Our family at display ad network XTEND have just put out a great post on their blog that is extremely relevant to PPC publishers.  With their permission, we are republishing the article here.  To read the original please click here.

PPC UPDATES!!!!!

November Market Overview:

Bing has reached its all-time high market share of 11.8% in November after a period of steady slow growth. However the combined market share of Yahoo and Bing is going down slightly, due to a decline in Yahoo’s market share. Moreover, the overall search activity (in terms of search queries) in the US has dropped down slightly, 4% decline since October.

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2010/12/comScore_Releases_November_2010_U.S._Search_Engine_Rankings

AdWords

• New Display Ad Builder features: The Display Ad Builder is an AdWords feature that allows the advertiser to create display ads without the need in image editing software by using templates. The new features added include AdWords Editor support and social templates which allow you, for example, to include your latest tweets in your display ads. In addition, more template optimization options are now available – text boxes and images are now moveable and resizable.

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/12/significant-advances-for-display-ad.html

• Opportunities tab update: Some new features are now available in the opportunities tab in your AdWords account. From now on you can view “ideas” in this tabs, which are alerts suggesting bid changes, first position bidding for certain keywords, and keyword suggestions. You can also export those ideas to Excel in order to review or save them.

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/12/discover-new-features-in-opportunities.html

• Keyword Tool updates: Some Keyword tool features have been updated. You can now “star” keywords to mark them for review later, and you can also view your keywords as plain text for easier editing.

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/12/keyword-tool-when-you-talk-we-listen.html

• Global Market Finder: This new and exciting feature brings together several tools you can use to better plan, create and optimize your global campaigns. Those tools include the Global Market Finder, which allows you to view and estimate the potential of global markets for your product in term of  search numbers,  Google Translator integration for creating foreign-language campaigns, and other tools that allow you to evaluate competition, compare between markets and more. If you are interested in opportunities for expansion, these tools will definitely help take your activity to the next level.

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/12/going-global-with-google.html

• Automated Rules: this feature (currently in beta) allows advertisers to create a customized set of rules that will make automatic changes to specific elements in their account based on criteria such as CTR or conversion rates. For example, it’s possible to create a rule that will modify the Max CPC bids based on conversion rates.

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/12/adwords-rules-and-so-can-you.html

MSN/Yahoo

• Merger Effects: A continuation from the last update, reports on the effects of the merger keep coming in. Another advertiser’s study reports results similar to what was previously reported, CPC seems to have spiked right after the merger, but right now the CPCs are going back to pre-merger levels. The CTRs dropped and remain lower than before the merger.

http://searchenginewatch.com/3641616

PPC Academy wrap-up

• SearchEngineLand.com have recently finished posting their “PPC Academy” series of blog posts – here is a chapter-by-chapter guide of the 1-year course on improving your PPC skills:

http://searchengineland.com/ppc-academy-wrap-up-guidebook-58725

Social networks world wide:

• Facebook continues to grow and steal users from smaller local social networks. You can view a map of the most popular social networks worldwide, and maps of changes since June 2009:

http://www.vincos.it/world-map-of-social-networks/