1. #DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
Bing Powerpoint template
August 2013
Winning
with the
unexpected
John Gagnon
Bing Ads Evangelist
State of Search 2015
#DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
29. When does the 1st day of school really start?
September
4th, 2014
New York City, the largest
school district in the US,
will have 1,000,000
students back in school
August
25th, 2014
All 5,000,000 of Texas’s
K-12 Public School
students go back
August
1st, 2014
All 180,000 of Hawaii’s
K-12 Public School
students go back
#DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
30. #DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
When parents will shop for back-to-school
Use staggered start dates to hit
the 1 week to 1 month sweet
spot. Two months for New York
means, July 9, whereas it means
June 5 for Hawaii.
22.4% will shop
as early as June.
<6% will shop the
‘week of’ or ‘after’
school starts. Keep
budgets low during
this time.
2 Months prior
1 Months prior
1-2 Weeks prior
Week of
After
22.3%
47.8%
24.0%
2.7%
3.2%
42. #DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
What are you actually doing?
Enter: Change History
43. #DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
Change History
1
2
3
Easy Access
# of Changes
List & Undo
44. #DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
What work did your team really do?
Remove Bid
45. #DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
What work did your team really do?
Remove Bid
46. #DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
Now have a real conversation about
progress on account strategy.
47. #DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
Agenda
Collision of Audience & PPC
Chegg: A case study
Voice search
48. #DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
Siri Cortana Google Now
Let’s make Voice search is part of the PPC conversation
49. #DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
Voice search is now part of the PPC conversation
US smartphone users who use mobile personal assistants
38%
39%
59%
71%18-29
30-43
44-53
54+
Thrive Analytics, “Is the Personal Assistant the Successor to Search?” October 2014
50. #DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
Voice search is already adding to text search
24%
76%
Text
Voice
Microsoft internal data April 2015
51. #DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
Question phrases are more likely to be voice search
Who What When Where Why How Total
Growth in Question Phrases Year over Year
Search Engine Watch, Jason Tabeling, “How Will Voice Search
Impact A Search Marketer’s World?” December 2014
52. #DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
Question phrases = voice search degree of intent
Where
When
How
What/whoInterested
Ready to act
53. #DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
Does successful query length differ for voice search?
Microsoft internal data April 2015
1 Words 2 Words 3 Words 4 Words 5 Words 6 Words 7 Words 8 Words 9 Words 10+
Words
Text
Longer searches: More words!
54. #DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
Search queries from Speech have more words than from text
Microsoft internal data April 2015
1 Words 2 Words 3 Words 4 Words 5 Words 6 Words 7 Words 8 Words 9 Words 10+
Words
Speech Text
Text searches more
concentrated around 1-3 words
Speech searches
longer through the tail
55. #DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
Take action: Adapt PPC campaigns for voice search
1. Use question words in your keywords to drive to
intent, and negative them if they don’t apply to
your offering
2. Hit the sweet spot of 3 words in your keyword
sets to capture more voice searches
57. #DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
Key Takeaways:
Audience: Use UET and try partnerships.
Chegg: Data hiding in plain sight. Use it to
your advantage across channels.
Change History: Real conversation around
your team’s work
Voice: As Voice search grows use clues from
voice search for smarter targeting
60. #DFWSEM | @jmgagnon | @bingads
Source of change Example Troubleshooting tool
Your own account
changes
Added keywords
Changed targeting setting
Change History
Consumer search
behavior
Fewer searches due to weekend
More searches due to seasonal
event
Top Mover
Traffic in Bing Ads
Intelligence
Competitor behavior
Aggressive bids
Decreased budgets showing
fewer impressions
Auction Insights
3 forces cause change in your account
2
1
3
Today we’re going to talk about how one advertiser, Chegg, saved 30% on their search budget by using an unexpected strategy – one that I talked about here a year ago. We’ll talk about how voice search is going to (and may already be) impact your paid search campaigns, and we’ll touch on some recent research we’ve done at Bing, the results of which may surprise you.
Read this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/upshot/free-throw-distraction-the-best-fans-in-the-ncaa.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=0
Anybody here get into March Madness last month? Do we have basketball fans here? Well, I love watching the games and because I’m a total nerd I was watching the free-throw distraction thing and I started wondering if it was effective. I like stats like that. I want data. So I went looking and it turns out I’m not the only one who wants to know things like this. The New York Times did a fantastic article about the free-throw distractions and whether or not they’re effective.
Could also make a gif out of the first bit of this video: http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=free+throw+distraction+gif&FORM=VIRE11#view=detail&mid=B5E746DDD9BAA9427CEAB5E746DDD9BAA9427CEA
The success of all those waving arms and big faces on sticks is nominal – the average team changes the opposing team’s free-throw percent by only a few percentage points.
Unless you’re Arizona State. They win close to 2 points in every game as a result of their distraction shenanigans. You see that asterisk next to their name?
If you can’t read that from where you’re sitting, I’ll tell you what it says. “Since implementing the Curtain of Distraction.” This story just got more interesting. The Curtain of Distraction? How can a curtain be responsible for such a big difference in success?
This is what I found. This is the Curtain of Distraction. You’ll note that you can’t see what’s behind it. And that is the whole point.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/14/upshot/how-arizona-state-reinvented-free-throw-distraction.html?_r=1&abt=0002&abg=1
The Curtain of Distraction works! But I started thinking – the success can’t possibly be because of the distractions. The distractions are not what catches the shooters off guard – everybody knows the distraction is there! Visiting teams know exactly what to expect. They could certainly prepare themselves for the coming distraction – and these players are pros. They know how to ignore a distraction. I’d have to suggest that the reason for the Curtain’s success isn’t the distraction itself – it’s the unexpected.
Nobody knows what’s going to pop out of the curtain, and that element of the unexpected is intriguing. One time it might be Elvis signing a song. Another time it’s a shark. This unexpectedness draws the shooter to glance at what’s going on. And usually, it makes him smile. Arizona State holds the keys to the unexpected, and that’s how they win.
If you hold the keys to the unexpected, you can make it work for you. As marketers, we get to dig into context and take advantage of the unexpected as in the case of the contact lenses or the dental care.
The teams that play against Arizona State don’t get a chance to hold the keys to the unexpected, and that is how Arizona State gets the advantage.
Today we’re going to talk about how one advertiser, Chegg, saved 30% on their search budget by using an unexpected strategy – one that I talked about here a year ago. We’ll talk about how voice search is going to (and may already be) impact your paid search campaigns, and we’ll touch on some recent research we’ve done at Bing, the results of which may surprise you.
The Curtain of Distraction works! But I started thinking – the success can’t possibly be because of the distractions. The distractions are not what catches the shooters off guard – everybody knows the distraction is there! Visiting teams know exactly what to expect. They could certainly prepare themselves for the coming distraction – and these players are pros. They know how to ignore a distraction. I’d have to suggest that the reason for the Curtain’s success isn’t the distraction itself – it’s the unexpected.
The Curtain of Distraction works! But I started thinking – the success can’t possibly be because of the distractions. The distractions are not what catches the shooters off guard – everybody knows the distraction is there! Visiting teams know exactly what to expect. They could certainly prepare themselves for the coming distraction – and these players are pros. They know how to ignore a distraction. I’d have to suggest that the reason for the Curtain’s success isn’t the distraction itself – it’s the unexpected.
The Curtain of Distraction works! But I started thinking – the success can’t possibly be because of the distractions. The distractions are not what catches the shooters off guard – everybody knows the distraction is there! Visiting teams know exactly what to expect. They could certainly prepare themselves for the coming distraction – and these players are pros. They know how to ignore a distraction. I’d have to suggest that the reason for the Curtain’s success isn’t the distraction itself – it’s the unexpected.
The Curtain of Distraction works! But I started thinking – the success can’t possibly be because of the distractions. The distractions are not what catches the shooters off guard – everybody knows the distraction is there! Visiting teams know exactly what to expect. They could certainly prepare themselves for the coming distraction – and these players are pros. They know how to ignore a distraction. I’d have to suggest that the reason for the Curtain’s success isn’t the distraction itself – it’s the unexpected.
The Curtain of Distraction works! But I started thinking – the success can’t possibly be because of the distractions. The distractions are not what catches the shooters off guard – everybody knows the distraction is there! Visiting teams know exactly what to expect. They could certainly prepare themselves for the coming distraction – and these players are pros. They know how to ignore a distraction. I’d have to suggest that the reason for the Curtain’s success isn’t the distraction itself – it’s the unexpected.
The Curtain of Distraction works! But I started thinking – the success can’t possibly be because of the distractions. The distractions are not what catches the shooters off guard – everybody knows the distraction is there! Visiting teams know exactly what to expect. They could certainly prepare themselves for the coming distraction – and these players are pros. They know how to ignore a distraction. I’d have to suggest that the reason for the Curtain’s success isn’t the distraction itself – it’s the unexpected.
The Curtain of Distraction works! But I started thinking – the success can’t possibly be because of the distractions. The distractions are not what catches the shooters off guard – everybody knows the distraction is there! Visiting teams know exactly what to expect. They could certainly prepare themselves for the coming distraction – and these players are pros. They know how to ignore a distraction. I’d have to suggest that the reason for the Curtain’s success isn’t the distraction itself – it’s the unexpected.
The Curtain of Distraction works! But I started thinking – the success can’t possibly be because of the distractions. The distractions are not what catches the shooters off guard – everybody knows the distraction is there! Visiting teams know exactly what to expect. They could certainly prepare themselves for the coming distraction – and these players are pros. They know how to ignore a distraction. I’d have to suggest that the reason for the Curtain’s success isn’t the distraction itself – it’s the unexpected.
The Curtain of Distraction works! But I started thinking – the success can’t possibly be because of the distractions. The distractions are not what catches the shooters off guard – everybody knows the distraction is there! Visiting teams know exactly what to expect. They could certainly prepare themselves for the coming distraction – and these players are pros. They know how to ignore a distraction. I’d have to suggest that the reason for the Curtain’s success isn’t the distraction itself – it’s the unexpected.
The Curtain of Distraction works! But I started thinking – the success can’t possibly be because of the distractions. The distractions are not what catches the shooters off guard – everybody knows the distraction is there! Visiting teams know exactly what to expect. They could certainly prepare themselves for the coming distraction – and these players are pros. They know how to ignore a distraction. I’d have to suggest that the reason for the Curtain’s success isn’t the distraction itself – it’s the unexpected.
Imagine a home improvement store with owned pixels [not sure what the right language is for this] across other sites like a do-it-yourself idea center and a paint store. Suddenly, the combinations for action have exploded. If you’re that home improvement store, you’re putting these qualified visitors into a list that adjusts the copy for painting tips and paint colors. You could also EXCLUDE those visitors for an ad that focuses on kitchen appliances, saving money by not showing ads that your audience isn’t interested in.
A year ago, a couple of digital marketing guys from Chegg sat in this audience and listened to me talk about a strategic way to plan your campaigns, using PowerMap to visualize timing as it rolls out across the country. Chegg is, so far, completely unique in that it’s working to capture the entire student lifecycle. They have programs that provide scholarship and college information to high school seniors, they do text-book rentals for colleges, and tutoring, and then they connect graduates with internship opportunities. They even offer classes for continuing education, for people who already have a degree or want to keep learning.
You might remember the PowerMap demo from last year. We looked at the question of school start dates – because they’re different everywhere. And if you’re running a search campaign for back-to-school, you can save a lot of money by targeting by geography and date.
We combined the school start dates with what we know about when folks will start shopping for back-to-school.
We tried to visualize this with a basic Excel chart.
We tried to visualize this with a basic Excel chart.
And we even combined schools and dates and school district population into one chart.
But until we were able to visualize it with PowerMap, we couldn’t make sense of the data in order to make a plan.
We pulled all the data into Excel….
And used PowerMap to visualize the first day of school across the country.
The guys from Chegg had the same reaction you’re having: “How can I use this awesomeness?” They went back to their office and this is what they did: First they pulled the top 2000 schools who drive the most revenue in text-book rentals. Then they put those schools into 3 buckets by start-date. <click> August 18, August 25 and September 1.
This is an easy way of looking at the bid schedule. The week before school starts, bids increase by 15% because students already know what their classes are and want to get ahead of the game. The week that school starts, bids increase by 20% - now things are on fire. The week after, bids stay up by 10% because students are still getting their books as the semester continues.
Chegg says, “I wish we could do this again!” And that’s one of the sad things about winning this way – an unexpected victory doesn’t come along every day. Otherwise it wouldn’t be unexpected!
This is an easy way of looking at the bid schedule. The week before school starts, bids increase by 15% because students already know what their classes are and want to get ahead of the game. The week that school starts, bids increase by 20% - now things are on fire. The week after, bids stay up by 10% because students are still getting their books as the semester continues.
The Curtain of Distraction works! But I started thinking – the success can’t possibly be because of the distractions. The distractions are not what catches the shooters off guard – everybody knows the distraction is there! Visiting teams know exactly what to expect. They could certainly prepare themselves for the coming distraction – and these players are pros. They know how to ignore a distraction. I’d have to suggest that the reason for the Curtain’s success isn’t the distraction itself – it’s the unexpected.
The Curtain of Distraction works! But I started thinking – the success can’t possibly be because of the distractions. The distractions are not what catches the shooters off guard – everybody knows the distraction is there! Visiting teams know exactly what to expect. They could certainly prepare themselves for the coming distraction – and these players are pros. They know how to ignore a distraction. I’d have to suggest that the reason for the Curtain’s success isn’t the distraction itself – it’s the unexpected.
The Curtain of Distraction works! But I started thinking – the success can’t possibly be because of the distractions. The distractions are not what catches the shooters off guard – everybody knows the distraction is there! Visiting teams know exactly what to expect. They could certainly prepare themselves for the coming distraction – and these players are pros. They know how to ignore a distraction. I’d have to suggest that the reason for the Curtain’s success isn’t the distraction itself – it’s the unexpected.
The Curtain of Distraction works! But I started thinking – the success can’t possibly be because of the distractions. The distractions are not what catches the shooters off guard – everybody knows the distraction is there! Visiting teams know exactly what to expect. They could certainly prepare themselves for the coming distraction – and these players are pros. They know how to ignore a distraction. I’d have to suggest that the reason for the Curtain’s success isn’t the distraction itself – it’s the unexpected.
The Curtain of Distraction works! But I started thinking – the success can’t possibly be because of the distractions. The distractions are not what catches the shooters off guard – everybody knows the distraction is there! Visiting teams know exactly what to expect. They could certainly prepare themselves for the coming distraction – and these players are pros. They know how to ignore a distraction. I’d have to suggest that the reason for the Curtain’s success isn’t the distraction itself – it’s the unexpected.
Today we’re going to talk about how one advertiser, Chegg, saved 30% on their search budget by using an unexpected strategy – one that I talked about here a year ago. We’ll talk about how voice search is going to (and may already be) impact your paid search campaigns, and we’ll touch on some recent research we’ve done at Bing, the results of which may surprise you.
First let’s get a good view of the voice search landscape. Who’s using it? As expected, the younger generations have embraced voice search more than others, but isn’t it a little surprising that voice search is actually being used by a pretty large percentage across demographics. I would’ve expected it to be much less than this.
http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Personal-Assistants-Mobile-Users-Service/1011449/1
The use of question words – who, what, when, where, why and how make a search more conversational. If you’re typing in a query, you might type, “Trevor Noah”, but if you were speaking, you’d certainly say, “Who is Trevor Noah?” (He’s the guy who’s going to replace Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.) Jason Tabeling, at Rosetta, published a small study in Search Engine Watch in December that gives us a great view into how to think about voice search. He looked at the increase in these question words in queries year over year, and it maps with the growth in voice search. Why do you think “what” isn’t seeing as big of an increase? [get audience to participate?] This is because “what” is about a noun – and we generally already know “what” things are around us.
http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2383498/how-will-voice-search-impact-a-search-marketers-world
As search marketers, we look at this and we want to understand how can this impact our digital campaigns? How can we use this to get ahead? What if we broke down the question words by their degree of intent? If someone is asking what or who, how likely are they to be buying something, or close to buying something? Not very. It’s only as we get to the words “when” and “where” that we really drill into action. Someone who searches for “Home Depot” is in a very different place than someone who queries“Where is Home Depot.” One might be looking for price comparisons or a phone number – but “where is Home Depot” is pretty clear in its intent – and would be worth a higher bid.
The second way that voice search differs from text search is in query length. Because Bing is a data powerhouse, we pulled data for query length for Cortana searches and compared that with query length for general text searches. What you can see is that the successful voice searches, the ones that get the most volume, impressions and clicks, are the ones with 3 words in the keyword or query. For text-based searches, the successful query length is just two words long. This was a little unexpected – I thought the query length for voice searches would be significantly longer than for text-based searches.
The second way that voice search differs from text search is in query length. Because Bing is a data powerhouse, we pulled data for query length for Cortana searches and compared that with query length for general text searches. What you can see is that the successful voice searches, the ones that get the most volume, impressions and clicks, are the ones with 3 words in the keyword or query. For text-based searches, the successful query length is just two words long. This was a little unexpected – I thought the query length for voice searches would be significantly longer than for text-based searches.
Nobody knows what’s going to pop out of the curtain, and that element of the unexpected is intriguing. One time it might be Elvis signing a song. Another time it’s a shark. This unexpectedness draws the shooter to glance at what’s going on. And usually, it makes him smile. Arizona State holds the keys to the unexpected, and that’s how they win.
Driving performance in digital marketing is about learning from change. Be excited when metrics in your account change, because good or bad, it’s an opportunity to learn. Hopefully your tests are driving the change. Improved landing page? Should see an increase in conversion rate. Create a kick-butt ad? Hope to see an increase in click-through rate.
Before jumping into competitive analysis, it’s important to rule out the other sources of change. Good news, though there are hundreds of factors that can cause change, there are three fundamental sources of performance changes. And there are easy to use tools to troubleshoot each source.
Symptoms of Increased Competition
The symptoms of increased competition can show up in a number of ways. The most common symptoms of increased competition are:
Higher CPC driving a higher CPA (if your conversion rate is lower that’s usually something else)
Lower position driving lower conversion and click volume
If you see one of these problems, that’s where Auction Insights comes in.