A marketing analytics company called RevTrax just completed a two year study on the effect of PPC advertising on consumer in-store spending.  The study analyzed the purchase habits of consumers referred by pay-per-click ads to e-commerce sites. RevTrax used landing pages with coupons that featured a unique barcode to track the information.  The bar code information was then able to track the consumers’ buying cycles and show conversions.

As companies seek to expand their global advertising reach online, it’s impossible to ignore China. Despite the number of restrictions associated with advertising in China, the size of the potential audience is enticing. Unfortunately, China places restrictions on the flow of information into and within its borders, a fact which may discourage many companies from investing the time and money to understand the habits and interests of this tremendous market.

Yesterday Google announced “Search, Plus Your World,” a significant change to its search results that will put more emphasis on content within its social network, Google+. The new feature will allow Google robots to crawl data within Google+, and include this information along with public internet data when displaying search results.

The new Google “Personal Results” link delivers information relevant to searchers based on their search behavior, as well as their social connections. This means that two searchers will see different results for the same query. Regular, nonsocial search results will now be presented to users as “Other results.”

In a recent article by Search Engine Land, Googler Amit Singhal states, “The social search algorithm, and the personalized search algorithm are actually one algorithm now, and we are merging it in a way that is very pleasant and useful.” Only users logged in to Google will receive personal results, though each user has the capability to remove social content from their search results by disabling the option.

In October Google announced an increased privacy setting for Google account users that created nervous anticipation among many SEOers. In order to further protect the privacy of Google users signed into their accounts, Google added a default setting that makes browsing done while logged in occur from an encrypted SSL (https://google.com). This privacy update blocks Analytics from providing some search data. If the user is logged in, queries/keywords resulting in a click will be classified as “not provided” in reports. Data from logged in users who select pay-per-click (PPC) ads will still appear in Analytics.

90octane is pleased to be included in BtoB Magazine’s Marketers Resource Guide ’12, a compendium of lists and reports providing information on key companies and people in marketing, media and advertising. We are listed in the Top Agencies, Interactive Agencies and SEM Vendors sections.

We strategize, execute and optimize search engine marketing, lead generation and lead nurturing programs. Our business-to-business clients include Gates Corporation, Jeppesen, Atlas Copco CMT USA, MWH Global and Ramtron International.

You can purchase the Marketers Resource Guide ’12 from BtoB Magazine here.

About BtoB Magazine
BtoB, the magazine for marketing strategists, delivers timely editorial on all disciplines of business-to-business marketing. Published monthly by Crain Communications Inc, BtoB provides more than 45,000 subscribers with the information and analysis they need to develop a winning integrated marketing strategy for their companies. http://www.btobonline.com