPA ads you don’t pay by the click but instead pay when the customer reaches a certain goal: buys a product, fills an enquiry, etc.
How to identify click fraud on your pay-per-click campaign
Before you can even contemplate identifying click fraud you must have effective tracking tools implemented on your website and, if possible, access to your server logs. With tracking tools in place, the most obvious way of spotting click fraud is to simply observe any spikes in traffic where there is no particular shift in your conversions.
Once identified, these spikes can then be analysed by looking for repeated clicks from sources that look similar. This similarity could be an IP address or an IP range; it could be a combination of IP range; browser version; operating system. Basically look for data in groups that looks fraudulent.
If all this is just ‘a bit too heavy’ for you then there are a number of companies out there that can help.
- AdWatcher: claims to able to spot click fraud so that you can report it. Covers other aspects of PPC marketing, by helping you track your ROI, email success, etc.
- Click Auditor: offers the ability to check whether your competitors IP is the one performing any abusive clicking, and says it will stealthily gather your competitors IP addresses for this purpose
- ClickSentinel: focuses on helping you get refunds on fraudulent clicks, as requesting a refund from your PPC provider can often be very difficult for the un-initiated
- Click Tracks: reportedly has automatic click fraud reporting along with other click tracking (analytics) tools
Reporting suspected Click Fraud
When reporting suspected click fraud, you must include as much captured data as possible to increase your likelihood of obtaining a refund or credit.
The following guidelines are recommended:
- Clearly state, at the very beginning of your claim, that you are reporting suspected click fraud
- Provide a full explanation to support your claim
- Include your account details (do not include your password or payment information)
- State the exact keyword, ad and campaign where you suspect click fraud has occurred
- State the exact time, date and IP address of each instance of suspected click fraud. This data can be gleaned from your server logs or 3rd party tracking tool
- Finally, state whether you are requesting a refund, credit or investigation
If you were using any software tools, such as those highlighted earlier, to help you track and report click fraud then include any reports generated by these in your claim.
Lowering the risk of Click Fraud happening to you!
Always bear in mind that your PPC objective is to get conversions and not just clicks.
The more you have researched the demographics of your intended client base the better your chance of avoiding click fraud. Are your clients from a specific country or location? When are they likely to search for your product or service? What are the key search-terms they are using?
With demographic data in-hand you can target your ad campaigns more effectively and lower your risk of click fraud.
John Hill
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/click-fraud-a-guide-to-protecting-your-payperclick-campaign-106710.html
The Benefits of Advertising on Craigslist!
Savvy businesspeople and Internet marketers who market on Craigslist are able to gain a great deal of benefits from this advertising option. Craigslist is an online community where users can exchange information, buy or sell items, seek jobs or even find friends or romantic partners.
There are a number of benefits to advertising on Craigslist. Two of the most important benefits are the affordability and the ability to reach a large audience. This article will focus on these two benefits and will also offer advice on ensuring your advertising is not just reaching a large audience but is reaching your target audience.
The Price is Right
Consider the cost of advertising on Craigslist versus advertising on other websites and there is simply no comparison. The vast majority of Craigslist postings are available free of charge to those who use the website. Only a limited number of advertisements including job advertisements in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York and brokerage listings in New York are charged a fee for posting advertisements. Even these advertisers are only charged a nominal fee for their advertisements.
This means all commercial advertisements for products and services are posted free of charge. Affiliate marketing, which offers business owners the ability to only pay the affiliate when the advertisement generates web traffic, a sale or a lead is an excellent bargain but even that is no match for the free advertising offered on Craigslist.
Advertising on Craigslist becomes even more financially appealing in comparison to other advertising option where the business owner is charged for each time the advertisement appears whether or not it results in a sale being made or even a lead generated.
Reaching a Large Audience with Craigslist
In addition to affordability another benefit to advertising on Craigslist is the potential to reach a large audience. Craigslist receives approximately four billion page views per month from approximately ten million website visitors. This is appealing because it allows users to reach a large audience with only minimal effort.
Craigslist already has a large following and many Internet users already turn to Craigslist for whatever they are looking for before searching other resources. Having such a large audience means half of the work is already done for advertisers. They already have high traffic to the website, now they just need to write an eye catching and engaging advertisement that will attract customers.
A Large Audience is Not Necessarily a Target Audience
Craigslist certainly has a large pre-existing fan base of regular users but this large audience does not necessarily ensure advertisers will have a target audience just waiting for them to post their advertisement. Craigslist is an extensive online community and finding members of the target audience is more important than reaching the entire community.
Business owners can certainly invest a great deal of time and effort placing their advertisement throughout the different sections of the website but this is not likely to be effective. Craigslist is divided into a number of different sections and categories for a specific reason. This is to make it easier for users to find the information they are seeking.
For this reason business owners should focus on placing their advertisement in sections which are likely to be visited by members of the target audience. Additionally, placing advertisements in multiple sections may result in the moderators of Craigslist interpreting the advertisements as spam and deleting them. Whether the advertisements are deleted as spam or rendered ineffective they are not likely to convince members of the target audience to purchase products or services.
Karl Glantschnig
http://www.articlesbase.com/online-promotion-articles/the-benefits-of-advertising-on-craigslist-119336.html
Make The Most Of Advertising Balloons
It takes creativity to make attractive and effective method of advertising. Depending on what you want to get indorsed for popularity through advertisement, it is interesting to keep in mind about using balloons to advertise your product.
Advertising balloons are specialized by some companies to provide interesting visual advertising for suitable brands. It has been tested to get most attention of the people, especially if the blimp is visually beautiful and fancy to look from below while it willows up from building deck.
When it comes to promoting products, cost knows no bound. Advertising balloons could range from variety of sizes from 12 inches to 30 feet. A blimp with a dimension of 30 feet is gigantic enough to catch attention at a distance. It means, the blimp could only go as big as desired. Go big and get noticed. It only takes creativity to achieve the desired customized design of an advertising balloon blimp.
Balloons for advertising are made out of dense and heavy-duty polyurethane made inflatable by helium. It has been used conventionally for many years as a still “floating billboard.” Now, there are available add-ons and features to expect better impact for balloon advertisements. There are mechanisms added to make them bounce, dance, and other simple tricks.
You have to consider the main disadvantage of using balloons for advertising. They only get installed in specific locations, where they are only seen by limited number of people. If they are installed in strategic place enough to satisfy your exposure satisfaction, then the next things to consider are as follows:
READABILITY OF LETTERS:
Consult with your chosen blimp manufacturer to assist you with the right size of lettering for your advertising need. Letters has to be bold and simple for maximum readability.
COLORS
Text on right background are ranked accordingly and tested. This means, the importance of combining colors to let the signage visually emphasized matters a lot.
ARTWORK
The scale/height of the letters can be used to assume if the image or artwork can be seen at a distance. For effective use of designs, they must contain less detail but solidity in appearance using good colors on right background.
You can avail pre-designed advertising balloons and get personalized signage to avoid heavy cost on customized one, unless you really want a full-customized package for your advertising need. A customized design can be re-used again for other advertising locations.
Low Jeremy
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/make-the-most-of-advertising-balloons-111708.html
How does advertising work for the recording and movie industry?
Technically, the recording and movie industry do not generate their income through advertising, so how does advertising work for them?
In a way they do generate their income that way. By advertising, there are usually two benefactors: the product being advertised and the sponsor of the advertisement.
The sponsor is given credit for the advertisement in hopes that people will buy THEIR product, and often they do.
The recording or movie industry is putting their product out there, so it is likely to be bought by consumers as well.
Without advertisements, a product would never be seen and therefore never purchased by consumers.
Introduction To CPA Marketing Webinar Clip6
Will, the owner of PPC-Coach.com did this introduction to CPA Marketing that took place on March 6th, 2009. It’s over 1 hour and 15 minutes long in total and is broken into 10 parts. If you’ve ever wondered about CPA marketing, (Cost Per Action), then this is the video for you. It is meant for people new to the business who are looking for a basic introduction to how we make money online doing cpa marketing. Part 6 of 10.
Duration : 0:7:36
Online Copywriting Video David Ogilvy Ad
This is a famous ad from David Ogilvy using demonstration to sell a product.
You can use the same technique in your online videos to sell YOUR product.
Read more at…
http://www.copywriting1.com/2007/10/famous-david-ogilvy-tv-ad.html
Duration : 0:1:37
Michael Jackson THIS IS IT Concert Offical Advertising on ITV 08/03/2009
This is the longest TV advertising ever bought by an artist.
Aired on ITV1 Sunday 8th March 2009
Duration : 0:3:30
What are the most effective ways of marketing/ advertising my home for sale?
I am trying to sell my home in a somewhat declining neighborohood in Nashville, TN. It is listed with an agent. She advertises in the little home magazines you find in the food stores and the Bob Parks catalog. Of course it is on MLS, and there is a little sign out front with a 2nd sign showing "1 acre".
Can anyone suggest effective ways of advertising? I am willing to spend the money if it is worth it.
There’s not much more you can do at this point. You can try to lower the price, but other than that?
This is a buyer’s market, and putting more advertising up isn’t going to do you any justice. You have an agent working for you–that’s the best thing you COULD do for yourself.
Making Easy Profits Using PPC In Your Affiliate Marketing Business
PPC is one of the four basic types of Search Engines. PPC is also one of the most cost-effective ways of targeted internet advertising. According to Forbes magazine, PPC or Pay Per Click, accounts to 2 billion dollars a year and is expected to increase to around 8 billion dollars by the year 2008.
Let us take a quick look at how PPC Search Engines work.
These engines create listings and rate them based on a bid amount the website owner is willing to pay for each click from that search engine. Advertisers bid against each other to receive higher ranking for a specific keyword or phrase.
The highest bidder for a certain keyword or phrase will then have the site ranked as number 1 in the PPC Search Engines followed by the second and third highest bidder, up to the last number that have placed a bid on the same keyword or phrase. Your ads then will appear prominently on the results pages based on the dollar amount bid you will agree to pay per click.
How do you make money by using PPC into your affiliate marketing business?
Most affiliate programs only pay when a sale is made or a lead delivered after a visitor has clickthrough your site. Your earnings will not always be the same as they will be dependent on the web site content and the traffic market.
The reason why you should incorporate PPC into your affiliate marketing program is that earnings are easier to make than in any other kind of affiliate program not using PPC. This way, you will be making profit based from the clickthroughs that your visitor will make on the advertisers site. Unlike some programs, you are not paid per sale or action.
PPC can be very resourceful of your website. With PPC Search Engines incorporated into your affiliate program, you will be able to profit from the visitors who are not interested in your products or services. The same ones who leave your site and never comes back.
You will not only get commissions not only from those who are just searching the web and finding the products and services that they wanted but you will be able to build your sites recognition as a valuable resource. The visitors who have found what they needed from you site are likely to come back and review what you are offering more closely. Then they will eventually come back to search the web for other products.
This kind of affiliate program is also an easy way for you to generate some more additional revenues. For example, when a visitor on your site does a search in the PPC Search Engine and clicks on the advertiser bided listings, the advertisers account will then be deducted because of that click. With this, you will be compensated 30% to 80% of the advertisers bid amount.
PPC is not only a source of generating easy profits; it can also help you promote your own site. Most of the programs allow the commissions received to be spent for advertising with them instantly and with no minimum earning requirement. This is one of the more effective ways to exchange your raw visitors for targeted surfers who has more tendencies to purchase your products and services.
What will happen if you when you integrate PPC into your affiliate program?
PPC usually have ready-to-use affiliate tools that can be easily integrated into your website. The most common tools are search boxes, banners, text links and some 404-error pages. Most search engines utilize custom solutions and can provide you with a white-label affiliate program. This enables you, using only a few lines of code, to integrate remotely-hosted co-branded search engine into your website.
The key benefits? Not only more money generated but also some extra money on the side. Plus a lifetime commissions once you have referred some webmaster friends to the engine.
Think about it. Where can you get all these benefits while already generating some income for your site? Knowing some of the more useful tools you can use for your affiliate program is not a waste of time. They are rather a means of earning within an earning.
Best know more about how you can use PPC search engines into your affiliate program than miss out on a great opportunity to earn more profits.
Daniel Alan
http://www.articlesbase.com/affiliate-programs-articles/making-easy-profits-using-ppc-in-your-affiliate-marketing-business-108755.html