Online advertising is great. It built the Internet. Online advertising mimed the TV broadcast model. We can thank online ads for the freemium model.

The problem is, online advertising’s best before date is immanent. Even Google thinks so! On January 19th, 2012 Google announced a search algorithm change that will affect page ranking. By placing too many ads “above the fold” publishers risk downgrading their page rank. It’s worth adding that according to Google, “This algorithmic change noticeably affects less than 1% of searches globally.” Despite the small number,  I believe it’s time for brands to start thinking about moving away from online banner ads to more compelling engagement models.

What’s the future you ask? I believe it’s “Brand Editorial” that can be mashed, shared, interacted with, modified, and talked about by fans and audiences. Let’s discuss.

Google is now down-ranking websites that dedicate, “a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads.” How much real estate is too much? Google won’t tell us and is not providing any analytical tools to provide the answer either. There are a few clues on Google’s Inside Search blog posting.

This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page. This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads. This algorithmic change noticeably affects less than 1% of searches globally.

If you get it wrong, it may take weeks for any corrections you make to be reflected in your rankings: If you decide to update your page layout, the page layout algorithm will automatically reflect the changes as we re-crawl and process enough pages from your site to assess the changes. How long that takes will depend on several factors, including the number of pages on your site and how efficiently Googlebot can crawl the content. On a typical website, it can take several weeks for Googlebot to crawl and process enough pages to reflect layout changes on the site.

The bottom line with this update is, as so many times before, for publishers to focus on creating content-rich, compelling websites if they want to use natural SEM. Anything risks a randomly-timed ranking downgrade.- Chris Trayhorn, mTHINK

Cost per click for paid search is on the rise forcing companies to spend more on their Search Engine Marketing. With Google’s monopoly on search growing, expect average rates to continue to rise.

Using superficial metrics, such as click through rates and cost per click to inform your Search Marketing decisions can reduce campaign effectiveness.  Often you can increase your performance by focusing on deeper revenue-impacting measurements, such as profit per order, cost per unique customer and activity measurements such as time spent on site or click path.

To make the most out of your Ad spend, consider these best practices:

1. Organize your Ad spend into campaigns, identify the main purpose of your campaign

•    eCommerce – to sell products or services online
•    Lead Gen – to generate leads
•    Drive Ad Revenue – in an effort to sell ad space
•    Online Service – to reduce call centre calls and support customers online

2. Select and track important metrics that matter

•    Click through rate and cost per click are important measures, but conversion is the most important metric to optimize search campaigns
•    Measure overall revenue, leads and CPA (cost per acquisition)
•    Measure cost per customer (or sale), return on ad spend, and profit per customer (or order)

3.  Reinforce your message consistently from the keywords or phrase to your landing page

•    Broad keywords should take visitors to general landing pages – perfect for casting a big net
•    Exact keywords should take visitors to a specific landing page – expect less traffic, but higher conversion

4.  Create multiple version of landing pages – validate your strategies with facts

•    Create different version of the landing page; make sure there’s a noticeable difference or you won’t know what to fix
•    The headline in your Text Ad should match the headline on your landing page and call to action
•    Clearly state your call to action — what do you want the potential customer to do?
•    Briefly explain the benefits and value proposition of your product or service

5. Have an effective keyword organization strategy

•    Don’t manage key words and phrases manually using using Excel – you’re limiting your ability to effectively scale search marketing campaigns

•    Resource properly – give yourself and your team enough time to manage, organize and execute – Search Engine Marketing takes time

Good luck and let me know how it goes!