The Added Benefits of Advertising Discount Vouchers

As recent research has highlighted, there are increasing benefits from advertising discount vouchers and deals that you might offer. With 58% of consumers stating they are more likely to visit a retail site where discount vouchers or coupons are available[1], you can take advantage of this additional traffic and ensure your ads contain the most attractive offers to users in the run up to Christmas. According to Hitwise in the last year alone searches for discount vouchers have grown by 47.5%[2]. But what other benefits are there?

1) The potential to attract new customers: 31% of internet coupon users state that they have started only using them in the last 12 months, while 50% of the same respondents say coupons influence them to try new products[1]. 39% of the same respondents said they are more likely to click on an online ad where coupons are available[1].

2) Increased brand loyalty and repeat purchases: 57% of respondents say companies offering vouchers and coupons care about keeping them as a customer[3].

3) Increased customer acquisition: 70% of users say they are more likely to provide information such as names and email addresses for a discount coupon[3].

4) Increased sales at Christmas: According to a Deloitte 2008 survey, 62% of respondents planned to buy gift vouchers, making it the 6th most popular gift idea[4]. As highlighted in data for 2008 from Google Insights, searches on voucher related terms begin a steady rise in the lead up to Christmas from early November.



With user behaviour changing during the economic downturn, consumers are increasingly moving online to find the best deals. Providing any unique selling points in your ad texts is a key method for making your ads stand out from your competitors and attracting increased sales and traffic during the Christmas period. In the last year alone there has been significant growth in voucher searches for ever more specific deals and discounts. Last year UK internet users searched for 8,300 variations of search terms containing the words 'voucher' or 'vouchers', but in the first 6 months of this year the figure has risen to 34,200[2].

If you are offering any discount vouchers this year, then be sure to add in branded search terms such as ‘brand voucher’ into your account before the late November/early December peak. Such terms will typically have higher CTRs and conversion rates. Use your Analytics Ecommerce data to identify potential keywords that triggered your ads last year. By running a Non Paid Keywords report you can see which keywords converted for you previously that you don’t currently have in your account.

[1]"Internet-printable coupons significantly increase customer engagement" Internet Retailing, October 2, 2009
[2]"Voucher searches up 47.5% in a year" Robin Goad, Hitwise Intelligence, August, 2009
[3]"Online 'Coupon Clickers' Number 36 Million" Retailer Daily, July, 2008
[4]Top 15 Holiday Gift Items that UK Consumers Plan to Purchase eMarketer, November, 2008

Posted by Ewan Aparicio, Dublin Retail Team

Close the Gaps in Your Christmas Campaigns with GCN

With only three pay days left till Christmas and the economic recovery still at a fledgling stage, shoppers have already started to think about what to fill their Christmas stockings with. Christmas search queries tend to start early and with bargain hunting also driving interest this year, their frequency has started growing as early as September.

Retailers looking to get ahead of the curve and roll out their Christmas campaigns early shouldn’t overlook the opportunity presented by the Google Content Network (GCN). Using the Content Network can supplement your search campaigns and stimulate extra demand and awareness. Many of the thousands of shopping sites available on the network have CPCs lower than search, which can drive your conversions at a more desirable CPA.

GCN serves more than 6 billion impressions a day globally which provides fantastic volume for advertisers, but the key questions are how does GCN convert and how cost effective is it? Google’s study [1] indicates that the median content/search CPA ratio for advertisers in all sectors was 97.4% and for average advertiser, GCN clicks are 28% cheaper than search. The discount CPC effect is due to Smart Pricing which automatically reduces CPC bids for certain pages depending on how likely they are to convert.

Conversions and volumes in retail subcategories differ. These metrics, however, are often augmented as shoppers start to browse for gifts and visit sites devoted to key Christmas product areas such as toys, games, music and jewellery.
With GCN’s targeting modus operandi being fundamentally different to search, and with GCN awareness being lower than that of search, here are our top tips for advertising on the Google Content Network - an opportunity to expose your brand to 29 million unique UK users:

1. Build a common theme in each ad group. With contextual targeting, we analyse all of your keywords and ad text in an ad group, then match the ad to sites in our network. Having very specific keyword lists in your ad groups avoids targeting ambiguity. You should also ensure that your ad text closely matches the theme that you have outlined in your keyword list.

2. Create direct and complementary ad groups. If you are selling glasses your direct ad group could contain keywords such as glasses or frames while your complementary ad groups could target related sites about glasses cases or other accessories. Many ad groups ensure that you target larger pools of potential buyers.

When brainstorming for complementary ad groups the new Wonder Wheel tool can help you discover other related themes. This tool is available in the left sidebar on Google Search.

3. Include negative keywords at set up to ensure that your ads are not showing on irrelevant sites. This will ensure high quality of traffic and good CTR, which is critical for achieving good performance history and building your GCN Quality score.

4. Exclude sites and categories that you do not want your ads to appear on.
Categories would be groups of websites with a common theme such as ‘Crime & Emergency’.

5. Bidding is a crucial factor in GCN. In order to enable our system to work out which sites are the most suitable for your ads, set bids relatively high to begin with and then lower them after history has been accrued. Most content sites and products display only two or three contextual ads per page, so monitor your CPC and average position as it has an impact on CTR. If you set bids too low on the Content Network, it will take a long time for your ads to reach the right sites.

6. As a rule of thumb allow at least 2 weeks before checking results as the system needs time to accrue performance data. The first few days of data may not reflect the campaign’s full potential and may provide you with misleading data.

7. After the initial few weeks of your campaign, pull a Placement Performance Report which will give you data on the sites where your ads are appearing. This report can help you to identify sites which are performing well and those which perform poorly or are irrelevant. Exclude sites where you do not want your ads to show with the Site Exclusion tool.

Once you find your high-performing sites, you can control and adjust your bids on them directly. Test if by increasing volume on these sites (i.e. increasing bids), the corresponding increase in conversions justifies a proportionately higher CPC.

8. If you do not use a bid management solution to manage your bids, consider testing Conversion Optimiser, a CPA bid management solution enabling advertisers to maximise their ROI. Although its entry threshold is 15 conversions in 30 days, launch it on a campaign which has accrued a high volume of conversions. Higher volume gives the system more substance and room to manoeuvre.

Whichever retail category is your focus, a GCN campaign can be a cost effective way to drive incremental conversions. GCN targeting is also fundamentally different from that of search. As an auction model, the system requires time to accrue the relevant data needed to optimise your campaign. Implementing these suggestions is the first step to making your GCN campaign a success. Not unlike other digital media outlets, GCN campaigns require testing. We recommend starting your GCN campaign early, so that you can begin testing and have a well-optimised campaign prepared for the peak Christmas season. Starting soon will ensure your brand’s exposure as people are likely to browse and spread their shopping between now and Christmas.

We hope that you found these tips useful. Please email us if you have any questions or feedback.

[1]Google Whitepaper November 2008


Posted by Anna Prolejko, UK Retail Team

Measuring Up Your Keywords and Conversions

As legend has it over 2,200 years ago Archimedes was challenged by King Hiero II to discover whether his new crown had been made from pure gold or mixed with lesser metals. Figuring out how to measure the volume of the crown with its irregular shape presented Archimedes with a major task.

Today's PPC managers face a similar measurement challenge. Namely, how do you model exactly how much each keyword contributes to each of your conversions? And given that PPC drives nearly 1 in 5 visits to UK retail websites [1], such models are more and more likely to find their way onto CFO and CEO desks.

At one end of the spectrum is 'last click' attribution. Simple and straightforward, the only keywords that count are those that lead directly to a conversion.

Most people would concede however, that this method is not the ideal way to measure keyword conversions as it doesn’t consider how much of their previous search activity led to the final purchase. The 'consumer journey' has already been the subject of much discussion. But what then is the other end of the spectrum? How do you attribute important metrics like new customers and lifetime value to a keyword? A 90 or 180 day cookie, tracking everything and anything? The data could be overwhelming.

Research commissioned by Google indicates that as many as 40% of conversions occur after 4 weeks from when a shopper first performed a search related to the goods or services they purchased. Yet no one wakes up in the morning and says to themselves: “Today I will start my journey to buy a new coat, it will take 18 days for me to finally get there and buy it”. You make a start by seeing what products are available; take ideas from various sources and then when you think you have found the best item and deal, you make your purchase.

Is this because we all love browsing, or because it can be difficult sometimes to find exactly what you want? Like many things, it is probably a combination of the two. The Consumer Decision Journey recently published in the McKinsey Quarterly [2] discusses these moments of influence and how the 'purchase funnel' may be a different shape from what was once thought.

One thing that should gain the consensus of agreement though is that the consumer journey is path dependant. That is, each subsequent step is dependent on the experience from the previous point.

Accepting this, how much can each of these prior steps claim to have led to the final conversion? Not an easy answer given the total number of steps, the media involved and the time taken. Within the overall context of search however, comScore can shed some light on the path dependant nature of conversions within three major consumer categories [3]:

Metric	Clothing	Computers	Mobile Phones
No. of searches per conversion	5.7	5.0	4.7
No. of site visits per conversion	11.9	12.6	9.4

So how do individual Retailers start to better understand and act on the challenges posed by accurately measuring their own conversions?

You don’t necessarily need another Archimedes, but certainly someone who will take responsibility for devising how you go about measuring your conversions. In this case, using data from your web analytics package to discover exactly how each keyword pays it way. There are numerous bid management programs on the market too that can make life easier; not to mention third party consultants who can help install and make sense of analytics. Today, retailers of any scale just have too many keywords to do this manually and hope to achieve their own “Eureka!” moment.

[1] Hitwise UK, Shopping and Classifieds category, August 2009
[2] http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Marketing/The_consumer_decision_journey_2373

[3] comScore custom analysis- UK Population, 15+ Home and Work, Q4-2007 activity

Posted by Jonathan Marsh, UK Retail Team