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The rumor bin has been active lately with rumblings of an upcoming interface change for Google Adwords. In what many might consider as a topic that should fall into the “if it ain’t broke…” category, I’ll take a look at what improvements Google might make to the current Adwords interface.

Yesterday’s post hinted that many businesses are now testing campaigns in Google Adwords and other cost-per-click programs with new online marketing budgets. Many marketers don’t realize that pay-per-click campaigns can quickly get out of control. Traditional marketing metrics can usually be measured over the course of several weeks and months, whereas online marketing metrics can spike on an hourly basis. In this post, I’ll discuss the safeguards you can use when running new PPC campaigns in Google Adwords.

Many online businesses expected a slower than average December in 2007, thanks in part to less than optimistic economics figures indicating a slowdown in e-commerce spending over the holidays.  Although that may be true for a few of the larger, more established brands, it may foreshadow the emergence of several new upstarts vying for attention in the e-commerce space.

Starting sometime in the past week or so, Google Adwords starting inserting actual businesses addresses into advertiser’s display ads.  In the past, it wasn’t uncommon to see the State or Province below your regionally-targeted ads in Google.  The impact of the change has yet to have sufficient time to filter down into analytics, so it’s too soon to say whether showing a business’ actual address is good or not.

Google’s Q4 product development schedule included a major upgrade to the campaign geo-targeting options that went live sometime last week. Aside from an actual map overlay using the powerful Google Maps API, it also includes a new exclusion feature that lets the advertiser decide whether they want to target a big territory, but exclude individual towns or regions that may not convert. Christmas just came early!

Rumors regarding Google’s next big acquisition abound with mentions of Sprint popping up here and there.  One significant relationship that is emerging could change the way everyone interacts on the internet, and that is through increasingly tight partnerships between Google and Go Daddy.  Go Daddy of course is the internet leader in domain registrations with over 25 million sold, plus countless more millions opted into web hosting, certificates, merchant services, etc.  Sprint would be big acquisition, but GoDaddy could be monumental.

Someone at Google must have been listening, because now you’ll be able to start excluding your Content Network Adwords campaigns from showing up on Domain Ads and Error Pages.  Although I’ve always preached that it’s best to determine whether or not those placements will convert on your unique campaigns, you’ll now have the power to test it yourself, without the need for insider help.

With the introduction of Placement Targeted campaigns in Adwords, now comes the ability to target and setup strategic bidding on demographic sampling as well. Although this feature concept is somewhat dated thanks to MSN Adcenter, Google Adwords engineers have finally caught up - but how accurate is the demographics information?

And the masses rejoice!  Christmas just came early for those of us that were waiting for CPC-based site targeting in Google Adwords.  For those of us that have tried in the past, CPM models for site-targeted ads just didn’t cut it from a ROI predictability and stability of standpoint, so CPC-based bidding is a sight for sore eyes.  How will this impact your search marketing?

Numerous analytics tools are at the search marketer’s disposal to research and analyze tactics for pay-per-click campaigns.  Targeting your ads for regions and cities is quite possibly amongst the most important settings in Adwords Campaign settings.  How many search marketers will actually get scientific about what their analytics suites are telling them about their campaigns?  Very few in the markets my clients compete within, so what’s the problem?

Can you guess what I dressed up as for Halloween?  I’ll give you a few guesses!

Here is what I look like tonight:

• I am big and daunting, and smart people steer clear
• I went to work today, but when people saw me they couldn’t tell I was working
• I am sometimes called mysterious and ever-changing, like Odo from DS9
• I say “trick or treat” but I usually just give you a trick, and then mug you
• I like candy, but I’d rather take your search budget and retire in Miami
• Lots of SEM’s use me every day, but they’re not sure why
• People get paid to “optimize” campaigns for me, but it rarely helps
• I was meant to show off my client’s ads, but I won’t tell you where
• Microsoft and Yahoo would love to take a bite out of me, but they can’t see around me
• Google’s released a lot of tools to help people figure me out, but it doesn’t help, I’m just too complicated
• I am the reason why a single Google share surpassed $700

Can you guess what I dressed up as?

Recent mumbling around Google indicate that the initial site-targeted CPC beta test is just about wrapped up. Testers are in the feedback phase, and depending on the overall success of the program, we might see a public release into mainstream Adwords accounts or it might be reinvented and introduced to new advertising beta testers. Here’s what you should know about site-targeted CPC.

There are seldom any sure things in life, but this one is for certain, Google Adwords Optimizations aren’t worth the e-mail bandwidth they are sent to customers on. One might say, Google has the insider advantage on your campaigns and ad groups, but practical experience says otherwise. For those itching to learn Adwords secrets, you may want to read on.

From the “now they tell me” file comes a surefire way to exclude your Content Network ads from “Domain Ads,” a.k.a. parked domains. Registrars often monetize parked domains to generate ad revenue, and considering there are a limited number of popular domain registrars, all those pennies and dimes do tend to add up to big bucks.  How do you exclude those parked domains?

Managing more than a few pay-per-click advertising campaigns can be pretty burdensome if you don’t set up automatic report scheduling.  I recommend that all advertisers run at least two critical monthly reports from within Adwords: a search query report and a content placement report.  Depending on your spend, you may want to schedule these two reports more often, but a few Adwords managers (including myself) have already noticed a little bug in the system.