March 2010

Google Betas: Paid Search Enhancements Are Welcome and Long Overdue

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Suzy Sandberg

In 2009, Google released a slew of paid search betas mostly to support retail advertisers.  These betas are, where applicable, being rolled out to other verticals too.  Examples include GAN Product Ads, Product Plus Box (renamed Product Extensions) and Ad Sitelinks which we wrote about late last year.

Google is heavily diversifying these days, rolling out a smorgasbord of new initiatives.   Tangentially, most enhancements are related to where search is now and/or where search is going in the future.  These are welcome innovations in that they focus on how paid ads are displayed to searchers.  Up until last year, paid search display had been remarkably stagnant:  one to four shaded sponsored listings at the top of Page 1 and the rest running stacked along the right.   

Google Paid Search Display

Continue reading →

Posted in Paid Search | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

How Do You Take Your Growth: Super-Caffeinated or Regular?

Posted on March 25, 2010 by Chris Paradysz

In Digital and across channels, 2010 has brought with it something we haven’t seen since 2007: investment growth.  Businesses are investing in building their customer base and growing top-line. The range is from cautious (3%-5%) to modest (5%-7.5%) with a few on the aggressive edge (+10%), but there is no more positive a sign than businesses putting cash back into their future.

Whether it’s the realization that expense cutting won’t grow profits, or investor pressure — private equity, venture capital or otherwise – for valuation and distributable cash increases, it’s all good for marketing.  Depending on which group you’re listening to, private equity and venture capital investing is back in vogue and 4Q 2009 trends showed more deals than in the prior nine months.  And, early stage venture capital is, again, finding its way into web 2.0 and 3.0 technologies which are early bellweather indications for the durability and sustainability of the investments.

Based on last month’s eTail show, Shop.org, this week’s SES conference and a recent technology summit I slipped into while staying in a NYC hotel, the number of exhibit hall booths from new companies is surging.  Most won’t survive, but they’re pushing the status quo even at Google where new offerings are accelerating at an astonishing rate.  Do check out the beta of Google’s new Search Funnels that allows advertisers to see through brand-assist keywords’ connection to trademark terms.

Although not an exhibitor anywhere, a new fave and current fascination is Polyvore, a voyeur’s fashion website birthed in 2007 with Matrix Partners, Benchmark Capital and Harrison Metal venture capital.  While The New Yorker calls it “The world of virtual Anna Wintours”, I prefer Polyvore’s VP of product management’s description: “Our mission is to democratize fashion. To empower people on the street to think about their sense of style and share it with the world.”  It’s passion, in a category that’s anything but casual, a user-generated content engine, on a social media platform, with easy-to-use tools where users can buy what they create (or, a look someone else designed), right now.

Continue reading →

Posted in Online Marketing | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Going Mobile

Posted on March 23, 2010 by Tim Kilroy

In 1971, The Who released a great album, Who’s Next, and Track #7 is the classic “Going Mobile”.  Who would have known that Pete, Roger and the gang were actually predicting the great mobile explosion of 2010?

From 3G enabled smartphones to ubiquitous WiFi-enabled laptops to the looming iPad, the internet is going mobile. I know that this isn’t really breaking news (I was involved in a mobile internet project launch in 2000), but now the mobile explosion is here. The question at hand is how do marketers take advantage of mobile and how do consumers use mobile.

Continue reading →

Posted in Mobile Marketing | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Measuring Organic Sitelink Activity

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Anthony Avolio

Sitelinks are the extra internal links that appear with some natural search results.  In addition to drawing more attention to a search result, these links are helpful to visitors that want to jump directly to a particular section of your site.  Organic SitelinksDespite the recognized value of having sitelinks, few organizations measure their popularity or effectiveness.  This post walks through how to use your web analytics solution to measure organic sitelink performance.

Continue reading →

Posted in Natural Search, Web Analytics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Instant Ads: Targeting Perfection in Real-Time

Posted on March 16, 2010 by Chris Paradysz

A few years back, I was experimenting with songwriting and free-form poetry.  Creatively, traditional boundaries were killing the sound my head wanted to hear.  I wrote, “Eyelids blink, but what truth reveals?  That squinch of time between a blink and a-h-aa.  Revelation.” 

Today, with a digital marketing industry that’s grabbing new and existing ad dollars, these words carry a truth that could solve the dominant online advertising challenge, that is how to bring the economics of targeting precision to display media.  With the SEM and SEO industries maturing and their ability to grow sales naturally constrained by the limitation of consumer demand, this could be the old-guard display advertising’s missing ingredient.  

Led by Google, Yahoo and Bing on their respective exchange platforms, advertisers can pinpoint consumer interest as it’s happening.  Instantly, literally, ads are served based on what was just learned about what someone was looking for and doing.  And you can know how many ads they’ve already seen and when. 

Imagine you’re the Martin Guitar Company trying to reach people looking to buy a guitar that’s perfect for Eric Clapton’s style of acoustic blues.  If you could be in front of a prospect at the precise moment they left a Guitar Player Magazine article about Eric Clapton’s 1992 “Unplugged” album and his use of 3 Martin guitars1 and who, 10 minutes earlier had already clicked on The Guitar Center and looked at acoustic guitars, you’d pay a premium for that.  It’s like being part of a Facebook exchange as people are buzzing about exactly what you’re selling and you can show and tell it, right at that moment. 

Continue reading →

Posted in Display Media | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off

Facebook CPC Ads: How Big Can They Be in the Media Mix?

Posted on March 11, 2010 by Suzy Sandberg

Facebook CPC advertising, which started to gain traction with advertisers last year, resembles the early days of paid search marketing.  Launching a campaign is done in a do-it-yourself interface, and that interface is where bidding is established, payment is done by credit card, ads are created and messages targeted.  Also akin to paid search circa 2001 is that the execution of a campaign is mostly a manual process (as of yet there is no API).

As we saw with search, there is no doubt that Facebook’s features and tools will become more sophisticated and radically improve over time.  Facebook would surely like to monetize its 450 million users, and we know there are enhancements to the program already in the works.  With the attractive CPC pricing model, Facebook and would-be Facebook advertisers are lined up and waiting to sync up with APIs or at minimum, get easy access to reporting and some kind of bid management tool.

Looking into the future, could Facebook CPC ads ever become a force to be reckoned with in the media mix, matching or even exceeding paid search as a proportion of total online spend?

Continue reading →

Posted in Social Marketing | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

It’s All Search

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Tim Kilroy

Search is a big channel. There are die-hard people in the SEO world who never think about paid search as part of search…it’s advertising they say. There are PPC jockeys who have disdain for anything that doesn’t have an easy metric and a quick way to A-B test. Anything else is squishy, they say.

Well, any debate that pits natural search vs. paid search is missing the synergistic whole.

It’s all SEARCH.

Search is about the traffic that comes from results to specific queries. And while there is a difference between the way paid and natural search works, as a marketer, it may help you to think of them as a single channel, because they work together so well.

Continue reading →

Posted in Search Marketing | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off

New Google Policy for Online Pharmacies Causes Some Google Campaigns to Go Dark

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Suzy Sandberg

Google has implemented a new policy affecting Internet pharmacies, HMO pharmacies, chain drugstores, and mass retailer pharmacies.  Such companies must now be certified by The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) through its Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites (VIPPS) program in order for Google paid search keyword campaigns to be approved.  This policy extends to keywords associated with any merchandise on a website that sells pharmaceuticals – not just pharmaceutical products.

For those still awaiting VIPPS certification, Google shut down all keywords across all campaigns beginning last weekend.  Many companies were affected by the policy and few were prepared.  The implications of what Google would do and when they would do it were not clear enough.  A week later, many of these companies remain dark on Google paid search.  A great deal of revenue has been and continues to be lost while these pharmaceutical companies scramble to rectify the situation.

Continue reading →

Posted in Google | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

PM Digital’s Holiday 2009 Rewind Study Released

Posted on March 2, 2010 by Glenn Lalich

This year’s report on paid search performance underscores dramatic improvements for retailers in Holiday 2009 compared to 2008.

PM Digital’s 4Q & Holiday 2009 Rewind report has been released with a look at paid search performance for retailers during the 2009 holiday season.  And as the study quickly points out, what a difference a year makes.  With 12 months’ distance from the bleakness of late 2008—a season in which e-commerce holiday sales actually dropped—online shoppers in 2009 seemed ready to buy with a renewed commitment to enjoy the holidays.

While research firm comScore cited 5% growth for online retailers, PM Digital’s clients saw paid search demand grow 19% on average.  Clicks, conversion and average order value were all up.

Continue reading →

Posted in Paid Search | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off