Author: Franz Malten Buemann

When it comes to generating traffic and brand awareness, digital advertising is the way to go. It’s surpassing traditional advertising, and Google is a huge reason why. As one of the biggest digital advertising platforms, Google is responsible for 37.2% of total U.S. digital ad spending alone.

But how can you take advantage of the advertising opportunities on Google? By knowing how each of its programs — Google Ads and Google AdSense — work and evaluating which is right for you (or both).

In this article, we’ll cover:

Google Ads (Search and Display)
Google AdSense
The Differences Between Them

What Is Google Ads?
Google Ads — formerly known as Google AdWords — allows advertisers to make bids for ad placements to drive traffic to their websites. These placements can be in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) or the Google Display Network (the network of sites, apps, and more that show Google display ads).

Search

The search ads that appear in the SERPs are a great option if you know there’s a demand for your product and your audience is using search engines to satisfy it.

Display
The Google Display Network ads — also known as banner or display ads — are more visual, perfect for grabbing attention as you “rent” space where your audience hangs out online.

Google actually has another advertising program that they released three years after Google Ads’ inception. It’s called Google AdSense.

What Is Google AdSense?
Google AdSense allows publishers to place ads on their websites and other “real estate” in exchange for a “commission.” These publishers make up a portion of the Google Display Network that advertisers can leverage through Google Ads.
In the image below, the recipe website uses Google AdSense to allow 2 advertisers to place banner ads on their site. The recipe site is paid by Google for the success of these ads. (More on this later.)

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Google AdSense is perfect for website publishers who are already getting traffic and want to monetize it.
Read on as we go over the main differences between Google Ads and AdSense, for whom they’re geared toward, and what their cost structure is like.

Ads (Formerly AdWords) vs. AdSense
While the Google Ads program is geared toward attracting advertisers, the Google AdSense program is geared toward attracting publishers. Advertisers use Google Ads to drive traffic to their sites, and publishers use Google AdSense to monetize their existing traffic.

Below, we’ve highlighted some core differences between the Google advertising options so you can make decisions on how best to distribute your ads budget.
Purpose

Platform
Purpose

Google Ads (Search)
Generate traffic to your own site from Google as a search engine.

Google Ads (Display)
Generate traffic to your own site from the Google Display Network of publishing partners, mobile apps, and video.

Google AdSense
Generate traffic for other sites as a Google Display Network publishing partner.

 
Strategy

Platform
Strategy

Google Ads (Search)
You know that your audience searches for your products or services on Google, and you want to show up in the SERPs for those queries. 

Google Ads (Display)
Your audience may not know about your product or service and aren’t searching for it on Google. However, a visual ad may catch their eye if you can show up on the sites where they do hang out.

Google AdSense
Your site is generating traffic, and you want to monetize it. You don’t mind “renting out” real estate on your site to advertisers that your audience may find interesting.

 
Cost Structure

Platform
Cost Structure

Google Ads (Search)
You pay a fee every time a user clicks on one of your ads. This cost per click (CPC) can vary based on how much you bid, your ad rank compared to the competition, and your quality score. For this reason, more competitive keywords can have a higher CPC.

Google Ads (Display)
You can choose the right pricing for your goals: Paying by cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM), or cost-per-action (CPA). CPC is better for generating traffic, CPM is better for generating awareness, and CPA is better for conversions. According to Google, you bid for placement, and “the winner of the auction pays the minimum amount necessary to outrank the next advertiser in the auction.” Competition drives up bidding, so industry and highly sought-after publications may cost more.

Google AdSense
Participation in AdSense is free, and you receive commission for the clicks, impressions, and other interactions the ads on your site receive from users. For this reason, your audience, the ad placement, and the ad quality will all be factors in how much you can make with AdSense.

As you can see from the table above, cost structure depends on a number of variables. We’ll go more in-depth on it below, starting with Google Ads.
Google Ads (Search)
Naturally, there’s enormous demand for the top ad rankings, so Google triggers an auction anytime there are at least two advertisers bidding for keywords that are related to search queries that users consistently enter into Google.

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Advertisers can then categorize keywords and their corresponding ad copy and web page into groups, pick the group they want to bid on, and choose their maximum bid. Next, Google will select a keyword from the advertiser’s ad group that they deem most relevant to users’ search queries and enter it into the auction.
A Google auction isn’t like your typical auction for antiques, though. They want to level the playing field when it comes to leveraging the size of their reach, so instead of the highest bidder always winning the auction, the bidder with the highest Ad Rank always wins.
AdRank is calculated by multiplying your maximum cost-per-click bid with the quality score of your ad, which is calculated by measuring your page’s relevance to the keyword, user experience, and click-through-rate. This means organizations can’t acquire the top ranking for any keyword they want just because they have the biggest ad budgets. Their content has to be engaging.

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Google Ads wants to incentivize the best advertisers to advertise the best content on their search engine results pages, so they reward ads that have high quality scores with higher ad rankings and lower cost-per-clicks.
In the same vein, they also want to discourage bad advertisers from advertising bad content, so advertisers with low quality scores will usually only acquire a high ad position if they pay a huge cost-per-click bid. If they want to pay lower a cost-per-click, they have to settle with stooping at the bottom of the ad rankings.
If you win a Google auction, your actual cost-per-click is calculated by the second highest ad rank divided by your quality score, plus one cent. The only time you’ll pay your maximum bid is if you’re the only bidder in the auction or if you make the highest bid in the auction, but you have the lowest ad rank. In this case, you’ll acquire the last ad rank.

Image Source
Google Ads (Display) / Google AdSense
For display ads, just as with search ads, advertisers bid on publishers’ ad space in the Google Ads auction. They bid on certain keywords, and if a publisher’s content has the same or similar keywords, Google will sell their ad space to the highest bidder and pay the publisher a small portion of the bid whenever people click the ad on their website.
However, AdSense doesn’t optimize the ads that they display on publishers’ website for a maximum return on investment like Google Ads does for its search advertisers when they want to optimize their ad campaigns. So, essentially, the amount of money a publisher can earn with AdSense hinges on how well they place the ads on their site and how well advertisers can craft their ads.
Publishers do have control over the types of ads that are displayed, though. They can choose from text ads, display ads, rich media ads, and more. They can also customize their ad’s style or create their own, which gives them the ability to change the size, color, textual, background, and border details of the ads that display on their website. Additionally, they can only place three content ads, three link ads, and two search boxes on each of their web pages.
Google Ads (both Search and Display) and Google AdSense are effective ways to generate revenue with digital advertising methods — the former as you drive traffic to your site and the latter as you use your site to drive traffic elsewhere.
Once you choose the program(s) that are right for you, you can begin your strategy and execution.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Branding is a key factor when you want to create instant recognition with your audience. Cultivating a sense of familiarity gives your audience a feeling of connectedness that will inspire them to seek your business out among your competitors. 
This is also true—and possibly even more so—for your digital communications. Without a brick-and-mortar to sell the experience of interacting with your business, you need your branding to resonate through your online presence as well.
One way to do this is to connect your audience’s physical experiences to the digital experience through branding.
Using colors, fonts, and logos strategically creates a seamless transition from physical experience to digital—or vice versa. If you sell products or services, your packaging should contain the same elements of branding as your storefront. 
Similarly, your emails—from your transactional emails to your newsletters—should also contain your branded elements.
Branding your email program
If you haven’t branded your emails—including your transactional emails, which will have huge open rates during the holiday season—you have missed a chance to reiterate and confirm your brand identity in the minds of your biggest fans. 
A good experience via email will imbue your branding with positive associations, leaving your readers with strong, positive feelings for your company.
How can you brand your emails?
Emails, even transactional ones, should always contain your creative elements, such as your logos, your brand colors, and fonts. Our customers have told us that uploading these elements is one of the hardest parts about getting their email program up and running.
Our new branded templates feature aims to fix that. Now you can get started and get sending in a few minutes. Simply enter your website URL and Campaign Monitor will automatically upload your creative elements into one of our branded templates. You can then tweak whatever you need, add your own copy and content, and get sending. 
With our branded holiday templates, you can start taking advantage of the increased digital traffic this holiday season with minimal up-front effort and time.
Your emails should always use the same fonts and colors as your brick-and-mortar stores, your ads, and even your website. The more places you can utilize your branding elements, the more repetition will solidify your brand reputation in your audience’s mind. 
You can even use the same colors and images on your social feeds to create a seamless, cohesive feel.
Branding with consistency: How to brand your emails, website, and beyond
Your emails aren’t the only place you should utilize branding. Instead, you should carry these elements throughout your digital presence. Consistent branding is a great way to make it seem like you have a dedicated marketing team behind you, even if your entire company only consists of one or two people. 
For example, here is a 2019 holiday email from Alo Yoga. But that fact is obvious at a glance, even without the explanation. Not only is their brand named multiple times throughout the email, the design and aesthetic are also similar throughout. Here’s an example of a branded email:

Your website, social platforms, and even direct mail should all follow the same design and tone guidelines so it’s clear at a glance that they’re all from you. 
Building strong brand recognition will strengthen your relationship with consumers and have them coming back to your organization even when your competitors might be easier or more convenient for them. 
Similarly, if you look at the Alo website, you can see they’ve got the same 70 and 30% off sales, similar graphics near the bottom, and the same inter-galactic design throughout. All readers who click through to the website will find themselves in familiar territory.

If you look at your emails side by side, is it obvious they’re from you? It’s an easy tweak that will improve your email results in the long-term. What about your website? When you follow your links, do you end up someplace that looks familiar?
You might find a few tweaks lead to more conversions and an even higher ROI from your email program.
Wrap up
Consistent branding helps you create seamless, memorable experiences that lead customers to return to your business time and time again. This holiday season will be unlike any other and, while that can be intimidating, it also means there are enormous opportunities for you to connect with your audience. 
Consumers want to do business with brands they care about, with brands they feel a personal connection with. Branding across your platforms and in your physical locations can help you do just that. With Campaign Monitor’s branded templates, creating unique, branded emails is even more simple and effective than ever before. You can send your first email on day one after signing up. 
Sign up today and get started with branded templates to send your first email right away.
The post Branding with Consistency: Email Templates and More appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

There are few things as nerve-wracking as hitting send on your next big email campaign. After all, you’ve spent a lot of time crafting every line of copy and choosing the perfect imagery to hit the right tone with your audience. 
You’ve also spent time, energy, and resources building your list, crafting segments, and A/B testing. As if those aren’t stakes enough, you’ve also got a specific goal tied to your campaigns, whether it’s an ROI goal for your email strategy or an individual goal you want your email to accomplish.
And after all that work, something as simple as a broken link can throw all that work out the window. That’s why we’ve launched our new Link Review tool.
A broken or missing link shouldn’t ruin your email—or your day. When you know your links are working as they should, that’s one less thing to worry about.
Despite your best-laid plans, marketers are only human and plans can still go awry. But mistakes don’t mean the end of your career. It just means you have one more thing to add to your email marketing pre-flight checklist and a few extra tasks to make amends.
Below, two email professionals are sharing their stories of an email send that didn’t go as planned and, more importantly, what they did next.
Lizzie’s story
Lizze Newbern is the Email Marketing Manager for Asurion with more than five years of experience. (When Lizzie isn’t working, she likes to spend her time illustrating!) 
Even with that much experience behind her, she missed how a subject line would get truncated on mobile for a specific inbox provider. Needless to say, it’s a mistake she won’t make again. 
Cut-off catastrophe
Like many email marketers, the subject line is one of the biggest stressors in hitting the send button. This one line of text is essentially the subscriber’s first impression of your email, and can seriously impact your open rates and sender reputation. You can try your hardest to proof and re-proof, and test and re-test, but at the end of the day, unfortunately we’re not computers. And we all have off days where our child kept us up until 4 a.m. wanting to watch the newest Frozen movie. 
We’re human, and mistakes can happen. Although some mistakes are worse than others…like a perfect, once-in-a-lifetime subject line truncation. 
One of my previous positions was working as the Email Marketing Manager for one of the top senior living companies in the business. We occasionally marketed events for the local communities where we’d send an email invite to the residents, and other interested leads in the area. This event in particular was for a conversation-starting cocktail night, where potential residents could come tour the community and meet some of the residents over some craft cocktails. 
The subject line that was written was “Celebrate the long weekend with cocktails and conversation.” Pretty harmless. The email was tested, proofed, and sent on its way. Throughout the day, I noticed I was getting a few responses to the reply-to inbox. 
I immediately started to sweat when I started seeing responses like “SO inappropriate.” “Wow, so unprofessional.” “Looks like someone didn’t check their subject line cut-off!” 
Panic ensued. 
I finally found a response that included a screenshot of the subject line, and how it displayed in their inbox. There, in all its glory was “Celebrate the long weekend with c***…” 
Oops. 
Immediately all the panicked thoughts came flooding in: “How can I recover from this?” and “Where’s the nearest hole to bury my head into?” 
I had to take a deep breath. The first step was to figure out the damage: How large was our audience? Realistically, how many people had this truncation issue? Luckily—if there was any luck to be found in this situation—our audience was very small for this particular send. We’re talking less than 100. 
I was feeling a little bit better, but not great. Next, I had to figure out how many opened on mobile. It turned out to be over 45%, and at this point I was feeling less better.
We had to decide whether to risk additional exposure by sending a follow-up email addressing the issue. At the end of the day, you have to weigh your mistake, and the impact it had on your message. In this particular instance, we felt that due to the audience size and the small amount of responses, we were going to let this mistake lie. It’s not the most exciting response to the situation, but as an email marketer you have to make those decisions when mistakes inevitably happen. 
I feel like every email marketer I know has some sort of document, or notes page titled “MISTAKES MADE IN PREVIOUS EMAIL SENDS. DON’T DO THIS AGAIN.” At the end of the day, you take your mistakes and you learn from them. You become more aware of the issues to test for, and you move forward. 
Most people in the email field have “send-button shakiness.” (If you don’t, you’re either a robot or have an English degree.) The main challenge comes with how to handle the inevitable mistakes that can sometimes happen and, most importantly, how you move forward.
Justin’s story: 
Justin is the Email Marketing Manager for CM Group and he has over 6 years of experience. But when you work in email, technology is always evolving and the introduction of dark mode led to an email mistake.
Dark mode faux pas
Once you’ve been around email marketing for a little while, you start to notice some quirks with how your sent campaign will look different across email clients. There are tons of different apps and thousands of screen sizes out there. What looks one way in Outlook may show up differently in Gmail. 
And while every email I’ve built gets tested, I recently failed to test one campaign for dark mode compatibility. Parts of my email were unreadable in Gmail’s dark mode.
While none of our subscribers pointed out the issue, several of my team members were on the email list for this campaign and noticed right away.
The first thing I wanted to do was to group together all the stakeholders for this email and inform them of the potential issue customers may have with the email. From there, I truly wanted to identify the source of the readability challenges and make note of what to change for the next send. 
I also made sure to go back into Litmus, where I do all my testing, and make sure all Dark Mode email previews were checked in my test settings.
My confidence did shake a bit after this one send. When you’re an email marketer and you make a mistake, you know that your next several sends are going to get extra attention, but I think there’s also an opportunity in that extra attention. 
Because of this experience, I have more team members willing to help me test future emails. I was able to revisit designs with the rest of the team to double-check other templates we have to ensure the same issue won’t get repeated, and also add in more time to do testing before each scheduled send. 
Having a supportive team around me has helped in regaining confidence.
Wrap up
Whether you’re just starting out in email marketing or you’ve been around the block, mistakes are an inevitable part of any email marketers career. Luckily, no one expects you to be anything other than human.
What matters most is that you learn from your mistakes and take steps to prevent them moving forward. Figure out when you need to send an apology email and when you need to contact stakeholders. Sometimes, as in Lizzie’s case, doing nothing is better than drawing more attention to the problem.
Whatever your next email send is, you can rest easy knowing there’s one less thing you have to test on your plate. The Link Review will monitor your URLs so you can spend your time and energy on other areas of your email.
The post Email Mistakes and How to Prevent Them appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

2020 has been a year of new challenges and unexpected obstacles. Email marketers around the world responded in spectacular fashion, adapting in the face of rapid change. 
You innovated ways to connect with subscribers and supported them in a time of need. And as other channels struggled to perform, you drove critical results for your brands and clients.
This was a record-breaking period for Campaign Monitor’s customers, and we couldn’t be more proud of your accomplishments. As we bid 2020 adieu (and for many of us, good riddance!), take a moment with us to reflect on some of your most impressive achievements from the last 12 months.
P.S. Ready to share your own 2020 recap? Get started with our latest ready-to-use ‘Year in Review’ email template!

Your subscribers turned to the inbox more than ever. 
Email remains a resilient, reliable way to engage your community even during times of crisis.

416,422 marketers sent 30.660 billion emails opened in 192 countries across the world. 

Open rates increased more than 20% YoY in April and May as shutdowns and restrictions ramped up around the globe. When other channels became inaccessible or unreliable, customers turned to email to find how brands were responding to the crisis.

More time at home brought the first shift back to desktop opens in years. The proportion of opens on mobile devices dropped from 63% to 54% in 2020.

Explore COVID-19 email marketing benchmarks in depth.

When times got tough, Campaign Monitor customers got smarter.
You rose to the occasion with tenacity and ingenuity.

Curious subscriber scientists A/B tested 148,450 campaigns, an increase of 63% over last year.

Customer experience architects designed 47,484 automated email journeys, clearing the path to immediate engagement and lasting loyalty.

Email artisans crafted 730,468 captivating custom email templates that lit up the inbox and stood out among the noise.

New problems call for new solutions.
You asked, we delivered. Campaign Monitors customers tapped into a suite of new features and resources to handle everything 2020 could throw at them. A few of the highlights:
Jan – Pop-up forms
Feb – In-app deliverability guidance
Mar – Campaigns page update
April – COVID-19 Resource Hub
May – Crisis templates
June – Unsubscribe survey
July – Campaign tagging
Aug – Layout templates
Sept – My branded templates
Oct – New holiday templates
Nov – Link review tool
Dec – Coming up: Lists & Subscribers UI update
We’ve got your back.
2020 pushed email marketers to the limit. We were honored to be with you every step of the way.

99% delivery rate for all campaigns sent
Features released: 25
Product deployments: 601
Code commits: 13,010
99.9% app availability

After all, your success is why we come to work every day.

39,263 support cases were responded to within 2 hours (on average)

Just like you, we’re working hard and making the best of the situation.  

625 team members around the world made the shift to remote working, resulting in over 241,000 hours of Zoom meetings with very serious, 100% professional virtual backgrounds.
Separated but not apart: We stayed connected with care packages, virtual yoga and fitness classes, digital master class events and competitions, and more remote happy hours than we care to admit.
$58,000 raised for the Australian Red Cross BushFire Appeal.
1995 hot meals and 1785 sweet treats produced for people in need in the Sydney CBD.

It’s all possible because of our incredible community of customers and contributors! THANK YOU!
What’s next?
Email isn’t going anywhere, and that means neither are we. More than ever, the world needs the connectivity only email makes possible.
Look forward to a long list of new tools, resources, and inspiration coming in 2021, starting with our much-awaited annual Email Marketing Global Benchmarks Report.
Keep an eye out for it early January!
What’s your 2020 story?
Share it with your subscribers today with a Year-in-Review email template.

Not a Campaign Monitor customer? Sign up now.

The post Email Recap: Our 2020 Year in Review appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

We just launched a Facebook contest automation tool (https://soctify.com), it allows users to automate: post creation, awarding, message sending to the winners, and various other stages of the contest. You are able to specify multiple qualification criteria and analyze daily updated contests statistics. I created this post because we are looking for multiple early adopters / testers who have unique use cases and would like to test our tool for free (we can grant you access to use it for free for a couple of months) and give us some feedback. Everyone who would like to give it a try – contact me via private message or write a comment and describe your use case in a few sentences. All questions are welcome. Thank you for your time.
submitted by /u/fluxas_lt [link] [comments]

Hey everyone! I work for a startup in Canada called Socialpeeks and we have developed a really cool chrome extension to help streamline all types of influencer marketing campaigns. Our main focus was to create a dashboard which automatically downloads and queues all your branded content and automatically tracks all your active campaigns. This means forget screenshots to track influencer insights! I was hoping to get some feedback/reviews from digital marketers about our tool. I would love it if you would check it out and provide some feedback like: A. Is it useful for a digital marketer? B. Do you find the value prop useful? C. Would you upgrade to a paid plan? D. Any other suggestions? Thank you Socialpeeks Influencer Tool
submitted by /u/Daydream1998 [link] [comments]

Today, technology is integrated into nearly every part of our lives. From the tiny personal fitness trackers on our wrists to the major data centers powering the internet we use daily, computers of all shapes and sizes have become ubiquitous in modern society, achieving levels of scale and popularity that were the realm of science fiction just a decade or two ago.
However, our increasingly connected world is not without its challenges. The trail of information left by our digital actions can last forever. Power imbalances between those who generate data and those who collect it have the potential to lead to serious privacy and security issues. 
As a result, legislative bodies worldwide have passed regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) to give consumers more control over how their data is used and to penalize misuse.
To remain competitive while maintaining consumer trust, it’s up to today’s businesses to build compliance into their products and services. That’s just what we’re doing here at Pardot. 
Here’s how we’re helping our customers comply with existing and evolving privacy regulations and build tailored solutions to support requirements under different privacy frameworks. 
Obtaining Consent 

Consent is at the heart of our approach to marketing automation. As a result, we have a strict permission-based email marketing policy — but for added flexibility, we also offer our customers substantial configuration options for email consent collection and management. 
Pardot also supports recency and frequency automation rules to govern suppression, which sometimes prevents communications from reaching recipients. Different governance strategies can be employed for different groups at a customer, segment, offer, product, or channel level.
We also support alignment with web-tracking consent requirements like affirmative opt-in, and we provide features that ensure unsubscribe and opt-out are as easy as subscribe and opt-in.
Empowering Customers to Manage their Data
Pardot supports the right to know, the right to be forgotten, and the right to rectification by allowing our customers to:

search their records for personal data on a given data subject
correct records
permanently delete data subject records

Our customers can support these privacy use cases directly through our user interface, or they can implement custom privacy workflows through our software interfaces. These same features support privacy requirements like restrictions on processing and restrictions on sale of information.
To enable compliance with data portability requirements, Pardot provides the capability to export records in a comma-delineated format, and we allow record export through our software interfaces for customers who want to build their own portability workflows.
Incorporating Privacy-by-Design
Our software interfaces are rich enough to allow our customers to build implementations using privacy-by-design principles, and Pardot encrypts all data at rest by default across all customer accounts. Pardot encryption works alongside Salesforce Shield and network security best practices to protect data at rest and in transit across systems.
Privacy frameworks and regulations like GDPR enforce controls on how data controllers interface with data processors like Salesforce Pardot. We allow our customers to comply with these controls through non-technical features.
Our Data Processing Addendum to our Master Subscription Agreement defines how Salesforce legally complies with GDPR and CCPA through mechanisms like Binding Corporate Rules. Salesforce contractually guarantees important security controls and certifications to our customers, allowing our customers to comply transitively.
The Future of Privacy
The privacy landscape is evolving, from both legal and social perspectives. The issue is receiving wide support from a variety of people and legislators. This is a good thing for consumers and businesses alike. The principles embodied in new privacy laws will protect against privacy threats that have emerged in recent decades and many of the future threats to come.
Even before the current wave of privacy regulations, most B2B marketers were already focusing on prospects who provide their personal information willingly for the purpose of exploring a relationship. At Salesforce Pardot, we’re watching privacy trends to make sure we support our customers in the face of a changing legal, technical, and social environment. 
Protecting privacy always has been — and always will be — the right thing to do.
Keep Learning
What is mixed content and why should marketers care? Learn why browser vendors are changing the browser experience to discourage mixed content.
This blog post is part of our security, privacy, and technology series.