iMediaConnection: SearchTHIS: A Four Point Cautionary Tale
iMediaConnection
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Kevin M. Ryan, Search Editor reviews the "eMarketer White Paper, Top Ten Ways to Make Search Marketing Work For You" stating that as:
"Typical with eMarketer White Papers, this one identifies areas of interest that the rest of the world somehow missed....the ...Paper does an excellent job of laying the foundation for all the good things happening in search, but what I really liked about it was the introduction of some of the not-so-nice things in search. For example, the problems of imbalanced spending, high cost of clicks, potential consumer backlash of search being just a bit annoying and the possibility of search becoming so difficult that no one will want to use it anymore."
Ryan concludes firstly : "The eMarketer theory (read: summary of thought derived from collection of facts) is that while search spending fueled growth,
we shouldn’t ignore the possibility of search pulling dollars away from other areas of online marketing. I’ve seen this happen more times than I can count. Note to marketers: Don’t sacrifice online ad budgets for search. There are plenty of other areas to hijack funds, but don’t even think about pulling back on that consumer helpline budget."
On the possibility of a
crisis in search advertising caused by rising costs he says "We need both to continue educating advertisers about returns to slow, ego-driven keyword bidding and to encourage measurement -- in my experience, once marketers begin to really understand return requirements keyword costs will get under control fast"
His third point is that he foresees a backlash against search ads:
"Paid search proponents say sponsored listings are well accepted when relevant. Organic optimizers love to preach about the bulk of clicks coming from under the paid portion of the page without specifying a particular category, i.e. commerce or information search click sourcing.
Both arguments may have merit, but the third revelation from eMarketer suggests there may be a consumer backlash on paid listings coming our way. Citing a survey completed by Intelliseek -- an overwhelming 66 percent majority of surfers distrust search ads."
His last point is
"the suggestion that search might work itself out of the surfing equation." On this he says "This makes sense: If one finds something one likes in searching paid, unpaid and “other” listings, a bookmark might be a good way to avoid having to conduct another search. Since many don’t trust search listings anyway, a user’s desire to avoid another laborious search is understandable. This reticence to keep searching is the same form of adoptive indifference we see with consumer technology that fails. History has taught us that consumer apathy is a powerful thing, hasn’t it?"
For search and paid search ads to survive he says "a smart search engine might just maintain a focus on both relevancy and revenue while encouraging surfers through media outlets to see what’s new by continuously improving the search experience"
For Totaltravel this means taking extreme care when deciding where to place paid ads with user (and partner) experience in mind.
Google gets gruff over click fraud | CNET News.com
Google gets gruff over click fraud | CNET News.com: "Google filed a lawsuit against an Internet operation that it claims systematically clicked on text ads to defraud its advertising network. "
DMNews.com | Why use adsense?
DMNews.com | News | Article
Buy.com became the latest Internet retailer to add advertiser text listings to its site yesterday, joining Google's AdSense content-listings program.
Buy.com shoppers now are presented with AdSense paid listings under a "Sponsored Listings" category in all of the retailer's product sections, including books, music and DVDs. AdSense content listings also appear on the site's search results pages.
The deal means Buy.com could steer shoppers to competing outlets. A visitor to the DVD section on Buy.com sees not only products to purchase from Buy.com, but also ads for competing DVD sellers such as Target, Columbia House and Pricegrabber.
"We are giving our customers additional highly relevant resources with which to make an informed buying decision," Buy.com president Neel Grover said in a statement.
"Buy.com is not the only Internet retailer to adopt advertiser listings. In
April 2003, Amazon.com began showing Google listings on its site. Others, like Best Buy and Circuit City, do not show paid listings.
Comparison-shopping sites Pricegrabber and Shopping.com show
Google paid listings. The listings have proven lucrative for Shopping.com since it began running them in August 2002. Google advertising generated 44 percent of Shopping.com's $65.3 million of sales in the first nine months of 2004, according to Shopping.com's financial statements. Google guaranteed Shopping.com $16 million yearly for 2003 and 2004, and another $500,000 monthly under a separate agreement, Shopping.com reported in its quarterly filing."
BPI: to better understand which sites have the most valuable audiences
NetScore is the only service that has developed a BPI, which enables web sites and their advertiser clients to understand the value of an audience based on actual online purchasing of that audience. The BPI can be used by web sites to develop more relevant advertising rates and by advertisers to better understand which sites have the most valuable audiences.
A May ranking of selected web sites from key categories, such as “News & Information,” “Portals” and “Travel,” uncovered the following results:
News & Information – Represented among the top BPI sites in this category were wsj.com (353), washingtonpost.com (272) and cbsnews.com (268). However, the “Detroit News” web site, detnews.com (367) took the top position in the category with the heaviest spending audience.
Portals – While media planners typically look first at mega-portals such as yahoo.com (125) and aol.com (140) for media buys, many other portals have very attractive audiences. May rankings showed altavista.com (160) with the highest BPI among large portals, followed by excite.com (142) and juno.com (142) as the portal sites with the greatest potential to attract online buyers.
Travel – Attracting visitors who are very heavy Internet spenders, travel sites lead all categories. During May, travel sites actually outpaced shopping sites. Twelve of the top 20 sites in the overall May BPI rankings were travel sites. Hertz.com (874) wasthehighest ranked site in the report. Additional travel sites that ranked very high included: basshotels.com (686), hilton.com (649), and budget.com (635).
Report extract
case studies
16 The keyword campaign
18 The email campaign
data
20 Report extract: The LemonAd Barometer
IAB Resources and Research - Glossary of Interactive Advertising Terms - C
IAB Resources and Research - Glossary of Interactive Advertising Terms - C
iMediaConnection: "The 5-step R.A.D.A.R. process for continuous optimization:
iMediaConnection: Marketing & ROI: 1. Reporting: When it comes to reports, less is more. Focus your reporting on the key metrics based on your marketing objectives. For example, if your primary objective online is ecommerce, standard KPIs might be �Average Order Size (AOS)� and �Browser-to-Buyer Conversion Rate.� If your site is geared toward lead generation, you�ll have a different set of metrics.
2. Analysis: Next, analyze data to identify trends and pinpoint areas that need improvement. For example, by analyzing the Shopping Cart Conversion Funnel, you might see that you are losing a high percentage of your visitors on the shipping information page. Examining the abandonment paths visitors take from this step provides an immediate indication of what needs to be fixed to keep them moving toward conversion.
3. Decision: Now, make one decision at a time. This step is imperative because too often people are either not sure what conclusions to draw from the data, or when they decide to make changes to their site, they make several major changes all at once. Multiple changes make it difficult for marketers to know which specific change had the greatest impact on performance.
4. Action: Take action. Action needs to become addictive within your organization. And decisive action based on sound analysis is the best kind. This is the most critical step in this process. You can�t improve results if you don�t act upon your analysis.
5. Results: Finally, measure the reaction your visitors have to the change or changess you�ve made. You�ll measure and report on whether the result was positive or negative -- comparing the before and after. If the result was positive, continue with that strategy. If the result is negative, test another action to fix it. It�s a continuous proce"
Search Engine Marketing whitepaper: Maximize the ROI of Your Search Engine Marketing by Measuring Beyond the Click-Through
Search Engine Marketing whitepaper: Maximize the ROI of Your Search Engine Marketing by Measuring Beyond the Click-Through: "The key to a successful search engine marketing strategy is constant testing, revising and optimizing based on metrics. In order to maximize your return on investment, you must measure the performance beyond click-through -- By measuring the complete interaction of your visitors with your site from acquisition to conversion to retention."
Microsoft renews Yahoo! ad contract - Computer Business Review
Microsoft renews Yahoo! ad contract - Computer Business Review: "Microsoft Corp has renewed its deal with Overture Services Inc, owned by rival Yahoo! Inc for another year until June 2006, the companies have announced. The last deal, signed October 2003, was set to expire June 2005...
MSN is believed to account for a material percentage of Overture's sales. Overture contributes to Yahoo's marketing services revenue segment, which represented 84% of the company's overall revenue in the last-reported quarter.
For this reason, these major deals are closely watched, particularly given the fact that Microsoft has vowed to catch up in the search market by bringing more of the technology in-house. MSN, for now, also uses a Yahoo-owned algorithmic search engine"
Overture tests RSS ads | CNET News.com
Overture tests RSS ads | CNET News.com: "Overture Services is experimenting with a new form of online advertisements that are paired with news feeds shuttled across the Web"
RSS is a technical format that lets publishers syndicate snippets of news or content to third parties, and in turn, allows Web sites or individuals to aggregate disparate information sources onto one page. (Overture parent Yahoo offers subscribers an RSS syndication service.)"
"RSS is seen by many investors and Internet executives as a powerful new tool for content distribution. It's also feeding a social phenomenon in the blogging and publishing community by connecting information providers and their readership more closely.... how to profit from the news-syndication technology is unclear for many publishers... several companies are looking to tap keyword-targeted search advertising, a multibillion-dollar business, for RSS feeds."
Online Advertising Strengths iMediaConnection:
iMediaConnection: Online Becomes Meat and Potatoes: "Benefits of Online Advertising" The survey attributes the increasing value of online media to its manner of complementing traditional ad counterparts and its ability to target audiences. Working with these distinctions in mind can reinforce online's strengths.
IAB: Impression Guidelines iMediaConnection:
iMediaConnection: IAB: Impression Guidelines, Q3 Revenues: "The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced industry guidelines for online ad impression measurement and that Internet advertising revenue totaled approximately $2.43 billion in the third quarter of 2004.
The IAB guidelines offer a detailed definition for counting an ad impression, which is a critical component in establishing consistent and accurate online advertising measurements across publishers and ad serving technologies.
The three key points of the new recommendations are:
Ad-impression counting that is conducted from the 'client-side' as opposed to 'server-side' (impression is counted once the browser receives the creative asset),
Consistent elimination of non-human activity counting
Consistent cache busting
'These guidelines demonstrate our continued commitment to being the most accountable ad medium. "
Are travel companies spreading their net wide enough ? - PPC SEO debate
Are travel companies spreading their net wide enough ? - 01-Nov-04.: A couple of pertinent posts - without the self promotion....
alex bainbridge:"A PPC budget is not dictated by total size - but by what return an indivdiual travel company can get from a booking. So a tour operator (big or small) can always afford to spend more on PPC than a travel agent - as they work on higher margins...
Darren Cronian: "I would say in general travel companies are using the net - but I don't think they are using it to it's full potential. Personally from a holidaymaker's perspective I think the major travel agents have a long way to go - many of these sites are unfriendly, and are out of date and detail inaccurate prices. "
Google AdWords: Definition & Success Stories
Google AdWords: Success Stories: "Google AdWords� is the world's largest search advertising program, currently used by more than 100,000 businesses to gain new customers cost-effectively. AdWords uses keywords to precisely target ad delivery to web users seeking information about a particular product or service. The program is based on cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, so advertisers only pay when an ad is clicked on. Advertisers can take advantage of an extremely broad distribution network"
Welcome to Google Advertising Professionals
Adwords for clients
cost of keywords up MediaDailyNews 11-08-04
Aims to set benchmarks in paid online ads
MediaDailyNews 11-08-04: "The cost of keywords grew 14 percent on average in October, due in large part to sharp spikes in the consumer services and retail categories, according to the latest monthly keyword price index from search engine marketing agency Fathom Online. The report said advertisers paid an average of $1.55 per keyword in October, an 18 cent increase over September's $1.37...For the report, Fathom Online looked at the 500 most popular keywords in nine categories, excluding brand names....
While that concept may seem similar to that of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, McMahon pointed to several key differences. "The search market is more volatile because it has less volume," he said, adding that the Dow also has hundreds of times more trading activity than the paid search market. "One advertiser entering or exiting the market could affect prices."
Google Posts New Ad Guidelines
Danny Sullivan writes:
Google Posts New Ad Guidelines: "In September, I wrote that Google was going to finally expand publicly its guidelines covering ads. Those new guidelines have now gone up. The Google AdWords Content Policy page explains how advertising products such as cable descramblers, gambling, radar jammers and other things is not allowed."
Search Marketing Beyond Google and Overture
Search Marketing Beyond Google and Overture: "alternative PPC networks fall primarily into three categories:
1. General search
2. Verticals (e.g. Business.com, Industry Brains, Travelzoo)
3. Shopping (e.g. BizRate, Pricegrabber, Shopping.com)
benefits:the smaller networks provide hands-on customer service & lots of guidance for their customers.
Generally.. may be a lower conversion rate on these engines, but the cost is so much lower that it makes up for it...
downside: irrelevant traffic, suboptimal distribution, and fraudulent clicks...
FindWhat announced a new "pay per call" service, which would function in a similar manner as text link auctions, but would feature toll-free numbers."
Target by Geography as proxy for income;Traffick: Minding the Search Engines' Business
Traffick: Minding the Search Engines' Business: "Geography is quite often a proxy for income and other demographic characteristics, so deeper use of such technology could help online advertisers target better without necessarily gathering extensive info on users"
Google & Overture local: Adding Offline Data to Online SearchiMediaConnection:
iMediaConnection: Adding Offline Data to Online Search: "In Google's case, you have the ability to purchase keyword phrases in your AdWords campaign based upon the location of the person that is performing a search for the specified terms. This means that you can buy paid keyword placement for a specific geographic area. If Google can identify the originating location of the searcher, and if it is within the area specified, your text ad will appear. Overture's program is a little different. It focuses more on the terminology used to search for a product or service and whether or not the search phrase contains a location specific term (Example: custom jeans Pittsburgh). The caveat? The bidder must have a physical location within the location term area. "
Step 1: Define where your best offline customer lives
Step 2: Determine what keywords to use
Step 3: Buy the best areas with the best keywords
iMediaConnection: Web Analytics 101
iMediaConnection: Web Analytics 101: "Web Analytics 101 Tuesday, November 02, 2004 By Brandt Dainow, Think Metrics..
Don't know the difference between conversion rate and prospect rate? Learning more about the core metrics for Web analytics will help you calculate the ROI for your online advertising.
The aim of this article is to give you the few simple metrics you need to measure, and improve, your online activities"
