Video Transcripts: An Introduction to Ad History

This readable transcript covers videos #1, #2, and #3 of the Introduction to Ad History Series. You can watch the actual videos here:

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Okay, first I’m going to give you a quick tour of Ad History, and then I’m going to show you how to use it to see first of all whether a keyword is worth bidding on at all – that is, is it going to lead to conversions. And then, how to seize on the best ad copy so that you are successful from day one.

[Free Credit Report - Term Page]

So, let’s get started. Let’s take a look at the keyword “Free Credit Report”. This is a pretty expensive keyword – particularly in terms of cost per day. I always make sure that I pay close attention to cost per day when I’m looking at Ad History – people can fall asleep at the wheel on cheap keywords. They might ignore a keyword that loses them a couple bucks a day, but they won’t on the ones that cost a couple thousand a day – at least they won’t for very long. At somewhere between 600 and 12 thousand dollars a day, we can be pretty sure that vanity buying or lazy analyst fluff is filtered out.

From here, the easiest way to get to Ad History is to scroll down here to the bottom of the ads and click the “Track this keyword’s Ad History” button.

[Click Ad History Button]

Alright, so here we are. What you are seeing is the complete history of every domain that has bought an ad on the keyword “Free Credit Report” in the last year.

Each of the colored rows is a timeline showing whether we saw that domain advertising in that month.

When you mouse over any of the colored boxes, you can see the ad position and the exact date and time right down to the hour that we pulled our snapshot.

You can also look back even further in time – see this “Bonus History” link? If you click here, you can go back as far as June of 2006. That’s an insane amount of history – you can’t find that anywhere else. Honestly, you’ll probably rarely use anything beyond the first year for your day to day execution – but when you DO need to dig deeper, with SpyFu you always know its there.

Okay, here’s where it gets exciting: We automatically sort the domains with the most consistent, highest ranked ads at the top. These are the guys that are getting the most clicks, paying the most, and most likely making a killing. And we’re going to see exactly how they’ve built their winning formula.

See how the color changes from light purple to darker and back again for Freecreditreport.com? Every time the box changes color, that means they changed their ad copy.

Let’s take a look at how they tested and improved their ad copy over time to squeeze out not just clicks, but conversions. Because, you know these guys at Freecreditreport.com are making money on this keyword – they’ve been dominating this very competitive, very expensive keyword for years. They’re almost always in the number one position – they’re definitely spending thousands of dollars a day on this one keyword.

Let’s see what they did.

So, in June of 2008 they started with the ad:

Free Credit Check

See Your Credit Report in Seconds

Easy to Read and Viewable Online

The next month, they changed the headline to read “Free Credit Report”. If we scroll all the way to the present, you can see that they never went back to “Free Credit Check”. I suspect that the reason they made the change was because “Free Credit Report” was probably more successful than “Free Credit Check” – I’ll put that in the back of my mind and see if we can validate that in a minute.

Anyway, let’s see what they did in August -

Completely changed their ad copy. The only thing they kept was the headline. That tells me something about this advertiser, by the way. They are VERY actively trying new things. They aren’t content just to tweak their existing ad copy. That’s really nice to find – it means they’ve done a lot of work that I can benefit from, and it makes their final best result even more meaningful.

In September, they tried something completely new again. Then, they stuck with it in October.

What that means to me, since these guys are active enough to make a change at least monthly, is that the new ad copy worked better than the ad they ran in August, AND the one they ran in July. It’s not just that the one in August sucked – they could have gone back to the July one – this new ad variation is better than the old one precisely because they stuck with it.

One thing that stands out to me about this new ad variation is the use of zero dollars. It’s kind of an explicit way of saying “free”. It doesn’t get lost. “Free” has almost been reduced to the status of a pronoun. I’m curious to see whether they continue to use it – I’ll tuck that one into the back of my mind too.

Okay. In November, they made a fairly small tweak. They went from asking whether you know your credit score to “See Yours in 2 Easy Steps”. They stuck with the zero dollar thing.

It looks like after a lot of experimentation, Freecreditreport.com found a winning combination. They threw in one holiday-specific variant in January, but more or less stuck with what they’ve got.

Now let’s look at the number two advertiser: FreeCreditReportsInstantly.com.

Just glancing real quickly at their ads, I can see that they don’t experiment as much as FreeCreditReport.com. They are making relatively minor adjustments to what is probably a pretty profitable campaign for them.

But, let’s see what we can learn.

Between June and July last year, they changed their ad copy from something that looks and reads kind of like a sloppy sentence to something that reads more like a headline. They also deemphasized the speed at which they deliver their report i.e. the 60 seconds part and emphasized the fact that the credit report is current.

They pretty much stick with that idea. But, what happens in November? Whoa, see that? They started using the $0 thing too. And, what’s even more exciting is that once they started using it, they NEVER went back. I think that’s some pretty serious evidence that the zero dollar thing works.

The other thing I think is interesting is – I did some digging – and before freecreditreport.com used $0 on the keyword “Free Credit Report”, no MAJOR industry player had ever done so. Since then, 3 of the top 4 advertisers tried and switched to the zero dollar thing.

CreditReport.com is the other one that switched. They did it in January 2009 and never looked back.

Each of these advertisers is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month – and guess what? They’re learning from their competitors. Taking what works and making it their own.

Now, I’m not here to tell you whether what these guys are doing is fair or right or just. But, this IS the way the game is played. And I AM here to give you the tools to win, to give you every advantage you can get – to make you smarter, wealthier, and more confident amidst uncertainty.

### In the last video, I showed you how can learn which ad variations worked and which ones flopped based on the spending habits of your competitors. By looking at the keyword “Free Credit Report”, we were able to get – if not proof, a very solid hunch — that “zero dollar” is more effective than “free” when we’re trying to convince people that what they’ll get is in fact a “Free” credit report.

And that’s really what Ad History is – a hunch building machine. Whereas downloading a list of all your competitors keywords is a “must have” starting point, it isn’t much of a differentiator. Your ideas, your flashes of intuition, your hunches are the way you can create lasting value for your company and your clients. Mastering Ad History will inspire your flashes and reinforce your ideas – it will give you a creative edge that leads to higher conversions.

This video is about the process of developing and researching a hunch using Ad History.

Alright, I want to go back to the first thing I noticed about FreeCreditReport.com. They changed their headline from “Free Credit Check” to “Free Credit Check”. I want to see if I can verify that “Free Credit Report” is more effective that “Free Credit Report”.

What I’m going to do here is search all ad variations on “Free Credit Report” to see if anybody else ever used “Free Credit Check”. The way I’m going to do that is, I click this Export All Ad Variations button, and I download them into excel.

[Click Export All Ad Variations]

[Open in Excel]

Then I’ll just do a search here… for “Free Credit Check”.

So, it looks like the domain “Capital.com” used that in the title. So, let’s take a look at that domain.

So, they actually switched FROM “Free Credit REPORT” to “Free Credit CHECK” between August and September and stuck with “Free Credit Check” for awhile. Then, just last month, they switched back.

Hmmm… That’s kind of inconclusive. But, what I really suspect is that “Free Credit Report” is used more often and more successfully in these ads, because it is the actual search phrase. So, it would be bold in the search results and “Free Credit Check” wouldn’t.

Check out the difference.

[Free Credit Report - Cache Page June 2008]

Here’s the Cache page from June 2008 – look at the FreeCreditReport.com ad. See how only “Free Credit” is bold? Now look at it in July 2008, when they changed to “Free Credit Report”…

Okay, so the way we should be able to tell whether the difference is in the words or the boldness is to look at the keyword “Free Credit Check” and see if people are favoring “Free Credit Check” or “Free Credit Report”. Also, I realize that people could just be using the Keyword wildcard, but let’s take a look.

Alright. Same three major players. Free Credit Report.com is on top.

So, check this out. All three of these guys are sticking with “Free Credit REPORT”.

The 4^th – 8^th guys are using some variation of “Free Credit CHECK” in their title. But, when you look at the body of their ad, they are talking about a “Credit Report”.

There’s some uncertainty here, as there often is. My gut tells me that “Free Credit REPORT” probably performs better. But, the depth of information I have here, at my disposal gives me a connectedness to my uncertainty that some kind of “goodness index” wouldn’t.

That’s important, because I’m going to execute on this. I’m going to make my best guess that “Free Credit REPORT” works better – and I’m going to make my best guess that the zero dollar thing works pretty darn well. But, if I’m not getting the clicks or conversions that I’m looking for – particularly on “Credit Check” related searches – I’ll quickly revise my plan.

In the next video, I’m going to show you how you can INSTANTLY know whether a keyword is going to be a blockbuster success or a dysfunctional money-pit. This is the single MOST powerful use of Ad History – your ability to predict the future will be so insane that if you REAAALLY want to mess with someone you’ll be able to convince them that you are ACTUALLY from the future – and that you’ve just come here to make tons of money profiting from your knowledge of the future so that your future self will be rich.

Seriously, it’s that good.

[END OF VIDEO]

What I’m going to show you right now is probably the most EXCITING part of SpyFU Ad History. Its what I call reading between the lines or reading the tea leaves of Ad History.

Once you see how to do it, it’s incredibly powerful because what you’re able to is look at an Ad History page and immediately understand whether a keyword is going to convert or not. It’s pretty much like a crystal ball. If you get this right people are going to give you nicknames like “The Oracle” or “Rainmaker” — this is good stuff.

So, let me show you how to use it.

[Free Credit Report - Ad History Page]

Now, you’ve already seen a couple good keywords. They’re easy to spot. See how there’s several domains that are very consistently bidding. See how they’ve made periodic adjustments to their ad copy? That’s how you know their paying attention – they didn’t pull do a “set it and forget it” on their adwords account.

This is a very competitive keyword, certainly. But, with the right combination of product, landing page, and ad copy – it’s definitely a winning keyword.

Now, let’s take a look at how use Ad History can warn you of money wasting, time sucking, dysfunctional keywords.

[Search Engine - Ad History Page]

The first example I want to show you is the keyword “Search Engine”. This is what an unprofitable keyword looks like. Memorize this, and avoid anything that looks remotely like it. See how there have been 20 advertisers in the last year and none of them hung around for more than a couple months? This keyword isn’t producing results for ANYONE.

Now, if you happen to be launching a new search engine, this is certainly A way to get some traffic coming to your site – but, it’s not sustainable. This is a pretty expensive keyword, and even if you are launching a search engine, there’s probably less expensive ways to get the clicks you want.

PS2

[PS2 - Ad History Page]

The next one I want to show you is what Ad History looks like when a keyword is dead, dying – or precisely in a state of transition. This one is kind of obvious – PS2.

Look at that. Going strong. Lot’s of competition, and the BAM! Dead. In this case, we know exactly what’s happened. But, if you are thinking about advertising on a keyword – or if you already do – and Ad History looks like this, beware. Do some digging.

This is a keyword in transition. Often times, there’s opportunity when the market changes like that. You either need to find the opportunity, get out, or proceed with caution.

Also, keep in mind that keywords that look like they are dead or dying might be going through a business cycle. For example, check out the keyword “Football Scores” – it looks like this keyword is dead. But, I’d bet it’ll come back around August or September. That said, it doesn’t look like anyone is really making a killing advertising on this keyword.

Let’s look at another transition keyword: Loan Calculator

[Loan Calculator - Ad History Page]

Here’s a keyword that looks like a pretty classic money losing keyword. But, knowing what we know about the real estate market, I suspect that this keyword might be more down on its luck than dead. Let’s look at the bonus history.

When we scroll through this, it’s clear that “Loan Calculator” has had better days. But, it still doesn’t look like this was ever a knock it out of the park profitable keyword. The whole industry may be in the tank, but if this keyword was converting, you can be sure there’d be people who would buy and hold.

For example, compare this keyword to “Mortgage Refinance”. Same industry. Same timeframe. Look at that keyword. These guys can’t get enough of it. Some of these are the same companies – I saw lending tree used to buy “Loan calculator”.

“Loan Calculator” is probably going through a business cycle, but it is clearly not the keyword advertisers are willing to bet their scarce resources on.

[Registry - Ad History Page]

Another type of keyword to watch out for is a double meaning keyword that is a winner for one industry, and a clear loser for others. An example of this is the keyword “Registry”.

So, this looks like a reasonably successful keyword. You’ve got some consistency here. PCTools.com seems to be doing well. Looks like a pretty decent, high-volume keyword if you’ve got a Windows Registry cleaner to sell.

But, what if you’re trying to drive consumers to your online gift registry?

Here we have PotteryBarn, and down a little further,

we’ve got Macy’s — there’s Williams Sonoma.

Hmmm… those guys don’t look their having as much success.

To contrast, let’s take a look at the keyword Gift Registry.

[Gift Registry - Ad History Page]

There we go. Now that’s the proper territory of PotteryBarn. They’ve clearly heatin things up over here.

Now, just to cap things off, let’s look at a keyword where neither of these industries SHOULD be advertising, but they have both tried.

“Gift Registry Software”.

[Gift Registry Software - Ad History Page]

So, this isn’t a bad keyword. Look at these ones at the top. RegistryValet, Esydor – these guys are selling the software that powers gift registry – and their probably making a killing on this keyword.

But guess who else tried and apparently failed on this keyword. Macy’s. There’s potterybarn, and target too.

And , if we go into the bonus history, we can even see that PCTools gave it a try – and to their credit they promptly abandoned it.

Now, I’ve got one more – let’s say dysfunctional keyword — that you can detect at a glance with Ad History. It seems that there are SOME branded keywords that are so well protected that you can’t advertise on them.

Now, we all know that if you tell Google that you don’t want anybody using your trademarked or otherwise branded keywords they will prevent people from using those keywords in their ad copy – there are loopholes of course. But, what they WON’T do is prevent people from actually advertising on the branded keywords themselves.

But, let’s say you’ve got a warehouse full of used Dell servers and you want to advertise on the keyword “Dell”. ….

Ad History tells me you’ll have a problem.

How about Apple …

Or Lenovo …

Let’s try something as far away from technology as we can get — insurance.

Let’s look at Geico…

Or Progressive…

So, somehow, these megabrands have managed to prevent anyone from advertising on their branded keywords. I’m not saying that Google has a hand in it – they might, they might not. I pretty much guarantee that what is going on here is a direct or indirect extension of the legal arm of these very large companies.

So, before you spend a bunch of time salivating over what looks like a missed opportunity, and spending a bunch of money building the perfect landing page for what should be a monstrous amount of traffic, realize that SOMEHOW, through some PROCESS be it legal or technical you probably WON’T be able to buy these keywords.

I’m not saying you should run for the hills. By all means, test the waters. There still may be opportunity, but it pays to look before you leap. Run a test campaign; make some phone calls. You might even want to run this one by your client or your boss if you’ve got one. Remember, if you didn’t have Ad History, you’d probably just blindly buy the keyword anyway – now, you just know up front that there might be some risk to doing that – and you can prepare for that rather than react to it.

So, these are the types of things that SpyFu Ad History can highlight for you BEFORE you make a mistake. Sure, if you are vigilant – and you manage your campaigns as actively and as disciplined as PCtools.com, or FreeCreditReport.com, then your mistakes won’t cost you too much. You’ll run something for a month, maybe two see that its not working and drop it.

But, why do that if you don’t have to? Why waste any money at all? Why not make it a habit of popping every keyword into Ad History BEFORE you buy it?

The reason I invented SpyFu way back when was because if I wanted to know which keywords my competitors were buying, the only option available effectively amounted to guess and check. You had to think of a keyword and then type it into Google and look to see if your competitors were there. SpyFu was the first to solve that problem.

Now, the industry is in a similar state. The “best practice” to see if a keyword or ad variation works is essentially guess and check. You get some keywords that might work for you – guess some ad variations – and spend as much money as you can waste until you have enough clicks to justify eliminating the bad keywords.

SpyFu Ad History solves that problem. Now you can start with the best keywords, and the winning ad variations so that you have a profitable, optimized ad campaign the day you start.

Video Transcripts: An Introduction to Ad History

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