Baidu Content Campaigns

To start with Baidu’s Content Network, set a daily budget and create new content-targeted campaigns.

You can also import your search-targeted campaigns (from Baidu PPC/search) and convert them into content-targeted campaigns. When importing a search campaign:

• Set a maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid for all the ad groups.
• Import ad groups, ads and keywords by match types into the new content campaign.
• Exclude IP addresses for all the ad groups.
• Set geo-locations to default (the entire China) or set geo-locations to specific cities and/or provinces for all the ad groups.

Baidu Content Ad Groups

After creating a new Baidu content-targeted campaign, you should create content-targeted ad groups.

Set up targeting for each ad group with one of the 3 targeting options. You can:

• Target all the sites within the entire Baidu Content Network.
• Target websites by categories.

• Target by top level domain (TLD) names.

To narrow down where your ads (in your ad groups) are displayed in Baidu’s Content Network:

• Set geo-locations to default (the entire China) or set geo-locations to specific cities and/or provinces.
• Add up to 5,000 keywords to each ad group.

To each content ad group:

• Set a maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid.
• Select one of the 3 display methods that applies to your ad group’s display ads: display ads within text content on web pages, display ads within header, footer and sidebars of web pages, or display ads in pop-up windows.

Baidu Content Ads

Baidu allows 2 ad formats in the Content Network:

• Text ads
• Display ads (or image ads)

Requirements to text ads:

• Headline: No more than 14 Chinese characters.
• Description line 1: No more than 20 Chinese characters.
• Description line 2: No more than 20 Chinese characters.
• Destination URL: No more than 1024 characters.
• Display URL: Must be no more than 35 characters and contain your top-level domain name (TLD).

Display ads (or image ads) can be in one of the 18 sizes:

• 760×90
• 728×90
• 1024×60
• 580×90
• 468×60
• 760×75
• 760×60
• 960×60
• 460×60
• 640×60
• 960×90
• 250×250
• 200×200
• 336×280
• 300×250
• 360×300
• 160×600
• 120×600

A typical Baidu brand link ad consists of several parts with 6 click-able Areas:

Which area of Baidu’s brand link ad will return the highest click-through-rate (CTR)? Take a guess!

• Area A: Ad’s Title (text link)
• Area B: 90×90-pixel banner (image link)
• Area C: Embedded links (text link)
• Area D: Promotional text links (text link)
• Area E: Search snippet links (text link)
• Area F: 175×300-pixel banner (image link)

Take a look at your trademark or brand keywords’ search traffic volume through Baidu keyword research tool.

Baidu’s search query report shows search queries that have led visitors to your website through your Baidu PPC ads. The search query report sorts by date and provides metrics:

• Search query
• Impression
• Account name
• Campaign
• Ad group
• Ad title
• Ad description line 1
• Ad description line 2
• Display URL

Baidu’s search query report is another source to find new keywords besides Baidu keyword research tool.

Take Actions from Baidu Search Queries

Keyword conversion data that you can capture through Baidu PPC conversion tracking is not currently available in Baidu’s search query report. However, by reviewing the meaning of the search queries, you can split all the search queries into 2 categories:

• Relevant search queries to your site: Add the relevant search queries as new keywords to your campaigns / ad groups.
• Irrelevant search queries to your site: Add the irrelevant search queries as negative keywords to your campaigns / ad groups.

Baidu’s Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are added as either exact match negative keywords or broad match negative keywords.

And you can add multiple negative keywords at a time.

Add Baidu PPC Conversion Tracking Goals

To set up Baidu PPC conversion tracking, add a new goal through the conversion tracking tool. Enter:

• Your site’s URL
• The goal’s name
• The goal’s URL (for example, purchase confirmation page)
• The URL matching (exact match or regular expression)

Baidu PPC’s Conversion Tracking Tool’s Tracking Methods

Baidu PPC’s conversion tracking can track your website’s conversions through one of the two methods of your choice:

• Auto-tagging: Baidu automatically appends the parameter “bdclkid =XXXXXX” to all your Baidu Phoenix Nest PPC URLs. For auto-tagging to work, your site must allow parameters in URLs.
• Cookie Tracking: Baidu drops cookies to all the visitors to your website from your Baidu Phoenix Nest PPC URLs. For cookie tracking to correctly report conversions, visitors’ browsers must accept cookies, and visitors must not delete cookies from their browsers before conversions are made.

Baidu Conversion Tracking Code Snippet

Get the conversion tracking code snippet from your Baidu Phoenix Nest account and insert the code snippet within the open and close body tags of your purchase confirmation page / thank you page. An example of the conversion code snippet:

If you optimize your Baidu PPC campaigns for driving visitors to make “purchase” through your site, this code snippet’s purpose is to track the number of successful purchase on your site.

Stop Baidu PPC Conversion Tracking

Baidu PPC’s conversion tracking can be disabled in one of the two ways:

• Stop tracking all types of conversions that you have created by completely disabling the conversion tracking tool.
• Disable each conversion tracking goal that you have defined/created.

Alternatives to Baidu PPC’s Conversion Tracking

Consider Baidu Analytics and/or Google Analytics:

• Baidu Analytics: If you aren’t using Google Analytics but need to monitor your Baidu SEO traffic and Baidu PPC traffic, set up and use Baidu Analytics in conjunction with Baidu PPC’s conversion tracking tool.
• Google Analytics: If you are already monitoring web traffic of your site through Google Analytics and don’t want to insert additional codes (for example, Baidu PPC’s conversion tracking codes) into your purchase confirmation pages, Google Analytics PPC conversion tracking is an alternative option for tracking your website’s PPC conversions.

Trends to Conversion Tracking

Baidu’s launch of conversion tracking tool is no surprise as the PPC trends are becoming more performance-based. Several years ago, the big 3 search engines Google, Yahoo and Bing all have made conversion tracking available to their PPC platforms Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft Adcenter respectively:

• Adwords conversion tracking
• Yahoo Search Marketing conversion tracking
• Microsoft Adcenter New Conversion Counting Options

• Baidu Phoenix Nest
• Baidu Brand Link Ads
• Baidu Search Open Platform
• Baidu Organic Search (or Baidu SEO)

Baidu Phoenix Nest

Baidu PPC Phoenix Nest is a PPC (paid search) system that was first launched in April 2009 as a beta program. Through Phoenix Nest’s PPC auction system, ads are displayed above of and/or alongside Baidu’s organic search engine results pages, and ads are ranked by keywords’ click-through-rates (CTR) and maximum cost-per-click (CPC).

Baidu’s Phoenix Nest system was officially launched in full after Baidu retired the old PPC system in December 2009.

PPC keyword ads (like Baidu Phoenix Nest ads) require advertisers to have experience in optimizing paid search campaigns, before good ROI can be achieved.

Baidu Brand Link Ads

Baidu brand link ads for trademark keywords are for advertisers focusing on “branding” by maximizing their brands’ ad spaces on Baidu’s search engine results pages.

Baidu Search Open Platform

Baidu Search Open Platform is the onebox results / universal search results that may appear in Baidu’s organic search results pages. Suggest website content for inclusion by submitting URLs or XML files through your Baidu Search Open Platform account.

However, Baidu gives few guidelines to what relevant content will be accepted and displayed in Baidu’s organic search results. So you should not expect all your submissions to be included in Baidu’s organic search results.

Other Baidu Marketing Channel(s) on Baidu’s SERP

Baidu Huobao text ads used to be a convenient ad type that do not require advertisers to optimize their ads regularly. However, Baidu Huobao text ads are believed to have stopped accepting new advertisers and are phasing out due to Baidu Phoenix Nest’s full launch.

Baidu Organic Search Traffic

Submit your site to Baidu. Increase your Chinese web site’s Baidu organic search traffic by improving your website’s Baidu organic search ranking through search engine optimization (SEO).

Baidu’s Web Analytics and Keyword Research Tools

Baidu’s keyword research tool is a “must use” keyword tool for Baidu Phoenix Nest and Baidu search engine optimization (SEO).

Baidu Analytics allows you to track your Chinese website’s traffic numbers.

Baidu Editor is a tool that should be installed and run locally on your computer, and is similar to Google’s Adwords Editor. The interfaces of Baidu Editor and Google’s Adwords Editor are almost identical.

Download your Baidu Phoenix Nest PPC account onto your local computer through Baidu Editor before making changes. Baidu Editor allows you to:

• Create a new campaign

• Create an ad group or create/edit multiple ad groups
• Create a single ad or create/edit multiple ads
• Add a single keyword or add/edit multiple keywords

• Set campaign budgets
• Set ad delivery methods
• Edit keyword match types (exact/phrase/broad)
• Update keyword CPC or ad group CPC
• Update keyword destination URLs or ad destination URLs
• Pause / deactivate campaigns / ad groups / ads / keywords

Use Baidu Editor to look up duplicate keywords in your Baidu PPC account, and then pause/remove those unnecessary duplicate keywords from triggering search queries on Baidu.

Baidu Editor can check the changes you have made in your Phoenix Nest account but have not been synchronized to your account copy in Baidu Editor. This ensures you always have the “freshest” account copy before making any changes to your Baidu PPC account.

The integration of the Classic Edition and Phoenix Nest happened on 30 November. During this system upgrade, Baidu shut down advertisers’ access to both the new system and the old system. Today, Baidu resumed the access to Phoenix Nest system.

Baidu has been allowing advertisers to concurrently run both systems (Classic Edition and Phoenix Nest) ever since the launch of Baidu’s Phoenix Nest. However, this Baidu PPC ad auction arrangement was not the ideal way for advertisers to manage their accounts that may have hundreds of thousands of keywords in each system. After the upgrade, you will have to only manage the campaigns in your Phoenix Nest account.

Regarding the display of PPC ads and organic search results, you will not find any significant difference on Baidu’s search results pages. However, based on search queries you will see 3 major different combinations of PPC sponsored ads and organic search results showing up on Baidu’s search engine result pages:

• Search queries on high traffic keywords: 10 PPC ads followed by 10 organic search results on the left side and 8 PPC ads on the right side
• Search queries on long tail keywords: 3 PPC ads followed by 10 organic search results on the left side and 8 PPC ads on the right side
• Search queries on keywords that are below the quality threshold: 10 organic search results and 8 PPC ads on the right side

Classic Edition’s old account data is still available through the report section after this upgrade.

I believe this integration will bring new opportunities to marketers who are focusing on search engine marketing through Baidu. Phoenix Nest is an auction system that you are required to consider your Baidu PPC account’s quality which mainly consists of keyword quality. You should optimize by improving your Baidu PPC’s keywords quality. The old way of keyword bidding by focusing mainly on keyword CPC will be forced to change.

Eligibility to Baidu’s Brand Link Ads

Baidu’s Brandlink ads are eligible to advertisers who have the ownerships of their their brands (or trademarks).

How Baidu’s Brand Link Ads work?

Baidu allows each advertiser to select up to five brand keywords. When search queries match one of their five brand keywords, the brandlink ads will appear.

Advantages of Baidu’s Brand Link Ads

Through Baidu PPC Phoenix Nest, any advertisers are allowed to buy competitors’ trademark keywords. However, Baidu’s Brand Link ad area is extremely large, and is relatively larger than the ad area of Google Adwords Brand Zone. When Baidu’s Brand Link ads are shown, you will have to scroll down before you can find any competitors’ PPC ads.

Fees to Participate in Baidu’s Brand Link

Advertisers have to pay a fixed sponsorship fee in which the minimum period for participation is a month. Baidu determines the fixed fee according to the 5 keywords’ search volume.

If you are already a Baidu PPC advertiser, you should work out whether it is most cost effective to continue your trademark keywords through Baidu PPC or participate in Baidu’s Brand Link.

Baidu’s Two PPC Auction Systems – Classic Edition and Phoenix Nest Edition

Baidu’s PPC ads are served by two distinct auction platforms simultaneously:

• Baidu Classic Edition – Baidu PPC’s old platform
• Baidu Phoenix Nest Edition (aka Professional Edition) – Baidu PPC’s new platform

The two PPC ad auction systems have different ranking algorithms, but together they contribute to how Baidu’s PPC ads are displayed on Baidu’s search engine results pages.

Baidu’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERP)

A typical Baidu SERP first page starts with 10 Classic Edition PPC ads which are followed by 10 organic search results on the left side. On the right side, a maximum of 8 Phoenix Nest PPC ads are shown.

• Left side: 20 search results
• Right side: 8 search results

Another version of Baidu SERP first page without any Classic Edition PPC ad competition shows a maximum of 3 Phoenix Nest PPC ads (with a slightly different background color) on the left side (above organic results). The rest of the Phoenix Nest PPC ads continue on the right side.

• Left side: 13 search results
• Right side: 8 search results

Before Phoenix Nest Edition was launched, Baidu tried to replace the SEO result with a Classic Edition PPC ad at position 10.

Baidu Phoenix Nest Edition

Baidu’s Phoenix Nest ranks ads by including CTR in the ranking algorithm. Baidu Phoenix Nest’s PPC Keyword quality can be optimized by improving CTR of the keywords.

Phoenix Nest’s ads are displayed on the right side of Baidu. A typical example of Phoenix Nest ads that show up on the right side:

One exception is that Phoenix Nest PPC ads can also show up above the organic search results, when there is no competing keywords that are matched to the appropriate Classic Edition PPC ads.

Baidu Classic Edition

Baidu’s Classic Edition includes ads’ click through rates in the PPC ad ranking algorithm:

Ad Rank = CTR x Maximum Bid

Classic Edition’s PPC ads are displayed on the left side of Baidu and above the organic search results. Baidu will display up to a maximum of 10 PPC ads at this spot. One exception is that when the spot is competed by more than 10 ads. From the 11th ads onwards, ads will show up on the right side of Baidu after all the Phoenix Nest ads are displayed.

When Classic Edition PPC ads show up on the right side of Baidu:

The Classic Edition PPC ads can be distinguished from the typical Phoenix Nest PPC ads by tiny details:

Baidu Huobao Text Ads

Baidu Huobao text ads previously have been sold to advertisers for fixed annual fees regardless of performance and rooms for optimization. However, Huobao text ads will be phased out.

Enable Web Analytics

Enable Baidu Web Analytics for your website from within your Baidu PPC account.

Insert Conversion Tracking Code Snippet

Insert the tracking code snippet of Baidu Web Analytics. Baidu Web Analytics gives you two sets of code snippets:

• The optional code snippet that goes to the header of each web page

• The compulsory code snippet that goes to the bottom of your conversion success page

To track your Baidu PPC conversions, you will only need to embed the “compulsory” code onto your conversion success page (or thank you page).

Create URL Tags

Create unique tags for each of your keyword via the Destination URL Builder. Use the constructed URLs as your keywords’ destination URLs in your Baidu PPC account.

With each keyword, you will have to provide values for your campaign’s source, medium, name and keyword, and tag them to your destination URL. “Campaign Creative” is the only optional parameter.

• Destination URL: e.g. http://www.gordonchoi.com/about
• Campaign Source (hmsr): e.g. baidufc
• Campaign Medium (hmmd): e.g. ppc
• Campaign Name (hmpl): e.g. about gordon choi
• Campaign Keyword (hmkw): e.g. gordon choi
• Campaign Creative (hmci): e.g. ad1

The successful constructed destination URL would look like:

http://www.gordonchoi.com/about?hmsr=baidufchmmd=ppc&hmpl=about%20gordon%20choi&hmkw=gordon%20choi&hmci=ad1

Keyword Conversion Tracking of Other PPC Programs

You can also track keyword conversions of other PPC programs via Baidu Web Analytics in the same way.

Baidu has been updating keywords’ minimum bids according to search volume and other factors. Alerts regarding keyword minimum bid updates are emailed directly to Baidu’s PPC advertisers.

In the alerts, Baidu shows your keywords’ current maximum bids and the minimum bids required for your keywords to appear in Baidu’s paid search results. For example:

• Keyword’s current maximum bid: RMB 0.45
• Minimum bid required: RMB 0.50

The short term solution to get your ads show up within Baidu’s paid search results is to raise your keywords’ maximum cost-per-click bids to or above the minimum bids required. However, the most cost effective solution is to improve your keywords’ quality index in your Baidu PPC account. To improve your keywords’ quality index, Baidu suggested you should:

• Ensure your keywords are relevance to your products and/or services
• Improve each of your keyword’s relevance to the corresponding ad text

This means like with other major search engines (e.g. Google Adwords and Microsoft Adcenter), you should also improve the click through rate (CTR) of your ads (and/or keywords) which is one of the major factors to your Baidu keyword’s quality index.

Baidu Phoenix Nest’s PPC ads have been mainly showing up on the right hand side of Baidu.com. The only exceptions are when ads’ quality is high or competitions are few, Phoenix Nest’s PPC ads will appear above Baidu’s organic search results. Due to search engine users’ click behavior, you should expect Baidu’s right hand side ads to generate lower CTR than those ads on the left hand side (or above the organic search results).

Baidu Huobao text ads are also competing for those right side ad spots against the Phoenix Nest PPC ads. However, regarding ad copy optimization, you should have more control over your Baidu Phoenix Nest ads than those Baidu Huobao ads of your competitors.

Baidu also rebranded its search marketing services from Baidu Jingjia (Bidding) to Baidu Tuiguang (Marketing).

With Baidu Search Marketing Pro, your ads will be eligible to appear on the top 3 positions of sponsored links (before Baidu’s organic search results) and the spots on the right side. This essentially puts Baidu’s sponsored links and organic search results look a lot like those of Google’s.

Many improvements of Baidu’s new platform are believed to follow Google Adwords which is the common search engine marketing industry’s standard.

Account structure

Ad group level has been added to the new account structure:

Account – Campaign – Ad Group – Keyword and Ad

This enables the following keyword-to-ad relations within an ad group:

• One keyword to one ad
• One keyword to many ads
• Many keywords to one ad
• Many keywords to many ads

Daily Budget

To control your account’s daily spend, you can set a maximum daily budget on the campaign level. The lowest daily budget you can set per campaign is RMB50.

Keyword matching

Broad match and phrase match keyword types have been introduced. Along with exact match keywords, the use of broad and phrase match keyword types allow your ads to show up on more relevant user searched keywords. You can also use phrase and broad match keywords is to discover your negative keywords.

Negative keyword matching

By appropriately using negative keywords with broad match and phrase match keywords, you can prevent your ads from appearing on irrelevant user searched keywords.

Ad rotation

Baidu now allows you to create multiple ads for a single keyword in which your ads will be rotated.

Geo-targeting

You can target your ads not only to the entire China, but for example to Northern China (multiple provinces level), Hubei Province (province level), or Beijing (city level).

Day parting

You can pre-set your ads to automatically show within specific hours or days. Day parting is set on hourly intervals.

Keyword suggestion tool and bid estimator

You can use the keyword suggestion tool to discover relevant keywords that will generate sales to your site, and use the bid estimator to find out the CPC of each keyword.

You can also find out the keywords’ combined ranking index of your competitors before launching your campaigns on Baidu.

Bulk import-and-export tool

The bulk tool enables you to quickly upload and download your keywords and ads via spreadsheets. Currently, the bulk tool only supports the import and export for spreadsheets of Excel versions 97-2003.

IP exclusion

You can exclude your ads from showing up on searches through specific IP addresses.

Ad preview

You can preview your ads via the ad preview tool. Under ad preview, impressions and clicks that trigger your ads will not add up to your campaign statistics.

The natural search results begin at position 5 and end at position 9. Five out of 10 search results on the first page are actually paid search ads.

Try some other Chinese keywords and they may not yield sponsored ad at all. Normally with popular keywords, 2 to 4 PPC ads are displayed before the natural search results. PPC sponsored ads are marked with a clickable link that says “Tui-Guang” which takes you to the specific advertiser’s website.

Baidu.com is the number one search engine in China regarding search market share. Setting aside marketing budgets and incorporating Baidu PPC into your China PPC strategies is absolutely essential.

Baidu.com, the search engine with the 3rd highest search volume in the world in December 2007, also offers Baidu Huobao text ads as alternative. Huobao ads are displayed at the right hand column of Baidu’s search result pages.

Baidu Hubao is not exactly like PPC ads. You pay a fixed yearly fee, rather than cost-per-click, which is what Baidu Search Marketing currently is.

There are 10 ad positions available for a keyword, on a first come first serve basis. The first advertiser who sends payment to Baidu gets the first position. The first 3 ad positions are fixed ads. Ad positions 4 to 10 rotate on a daily basis. Everyday ads on positions 4 to 9 move down one position and ad on position 10 move up to position 4.

Each Huobao ad is shown on the right hand side of Baidu and its selected partner sites for the duration of one year. Advertisers will have to pay in full (for the cost of a year) before their ads will be shown. If you have missed the purchase for the year, you will have to queue for the next period, and you are only allowed to start queuing not more than 3 months before the start of the next period.

You will be allowed 13 Chinese characters in the headline and 32 characters in the description. If you include your keywords in the ad description or headline, your keywords will be shown red.

Unlike conventional PPC, one problem with Baidu Huobao is that you have little control over the ranking of your ads by optimization. The only changes you can make are your ads and your landing pages. Also, this format of text ads does not suit mid- and small-size businesses as the upfront cost you need to pay could be expensive.

By the way, Huobao means “explosive” in Chinese. For those you can read Chinese, here is a brief description about Baidu Huobao.

CPC x Keyword Quality

The higher the Combined Ranking Index of an individual keyword, the higher that keyword is ranked. Keyword Quality includes the following factors:

• Clickthrough Rate (CTR)
• Adcopy
• Landing Page
• Other Historical Factors

I believe obviously this is Baidu’s great advancement in terms of its PPC ad platform. The change is inevitable as two other American major PPC players MSN Adcenter and Ask.com Sponsored Listings have already included CTR and some other factors into calculating PPC ad rankings. By Q4 Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) will also be doing the same via its new PPC platform, Panama.