Paid
search in publishing is a very interesting topic because it gives insight into
how magazine companies and those similar have been able to maintain relevancy
in the digital age. In order to understand how paid search is applied to
publishing we must first define paid search. Paid Search otherwise known as
search engine marketing (SEM) is simply put the practice of obtaining traffic
through purchasing ads on search engines such as google, yahoo, bing. There are
many benefits for companies engaging in paid search, it can be targeted as in
directing it towards a certain audience of demographic, it is trackable so you
can see who is clicking and use those metrics to further benefit you, and it is
a good testing platform for search engine optimization (SEO). Lastly, it is
important to note that paid search may be referred to as PPC (Pay-per-click) or
CPC (cost-per-click) marketing seeing as how a majority of paid search ads are
sold on a CPC/PPC basis.
The most
prevalent form of paid search is Google Adwords. Google is undoubtedly the
leading search engine as "Googling" has essentially become a verb on
its own synonymous with searching something. Adwords is the clickable ads
on Google’s organic results pages, they may appear at the very top of the
results or the right side of the page. You can identify Adwords by the small ad
box in green under the title tag, these are used by the advertisers. Publishing
companies like any newspapers or magazines may use a simple Adwords ad when to
appear as the very top results. Take New York Times for example, googling their
name will result in a page of organic results leading to their sites as well as
paid result at the very top, companies may use it to advertise different
landing pages. NYTimes is a huge brand and if you directly search them of course
they will show up, but their ad at the top differs from their organic results
because it specifically pushes for subscriptions. This is beneficial for them in
particular or subscription-based publications because they can expand on what
they’re trying to offer you, they are specifically trying to sell their subscriptions
here. For paid search, the way Google identifies where companies’ ads should be
placed is through their quality score and bid amount. Quality score is a
measurement of how relevant ads, keywords, and landing pages are to a person
seeing your ad. When trying to input queries for art magazines, newspapers, or
anything along those lines of broader searches, I find that there are little to
no paid search ads by big publishing companies. But as mentioned earlier a
direct New York times search will prompt an ad of there’s, this is interesting
because when determining a pages quality score, I figured with how many
different articles and stories these papers of magazines are involved with,
they are more prone to appearing in organic searches. The bigger names do not
need as much of a fight for paid search but utilize it where they can, as talked
about earlier, NYT is pushing their subscriptions through ads. Otherwise you’re
more likely to happen upon their site just off one of the many articles they
produce daily. Let’s delve more into their subscription services. When simply
searching newspaper subscriptions we receive paid search ads in this order top
to bottom: New York Times, Bloomberg, and Wall Street Journal. Why do they
appear in that order? This is a lesson on the Google auction process. Google
places these ads in that order based off their ad rank. The formula for adrank
is =(Quality Score) x (Maximum Cost-per-click). With the quality score being a
numerical value from1 to 10 that Google assigns to each keyword. There are
three bidding types: Manual bidding, automatic bidding, and enhanced CPC.
Manual is the default method where you tell Google the maximum amount you would
spend per click. Automatic is when Google sets the amount for you and tries to
maximize the clicks you get. Lastly, enhanced CPC google Adjusts the companies
bid based on how they think the keyword will convert in a given auction.
Looking at the order my search generated these newspaper subscription ads you
can infer that Wall Street Journal paid Google’s minimum price requirement. Actual
CPC is found by (ad rank of the advertiser below you/your quality score)
+$0.01. Bloomberg has a better quality score than WSJ.
How else
can publishing companies benefit from paid search? You may find that inputting
relevant queries into Google’s search that have to do with magazines and
newspapers do not generate many paid search ads. Newspapers may not be engaging
in making their own paid search ads because they do not have as much to really
sell people. Due to this, you may notice different, more prevalent relationship
between companies along this line and paid search. If you go to the New York
Times home page you will notice they have ads running for other companies at
the very top and as you scroll through. These are a format of text ads on the
Google Display Network labeled magazine ads (funny enough). You may notice them
often on landing pages if you don’t have adblocker. According to searchengineland.com
these ads actually have lower cost per clicks generally. They come with
drawbacks like identifying the hyperlink of the paying company but for the
hosting site, these are one of the ways publishing companies are able to
generate revenue and fight to stay afloat in the digital age. This is not too dissimilar
from old school ads in physical newspapers, these companies are simply
acknowledging the times and transitioning to sites. Offering subscriptions to
digital versions of their pieces along with hosting ad space on their pages is
how they can stay relevant.
