11.14.03
 By
Ilana Grunberg
Last week, PPC giant, Google, purchased Sprinks. Sprinks advertisements,
which were distributed over the About.com media network, will be now
be replaced by Google Adwords advertisements within the next month.
If you do not have a Google Adwords account, and would still like
to have your site seen where Sprinks was showing before, then you
will need to open a Google Adwords account. Let's take a look at Sprinks,
the advantages of Google Adwords, discuss what will happen to your
Sprinks account, and what this means for you.
What is Sprinks?
Sprinks is owned by Primedia (About.com) and has agreements with companies
such as Metacrawler.com, Mamma.com and more. It has content-targeted
distribution, as well as the opportunity to purchase premier PPC listings.
A great tool that Sprinks has is the Character Count tool, which helps
you know when your titles or descriptions are too long. Within Sprinks,
every change that you do to your account, needs to be reviewed (may
have 3 day review process), Although Sprinks is easy to manage, Google
has an even easier and more advanced management tool. |
Advantages
of Google Adwords
Google has become one of the major players in the PPC world (Google
Adwords and Overture have 90% of the PPC market). Google Adwords advertisements
appear on the right side of the page when you do a search on Google.
Google Adwords is the PPC tool of Google, whilst the main results,
the organic SE, appear on the left side of the page. Google Adwords
has many advantages including:
• Cost Control – daily budget according to your spending needs
• Accessibility – 24/7 online management, which means that there is
no 'pre' editorial process. Edit your keywords, ads and pricing online
and see the changes within a few minutes (at times may be instant).
• Network Distribution – ads shown on network of Google sites increasing
your ad exposure. AOL, Netscape, Ask Jeeves, AT&T Worldnet, EarthLink
and Excite, and more have joined the Google network, and they get
approximately 45% of the PPC market share traffic.
• Country/Language/Region Targeting – target specific languages and
countries, as well as U.S. states. This NEW tool is very powerful
as it means easier geo-targeting, with specific languages, all in
one management panel.
• CPC and Positioning Formula – in Google, if you bid the highest
you still may not be in number 1 position. Google Adwords has an algorithm
that takes into consideration the CTR (click-through-rate), as well
as the CPC. This means that if you have a high CTR, your position
may improve
• Personalized reports - with statistics and graphs which may be helpful
to agencies running many campaigns
• Conversion Tracking – track your conversions by inserting Google's
conversion tracking system into your code (we suggest using 3rd party
tools rather than this tool so one can control ALL PPC conversions
under one management tool)
What will happen to my Sprinks Account?
Please note that you may still access your Sprinks account and adjust
bids until funds end (or until Nov. 28th 2003). From November 29th
2003, please note that Sprinks will discontinue its service, which
means that your advertisements will stop being distributed. You will
also not have any access to the system. Sprinks has also informed
it's customers that as of October 27th, you will not be able to:
• Create a new account
• Manually add funds
• Automatically add funds with the Auto replenish feature
• Edit existing listings
• Add new listings
I already have a Google Adwords account. What do I do?
Adwords will soon include many of the same advertising sites that
Sprinks used to distribute so in order to cover the additional audience,
just increase your daily budget. If you had keywords that you were
using in Sprinks, and not in Google Adwords, then add them to your
Google Adwords account. If you used Sprinks ContentSprinks service,
and want to continue showing ads on relevant content pages, select
"Content-Targeted Advertising" when setting up your network distribution
for your Adwords account.
I had a Sprinks account but I don't have an Adwords account?
Open a Google Adwords account, and start writing your advertisements.
We suggest not waiting until the end of November, and then opening
an account, as your transition to this PPC tool might take you some
time (especially if you want to learn how Google Adwords works), and
you don't want to lose traffic. Open an account as soon as possible.
It is also important to remember that Sprinks will no longer be around
at the end of November, so make sure that you have spent all your
money in Sprinks this month.
Google Adwords is a user-friendly tool to help you market your site.
Sprinks only covered a small % of the PPC market whilst Google is
one of the main PPC giants, and it's growing at a rapid pace. Google's
purchase means that your site will now be more widely distributed
than it did in Sprinks, so take advantage of Google Adwords and benefit
from this PPC tool.
About the Author:
Ilana Grunberg is a SEM consultant for Compucall
Search Marketing Ltd. Ilana has experience in the SEO world, and
participates in forums, chats and has written articles for the search
engine marketing world.
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| From
the Forum: |
| Is SEO becoming irrelevant? |
... If it is the case, that pay for click placement pushes optimized sites down the search return page, is it becoming less relevant whether a site is optimized for a particular search engine or not?
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