How Not to Use DKI, Part 2

Dynamic keyword insertion is one of the great features of PPC.  Dynamic keyword insertion, or DKI, allows the advertiser to automatically insert the bidded phrase into ad copy.  This can provide a huge boost to ad relevance and CTR, but it can be easily misused and over-used.

I’ve written before on how not to use DKI, and you’ve probably seen some pretty crazy examples of it yourself.

There’s another common misuse of DKI that I’ve seen during PPC account audits that bears discussion.  It’s not egregious like the common DKI fails, but rather, an honest mistake that can have a negative impact on PPC ROI.


Don’t hide your USP in DKI.

I’ve frequently seen unsuspecting advertisers hiding their USP, or unique selling proposition, in DKI.  For example, let’s say you’re a retailer promoting a big, limited-time sale.  You’d rightly want to include “Limited Time Only” in your ad copy – after all, it creates a sense of urgency and should increase your CTR.

Unfortunately, though, it’s not uncommon for these advertisers to hide that feature behind DKI!  The ads look something like this:

{KeyWord:LimitedTime Only}
Huge Sale on Red Widgets at Joe’s
Shop Online Today & Save!

On the surface, the ad looks great – after all, one of the key points is in the headline, right?

Wrong.

Remember, DKI inserts the bidded keyword, and only uses the default text (the part after the KeyWord: command) when the keyword is too long to fit.

Let’s say this advertiser is bidding on the branded term “joes store” and the non-branded term “buy red widgets.”  The actual ads would then be:

Joes Store
Huge Sale on Red Widgets at Joe’s
Shop Online Today & Save!

And

Buy Red Widgets
Huge Sale on Red Widgets at Joe’s
Shop Online Today & Save!

In both instances, the “limited time only” call to action is gone!  DKI has effectively watered down the offer.

How can we make these ads better and still use DKI? It’s pretty simple.  And this is how DKI was really intended to be used.  Remember, keywords can be inserted anywhere in the ad copy, including display URLs.  It’s not limited to the headline.

So in our example, instead of this:

{KeyWord:LimitedTime Only}
Huge Sale on Red Widgets at Joe’s
Shop Online Today & Save!

We’d do this for brand terms:

Limited Time Only
Huge Sale on Red Widgets: {KeyWord:at Joe’s}
Shop Online Today & Save!

And we’d do this for non-branded terms:

Limited Time Only
Huge Sale! {KeyWord:Red Widgets} at Joe’s
Shop Online Today & Save!

As you can see, good account structure is critical for this approach to work.  If you have branded and non-branded terms in the same ad group, it’s nearly impossible to write DKI ads that make sense.  But if you’ve taken the time to create small, tightly-themed ad groups, incorporating DKI is a breeze.

When used properly, DKI is a useful tool that can really make your ads stand out.  Just don’t hide your USP in it!

Have you used DKI in a unique and successful way?  Share in the comments!

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Why Musicians are Good at PPC

Ready for yet another ranty post?  Too bad!  After the past couple weeks of craziness in the PPC world, I need to cleanse the palate.  Thus, a post about one of the other loves in my life:  music.

Many of you know that I’ve been a musician most of my life.  I sang in church when I was tiny, then moved on to the recorder and a brief and relatively unsuccessful stint at the piano before settling on the clarinet in 6th grade.  I continued with music in college as a proud member of the Spartan Marching Band, playing the alto sax.  I still play in both the MSU Alumni Band and local community bands.  I can’t begin to enumerate the joy and opportunities that music has given me.

As with many of my blog posts, you’re probably wondering what the heck this has to do with PPC.  In my 10 years in the industry, I’ve discovered that many of you are fellow musicians.  Some of you are really darn good at it.  Some of you have even made a living at it for a while.

To me, that’s awesome and fun.  Beyond that, though, I recently read an article that explains why so many of us are into music.  Scientific studies have shown that musicians use both sides of their brains more frequently than average people.

The article states that “Instrumental musicians often integrate different melodic lines with both hands into a single musical piece, and they have to be very good at simultaneously reading the musical symbols, which are like left-hemisphere-based language, and integrating the written music with their own interpretation, which has been linked to the right hemisphere.”

The researchers in the article also found that “the musicians gave more correct responses than non-musicians on the word association test, which the researchers believe may be attributed to enhanced verbal ability among musicians.”

Sound familiar?

Music is basically one big dichotomy.  It’s full of mathematical concepts:  from the time signature to counting rhythms to even the musical scales themselves – all of these have mathematical theory at the core.

But listening to music played mathematically is awful.  Think about a song that’s plunked out on a computerized synthesizer:  the notes all sound the same, and there are no changes to the volume or rhythm.  Booooo-ring, right?

In order for it to be meaningful, music needs feeling.  The interpretation of the tune is what makes it pleasing to hear – whether it’s a classical piece played by an orchestra, or a hard-driving rock and roll song.  If the musicians didn’t play with feeling, nobody would care.  It takes both the left-brained meter and math and the right-brained creativity to make the song appealing and effective.

The same thing goes for PPC.  The reason not everyone succeeds at PPC is often due to the lack of either left-brained or right-brained activity.  I’ve seen people who are great at math and analysis struggle with writing good ad copy.  And I’ve seen super-creative people, many of them artists in their own right, struggle with the data overload that’s native to PPC.

It takes ability in both hard data and creativity to really knock PPC out of the park.  I think this is why so many of us are musicians, too.  We’ve learned to, or have an innate ability to, combine math & statistics with a creative streak and make magic out of it – and that draws us to PPC, where these abilities are strengths.

Of course I know that not every good PPC’er is a musician.  And certainly not every great musician would make a great PPC’er (or would even want to try it!).  Somehow, I can’t picture Eddie Van Halen sitting down at a computer and writing PPC ads.  But I bet Neil Peart would be great at it.

What do you think?  Are you a musician-turned-PPC’er? Or vice versa?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

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Adwords Support Needs A Better Bra

I know I’m probably starting to sound like a broken record.  Over the past couple weeks, I’ve written about the less-than-optimal changes to Adwords, including near match and the rotate ads fail.

I started this week thinking things couldn’t get any worse.  Surely we’d hit rock bottom and were on our way up.

I was wrong.

Last week, I was hard at work on my first-of-the-month to-do list:  client reporting, and updating ad copy tests.  For as long as I’ve been in agency PPC, I’ve evaluated and updated ad copy tests on at least a monthly basis.  It’s a good practice, right?  Especially in view of the recent “near rotate” fiasco?

Not so fast, bad guy.

We have a global client with campaigns for every country and region of the world.  Although the basic message for their ads is the same, I’m sure it won’t be surprising to hear that minor nuances in ad copy can have different results in different parts of the world.  Anyway, I updated all their ad copy tests and moved on.

Or so I thought.

When I checked the campaigns the next day, I noticed that the US campaign traffic was down a bit.  Well, I didn’t get too worried – after all, we all know that .

A few more days went by, and I checked the campaigns on Monday.  I was in for a shock.

US campaign traffic had screeched to a halt.  Mind you, this is a branded campaign for a long-term advertiser with an average quality score of 10.  At first, I thought the new ads might be stuck in editorial review, which seems to be happening more and more lately.

But alas, the ads were just stuck on the “other” ad position, instead of the top where they had been.  And CTR & traffic tanked as a result.  Quality scores and everything else were still ok, so I figured there must be something else going on.

Well, of course we don’t have an Adwords rep for this client, for whatever reason.  (Eliminating agency reps is yet another tear in the elastic of Google’s support.)  So I called the general support number.

What a nightmare.

I related my story to the rep right off the bat – basically telling her the exact same thing I said here.  She agreed that something was amiss, and promised to get back with me.

Later that day, I got an email reply.  It said, and I paraphrase:  “I took a look at your account, and it looks like your ads are mostly appearing in the Other position, which is why your CTR is down.  Here’s a report illustrating this.  I suggest you raise your bids to get things back on track.”

Seriously?!?!?

One, I told her that I’d already run that report.  I knew that’s what had happened.  But I didn’t know WHY it happened.  Two, how in the h-e-double-hockey-sticks can my quality score drop that much overnight??  The ad changes were very minor – just a tweak to the second description line – and this is a long-standing branded campaign for the brand owner.  I smelled a rat (or something even stinkier).

So I wrote back, basically telling her all that, and also telling her that I’d tripled my bids as soon as I saw the problem (BEFORE I even called Google), and still traffic was nil.

Two days later, I hadn’t heard anything.  So I called support again.  The rep I spoke to that time told me that the original rep had gotten my email and was looking into it further.

Yet another day went by before I heard back.  The reply?  “There might be a temporary drop in quality score due to the ad changes.  Just give it a few more days.”

ARE THEY KIDDING??

Here’s a client whose traffic from their most important region of the world has gone to crap, and they want me to wait?  And does quality score really drop with minor ad changes?  Does that mean that our quality score is reset every time we change ads?  Does historical quality score count for nothing? And how is that going to work now that we have to change our ads every 30 days just to keep them rotating evenly?

After I got this reply, I decided to try a crazy ACE test.  I set the test to 50/50 and set the experimental bids at $108 per click.  Yes, over $100 per click.  And this is for brand terms with an actual CPC of well under $1 prior to this disaster.

Guess what?

Traffic is back!

And no, we’re not actually paying $108 per click, but the average CPC is up about 10x from what it was before.  It’s still early days, and I’m hopeful that I can back the bids down to a more reasonable level in a short period of time.

There’s a nagging voice in the back of my head, though.  And it’s shrieking “MONEY GRAB!”

Postscript:  I just got an email from Adwords Support.  It says “I see that the number of clicks this campaign received today has increased quite a bit from days past.” Nothing like stating the obvious…. Wow.  I’m speechless.

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PPC Isn’t Dead, But I Wish Google Were

OK, maybe that’s a little harsh.  If Google were dead, a lot of us would be out of jobs, myself included.  But the last two changes they made to Adwords have me mad enough to spit nails.

I already wrote about the near match fail that was announced last week.  Apparently the hue and cry over that announcement wasn’t loud enough for Google, because this week they announced near rotate.

The outpouring of hatred for this announcement was unbelievably loud and clear.  No one asked for this, and no one wants the change!

There’s been so much coverage that I won’t go into any more detail here.  The purpose of this post is a call to arms.  If you’re as teed off as I am about this change, please sign the petition protesting the change.  As of this writing, there are nearly 350 signatures from PPC’ers all over the world.

Join us in telling Google just how badly we think this will kill our PPC test results.  Sign the petition today!

PS, credit for the idea for this post title goes to Dr Pete for tweeting a similar post title idea. Thanks for the inspiration!

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Two PPC Wins and a Fail

This week brought a flurry of PPC announcements from Google.  Of course, this isn’t unusual – PPC is known for being fast-moving and constantly innovating, with Google leading the way.  Like many of the PPC advances of the past, this week’s list brings both good and bad to the industry.

Win #1:  Adwords Account Labels

On Tuesday, Google rolled out a neat feature called Account Labels.  With Labels, you can organize account elements into custom groupings to facilitating the slicing and dicing of data.

This is basically pivot tables on steroids.  The example Google gives in their blog post is grouping products across geo-targeted campaigns.  Say you sell Nike sneakers, and you replicate campaigns across geographies.  Labels will enable you to group and summarize stats on Nike sneakers across your account so you can evaluate results on a larger set of data.

Labels are a pretty neat feature, and I’m already planning to implement them in one of our international client’s campaigns.

Win #2:  Quality Score Transparency

Ever since it was introduced in 2007, PPC managers have lived and died by quality score.  Countless hours and thousands of blog posts have been devoted to optimizing quality score.

And yet, quality score has been somewhat of a black box.  We all know that click-through rate is the most heavily-weighted factor in quality score, but there were also the ubiquitous “other factors” that Google didn’t specify. 

And furthermore, Google didn’t tell us a lot about what was wrong when we earned poor quality scores.  We were just told keyword relevance is “poor.”

Now, Google’s giving us more transparency into quality score factors.  They’re supplying more detail on what elements need improvement:  CTR, ad relevance, and/or landing page.

Pretty cool – more info is always better!

Fail:  Near Match

For years now, PPC’ers have complained about broad match gone wild.  Just yesterday I was reviewing some search queries for VoIP keywords, and apparently Google thinks that’s the same thing as “voice recognition apps” and “cheap prison telephone voice”. 

But, at least we have phrase and exact match to counteract the silly broad matching.  Right?

Wrong.

From Google’s Inside Adwords blog, “Starting in mid-May, phrase and exact match keywords will match close variants, including misspellings, singular/plural forms, stemmings, accents and abbreviations. Based on our research and testing, we believe these changes will be broadly beneficial for users and advertisers.”

Are they kidding?!?  What research are they doing?  Maybe they’re looking at their own search query reports and deciding the matches are close enough?

This move hasn’t exactly been popular with PPC pros.  An informal and unscientific poll of the PPC Chat group on LinkedIn reveals that 68% of PPC’ers are against the change (registration required).

While I do see the benefit of this change in certain situations, to me it’s yet another money grab by Google.  Like many other default settings in Adwords, this one will slip by the novice PPC managers and mom & pop folks trying to manage their own accounts, and they’ll wonder why they’re not getting the ROI they expected.

The good news is, there’s still time to opt out.  You’ll find the option under campaign settings in the Adwords UI.  The bad news is, there’s no bulk edit, so each campaign has to be opted out manually, one by one.  And there’s no option for this in Adwords Editor yet either.  Coincidence?  Maybe.

What do you think of the recent Adwords announcements?

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HeroConf – The Class Reunion of PPC

On Monday, about 100 PPC pros converged in Indianapolis for the first annual HeroConf, put on by the great folks at PPC Hero. Being the first conference, none of us knew exactly what to expect, but there was a sense of anticipation and excitement in the air in the PPC community during the days leading up to the show. Everyone was looking forward to a conference focused solely on PPC.

HeroConf didn’t disappoint. It was a day jam-packed with PPC goodness, covering everything from account structure to mobile to remarketing and tons more. The sessions were insightful, and the speakers were a who’s who of paid search.

Yes, I spoke 3 times and moderated a lunchtime roundtable, but this isn’t meant to be a brag. I am humbled to have been included in such stellar company. As I sat on the Q&A panel at the end of the day, I honestly couldn’t believe I was up there with 2 of the people from whom I learned PPC back in 2002 – Brad Geddes and Andrew Goodman. The days of me harassing them with questions on the search forums are behind me, and they’ve both become good friends. Still, it was an awe-inspiring experience.

Because of the small size, the best part of the conference for me was the networking. I think I got to personally speak with nearly everyone in attendance, which is unheard of at the major shows. At the meet and greet Sunday night, I met old friends for the first time – people I’ve hung out with every Tuesday at noon EST for PPC Chat. It was a total blast, and I stayed up too late both Sunday and Monday, but it was worth every second of lost sleep!

After last year’s SMX Advanced, I wrote a post saying the show was like homecoming. Well, if SMX Advanced is homecoming, HeroConf was a class reunion – the group you were always closest with and knew the best. The camaraderie and knowledge-sharing was unmatched – I don’t think I’ve ever felt so relaxed at a show, especially one where I was speaking so many times! Usually that’s a recipe for all-day nerves, but I felt totally comfortable because I knew I was among friends.

It would take me all day to list all the amazing PPC people I met at HeroConf, but I do want to give a special shout-out to a few who made the conference especially meaningful to me.

To Melissa Ferrigan, who was a friend before I was even doing PPC, I’m so glad you were there to share it with me.

To Matt Umbro, it was totally awesome to share the stage with you at the Account Structure and Q&A panels, and to geek out on PPC over drinks.

To James Svoboda, I really enjoyed hanging out at IND. Thank you for turning the usually-mind-numbing time waiting for my flight into a fun chat!

And finally, to Michelle Morgan, my PPC little sis, I had an absolute blast swapping stories and rants with you. I knew we’d hit it off, because we already had on Twitter, but I felt like we became true BFFs at the show.

And to everyone else I met, know that I feel blessed to have chatted with you. I can’t wait for next year’s show!

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My Top 3 PPC Posts of 2012

The first quarter of 2012 is in the books (already?!?!?), and a lot has happened already in the PPC world. Here are the top 3 posts on this blog for the year to date.

3 Unfulfilled PPC Wishes from 2007

This was a fun post to write, and it got the attention of PPC pros on Twitter and beyond. What’s funny about this post is that I wasn’t even going to write it because when I had the idea, I didn’t think there were any unfulfilled wishes from 5 years ago. I was wrong.

A 12-Step Program to Improve Your CTR

This SEW rerun accomplishes something that not every blog post can: timeless tips that can help all PPC’ers. Just when I think “oh, everyone already knows that,” a post like this reminds me that we can all use a refresher course from time to time.

The top post for 2012 so far, by a landslide, was this one:

PPC Is Alive and Well, Thank You

There’s nothing like a good controversy to get the attention of the entire PPC community. This post was spurred by an idiotic post from a so-called social media expert who claimed that PPC was dead. Judging by the reaction I got to my post, she was, well, kinda wrong.

And there you have it – the top 3 posts of 2012 so far. What are some of your favorite PPC posts from around the web?

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Breaking: Sitelink Conversion Data Now Available!

A few of us on PPC Chat noticed today that conversion data is now available in the Adwords interface for sitelinks and ad extensions! Data can be segmented in all the normal ways, including by time, top vs. side, click type, and network.

This is a huge leap forward for Adwords in terms of giving PPCers the data they need to optimize not only ads & keywords, but sitelinks as well.

For more info and up to date findings, follow the #ppcchat hashtag on Twitter.

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How Online Marketing Is Like Fine Dining

Online marketing has been all the rage for 15 years now, at least. From the beginning of public adoption of the internet, success measurements have varied. In the early days, it was all about “hits.” Then it was all about site visits (unique visitors). At some point, the more savvy online marketers started worrying about conversions.

And yet, in 2012, I’m often surprised to hear clients coming in saying “we need to do PPC” or “we have to get out there in social media.”

Why is this bad? Because they’ve chosen the tactic before they’ve set goals and mapped out a strategy.

Have you ever been to a really fancy dinner where each place setting has 3 forks, 2 spoons, a couple knives, and a seemingly endless number of plates? And have you sat there at the table wondering which water goblet you should drink from, and worrying about which fork or spoon you should use for the first course?

I’ve been there, too. But what I’ve noticed about these fancy meals is that 9 times out of 10, it becomes plainly obvious which utensil you should use once the first course actually arrives. If it’s soup, you use a soup spoon. If it’s a salad, you grab the outside fork. If it’s seafood in the shell, you’ll pick up the little seafood fork (I don’t eat seafood, so forgive me if I haven’t used the right analogy here!).

The point is, once you know what your goal is (eating soup vs. eating a salad), the right utensil becomes obvious.

Online marketing is the same way. Marketers spend an inordinate amount of time debating which tactic they should start with: PPC, SEO, social media, email, website optimization…. and often they can’t agree on what makes the most sense. In the meantime, their sales are struggling to get past the appetizer course.

A better approach is to think about your goals. Is increasing sales the first order of business? Are you looking for awareness for a new brand or product? Are you selling inexpensive products or services to consumers, or are you an enterprise solution provider selling to CEOs with a 12-month sales cycle? Is your website ready to capture sales or leads, or does it need work?

All of these factors will affect which tactic you choose. Many online marketing tactics work together, and it’s great to integrate as many tactics as you can within an overall strategy. But before you get to that step, it’s critical to establish your goals and determine how those goals will be measured. So even if your goal is clear from the beginning, if you don’t have tracking and analytics in place, how will you know if you’ve achieved it?

So the next time you’re debating a dip in the waters of PPC, SEO, or social media, put down your fork and think about your goals first.

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PPC Is Alive and Well, Thank You

Earlier this week, an article in Social Media Today caused a bit of a stir in the PPC community. The article was titled The Death of Pay Per Click Advertising – a link-bait-y headline if ever I’ve seen one – and it’s a doozy.

Putting aside the fact that the article was published on a social media site (seriously??), let’s break down each and every fallacy in the post.

Fallacy #1: Advertisers Don’t Recoup their Investment

The article states that “there are clear signs that it is dying out as a lone marketing resource. For example, recent research has revealed that just 18% of SMEs using Google Adwords actually recoup their investment (Source: YouGov).”

First off, there’s no link to the YouGov “revelation,” so I find myself questioning whether it’s even true, or whether it’s taken out of context. But anyway… let’s assume it’s true.

I actually wouldn’t be surprised if only 18% of SMEs are recouping their investment. That’s because these SMEs don’t know what they’re doing. PPC has evolved into a complicated program that takes training and expertise to get good ROI. It’s not something that Mom or Pop Jones can just run themselves. This is why it’s critical to hire a PPC professional to run your program, whether it’s in-house or agency.

I’d be curious to see how many professionally-managed PPC programs are recouping their investment. I bet it’s way more than 18% or we’d all be out of business.

Fallacy #2: PPC Is A Short-Term Play.

This is the one that really got the goat of a lot of PPC’ers: “PPC can deliver results when it is used for a short-term, highly targeted campaigns (sic), but used in the long-term it often becomes costly.”

I’m choosing to ignore the terrible grammar in that quote, by the way.

At gyro, we have many clients who have used PPC for years. Many of these clients have recently shifted dollars from traditional media to PPC, precisely because it’s been so effective for them compared with other channels. The same was true in my previous position at Fluency Media – we had clients who were approaching the 10-year mark in PPC who were still making money on every sale.

Are these all just flukes? Hardly. And to say that PPC delivers lower returns than content marketing (another claim in the article) is just ridiculous. Yes, SEO often delivers a higher volume of traffic and leads than PPC, but does SEO convert as well? In my experience, the answer is often no.

Fallacy #3: PPC’s Purpose is to Drive Traffic.

“PPC appears to offer a simple solution – paid ads to drive people to your website.” Um, what? So none of the PPC campaigns I’m running are driving conversions – they’re all about traffic. Yeah, right. I’m not even going to gratify this statement with a response.

The article goes on to say that “PPC is focused around gaining high volume results and often comes with confusing data and analytics on visitor numbers.” I honestly have no clue where the author got this idea. Most of the PPC campaigns I’ve run in my 10-year career in the industry have focused on reducing overall traffic volume while increasing overall conversion rate. No one wants to pay for a bunch of unqualified visits.

A well-run PPC campaign will often contribute little in terms of overall website volume, but will contribute a disproportionately high percentage of conversions. I’ve run PPC campaigns that represented only 20% of overall site traffic but 80% of total conversion. Doesn’t sound like “focusing around high volume results” to me.

Fallacy #4: PPC Is Brand Unaware.

“PPC is purely about the ad and about capturing the interest of window shoppers. With no brand awareness or value proposition around it, the PPC campaign tends to attract window shoppers who are focused on cost rather than quality.”

This is just wrong on so many levels. I’ll concede that many PPC campaigns are indeed focused on promoting low-cost offers. It’s called customer acquisition. This happens all the time in traditional media – what do you think coupons, sales, clearance events, and weekly circulars are all about? These, too, promote low-cost deals to attract the customer. So is the author saying that traditional media is also a huge fail?

And if you’re running PPC ads without a value proposition, you’re doing it wrong.

Furthermore, the author fails to consider impression-heavy PPC advertising such as display and social media ads. If these tactics aren’t brand aware, I don’t know what is. Facebook PPC, in particular, can drive millions of targeted impressions at a very low cost and can nearly create a brand from scratch – all by using PPC.

In the second half of the article, the author talks about how PPC should be used. Many of her points are valid: be strategic, build loyalty, test for the best – this is all good advice. But there is one more misconception worth calling out.

Fallacy #5: Advertisers Should “Increase Cost Per Conversions.”

When I first read this, I thought it was a typo. But then the author says it again a couple paragraphs later: “include a plan to increase your Click Through Rate and Cost Per Conversion for rewards from Google.” (emphasis mine)

Who on earth is trying to increase their cost per conversion? If you find this advertiser, give them my phone number. I have a few words for them.

The Bottom Line

PPC isn’t dead. That is, unless you run your campaigns the way this author tells you to.

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