Brad Geddes from Local Launch is up first to give an overview of language and targeting options. Most common forms of Spanish language targeting; english web sites targeting spanish speakers, and many other options. There are many possible configurations (keyword, ad copy, audience). Google AdWords Language Options: they have a language settings under the campaign settings, this is based on user preference set by user at Google.com. Keyword & ad copy use; no restrictions as to the language of the keywords, ads and non for mixing and matching keywords and ad languages. There is a quality score that will regulate this, so the restrictions are not needed as much. Yahoo! Search Marketing Language Options; allows English or spanish keywords, they will allow english or spanish ad copy and there are restrictions; spanish keyword must trigger spanish ads, spanish ads must lead to spanish landing pages, and some more. Microsoft adCenter only supports English and French, so give MSN feedback. Geographic targeting, most common location targeting options are country targeting or region targeting. Country targeting can be done at Google AdWords (multiple countries can be targeted with one campaign (don't use the same campaign, but you can), Microsoft adCenter allows it also, same deal as Google, but Yahoo search marketing allows one account per country and in Q1 2007, you will be able to link accounts. Top 10 Hispanic Markets; LA, NY, Chicago, Miami, Houston, Dallas, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Harlingen. Regional Targeting; IP targeting, Specific Geographic based campaigns (ip based and keyword based), country & territory based companies (targeting country and keyword based). He then shows geographic permutations for keywords (Florida Pizza, Miami Pizza, etc.). Reach your target audience, location (ip/keyword), languages, and ppc inventory.
Paul D. Saffery from SilverDisc Chile was up next. Spanish is a much less standard language than English. Not only in pronunciation, but also in vocabulary. Spanish speaking territories can vary greatly in many ways; population, Internet penetration, wealth distribution, geography and psychology. Challenges specific to Spanish; the nature of the ad business, what jargon does your target audience expect from the business you are advertising? The nature of your target audience? The answers to these questions will help you decide to use neutral Spanish or country-specific Spanish. There are 14 different variations of Spanish. Issues about the SPanish language; text length (more characters compared to English), translation non-expstent or "poor," accents, non-unique translations and non-unique meanings. Is advertising in Spanish worth the effort? Only if your landing page is in same language, only if you access the user base, you access the demographics. You need to research number of users, broadband penetration, the spread of wealth, the demographics, the psychographics and the postal service. Selling PPC: the competition of traditional advertising media, market granularity (hot versus cold keyword judgment), awareness about the importance of measuring ROI. Make sure you communicate, get your audience to trust you, and don't deceive your clients.
Frank Watson from FXCM. He said foreign languages are the most profitable. Use keyword inserts, it has better results when compared to English usage of it (in terms of CTR). Use single keywords, the Spanish market is young, more likely to search on one word versus two or three, so be aware of broad-matching. Don't compete with yourself, when you need multiple accounts - you can bid against yourself - just be careful. Create coherent categories and groups, use multiple messages and test them. AussieWebmaster - big budgets...
Alexandre Kavinski from HotList is going to talk about mostly Portuguese case studies. SEM is about results, the WORDS are the means to the results. He shows two examples of bad translation. Challenges, cultural aspects, different languages, different vocabulary, different user profiles, different web use habits and more. When preparing a campaign you need to understand all these items. You should know which product or services are important, how people see a brand or label, what are ones strengths and weaknesses, and how is our competition positioned and what are my clients searching for. You should have different ad management styles for each country. Each country may have its own objective, which areas are a priority, so managing the results locally is important. A good report should support web site strategies definitions, should highlight user profile differences on each country, should bring up strategic information that may be used by marketing department even offline.
Jessie Stricchiola from Alchmist Media is last up to go over click fraud issues on a general level. She talks about the first sign she has seen click fraud, I remember when she presented this data at an SES a while back --- ohhh memories. She presented it back in 2001. She explains that some people make some extreme claims about click fraud to it threatening the global economy to it being immaterial. The search engines have definitions of click fraud, "click spam," "invalid clicks," and so on. She lists some more definitions, as quotes. How is click fraud generated; manually generated clicks, clicks from hitbots, clicks from spyware, and clicks from email distribution. There are now auditing providers; ppc trax, vericlix, hitslink, clicklab, adwatcher, clickrisk, whosclickingwho, and so on and the list is growing daily (demand is growing for this daily). CPC advertising agreements; advertisers are agreeing to pay for all clicks from publishers, regardless of their source or quality, they agree to limit the time frame in which they can dispute their PPC bills to 60 days, they agree to limit the data used in the investigation of the dispute to the publisher's data only - publishers are not required to look at any data from the advertiser, and they are agreeing to pay for any number of volume of clicks - no matter what amount of clicks may be retroactively found to be fraudulent after further investigation - as only "credits" and not refunds, are issued. Click fraud concerns; publishers are communication that they are in a safe ad environment, publishers are not working together to create a uniform method of scoring click validity, and publishers have not yet created a uniform methodology for data submission. What advertisers can do about it? Begin benchmarking and auditing your PPC data, document your tracking and analysis for future use, perform 60 day audits consistently, establish and maintain close relationships with publishers to address click fraud related problems as soon as they are identified, communicate to publishers - tell them what you need from them to create a safer advertising environment.
Disclaimer: I type as fast as I can, there are grammar errors, typos and more issues with this. I do my best to be as accurate as possible. But due to the nature of "real time" coverage, there will be issues.
