Today’s post will define some optimization practices around participation in the auction environment. It’s true that adCenter’s minimum bid is a simple $.05 cost per click (CPC) and does not fluctuate in the auction environment during seasonal or vertically-driven periods of time. That being said, the question remains: how do I ensure that I’m actively participating in the auction environment? We’ll cover three different optimizations tactics in this post that should help define some critical ways of increasing your position while avoiding the “minimum bid” conundrum.

Separate Search and Content

This is an important call out for those of you who are participating in both the search and content networks. The key performance indicators (KPIs) across these two are drastically different, as they encompass two different stages in the sales funnel: browsing and searching. The impression volume, expected click-through rate (CTR), and positions available are drastically different. Because of this, the best practice is to have these separated at the campaign or ad group level so you can easily distinguish performance.

Look at Historical Data

The reporting in adCenter is robust and includes the ability to monitor your position from all levels of campaign structures. The ability to pull an ad group or keyword performance report is at your fingertips; simply make sure you’re looking at the “Avg Position” column. If you aren’t satisfied with your given position:

• Take a look at your CTR% and see if you can modify ad copy based on the keywords you’re getting the most traffic on.
• Modify or add negative keywords to qualify the traffic and exclude those impressions you don’t want to see (the Search Query report is a great place to start!)
• Increase your bids if a specific keyword is working great for you.

Utilize Microsoft Advertising Intelligence (MAI)

MAI is an incredibly powerful tool. It uses adCenter marketplace data, and in this situation, provides some key insights and guidance on the auction itself. For our use today,we’ll look at one key function for gaining insights to adjust your position:

• Keyword Monetization: This will give you the KPIs (clicks, impressions, etc.) for your particular keyword set within the adCenter Marketplace.  This is not your own data, this is a combination of all performance on a particular keyword.
  • Edit your Options - the Options button allows you to modify the queries your running, you can choose a particular match type or position, or pull all match types and positions.
  • Enter your Keywords - simply paste or enter your keyword list into Excel (you can pull either the entire list, or a small subset if you want to be granular).
  • Highlight & Run - from here, highlight your keyword list and select the Monetization – Search button.
  • Explore - the data presented here is robust – you can get a clear idea of what the expected bid, paid CPC, CTR% and available clicks/impressions over the last 30 days historically. NOTE: Please use this data directionally only; it does not take into account your own ad/keyword performance.

When looking for optimizing your position, closely align your optimization decisions with your ROI goals. If particular groups of keywords or ads are working well for you,that’s a great starting point in increasing the traffic. If you have ad groups that are performing around your ROI goals, you can use MAI or performance reports to adjust to find the perfect mix for your business.

Remember: a $.05 doesn’t guarantee significant traffic, you could be missing out on a lot of opportunity. Take a look at the functionality in MAI, run a few performance reports to see where you stand, and optimize away!

Best of luck,

Kim