Online Advertising

I just received an email from a small business owner who is looking for advice on what direction he should go with the online advertising campaign.

That is a very tough question because the ad campaign is small and small things tend to be hard to measure so it’s very difficult for me to give good advice in these situations.

The problem is trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t when you only have a small sample size to work with.

Large advertisers have the advantage in these situations. If two sets of ads each got 10,000 clicks and one got 200 conversions and the other got 300. The one with 300 conversions is the winner.

On the other hand… A small advertiser might only get a few clicks per day. If two sets of ads are running for a week and each got 10 clicks but one got 2 conversions and the other got 3… It makes no difference because the result is within the margin of error. You would need to run the test for several months.

The math required to do statistic is beyond me but here are some simple situations.

1. Lower margin of error requires a larger sample size.
   If 90 out of 100 people agree on something, you can likely believe it. The closer it gets to 50/50, the larger the sample size you will need to overcome the margin of error.
2. Higher confidence level requires a larger sample size.
   If 3 out of 5 people agree on something, you can’t be too sure. If 300 out of 500 people agree, you can have more confidence in the result.

Aaron Wall had a great post on the subject a while back. He ran two identical ads against each other and one performed three times better the other. (If your total sample size for a split test is only 16 clicks, anything can happen.)

Here are some tools that may help you do the math.

http://www.splittester.com/
http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm
http://www.raosoft.com/samplesize.html
http://www.surveyguy.com/SGcalc.htm

On the bright side… If you’re dealing with small numbers, you don’t have much to loose by trusting your instincts and going with your gut until things start to pick up.

As 2006 comes to a close, several bloggers feel compelled to reflect on the last year and either list some of their best posts or the best posts on a particular subject like I did with the previous post on “The Best Blog Traffic & Monetization Posts of 2006“.

So here are the some of the posts that I’ve found so far.

Seth Godin has a post called “Your Favorite Seth Posts, 2006” where his readers can vote for the best post. He has some real gems in there. Most of the posts are focused on the topic of marketing in general but 99% of his posts on the list will change your mind about how you conduct business. One of my favorites that didn’t make the list is a video of him at Google.

Copyblogger has a post called “The Best of Copyblogger (According to Time Magazine’s Person of the Year)” You. I can’t say enough great things about this blog. The advice is extremely actionable. I have several of these pages bookmarked and read them over and over.

Darren Rowse of ProBlogger has a very long post called “Best of ProBlogger - 2006” where he reconstructs the entire year month-by-month.

Local SEO, Mike Belasco, has a post called “Top 10 Local Search Engine Optimization Blog Posts for 2006“. In my opinion this is an extremely relevant topic for most businesses in Hawaii. (The vast majority of business and services related queries will usually have a city or state in front of the query to keep the results relevant.)

The Official Google blog, Inside AdSense has a post called “Best of 2006” where they narrow down the Top 10 highlights, not listed in any particular order. It’s always good to get the story directly from the source.

Chris Boggs who covers the search news posted links to the “Top SEM Stories of 2006” on his new blog.

Lee Odden posts his “Top TopRank Blog Posts for 2006” as well as some other year end stats for his blog.

Eric Goldman and John Ottaviani posted on the Technology & Marketing Law Blog the “Top Cyberlaw Developments for 2006” as a two part post.

Update: I was just over at Todd Malicoat’s blog and found a few more worth mentioning in his post about his 2006 Predictions & Review.

Techipedia created a huge post called Internet Marketing Best [Blog] Posts of 2006: The Year in Review. All I can say is WOW! It will take me a while to digest this one. I’n sure I’ll find a few new blogs worth reading in the process as well.

Andy Beal posted the Marketing Pilgrim’s Top 10 Posts of 2006

Chris at 10e20 posted the 101 Biggest Stories in Search 2006. It’s a huge list. Wow! It’s a real walk down memory lane.

John chow is asking people to review his blog and then he’ll post links to the reviews so everyone can read them. He’s also offering some sort of electronic devise as a prize for the best review.

I’m not interested in the winning anything but I honestly do like John Chow’s blog.

I subscribe to about 100 blogs on the subjects of internet marketing and advertising. There are so many daily posts that it would be impossible for me to read everything so I usually just look at the titles and only read the ones that promise something new and interesting. However there are a few blogs that I make a point of reading every single post. John Chow Dot Com is one of these blogs.

Topics vary greatly from day to day so you never know what you’ll get. The quality of the posts also varies greatly. Some days are much better than others. He also posts a lot of off topic stuff about his personal life which would be cool if he had a strange life or twisted sense of humor, but he’s just a normal Asian guy. I already know a lot of normal Asian people so those posts aren’t very interesting to me.

Here are some of his favorite topics:

• Monetizing website traffic - Excellent
• Food - Boring
• Internet & Blog Marketing - Excellent
• His personal life - Nice guy but Boring
• Blogging - Excellent
• Credit & Credit Cards - Lame
• Social Media - Excellent

In all fairness, I’m only interested in internet marketing. The other posts about credit cards, food, etc are probably pure gold to someone.

What I like the most about John Chow is that he likes to try new stuff. In many cases, he will post about the new idea that he’s trying today and then post an update to let us all know what happened and what he learned. It’s great stuff. Most people just pose a general idea or what the best practices are but don’t get too specific. John seems comfortable giving us details and the numbers. I love that kind of stuff. If you don’t read his blog, you should.