Articles by Elizabeth Marsten

You might not be. I was poking around in Google Shopping results the other day and found that there are some merchants who have partnered with major brands that are essentially “piggy backing” off their name through the Google Shopping Feed. At first, I thought NewEgg was being just really clever/sneaky by changing their store [...]

Duh. eBay commissioned a 26 page study through their research lab with one of their researchers and some reputable sources (a Univ. of Chicago Assistant Professor & UC Berkeley Associate Professor), citing some reputable resources (like Google Chief Economist Hal Varian), doing some pretty in depth research and even formulating their own algebraic equation to [...]

We’ve discussed it, talked about it, webinar-ed, convened around the water cooler, blogged and tweeted. Opinions are hot, high, frequent and mixed. One thing is for sure, it’s not going away. Each time it seems as if the proverbial dust has settled, more about EC is announced. Each week a Google webinar reveals a few [...]

Armed once again with intern Tim and a few dollars from Portent’s pocketbook, I decided to take Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) for a spin using our small business PPC Essentials management package as a test case. I made up my mind pretty quickly and an informal poll of my massive follower list (massive being a [...]

I’ve never done a prediction piece for the Portent blog before but based on the number of times a year I get asked “how much will I make from PPC?” I must have a crystal ball somewhere. (Particularly since when this question is usually asked, it’s been 5 minutes, I haven’t seen the cart funnel, [...]

In our endless quest to find the “next big thing” in PPC, we tried a small test at Portent on Portent products and services with Twitter ads. I noticed there were many “how to get started” posts but few data-supported case studies with results. Armed with PPC intern Tim, a $100 head start from a [...]

Well OK, I’m being a tiny bit dramatic. But Google Shopping could totally and utterly screw you over if: You’re not a major brand with an AdWords rep to spoon feed you You’re not familiar with how shopping feeds, shopping engines & AdWords works You haven’t started thinking about this and you’re an ecommerce retailer [...]

Rick is the CEO and Co-Founder of CPC Strategy, a comparison shopping engine management company started in 2007. They take client feeds across multiple platforms (Amazon, Nextag, PriceGrabber, etc;) and optimize them for ROI through strategy, attention to detail and expertise in CSEs (comparison shopping engines.) Rick was kind enough to let me ask a [...]

How do you know when you should use a lander over a category or product page in PPC? Well, yes, you test. But let’s say you’ve tested between the two, but are stuck in a circle and would really like to test a category lander just for PPC and need some “evidence” to convince a [...]

Froogle, Google Product Search, Google Shopping- whatever you call it, it’s integrated with AdWords – now more than ever. And if you think Google is going to stop there…yeah, right. This just got a bit more competitive is all. Oh yeah, and less free. If you’ve been following along with the recent announcement that Google [...]