Before tearing apart all aspects of a campaign trying to identify the problem, look first at web analytics to see if the percentages of sales from each of your marketing channels are consistent with what you typically experience.  For example, if you normally see that 25% of your online sales come from paid search, 15% from natural search, 25% from direct load, 25% from email and 10% from affiliates,  check to see if the percentages are the same in the week that sales are low as they are in a “normal” week.  In Google Analytics, this information can be found in the Traffic Sources Overview.  In Coremetrics, you can get at this data in the Marketing Channels report.  In Omniture SiteCatalytst, this same information is found in the Traffic Sources Referrer Type Report.

At any time of the year, looking at this data is a great way to benchmark your sales by channel.  By doing this, you are able to easily troubleshoot issues when sales dip for whatever reason.  If the percentage of sales from a particular channel is much lower than normal, look first at that channel to isolate the problem.  If the sales percentages for all channels are about the same as normal but sales are still low, it indicates that business is slow overall. A particularly strong email promotion can throw these percentages out of whack, but normally it is well known that the email was a strong producer, and fairly obvious then that a higher percentage in that channel will lower the percentages in all the others.

Try setting up auto-generated site analytic reporting to regularly and easily keep on top of sales trends.  With extremely high temperatures in the Northeast this holiday week, hopefully consumers are inside sitting at their computers shopping.  Or, they could be sitting under an umbrella on the beach with a tall cold drink… in or day or so, we’ll get a chance to see how July 4^th week, 2010, has performed.

Marketing Opportunities vs. Privacy

Suzy Sandberg:  When I first heard the details of Open Graph, I immediately went into Facebook to turn the feature off.  Facebook went with a pre-checked box to enable the Open Graph feature which requires unchecking to opt out.   We’ve seen this before — a Facebook platform change with privacy implications where the user must seek out and select new privacy settings in the application to undo a new feature.

Open Graph is getting buzz for two reasons:  one is its ability to socialize the internet in a new, unique way.  The other is the emergence of new privacy concerns, of which Facebook has already had its share of in the past.  Are the benefits of Open Graph really worth the positive buzz?  And/or how much of the privacy concerns are just noise?

I think it really depends on your point of view.  On the plus side, the Open Graph plug-in will bring socialization to the web in a way that hasn’t been done before.  The “like” button is often used in Facebook, and its familiarity with users could yield high usage rates making its adoption on websites take off quickly.  Large swaths of people are signing on to FourSquare, Gowalla and other location-based networks to share their info with friends, so Open Graph certainly won’t spook users of those applications.  In fact, sharing their likes online could be considered less intrusive than broadcasting personal info by GPS.  The younger demographic is comfortable with sharing online, so this new application may be quite appealing.

On the privacy side, there are four components of the issue.

• Facebook users who see the identities of their friends listed on a website with the Open Graph plug in for “liking” the content on the page probably believe their identity is being disclosed to the masses.  In actuality, the only people who would see someone’s identity are other people in their network.  Assuming someone is ok with sharing their likes to friends, this isn’t an issue at all.  The majority of users, though, who don’t know anything about iframes and how this all works, may be spooked.  Facebook may get a bad rap because it’s too complex for people to understand. If such an objection goes viral and creates mass buzz as we’ve seen in the past, this program may go the way of Beacon.
• If you don’t want your friends seeing which sites you “Like,” you will have legitimate privacy concerns.  You can always opt out, though.
• Having to opt out is troublesome and the process is cumbersome.  Pre-checked boxes went away from reputable websites years ago because of CAN-SPAM, so Facebook is going against the grain here in terms of using the best industry practices.  I understand that Facebook wants wide adoption, but email marketers wanted big lists too – they ultimately understood and accepted that pre-checked boxes can be perceived as deceptive.
• The most troublesome aspect of Open Graph from a privacy standpoint, and I imagine this is what New York Senator Charles Schumer and Moveon.org will latch on to, is that part of Open Graph entails a “small pilot program” with a few big sites (Yelp and Pandora, for example).  The partners in the pilot program do receive personal information on Facebook users including names, friend lists, interests and likes so that they can personalize the experience for users.  Facebook itself describes this information as public in their blog post explaining the program.  A person can opt out by checking a blue bar that appears at the top of the site, but I have to imagine that many users will not understand the purpose of the bar, meaning that these consumers have therefore not willingly agreed to share their personal information with the businesses in question.

A Boon for Marketers and Consumers Alike

For years and years, catalogers have been sharing data with each other.  (How else did you think that Williams-Sonoma started sending you catalogs after you bought something at Sur La Table?)  And for just as long, there have been marketing databases that essentially profile what kind of marketing you are likely to respond to based on assumptive demographics.  Based on your address and zip code, marketers all over the world can find out tons about you.

So, sharing the kinds of things that you “Like” on Facebook is pretty innocuous. You are clicking on a button that says “Like” and it gets broadcast to your network.  Your assumption of privacy ends at your public declaration of “Like”.

Are there issues with Facebook’s implementation? Sure.  Should it be easier to opt out?  Absolutely.  Should you have to opt in?  Well, I don’t know about that.  You have already made a public declaration of liking something…you are only exposing your data if you engage…the Open Graph isn’t pushed on you.  It doesn’t interrupt you; it only shares information if you actively participate.  Already opted in seems fine here because you must take an explicit action to share.

What is the opportunity?

This is a boon for marketers and consumers alike. Fundamentally, pervasive implementation of social marketing through Facebook’s API gives marketers a wonderful opportunity to personalize and customize their web experience based on explicit declarations of preference. This gives marketers an opportunity to present a unique, personalized experience to customers, even if they’ve never visited before.  This is powerful.

For consumers this is a great opportunity too.  If you have expressed on Facebook that you are a fan of ESPN, College Sports Network, MLB and the NBA, you might see more sports related merchandise when you visit a participating site.  This is great.  It may be a little “Minority Report” for some, but for most folks, allowing merchants and marketers to personalize their pitches to you is highly desirable.  You get to see more of the stuff that you want to see.  The devil is in the details, of course, some marketers will do a better job at this than others. But fundamentally, by allowing marketers a glimpse into what you like before they present to you gives them the opportunity to give you more wheat and less chaff. I think the privacy concerns are overblown.  By engaging with Facebook, you have already made public declarations about your affiliations. And marketers should be able to use information about you that you publicly disclose to serve you better.

For marketers, this is such an amazing opportunity, because you suddenly have deep access to potentially millions of visitors. You will be able to learn more about them, more about how they interact with your brands and how you can deliver them the right offer at the right time.

The big winner here is, of course, Facebook.  If the “Like” button gets deep acceptance across the web, Facebook has harnessed the power of 400 million minds to help them understand the web and how people use it.  That is infinitely more powerful than anything Google can do. Further, with all of these explicit preferences known, Facebook can uniquely target you with salient, relevant ads…this is the real reason for the Open Graph, but the ancillary benefit for marketers to know more about their customers and for customers to get more personalized services from marketers is a real win.

Final Thoughts:  The Importance of Clarity

Chris Paradysz:   The challenge with even the definition of “Privacy” is that its meaning differs for each user.  In Facebook’s case, unlike that other behemoth Google, they are ambiguous and often resort to using industry jargon to describe their practices which users could perceive as arrogant, naïve, or even black hat, the latter of which is what gets privacy advocates and AG’s all cranked up.  They are typically reactive with their policy changes instead of understanding their customer and the legislative rants around them which, unfortunately, is giving them an early and very expensive education.

No one really begrudges Facebook for trying to make money, but they would sure save themselves a lot of headache and goodwill if they’d be more open.  Isn’t shared candor social media’s intent, anyway?

For marketers, Open Graph should be a bonanza.  For consumers who let marketers in on their passions, it should be all good as long as Facebook understands who’s paying their bills and doesn’t corrupt the implicit trust they’ve created with their users.

Just ask MySpace.

Paid search is fundamentally about presenting a relevant ad to someone who enters a keyword in a search engine. Every month, 60% of the searches on Google are brand new. With the keyword list being the pillar of the paid search campaign, keyword selection is essential. Technology now exists to scrape a page and cull a list, but the fundamental strategies for effective keyword selection remain the same now as they have been for years. Here are some of the basic keyword selection tactics that apply to the retail vertical.

Top Sellers: Site analytics can determine the top selling products through direct load and natural search. These words should be part of the paid search campaign.

Top Searched Products on the Site: Site analytics can inform what people are searching for on the site, and these words should be included in the paid search campaign. Products being searched for but not sold by the merchant should be given to the merchandising team to potentially expand the product line.

Research Tools: Hitwise, comScore Marketer, Compete and Keyword Spy are all great sources to identify not only the top keywords driving traffic to a competitor’s site, but also to identify the top keywords driving natural traffic to the company for whom the paid search keyword list is being developed. Keyword coverage in both paid and natural search ultimately adds up to more revenue for the advertiser as it creates additional real estate for the advertiser on the search engine.

Website: It’s a laborious process, but making sure all products on the website have relevant keywords is essential as is ensuring that category terms make the list, as well. It is the category terms that will drive the most volume and the product-specific terms that will yield the best conversion rate.

Catalog:  If the paid search advertiser also has a catalog, ensure that there is maximum keyword coverage on products featured in the catalog as well as ensuring that best sellers have maximum exposure.

Datafeed:  Most merchants have a datafeed that’s used for various purposes. Identifying new items in the feed is a great way to ensure that new products don’t slip through the cracks. Additionally, active keywords for products that are no longer in the feed should be paused.

Search Engine Tools: The search engines make lots of free resources available for recommending like keywords to the base word that was input.

Plurals:  For the life of me, I don’t know why a singular (or plural) version of a keyword that is at the top of the best performers list is also at the bottom for the opposite version of the word (singular or plural).  Anyone who has seen lots of paid search results will recognize this curious dynamic.  For this reason, every keyword needs both plural and singular versions of the word to be covered.

Search Query Reports:  Refer to the search query reports provided by the search engines to identify the actual words someone entered into the search engine in order for an ad to be displayed.  Refine the keyword list and match type strategy based on these findings.

Google Insights for Search: This free tool shows rising searches related to a particular keyword enabling a campaign to yield scale quickly.

Synonyms:  If you sell women’s clothing, ensure that you have all variations of women’s (ladies, girls, etc) and add these variations to the base of every keyword.

Once the keyword list is developed, give it a reality check.  Many merchants name their products with language that is not common to the public.  Cosmetics companies may refer to “fragrances,” whereas the majority of searchers will be looking for “perfume.”  Make sure your product can be found by emulating consumer behavior and by applying common sense.

Suzy Sandberg is President of PM Digital.

OS4 Will Make the iPad Truly “Magical and Revolutionary”

Chris Paradysz:  OS4 will have multi-tasking capabilities.  Now, I love the iPad.  I can be excited about any great technology, but it should fulfill the hope I had back when I blogged about it earlier in the year that it will create an intimacy bond between content and users.

Music, video, words, pictures should no longer be disconnected from touch and feel.  The iPod and iPhone didn’t transform this connection with people (consumers).  With the portability, size and weight of the iPad well-suited to most people’s hands and laps, it can easily move from one position to another and from one person to another.

From a marketing pov, this creates a new experience sensation and viral ability that prior e-readers have failed to deliver.  Within an app or the internet, an advertiser can deliver a rich brand or offer experience, not just ink on “paper”.   With the iAd and technology infrastructure to support it, I have two questions:  1) how soon will it be before Apple starts up an advertising agency; 2) will a new SNL Apple skit be on this Saturday night?

A Must-Have Device You Didn’t Know You Needed

Suzy Sandberg: Just to get this out of the way, YES, the iPad does look like a giant iPod Touch. (iPad owners, I feel your pain on this relentless comment).  And since I can’t strap the iPad to my arm when I go running, I do still need my iPod Touch. And I still need my laptop since the iPad has limitations (no USB for one). I also have/need a cell phone until/unless Verizon ever actually does get the iPhone.

So with four devices (ok, I actually just lied about that…I have a Blackberry, too), where does this newest one, the iPad, fit in my life?

First is that it gets me online quickly, and the speed is lightning fast. Research has shown that the majority of time spent on the mobile web is done in the home, on the couch. I am one of those. The experience of being online on an iPad can’t compare to that of an iPhone or iPod Touch, particularly if you are consuming media. Just because you CAN download a movie or book on an iPhone, does that mean you should?

If you have an iPad you should do your downloads on that device. Some media is so breathtakingly beautiful and awe inspiring that even though I’ve had the iPad just for one week, I couldn’t go back to the small screen for certain things.

In the app department, the current choice is somewhat limited, but I’m optimistic that here is where the iPad is going to hit a home run. There are many apps to be enamored with for the iPhone, though many were developed as workarounds for a clunky web experience on a tiny screen. Since that is definitely not a factor with the iPad, I predict incredible creativity coming out of the app store to serve entertainment needs and many other things I can’t yet visualize.

The iPad fits in my life, so far, because it’s a highly enjoyable experience and perfectly meets the needs of my digital life. Especially when paired with my other four devices.

You and Your Customers Just Got a Whole Lot Closer

Tim Kilroy:  I am a big Apple fan. I use an iPhone. I am writing this on a MacBook Air.  I have never purchased a PC in my life, and I have bought 7 Macs.  And I wasn’t first in line for an iPad!  So what gives?

For me, it was just a failure of imagination.  I didn’t, frankly, understand why I would want an iPad.  It was an iPhone that I could use without my glasses.  Great.  It is a laptop that I can’t do real work on.  Super…that is exactly what I need.  And then, I used it…the magic hit me.

This is truly personal computing that allows for immersive engagement.  Web, mail, video are all at the tip of a finger.  So why is it magic?  Because the computer disappears.  It is just you and whatever you are doing.

What does this mean for marketers?  It means that your presentation layer just got cooler, and more transparent.  The opportunity to create impact and engagement just increased.  Imagine that your interaction with consumers on a computer is like you yelling across 6^th Avenue at your target audience.  They can hear you, and some will even listen closely.  But few will ignore everything else happening in NY to follow you.  With the iPad, you have the opportunity to walk across 6^th Avenue, and sit down with your customer at a Starbucks. It is still noisy, but you can sit across the table from each other and listen.

And that is magic.

More Touch, More Emotion, More Measurement Challenges

 Anthony Avolio: Based on my experience with the iPad thus far, I have three key impact areas for marketers to consider moving forward.

Touch usability.  Marketers must actively consider touch interfaces when planning their designs. Designs with small click targets, extensive use of hovers/rollovers or requiring browser plug-ins don’t create a positive user experience on the iPad. This applies to all online media, including websites, banners and emails. While the iPad is just one device, it’s likely the start of a new mainstream push for touch interfaces. Marketers must insist that their creations function and resonate with consumers on as many screens as possible.

More emotion.  The iPad’s touch interface and minimal design can create a more immersive experience for consumers.  Upon launching an app, the iPad disappears and becomes that app.  Upon opening an email, the iPad becomes that email message. Keyboard and mouse peripherals that typically separate the consumer from content are absent on the iPad, allowing the experience to be more direct, more one-on-one.  Skilled marketers will use this more direct opportunity to delight, enthrall and connect.

Increased splintering of online browsing will continue to create challenges for measurement. In the old days, consumers’ online activity was typically split between two web browsers — one at home and one at work.  Smart phones and now iPads add to the number of devices that a single consumer actively uses to access the Internet, making measurement more challenging. Consumers can now learn about a new product on their work computers, research further on their phones before purchasing it on their tablets while at home.  With online browsing spread across devices and apps, conversion measurement and campaign attribution become increasingly more complicated.

Suitable for Framing

Glenn Lalich:  My first few days of playing around with the iPad were largely app-focused, as I figured that was where the biggest wow factor would be.  And the few retail apps available did not disappoint.  The Gilt for iPad app is elegant, and I found my fingers naturally tapping up beautiful super-sized product photos.  The Gap 1969 Stream app is even more revolutionary, with the iPad acting as a window on some infinite universe of Gap photos, merchandise, stories, videos and social media links. Pretty amazing stuff.

But from a retail perspective, my favorite iPad surprise didn’t come from a download.  It came when I stopped playing around with my apps for a second to check my email.  That’s when I noticed that the retail emails in my inbox looked gorgeous. The size of the iPad display, the hand-held proximity and the glossy screen made many emails akin to high-quality print ads or catalog pages.  Freed from a traditional computer, they were vibrant and alive in my hand.

Not every email I saw was a winner, mind you.  Product grids with a lot of white space can look like meagerly stocked store shelves.  In portrait mode, top-heavy layouts designed for standard preview windows do not fill the entire iPad screen, allowing below-the-fold disclaimers and legalese to move up and steal a bit of the spotlight.  But these are relatively modest adjustments to make, and relatively inexpensive as well.

The iPad just gave email creative a dazzling shot in the arm.  And it didn’t cost marketers a cent.  As much as I hope to see killer retail apps and touch-centric websites in the near future, it’s exciting that the iPad’s “magical” display and interactivity already offers fresh advantages to retailers as is, right out of the box.

The way Google has chosen to price this product, however, sets it apart from the other remarketing providers.  Google’s structure is CPC, whereas the other companies charge CPM or CPA.  Cost-wise, the CPC model has a clear advantage.  Comparatively, the cost savings to the advertiser can be huge.

With CPC pricing, despite the fact thousands may see an ad, the advertiser is only charged for clicks.  This is the preferred pricing model for direct response advertisers all over the internet.  Long ago, Google’s paid search ads were originally priced at CPM, and when they switched to CPC, the source took off.   With banner advertising, only a small percentage of people who see an ad actually click on it.  That’s why display ads are more commonly used for branding efforts—they are guaranteeing impressions, not clicks.

Display advertising in a remarketing sense, though, has gained traction with direct response advertisers as the audience is more qualified.  Since the person who is presented with the ad has already been on the advertiser’s site, some level of interest in the brand already exists.  Despite this, the click-through rate of remarketing banners remains less than 20%, and often is even less than that.  As we saw long ago with Google paid search, there is a clear monetary advantage for the advertiser using CPC over CPM.

For anyone not familiar with the way remarketing pricing has traditionally been structured on CPA, one may wonder why anyone would opt for CPC over CPA.  CPA has always had an allure, but as the saying goes, there’s no free lunch.  The issue is view-through tracking,  a method of accounting for sales that some people have a real issue with.  Most CPA remarketing programs charge revenue share using a two-tier structure:  the advertiser pays more for sales that originate from people who click through the banner since it’s pretty obvious that the traffic got to the site as a result of the person seeing the ad.  They pay less for sales that resulted from someone who saw the banner but didn’t click on it (called view-through tracking).

All view-based sales are allocated to another channel, which is why many advertisers don’t like this program.  No one can ever be certain that the fact that the person saw the display ad is why they later purchased on the site.  For example, if someone was on About.com and saw the advertiser’s display ad, and some time in the future (either hours or days) went to Google and clicked on a paid search ad to go back to the advertiser’s site and then made a purchase, the advertiser has now paid twice for the order:  once for the click on Google and again to the remarketing company as a view-based order.  In the same scenario, if the person used the search bar to get to the advertiser’s site, it’s possible that they now have to pay revenue share on a sale they would have gotten for free.

Advertisers who have tried to determine how many view-through orders are incremental usually find that roughly 30% are new buyers (although in some cases, it’s much less).  For some, a 30% new buyer rate represents a winning program, while others object to paying revenue share on 70% that they already paid for through another source or would have gotten for free (as in the case of direct load).

So when you compare the Google pricing structure of just paying for the people who click on the remarketing banner to having to also pay for view-based orders, there is no comparison to the lower cost of remarketing with Google than going with a CPA program.   Google’s CPCs for remarketing are more expensive than the average paid search click, but eliminating the entire view-through portion of the sales represents a tremendous cost savings.  (Note:  view-through sales can be tracked with Google’s program, but the advertiser doesn’t have to pay for them.)

There are a few things we need to watch out for with Google remarketing.  One is scale.  CPC ads tend to get prioritized lower by publishers who may also have CPM ads in the queue, as they make more money running them.  Publishers may opt to run the CPM ad over the CPC ad. The other difference is that Google does not yet have the ability to serve dynamic banners which can be effective with remarketing offers.  The big brother/creep factor with dynamic banners makes some advertisers shy away from them, so this may not neccessarily be much of an issue for now.  I would bet that Google has this enhancement in the works anyway.

Suzy Sandberg is President of PM Digital.

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

The organic and the paid sides of search are best described as church and state.  I’m not sure which is which, but on the organic side, innovations in the way search listings are displayed have been happening more quickly and steadily.  In the past, organic search results primarily contained a list of websites relevant to the search term.  Now keyword searches return a much more varied list of results that include content from blogs, YouTube, Flickr, news sources, Facebook, websites, image ads on product search and, now, tweets in real time. 

The merging of all these different content sources on Google’s natural search results is called Universal Search, and it definitely keeps evolving, reacting to, and incorporating new types of online content.  While the way paid ads are displayed has remained static, organic display has enjoyed a considerable amount of experimentation and subsequent rollouts over the past few years. 

So now enhancements to the way paid search ads display are starting to accelerate.  Ad Sitelinks, product extensions, product ads, and video ads are a pretty big change to what we’re used to seeing for paid search.  Some of these new paid search changes are yielding real increases in traffic.  For others, it’s too soon to tell what the impact will be.   Ultimately, though, it’s great to see the paid search side of the business catching up to the innovations enjoyed on the organic side.  We hope there are many more enhancements to come.

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?

If you are a direct response advertiser, the answer is no.  The reason is because Facebook users are not there with an intent to purchase.  It is the element of intent to purchase that has made paid search effective for ecommerce. 

Direct response marketing relies on a combination of intent plus interest or demographic targeting  in order to be successful.  It’s easy to explain this dynamic as it applies to direct mail list selection.  A toy cataloger’s best lists are probably other toy catalogers.  The fact that names on a mailing list have purchased toys through the mail in the past is the implied intent to purchase.  Further, if the list of prior toy buyers makes recency available, it is the most recent buyers who will usually do the best (called “hotline buyers”).

What probably would not work, though, is a list of people who are known to have children within an age range that is appropriate for the toy cataloger’s merchandise.  Just because a person has a child does not mean they buy their toys through catalogs.  While this person may hit the exact target the toy cataloger is looking for, the intent to purchase is not there.  If I were a direct mail list planner, I would not select this list.

Lack of known purchasing intent is the reason Facebook CPC ads won’t outperform paid search cpc ads for direct response offers anytime soon.  Even if Facebook could target a person with a nine year old boy, serving a toy ad on Facebook would not be as effective as it would be on a search engine served to someone who keyed in “toys online for a nine year old boy.”  The latter is more likely to result in a sale.

In terms of what would work well with Facebook CPC ads today is using it to build up fan bases, brand advertising, and possibly direct response offers in very niche categories.

Google has made significant strides in improving their content offering over time, which, like Facebook CPC ads, may be perfectly targeted but are lacking intent to purchase.  Facebook should be carefully evaluating the tools Google now offers to leverage content and apply similar principles as they evolve their CPC product.  Comparatively, contextual search is probably the most similar model out there to Facebook CPC ads, and everyday contextual search performs a little better for direct response offers.

Suzy Sandberg is President of PM Digital.

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.

Prior to the new policy, Google, Yahoo and Bing all used the same company to verify that the pharmacy codes associated with a given marketer were legit: PharmacyChecker.com.  For whatever reason, Google switched to VIPPS, but the transition process has been flawed.  Affected companies received minimal notice (10 or so days), and it was unclear that all campaigns would go dark right away without the new certification.

Also troubling is that the cost of using VIPPS is incremental to what pharmaceutical companies will still have to pay for PharmacyChecker.com to cover Bing and Yahoo.  Plus VIPPS is more expensive.  With a $5,000 application charge applied to the first year plus a $3,000 survey fee, VIPPS costs nearly seven times more than the $1,200 annual for PharmacyChecker.com.

In the past, Google has allowed merchandise that was outside of special policy areas to remain live with only the special policy keywords brought down (this was the case with ammunition and tobacco, for example).  But in the case of pharmaceuticals, all keywords across all campaigns came down — not just the keywords related to pharmaceutical products.

At present, there are many companies who sell pharmaceuticals online who are scrambling to get certified since their Google campaigns went dark.  Most have applications pending with VIPPS, but in the pet pharmaceutical category, for example, only one company has received certification thus far.  While everyone else is in limbo, this approved company is buying up the trademark terms for those companies that are down.  It’s a wide-open playing field for those with early accreditation while companies still awaiting VIPPS certification are losing sales every day.  For small companies, it is hard to sustain this type of hit on revenue and one wonders whether NABP has any sense of moving the smaller guys to the front of the line.

I don’t know why Google opted to replace PharmacyChecker.com with VIPPS as their certification provider of choice, but there’s no question that the idea of requiring online pharmacies to be certified is sound.  It’s important to ensure that medications sold online are safe for those purchasing them.

The online pharmacies we’ve spoken with don’t object to the certification per se, but they would have preferred that the new policy be implemented on a level playing field.  Pharmaceutical companies should have been given the same amount of time to get their paperwork in order (and certainly with more than 10 days).  The implications should have been clearer.  All companies either should have been able to stay live for a period of time while they got everything in order, or everyone should have gone dark for the same period of time on a defined set of keywords.

The current VIPPS process seems to be putting companies back up on a rolling basis as applications are processed.  I’m sure the NAPB is inundated at present.  But processing requests in an unclear order and within an unspecified amount of time is giving a clear advantage to those who have already made it through the VIPPS process.  As many of these still-unapproved pharmaceutical marketers wait in limbo and watch competitors squat on their trademark terms, large amounts of revenue are being lost by some and taken by others.

Internet Retailer – Internet Retailer currently hosts two key shows each year – the Web Design & Usability Conference which was just held last week in Orlando, and the larger Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in June.  This year’s main conference will be in Chicago from June 8-11.   If you are actively involved in web design, the February show would be valuable to attend.  For more general retail info, I am a big fan of the June show.  It draws a huge crowd (great for networking and exhibiting), and there is a ton of great content.  Our clients also rate this show highly for value and time well invested. 

Shop.org – Shop.org hosts several conferences throughout the year.  The best known and largest of all the online retail shows is the Shop.org Annual Summit in the fall.  This show has frequently been held in Las Vegas , but it’s moving to Dallas for 2010.  The change is unfortunate as I predict they are going to take a hit on attendance.  The Mandalay Bay venue in Las Vegas was much loved and Dallas pales by comparison.  The Shop.org shows have the reputation of being extremely retailer-focused, as opposed to eTail which is more vendor-focused.  Shop.org has retailer-only days and retailer-only events.  But despite their somewhat heavy-handed non-vendor stance, there are many sponsorships available to vendors, although some (like the vendor-hosted tables on retailer-only day) come with a pretty hefty price tag.

One of Shop.org’s other (smaller) events has just been retooled.  It is called the Retail & Innovation Marketing Conference and will be hosted in San Francisco from March 2-4.  This show focuses on next-generation media.  Social media had been a key topic at prior shows, and this year mobile will be a big area of focus.  I have really enjoyed this show in the past, but the reality is that there are so many shows crammed into a tight six-week period between February and March that marketers are challenged to squeeze them all in.  I personally could not make the Retail & Innovation show work with my schedule this year.

Retail Marketing Conference and DMA - These are two offline shows that attract many of the same retailers who also attend the online retail shows.  After years of declining attendance, the ACCM catalog conference has been renamed and presumably retooled.  It is now called the Retail Marketing Conference and will be held May 24-27 in Kissimmee, Florida.   The thrust of the agenda for this year’s show is “integrated marketing” with mostly online content spanning social media, SEM, mobile, e-commerce and catalog/print.   The new show doesn’t sound that much different than the Internet Retailer, E-Tail or Shop.org conferences.  I’m sure the Retail Marketing Conference will continue to draw a large offline audience made up of prior attendees of the ACCM, so the Direct Marketing Association (who runs this show) would be foolish to kill that offline content.  After all, there are still plenty of catalogs in my mailbox every day, so it’s not like this business is going away.   I remain on the fence about this event.  If the retooled content and rebranding works, it would be a great show.  If they aren’t able to get attendance back up, however, I imagine it may be the last year for this conference.

With regard to the DMA itself, I have attended the big annual conference for the past 10 years and have come to the conclusion that from an online perspective, I get very little out of this show.   One year the DMA filled up a pretty awesome online pavilion of exhibitors, but it wasn’t successful because they housed it across the street which drew very little foot traffic.  The next year, the online and offline exhibitors bordered each other in the main exhibit hall, and in subsequent years, many of the online exhibitors dropped out.  So thinking solely of online, I am ambivalent about the fate of this show. The DMA:2010 Conference & Exhibition is scheduled for October 9-14 in San Francisco.

ad:tech – This is such a fun, mobbed, upbeat show with great energy!  There are two large U.S. ad:tech conferences along with a variety of smaller events throughout the year.  The big U.S. shows are ad:tech San Francisco (April 19-21) and ad:tech New York (November 2-4).  Audiences for these events consist largely of agency and technology people, job hunters and employers.  There is very little content that is applicable to an actual marketer – it is largely technology-focused for agencies.  It will be interesting to see if this year’s NYC show can maintain the same high-energy atmosphere in its new digs at the Javits Center vs. the Hilton which had been its home for many years. 

Last year we saw attendance at all the shows plummet.  We are optimistic that this year they will go back up.  We have also noticed that marketers often attend the exact same conference year after year.  My recommendation would be to mix it up and do one of the eTail, Internet Retailer, or Shop.org shows and then perhaps add an SES or SMX show.  Next year you should consider switching it up.  Note that in my opinion there is really no reason to go to more than one or two of the retail shows and only one of the search shows in a given year.  You’ll quickly find that the content is not exclusive to each show.

Click here for Part 1 of our Online Marketing Conference Guide.

Suzy Sandberg is President of PM Digital.

Because PM Digital has a heavy penetration of retail clients, we attend many conferences in the retail category as will be evident in this roundup.  The list below takes into account that there are generally three reasons to attend trade shows:  1) networking, 2) keeping current, and 3) investigating new technologies.

eTail - eTail hosts two big shows each year.  eTail West (which starts today) is the larger and runs from February 22-24 in Palm Desert; eTail East will be held in Baltimore from August 9-12.   I personally love the timing of the February eTail show since it’s the first big event after the holiday season.  People have had a few weeks to relax and breathe, but they also recognize that now is the time to launch new initiatives in order to maximize the next year-end holiday.  Attendees are definitely looking and researching at this conference.

A common criticism of the eTail shows is that it seems partial to vendors rather than retailers, and this manifests itself in sessions that occasionally sound like paid commercials.  Many of the session panels include vendors, and there are some big keynote slots given to vendors (and as a vendor, we are aware that there is a cost to speak at this show as well as some of the other events).   I once left a multivariate testing session and found one of the companies represented on the panel was also the manning the exits with one-sheeters.  I haven’t seen anything that blatant happen in a while but it’s a good example of how eTail developed its vendor-first reputation.  The August eTail conference is very convenient if you are on the East Coast, and I’ve found it attracts a high-level retail attendee.  It is much smaller than the West Coast show.

NEMOA – Otherwise known as the New England Mail Order Association, NEMOA typically holds a spring and fall conference each year.  The NEMOA Spring 2010 Conference runs from March 10-12 in Boston.  As one can deduce from the organization’s name, attendance is comprised largely of New England retailers, although a smattering of companies who are based elsewhere also come to this event.  This show definitely draws a high-level executive and is far more intimate than the other retail shows.  For example, content is delivered in a general session as opposed to the myriad of tracks and concurrent sessions you find elsewhere.  NEMOA has a very strict policy for its vendors in order to ensure that this conference is entirely retail-focused.  There are no exhibitors at NEMOA.

SES (Search Engine Strategies) and SMX (Search Marketing Expo) - These are rival companies who put on shows with similar search-engine related content.  Each has an East and West Coast show with smaller regional events in between.  SES New York will be held in its namesake city from March 22-26; SES San Francisco will run from August 16-20.  SMX West will be held March 2-4 in Santa Clara and SMX East in NYC from October 4-6.  These shows all have great search engine content spanning both PPC and SEO.  The SMX show has a reputation for being a little heavier on higher level SEO content whereas the SES shows gives equal weight to both.  If someone wants to immerse themselves in PPC and SEO, these shows are great – especially for those who do not have much (or any) contact with search engine vertical teams.  My recommendation would be to first attend SES for a more general overview and then try SMX if you are in need of deeper SEO content.

Click here for Part 2 of our Online Marketing Conference Guide.

Suzy Sandberg is President of PM Digital.