"F.E.E.L.I.N.G. C.A.L.L.E.D. A.D.S."

This challenge is one of 2 or 3 most thrilling experiences of my recent life. The way reports get you upset is nearly surprising, and the concern you're into when looking at all those numbers overcomes by far the worst and abrupt election upshot - which actually we did have.

We're now waiting for a complete report of the first 3 days of campaign, trying to figure out why impressions keep going up.. i guess it may be a matter of too much keywords for each group, but most of the problem comes from the content network that keeps raising up impressions at thousands at a day.

Next step i guess will be to delete useless keywords and adjust bidding options for most gainful ones, improve ads wherever possible, keep excluding specific network's sites not bringing any click. We are also taking a look at google analytics, but i don't think we can go on even a little further with all of the seo stuff. That's to be said, the help we expected on website improvement is still to come, and the business owner is gone missing somewhere.. at least i hope is having a good time :)

Tomorrow we'll run an exam at the college, so we have a really kind excuse in letting adwords by itself for a couple of hours. May the blessing of madchester sound be with you, we'll try to update as soon as adwords will let us.

Vincenzo.

That's how we get ready fot the challenge

Hi folks, Vincenzo's right back to update you.
We had to celebrate not one, but two of our team members Saturday evening. Luigi and Sonia became 28 and 27, so we just voted her house as the best place to take possession of when drinking and shouting is more needed than breathing.

At 2 a.m. we had to run out and colonize the street, since a silly neighbour started beating on the door threatening us he was going to call the cops.. still now i'm absolutely convinced he just wanted us to invite him have a drink.

Anyway, this is us.. I'm the pinky primped piece of wonder you see in almost each picture (click on the images for large-size view).

Oh.. i nearly forgot.. i'm actually working on adwords now. Checking the panel, setting bids and other details that in the end wil state our supremacy.

Love,
Vincenzo.

Sunday morning.....

Hello to everyone, it's Vincenzo, wishing you a great sunday.

Yesterday's been a very tough day, as we'been trying to compare all kind of keywords that could be useful to our campaign. We're not sure about the criterion, and that's the issue we've been charged since the beginning: finding a lead concept that guides us through all decisions, 'cause nobody really seems to know what should be our breakeven point, nor where to find some case-history to show us as successful campaigns.

Well, i don't like to cross my bridges before i come to them, and all this is also partially exciting, because it teaches us how to fulfill hard tasks without all instruments. I already feel a little thankful, because i know that if i should've learned adwords all by myself, i'd have left the panel just a few seconds after i got in.. and i guess i can say the same for a lot of us.

Another good thing i'm learning, is that knowing usability is a very precious skill. One of the major benefits of finding a friendly and helpful business, in fact, is that you have the chance to improve very much the site you're promoting. Roberto's being very kind about this, and he's really apllying himself to make the mountain of changes we suggested.

In the next few days we'll go mad trying to write the pre-campaign document, full with ad texts, goals, and a lot of other demanding explanations. I found myself astonished when i saw how much points go to the final part of the document, as i knew we had to erase all those cute information we got about market, and free space to the unknown adwords details.

Well, i wish you good luck, and i take leave with this funny video i found on an unofficial social network about the challenge. It's a rapper who explains his way some key-concepts about online advertising.

Have a great week!

3D Mansion: the business

Hi all, I'm Sonia.
At this time my role is the "account manger" of the group, because I mainly maintain relationships with our client. Finding a business disposed to commission its online campaign to a group of students was very hard. A lot of people, who I have asked to participate at Google Challenge as our business, were afraid to have to pay for the campaign. Another part of these, didn't trust in online campaign and said me "I am not interested".
After some days of searches I have found the business.
I'm talking about "3D Mansion", a webzine of computer graphics created by Italian experts, directed by Roberto Lombardo. 3D Mansion's site has been re-opened with a new look at the half of febbruary 2008. Actually there are about 3,000 visits monthly.Roberto Lombardo was lead Artist 3d department at 7Th Sense s.r.l (for example, he was involved in the developement of "The fish file", a game for GameBoy Advance published by MC2-Microïds). He wrote several tutorial and articles for magazine like "Io programmo", "Game Republic" e "The Games Machine". Now he spends a lot of time in managing his webzine, and collaborates with many societies which operate in computer graphics field .
After Roberto's agreement, we have made an analysis of site quality, including Usability and accessibility. Then we have sent the report to Roberto, who have charged his webmaster of doing some modifications.
One week ago, we have met Roberto to arrange the most important goals of the Adwords campaign. Now we are writing the Pre-campaign document and we are analyzing the web log file of 3D Mansion's site to understand user's behaviours.

I hope we'll make a good work,

Sonia

"Give me the money!!"

Hi, here we are with our first step in the challenge. We're from university "Sapienza", Rome.
Our group is made up by:

Vincenzo De Simone (me, captain)
Sonia Mendola
Luigi Tranchina
Roberta Sanzani
Mario Di Bona



Visualizzazione ingrandita della mappa



It all started for us about a month ago, when our teacher told us we'd take part to this challenge. Then we just rushed up to eat all we could while easter vacations, and since we got no spring break, just after that Sonia came out with the business that in the end we've chosen for our campaign.

These kind of projects always get me a little paranoid, so i don't know yet if a can tell what kind of activity we're about to promote. I guess in the next few days we're gonna spent some of our preciuos time in deciding all these sort of stuff.

Before I say goodnight, i wanted to share the accident that opened our experience. As a captain, i was supposed to create the adwords account and then keep it paused until our teacher told us when to begin. Well, i'm not saying that the "important notes" part of the google document was incorrect, or too ugly to look at, but somehow i didn't notice it in the first place, so i signed out and left the campaign running for a couple of days. We spent about 10% of overall budget, and so far we still do not know what's gonna be of money and time we wasted.
Uhm.. well begun is half done.