A few Mondays ago I answered this question where I revealed a little trick I like to use in my Adwords adcopy that makes my ads make a little arrow with the keywords like this:
Well a ton of questions emerged… Threads on forums poped up and I started getting email… The questions and comments ranged anywhere from “How do you do that?” to “Do you have any real data to support your numbers?”.
So lets cover the first question – How is this done?
In my example I use Google Adwords. Google has a function {keyword:sub} that will automatically substitute the keyword where the {keyword:sub} goes and if it is to many chars then the “sub” is used.
For instance lets say you bid on keywords “Michael Jackson” and “Jay-Z” to send to ringtone offers. Then in Adwords you write your ad like this:
Title: {keyword:New} Ringtones
Headline1: Get The Latest Ringtones By {keyword:Artists}
Headline2: {keyword:New} Ringtones Instantly Sent To Your Phone!
In the case of the keyword Jay-z that would make
Jay-Z Ringtones
Get The Latest Ringtones By Jay-Z
Jay-Z Ringtones Instantly Sent To Your Phone!
Now with Michael Jackson Its to many chars so the ad shows like this:
New Ringtones
Get The Latest Ringtones By Artists
New Ringtones Instantly Sent To Your Phone!
So you see when you have a keyword that is to long for the ad it uses whatever is after the : in your keyword function. easy huh?
Next Question – Do you have any data to support this claim?
Well the truth is at the time I did not have any numbers a/b comparison because I did not use what did not work and really to test it I would have to lose some money… oh well… This morning I did some a/b testing with a ad that did not have the bold keywords forming a >
Here is the screen shot with results from this mornings a/b testing as you can see the ad copy forming a > is at .40% CTR where the normal is at .19%. So this was actually over a 200% increase in CTR. :
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wow thks for the infor man. nice trick.
This is what is called as a quality and informative post. This is why people flock such blogs and enjoy reading every bit of it. The value and knowledge that this post gives a reader is something that a lot of people will save as a business secret.
Thanks a lot for sharing such wonderful business secrets.
Data or, no data, if the trick is working, it means that it is worth a try.
I think that that’s a brilliant little trick. I honestly wish I had found this sooner. Nice one mate.
Jeremy, this post means giving value to your readership. Why?
Because you revealed a trick many “Gurus” take our money to teach. You discovered a little hint that most advertisers struggle to know.
Anyway, this strategy would help our ad get a better click through rate because the searched keyword would become bold in the ad. On top of that, you backed your claim with your real proof of your AdWords Data. Something that many of those “Gurus” don’t even dare to think about it.
.
Thanks Jeremy. You’re the Man!
To Your Success!
Hooshmand
I have never use adword. I guess I will use it in sometime in the future and it certain a good tips
Thanks for the share shoe. it would make our ad stand out. i have always suffered from under performing ads and Google eliminating them. his should do the trick especially for the ring tone type example sites you mentioned
Thats simply amazing.. You simply rock..This is dyanmic keyword insertion I guess..
This is really cool, i have to try this out!
hmm … not convinced im afraid…. i tend to think that anything under a 2% CTR is pretty much a waste of time.
Neat tip! I’m going to give this a try, hopefully I’ll have better results than normal
Thanks for sharing!
This is a clever trick – thanks for sharing !
That’s an excellent tip, was searching for google adwords improving tips when I came across your’s I was sold
That’s a very good way to increase your revenue from a AdWords campaign. Going to use this for my new campaigns!
This is a neat little trick! I’ve never heard of it before, but will definitely try it out on my next campaigns. Thanks.
Never seen this before, thanks for sharing and thanks for some nice tips.
Thanks for this tips, I will try it
Thanks. This is an interesting theory and I thought it might work because it maximizes the repetition of the keyword but leave the most visual space between them (so it doesn’t look stuffed). At least for me, however, it didn’t work in practice. My straight A/B got better results without this keyword pattern. Always worth testing, though.
Thanks for the tips.. I will use your idea in my adword PPC marketing. Hope will increase my CTR..
That’s a nice tips. It’s important to increase our knowledge about keywords so we’ll earn unlimited profits.
Thanks for this great article!
This would really help me out!
Yup… I agree with you.
Learning New,Learning New.the adwords trick you mention here now,is applied o my campaign I will see what is going on soon,and with combining those tricks with other tools from KYC and Hittail I just hope from now on I could made more CTR then only with this tricks
This is one of the most useful posts on this blog to date, and the fact that it’s still getting comments more than 2 years later reflects that. I just made a post about increasing AdWords CTR and linked back to this post as something to consider. It involves using symbols, which isn’t new by any means, but theres some pretty creative stuff with bullets and high-ASCII.
It was really a great idea.
Than you,
I’ve had good results with dynamic keyword insertion but have not noticed any increase in CTR based on the positioning of inserted words. Will try again though after reading this
Oh yeah…I remember this post and trick… I have been meaning to test this out. Thanks for the reminder, I saw it in the post listed top left.
Jeremy, That extraordinary little move has returned some really great results if you are promoting a hot product. If your content is poor then the results seem to be about the same. My experience has been to only promote niche products that are of true value and ones that I have used. That makes me a better consultant on the subject matter. I am sure the group will get much use from the function.
good post…
So you mean to say, Adwords will increase the clicks in a big way?
Great trick
What a great, clever little trick. I’m definitely going to try this one out. Thanks.
Wow, you got a nice trick there, that will sure come handy to me, thanks.I’m trying it right now
wow what a lovely trick..you are master my friend..
That’s a nice little trick you got there! Thanks!
Nice trick..I might use it when i will start investing in Google Adwords..
Thanks, this will most certainly come in handy. Any idea if DKI works for the target URL as well?
nice tricks
To be honest, this is awesome! , I never knew that keyword function ever existed….that’s going to be quite useful!
Thanks !
Great little trick there, I’ve been using this one for a while by our websites and really works a little. Greetz, Monvesta
That definitely looks like a neat trick. I hope you made some sales..
Does this trick still work???
very cool. I tried it, but I think I’m doing something wrong! Is it still working or has google fixed it by now.
I think the arrow is doing the trick.
Thats very useful and looks a lot better, and props for using my main man Jay z
Great little (BIG) Trick you got here. And those results are showing just how big this little trick turns out to be. Most certainly worth to try it out! Thanks man, ´m trying it out right now!
I think you are great at finding wonderful tricks, like the flight ticket.
A cunning trick. I should implement ASAP….muhahahahahaha
Years ago I used to work for a newspaper in Toronto Canada that used a similar technique with rivers in the text to draw attention towards ads. Brilliant, thank you!
That’s a nice little trick you got there! Thanks!
by the way, i finally used this trick in combination with DKI and it is interesting to see the ads that way but i didn’t really see that much of a difference… what i do notice is that if I use ” symbol or ? google doesn’t care or say anything about it. yet if i use ! or CAPS they start bitchin’ …
I always read in your blog about adsense related topics and get exited and try to do the same in my blog – but till date I could not understood the trick which you used to diplay more than 3 image adds in your right side bar – Please Dear Friend I like to get the details how you did that. I am very much Interested in doing that. Shaikh Izaj Ahmed Abdul Razak of India.
This is definitely something that works.. I put it up against several of my best performing ads, and in each case, it did at least as well, if not better, in short order. Thanks for the info, and keep the great content coming! I never leave the House of Shoe without learning something..
cool trick.. well i am just a starter in ppc..
though i dont have any success yet, i am happy that i am gaining knowledge.. thanks
solid post.
It’s interesting but I dont thin’k it’s any trick at all infact the only reason there was an increase is because the keywords appears more on the ad, making the ads quality go up as well as CTR simply because if a person is searching for “cat clothing” that person is more likely to click on the ad that has the keyword in it 3 times as opposed to the ad with the keyword only appearing once.
- Luis Gross
I think it’s more than just repeating the ad word. I’ve done that in other configurations before, and didn’t get as good of a performance. I think this has more to do with visually how the mind picks it up that pattern of words (perhaps I’m over analyzing) but I would suspect that’s true.
I honestly don’t see what it matter as far as the increase is concerned, the fact is she had an increase and a very good one at that! I say way to go! I also believe it IS the arrow, if you think about it. When you read a post or email with text that has been scored over, don’t you read that scored text?? Aren’t you curious as to what it is??
Way to go Shoe!! I think you’re onto something
SEOrious trick you’re sharing here. Am currently learning about adwords, and gems like this will definitely come in handy. Will try this out for sure!
Woah this is a really great ppc trick I had heard about this one in a forum somewhere but thanks for sharing with everyone!
Thanks for the tip, trying it now!
Thanks for the suggestion, trying it now!
i will try this neat trick on my next adwords campaign
Sometimes I wonder what Google are really up to? I oftn feel they are trying to drive their customers, that is me, away with some of the seemingly weird and often abrupt policy changes they make. Sometimes it would be nice to be asked by them what I think, not always get emails about how their changes and how it will screw my business.
I should hire a typography person to do my ads…
I have tried this cool little trick with one of my Adsense campaigns and have noticed a 75% increase in CTR. Awesome little trick!
Thats a very cool trick and its always nice to see supporting data instead of some wild claim other people make
whilst I am sure this is a good trick, I really find it difficult to word my ads to make this shape while still making sense. Maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about creating a proper sentence and just fill it full of keywords?
That’s a pretty good trick. It’s always good if you can draw extra attention to your ad and I like your adwords tip. It’s something that I’ll have to test out with various ad campaigns and keywords to see how well it works out. It’s great to see you got some positive results with it.
~Terry
I didn’t test it yet for my PPC campaigns, but it’s a great though and I am quite sure that this attracts the eye of more people. Great tip!
Interesting trick. I bookmarked this so I can come back when I start using adwords. As of now, I haven’t used the program at all to drive traffic. Just use adsense so far, but I plan to use adwords soon.
Thanks for the information! I’ll test it out today!
There was someone or some company using this arrow trick with a lot of results showing up a couple weeks ago.
thanks for the tips
That post could have been a bit more detailed. But thanks for the adwords advice.
I use adwords mainly for affiliate programs profit, and it works okay.
Sean
Great little trick. Thanks man!
Not sure if i really understand the benefits of this
I also did not know that existed. Great tips, I’ll definitely try it out, thanks.
Seems very interesting
So besides owning 2 blogs you sell adwords for other companies?
Is it bad when you have an CTR of 5%?
I have been trying a much cheaper small version of this on MSadcenter and the arrow version is pulling 2-1!
Granted I have a much smaller budget, but still cool. I don’t think Google would stop this. It is just good marketing using eye movement. Not blackhat at all
This has been out for a while now and I’ve yet to actually see this in place. I would think that people would be trying it by now. Has Google stoppd this little trick?
A 200% increase would make it .60.
.20 to .40 is a 100%
One truly awesome trick – thanks Shoe
very interesting, the arrow is a welcome addition i think
MMMM interesting method, something i didn’t know
I am in the crowd to see the ShoeMoney in other languages. English is universal, but each country has its peculiarity. Certainly, ShoeMoney would reference in any country. (Using Google Translate)
Think about this blog expand to other countries?
Фонарь. Джо снова пиарится по чёрному – как с ДМОЗом.
math is gibberish my friend
I recently read something about german auto dealers using ascii cars to gain a little bit more attention to their ads. The neat ways to increase your CTR…
This is a really funny post. I find it hilarious that you would give weight to the fact that a bold arrow should take the credit for an increased CTR. I am a PPC specialist and I have extesive experience to understand that the ARROW is not what created the increase in CTR. The simple fact that you are triple bolded is most likely the main determining factor. A really good test would have been to have an arrow bold, 3 bolds in the front of the message and 3 bolds at the end of the message. Basically an a/b/c test and with the messages all stating the same thing and not 2 different messages like 10 complimentary vs 100% complimentary. Good try though and a great way to stirr up a debate…
wow you pay like $0.06-0.07 per click? this is quite low.. I guess you have a nice ROI, would love to see your landing + keywords
Thanks for the informational post Shoe! Learned from it
It just comes down to — make sure you use the keywords in the ad! Generic, boring ads give you crap results! Period!
This is a bad A/B test – you state that the triangle is the cause for the CTR spike, but that ad also uses dynamic keyword insertion and has entirely different wording. You’d want to keep the wording as close as possible and just alter the position of the bold keyword to evaluate the performance appropriately.
I don’t see what is so special here?
Thanks for the Tip. I will try it out.
Maybe another book idea Tips from Shoe.
It could work.
Cheers
Heh, interesting trick. I’ll make sure to test it some time.
~ Dave
Nice tip here! I am going to give your “arrow ” tip a try on Adwords as well and see if my CTR will increase. Thanks for sharing!
Nice article. Thanks for the tip.
i wish i could drive more traffic/make money off of adsense like you say i can (freeyarnball.blogspot.com)
never really thought about it, and i didn’t know you could do that keyword thing with adwords, even after reading an ebook about how to succeed with adwords, jeez!
Great trick I’ve been using this one for a while myself. Thanks for nice idea.
Hope my CTR will raise up in next month
–blog for dream–
It works – trust me
I also read alliteration, like repeating the same sounds over and over again helps increase ctr, I wonder if this is related.
I gotta try this out. Thanks for all the tips…One day I will get fat checks from google like you.
Hmmm…thanks! Since I’m getting ready to place my first Ad-Words ad, this is useful stuff!
Wow! Thanks for sharing! Another Adwords tip in the bag
From 0.11% to 0.17%.
Stable results for 3 days…
Mr. MooMoney, you rock!
I agree. I would guess that the greater CTR is as a direct result of the dynamic keywords and doesn’t really prove much.
Everyone else in the ringtone business is now bidding 8c
great little trick.. i love how you think outside the box so much.. i cant wait to test this on some of my adwords campaigns.
Agreed. This test is inconclusive to say the least.
This particular example doesn’t prove much, other than one ad does better than another ad – but the text isn’t the same so you can’t compare. The only way to test this would be to have 2 ads with the exact same text on them, only laid out differently.
(this trick may totally work, but this test doesn’t prove much)
Hey Shoe thanks for the tips! I had no idea there was a dynamic way to insert keywords into ad copy. Great little trick.
errr? If you look at the screen you see it’s the search…NOT content network ;o) And that is exactly what made me think shoemoney is an freak lol. Damn impressive impressions you got there man.
Derren Brown ain’t got nothing on you Shoe.
Also Aarons study was based on 600 impressions… I did over 250,000
Ahhh you’re right, for some reason i saw the value in the clicks column and thought it was impressions.
The trick does work where it fits with the keywords.. the key is drawing more attention to your ad then the other ads around it.
This data appears to be from the content network, as the impressions are super high and CTR super low. None of the bold text will show as bold on content sites so I would say this test is meaningless.
The effect might work on search, but one could not make any judgements from this particular test.
You could probably improve this add, by making a small change… {KeyWord:..} Means the first letter of each word is capitalized {keyword:…} means nothing is capitalized..
Also, to be a truly accurate test, it would probably make sense to have the exact same keyword text you use as replacement text be the B version.
Small differences in even a single keyword can have HUGE impacts on CTR and Conversion. I blogged about this a few weeks back.
Anyone find the ad shoemoney is referring to on google? I can’t! Looking for the text in the ad and a site that ends with ringtones.net. Can’t find anything unless its Totally-Free-Ringtones.not but from the ad he shows this looks too long.
Thanks for this great piece of advice. As David asked before, are you bidding on the keyword “jay-z” to have this effect? Is there a way to bid on “jay-z ringtones” and have a similar pattern?
Didn’t Andrew Goodman point this out in his book. Now calling you out just checking if I’m mixing something up here.
Yes, they’re in bold. But are your keywords showing up in a geometric pattern? That’s what he’s pointing out here.
Anyone can do it, but they don’t post it on their site. Problem is that too many people just use the dynamic stuff in their title and don’t customize things.
Also, there’s a difference between KeyWord and Keyword and keyword. Use them as appropriate.
Well…I’m alredy up 8% ctr on a niche I’ve had a hard time getting my ctr up above 15%.
Just a Typo I think…
Headline2: {keywords:New} Ringtones Instantly Sent To Your Phone!
Shouldn’t “keywords” be “keyword”?
That is pretty damn smart observation.
Do think the arrow effect is tracking an automatic eye movement?
Have you tried it with a column effect? Keywords down the left column?
Good tip. I’ve been testing this for a couple of weeks now.
What’s interesting is that it doesn’t seem to work across all KWs – half of the campaigns I’ve tested have seen an increase in CTR, half have seen a decrease.
I guess ads without the KW repeated three times come across as less spammy, so this affects people in different ways, depending on what they’re searching for and what stage of the buying process they’re in..?
The dynamic keyword insertion isn’t mentioned in the AdWords help centre, except one brief mention in a PDF:
http://www.google.com/ads/library/maximimum_effect_dec03.pdf
…Still works though – for all accounts.
Interesting data.
A more interesting question to me would be was there a corresponding difference in the conversion rates of the offers on the landing pages?
The arrow theory is an interesting idea, but this test doesn’t prove or disprove it. People who measure their advertising have learned that “what you say is more important than how you say it”. In this case, the “what you say” is significantly different in each ad, and I (like many of the other commenters) would expect this to swamp any effect from the change in layout.
Actually, that throws down the gauntlet: does anyone fancy their chances at being the official prover/disprover of “Shoemoney’s Arrow Theory”? Your name would go down in internet marketing history!
This is actually something my class went over in Graphic Design. Many corporations use this in logos, magazines, etc. Fedex is probably the most famous for it.
I don’t doubt that this brings in more clicks, since it helps bring attention and subconsciously makes the user think about it.
However, does the increase in CTR also increase the sales proportionate to the increase in cost?
This is dyanmic keyword insertion right? Am I missing something or did no one know about this function?
Can’t wait to see all of the copy cat ads running in the next few days.
Not sure I am getting the benefit of this in full. At first it seemed like it would bold the keywords that someone searches. But when I analyzed one of my keywords that I advertise under, I noticed that all those keywords within the results including the sponsored results show up bolded. So if someone used the trick for “rare cars”, the bolding would occur anyway if someone searched “rare cars”.
Am I missing something?
Shoe- At first I was amazed, but then I went to one of my ads to show my wife and I noticed that the keywords that I am bidding on alreay show up bold. So if I goto to google’s home page and do a search for some keywords that I have in adwords, those keywords bold all over the results. I guess I am confused at what the real benefit is. Is this used primarly with the use of a general keyword of ” “shoemoney” ” where your ad would show up with any combination of someone using shoemoney in a search phrase? hope this makes sense.
Nice CPC you got there imo. What’s your conversion rate off that amount of clicks?
Stu
Just to be clear, Aaron was posting about small data sets and I wouldn’t say this one was terribly small.
actually no… i just blocked the first part of the domain out
Correct the only way to do it is to have 1 ad with dynamic and static data and compare… except you would have no volume to compare it with.
That is why this example is realistic because its actually how you do it.
This is as close to a real world a/b testing as I will do.
The fact is that unless you want to make each keyword ad vs dynamic you are not going to get exact. I dont have time to do that =P
actually you miss the point… because there are to many chars with Michael Jackson it uses your sub:
You own ringtones.net!
I should point out some mistakes you made:
1. The title for Michael Jackson query should be “Michael Jackson Ringstones” not “New Ringstones”.
2. An arrow will be formed in the ads only if the queries are short.
3. In your example, you will have a broken arrow since the last line is too long for a dynamic keyword.
Cheers,
That’s awesome! To be honest, I never knew that keyword function ever existed….that’s going to be quite useful!
once again your a star! Thanks!
now i got my daily fix form shoemoney
Interesting, Personally I think the arrow is doing the trick.
Not too sure if this is because of the arrow or the fact that many of copy words are in bold. I think it might be the later.
This trick is very hard to implement. I would imagine that, for example, the ring-tone keywords would be “JayZ ringtone” not just “JayZ”. If so, using the keyword tool will work for the title but not for the body copy. If you follow Shoe’s example, then you can potentially target searches for Jay Z clothes and/or CDs and get bad clicks to your campaign.
Just my 2 cents.
Yay for math!
I might be missing something, but isn’t this A/B test really showing the difference between an ad with keywords inserted vs. one without? There are too many variables there. I would like to see it tested using both ads with keyword insertion, with one using the arrow trick and the other one not forming an arrow, but using the same dynamic keywords.
I think your data is really inconclusive since on the 2nd ad you are not using the keyword on the 2nd line. The increase could be due to the fact that the keyword is mentioned in the ad twice and have nothing to do with any ‘arrow’ bold text.
The only way to accurately test this would be to use the exact same wording, with and without the bold text, which you cannot do since Google automatically does will bold the text.
Where are these functions documented? I’ve never seen them on the AdWords help center… Are they for high-volume accounts only?
While I don’t dispute the visual draw of the arrow, it’s funny you post this a day after Aaron posted this:
http://www.seobook.com/archives/002026.shtml
Hm, looks like I can compile all such tricks when I start ppc marketing.
iam not receive money
I know you’ve done this kind of testing before, so maybe previous experience is driving your conclusions more than your example, but in the example in this post, the ad with the higher CTR promises 10 complimentary ringtones, and the other ad says 100% complimentary. On different lines.
I would think that is a significant enough difference to say that it might not be the “arrow” that caused this particular test to favor the first ad.
Although I love the idea. I’ve wondered a few times if the aesthetics/geometry of the ad played
I know you’ve done this kind of testing before, so maybe previous experience is driving your conclusions more than your example, but in the example in this post, the ad with the higher CTR promises 10 complimentary ringtones, and the other ad says 100% complimentary. On different lines.
I would think that is a significant enough difference to say that it might not be the “arrow” that caused this particular test to favor the first ad.
Although I love the idea. I’ve wondered a few times if the aesthetics/geometry of the ad played any part.
Nice trick, though the reason for the increased CTR in one of the ads could also be the fact that the better performing ad is utilizing DKI while the other one is not.
btw, nice number of cheap clicks..
Great little trick there, I’ve been using this one for a while myself. Thanks for sharing
Not to rain on your parade but it’s just about a 100% increase. x + 100% is equal to 2 * x.