Submitted

Hey Guys

We are all done with the project. I have just submitted it to Google and sent a copy to both Steffen and Doug.

Cheers : )

Done!

Hey Guys

I have already edited the report and sent it to Li Zhen to add the table of contents. She will send it back to me and everyone, and i will then submit it to Google and send it to Steffen and Doug.

Cheers

Almost Done

Hey Guys

We are almost done with the Google project. Since we practically finished the report on wednesday, we are now waiting for Wen Sze to send me the recommendations by tonight. I will then add it in and send it to Li Zhen for formatting. Li Zhen will then send it back to me and everyone else and i will submit it online to Google. I will also send a copy to Doug and Steffen.

Cheers

The campaigns are over and judging is about to begin in the 2008 Challenge!

Campaigns have now finished and the judging is about to begin for the
2008 Google Online Marketing Challenge! Over 1600 student teams from
47 countries around the world are now competing for a chance to become
our winners and finalists.

What happens next?
As outlined in your guides, we will use the Campaign Statistics
algorithm to determine the top 50 teams in each region. AdWords
experts from within Google will then apply an extra level of rigor to
select the top five teams in each region.

Once the top five in each region have been chosen, our independent
Global Academic Panel will review the Pre-Campaign Strategy and
Post-Campaign Summary reports to determine the regional and global
winners and our finalists. It takes great Campaign Statistics to make
the top five in each region, and then great written reports to win.

Remember: Teams must have submitted their reports on time to be
eligible for judging. Teams who have only recently completed their
campaigns have until the 14th of June to get their Post Campaign
Summary report to us. For more information on this, please refer to
your guides.

The winners and their professor will be notified in mid July 2008. You
will also be sent an email around this time to let you know who won.

Student teams will also be able to see how they performed. Based on
the results from the Campaign Statistics algorithm, we will upload a
list of all competing CIDs indicating how groups fared. Teams should
remember to keep their CID number as this will be needed this to look
up individual performance.

Good luck!
The Google Team

Job Well Done

Hey Guys

Congrats on the awesome performance last night. We will be meeting next wednesday 9am sharp and we will work the whole day (hopefully less : P ) to finish the Google report.

Cheers

Almost There...

Hey Guys

Thanx for putting in all the effort to practically complete the report and powerpoint slides. Once tonight's presentation is over, what is left is the Google report, which we can do next.

I suggest that we meet up for one day and just complete the whole thing. We kinda have already started, but we just need to do it the way Google wants it.

Once again it's been great working with you guys! Let's end this with a bang : P

Cheers

The last two laps of the race!

Tomorrow marks the end of our Adwords campaign and I think that most of us are really relieved that the intense drama is over!

There are two more laps of the race which we still need to run, our presentation tomorrow to Steffen and the Final Report submission to Google.

Fortunately with everyone's effort put in, we have managed to successfully complete the bulk of our report and powerpoint slides, amidst the examination period. Just left with the graphs and charts of week 3 and that's it folks!

So thank you everyone for all the hard work put in during these three weeks. I think it doesn't matter whether or not we're able to get a placing in the finals and such. As long as we've done our best, and have no regrets, that's all that counts.

Therefore, give yourselves a HUGE pat on your backs, (as a form of encouragement :P) because the race is finally gonna be over! :)

P/S: We'll be meeting tomorrow 22nd May 2008 for rehearsal at 6pm.

Meeting 21st May 2008

While everyone is busy mugging for the paper on Saturday, please note that we have a meeting tomorrow at 11am school canteen. Probably wouldn't take more than 2hours because most of us want to continue studying for the midterms.

Please note that the meeting is compulsory especially for presenters. Wensze is excused coz she has work.

Thanks.

Post Campaign Sumaary

Post-Campaign Summary (75 points total, maximum ten pages submitted in English)
The Post-Campaign Summary has an Industry component, Learning component and Appendix for Tables, Figures and Charts.

Industry component (24 points, maximum four pages) This is team’s chance to share the results with their client. This component begins with a one-page Executive Summary covering four points:

1. A campaign overview
2. Key results
3. Conclusions
4. Recommendations for your client’s future online marketing

Teams have an additional three pages to expand the four points noted in the Executive Summary.

Learning component (24 points, maximum four pages)The teams’ reflection on what they learned should cover four points:

1. Learning objectives and outcomes – what did the team hope to learn and how well did the team meet their expectations. What else did they learn?

2. Group dynamics and client dynamics – what problems did they encounter and more importantly, how did they overcome these problems?

3. The evolution of their campaign strategy – teams describe how the strategy changed and what led to those changes.

4. Future recommendations – what would they do differently in the future to improve their campaign strategy, learning experience, group dynamics and client dynamics? This should also address next steps for the client if they want to continue with online marketing and AdWords.

No neccessary to fellow the guideline as stated from email.

Thursday presentation

Hey Guys

As you know i have already emailed Steffen yesterday and he replied saying he does not mind if Doug does not mind. I just got a reply from Doug and actually what we have to present and hand in is not the 10 page report. We just need a weekly report, like the one Antony has done. Then we just have to present a very short summary of what has happened. Doug also prefers that we do it on Thursday so that we can get feedback from Steffen to include in our 10 page report due to Google.

So we will have to prepare a short (prob 5 min) presentation and just hand in the weekly reports.

Cheers

CTRs

Hey Guys

Our CTR for today was 2.33%, if we can maintain this for the rest of the week, we will be able to push up our entire campaign's CTR from 0.80% to at least somewhere above 1%....

Fingers crossed : )

Cheers

p.s. Antony please send the reports to everyone as soon as possible. I will try putting the report outline together by end of the weekend. Also everyone please read up on what is required in the final report and also i have already emailed Steffen regarding Thursday.... Have you guys done the same yet?

Minor Update (We are in School!!)

Account people has noted.

We have made some minor changes:
- Previous Ad Group from "Movie Poster" that is paused has been resumed
-Bid for keyword "posters" has been reduced to $0.20 from $0.40 because for the rest of the weeks our budget has been decreased to $4.
-Bid for Iron Man poster and Chirashi has been increased to $0.30 that is done by Boss, Bid for dark knight poster has been increased to $0.20.

Reported by Mr Lim Zhi Shen aka Kelvin

Movie premiums

Hey Guys

Esp... our accounts people, please take note that i had to increase the bid for the dark knight poster, iron man poster and chirashi because they we inactive. Also i think that we should not pause the other ad groups because we need to know which one is the most effective. What do you guys think?

So accounts people please log into ad words and note the changes to the bids.

Cheers

Change and Adding of Ad Group

Ok i have included the new Ad Group under "Movie Premium"

Movie Memorabilia
Latest movie posters, chirashi
Free Delivery, Hurry Now!

Under "Movie Poster" , i have paused "Movie Poster" and "Purchase Movie Poster". However, i added the new adver:

Latest Movie Posters
Take your pick from our exclusive
collections! While stock last @.

-ve keywords added:
blue film
blue films
live video chat
vedio
video
xxl video
xxx video

This is our last week, and hope that with these new advertisement, the CTR will increase.

Meeting before the 2nd block teaching starts

Today, our 2nd in command (Li Zhen) is sick, so she din turn up.

The guys have gone thru the weekly report and make some amendments, Antony will retype and resend to the team members soon.

Also we have decide to have more text ads variations, to attract more geneniue customers to our website and reduce impression and increase our CTR.

Again, Antony with Kelvin help will come up with the variations and put it online and we have more or less came up with one before the lecture start.

We also decide that we shall run two ads concurrently. We will finalise this asap.

CTR

Hi Guys!

Bad news is that for 14th of May, our CTR is only 0.99% and the impressions made are like 3530 (+/-). Please place suggestions on the blog on what you guys think we should do.

Also Kelvin, Wen Sze and Antony, you guys have not confirmed whether you are able to make it to today's meeting???

Meeting

Hey Guys

I suppose we can meet at around 6pm, thats more than enough time to get through the stuff we need to cover.

Yes Eugene, please bring your laptop.

Thanx

Thursday Meeting 2

I am fine with any timing? need me to bring laptop?

:)

Thursday Meeting...

Hey Bhaj,

I'm alright with meeting earlier on Thursday at 5.30pm/6pm. Not sure if the rest can make it. I think that 1hr - 1.5hrs would be enough to finish our stuff right?

Cheers.

Meeting Thursday

Hey Guys

We should meet for a while on Thursday to go through what has happened in the past week and to make any necessary changes. We can probably meet before class starts so please posts up times at which you guys would like to meet.

Cheers

p.s. i was thinking maybe 6pm, as we just need to look at basic things. But maybe earlier if we want to come up with ad for the posters ad group??

Report Week 1 and Others...

Hi Guys

Thanks Antony for the report, basically it is a day to day summary. Maybe everyone can suggest what type of graphs we can actually include? Coz you did not include any : )

Anyway, Wen Sze and Kelvin, please take note of the points that Antony has brought up in the previous post and please make sure that those points are recorded for this week and the next.

The only good news is that our impressions have decreased slightly and our CTR is at 1.96%, which could probably be improved further. In addition, i am just as worried about the movie posters ad group! People are searching for it although the impressions are not that high, but they are not clicking on it. I think we need to improve our ad message and make a more catchy message. What are your thoughts on that?

Also as Li Zhen suggested we could try an accelerated budget. But what this does is that it shows the ad as quickly as possible and not throughout the whole day. It stops once our budget maximum is reached. So once again what are your thoughts on this suggestion?

Cheers

report

Ok i've finished the report.

Here is my feedback.
These are some things that need to be recorded down daily in preparation for the next report.

-adding/deletion of keywords
-adding/deletion of negative keywords
-change in bids
-pausing of keywords

Hmmmm..

Actually I don't quite understand how come there isn't anyone searching for movie poster...? It seems like the clicks for that particular adgroup is seriously quite low..

Do you think it'd be a good idea for us to try changing the budget to Accelerate instead?

P/S: Who has been blogging under team popcornpop??

Update

Just for record.

Previous the geotargeting area consist of 12 countries and this are the 6 countries that have been taken away from the list:
1.Turkey
2.Vietnam
3.Hongkong
4.Thailand
5.Australia
6.New Zealand
The main reason for shrinking the countries to the top six countries is still to lower the impression rate.

I still worried about the "Movie Posters" because is not performing. Do any of u have any recommendation, such as editing the advertisement to bring in more clicks?

Narrow Geotargeting

Hi Guys

Kelvin and myself have just decreased the geographic areas that we are targeting to only the top 6 locations. Kelvin will be putting up more details of this on the blog soon.

Cheers

Search Query Report 10th to 11th May

Guys,

I have made the report as mention above, I think we are doing great as in we have "chase away" a lot of unwanted "porn stuff" for our campagin.

But we have another unwanted words like : video, video chat, film, film school, films etc.
Think have to come out more negative to counter them.

And we only left about 50 odd bucks for our campagin.

Lastly: Antony, how is the report for week 1?

Cheers

Premiums

Hi Guys

I added a couple of keywords and negative keywords yesterday and so far there has not been any real improvement in our movie posters ad group. Any suggestions on how to improve it further?

Cheers

Update

The impression for keyword "Movie" has gone done from a range of 5000 point to 2036 after Bhajinda has added those additional keywords. I believe is about there.

AdGroup "Movie Posters" is still not performing after we have risen the bid for keyword "poster" & "Movie poster" to $0.40. The average position for keyword "poster" still remain around 3.5 and "movie poster" is at 5.0

The cost remain within our allocated budget of $10 for date 08/05 & 09/05.

Lim Zhi Shen

Wait and See...

Hi Guys

The budget for today has already been changed to $6, i guess we have to wait and see whether the impressions decreses and CTRs increases.

Cheers

Change the bids and adding more negative keywords

After discussion between boss and wensze and with the agreement of the team members, we have done the following (with resoning):

our campaign impression is abit far too high so we wants to decrease slightly so what we did was to add in 10 negative keywords from "Movie Premium" hoping to decrease the impression. We have also increase the bid for the keyword "Posters" to 40cents. The reason is that Posters are the main source of revenue for Popcornpop and we hope to fulfil what we have stated for our pre-campaign presentation; to align our campaign with the business. So this is the update we have done today and to note that the budget for today has been decreased to $6.00 cos out budget seem to get rather tight.

Guys, please do comments if i need to retype the blog

Respond to Suggestion

I agree that we should keep movie coz it is most definitely drawing people to the website. I just checked and we spent $9.97 yesterday, which means that we have managed to be under the $10 budget, but this budget of $10 will only last til today. Kelvin will be decreasing it to $6 for tomorrow.

I think increasing the bid of posters to ensure the the ad is in line with the business is a great idea. Kelvin, i need to talk to you, as we need to strategise for decreasing the budget for tomorrow. I will txt you anyway n u can call be in the evening so that we can sort this out.

Keep up the good work guys! Antony, please keep us updated on how the report is coming along.

Cheers

Suggestions

I agree with Zhishen cos the CTR for "Movie Posters" is doing rather well as compared to other keywords. But up to date, we have already spent 61.4% of our budget.
Zhishen and I have discussed on some issues for our campaign but we need to consult Bhaj 1st before moving on to our plan. "Posters" should be placed higher emphasis. As mentioned in our pre-campaign presentation, the main challenge is to make people aware and to increase the sales of popcornpop. The main revenue of popcornpop is poster so probably we can do something about this keyword. Rem we need to align our challenge with the company goals and this can be mentioned in our final report that we take into consideration of the company interest as well? What do u guys think of our suggestion? Feel free to let us know so that we can further improve on it.
Anyway I'm off next Thur so we can meet up before the lecture starts? So that I can join in the discussion too..

Suggestion

Fortunately our budget is within the allocated $10. Impression has gone down for "Movie Premiums" but i believe that it will remain within the thousand range, because keyword movie is too general in the sense. Most importantly, audience using this keyword is not meant for "unwanted" purposes. What i feel is that this keyword might need to remain to draw "indirect" awareness to popcornpop.

What i am worried is AdGroup "Movie Posters" because this ad is more specific to the company's core business. I am suggesting a rise to the bid for keyword "Poster" to $0.40 ~ $0.45 to increase the average position of the adv, provided that we are within the budget or there is extra budget.

Maybe we should focus more on "Movie Posters" than Premiums.

Spending....

Hi Guys

I just checked our campaign spending and so far today we have spent $8 +, which means that we have managed to reduce the costs. I suppose the next thing to see is whether we should change the movie keyword. But i think that once we do that, our CTR would drop dramatically!!

Cheers

8th May meeting

All are present except our working gal (Wensze) and SOCCER FANATIC (Antony)

Things that we have done for today:

1) After reading what Li Zhen have post about one of the Gomcha post, we have make a similar "mistake" as the group in Gomcha, we have our Ads Grps on content network which in a way is not good for our campagin, Solution : Unclick that option

2) Have change our budget from $10 instead of $14 for 8th and 9th May.

3) We have paused and decrese bids for some of the keywords in the Ad Grps:

a) Movie Premium - Paused keyword - Popcorn Singapore
- Decrease bids from 35 cents to 15 cents for keyword " Iron Man Poster and
Dark Knight Poster.
b) Movie Posters - Paused keyword - Popcorn poster

4) After reading our report for day 7, we have increase a huge amount of negative keywords for our campagin, please kindly take some time to read the negative keywords -

XXX movies, XXX movie, www tamil blue film com, www pornmovie com, the sex, tamil movie, tamil blue movie, blue movie, sexy, sex video, sex, sex movie, sex movies, sexs.

5) Okay, now is Kelvin and Antony turns to report:

Kelvin - Please update and report on the financial matters.

Antony - Please write out the report for week one, matters like budget (which should have meet the allocated budget nicely for week one if not for the $18.19 incurred on the first day of the campagin). We may need a detective help in finding the answer why is this amount ($18.19) incurred in our budget on the first day.

As for the next meeting, we have yet to decide on the date, so Team members, please KINDLY make yourself avaible on that meeting day. Of cos we will announce the date to give each others ample time to reply.

Thank you

I'm Eugene reporting live for PopcornPop Gomcha.

Update

Thanx for the update Kelvin, we will look into these matters at tomorrow's meeting

Cheers

Update on Statistic

Sorry team for not updating, well as u know i had a bad flue but still recovering, not "LOVE SICK" as many have assumed haha.

Alright here it goes, the average budget which i have calculated from 30th of April to 6th of May is $14.59. This is $0.59 more than what we have allocated $14.

The top keywords is still Movie, with an average click of (478 clicks / 7 days = 68.29 per day). However the "Impression" still remained as high. Therefore, there is a need to lower the impression level and attain a higher CTR. More -ve keywords might need to be inserted as what i have agreed with team captain.

Next, the number of clicks for keyword "poster" has fallen drastically. The highest click attained was on 1th of May with 33 clicks. Since then, it dropped and maintain between 5 to 9 clicks per day. In addition, keyword "Movie poster" is not moving apparently. This will have to be further examined.

Lastly, AdGroup "Movie Premiums" still remain as the better performance as compared to "Movie Posters". The other of the 3 Ad Groups have been paused due to low or zero activity.

Analysis:

Keywords like original movie poster and popcorn poster should be eliminated. Bid for Movie poster and poster has to be increased. Objective is to achieve more clicks.

Keywords popcorn singapore can be eliminated under Ad Group "Movie Premiums".
More -ve keywords to be inserted to remove "unwanted" search.
Change of description to "Purchase exclusive posters, figurines, chirashi"
Add Keywords figurines and chirashi. This might help to optimize this ad group. The use of "purchase" is to attract "call-to-action".

That about all. I will send the data to everyone. See you guys tomorrow at 2pm =)
Lim Zhi Shen

Firstly my views on the keywords used. I think that perhaps we could try changing the word figurine to toy. Figurines are mostly to target the younger ones and perhaps the word toys come quicker to the minds of children. As for movie premiums, we could try batman poster instead of dark knight poster. Last year’s favourite movies were the transformers and spider man. So we could also add in these keywords, transformers posters and spider man posters. For movie collectibles, how about adding in movie merchandise or limited edition movie items or just the word movie items itself. For the movie posters ad group, maybe we could use some keywords that match the main item category words in the popcornpop website. For example, asian movie posters, value posters, Japanese chirashi or maybe even cheap posters or classic posters.

Ok now as for the ad group advertisements. Here is what I have in mind for movie posters and movie premiums.

Movie posters

Movie posters
Over 2999 movie posters available
Come visit us for a special experience!
www.popcornpop.com


Movie premiums

Movie premiums
The world exclusive collection of
the latest movie gifts, posters and toys
www.popcornpop.com

Agreement

Hi Guys!!

We are definitely making progress and i have just read Li Zhen's message and i most definitely agree with her. Up til now i have decided to take a more passive role in trying to get everyone to participate. It's because i feel that as mature adults we should be more responsible and understand the need to participate actively. This project is not only important for our grades, but more importanly it is an experience that we can take along with us.

I am finding it very hard to explain to everyone how important it is for everyone to be enthusiastic and active in keeping this log book updated. Another point of issue is that from week 2 onwards i expect everyone to be available for the team as and when needed. No excuses other than work or if you are desperately ill. It is important for everyone to understand that if other team mates are willing to sacrifice their time to meet up, it will be expected of everyone else. If you cannot look at this from the viewpoint of participating and contributing to the team, think of it as being a short term commitment!! We only have to meet until the 21 or 22 of May!!

Please take time out and commit to the team, at the end of the day i do not want to be giving our lecturer or tutor a report on how hard it was to get people to commit to this team.

OK over with the nagging : P The following are a couple of tasks that need to be completed:

1. Antony will be writing up a couple of ad variations and sending it to be by tonight or before tomorrow lunch time.
2. Also Antony will be doing a report on the first week of our campaign. Kelving and Wen Sze, please provide him with the necessary details for the 1st week. This is due by Monday.
3. Kelvin and Wen Sze, please send out or post up here details on the movement of the campaign and all the necessary information for the 1st week of the campaign.
4. Tomorrow, we will be adding more negative keywords and possibly campaign negative keywords. We will also stop certain keywords and maybe reduce/increase the bids for others.

Please keep this blog updated and see you guys tomorrow.

Cheers!

Updating of blog

Hi guys,

Please check out this link from Gomcha. It shows an extremely well-written account of another group who has started the campaign. This is the main purpose why we have set up this blog, so that we can keep track of what is going on and at the same time act as our logbook.

http://www.gomcha.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1698423%3ABlogPost%3A7268

I realised that there has not been much updates on the blog about our Adwords campaign from the Finance people.. The above link will give you an example of what you have to write in the blog for us, so that we can have clear knowledge of what has been done.

It's crucial that an update be given to us, so that everyone knows exactly what has been going on and not only the few that communicate with Bhajinder directly, or Bhajinder herself. Not to mention that our group is quite large, and that the Finance people are the ones who have been handling the Adwords account every single day, and making changes to it.

I know that it might be a chore, and you're very unwilling to update the blog, but please do this for the sake of the group and our grades. Like that we can also refer back easily when we are making notes for our presentation or doing up the final google report.

This space here is our logbook. Once the campaign is over, I'll be opening it up for the public to view. At the same time, the url will be passed on to our lecturer and tutor too.

I hope that you guys can understand where I'm coming from. If others can do it, I don't see why we can't make it happen!

Thanks.

P/S: If you're lazy to do a daily update, you can write up a weekly one based on what the guy in the link has done. If necessary, please send your daily/weekly writeup to Eugene or me, so that we can help you to post it up on the blog too. So far, the very active ones on the blog are Eugene, Bhajinder and me. We expect everyone else to be active, especially if you're directly in charge of updating the Adwords account.

Woohoo!

Hmm, I think we've definitely spent way over the budget allocated right?

Anyway, our CTRs are finally reaching 2%! Woohoo!

I was thinking that perhaps we could lower the bids for movie to 0.20? Since that is the minimum bid now? It seems like Movie is the only keyword generating the large amount of clicks!

I think we shall discuss more about it tomorrow when we meet. :)

Improving CTRs

Hey...

Yup we should definitely improve it further....

Another point is that our budget is kinda going weary... we have already spent 50.1% of it.. we need to add more negative keywords soon! Especially since we still have 2 weeks more to go : )

Cheers

Meeting confirmed.

Dear all,

Please note that there will be a meeting on Thursday, 2pm, School Canteen.

I've already asked Antony to inform the team.

Catch you guys then!

Cya!

P/S: Hey Bhaj, I've realised that the CTRs are improving! which is a good thing.. :) We should improve it further! :D

CTR

Hey Guys

If you have noticed our CTR has improved for yesterday 0.92 and at the moment it is at 1.something : P can't remember exactly.... but looks like pausing the ad groups have helped tremendously.

Now we will just add more negative keywords and improve it further

Cheers

P.S. Please confirm whether the meeting time is suitable.

Meeting on 5 May

All of us are present except our "lover"(Kelvin) as he is sick.

We have decided to pause 3 of our ad grps that is not growing healthy. Also we have to change the keywords and add in more negative keywords for each ad grps as to minimize our budget and increase of CTR......

Our next meeting will be on Thursday (8 May) around 2pm in sch? Ladies and Gentlemen, is this timing okay with your schedule? Please reply.....

Cheers

Ps: Mid term coming soon, Lets study hard.....

Ad Grps

Ladies & Gentlemen,

One of our Ad Grp - Movie Collectibles is not growing, the fastest growing is our Movie Premium follow by Movie Posters (Base of report on 3 May)...

Think we still need to fine tune the keywords and negative keywords as there are still some "interesting findings" in the reports.

So see you guys on Monday 6pm.

Ps: Dont be late.

Negative Keywords & Ad Groups

Hey Guys!

It's been about 4 days since our campaign started, we have already added a couple of negative keywords. I also propose these additional measures:

Firstly, we should add alot more negative keywords per ad group and maybe consider adding campaign negative keywords

Secondly, we may need to think about whether it is worthwhile keeping those ad groups that are hardly generating any clicks. This is because due to their impressions, our campaign CTR is being reduced significantly.

We can discuss this when we meet tomorrow. Cheers : )

1st Online MSN meeting on 2nd May

We have our 1st meeting via electronic means...maybe because we are doing our E-commerce. :P

What have been discuss are as follow:

1) Everybody SHOULD or MUST read the blog and visit the campaign daily. As to keep update of information etc.

2) Do post comments about how you feel about the stuff that we are doing (whether in the right direction or wrong way....) or whether you agree or disagree with what other team member have blogged.

3) Boss and ZS will be discussing about the -ve keywords and keywords for the ad grps before the new day starts.

4) Discuss about whether to change the budget, target audience (countries).

5) Two of our ad grps (PopcornPop and Collectibles) are not "growing" - maybe due to keywords, thinking of changing the keywords.....

And this discussion took us 1 hrs or so to conclude. (discussion starts at 8pm).

So guys dont be late for Monday (5 May) meeting at 6pm at sch's canteen. cheers @___@

PopcornPop News - Statistic

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to "PopcornPop News".
This evening I am going to report the statistic results for the best AdGroup and Best Key words for 1st May 2008.
Here it goes,

Top AdGroup:
Movie Poster has derived as the top among the rest of the AdGroup with total clicks of 46, an increase of 28 points. Movie Premium which is the top on the 30th April has lost it momentum and plunge to a devastating low point of only 18 clicks.

Keywords:
Once again, the top Keyword for 1st of May is "Poster", overtaken keyword "Movie" which is the top for yesterday. Second of the rank is still "movie" with total clicks of 9 compared to 94 points on 30th of April =x . This is a drop of 90.4%.

Budget:
Actual cost for today is $14.06 which is a mere increase of -$0.06 of $14 that is allocated.

That is all for this evening report. We will turn to Wen Sze for analysis of statistic, tonight at Prime PopcornPop News when she returns from work. Stay Tune!

MIA : P and more..

Hey Guys......

Sorry that i have seemed to be MIA from the blog's last couple of posts. But i have very busy sorting things our using the phone instead, so that we can do real time changes and discussions.

I just got a text from Li Zhen, about the fact that our CTRs is low, i have also noticed this. In fact there are a number of solutions to our problems. First, we must add negative keywords to our ad groups. Like Kelvind mentioned in one of our meetings there is actually a special way to add it and it's not just by using e.g. movie as the keyword. So Kelvin n myself will be adding these tomorrow.

Second, at about Monday we can start to delete some of the not so popular keywords or we can refine the keywords and make them more specific. Thirdly, we could have even more specific targeting of consumers.

These are just some suggestions and we don't have to use it all at once. What we must remember is that we need to be creative and tactical when dealing with the campaign. There is no need to rush in a fit of panic if we see our costs increasing.

So i think we need to set up either an msn conference or teleconference and decide as a team on our next step. The last thing we want is for this campaign to be disparate.

Also another thing that has been changed is the manner in which we will be recording our expenses and the statistics. As i hope that you are all aware of the fact that the results shown are in US timing, so there was major problems with the dates etc. What i suggested to Kelvin is to record by starting on the 30th april and note that this date corresponds with Singapore 12 midnite. So he was check everyday to see how much was spent and what the corresponding statistics are. In this way we don't get confused between the 2 time zones.

So guys... keep the eye on the prize and please continually suggest how we can improve our campaign!!

Cheers : )

I've emailed our lecturer about the recent problems we encounter mainly about 1)which statistics,the google adwords or the google analytics, is accurate? 2)does the change in the bids register immediately or after some time?

Our lecturer Steffen replied almost immediately. Here's the email.

Hi Antony, I would post the question on GOMCHA. I experienced similar things duringmy campaigns and think there is a certain time delay between the actualdata and the data shown on Analytics.Therefore you should see morevisitors on Analytics tomorrow. A change in your bids should affect your account immediately. HoweverI'm not 100% sure with this question, too. As I said, post questions like that on GOMCHA or use the GOOGLEcompetition help. Cheers, Steffen

Prizes for GOMCHA

Hey guys, just wanna reinform you all of the prizes that we can receive if we were the regional/global winners..

Let's re-motivate ourselves to do even better and aim high!

:)

Global winner
The Global Winners and their professor will win a week’s holiday to San Francisco, USA, including a full day visit to the US Googleplex offices to meet the team that developed AdWords as well as participate in a presentation ceremony in their honor. The prize includes flights to San Francisco, transfers to the Google office and seven nights’ accommodation in a five-star hotel in San Francisco. In addition, each student in the Global Winners’ team will receive a laptop to the value of approximately USD $2,500.

Regional winners
The Regional Winners and their professor will be invited to spend a day at a major Google office within their region to attend a presentation ceremony in their honor. For the Americas this will be to San Francisco, for Asia Pacific this will be to Sydney and for EMEA this will be to London. The prize includes flights to the chosen Google office, plus 1 night’s hotel accommodation. In addition, each student in the Regional Winners’ team will receive a laptop to the value of approximately USD $1,300.

The second and third teams in each region (Finalists) The Finalists and their professors will be invited to attend the same dedicated presentation ceremony as the Regional winner at a major Google office within their region. For the Americas this will be to San Francisco, for Asia Pacific this will be to Sydney and for EMEA this will be to London. This prize includes flights to the chosen Google office, plus 1 night’s hotel accommodation.

The Top 50 teams in each region (Semi-finalists) Each student in a Semi-Finalist Student group will receive a special personalized certificate noting their status as a Semi-finalist in the Challenge.

Judging starts once all teams have finished on the 24th of May and winners will be announced in mid July.

A few edits..

We have currently spent $18.19 as compared to $15+ when I checked the previous time..

Bhaj, Zhishen and I have discussed and we have decided to change the bid for movie, to $0.10 instead and give it a test for one more day to see what happens next. We have decided on this also because movie is the keyword that's bringing in the people to the website!

I have already checked analytics and it has shown that the visitors through google have increased! Quite a large percentage are new visits. :)

The keyword chirashi is currently inactive because the bid of $0.35 is lower than its current bid, therefore, we have increased the bid to $0.40, which is the minimum bid required for this keyword.

We have already spent almost 10% of our budget! Current CTR is 1.34%. I'm positive that we can go much higher, because the 1.34% is based on a few hours after the launch of the campaign, before we exceeded our budget. So it's a pretty good rate! :)

Other edits that we're planning to do is to change the countries that we're targeting to those 5 countries who have more traffic inflow as stated in Analytics.

Anyway, I hope the rest of you are also logging into the system and check out what's happening with all the clicks and such.

It's quite interesting and exciting you know. :)

P/S: I will be away from 3pm onwards because my friends are coming over for a BBQ.. so, if there's anything do SMS/call me. I'll try to reply ASAP. Will continue checking the Adwords account after 11pm. :D

Campaign has started!!!

As of 12 midnight, Zhishen has started our campaign for us.

But please do not be alarmed if you're not able to view any of our ads online..

I have just checked the account together with him and realised that we have finished our budget for today and have also exceeded our budget by $2.

If you've logged onto the campaign account, you should have seen that we have spend a total of $15.94 within an hour!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Most of the clicks come from the Movie Premium adgroup, clicks are generated by the keyword MOVIE!

Hence, I have paused the keyword for today.

By the way, because we have exceeded our daily budget, our ad will not be shown for the remaining hours in the day. This is a google policy and there's nothing that we can do about it, but to wait for the next day to come..

I have checked on the minimum bids, and it seems that our competitors are currently doing a bid of 0.05 per keyboard.

Those who are interested to check, click on one of the adgroups, e.g. Movie Premiums, and a list of the keywords that we have used are shown in your screen.



Place your cursor over the magnifying glass beside each keyword, and wait for the google popup to load.



It will inform you if your ads are showing, the quality score, and minimum bid for this keyword.

I think that since we have information that the bids are rather low right now, we should change the bids to enable us to have more clicks!

As to whether or not we should re-activate the keyword "Movie", I'll leave it to you guys to decide, as I find that it's pretty generic and is sucking up our money?? :P We have like close to 100 clicks on that within 1 hour!!! :o

Anyway, this has been our first day only.. I'm glad that we've managed to recheck the account and realised this situation immediately.

Let's learn from it and start doing better for our campaign tomorrow! :)

$184 left to spend!!!!

P/S: Zhishen has informed me that he editted the global settings, so right now we're targetting to the whole world instead of Singapore. Are we supposed to do this Bhajinder?? Coz I thought previously we ignored this part, but I forgot why we ignored it. lol. :P

PP/S: I don't know why, but from the Google adwords account, it seems that the keyword Chirashi is currently inactive? I definitely did not touch this keyword.. So, just wondering what happened. Is it supposed to be inactive?

Budget

The most anticipate day will be arrive in less than an hr. We will be launching our Adword Campaign at 12am.
Had a meeting with Zhishen in the late evening to discuss on what and how we will be doing on our campaign budget. We planned out a template to keep track of the campaign in an excel in terms of clicks, impression and CTR. We will monitor the metrix everyday at 11pm and from there, we will be able to know which are the popular AdGroups or keywords to be used. We analyse situations and provided some alternative to counter the situations. Although it will be rather tedious to monitor everyday but we feel that this is the best way to monitor more effectively on our campaign. The statistics will be of good use when we are going to present at the later stage.

Situation 1
If the hit is 40 clicks, we will consider to reduce the bid. The bid which we discussed will be $0.30 (46hits), $0.28 (50hits) and $0.25(56hits). Ultimately, our aim is to ensure that our position will be at top 3.

Situation 2
However, if we are not able to hit the targeted 40 hits, the budget for the day will be carried forward to the next day. The action will be carried on subsequently. We will find out the reasons for not being able to hit the targeted clicks. Eg. To check for the position and whether is there a need to increase the bid to achieve a more prominent position.

Both of us will work together to ensure that we fully utilised the US$200 as that is one of the goal we set for this campaign. So lets anticipate the launching of our Adwords Campaign in less than an hr.. =D

Proposal and Updates

Hey Guys

I still have not received any reply from Doug, so i will be sending the proposal to Google in a short while. I will also email Steffen to inform him that we have submitted it to Google.

Also, Kelvin and Wen Sze will be meeting tonight, as they are in charge of our account tracking. Fingers crossed that we have a successful campaign!!

We will monitor the progress made and will set up another meeting date k.

Cheers and enjoy the public holiday tomorrow!!

Todays' meeting

After draining our preciousssssssssssssssss brain juice and with the help of Wensze's moral support (as she is working today), the team have come out with a brand new description for the Ad groups!

And there are:

Movie Collectibles
Choose from a variety of authentic
movie merchandise. Visit us at
http://www.popcornpop.com/

PopCornPop Singapore
Movie memorabilia specialist.
Dedicated to movie enthusiasts!
http://www.popcornpop.com/

Movie Posters
Posters for collectors & decorators
Fast delivery and instant framing!
http://www.popcornpop.com/

Movie Figurines
Disney, Harry Potter & LOTR
figurines offered! Check it out at
http://www.popcornpop.com/


Movie Premiums
Wide Range and Exclusive
Posters, Figurines, Chirashi
http://www.popcornpop.com/

So guys, keeps our fingers crossed! As the campaign is going to start s00n.

Stay tune to find out the next meeting schedule! :P

Congrats and Moving On..

Hey Guys

Firstly, congratulations to the entire team!! Great effort has been placed into making the proposal a success. Everyone deserves a pat on the back, especially our great presenters : )

Today, we will be meeting at 2pm as Li Zhen has mentioned. I second the fact that we have to be responsible to check and add to the blog consistently. If for any reason you are not sure about meeting times, please feel free to contact any other team member.

Make sure that we turn up to meetings and continue putting alot of effort into our assignment. I guess Kelvin and Wen Sze's jobs are going to kick into high gear once our campaign begins on Thursday. Please keep us updated on what is goin on and i will be emailing the excel sheet of the budget to both you guys by today, after lunch.

I better get back to work, but thanks everyone and continue shining!!

Cheers

p.s. Li Zhen we all know that you are friendly and cheerful : P Work is work, and there should be legitimate reasons for not being able to attend meetings.

Tomorrow's Meeting at 2pm

Hey guys,

Tomorrow we have a meeting at 2pm. Location will be in school's canteen.

Objectives:
- Creating of 5 Ad Groups
-Update of relevant information

I am allocating the "actual" budget for the campaign and will send to you guys by tonight. Let keep up with our good work.

Cya guys =)

Good job!

Hey guys, the first part of our presentation is finally over! Eugene and Wensze have done a great job, so let's give them a huge pat on their backs. Heh. Doug was definitely impressed with it, so this means that we're on the right track (i think) and hopefully, we'll be able to do well for the real thing! Our adwords campaign will be activated in like 2 days time?? *crosses finger*

Anyway, I would like to stress that the purpose of this blog serves as a platform for communication throughout the group. Therefore, it is each of our own individual responsibility to read the blog everyday at least twice, so that we know what is going on or if there are any latest meetings scheduled the next day.

As soon as our adwords campaign starts, I'm expecting alot of updates from the Financial Planner and Assistant FP, to let us know what they've been doing and how they have been editting the bids and such.

Bottomline is: As long as there's anything to do with this project, it has to be communicated in the blog, and it is our own individual duty to refresh the blog daily.

Not to mention that we need to login to our Adwords account too, to keep track of the statistics and see how it changes. This is especially important for presenters who are presenting the next half of the campaign audit. We need to familiarize ourselves with everything so that we can present better. :)

As Bhaj has said in the earlier post, our next meeting will take place tomorrow where we will be deciding on the few campaign taglines for our adwords advertisement. It'll be held in the school canteen at 2.00pm. Everyone is expected to attend the meeting unless you have a valid reason, i.e work.

So see you guys there ok?

P/S: I hope that I haven't been too harsh in this post.. Just want to let you guys know what's the main purpose of this blog.. That's all. I'm still the cheerful and friendly girl that you know ok? Hurhur. :P

4 Hours to Presentation... : )

Hey Guys,

Hope that everyone received the powerpoint slides and were able to open it up. So as we have all decided, we will still stick to the plan of having Wen Sze and Eugene present, rather than all of us. I have emailed Doug about this issue and he has not replied as of yet. So fingers crossed that he agrees....

I have already added the pictures for the ppt. Don't worry Li Zhen, I understand that you were busy on Saturday.

Eugene, maybe we should let Wen Sze introduce us in the beginning. It kinda makes more sense for the introductions to be done at the start. We will discuss this point when i meet you guys at 5pm today.

Also, i think that we need to meet for approx. 2 hours tomorrow, so that we can actually create the adgroups and set the keywords etc. With regards to the ad groups that Antony and Eugene have come up with, i think it needs further discussion tomorrow, but great start guys!!

So see you guys soon and bring lots of energy to our presentation! : )

Cheers

Ya i agree with Li Zhen that we should be introduced at the start of the presentation.

Anyway our lecturer has replied about the timing issue. Here is the message.

Hi Antony, the time is local time, so Singapore time.I haven't changed time zone settings yet. I think there is always a bit of delay to view the statistics. Maybe Doug or gomcha.com has an idea!?Cheers, Steffen

So i guess we'll just follow that.

Hmm..

After reading what Eugene has said, with regards to everyone of us going up in front, i thought that perhaps Wensze could say something like, "Good evening ladies and gentlemen, Hello, I'm Wensze and these are my team members, Eugene, my co-presenter, Antony, Bhajinder, our team caption, Li Zhen and Zhishen. Together, we form Team Popcornpop. And therefore now, we will be presenting to you our Google Adwords Pre-campaign report."

So as Wensze says our name out, we will then stand up from our seats and give a little bow????


What do you think of that?

Or should we still stand up after the presentation up front on the "stage"?

P/S: Have been really busy on saturday so I didn't reply any smses and msns. Sorry about that. I've received the ppt already. Will try to beautify it and send it back to Bhaj latest 6pm tomorrow night so that she can print a copy for the tutor if we're required to. :) I'll be meeting you guys on Monday 5pm as well. Ciao!

Meeting

Today I went to school to meet up with Bhaj and Eugene to prepare for Mon presentation. Made some amendment to the slides and started doing some run thru with Bhaj as well. We were discussing how we should intro our team members as our team is rather big. Anyway pro we need to gather everyone thoughts on this matter on Mon? 6 brains can work better with great suggestion? Anyway we will be meeting at 6pm on Mon to go thru the whole presentation. Cya guys..

Presentation on Monday

Ladies and Gentleman,

I have a talk with Boss, We suggest that for the last slide which is the Q&A and Thank you slides with our team members name.

It will be good that I intro you guys one by one and we all could go up stage to answer any questions that are given from the floor?

Can my point? Please suggest.

Meeting on 26 Apr

Boss, wensze and I have gone thru and amend the powerpoint slide. Now we just need to come out with the script that Wensze and I have to talk about. Also we have finalise our dress code which is blue tops with jeans (agree by boss/designer) :P.

Everything will BE running smoothly. And boss and me will be meeting at 5pm on monday for the last run of rehearsal while Wensze will join us at 6pm.

So guys! Meet you guys on Monday.

Btw, by now Boss have send the latest version of the powepoint slides, please take a note and try to figure what questions will be pop out during the presentation - questions and answer section.

Yep ok i've sent an email to our lecturer regarding some queries. Here is the email i sent.


Hi, Im a student from your UWA EBUS2205 class in Singapore. On behalf of my group mates, i would like to clarify some issues encountered during our discussions. Firstly, the campaign starts at 1st May and ends at 21st May. The dates are according to the Singapore time or the American time? Also, in our google adwords account, is there a way for us to change the time settings from GMT-8 to GMT+8? Because currently, we can only view the statistics from the previous day only at 4-5pm daily. Thank you very much and have a nice day!

Our next meeting..

Monday 6pm, to see Eugene and Wensze practice their slides..

So see ya then people!!

The advertisements

Guys, please comments???

Just now me and Eugene came up with the advertisements for the ad groups. So what do you guys think?


Movie collectibles

Looking for movie collectibles?
We have them !!!!!
Visit us now!


Movie posters

Want movie posters?
We bring you the most exclusive ones!
Right to your doorstep!!!


Movie figurines

Movie figurines!
Unique and genuine!!
Get it for your loved ones now!!!

In school now..

We're currently in school right now doing our discussion.

Offtopic for awhile. We've just recently gotten back our results of the A&P project and all of us are not happy with it! Suwei said that she has already emailed Fang about the discontent that we have towards our marks, so hopefully, there would be some changes for the better. Hurhur.

Okay. Back to the meeting.

Bhaj is currently editting the pre-campaign proposal for adwords.

Our strategy is that we will be placing high bids for the first week. Total amount spent will be around $98.

In the second week, we will be spending about $75+ in total. Third week will be the least, where we have optimised all our keywords, $30+.

Please note that the amounts can be changed from time to time, depending on the traffic from Google. Currently, as there are alot of direct website users, we have an assumption that 40 or more users will click the sponsored link from the Google search engine. The average rate now is 28.

There is also a slight problem with the Adwords account.

It seems like the timing is GMT-8.00, instead of GMT+8.00! This means that we must wait until 4-5pm everyday before we are able to view the statistics yesterday. So, our group secretary, Antony, has been tasked to email Steffen about this problem. He will post the email here soon and tell us what Steffen has said about it.

After the completion of the proposal today, Eugene and Wensze will then be asked to do the powerpoint slides and they will be meeting with Bhaj tomorrow to rehearse the presentation on Monday.

Kelvin right now is in MIA mode as he has gone to M'sia for personal business.

Antony and me will not be around for the rehearsal tomorrow so all the best guys!!!

Just 5 more days before the campaign starts..!

Updates II

Hey guys,

Just a quick update. I've actually made all of you authors of the blog already. Therefore, you can start creating posts. Please make use of this blog as this will be an important communication tool for all of us.

An email should have been sent to you, inviting you to be the writer of this blog. What you have to do is to create a blog account. Just follow the steps given by blogger. It's a very simple process and you should have no problems with that.

Also, following Bhaj's suggestion today, Zhishen will now be the Assistant Financial Planner, whereas Eugene will be the Assistant Blog Administrator.

Remember our meeting tomorrow at 2pm in school!

Hopefully we'll be able to finish all our stuff quick quick and go home earlier since it's a Friday night. Heh.

P/S: I have looked through Google Analytics today and it seems like we have around 134 clicks today! (if I remember correctly) which is quite good! :)

Budget Suggestion

Kelvin and I had discussed on how we are going to allocate our budget for our Adwords campaign. We will be doing up on a calendar and to input funds for each day. More funds will be pump into the 1st week of the campaign to boost up on the heavy traffic into our website.. =D (Sounds so confident hor?) After we decide how much funds for each individual days then we will amend the funds accordingly. This is what we have decided so far for the budget. The current marketing analysis, both of us have done up but not too sure whether Kelvin send to you guys anot cos he never sent me.. and I cannot contact him also.. Anyway if possible then we can meet up on Sat afternoon after my work. Cheers..

Updates.

I have just sent out the various invitations to your emails, so if you're able to view this, that means you've been permitted to view the blog already! Please remember that this blog is set as private so unless you login to your account, you would not be able to view this blog at all. :)

*****
All of us turned up for the meeting in school today except Wensze as she's working.

First up in the list was creating roles for each of us. So far, we have the roles for 4 people in our group, which is indicated at the side of the blog.

We still have 2 members without positions therefore Bhaj and I are trying my best to figure out what sort of positions we should give them. So if anyone of you has any suggestions, please voice it out ok?

Hmm, we have also finally figured out the few Adgroups that we're gonna have for this challenge.

1. Movie Premiums
2. Movie Posters
3. Movie Figurines
4. Movie Collectibles
5. Popcorn Pop

So how is it going to work?

After the US$200 has been pumped into our account, the Adwords will start running immediately. Based on our understanding, it seems like the Adgroups are allowed to run concurrently. Therefore, we will be placing 4 keywords into each of the Adgroups, as we are only allowed to have 20 keywords in total.

So far, Google Analytics has shown that up till today late afternoon, there are about 40 visitors in the website. Most of them are from Singapore. It seems that these people are aware of the shop as the keywords that they have used are quite direct, with it being related to the company's name.

We have realised that there might be a discrepancy, because Danny told us the day before that there are at least 200 visitors to his website per day. I just thought about it and realised that maybe it might have been due to the short amount of time that the code was placed in the website? Nevertheless, we are still observing the website statistics for one more day, before coming up with our strategy on Friday.

The proposal is somewhat done as well, except for the strategy part. Other than that, once it is completed, we can start on the presentation slides and prepare for our presentation on Monday.

Please note that the next time we're meeting in on Friday 2pm in school.

Hopefully we're able to do up a good strategy plan by then. People who are good in maths should start owning up right now and help to calculate the budget on Friday! Our financial planner and AFP are unavailable so it's up to us then..

Anyway, I'm quite excited at the thought of our campaign starting. Are you?? ;)

Meeting Danny

We first met up at the Esplanade library to discuss the questions that we were going to ask Danny.

After much consideration, we have decided that it would be better to pass him the code for Google Analytics on that day itself, so that he can place the code into the company's website on Tuesday night. This will then give us one day's time to take a look at the website statistics and then plan our Adwords strategy more efficiently and effectively.

The information that we have gotten from Danny is mostly written on our Pre-Campaign proposal by Bhajinder.

I guess what shocked Bhaj and I the most was that their target market included new homeowners who wanted to decorate their entertainment rooms or any part of their house with such movie posters. It was something that we did not think of, which was why it was surprising to us.

And as of yesterday night, Eugene has informed us that the code had been placed in the website already. We look forward to the results at the next meeting in school.

Sunshine after a storm

After much realization that our initial company had an Adwords account (which strangely appeared at various timings), we changed to Popcornpop within a day, on Monday 21st April 2008.

There was much reading to be done about the Google Online Challenge, and we realised that we had found quite a substantial amount of useful information on Gomcha.

Thereafter our first tutorial, we had a mini meeting to decide on what action should be taken next, now that we've gotten a new company.

The conclusion we came to was: Bhajinder, Eugene and Li Zhen will go down to the Esplanade to discuss with Danny (Popcornpop's Boss) the Adwords project and as well as asking him several important questions which are crucial for us in our pre-campaign proposal.

As the other three members are not able to make it, due to work and other personal reasons, they will look through the website and try to fill up the gaps for the company's profile and other relevant information.

And then we were dismissed.

Hi guys!

This is officially the first post of our Google Adwords blog. This blog serves to inform all of us, the current situation of our project, where we are headed to, what have we done and more. It also acts as a log book, to keep track of meetings we have and the people who attended the meeting, and the different roles and tasks that each of us is in charge of. :)

I will be updating this blog again on a regular basis together with my helper.

Just for recording purposes, we have hence started our project on the 20th April 2008.

Our initial chosen company was Polybuilding. But, due to the fact that they've already signed up for an Adwords advertising through a company, we have no choice but to choose another SME.

Fortunately, Eugene had contacts and which is why we are doing our Google Adwords on PopcornPop.

For more information on them, please do not hesitate to visit their website at: http://www.popcornpop.com.