Search Engine Optimisation Blog

On the Internet, the written word has always dominated.  Whilst a picture may be worth a thousand words, the word holds pride of place in online marketing and advertising.  However, since the development of fully proliferated wireless access and high performance video technology integrated within the World Wide Web, the power of Video has really come into its own and it’s already becoming a multi-billion pound phenomenon across the globe.

The obvious example of the explosion of video on the Internet is from YouTube.   The most popular video site on the Internet is owned and run by Google, the most powerful search engine company on the planet.  If you want to advertise with a video on the front page of YouTube for a day, it will currently cost you a minimum of £25,000.  Cheap enough if you’ve got that kind of budget.  But what if you haven’t?

Internet analyst David Hallerman suggests that while Paid Search is very effective for direct marketing, nothing grabs the surfer’s ‘heart and mind’ like video advertisements.

Video Advertising is now considered an excellent choice if you want to drive brand awareness and sales.  Research has shown that web users have higher levels of interaction with video than they do with traditional online image ads.  The average surfer will click ‘Play’ on a video far more easily than committing to the click on a Paid Search ad.

Google have recently brought together the idea of PPC (Pay per Click) with Video Advertising in attempt to make the most of these rapid changes in the online advertising market.   Like their PPC campaigns, marketers bid the maximum that they would pay per CPM (Cost per 1000 impressions).  Google claim to offer a guarantee against overpaying by reducing the cost you actually pay to one cent more than the nearest next bid.

There are alternatives to the YouTube/Google monopoly, if you want to use Video Advertising as part of your marketing campaign.  Many video advertisers charge via CPM.  This type of advertising has exploded in the US, where sites such as MySpace offer a short 5 second video display at a cost of $25 per CPM.  At the other end scale, the Wall Street Journal charges $90 per CPM.

In the UK, local search site SCOOT already offers video advertising deals.  By building on their relationship with media group ITV, they offer localised video ads around online television programming.  With SCOOT, 25,000 plays is just £500.  Other companies offer more bespoke services and are therefore reticent to publish prices.

Recently, the Guardian predicted that by 2009, Internet Video advertising would outspend traditional television advertising for the first time.  By 2012, it’s considered that £361 million will be spent on Internet Video advertising in the UK alone.

By 2009, to actively compete in the global marketplace, Video Advertising is an area of your online marketing campaign that you simply must factor into your budget.  Whilst the costs are currently high with the most obvious main providers like YouTube, more cost effective video advertising services are being made available from smaller sources all the time.

If you can see video forming part of your marketing stratagy, take a look at our Video Marketing Services to evaluate whether we can help you.

Of course, there’s no absolute answer to this question as many search marketing agencies will charge for their PPC services at different rates.

With Impact Media, we work with our clients typically by charging an initial fee to set up their Google AdWords PPC campaign or to optimise an existing campaign. This varies based upon complexity and/or number of products or services but is flexible enough to accommodate most budgets.

We then work on a monthly retainer basis, the purpose of which is to allow us sufficient time to further optimise the account, develop additional Ad Groups and provide comprehensive reporting. Given that we see what we do as a partnership with our clients, no one is tied into any long term contracts and we only want our clients to stay with us if they feel we are adding value.

Some agencies will also charge a monthly service fee as a percentage of the spend they are managing through the pay per click search engine(s) and you should check the details if that is the case as this could develop into a hefty additional charge.

When shopping around for a company to use for PPC management, make sure you have a good chat with them to understand their approach and also ask for testimonials or case studies. If you find a good one, stick with them! Once you do this, the question will change to “How Much is PPC Management Gaining Me?”

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Impact Media provide AdWords management tailored to fit your needs.

Everyone knows that Google is making money like there’s no tomorrow but could the search giant be losing $110 million a year by having the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button next to the “Google Search” button?

That’s the claim in featured in a post on the Valleywag site.

Of course, Google aren’t saying how much this feature is really costing them but what is clear is that every time a search “feels lucky” they bypass the search results page and therefore miss the company’s sponsored adverts. It is estimated that as many as 1% of searches could be made this way ‘though that number is disputed in the many comments below the post.

Whatever it’s costing Google, the company will hardly be worried as profits continue to soar, just like the company’s many privately owned airplanes!