When first introduced, the concept of day parting was revolutionary.  It was the first major tool in SEM outside of bid management and the logical next step when hourly data sets became available through internal tracking tools. ROI focused advertisers observed patterns indicating the majority of conversions happen during certain peak hours of the day (unique to each advertiser) and asked themselves: if I can get 90% or more of the conversions at a fraction of the cost, what's the point of running ads outside of those hours? While this logic may appear seamless, there is a potentially massive flaw built into it - what actually happened during those "peak" hours: the click(s), the conversion or both?  When analyzing hourly data, it's absolutely critical to establish consistency in the data sets and the logic used to create bid management strategies.  If there is a lag time between click and conversion, the click is the most valuable time stamp because that's when the ads need to be live. Aside: The only exception to this analysis is if the advertiser is using a single session cookie.  In this case, the conversion must happen with the same session (directly following the click) and as a result it does not matter whether the analysis uses the click or the conversion time stamp. So this all makes sense if there is a clear distinction as to the hours of the day when clicks that lead to conversions occur.  But what if the data isn't as skewed - if the peaks and troughs of hourly conversion curve are closer to the normalized value for the day?  In this case, traditional day parting (henceforth referred to as "opening hours") is not a valid strategy as the only positions are on or off.  In this situation, an ideal case would be to be able to manipulate bids to have a greater impression share or position during the hours of higher conversion rates and lower impression share or position during the hours with relatively low conversion rates.  eSV has offered this type of solution for some time and the search engines have followed suit more recently. Each search engine has limitations for these advanced day parting tools.  AdWords, for example, does not provide hourly conversion data so it's impossible to use the tool effectively unless the advertiser has an advanced tracking solution already in place that captures click information. AdCenter does not allow advertisers to bid down from the basis bid, so the tool is only doing half the job. And Yahoo! does not provide hourly reporting by default – one must create a dummy day part in order to “trick” the reporting system into generating hourly data. While this isn’t a particularly big deal, unless you have a dedicated Yahoo! account rep, chances are this is the first time you’ve heard of this process. The good news is that advertisers are not bound by the limitations of search engines. Advanced bid management software, such as eSV’s v5, not only allows customized manipulation of bids on an hourly basis, but also provides algorithms to calculate the ideal percent bid changes –known as automated day-parting. This takes advanced day parting to the next level through incorporation of statistical significance models while still providing controls via parameters (max/min % bid change/bids, khi squared min requirements, etc). Strategies like automated day parting are specifically designed for ROI focused advertisers who know there is a disparity among daily conversions by hour. Like any other strategy, we strongly urge our clients to test these tools and also test the automated algorithm versus the manual day parting functionality. In the data heavy business of SEM, we all know the value of statistical significance, but more valuable than stats is ongoing testing as you never know what’s going to work best unless you test it. Please join us from 9am - 10:15am on October 5th for an interactive discussion on Mobile Search Advertising.  Marc Wendling, our US Managing Director, will be sharing his innovative perspective on Paid Search opportunities in this rapidly growing Mobile market.      SMX East is a three day conference including 50+ sessions covering SEO, PPC, social media, local search, mobile search and more.  The conference takes place at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in NYC (655 West 34th Street).   We hope to see you there! Joshua Krafchin Director of Business Development Based out of our New York office, Josh Krafchin joined the eSearchVision team in July 2008.  In his position as Director of Business Development, Josh works with new clients to create and develop SEM programs and with existing clients to build optimization strategies. Prior to eSearchVision, Josh's developed his career through a variety of roles.  Beginning in financial services at Morgan Stanley, Josh next made the transition to   the internet world as he managed website and content development for small to medium sized businesses.  He then jumped into online marketing with Register.com where he successfully managed the company's Affiliate marketing program. Josh earned a BA in Philosophy from Columbia University in New York.  In his free time he loves to spend time with family and friends, work on community projects and of course, play games on his iPhone! Get PPC tips from our experts and interact with our team!   Follow eSearchVision1 to stay updated on what we're doing  231 Sansome Street, 4th Floor San Francisco, CA 94104 415.814.1001 mw@esearchvision.com For more information, or to schedule a free demo, visit us at www.esearchvision.com