Checkout Adcenter Labs here: MSN Adlab

Loads of cool tools here but one that looks very interesting is ‘Detecting Online Commercial Intention’

Microsoft adCenter can detect your customers’ intention to purchase products or acquire information. For example, if a customer searches for “canon digital camera”, it is likely that he or she wants to purchase a canon digital camera; therefore, the online commercial intention is strong, with a confidence level bigger than 0.5. Webpage searches display two levels of commercial intention: informational and transactional.

Check it out, from my keyword data / sales looks pretty accurate….

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Send your clicks to this script to split test your landing pages.

if(rand(0,1) == 0) {
header("Location: http://www.example.com/split1");
} else {
header("Location: http://www.example.com/split2");
}
?>

After 15 / 20 conversions drop your worst peforming landing page & replace it with a new version.

Rinse & repeat and watch the $$$$ roll in………

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ADTECH has revealed the results of its latest browser analysis indicating that the current click-through rate of 0.18%, representing the lowest since the ad serving technology firm started the measurement in 2004.

Then, the average was 0.33 per cent.

“We know from our regular ad analyses that click-through rates oscillate,“ commented Dirk Freytag, CEO at ADTECH. “They typically take a hit at the beginning of the year and rise with the temperatures and then hold a stable level until the end of the year.”

Freytag continued: “The decreasing numbers overall in my opinion are due to the fact that the users have increasingly gotten used to online advertising during the last years. Banners are now commonplace on the Internet. New formats, such as video ads are needed to draw attention and generate clicks. Layer and Leaderboards in contrast have a high reminder potential even
beyond the Web.”

Click-through behaviour also varies significantly between banner formats andp countries. On average, the majority of clicks results from video ads (4.6 per cent) as well as pop-ups and layer ads at 0.6 per cent. Users click on the traditional full size banner more often (0.2 per cent) than the new large-format ad spaces such as Skyscraper (0.11 and 0.15 per cent) or Leaderboard (0.12 per cent).

The research identified the French and Italians as the most eager to click. Their click-through rates of 0.24 and 0.23 per cent respectively are double the rates of the Danes and Finns (0.1 per cent each).

Source: Netimperative

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As Google moves ahead with its acquisition of online advertising powerhouse DoubleClick, Yahoo continues to wage its own battle with Google on several fronts, including in the field of Web analytics. While Google takes a give ‘em all they could want and more approach, Yahoo aims to give Web marketers a more focused set of stats and graphs — hopefully, just what they need.

Search engine marketers rely on Web analytics to tell them which key words are working — and which ones are not. So when Yahoo launched a “Full Analytics” option within its new Panama search-marketing system, it turned a few heads.
Despite the buzz, however, there is still plenty of marketplace confusion surrounding Yahoo’s analytics platform and how it compares to and contrasts with what Google Analytics has to offer. In fact, some Search Engine Marketing (SEM) consultants interviewed for this column were unaware that Yahoo even offers anything beyond the simple metrics it has historically made available to online marketers through its Advertiser Web Services program.

Although some experts might not think of Yahoo as a big player in the Web analytics game, Yahoo would beg to differ.

The Players

In case you haven’t been keeping an eye on the blow-by-blow competition between Yahoo and Google on the analytics front, here’s a little history to bring you up to speed.

When Yahoo acquired Overture in 2003, it inherited Keylime Software’s analytics and paid-search management tools. Overture had snapped up Keylime for $9.5 million just before Yahoo closed its $1.63 billion buyout of the popular platform. And now, Keylime’s deep analysis software is being used as the foundation for the analytics capabilities included in Yahoo’s Panama search-marketing system.

On the other side of the board is Google who acquired Urchin Software, a Web analytics firm that measured traffic to thousands of popular Internet sites, in March 2005 for an undisclosed amount. Google said its motive for acquiring Urchin was to provide Web site owners the information they need to optimize the user experience and generate greater ROI on their advertising spending.

The Yahoo Approach

Paul Apodaca, who is the director of program management for Yahoo Search Marketing shared his insights with us about Yahoo’s strategy.

“Our Web analytics program,” he explained, “was developed from the standpoint of someone trying to understand their Web site’s performance, whether that be a marketer or an IT person. But our Full Analytics program doesn’t show all of those reports. We have tailored the display to suit the specific needs of search engine marketers.”

Apodaca just hinted at the first major difference between Yahoo’s Full Analytics offering and Google Analytics: Yahoo isn’t giving search engine marketers information it deems unnecessary to their online advertising mission.

The Google Way

Google, by contrast, uses its Urchin roots to track and display all visitor data, from visitors and pageviews to conversion funnels and so on. In short, Google Analytics offers a more comprehensive view of a Web site’s activity — not just search engine activity.

Brett Crosby, Sr., manager for Google Analytics, said as search has become more relevant and more people are using it, Web analytics has taken on a more important role in helping advertisers understand not only how customers are finding the site, but also what those visitors are doing when they get there. “Google Analytics helps advertisers get higher margins because they can use the data to create a better experience for their customers,” said Crosby, who was one of the co-founders of Urchin.

Google Analytics allows for cross-segmentation of data in 18 different ways, including by keyword, location and browser. In all, there are 82 reports from which to analyze the data, such as by geographic location, site overlay (which allows Web site owners to see the Web site with analytics data overlaid on the site), and e-commerce tracking to measure the value of conversions.

“Google Analytics offers geotargeting,” Crosby explained. “That means customers can not only identify new opportunities to advertise online, but they can also measure the impact of print campaigns by seeing if they get geographic bumps in regions where they advertised.”

Too Much Information?

That’s all well and good, but from where Yahoo’s Apodaca sits, 82 reports are just too many for Internet marketers. That’s why Yahoo Full Analytics offers only 14. According to Apodaca, Yahoo has streamlined its offering based on two principles: don’t give search engine marketers information they don’t need and don’t give search engine marketers information they won’t understand. “The marketing guys just want to know which five reports to look at,” he explains. “They want a snapshot of how the campaign is performing.”

To put it another way, they want to know how much money they spent on a given day and how many conversions it got them. Beyond that, search engine marketers can drill down into more detail and see the number of impressions and clicks on specific ad campaigns to see which are performing the best. They can also manage keywords and use filters that narrow the data field based on specific questions, such as the performance of banner ads or sponsored search. Yahoo Full Analytics can measure visitor activity all the way from the inbound click to the conversion.

“The way we deliver information to search engine marketers is different from Google,” Apodaca said. “We aren’t reporting on natural searches. We only report on campaign-related activity. We have the ability to provide something similar to Google Analytics but our philosophy is to arm advertisers with appropriate campaign information.”

The Price To Pay

Users of Google Analytics and Yahoo’s Panama Full Analytics have their own views. Yahoo’s Panama is not nearly as robust as Google Analytics, according to Tom Bianco, CEO of Atlantic Consulting and Sales, an e-commerce consulting firm. “Google Analytics is graphically superior, with more charts, geo maps, [and] the all-important site overlay so you can do multivariate testing,” he says. But, in Bianco’s opinion, neither Google nor Yahoo does a good job of segmenting the opposition’s pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.

Another difference between Google Analytics and Yahoo’s Full Analytics option within Panama is the price. Google Analytics is free whereas Yahoo is charging a premium for access to its Full Analytics. Apodaca declined to disclose the fee, but Cindy Krum, a senior Search Engine Optimization analyst at Blue Moon Works, an interactive marketing agency with clients like Timex and Bluefly, noted that the Full Analytics option is only available to gold level users who spend more than $6,000 on SEM per year.

“It has yet to be seen if Yahoo will parlay advances made with the Panama update into a more universal and sophisticated free Web analytics software that tracks and reports on all site traffic, like Google Analytics,” Krum said. She noted that Panama offers robust event and conversion tracking that is similar to the pay-per-click tracking available in Google Analytics, though she said it’s not much better than the PPC tracking Google currently offers in AdWords.

At the end of the day, analytics beauty may be in the eye of the beholder. Clearly, Google Analytics and the Full Analytics option in Panama are two entirely different programs, yet with a common goal: to track Web site activity. Your choice of programs, really, depends on how much of that activity you want to track and on which search engine you choose to deploy your advertising spend. Google Analytics though, may have an offer search engine marketers can’t refuse: it’s free.

Source: http://www.cio-today.com

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A very useful collection of resources for webmasters including SEO, Usability etc.

http://siteadminstuff.com/all.html

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Whilst looking how to [tag]track PHP page redirects[/tag] I came across the following solution which seems to work perfectly using [tag]Google Analytics[/tag]:

“Google Analytics provides an easy way to [tag]track clicks on links[/tag] that lead to file downloads. Because these links do not lead to a page on your site containing the tracking code, you’ll need to tag the link itself with the urchinTracker JavaScript if you would like to track these downloads. This piece of JavaScript assigns a pageview to any click on a link – the pageview is attributed to the filename you specify.

For example, to log every click on a particular link to www.example.com/files/map.pdf as a pageview for /downloads/map you would add the following attribute to the link’s tag:

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All [tag]Ecommerce[/tag] websites are always striving to achieve maximum ROI on their marketing & advertising investments trying to establish what gives them the best bang for their buck.

Basically what this comes down to is [tag]Tracking[/tag], [tag]Analysing[/tag] & [tag]Converting[/tag].

Whilst looking from some information about tracking some page [tag]redirect scripts[/tag] for one of my sites I came across a very useful resource I’d forgotten about, this is Google’s [tag]Conversion Univertisty[/tag].

Learn about marketing and content optimization, read web analytics tips from industry experts at Conversion University, the [tag]Google Analytics[/tag] companion site. Visit the university now for a wealth of useful tips & advice.

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New [tag]EyeTracking[/tag] Study verifies the importance of page position and rank in both [tag]Organic[/tag] and [tag]PPC[/tag] search results for visibility and click through.

A joint eye tracking study conducted by search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it and eye tracking firm Eyetools has shown that the vast majority of eye tracking activity during a search happens in a triangle at the top of the [tag]search results page[/tag] indicating that the areas of maximum interest create a “[tag]golden triangle[/tag].”

The first phase of the study was conducted with 50 people in Eyetools’ eye tracking lab in San Francisco, California and presented panel participants with 5 distinct scenarios that would require the use of a search engine. Google was used as the search engine in all of the instances.

Key Preliminary Findings of the Study included
The key location on Google for visibility as determined by the eye activity in the study is a triangle that extends from the top of the results over to the top of the first result, then down to a point on the left side at the bottom of the “[tag]above the fold[/tag]” visible results. This key area was looked at by 100 percent of the participants. In the study, this was referred to as the “Golden Triangle”. Generally, this area appears to include top sponsored, top organic results and Google’s alternative results, including shopping, news or local suggestions.

Visibility dropped quickly with [tag]organic rankings[/tag], starting at a high of 100% for the top listing, dropping to 85% at the bottom of the “above the fold” listings, and then dropping dramatically below the fold from 50% at the top to 20% at the bottom.

Organic Ranking Visibility
(shown in a percentage of participants looking at a listing in this location)

Rank 1 – 100%
Rank 2 – 100%
Rank 3 – 100%
Rank 4 – 85%
Rank 5 – 60%
Rank 6 – 50%
Rank 7 – 50%
Rank 8 – 30%
Rank 9 – 30%
Rank 10 – 20%

Eye scan and click through behavior changes dramatically as users moved “below the fold” to the section of results that required scrolling down. At the top of the page, the amount of eye movement declined rapidly through the top 4 or 5 results, and then at the bottom of the screen, tends to become more consistent through to the end of the page.

In searches where top sponsored results are returned in addition to right sponsored ads, the top ads received much higher visibility, being seen by 80 to 100% of participants, as opposed to 10 to 50% of participants who looked at the side sponsored ads.

On side sponsored ads, the top ranked results received much more in the way of both eye activity and click through. About 50% of participants looked at the top ad, compared to only 10% who looked at ads in the 6, 7 or 8th location on the page.

Side sponsored ad visibility
(shown in percentage of participants looking at an ad in this location)

1 – 50%
2 – 40%
3 – 30%
4 – 20%
5 – 10%
6 – 10%
7 – 10%
8 – 10%

There seems to be a “F” shaped scan pattern, where the eye tends to travel vertically along the far left side of the results looking for visual cues (relevant words, brands, etc) and then scanning to the right if something caught the participant’s attention.

These results come from an initial analysis of the results and were presented during sessions at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York. While interesting, the study’s main findings are still to come and will required detailed analysis of individual behavior patterns.

Did It’s Kevin Lee said, “At this point, we weren’t too surprised at what we’ve seen in the study. We suspected much of this to be true prior to conducting it. However, there is tremendous value in confirming these suspicions, especially in a way that’s so visually compelling. It also proves that our methodology will hold up for phase 2 of the research. On the sponsored search side, data indicates that it is the clear branding and visibility advantage offered by gaining top positions, especially Google’s top sponsored links. Unfortunately, these aren’t always presented with a search. Google is a little fickle in this regard.”

Enquiro’s Gord Hotchkiss added, “We see a marked difference in how people say they search and what they actually do. Previous research had indicated that people were considered searchers and spent some time before choosing a link. The past few studies we’ve done, this one included, shows that there’s a huge importance placed on where the eyeballs end up on the page. Clicks happen pretty quickly. It just shows that search marketing is a real estate game. It’s all about location, location, location.”

Eyetools’ CTO Greg Edwards also commented, “Eyetracking is the enabling tool that fills in the gaps to understand why people click or don’t click — by quantifying what people consider before the decision to click or leave is made, companies can start to better anticipate and design to satisfy people’s needs. Applying this in the search results arena enables companies to better plan their marketing communication and increase conversions.”

This research is ongoing and the phase 1 results are highly encouraging. After further analysis is done, the results will be made available to the public through white papers. Further findings will be announced as they become available.

For more information about Eye Tracking or the study, contact Greg Edwards at contact@eyetools.com.

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