Google: an innovative, cutting edge tech company that encourages a casual work setting in the environmental friendly and trendy Googleplex.  Procter & Gamble: the 2008 advertiser of the year that spends more than twice as much as the next advertiser on the list, has prospered since the 1800s, and only spends a tiny fraction of its ad budget online.  These two companies recently initiated an employee-swap in an effort to learn from each other.  So, what can we learn from them?

While the swap has been helpful for Google in terms of further educating their employees about marketing, it may be critical for P&G.  Consumers ages 18 to 27 use the Internet 13 hours per week and only watch 10 hours of TV.  Advertising on TV is still huge (look no further than the price of Superbowl ads), but P&G seems to understand that the future is online.  Online searches for the word “coupon” have increased 50 percent in the past year, indicating that consumers are flocking to the Internet more frequently than ever.

Internet viewers are more active than passive TV viewers and thus are tougher to reach.  It takes expertise to efficiently navigate the waters of online advertising.  P&G understood that and went to Google for insight.  Your business can look to Search Concepts with confidence for solutions to its online advertising needs.

Google and Yahoo! have been involved in settlement discussions with the Department of Justice in an attempt to avoid an antitrust challenge to their proposed deal.  We know that regardless of how the proposed deal unfolds, it will have significant ramifications in the online advertising community.  In addition to the possibility of an approved or rejected deal, we could instead see a third result - a modified deal that would cap the volume of Google ads that Yahoo! could use and require more disclosure.  Additionally, in an effort to alleviate some of the DOJ’s concerns, Google is seeking testimonials in support of the deal from large advertisers.  Meanwhile, Microsoft is still interested in a Web search advertising deal with Yahoo!.

Google has also been busy on a different front.  Although Google has not disclosed much about its plans, the hiring of former chief executive of DoubleClick suggests that Google plans to expand further into the display advertising market.  Search Concepts offers both display and text advertising though our pay per click advertising services.

We have previously blogged about how the proliferation of mobile Internet use will make SEO increasingly important.  Next week, the first phone using Google’s Android software will be released.

When taking over the management of pay-per-click campaigns with a substantial accumulated history, it is important to examine the three primary factors of most any PPC campaign: keywords, ads, and landing pages. While all these elements are important, let’s just focus on ads.

To test the effectiveness of the current ad being used, ad testing must be implemented in each ad group. We like to implement the “show ads evenly over time” setting in order to get a true read of how each ad responds in an equal amount of time. One ad will eventually separate itself from the other by having a higher clickthrough rate. In other words, one ad simply encourages a response more often than the other.

Recently, we implemented ad testing in a client’s campaign in order to test the effectiveness of their current ad. After two weeks of testing, the new ad we implemented was the clear choice to become the permanent ad. The clickthrough rate was significantly higher and the conversion rate was higher as well. We presented this new-found data to the client, who surprisingly refused to let the older, less effective ad be removed.

In their words, they liked the older ad because it was catchy and similar to their competitor’s ads. They thought that if their competitor was doing something, then maybe they should be doing it too. We attempted to explain the data again, but to no avail.

In summary, the objective data doesn’t lie. Historical data should make campaign decisions such as this one rather easy. The takeaway is that you should be partial to the data for each ad, not the actual ad itself.