There have been whisperings in the air and at meetings about a particular merger. Some held their breath, while others thought it would never happen. Well, it’s official. Yahoo and MSN/Bing are merging their search efforts to form a union known as the Search Alliance.

Search Alliance is the name that Yahoo and MSN/Bing are using for the search merger. However, at the same time they are still competitors. Although Yahoo and MSN/Bing have joined forces in the search arena, they will still remain competitors in the display market. If a company is running display campaigns with either of the engines, they will be unaffected by the merger in regard to through which engine their display ads will be managed.

The Search Alliance merger will allow Yahoo results to be powered by MSN/Bing. When the transition is complete advertisers will be managing their paid search campaigns in MSN/Bing AdCenter. Any advertiser who has been advertising in both Yahoo and MSN/Bing for search will only need to focus on optimizing the MSN/Bing campaigns because their Yahoo campaigns will be turned off. For advertisers who are only advertising in Yahoo, they will need to make sure that they get a MSN/Bing account set up.

The Search Alliance should prove interesting. Many questions arise such as will cpc’s go up? What search partner sites will I show up on? One of the most daunting questions is how will the merger affect my traffic and my ROI? There is one answer for all of these questions. The answer is only time will tell. 

In the world of Google search ads, advertisers know the drill. Twenty-five characters for a headline, and thirty-five characters for description lines 1 and 2, as well as the display url. It seems like a very limited amount of space for a company to get their message across, until now. Google has recently opened up Ad Sitelinks to all advertisers.

According to Google, “Ad Sitelinks allow you to extend the value of your existing AdWords ads by providing additional links to specific, relevant content deeper within your sitemap.” Ad Sitelinks give companies the power to share more about their business and what it has to offer. In the examples below, 1-800-Flowers is able to show searchers that they offer birthday flowers & gifts, gift baskets and even Martha Stewart flowers & gifts. These are all options that might not have been promoted without Ad Sitelinks.

There are two format options for Ad Sitelinks. There is a one line format and a two line format. Google determines how your sitelinks will appear based on ad relevancy and other factors. Let’s take a look at how site links show with a search ad. Example 1 shows a one line format and Example 2 shows a two line format.

Example 1:
 

Example 2:
 

In both examples the Ad Sitelinks appear in blue below the paid search ad. Keep in mind advertisers have to rank between positions 1-3 and be in the light peach colored box above the organic listings in order for Ad Sitelinks to be eligible to show.

Ad Sitelinks empowers advertisers to set themselves apart from the competition by letting them present more services and options to searchers within a search ad. Plus, it gives more real estate on the page and most advertisers will gladly take it.

Have you ever gone to a store and forgotten to buy something? Have you ever been at a store pressed for time and told yourself I’ll have to come back later, but you never made time to go back? What if on your way home you see a reminder sign right above a street sign? The sign would say “Don’t forget to visit the store.” It makes you look twice, but you kept driving. About 5 minutes away from your house you stop at a light and notice a sign that says, “Remember, you need to get something from the store.” In your mind you say, “Oh yeah, I did want to go to the store.” Then you drive over to the store and buy what you need. It may sound like a fairy tale, but this does happen online and it’s called remarketing.

According to Google, remarketing “allows you to show ads to users who’ve previously visited your website as they browse the Web.” It’s quite a phenomenon, especially if you’re using banner ads. The beauty of remarketing is that you’re only advertising to people who have shown an interest in your site and apparently people must not mind, because many visitors are returning to sites to complete orders or fill out a lead generation form.

Even better is that remarketing can be set very broad or it can be set to an incredibly granular level.   A company can set up a remarketing campaign, so that anyone who visits their site is later targeted by an ad whether they completed a desired action or not. On the other hand, a company could just target people who visited their product “Y” page, went to the shopping cart, but didn’t complete the order. This could also be used for a lead generation website. For example, a company could set up remarketing to target people who went to a lead generation form page, but left before completing the form. There’s multiple ways to set up remarketing campaigns to reach visitors, but it is definitely recommended to use banner ads.

Remarketing is catching on quickly with many companies and those who are jumping on board haven’t been disappointed. Remarketing allows companies to narrow down the playing field; in fact it’s like a sales person pursuing a hot lead. The visitor comes to your site, and they go far enough in the process to show that they aren’t there by accident. Now, your banner ad is appearing to them on certain sites on the web, just like a sales person who calls to follow up on a lead, and in many cases remarketing is closing the deal. It’s definitely worth it to get involved with remarketing. After all, shouldn’t you be asking visitors who left your site if they are interested?