SES Chicago - December 7-11, 2009

August 23, 2009

Nicholas Fox of Google AdWords Invites You To Shape Future of Search Advertising

Nicholas Fox, the Business Product Management Director of AdWords at Google, gave one of the three keynote speeches at SES San Jose 2009. Yes, yes, he provided a glimpse of where he saw search advertising headed in the near future. And that included finding what you were looking for without using keywords, richer media formats, and cost-per-acquisition.

All these were headline grabbers. And you can see the media response by reading:

Paul Krill article in the San Francisco Chronicle, "Google exec provides glimpse into future of search-based advertising."

David Needle's article in Internet News, "Google Looks Beyond Keywords."

Rebecca Lieb's article in ClickZ, "Keywords Out, Networks In."

But I think there was another big story hidden beneath the headlines. Fox also invited attendees to help Google shape the future of search advertising. And he provided a URL (http://www.google.com/seskeynote2009), which will redirect users to a Google forum where they can provide feedback on the future of search advertising as they see it.

If Google gets more friendly with search engine marketers, then Microsoft will have a much tougher time taking more market share. This is a significant development.

Following his keynote, I interviewed Fox about what he had said in his keynote about keywords, richer media formats, and cost per acquisition. More importantly, we talked about his invitation to attendees to help shape the future of search advertising.

Nicholas Fox, Google, on future of search advertising at SES San Jose 2009

As of this morning, there were more than a dozen messages in the SES Keynote Feedback Forum, including ones by Mona Elesseily and Andrew Goodman of Page Zero Media and Joe Cibula of InverSearch. Check it out.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

July 21, 2009

New LookSmart Tool Automatically Optimizes Best-Converting Ads

LookSmart is releasing a new tool that automatically serves up the best converting ad in a campaign group. Think of it as landing page testing, except for search ads. The tool is dubbed SmartRotation and bases the optimization on a conversion tracking script that informs ad rotation. The conversions could be based on sales, sign-ups, downloads, registrations or the like, depending on advertiser goals.

The idea behind the tool is to increase conversions by serving up the best performing ad.

"€œIt doesn'€™t matter how many clicks you have if it doesn'€™t convert,"€ said Michael Schoen, Vice President and General Manager of Advertising Platforms at LookSmart.

Schoen says the industry has had the feature that SmartRotation uses for awhile now, but they're the first to take put the peanut butter with the jelly.

"€œWhile other platforms only offer even ad rotation or optimization by click-through rate (CTR), LookSmart'€™s SmartRotation analyzes conversion rates and serves the best-converting ad creative, giving advertisers a better rate of return on their search investment."€

What do you think of LookSmart's new tool? Will you try SmartRotation? Let us know in the comments below!

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 21, 2009

ABCSearch Acquires and Rebrands as Advertise.com

Privately-held paid search company ABCSearch, Internext Media Corp. company, has acquired Advertise.com. They will rebrand under the Advertise.com name, which will serve a larger online advertising solution including PPC, contextual advertising, and display ads.

This is, of course, not to be confused with AOL-owned Advertising.com (which has been rebranded as Platform-A).

"I believe that online advertising needs a new approach," said Daniel Yomtobian, founder and CEO of Advertise.com. According to Yomtobian, advertisers and publishers have so many choices--some work, while others definitely do not. "The current model does not provide advertisers enough ROI. We launched Advertise.com to provide advertisers and publishers a new value proposition--effective, affordable, and easy-to-use advertising campaigns all under one roof. We are committed to our motto: 'online marketing made easy'."

Related Reading: PPC Search Engine ABCSearch Partners with AdWatcher on Optimization ABCSearch Acquires Social Search Portal, AfterVote.com

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 4:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 13, 2009

AdGooroo Releases Q4 2008 Search Advertising Data

AdGooroo has released data for search engine advertising in the fourth quarter of 2008. Google's first page advertisers grew by 58%, and Live Search grew by 42.3%. Yahoo only grew by 8.8%.

More interesting tidbits from Q4:

  • A combined Microsoft/Yahoo! entity would increase large advertiser counts on the Live Search network by 157 percent, making a strong case for Microsoft acquiring Yahoo!
  • Microsoft continued to close the gap in advertiser share with Yahoo: In Q3, Yahoo! led by 17.6 percent, but this lead has narrowed to 3.0 percent at the end of Q4

“Ad coverage on the search engines continues to provide a reliable indicator of advertising activity and is the focus of increased industry chatter,” said AdGooroo Founder and Chief Gooroo Rich Stokes in the new report. “The Q4 report shows that we measured large increases in ad coverage on Google. Microsoft ad coverage fell, on the other hand, likely indicative of their continuing focus on ad quality control and holistic search. Yahoo! showed little change in ad coverage from other 2008 reports.”

Related Reading: Paid Search Spend up 12% in Q4 2008 Retail Search Ad Spend Up 33% So Far in Q4 2008

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 13, 2008

SEW Experts: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Click-Through and Conversion Rates

What's a good click-through rate for a search ad? What's a good conversion rate? That's not an easy question to generalize on, but in today's Profitable PPC column, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Click-Through and Conversion Rates," David Szetela shares some guidelines that can help you decide if yours is acceptable.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 27, 2008

SEW Experts: Those Mysterious Quality Scores: Fundamentally Simple

The quality scoring system used for search engine ads is based on a complex group and series of calculations that take into consideration hundreds of factors that the search engines won't reveal. In today's Profitable PPC column, "Those Mysterious Quality Scores: Fundamentally Simple," David Szetela points out that you don't really need to know what those factors are, as long as you create your campaigns correctly and make sure you're giving visitors what they're looking for.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 8, 2008

SEW Experts: Killer PPC Ads: The Final Word

Last week's column on PPC fundamentals sparked some feedback. In today's Profitable PPC column, "Killer PPC Ads: The Final Word," David Szetela responds, and clarifies some simple guidelines that will pave the way to pay-per-click nirvana: double-digit click-through-rates.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 12, 2008

PPC Advice, Podcast Style

If you're interested in pay-per-click marketing, you've no doubt checked out our Content Advertising column by SEW Expert David Szetela, founder and CEO of Clix Marketing. If you're looking for more advice from David, you can find it via his brand-spanking-new podcast airing on Webmasterradio.fm beginning today, "PPC Rockstars."

The show will be broadcast live on Mondays at 4:00 PM EDT, 1 PM PDT, 21:00 GMT, and available for download soon after. In each week's show, David will feature a current or future PPC Rock Star, and have a discussion about one particular aspect of PPC advertising. David's first guest is one of PPC's brightest stars, Matt Van Wagner of FindMeFaster.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 17, 2008

Craigslist Ruling: Does This Extend To Our Paid Ads?

A recent ruling in Craigslist's favor may let our paid ad suppliers rest a bit easier, as they are all advertising conduits. Google already states that it's not liable for ads it serves, and this ruling provides ancillary support.

On Friday, a long-standing case against Craigslist came to a close when the U.S. Appellate Court ruled they aren't liable for discrimination as an advertising conduit. Two years ago, the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed a suit which accused Craigslist of posting discriminatory ads under the Fair Housing Act.

According to the ruling, “Doubtless Craigslist plays a causal role in the sense that no one could post a discriminatory ad if Craigslist did not offer a forum. That is not, however, a useful definition of cause….it cannot sue the messenger just because the message reveals a third party's plan to engage in unlawful discrimination.”

If some ad seems objectionable, we can flag it and Craigslist will respond and remove the ad. They cannot, however, be held responsible for the classifieds themselves and are not equipped to review all ads before they are posted.

Perhaps Google and Yahoo attorneys are pleased with this ruling, too. As ad networks, they cannot be expected to review all ads through their systems either. They do have some complaint systems in place, especially for trademarks. There's no external flagging system for ads which have been purchased through them.

One level removed, publishers who use ad feeds should look at their fine print. Google and Yahoo say they are not liable for the ads they show. In turn, this means publishers are not liable either. Try telling that to a complaining visitor who doesn't like a particular ad that shows up on your site? Well, that's for another day.

Posted by at 10:16 AM | Permalink

January 11, 2008

Is the AdWords Competitor-bidding Party Over?

1-800-Contacts is trying to force a legal ruling that could put a chill on the widespread practice of PPC advertisers bidding on competitors' trademarks.

According to this article in MediaPost:

IN THE LATEST EXAMPLE OF a marketer suing about search ads, 1-800-Contacts this week filed a lawsuit in federal court against LensWorld for purchasing search links triggered by the term "1-800-contacts." The company, which has brought several other similar cases, says it's trying to guard against confusion. "The worry that they have is that these advertising methods will make consumers think there's an affiliation between these other companies and our client," said 1-800-Contacts' lawyer, Bryan G. Pratt.

Many advertisers experience great conversion results bidding on competitor terms, so the impact on the search advertising community as a whole could be huge.

Posted by David Szetela at 8:17 AM | Permalink

January 2, 2008

Which Industries Really Like Sponsored Links

When advertising on destination sites, some industries prefer sponsored text links while others are less focused on them. For text links, about 18% of all ad impressions are from Retailers while another 47% come from Web Media advertisers -- and that makes sense.

However, straight reporting of text link placements doesn't tell the whole story for industries who participate at lower levels. To understand all industry results better, we compared each industry's sponsored text link activity to all online ad units. Here are top-level findings, based on Nielsen Online monthly data:

* HIGHER than median ad levels: Business-to-Business; Entertainment; Public Services; Retail; Web Media * MEDIAN ad levels: Health; Software; Travel * LOWER than median ad levels: Automotive; Consumer Goods; Financial; Hardware; Telecom

The pecking order of industries may seem a bit surprising, because it's all volume based -- and without CPC/CPM rates or click throughs entering the picture. While it's true that companies control their overall activity levels, no company or industry controls match rates per se. Those with higher text impressions may simply be "better matched" to the 2,000 destinations tracked by Nielsen.

At this point, the lion's share of text links are served across the whole Google network. It's possible that industry participation levels could shift, especially when advertisers are able to make more placements based on verticals or destinations (i.e. through Quigo, Pulse 360, others).

Other explanations? You could chalk up the preferences due to the nature of these industries and the types of products/services sold, but that's a reach. Or you could say these industries are more “direct marketing” driven, but that doesn't work too well for Entertainment.

Let's start looking at these industry relationships over time. We would like to understand if industry activity levels are stable, dynamic or beginning to change -- based on new text link ad opportunities or other factors.

For those interested in "drilling down" to actual industry percentages, please see the spreadsheet and calculation details below.

How the calculations work: Nielsen Online reports ad placements monthly, based on over 2,000 sites and subsites. They track impressions for five different ad units, namely sponsored text links, flash, rich media, standard images, and standard images with text links. For each type of ad unit, we divided each industry's volume by total volume. Then we calculated industry medians across the five types of ad units.

Posted by at 5:45 PM | Permalink

November 2, 2007

When Business Mags Venture Beyond Wall Street

When the well-known business magazines venture beyond Wall Street and even Main Street to find stories, don't be surprised to see your contextual and search ads running on their august domains.

There's a battle currently waging among publications hungry for larger online audiences. They acknowledge the need to reach site visitors who are distinct from their print readers, and are positioning themselves in different ways to grow online revenues.

At the recent Future of Business Media conference, we heard a wide range of plans and tactics discussed by Forbes and others. Magazine publishers are deciding how much to invest in more web-only content and resources, including video and other multimedia options. Like other web publishers, they are actively exploring social elements both on and off their domains.

For advertisers, all of these plans translate into more opportunities to reach responsive audiences. Publishers say they will attract more dollars from travel, tech, shopping -- pretty much all the productive ad categories.

See more below, including my take on what the publishers shared this week.

Forbes: CEO/President Jim Spanfeller, Board Member Roger McNamee They aim for “wide aperture versus narrow aperture” as the web audience is much larger with completely different demographics. People don't have much free time, so they seek sites with a broad range of news, features, interpretative elements, etc. The brand is fully separate and distinct online. Forbes produces a mix of articles, images and video for the web. My Take: One of the earliest players in online multimedia and web-only content. We all know them for their highly-promoted Forbes slide shows related to lifestyles of the rich and famous. Let's see how they grow from here. Text Ads: Quigo/AdSonar contextual ads; No search ads seen.

Time Inc: Chairman/CEO Ann Moore

Digital revenues are finally growing much faster than print. They still have “lots of work” to do on their digital offerings in the U.S. and are also pushing internationally. Video will be part of their focus and investment online. The crown jewel is CNN Money, which appeals to the wider audience. It gets “glorious CPMs” and is profitable. My Take: They are riding the Main Street coverage approach. The well-known Fortune brand isn't mentioned much at all, nor getting leveraged online. Also, they decided to shutter Business 2.0 due to low performance. It will be interesting to see how their video plans pan out. Text Ads: Quigo/AdSonar contextual ads; Google search ads.

Business Week: Group President Keith Fox

They are a “liquid brand” where print content flows to online version. In addition, they include or link to content from other places. Business Week has a profitable business model, with strengths in auto, tech and finance ads. The magazine was recently redesigned, keeping in mind the multiple channels. However, they aren't “bullish on video” right now. My Take: This brand stays relatively small, because it is sticking more closely to what we know as business news. They aren't investing much in original web content. It's a tough battlefield, as BW directly competes with Yahoo and other news outlets. Text Ads: Google and Industry Brains contextual ads; Business.com search ads.

The Economist: Publisher and Global Marketing Director Susan Clark

This brand reaches a high-end, global audience with a wide range of international news. The magazine is a ritual pleasure. The Economist offers the same content online, with additional news and columns to keep things fresh. While the first year of content is freely accessible, you have to pay (or be a print subscriber) to access archives and audio. Interestingly, they keep tabs on their online reputation and see Facebook communities which are self-forming about their brand -- but stay away from them. My Take: This brand has a true identity. They aren't doing anything revolutionary online, but will continue to appeal to advertisers who want to reach their small but well-heeled niche. Text Ads: Economist classifieds; No search ads seen.

Conde Nast Portfolio: Publisher David Carey

This well-funded Conde magazine is “challenging the legacy titles” with a long-term commitment. The print version covers forward thinking content, while the site is about immediate news. About 85% of content is created for the Portfolio site. The publisher says, “Advertisers like productive customers…and you'll see good pickings from readers.” They aim for category diversity -- including business, luxury, travel and lifestyles. My Take: Great out-of-the-block effort, achieving 1mm uniques on site already. Like Forbes, they threaten the status quo by re-defining business news and establishing their niche. Text Ads: No contextual or search ads seen.

Mansueto Ventures: Publisher John Koten

Better known as Inc. and Fast Company, the publisher reports a 15% increase in revenue this year, described as a turnaround. “Our success is not dependent on [the] business category,” and is not trying to be all things to all people. They are pursuing lifestyle coverage, and want to appeal to their two defined communities. Today there are Facebook efforts for Inc. and blogs for Fast Company. My Take: These brands seem more participatory than the others titles. With consistent targeting both off-line and online, they have strong prospects based on growth of their social networks. Text Ads: Google contextual ads for both; Google search for Inc; Fast Company's own links appear on search and other pages.

Posted by at 3:44 PM | Permalink

October 3, 2007

Search Ads Fared Poorly in Trust Study

We're disappointed to learn that search ads fared poorly in Nielsen's survey of over 26,000 internet users worldwide. Just 34% of these respondents trusted search ads!

Let's see how well the remaining online vehicles performed. Only banners were judged more harshly, with 26% saying they trusted them. These other ad sources did far better:

* Emails I signed up for - 49% * Brand websites - 60% * Consumer opinions posted - 61%

Most likely, these results reflect the degree of user control. When you decide to check out products or services directly, you have some faith in the messages. When your fellow consumers weigh in, that's what you believe the most. However, when unknown or unwanted services are targeted online to you, that trust can start eroding.

It's a plausible explanation, anyway.

Posted by at 12:15 AM | Permalink

August 6, 2007

SEW Experts: Microsoft adCenter Could Win the Search Battle

In today's Search Ads column, "Microsoft adCenter Could Win the Search Battle," Tony Wright explains why he thinks Microsoft adCenter can win the search wars -- if it can scale the audience.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

June 28, 2007

Search Ad Sellers Should Help CTRs More

Where are Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask and others when you really need them? We think that they ought to be helping their customers even more actively. Right now, it's mostly up to the advertisers and their SEM agencies to improve clickthrough rates and buying efficiency.

Of course, creating strong paid search systems is not a trivial matter. There are, however, a variety of ways in which the ad sellers can provide incremental boosts for both advertisers and themselves.

1. Show ads when you know they work. Currently, advertisers buy keywords and ads are delivered to them. This seems fair and creates a smoothly functioning marketplace…or does it?

MSN example: I searched “chocolate” and saw that Godiva showed up in organic results and suggested searches, but not in ads. Some sponsored ads seemed appropriate while others appeared to be backfill. Of course, Godiva ads showed up when searching for “Godiva chocolate” directly.

There seem to be missed opportunities for advertisers. Perhaps Godiva advertisers only bought their brand name. Still, the suggested searches alone could help trigger and serve more appropriate Godiva ads, even without any refinements to user queries. We're sure these placements would be welcomed.

2. Prevent unnecessary buys. The ad sellers know what gets searched actively and how those terms are connected to the query tails. Maybe there is a way to share this intelligence, and bridge the gap between broad match and backfill buys.

Yahoo example: I searched "running" and found many appropriate sites to learn about it. Most ads were tied directly to the sport, such as running shoes. One exception came from Art.com, which featured "running" pictures; it linked to people or animals in motion.

Another Yahoo example: I clicked on one of the “top searches” shown about puppy names. There were plenty of great sites to find names for my future Fido. At the bottom were two sponsored ads, including a classic eBay backfiller: Puppy Name For Less.

Imagine if advertisers could eliminate less productive (or pointless) placements and clicks, via new performance models. In addition, advertisers might be attracted to different backfill tiers if they became more refined and reliable low-end buys.

3. Help with contextual buys. We're fond of the snafus that are easy to uncover while checking out ads shown on content pages. There are real disconnects, even when the subjects or terms seem quite clear.

Google example: I clicked on a Washington Post article about religious pilgrimages and saw two ads -- one about Catholic pilgrimages and another about Pike's Peak. By the second page of the article, there were unrelated backfills for accident lawyers.

There should be enough logic (and inventory) to show ads for other religious information or similar travel locations, right? Buyers would welcome this kind of opportunity, if their ads were connected to related interests. We're looking forward to improved matching algorithms.

4. Consider portfolio cooperation. The largest buyers and agencies are lucky -- they have sufficient resources to create portfolios and get coveted keywords. It's the smaller advertisers who can get stuck in the middle.

Ask example: I searched for “DVRs” and appreciated the mix of commercial and non-commercial organic results. The ads were predictably from big spenders including TIVO and NexTag.

Additional marketplace opportunities are already getting created. For local advertisers, geocoding makes these kinds of buys possible now. What about specific products that seem limited in scope but are related to a broader topic or search? For these advertisers, there should be new mechanisms that power cooperative buying.

5. Offer related searches for ads. Today, search providers create active coaching for end-users based on their queries. In their role as sellers, they leave it up to the advertisers to come up with their own approaches to inserting dynamic keywords. Perhaps there is a better way to help advertisers, rather than letting them "sink or swim".

The search engines have all the capabilities to suggest a term or two for each of the sponsored ads. These terms can connect what was searched to what was shown in sponsored results. It seems like a natural fit -- helping the advertisers and even the end-users who click on ads.

The marketplace won't be in this hyper growth mode forever. Even with a handful of major ad sellers, it's a matter of time before they will need to provide more than just the standard inventories being offered today. Servicing customers and helping them succeed isn't revolutionary thinking. It's generally the next evolutionary phase in differentiating your business, once certain processes have become commonplace.

Posted by at 3:10 AM | Permalink

May 21, 2007

SEW Experts: Ego Bidding Gone Wild

In today's Search Ads column, "Ego Bidding Gone Wild," Tony Wright talks about the danger of ego-bidding and how to stop a client from bidding their business into the ground.

Besides being bad business in general to spend money that can't be shown to bring a return, Wright points out that "in a world where relevancy criteria is in play, number 1 is somewhat nebulous."

Personalized search, quality scores, geotargeting, behavioral targeting, and other factors can make the concept of a "top result" that everyone sees a quaint memory. Wright says it's better to focus on the return, and not to let ego drive you to make bad decisions.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 3:45 PM | Permalink

April 26, 2007

DoubleClick Takes Ad Exchange on the Road

Apparently DoubleClick's new ad exchange is a bit more than vaporware, or a pretty bow to put on the package to entice potential acquirers. DoubleClick announced plans for the exchange in April, shortly before Google announced its plans to acquire DoubleClick.

The product is apparently still in the works, as it was trotted out this week at Ad:tech in San Francisco, according to DMNews. According to the report, "DoubleClick would not mention which publishers are using the exchange, but there are 35 combined publishers and advertisers currently using the service."

If the exchange does get built, and Google does acquire DoubleClick, that will make one more way for Google and Yahoo to compete head-to-head. Yahoo put its money behind Right Media, and announced plans to participate in the Right Media Exchange, last October.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:27 PM | Permalink

April 17, 2007

AdWords Announces Preferred Bidding Feature

A new feature at Google AdWords has just been released globally, and will be known as 'preferred cost bidding' or 'preferred CPC bids'. This new feature allows advertisers to specify the average cost per click or CPM (cost per thousand impressions) they want to pay within their AdWords campaigns.

Google says the feature was added in response to "advertiser demand for greater control over how they manage their bids and costs", and expects that advertisers will be better able to maximize ROI.

The AdWords algorithm will work constantly to achieve the target price set by the advertiser. The average price model is designed as an alternative to the existing maximum bid system, which often forces advertisers to pay more up front, based on the competition, and aim for an average cost per conversion instead.

By agreeing to an average cost per click or impression, advertisers should be able to feel more confident in their CPA targets. However, this could potentially mean advertisers will have slightly less control over positioning, which may also affect conversion rates.

Only time and testing will tell for many advertisers.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 12:00 PM | Permalink

Today's Featured Expert Columns

In case any of you missed it, we recently launched a new series of daily columns, with expert writers covering several topics in search marketing. You can sign up to receive the latest SEW Experts headlines via XML/RSS feeds, or subscribe to each column individually to receive email newsletters. We will send these as each column publishes, beginning May 1.

Today's featured columns are:

Organic Search by Mark Jackson of Vizion Interactive Compliance Continued: Creating Internal Links for Organic Success Considering internal link structure and keyword rich anchor text makes your Web site more accessible to users and search engines, and lead to strong rankings naturally.

Little Biz by Carrie Hill of Blizzard Internet Marketing Branding Isn't Just for Big Businesses Search advertising can be intimidating to small businesses, but buying your company name in PPC ad programs can be both affordable and profitable.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 2:28 AM | Permalink

April 5, 2007

Introducing: Weekly Columns by Search Marketing Experts

This week, you will see a new navigation scheme here on Search Engine Watch. Not only is it an effort to help readers to find critical content more easily, but you will see a new section labeled "SEW Experts". All this week, we're launching a new series of weekly columns, written by several familiar names in the search industry, and a few fresh faces offering new perspectives.

Today's featured column is Link Love, with starting with Engaging Customers to Say I Love You Back, by Justilien Gaspard, who discusses ways to use current customers to gain valuable inbound links and market your Web site at the same time.

You can now sign up for the daily feed of all Experts articles! Click the link or the images below to subscribe to the Search Engine Watch Experts Feed

You may also opt-in to each column individually by updating your subscription options via our Newsletters & Feeds management page.

Wednesday's Article: When Clicks Don't Get Credit for the Sale Analytics & ROI expert Eric Enge explains the common problems associated with tracking pay per click campaigns through to the final conversion points. Get tips on how to investigate conversion tracking problems on your Web site and within your online marketing campaigns, and find methods to get more accurate data.

Every Tuesday will feature two new stories: au Natural - focusing on organic search issues. Two columns will publish on alternate Tuesdays: Little Biz and Big Biz , will cover SEM issues for both small businesses and large enterprises.

Tuesday's featured columnists:

Mark Jackson, of Vizion Interactive, with: A Plea to Stop Treating SEO as an Afterthought

Carrie Hill, of Blizzard Internet Marketing, with: Time and Money: Small Businesses Have Little of Each

Monday, we started out with our Paid Search columnist, Tony Wright of Dexterity Media. Tony is a long-time speaker at Search Engine Strategies conferences on paid search advertising, and has written several articles for Search Day. The Search Ads column will publish every Monday, and you will also be able to subscribe to our experts columns via email and RSS feeds shortly.

Read Tony's first article, Desperately Seeking Stats to Prove the Value of Branded Keywords, a rebuttal of sorts to recent commentary on the incremental value of bidding on brand names and branded search terms in paid campaigns.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 10:27 AM | Permalink

March 9, 2007

PPC Wish Lists, Part 3

Kevin Lee wraps up his PPC advertisers' wishlist for search engines in his ClickZ column today. Included in the final installment are a way to bid-boost Google's ads that appear on AOL, more click-specific data passed by URL, and better customer communications.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:02 AM | Permalink

March 2, 2007

More Search Engine Wishes

In his ClickZ column today, Kevin Lee continues his look at Search Engine Wish Lists, with requests for search engines for things that would help search advertisers. This week's list includes requests related to video ads (short pre- and post-roll video ads targeted against geography, daypart, user profile, or content channel), geotargeting (more accurate), campaign management (network opt-outs, campaign cloning), and some Yahoo-specific wishes (like merging its display and search ad sales and support teams).

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:27 AM | Permalink

February 23, 2007

Search Engine Advertisers' Wish List

In his latest ClickZ column, Kevin Lee has compiled a Search Engine Wish List -- changes that search engines could implement to make PPC search advertisers' lives easier. The first installment includes requests for ad-click tracking in Yahoo, CPC behavioral search ads in all engines, and PPC video ads. He's compiling more requests, so feel free to add yours in the SEW Forums.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 1:07 AM | Permalink

February 20, 2007

Ask.com Renews Deal with LookSmart

Ask.com and IAC Advertising Solutions announced today that it would renew its license with LookSmart AdCenter for Publishers through 2009. The LookSmart service provides an auction platform, algorithmic based ad server and reporting engine, as well as an API for agencies and large advertiers. Ask uses LookSmart's AdCenter product as part of its Sponsored Listings program.

The automated open-auction system allows search marketers to purchase, manage and optimize campaigns on Ask.com and its publisher network. Ask.com Sponsored Listings currently process more than five billion queries each month, and supports over 30,000 advertisers bidding on more than 10 million keywords.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 1:33 PM | Permalink

December 21, 2006

NYTimes.com hires former Yahoo executive

Leon Lazaroff of Bloomberg reports that The New York Times has named Murray Gaylord, a former Yahoo executive, to oversee marketing of the NYTimes.com web site.

"The move is part of New York Times's efforts to increase sales at its digital operations as advertisers spend more on the Internet and less on print publications," writes Lazaroff.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 10:20 AM | Permalink

November 7, 2006

Use Of AdWords In US Senate Campaigns

The Rimm-Kaufman Group conducted a small study on how the US Senate candidates and campaigns used Google AdWords this weekend to "swing Senate races" in the last minute hustle and bustle. Here is a quick punch list of 'take aways' they sent me from the study:

* "Red" ads (pro-Republican or anti-Democrat) outnumbered "blue" Ads (pro-Democrat or anti-Republican) two-to-one.

* Blue ads were three times more likely to be negative than red ads.

* The most prevalent advertisers within this query set were Accoona (search engine ), Gather.com (social networking), CafePress (retailer), and GOPSenators.com (National Republican Senatorial Committee).

* No campaign ads referenced President Bush. Iraq and Al-Qaeda were only mentioned only twice (stopidioticforeignpolicy.com, against Jim Webb)

* Only two ads linked directly to videos (against George Allen: "macaca" and prescription drugs).

* Blue ads were more likely to include an exclamation point. Red ads were more likely to contain a question mark. * What struck Rimm-Kaufman Group most was how few political organizations are using Google.... And Yahoo, practically zip.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:11 AM | Permalink

November 2, 2006

ClickRiver New Pay Per Click Program from Amazon

Ever wanted to put your ads right on the product page of your competitor's product at Amazon.com, or wanted your product advertised with something related to it? Now with Amazon's new pay per click program ClickRiver, now you can. The program is in beta at the moment and through Amazon's A9 department.

You can find out more about the program here and apply to participate in the beta at ClickRiver.com

Posted by Jennifer Slegg at 10:02 AM | Permalink

In UK, Google To Surpass Channel 4's Ad Dollars

The Independent reports that Google UK is expected to earn "£900m from the UK ad market in 2006." When compared to Channel 4's "£800m at the TV group" this year, Google is expected to beat this TV player in ad dollars. Channel 4's Andy Duncan said, "Some broadcasters have been very slow to realise this. The industry as a whole is frankly rather backward-looking and is perhaps underestimating the scale of change that is going on and the pace of change."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:59 AM | Permalink

October 18, 2006

Google To Own 25% Of 2006 Online Ad Revenue

An eMarketer.com report estimates that Google will account for twenty-five percent of all online ad revenue. Google's share continues to increase (65% increase YoY) while Yahoo's growth continues to decrease, eMarketer says. Google first surpassed Yahoo in ad revenue back in 2005, but barely. Google in 2006 is expected to earn over $4 billion in ad revenue but Yahoo has just $2.9 billion according to eMarketer.com.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:24 AM | Permalink

September 28, 2006

The Click Quality Council Formed By ClickForensics

ClickZ reports that ClickForensics announced that they will be leading a new group named The Click Quality Council to "discuss Pay Per Click (PPC) quality issues and to ensure their interests are represented in the development of PPC measurement standards." The Click Quality Council has 20 advertisers including names such as VISA and LendingTree and agencies such as Carat Fusion and Agency.com. There were hints that this group would be formed in the BusinessWeek's Good Look At Click Fraud. It is important to note that the IAB seems to be setting up a similar organization, but the IAB will have both advertisers/agencies and search engines involved, whereas the Click Quality Council will only have advertisers and agencies.

Postscript: Some corrections were made to this article.

(1) The Click Quality Council has 20 advertisers. (2) The CQC wants to make it clear that they are not setting up a "similar or competing organization" to the IAB or to SEMPO.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:26 AM | Permalink

Fun and Profit with Search Ad Arbitrage

Clever (some would say evil) search advertisers are taking advantage of price differences in search advertising programs by buying comparatively inexpensive paid links in search results that drive users to pages with contextual ads with higher payoffs. While this search arbitrage is profitable for those who do it properly, it also aggravates other advertisers who complain that it drives costs up. And searchers aren't always happy with the practice either. The subject of search arbitrage was the focus of a lively debate at a recent SES panel, and guest writer Cat Seda covered the fireworks in today's SearchDay article, Search Arbitrage: Good or Evil? .

Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:53 AM | Permalink

September 26, 2006

Exploiting the Differences in Search Ad Programs

The major search engines pay-per-click programs all have similarities, but also have their own unique features and nuances. Crafting your campaigns to take maximum advantage of each program requires understanding the subtle differences in each program. At a recent SES conference, a panel explored the different programs and offered suggestions based on experience using them. Read on for more on these differences in today's SearchDay article, Compare & Contrast: Search Ad Program Strategies.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:27 AM | Permalink

September 20, 2006

Again, The Need For Search Ad Revenue To Stand Alone

Has the search bubble popped, given Yahoo's warning yesterday about declining ad revenue? That warning generated a stock plunge that has hit both Yahoo and Google. No, it's probably not a search bubble. Instead, it's a lesson in the danger of not breaking out search ad revenue from other forms.

Exactly as Robert Scoble notes here, the ad slip at Yahoo is not necessarily a search ad problem. What Robert calls "banner ads" is more specifically display advertising, graphical ads that are not pay-per-click text ads that show up in response to a search. Yahoo has a much bigger display advertising effort than Google. The downturn could be impacting just that side of their ad house.

In fact, the Wall Street Journal article about Yahoo's warning suggests this may be the case:

Yahoo's total revenue last year was $5.3 billion and an unspecified, but significant percentage of that was from so-called branded advertising, which includes graphical display ads as opposed to the small text ads placed beside search results.

Analysts say the two sectors Yahoo singled out generally spend heavily on such display ads. John Aiken, head of equity research at research firm Majestic Research Corp. in New York, said data about Internet activity suggest that search advertising for Yahoo and the broader industry appeared to be growing around expected levels. "Branded [advertising] is going to be a bumpier road for growth than people expected," said Mr. Aiken.

Of course, Google's not necessarily immune. A significant amount of Google's income is from non-search advertising -- contextual ads, some of which are graphical in nature. This is one reason why I'd asked Eric Schmidt at SES last month about breaking out search ad income from other forms. From the transcript of our talk:

Danny: Somewhat related: my understanding is that I still can't go to Google's financials and know how much money is going into content ads versus search – and I care about the search. I mean, to me search is a different intention and contextual. And so when people say, "we're going to measure the health of the search market," I want to know how the health of the search market is from a leader like Google. But I've always felt like when those figures are mixed together, it pollutes the data. For all I know, your contextual network is suddenly tanking, a whole bubble is about to burst out there, but search will be healthy. But the whole search industry might go down with it.

Eric: None of that is going to happen.

Danny: None of that is happening. And I was going to say, alternatively, everything has been doing great.

Eric: Since we're on the record, since we're on the record and it's a public company, I want to make sure that what you just said [that the contextual network is "suddenly tanking"] is not true.

Danny: Right. But that's the opposite to what could be happening. But contextual might be doing wonderfully, and search might be [tanking] …

Eric: They're both doing well. Again, we have a whole bunch of people who are trying to reverse-engineer the economics of Google. And we have historically not wanted to give out the detailed information that you're describing. These are clickthrough rates, CPCs, RPMs, and so forth. There are a number of reasons [not to split these out]. One of course is competitive. But there's a more fundamental reason, which is that anybody who looks at how Google actually runs the ad network makes simplifying assumptions that are not in fact true. And it's important that we, Google, not give out information that can be misused or is essentially false. So we've chosen, to the frustration of many, to not reveal the underlying economics of the ad box. Partly because it's changing so quickly. And all of the estimates that you see are based on smart people making estimates without our assistance. We think for numerous reasons that's the right decision. It's how we run the business.

Perhaps now we'll see some change happen. The failure to do good breakouts, the pollution of other ad revenues mixed in with search, directly causes search to perhaps be seen as in trouble when it might be completely healthy.

In fact, as I told a reporter yesterday, I think search will be just fine given its history. Search was booming during the ad downturn of 1999-2001. It was booming because of its highly measurable, highly converting nature. Born from a downturn, I expect it will continue to ride out any future ones, if not benefit from them.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:06 AM | Permalink

August 17, 2006

Seevast: It's Kanoodle & More

Catching up on some industry news earlier this month, Kanoodle has done some restructuring. Previously, Kanoodle offered both search and contextual ads. Now, Kanoodle only offers search ads. Contextual ads are being sold through a sister business unit, Pulse 360. Meanwhile, the Moniker domain traffic service has been acquired and will run as a third sister business. Above all of these is a new operating company, Seevast. For more, see this ClickZ story: Kanoodle Makes Acquisition, Becomes Seevast.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:36 PM | Permalink

August 15, 2006

103 Links About SES San Jose 2006 (AKA The Big Recap)

Couldn't make it to last week's monster Search Engine Strategies show in San Jose? Well, maybe next time! In the meantime, I've compiled a list of coverage from across the web, even somewhat organized into topic areas.

Our San Jose show is always tough for me, as I arrive a week earlier to visit with the various major search engines out there. That means two weeks of news and email to dig out from, since you can never get it all done on the road. All that digging out means I know I don't have everything listed below. But you'll find plenty to keep you entertained.

General Recaps

Eric Schmidt Appearance

Eric Schmidt & Search Privacy

Click Fraud Panel & Related Coverage

Yahoo's Panama Ad Platform Preview

Social Search & Related Topics

Organic Listings Sessions

Search Advertising Sessions

Issues Sessions

News, Blogs & Public Relations

Big Sites/Budget Sessions

Small Sites/Budget Sessions

Conversion & Metrics

Other Sessions

Google Dance & Parties & Pictures

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:50 PM | Permalink

July 3, 2006

Ending Click Fraud with Pay-Per-Percentage

In Pay-Per-Percentage vs. PPC, Shimon Sandler points out an interesting new paper from the folks at Microsoft Research - Pay-Per-Percentage of Impressions: An Advertising Method that is Highly Robust to Fraud (pdf)

As Shimon notes, the idea is that this type of advertising approach would be "immune to both click fraud and impression fraud," and would use something called "pre-fix match" instead of broad match.

The author of the paper is Joshua Goodman, who is a Principal Researcher, and the head of the Microsoft Learning for Messaging and Adversarial Problems (LMAP) team, and who has an impressive page of other publications listed on the Microsoft domain, including a recent one on Finding Advertising Keywords on Web Pages (pdf).

What does pay-per-impressions mean? Simply, someone can can for a percentage of all impressions for certain keywords or keyword phrases over a period of time.

In this system, an advertiser picks a keyword, e.g. ?cameras? and purchases, perhaps through bidding, a certain percentage of all impressions for that keyword. For instance, an advertiser might pay $1.00 to MSN Search. In return, the advertiser might receive 10% of all impressions for ?camera? for 1 week. What does this mean? It means that for 1 week, one out of ten times that someone searches for the word ?camera?, they will see the ad.

The number of real impressions that an advertiser receives would not be affected by the number of fake impressions. The paper describes how this mechanism would need to work to avoid impression fraud, and how a broad match-type of system could function under a pay-per-percentage type system.

The paper points out that if an pay-per-percentage system is adopted, that it wouldn't replace pay-per-click or pay-per-impression, but would rather be another choice that an advertiser can make. A method is described in the paper that would allow these types of systems to function side-by-side.

It also looks at something that the author calls "misinformation fraud" which is when a competitor performs searches to boost the apparent rate of search volume that an advertising system might display as indicative of how popular a word or phrase is, and affiliate fraud.

It's an interesting and thoughful paper, well worth a read if you use paid search to attract visitors to you web site. Thanks for pointing it out, Shimon.

Postscript: Donna Bogatin, from Digital Micro-Market also pointed this paper out on July 1st, and has an interesting post from yesterday asking Google to show that they are taking a stand against click-fraud in Click fraud prevention: The next great search engine differentiator?.

The Microsoft paper was published as part of a workshop last year sponsored by Yahoo, but really doesn't seem to have received much attention at the time, though Dr. Garcia (Orion) wrote about it at the Search Engine Watch Forums, along with other papers from the same workshop in December, in a post titled Searcher Perceptions & Paid Links.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 12:49 PM | Permalink

June 15, 2006

Yahoo Sued For Trademark Infringement Using Google AdWords

DenverPost.com reports that Yahoo was sued by lovecity.com for bidding on the lovecity.com trademark in Google AdWords. Reportedly, Yahoo placed bids on "www.lovecity" and "lovecity.com," so when someone searches on those phrases, Yahoo Personals would come up in the search ads on Google and Google's search ad network. I tried a search on www.lovecity and saw two competing dating services but not Yahoo, come up in the sponsored listings section. I actually find it humorous that Yahoo would go this far, only because the left hand does not talk to the right hand.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:03 AM | Permalink

May 24, 2006

Search Engines Using Search Ads To Promote Themselves

In the past week or so, I have been reporting on the different ways search engines use search ads to promote their own search engine. I have spotted Ask.com bidding on Google for "pimped out search engine," which is part of their marketing speak of the TV commercials. I have also spotted Yahoo using Google AdSense to promote Yahoo Search products.

Search engines like MSN come up in Google AdWords for a search on search engine, MSN and Google come up in Yahoo Search for a query on search engine also. But at this time, none of the search engines are paying MSN or Ask.com for ads on their networks for the keyword phrase "search engine." It is also interesting to note that Google and MSN do not rank themselves in the number one position organically for the keyword phrase "search engine," only Ask.com and Yahoo do that.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:20 AM | Permalink

May 15, 2006

Indeed Job Search Moves Ads Out Of Beta & Q&A With CEO, Paul Forster

Indeed, a job search engine, announced last week that it officially launched its pay per click network (the system had been in beta since mid-2005).

CEO Paul Forster sat down with me for an introduction to the company: "The job search market is very fragmented. There are 1000s of different places to search which makes it very difficult for seekers to do a comprehensive search. Indeed saves people time, enables people to find unique jobs, and also to find sources of jobs that they normally wouldn’t have heard of. We’ve put a lot of work into the search algorithm."

Read the full interview at VerticalSearch.

Posted by Brian Smith at 1:01 PM | Permalink

April 27, 2006

Revisiting Search Engine Ad Breaks

Originally, the news of Google's broad matching change had me thinking that Google was adding more ad positions to their search results pages. I've since talked with Google and understand now this isn't the case. I've broken what is happening into a new story. Meanwhile, I think this story is still a useful reminder on the number of ad positions each search engine offers across the board.

Here's the rundown I did from June 2004:

2004

Paid Links

Free Links

Total

% Free

Yahoo

8

20

28

71%

AOL

8

10

18

56%

MSN

9

11

20

55%

Google

10

10

20

50%

Ask

11

10

21

48%

Average

9

12

21

56%

And the situation today?

2006

Paid Links

Free Links

Total

% Free

Change

AOL

8

10

18

56%

0%

MSN

8

10

18

56%

1%

Ask

8

10

18

56%

8%

Google

11

10

21

48%

-2%

Yahoo

14

10

24

42%

-30%

Average

10

10

20

51%

-5%

Google*

14

10

24

42%

-13%

The two big players -- Google and Yahoo -- have decreased the percentage of free listings shown. To be clear, on Google, you still have the same ten free listings shown since Google began, but they've added another paid spot. On Yahoo, you have 10 less free listings than they used to show, plus they've added more paid spots.

Aside from number of ads, the positioning is an issue. Google's long had many ads running down the side of its page, something the other major players have all largely imitated. To me, that's not been irritating, because plenty of editorial listings were still "above the fold" or visible without scrolling.

In contrast, dumping ads on the top of pages might drive users away. Ask used to do this quite aggressively, as Ads On Ask & Could Paid Listings Take Prime Position? from last year covers in more detail. Ask Jeeves to Reduce Paid Ads covers how Ask pulled back on the ads because it found fewer ads boosted user retention -- at least in the US. In the UK, they'll still run up to four ads at the top of the page and five below.

FYI, Google did increase from two to three ads at the top of results last August (it also has been testing ads at the bottom of pages since November).

For the record, here's the current top-bottom-side breakdown in chart form:

2006

Top

Bottom

Side

Paid Links

% Top

AOL

4

4

0

8

50%

MSN

3

0

5

8

38%

Ask

3

5

0

8

38%

Yahoo

4

2

8

14

29%

Google

3

0

8

11

27%

Average

3

1

5

10

36%

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:51 PM | Permalink

April 25, 2006

Yahoo's Ad Inventory Beats Out Google

Susan Kuchinskas informed me of this post that shows recent comScore qSearch stats where Yahoo's ad inventory is higher as a percentage, when compared to Google. Yahoo shows a PPC ad for 59.7 percent of Web searches conducted. Google shows a PPC ad for 52.9 percent of Web searches. Google still has a higher click through rate with 11.8 percent but Yahoo is not far behind with 11.4 percent. Keep in mind, I know Danny hates comparing month to month, and these numbers are comparing March 2006 vs. March 2005.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:14 AM | Permalink

April 18, 2006

Search Ad Providers Gaze into their Crystal Balls

Is search advertising slowing down, or just getting started? What new distribution channels are likely to open up in the coming months? Will traditional ad agencies dominate the business? And just how big a problem is click fraud, anyway? Answers to these and many other questions from executives from Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN and IAC in today's SearchDay article, Divining the Future of Search Advertising.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:24 PM | Permalink

April 11, 2006

Time Warner Cable Can Auction Off TV Ads

Reuters reports that Time Warner Cable currently has the ability to run AdWords like auction based selling for its video-on-demand channels. Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Glenn Britt said, "We can start doing what Google does -- auctioning off spots." Reuters provides an example; A "car manufacturers or dealerships could bid to put their ads on the television screens of viewers who favor the Speed Channel." For other discussion on auctioning off TV spots, see Danny's blog entry from last week named The Future Of AdWords For TV?.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:12 AM | Permalink

April 3, 2006

The Future Of AdWords For TV?

No, it's not search. No, Google's not connected or even rumored to be involved with this company. But See Spot Run from BusinessWeek caught my eye. It's about a start-up company called Spot Runner that does quality local TV commercials for small businesses. Pick your industry, do a quick cheap modification to a commercial template, then run your ad on cable stations in your local area. The story felt a lot like how small businesses initially got into paid search through programs from Overture/Yahoo and Google. Now that Google's doing radio ads, this model feels a lot like how it or other search players might go into video and TV ads.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:09 PM | Permalink

March 31, 2006

RPA Awarded By Both Google & Yahoo For Paid Search Innovation

AdWeek reports that ad agency, RPA, has been awarded awards from both Google and Yahoo for paid search innovation early this month.

"RPA's ability to leverage the entire Google network helped them creatively manage the innovated Honda and Pioneer Electronics campaigns by finding customers not only on our core search properties, but across thousands of Google AdSense partners," said Chris LaSala, Google's head of agencies, New York, in a statement. "This approach reinforces their leadership in the industry."

Chris Sherman wrote about the Yahoo "Search Light" Award around a month ago.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:42 AM | Permalink

March 28, 2006

Google Lands Deal With Verizon SuperPages.com

ClickZ reports that Google has landed a dead with Verizon SuperPages.com to provide some backfill sponsored results for SuperPages.com. Google will be using its AdWords PPC engine to help Verizon better monetize their online Yellow Pages engines, SuperPages.com. The deal will allow Verizon to increase their inventory of ads. SuperPages will be managing the accounts and they will buy the Google advertising on their behalf.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:52 AM | Permalink

March 16, 2006

Forbes Discusses Impression Fraud And Impact On Google's Outlook

I was a bit surprised to read an article at Forbes with the title Google Faces Potential Pressure From Impression Fraud. Impression fraud is different from click fraud, in that Google is measuring ad views and not ad clicks. Impression fraud is an issue at Google because Google uses a "Quality Score" to determine the ranking of the ad.

The quality score is made of your cost per click and your click through rate (plus some other criteria that is not 100% clear to me). The click through rate is based on the number of clicks you receive for an ad and the number of views. So the more ad views, impressions, your ad receives and the less clicks you get on that ad, the lower you quality score is, the lower your ad ranks in the AdWords system.

Bear Stearns, a worldwide investment banking and securities trading and brokerage firm, kept Google's stock at an "outperform" rating due to impression fraud and the impact it can have on lower the price of keywords. In reality, the keyword prices are not directly affected by impression fraud, it is however less expensive for some advertisers to our rank their competitors. How interesting is it that Wall Street knows about impression fraud?

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:37 AM | Permalink

March 5, 2006

Daily SearchCast, March 2, 2006: Special SES NY Edition, Search Advertising: Now & Future Panel

Today's search podcast is the fourth of special editions out of the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York this week. It covers highlights from the Search Advertising: Now & Future panel, which you'll find it in this MP3 file. About the panel:

Search Advertising: Now & Future What's the state of search advertising now and where's it going, especially as search leaps out of the browser and into places like our TVs, phones and music players? This session with search engine executives explores the topic.

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor, SearchEngineWatch.com

Speakers: Gerry Campbell, VP & GM Search & Navigation, America Online, Inc. James Speer, VP Marketing and Products, IAC Advertising Solutions, Ask Jeeves Tim Armstrong, Vice President, Advertising Sales, Google Inc. David Jakubowski, General Manager, MSN Search Tim Cadogan, VP of Search, Yahoo! Search Marketing 

Want more SES NY 2006 news? Technorati has blog reports here: . See shared photos on Flickr here: sesny2006. See bookmarked pages on del.icio.us here: sesny2006. See saved pages on Yahoo My Web 2.0 here: sesny2006. Find live coverage and discussion at the Search Engine Watch Forums here: SEM Events.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:12 AM | Permalink

February 1, 2006

Marketers Find Google Ads Slightly More Effective Than Yahoo & Well Above MSN

Survey: Advertisers Say Search Ads On Google Better Than Yahoo, MSN from MediaPost reports on an Outsell survey of 1,200 advertisers last November that found 71 percent found search ads on Google were effective, compared to 62 percent on Yahoo and 49 percent on MSN. But those most likely to find Google as "extremely" effective had slightly smaller average budgets than Yahoo and MSN spenders.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:55 AM | Permalink

January 30, 2006

New Study Reports that Search Sites Provides Twice the Conversion Rate When Compared With Other Acquisition Sources

The Dow Jones story: Search Sites Better At Getting Shoppers To Buy: Study, reports on new research from WebSideStory that shows search engines (both paid and organic listings) provide more than twice the conversion rates than other forms of Internet advertising and marketing.

However, direct navigation offered the highest conversion rate. The sites used in the study cover five product categories.

From the article: The study defines conversion rate as the percentage of visitors to a site who view an ad or clicking on a search result and purchase a product or service.

Numbers

Search Search Sites had a conversion rate of 2.3%, meaning that for every 100 consumers clicking on a search result or advertisement, 2.3 people made a purchase.

Other Forms of Internet Marketing Banner ads, affiliate marketing links, comparison shopping search sites* and other online marketing efforts had a conversion rate of 0.96%.

* Note, that shopping engines are not considered in the main search category.

Search Bypass: Direct Navigation/Bookmarks Direct to a company's web site (including via a bookmark) offered a conversion rate of 4.23%.

Where did the data come from: The study collected data from Web sites that sell apparel, toys, electronics, sporting goods and leisure products. Among the most successful were toy sites. When reached through a search engine, they had a conversion rate of 4.85% while Web sites selling computers and electronics had a conversion rate of 1.35%, the study found.

The sites used in the study generate more than $3 billion in annual sales online in five categories listed above.

This news release from WebSideStory has more including precise definitions for each category.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:26 PM | Permalink

January 23, 2006

How to Handle Yahoo's Shorter Ad Descriptions

Last week, shorter ads descriptions came to Yahoo as Danny points out in this post. To assist with the change, Kevin Lee's column on the Clickz site: Strategies for Yahoo's Shorter Descriptions, offers some suggestions and tactics for SEM's on how to handle the new ad lengths.

Here are a few key points, in my view, from Kevin's column:

+ Don't simply clone your Google ads to Yahoo. Why? Any changes result in the ads going back through Yahoo!'s dreaded editorial process. So first, evaluate if the truncated ads continue to communicate your advertising message appropriately. Many advertisers write their descriptions in an inverted pyramid format, so truncation may not be a big deal because the meat of the message is in the first few words.

+ Yahoo and Google campaign structures are "likely very different." Though you may rely on Google campaigns running on broad or phrase match, Yahoo! creative and keyword lists may need to go much deeper. In addition, unless you really want the highest possible volume of clicks from a listing, your ad creative may be better served with a clear message about the product or service you provide. In Google, less-than-compelling ad creative is penalized with a lower quality score. That results in a lower position or more expensive campaign.

Finally: Another reason to keep Yahoo! titles at the maximum length is that often, additional length allows you to more effectively communicate your value to potential customers. On the other hand, you may have already created compact ad titles that communicate with the same level of clarity as longer ones do. Google and MSN forced many of us to become experts at compact communication.

Much more in Kevin's excellent column.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:52 PM | Permalink

January 13, 2006

Show Me the Content: Web Search, Verticals, and Metasearch

Putting the Screws to Google, by Jon Fine from BusinessWeek offers a look at how, "old media could take back its share of search's ad bounty." So, in a sense it's not only putting it to Google but to Yahoo, Ask and other general purpose web engines. Of course, the word Google in a headline gets people to look.

It's an interesting read. How would these "old media" players do it? Fine offers an example of Walt Disney, News Corp., NBC Universal, and The New York Times, joining together to form a "Content Consortium" that offers a search engine containing content that, "no outside search engines can access."

Of course, Google is well aware of proprietary content issues that Fine raises. If you look at the "Risks Related to Our Business and Industry" section of many of Google's SEC filings (including their IPO filing) you'll read:

Proprietary document formats may limit the effectiveness of our search technology by preventing our technology from accessing the content of documents in such formats which could limit the effectiveness of our products and services. A large amount of information on the Internet is provided in proprietary document formats such as Microsoft Word. The providers of the software application used to create these documents could engineer the document format to prevent or interfere with our ability to access the document contents with our search technology. This would mean that the document contents would not be included in our search results even if the contents were directly relevant to a search. These types of activities could assist our competitors or diminish the value of our search results. The software providers may also seek to require us to pay them royalties in exchange for giving us the ability to search documents in their format. If the software provider also competes with us in the search business, they may give their search technology a preferential ability to search documents in their proprietary format. Any of these results could harm our brand and our operating results.

From the BusinessWeek article: "For the life of me, I can't imagine why they haven't done it," says Tom Curley, CEO of Associated Press. Here's one reason: Doing it would require spinal implants for intimidated media barons. But the notion that some pushback is pending is not far-fetched. Curley says he is talking with potential partners about setting up subject-specific Web packages -- say, for travel or basketball -- that will include content from multiple media. Once partners are on board and packages are finalized, search engines will be invited to bid for that traffic.

So the AP might be getting into the vertical search business, interesting.

For a long time I've said verticals will continue to grow in popularity and importance as meta search tools which are getting better all of the time will allow various database and content publishers to offer material (free or fee) to end users who will select these databases at the time of their search based on their information need. Of course, database selection tools to assist users in making these decisions that incorporate personalization, social networks, etc. will also be available.

The metasearch tool could be sponsored and/or have contextually based advertising included as a part of it.

Fee-based content could be made available for free if, for example, the user would view a certain number of ads over a given period of time. Marketers could also sponsor access to databases with fee-based content. For example, Kayak or Expedia might sponsor access to a database containing digitized travel books and videos.

Smaller but focused databases, can potentially offer more precise results (higher precision, lower recall). Don't forget that for many web searchers, the Invisible or Deep Web is everything beyond the first six or seven results. Advanced searchers might also benefit with a unified interface versus numerous interfaces and syntaxes. Training sure would be easier.

In many respects, what I'm talking (in concept not content) has been around for years with services like Dialog and LexisNexis. For example, Dialog offers access to over 1000 databases with many coming from various database producers. I often describe it as a supermarket of databases with a common syntax. Users select various databases depending on their information need.

Another example. I've written numerous times about the many full-text databases (available for free, without going to the library, for personal use). Well, the San Francisco Public Library offers searchable access to many of these databases using a single interface. They call it a cross-database search. Instead of having to go to 20 databases and then search each one, you can pick and choose databases depending on what you're looking for. Articles? Reference answers? Images? Directory info? Business? Local?

The SF Public Library is hardly the only organization offering this type of service. The topic of cross-database (aka federated or metasearching) is a hot topic these days. In fact, NISO, the National Information Standards Organization, has a large initiative in developing metaseach standards.

Postscript: Cold North Wind is another company involved in large newspaper digitization projects. Their PaperofRecord.com site is their public database where you can actually see what they have digitized to this point.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:03 PM | Permalink

January 12, 2006

Search Marketers Will Soon Be Able to Buy Search Ads on Just AOL Properties

A MediaPost article takes a look a closer look at the advertising portion of the recent Google/AOL deal. It includes comments from Mike Kelly, the president of AOL Media Networks, who says that one of the primary benefits of the Google/AOL arrangement from an advertising perspective will allow AOL's sales staff the ability to sell search ads just on AOL properties, something that's currently not possible.

"It's definitely a plus for marketers to have the flexibility to buy on AOL alone," said Joshua Stylman, managing partner at Reprise Media.

Gregg Stewart, senior vice president, channel management and marketing at Fathom Online, agreed. "Marketers will always want to go for precision if given the opportunity."

Marketers have long said anecdotally that AOL search converts at a higher rate.

More in the article: AOL: Google Deal Will Boost Search.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:30 PM | Permalink

December 17, 2005

New Issue Of Information Science Publication Focuses On "Paid Search"

Here's a bunch of new reading for your reading lists. The December/Januaury Issue of the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) is new online (free). This issue of the Bulletin was, edited by Dr. Bernard Jansen from Penn State University and features a look at what's termed "paid search." Now, just to find some time to read all of this interesting material. (-:

Dr. Jansen writes: There is growing interest in information searching research that focuses on the environmental aspects of searchers,...However, there has been little consideration of paid search, an increasingly popular and uniquely contextual form of information interaction on the Web. Paid search is a distinctive type of interaction that combines both information push -and -pull and is increasingly important in locating information on the Web.

Here are titles, authors, and links to the articles that focus on paid search:

+ Paid Search as an Information Seeking Paradigm Bernard J. Jansen

+ Clicking Instead of Walking: Consumers Searching for Information in the Electronic Marketplace Kuan-Pin Chiang

+ Sponsored Search: A Brief History Daniel C. Fain and Jan O. Pedersen

+ The Power of Understanding: Switching Paradigms with Your Target Customer in Search Marketing Gord Hotchkiss

+ Repeat Search Behavior: Implications for Advertisers Nico Brooks

+ The Flip Side of Fear: Marketing to the Empowered Consumer Tim Armstrong

+ Click Fraud Brendan Kitts, Benjamin LeBlanc, Ryan Meech and Parameshvyas Laxminarayan

+ The Value Implications of the Practice of Paid Search Michael Zimmer

Posted by Gary Price at 4:57 PM | Permalink

November 28, 2005

TiVo To Offer TV Ad Search

TiVo Users Soon Can Search for Ads from the Wall Street Journal covers a new "feature" from TiVo planned for next spring to let people search for ads of interest to them. So say you're interested in BMW ads. You could search for that, then watch 30 second spots. Oh, and advertisers might get to bid to make their ads come up tops. OK, we'll see how great this might turn out to be.

Seriously, if you're interested in buying a BMW, do you really want to watch a 30 second ad on your TiVo? Wouldn't you rather do a web search to get some more substantial information? And if so, hmmm -- we've already got those ads through Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and MSN.

Yes, they don't fit the video medium of TiVo or television. But that's the difference between TV, which is good for branding and desire (see the cool BMW ad -- now maybe you want one) and search, which is good for delivering up ads that match a person's existing demand (been thinking about a new car -- better do some research on types and prices).

That's why I long ago called search as a "reverse broadcast system," where searchers broadcast their desires. Maybe a TiVo ad search service will tap into that by letting advertisers tap into those broadcast desires as viewers search. But realistically, they'll dish up the same 30 second spots designed for generating desire rather than informing, missing what the searcher really wants.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:44 PM | Permalink

November 8, 2005

French Party Turns To Google Ads On Riot Issue

Via InsideGoogle, Paris Riots. Political Party turns to Google Ads to win support for policies of Interior Minister at Morrison covers how the UMP, the political party of French interior minister Nicholas Sarkozy, has turned to Google ads to drum up support for their policy to reestablish order in the country. More coverage from Reuters here.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:21 AM | Permalink

November 7, 2005

Miva Enhances Search Ad Offerings

MIVA announced today the launch of Ad Center 3.0, an enhanced self-service campaign management tool for advertisers. The company also debuted a new broad match tool. More information about both programs can be found at the company's press release center.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 3:17 PM | Permalink

November 1, 2005

New Research from Stanford on the Truthful Auction Pricing of Keywords

A new research report was just published online from the Stanford InfoLab! that might worthy of your attention. Here are the details. Note: The report does get a bit technical at some points but I still think it will be interest to many of you.

Title: Truthful Auctions for Pricing Search Keywords (10 pages; PDF) Authors: Gagan Aggarwal, Ashish Goel, Rajeev Motwani.

Abstract: We present a truthful auction for pricing advertising slots on a web-page assuming that advertisements for different merchants must be ranked in decreasing order of their (weighted) bids. This captures both the "Overture model" where bidders are ranked in order of the submitted bids, and the "Google model" where bidders are ranked in order of the expected revenue (or utility) that their advertisement generates. Assuming separable click-through rates, we prove revenue-equivalence between our auction and the non-truthful next-price auctions currently in use.

Want to discuss this new research? Check out this thread in the SEW Forums.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:13 PM | Permalink

October 18, 2005

Paid Search Helps the Smithsonian Institution Increase Revenues

One of the best things about living in the DC area is taking advantage of ALL that the Smithsonian Institution has to offer (much of it available for free). However, what many people don't realize is that the Smithsonian offers many products, services, and activities for people outside of the area. As Mickey Alam Khan's DMNews.com article: Search Shows Smithsonian's Facets, points out, search advertising is helping the organization increase profits in the e-commerce arena.

The Washington-based organization in August posted a 38 percent year-over-year increase in total sales to $54,000 for its e-commerce site at www.smithsonianstore.com. Also, online sales attributed to paid search are up 75 percent year to date. Smithsonian's educational group travel brand, Smithsonian Journeys, similarly is benefiting from paid search, as that tactic is driving more than half of the online queries for the service. And paid search is raising the profile of the 2 million-circulation Smithsonian Magazine for members, too.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:39 PM | Permalink

October 13, 2005

Don't Hate Search

I Hate Search from David Cohen at ClickZ posits the self-admitted conspiracy idea that if search engines made free listings better, then ads wouldn't be so lucrative. No, that's not the reason paid ads are so effective, plus paid search isn't exactly the inhuman, uncreative open auction model that he thinks.

Let's start with the conspiracy theory. Paid search ads are effective because, as I've talked about before, search engines are a reverse broadcast system where consumers are broadcasting exactly what they want to advertisers. Search marketers are smart enough to tune in and deliver up something that matches. It's a connection unlike most other advertising mediums except for really the yellow pages industry.

Yes, free listings can always be made better. But if you really wanted to deflect consumers into paid ads, you don't downgrade organic results. You simply put more paid listings in the "main" column rather than on the side. Indeed, Google just did that last month, putting three ads on top of free listings in certain circumstances, rather than just two.

But put too many ads up there, and unless the relevancy is always spot on, you risk losing users. That's one reason Ask Jeeves recently cut the number of ads it would display, sometimes up to 10 of them before showing regular results.

So skip the conspiracy theory, at least the idea that regular results might be reduced in quality just to push ads. That's just going to cost search engines users. Gary Stein does some further debunking here.

If you want a conspiracy theory, go with the one kicked off back during Google's Florida Update of 2003, where some wondered if Google was trying to make its free results more non-commercial.

Since that time, I've heard various search engines express the idea that they would like to see the free results be more non-commercial, or at least more about providing information rather than selling things. But it's clearly not completely that case. Take a search for ipod on Google. Yes, I get iPodHacks and Wikipedia and other news and information sites. But I also get everythingipod, "The Superstore for your iPod," coming up.

How about the concern David has that the open auction model of search means anyone can outbid you, and the relationship/clout you have with other ad sellers doesn't mean anything.

Part of me thinks, "Too bad!" I'm sorry if you the advertiser don't get to shove yet another ad I don't care about down my throat in search due to being cloutly-challenged. I get enough of that when I'm at the supermarket, watching TV, reading a newspaper and so on. You're often wasting your money, and if you're an agency, wasting client money, doing this.

Beyond this, he writes:

I don't know about you, but I always liked the "part art, part science" section of the business. I don't even want to think about being replaced by an open auction.

That's just not correct. Search is very much part art and part science. Doing well with even showing up with a Google ad is not entirely down to just spending enough money, since ads are not ranked solely on bid. MSN will be that way. Ask Jeeves is that way. Yahoo's going that way.

And what's the pitch in the copy? What's the landing page like behind that? Because if you aren't converting, you're not going to have the budget to convert. Again, as I wrote before, it's not just math and machines.

Let's be honest. I think what scares David and a lot of other non-search marketers is that money keeps flowing into search, and they may not understand the fundamentals of that medium.

Here's the good news. Other media will continue to have money come to them as well. Search especially isn't a good branding venue, as I've written before.

Here's the bad news. Those other media are going to be forced to be more accountable and they will continue to give parts of their money pie to search, since search remains largely undervalued and in demand. David understands this, as he says at the end of his column:

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to get over it. Despite my protests, our clients demand increasingly more of our digital media budgets go toward search-related spending. As a company, we're rapidly scaling our search practice to accommodate increased need.

Overall, don't hate search or be scared of it. Get educated and participate in the space!

Want to comment or discuss? Please visit our Search Engine Watch Forums!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:29 AM | Permalink

October 4, 2005

SEO Big With Small & Medium Sized Businesses

No Guesswork Here: Web Sites Work For SMBs at InternetNews.com has a few search stat tidbits worth noting. A survey has found that among ways small and medium-sized business promote their sites, SEO is ranked second, 54 percent, just after email at 60 percent. That's SEO as in non-paid search. Paid search (or PPC) was ranked fourth at 20 percent.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:25 AM | Permalink

September 29, 2005

Search Pulling From Banner Ad Spend

An article in New Media Age UK titled: Long-time advertisers are abandoning banner ads in favour of search, includes comments about how firms that have been the "backbone" of Net advertising for years are moving into search marketing.

Eric Abensur from Wanadoo UK and Giles Ivey from AOL both say that big-volume advertisers are switching their spending from display ads and banners into search.

Media agency Unique Digital says it has been seeing this from finance, retail and travel brands, with some putting up to 20% of their budgets into search. "It's primarily advertisers that are looking for a direct response," said the agency's media director Martin Kelly. "Search is an easy win, but it's not a long-term solution."

While Abensur and Ivey are postive about large companies moving from banners to search spending, Phil Macauley, head of planning and strategy at Yahoo Europe, says:

Direct response advertisers are increasing their media spend online as a whole, both in branded advertising and sponsored search. But they're moving it away from other media, rather than moving budgets around within online."

Posted by Gary Price at 2:49 PM | Permalink

September 26, 2005

Microsoft Opens adCenter & MSN Keywords To Singapore & France

Microsoft has officially launched its adCenter system to sell paid search in France and Singapore. More details in this company press release. More info on the program in general here.

Actually, the release notes that Singapore officially launched on August 30, so it's France that gets rolled out today. MSN lance sa plateforme de liens sponsorisés en France from Abondance has more details on that, and the new French program can be found here.

Microsoft Plans to Sell Search Ads of Its Own from the New York Times has some overview coverage of the rollout, with some reaction comments from Google and Yahoo. MSN reiterates previous timing of hoping to replace Yahoo ads on its own sites entirely by next spring.

For more, see also

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:17 AM | Permalink

September 7, 2005

Sponsored Search Links Accounted for 34% of Online Ad Impressions During One Week Period

Some new numbers released today show that search sponsored links made up 34 percent, or nearly 13 billion, of online advertising impressions for a one week period. This stat comes from Nielsen//NetRatings new AdRelevance Sponsored Search Link service.

According to the latest AdRelevance sponsored links report, eBay ranked No. 1 in sponsored links placements, which featured more than 15,000 companies, during the week ending August 21.

Here's a look at a few of the numbers that are highlighted in this news release:

Top 5 Companies Ranked by Sponsored Link Impressions, Week ending August 21, 2005

  • eBay, Inc. 378,525,000 impresssions
  • Shopping.com, Inc. 138,307,000 impresssions
  • InterActiveCorp 97,969,000 impresssions
  • MyCashNow.com 93,751,000 impresssions
  • Yahoo! Inc. 90,544,000 impresssions

Top 5 Industries Ranked by Total Sponsored Link Placements, Week ending August 21, 2005

  • Retail Goods & Services--22% Share of Impressions
  • Web Media 21%--Share of Impressions
  • Financial Services 6%--Share of Impressions
  • Travel 5%--Share of Impressions
  • Business to Business 3%--Share of Impressions

Leading Advertisers by Industry, Week ending August 21, 2005

  • Retails Goods & Services--eBay
  • Web Media--Shopping.com
  • Financial Services--LowerMyBills.com
  • Travel--Orbitz
  • Business to Business--Intelius

Posted by Gary Price at 2:30 PM | Permalink

September 1, 2005

Yahoo Rapped Over Funding Spyware -- Isn't It Overdue For Source Selection To Be Allowed?

How Yahoo Funds Spyware out now by spyware researcher/activist Ben Edelman looks at how Yahoo ads run in plenty of places beyond Yahoo, including syndication partners he says make use of spyware or adware. It raises again the question of why the major search engines are dragging their feet on letting people pick-and-choose where their ads will run?

Edelman's written similarly of Google before and provides links to those reports in this latest one. However, he feels he encounters Yahoo ads more in spyware-infected PCs than those from other ad networks. He looks closely at Yahoo ads being distributed through Claria, eXact Advertising and Direct Revenue. He also takes aim that Yahoo should be doing better disclosure of such deals to its advertisers.

Ultimately, if Yahoo can't do better policing, he says advertisers should be able to pick-and-choose where they appear. I agree. So do most advertisers I talk with. I just surveyed a room of them at our SES San Jose show last month, and virtually everyone agreed they should be able to choose exactly where they appear.

As a reminder, among the majors, only Google currently offers site exclusion -- but only for its contextual ads. See our past post, New Google AdWords Site Targeting Allows Advertisers To Pick & Choose, for more info. You still can't exclude more than 25 sites. However, site targeting is an opposite feature where you can pick-and-choose exactly the sites you want, rather than just excluding some.

I'm honestly amazed -- actually appalled -- that the majors haven't done more to give advertisers choice here. Let's just recap a few reasons why:

  • It would help eliminate click fraud - BlowSearch Offers Source Exclusion; When Will The Majors Do The Same? on the blog from March explains how BlowSearch decided to allow source/site exclusion -- and Mirago did the same way back in 2003. Is there a site you think is generating fraudulent clicks? Site exclusion would allow you to get off that site. Moreover, if enough advertisers opt-out of a site, you're building a database of sites you might want to blacklist.  
  • It would prevent embarrassment - That's what happened to Kraft, when it found its contextual ads running in Google showing up on a pro-white web site. As mentioned, Google's site exclusion solves this -- but only for the contextual side of the house. Search targeted ads still lack exclusion.  
  • It might prevent legal liabilities: As Edelman's report points out, there might be some legal issues with advertisers who inadvertently support spyware. Legal issues also came up over Ask Jeeves putting ads on a BitTorrent search engine

The most important reason is that it's the right thing to do. I've talked for years about how search advertising is so rudimentary, as if you wanted to buy a TV ad to run in association with ER on NBC but are instead told you have to have your ad run with every program, throughout the day.

Let people pick and choose. It's not only right -- it's overdue to be offered as this industry matures.

Want to discuss? Please visit our Search Engine Watch Forums!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:00 AM | Permalink

July 28, 2005

Google Ads, a Feud, and a Barren Rock

Stories from the Canadian Press and Reuters report about how ads on Google are coming into play in a an argument betweeen Canada and Denmark over Hans Island, a barren rock near the North Pole.

"A quick Google search of "hans island" Wednesday revealed a paid advertisement with the banner headline: "Hans Island is Greenland. Greenland natives have used the island for centuries." The ad was linked to a Danish government letter condemning a recent unannounced visit to the island by Defence Minister Bill Graham. However, the paid advertisement was not a Danish government initiative and whoever placed it was acting alone, said Poul Erik Dam Kristensen, Denmark's ambassador to Ottawa. That didn't stop one Internet expert - and patriotic Canuck - from striking back. Toronto resident Rick Broadhead placed a Google ad and said the Canadian government needs to get with the times.

Postscript From Danny: I thought a picture was in order. When Gary and I looked yesterday, we didn't see any ads. Now they are back. Left side shows ads on Google Canada. Right side shows ads on Google Denmark. No ads are appear on Google Denmark when I searched for hans ø, which I'm pretty sure is "hans island' in Danish. I couldn't seem to trigger any Danish-language ads in any way. Here are the ads as of 12:30pm GMT:

Posted by Gary Price at 4:32 PM | Permalink

July 26, 2005

SuperPages To Buy Ads For Advertisers On Google & Yahoo

Superpages.com Tries on Agency Hat covers how Verizon SuperPages has advertisers who can't buy enough inventory on SuperPages itself, so SuperPages plans to take their excess money and do buys for them on Google and Yahoo through a new "pay-per-click-plus" program it will begin testing in August.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:43 AM | Permalink

July 21, 2005

Do Or Die Domain Name Registration Soars

Kevin Murphy's Computer Business Review article Pay-per-click speculation market soaring takes a look at numbers from VeriSign that show hundreds of thousands of domain names are being registered each week, "purely to publish pay-per-click advertising links from the likes of Google Inc and Yahoo."

There are close to a quarter of a million domain names a week being registered for just a few days, while people "test" the traffic potential of those names before discarding them, chief executive Stratton Sclavos told analysts yesterday... "Names are being bought and then tested against traffic analyzers," Sclavos said. "The ones that can generate more than the $6 or $7 [registration] fee per year are kept, the other ones are returned within the five day grace period." These speculators basically put up collections of Google Adsense or Yahoo Overture text advertising links that are more or less relevant to the topic indicated by the URL. Whenever someone comes across the site and clicks a link, the owner gets paid.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:44 PM | Permalink

July 5, 2005

Cost Per Action Ads At Snap

Kevin Ryan offers a few thoughts on how cost-per-action ads work over at Snap.com. Cost per action? Yes, you decide what action you want to pay for -- a click or an actual acquisition -- and bid accordingly. More details from Snap here. The system rolled out at the end of February, as covered in this press release (PDF file).

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:17 AM | Permalink

June 13, 2005

Yahoo & Google Paid Programs Compared

Yahoo SM vs. Google AdWords from Search Engine Guide is a short summary covering some differences between buying paid listings with Google versus Yahoo. If you've been doing this for a while, there's no major surprises. But it has some nice highlights. Be wary of the claim about Google conversions being better, however. This seems based on one single ad campaign. Your own mileage may vary and dramatically so.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:38 AM | Permalink

June 10, 2005

Where Oh Where Will My Search Ad Show Up?

Paid Placement SEM Is Dead. Long Live Paid Placement from Kevin Lee at ClickZ looks at how while you can still buy your way to the top, knowing exactly where you'll be placed is getting harder and harder as search ad delivery increasingly gets determined by many factors other than price.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:03 PM | Permalink

AOL Moves TV Spend To Search; Rodney Dangerfield Of Online Advertising No More!

AOL Wooing Users to Portal, With a Little Help From Its Foes from the New York Times looks at how AOL is ironically turning to search ads on rivals Google and Yahoo to attract people to its new public portal offering. The story notes how $50 million intended for television ads is instead going to search because AOL realized search was already the biggest driver of traffic to its free music site. Here's a quote to warm the hearts of search marketers over the years who've had to scrape, lobby, beg and plead for more spending on search:

"We started seeing the results and said, 'Oh, my God, what if we took this money and put it into search engine marketing,' " Mr. Miller said. Now more than half of AOL's marketing budget for the portal will be used to pay for ads on search engines and formatting Web pages so they appear in the free search results.

So there you have it. Search, which I called the Rodney Dangerfield of no respect in terms of online advertising in 2001, gets an endorsement from Time Warner. If you're still dealing with some marketing department that remains dubious about search -- despite the continued rise in spend -- despite the fact that for a tiny, tiny amount of traditional spend they could discover the power of search themselves -- point them at this quote.

And hey, point the Penn State to it, as well. Gary noted recent research from Penn State yesterday, on how consumers are found to head primarily to organic listings. Yes, search marketers have known that for years. But to say about ads:

According to recent reports, businesses spent an estimated $8 billion to sell their products and services via sponsored links in 2004, despite little evidence that such advertising successfully directs traffic to Web sites. More likely to hook consumers are the organic results or those results returned automatically by the algorithmic operations of the search engine, Jansen said.

I bolded the key part. Little evidence advertising successfully directs traffic to web site? Please. Search is one of the most heavily measured advertising venues. Advertisers are spending because they know they are getting traffic to their web sites, and traffic that converts. The rising spend is direct evidence that it successfully drives traffic to sites. Spend wouldn't be rising otherwise.

Organic, of course, remains important. If anything, organic search is the new Rodney Dangerfield of search. Despite bringing in more traffic than paid search, advertiser spend on paid search dwarfs organic, as SEMPO stats showed last year.

But maybe organic will get more valuable. At the very least, note that AOL didn't say it would spend only on paid search. "Free" search results were deemed important, as well.

Postscript: Paid Search a Footnote in AOL.com Push from ClickZ is a brief story that organic listings will be the big push in AOL's campaign.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:52 PM | Permalink

May 31, 2005

Findory Now Offering "Personalized" Advertising

Greg Linden from Findory reports that the personalized news and weblog recommendation tool is now showing "personalized" advertising that's not only based on the content of the page but also the "individual behavior" of the Findory user.

Just as Findory's personalization engine matches content to interested audiences, our personalized advertising matches advertisements to interested people. After all, at its best, advertising is a form of content. It is useful when it is relevant. When it is not relevant, it is annoying. We firmly believe advertising should be useful, not annoying.

Findory's personalized ad engine is powered with content from Google's AdSense.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:53 AM | Permalink

Yahoo CEO: 2005 Is For Making More Search Revenue & Better Ad Targeting Through Personal Info

Yahoo CEO: Better Search Monetization Is Top Co Priority from Dow Jones has Yahoo's Terry Semel saying that increasing the revenue earned per search is the company's "largest and most important project" in the search space. Now that the core search effort of 2004 is apparently considered overcome, cranking up the revenue is what the tech teams are focused on this year. Not exactly reassuring words for searchers, who might hope that the most important project remains a focus on relevancy. But, the comments did come at a conference aimed at investing types.

Meanwhile, Yahoo is going to tap into the tons of data is has about users to better target ads. If Google said something like that, pitchforks would be out, privacy advocates enraged and the question of whether Google was really secretly evil would hit the blogosphere. Yahoo said this last Thursday, and so far, nada.

Everyone, of course, is going to do more targeting of ads (and search results) based on personal data. It's even a good thing, in many ways. But it would be nice to see the industry perhaps look more at how to prepare consumers for this coming. A bit more on this in this past post, Better Search Privacy Needs Addressing Overall.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:10 AM | Permalink

May 5, 2005

Reports from SES Toronto: Day One

If you're interested in learning about what's being said at SES Toronto, ace reporter Barry Schwartz (aka RustyBrick) has posted reports from 5 sessions that took place on Wednesday.

+ Cleaning Up Spam & Other Messes

+ Organic Listings Forum

+ Buying Search Engine Advertising

+ Balancing Paid & Organic Listings

+ Link Strategies 2005

Finally, in the InternetNews.com article: Google's Golden Triangle, Sean Michael Kerner offers highlights from panel the featured Gord Hotchkiss from Equiro, and Debbie Jaffe, product marketing manager at Google. Hotchkiss talked about the results of an eye-tracking study.

Just like the famed Bermuda Triangle that traps wayward travelers, there is a "golden triangle" on Google that "traps" users' eyeballs. The golden triangle is a triangle-shaped viewing pattern that reaches out from the top left of the search results page...Jaffe agreed with Hotchkiss' findings for the most part. But she added that the golden triangle, in terms of clicks at least, is more focused specifically on the top organic results as opposed to the whole top-left corner.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:58 PM | Permalink

May 2, 2005

Newspapers & Yellow Pages Selling For Search Engines Ad Agents for the Search Engines from the New York Times looks at how newspapers and yellow pages are helping small businesses get online by selling them search ads.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:43 PM | Permalink

April 26, 2005

Search, Local Newspapers Pulling National Newspaper Advertisers

Newspapers Find National Ads a Tough Sell is an interesting look from the New York Times on how US national advertisers are apparently pulling away from nationally distributed newspapers. Why? One reason seems to be that if they want to reach nationally, they do so and in a more targeted way via search engines. But local newspapers seemed to be doing much better, given that they continue to provide a targeted audience, in a geographic sense.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:22 PM | Permalink

April 19, 2005

Search Cost Per Lead Cheap Compared To Other Ads

Gold Mine Found in Web Searches from Reuters has some nice stats at the end comparing search to other forms of advertising, from a cost per lead perspective. Citing Piper Jaffray, is says the cost to acquire is $8.50 for search, $20 for yellow pages, $50 for online display ads, $60 for e-mail and $70 for direct mail. Cost for television leads were not covered.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:51 PM | Permalink

Bristol Buys Search Ads

Google Adds Boost to Bristol from eGov monitor covers out the Bristol City County in England is generating traffic for its Askbristol community web site through paid ads with Google and Yahoo. It's apparently the first local authority in the UK to turn to paid search ads.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:02 AM | Permalink

April 8, 2005

Media Companies Buy Keyword Ads

I've noticed some media organizations (NY Times, Washington Post, etc.) purchasing keyword ads from Google, Yahoo, and other services for a long time. A new article in The Wall Street Journal article: News Sites Turn to Advertisements On Google, Yahoo to Boost Traffic (reg required), takes a look.

News organizations don't appear to be adopting the strategy in large numbers -- at least not yet. "If you're in the online news business, ultimately your goal is to draw eyeballs to your news pages," said Robert Niles, editor of the University of Southern California's Online Journalism Review. News sites "need to become more aggressive in trying to [draw readers] to all the great content that is buried on their Web sites." He believes more sites will use the ads.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:49 AM | Permalink

April 7, 2005

Update: NY Gubernatorial Candidate Removes Google Ad

Elliot Spitzer, a Democrat running for governor of New York has pulled the Google ad that Danny blogged about yesterday. The keyword ad appeared when searching the name of an insurance company Spitzer is prosecuting as New York Attorney General.

From the Reuters article: "It wasn't appropriate, and as soon as Mr. Spitzer found out about it, he had it removed it as soon as possible," Darren Dopp, a spokesman for the New York attorney general, told Reuters.

Dopp said it appeared that a relatively low-level campaign staffer responsible for promoting Spitzer's campaign Web site made a mistake and put in the AIG keyword.

More in the article: Spitzer pulls campaign ad off Google.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:53 AM | Permalink

April 6, 2005

NY Governor Candidate Spitzer Targets Google Ads Against Prosecution Victim

New York gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer is apparently targeting campaign ads on Google to the name of one of his prosecution targets. Spitzer, currently New York's attorney general, has ads showing up when people search for AIG -- the acronym of insurance company American International Group. More details from Reuters in NY's Spitzer Gubernatorial Campaign Goes to Google

Google's policies allow for terms that are also trademarks to be targeted with ads as long as the trademark isn't used in ad copy. Spitzer's ads apparently didn't do that, saying only "Spritzer for NY Governor." When I run that query now, I also don't see the ads at all. However, it was interesting to see a New York Times ad targeting the word:

NYTimes.com Business Insurer Admits Bad Accounting Read this article at NYTimes.com nytimes.com

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:55 PM | Permalink

March 28, 2005

NPR Looks at Online Advertising

A National Public Radio ran a story Morning Edition today on report about online and keyword advertising. You can listen to the 4 minute report here: + Advertisers Log on for Big Profits

The report includes a few comments from Forrester's Charlene Li

An ever-increasing number of commercials on the Internet means search engines like Google and Yahoo are making big profits. Still, the Internet draws only about 3 percent of total advertising dollars. The increase in ads may be coming at the expense of more traditional media

Posted by Gary Price at 3:45 PM | Permalink

March 23, 2005

Ads On Ask & Could Paid Listings Take Prime Position?

In The Search Interface Of The Future from MediaPost, David Berkowitz looks at future history, envisioning a move where Ask Jeeves puts paid listings in the prime left-hand column of results, with unpaid results relegated to the less noticed right hand side. An uproar ("Boycott The Butler") ensues, but Ask -- to some degree like GoTo back in 1998 -- holds its ground. Traffic survives, and revenues skyrocket. Others eventually follow, but then a crash happens when consumers ultimately train themselves to still seek out the "natural" results wherever they are.

It's a funny story, well worth a read, but it's not necessarily fiction. Last year, I wrote about how Yahoo thought surviving the uproar over paid inclusion was worthwhile because it allowed it to monetize that important left-column better: The Paid Inclusion Dinosaur. I also wrote in the same article how Ask Jeeves was putting up to 10 paid listings in the left column of its results, pushing the "natural" results well to the bottom.

Ask is still doing that. Search for dvd players, for example, and it's 10 paid listings you get. Anything deemed highly commercial is likely to go up to this maximum amount, if there are that many ads available. But a search for repetitive strain injury prevention isn't as commercial, so the ads are fewer.

Meanwhile, as our forum threads The Little Engine That Could - Part II and Ask Jeeves is One Brand - Teoma Who? discussed, we even had a situation recently where Firefox users were seeing fewer ads than Internet Explorer users, something that since has seemed to stop.

Speculation was that this was a way Ask was trying to present a more "pure" face to a potentially savvier Firefox audience while shoving ads down the throats of all those dumb IE users :)

I emailed with Ask Jeeves senior vice president of search properties Jim Lanzone about this when the topic was heating up at the end of February, and here's what he sent:

We have been trying to work our way to a better balance between the user experience and monetization. What you are seeing are tests we're running of different configurations of the results page. Firefox users are easily segmented in terms of giving them a test configuration, and yes, that configuration has fewer ads. The majority of users are receiving the current "normal" results page, which takes what Google gives us, up to 10 results in highly commercial categories.

In some cases, more ads might be useful. Ads can be relevant. But it can also be annoying to get too many, if the natural results turnout to have the better answers you need. Ask has indeed been leading the way in trying to get the balance right. If it does so, Berkowitz's speculation of higher revenue is assured. And if it and the others fail, they'll see a collapse, as well

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:48 AM | Permalink

March 21, 2005

BlowSearch Offers Source Exclusion; When Will The Majors Do The Same?

Another Search Engine Strategies, and another show where I heard plenty of advertisers asking yet again for the ability to pick and choose exactly where their ads show up, when they buy into the search networks run by Google & Yahoo. Please, sir, may I have some exclusion? As usual, neither of the majors offered any hope of this. Is it beyond the capabilities of those two giants to offer source exclusion? No, it's just something they continue to choose not to do.

Tiny European-based search provider Mirago managed to make source exclusion happen way back in 2003, as we mentioned when giving them an honorable mention in the 4th Annual Search Engine Watch awards. Now little BlowSearch emails us to say that its new PPC program offers source exclusion as well. The program already is accepting sign-ups.

BlowSearch also says that advertisers can enter the IP address of competitors to prevent competitors from seeing those ads. I'd also assume that this means you could block any IP address at all you wish to block, not just competitors. That would be useful if you find a lot of clicks from a particular source appearing to be fraudulent or low-converting. ROI tracking is also being offered.

Want to discuss? Check out our past thread on the subject, Protest PPC Engine Content Partner Distribution.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:41 PM | Permalink

February 23, 2005

Calling for Conversions

Pay per click advertising campaigns are great, if you have a web site with a landing page, product offerings and other meaningful information for consumers. For advertisers that don't have a web site, however, there's little incentive to participate in a paid search campaign.

Until recently, that is. The past year has seen the emergence of a new type of paid search advertising program that doesn't require merchants or service providers to have an online presence. In Tuesday's SearchDay article, Pay-Per-Call: A New Avenue for Search Marketers, guest writer Heather Lloyd-Martin covers a recent Search Engine Strategies panel where the pioneers of this new marketing format talked about how it works, and why it's particularly appealing to the millions of local advertisers that don't have a web site.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:34 PM | Permalink

February 7, 2005

Rating Super Bowl Advertisers From A Search Marketing Perspective

How did Super Bowl advertisers do in terms of ensuring they had a post-game search presence? Despite last week's big New York Times article looking at how search advertising has arrived in terms of Super Bowl advertisers and take up, search marketing firm Reprise Media concluded efforts could have been better.

  • Brand names were purchased but product-related terms were not, nor were custom landing pages set up. Visa, Pepsi, Degree Antiperspirant and Frito-Lay were hit with the worst scores relating to this.  
  • Ameriquest, Staples, Napster, CIBA Vision, GoDaddy, Cadillac and CareerBuilder.com won top scores for being clearly visible throughout the major search engines and following up on their ads with clear integration on their web sites.  
  • Movie companies were dinged by not buying ads linked to the titles of the movies they were pitching on TV. Of course, they may have felt that natural search results would give them enough of a presence -- or more likely, it's something they just didn't think of.

You'll find a bit more from the Reprise press release. No actual scorecard is shown, however.

Postscript: A scorecard (PDF format) has now been posted, and Reprise talks a bit more on the survey in this blog post.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:12 PM | Permalink

February 4, 2005

Search Advertising Comes of Age

John Markoff and Nat Ives from The New York Times take a two page look at search advertising in: Web Search Sites See Clicks Add Up to Big Ad Dollars.

The article says that web advertising has come of age since several Super Bowl advertisers are also Google advertising "regulars."

"In the past, advertising has been hard to track and hard to make accountable," said Tim Armstrong, Google's vice president for advertising sales. Now, he said, advertising has become a dialogue with the consumer.

Also, positive comments about search advertising from a Berkeley professor.

"You're seeing advertising move into advertising that people can seek out, and moving away from mass advertising," said Peter Sealey, a former Coca-Cola marketing executive who now teaches at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. "In the context of that shift, this little niche of Internet search will be a huge beneficiary."

Bill Gross, the founder of the first pay-per-click company, GoTo.com (which became Overture and now owner by Yahoo!) tells The Times that he never thought that keyword/ppc advertising would become as big as it is.

"I thought that the Internet was fantastic, and I was sure that it would become the ultimate direct marketing tool," he said yesterday. "But I had no idea that pay-per-click would ultimately be this big."

Gross launched his latest search effort, Snap.Com in 2004.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:36 AM | Permalink

January 17, 2005

Search Advertising: Strong Growth Ahead

After a dry spell of several years, online advertising rebounded sharply in 2004, with paid search ads leading the way with a 34% increase in growth. Jupiter Research expects this growth to continue, albeit at a slower pace, through the end of the decade, with paid search solidifying its dominant role.

Today's SearchDay article, Online Ads & Search: Looking Back, Looking Forward, covers a recent Search Engine Strategies conference panel where Jupiter Research shared its findings about the paid search market. A longer version of this story for Search Engine Watch members goes into detail about the specific drivers of growth for online search ads, including demographics, searcher behavior and other factors. The longer article also details eight "things to pay attention to" that Jupiter Research believes will be crucial for successful search marketing campaigns in 2005.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:28 AM | Permalink

January 13, 2005

Search Ads Were Hot In December 2004

DoubleClick-owned Performics has provided more figures about the holiday shopping period and search, finding consumer searches were way up in December.

Based on what? Performics compared clickthrough in December 2004 to all of the third quarter of 2004. On average, daily clicks were more than double (144 percent) for December than on average through the third quarter period.

Conversion rate in December was also up, 124 percent when compared to the average of the entire period.

Average ad price per click rose 23 percent -- but as the volume of clicks greatly increased, overall ad spend in December was up more than double compared to the third quarter average.

A few more stats from this Performics press release, along with a quote saying search was good to consumers and advertisers. For information about previous releases for the holiday period, see the DoubleClick Says Black Friday Was Good For Search Marketing post.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:56 AM | Permalink

2005 Ad Spend To Rise 30 Percent; Search In 2004 Ranked Third

A Deutsche Bank/MediaPost survey predicts ad spend will increase 30 percent in 2005. Looking back at 2004, 42 percent of ad spend went toward branded ads, according to the survey based on questioning 100 media executives. Direct response followed at 24 percent, then paid search at 10 percent. Paid search might involve some branding or direct response, of course, but the survey doesn't seem to encompass this.

What will be hot in 2005, in terms of new focus. Half said behavioral targeting, followed by video ads at 21 percent, then local search and pay-per-call coming in at 16 percent. General search ads don't make that list? If not, it sounds like because it may not have been included as something new as a focus area.

MediaPost has more details in Deutsche Bank: Online Ad Spend Could Grow By 30 Percent In 2005.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:34 AM | Permalink

January 10, 2005

Yahoo! Launches Print and Online Ad Campagin

Yahoo will launch an online and print advertising campaign today (aimed at media buyers, ad agencies, etc) promoting their ability to target advertising to specific audiences and groups.

The campaign will run online in publications including WSJ.com, NYT.com, various advertising trades, and on the Yahoo! network. Print versions will also run in advertising trade magazines--but, said [Jerry] Shereshewsky, "the centerpiece of the campaign is online." Yahoo! declined to provide its budget for the media spend. Yahoo! plans to use domain targeting with the campaign, which will involve displaying ads to visitors coming from Internet protocol addresses of specific companies--including ad agencies, clients, and prospective clients.

More in the Media Post article: Yahoo! Plugs Targeting Power

Posted by Gary Price at 10:45 AM | Permalink

January 8, 2005

Former Enron CEO Using Paid Search Listings

Here's another use of paid listings by the legal industry.

AP is running a story today about how the legal team of former Enron CEO Ken Lay is using paid search engine listings (Yahoo | Google) to get people to visit his web site.

"I want people to understand Ken Lay's position," Lay's attorney Mike Ramsey said. "I said that if we were going to do a Web site at all, do it so people can find it..."Everybody has ADD when they get on the Net. If you're doing any kind of public relations, you've got to do sponsored links too," marketing consultant Joel Miller said."

Posted by Gary Price at 2:04 PM | Permalink

January 7, 2005

Kraft Supports Pro-White Groups? Lack Of Search Ad Targeting Makes It So

I've long written that advertisers should be able to pick and choose exactly where they show up in a search company's network. Gary just passed along a great news story he found, Story search reveals Google glitch, that illustrates why this is so.

"Why would Kraft Foods, Jennie-O and the other companies listed support White Revolution?" the story asks, after finding these companies and organizations including the NAACP had ads coming up in the Google-powered search results at a pro-white web site.

Kraft certainly didn't want to do that, as the story details. But it had no choice, if it wants to tap into Google's network beyond Google itself.

With Google, if you buy a search-targeted ad, that ad runs on only Google-owned sites or the broader Google ad network (Google + Google partners). If you go broad, you go with everyone. You can't pick and choose exactly where you show up.

I've likened this at our conferences as going to a TV network and saying you'd like advertise. Sure -- love to have your ad! But you have to run that ad in the middle of every program we offer, regardless of whether you don't like or want to support some of those programs. No prime-time cherry picking for you, valued advertiser.

As is often the case, this isn't just a Google thing. You buy Overture, you're buying everyone in the Overture network as well. And unlike Google, you can't at least pull back to just say Overture's parent, Yahoo. You take all places that carry Overture, Yahoo and beyond.

Going back to the article, it gets lost assuming that the problem is some type of bad targeting on Google's part that it should fix, which one source quoted (almost certainly not a search marketing person) assumes would be "astronomical and prohibitive" to implement.

Please. This is not an automatic targeting problem that needs to be solved. It's a lack of control problem. The search ad networks don't give advertisers enough control, so this type of thing will happen.

In contrast, Blog Ads Hit Rough Patches from MediaPost today illustrates the full (or at least much better) control Google will give publishers. That story illustrates problems we've heard before where contextual ad targeting may go amiss. But if a publisher doesn't want certain ads, they can block them. Pity advertisers can't block from their end. They might not have wanted to end up on the blogs upset to get the poor targeting in the first place -- especially since they're footing the bill!

The story is a great read. Watch how Kraft can't figure out what's going on, then bumps the responsibility over to the firm handling its search marketing, Modem Media, then comes back saying its working on a way to ensure this never gets repeated.

Yeah, good luck Kraft. Since you don't know all the sites that might carry Google's listings, there no way you'll prevent this other than to stop advertising with Google's network as a whole. You can pull back to advertising on just Google, of course -- that will still get you plenty of traffic. But over at Overture, you'd don't get that option -- so guess you'll have to stop advertising with them entirely.

Can you ask for a better illustration of how immature search is and how desperately the search networks need to give advertisers better control, a problem that's been raised for ages? Can you imagine Kraft wanting to advertise in the offline world but being told it can't control exactly what magazines or newspapers or television shows will be associated with its message, when it turned to a major publisher or media outlet?

Google, by the way, solved this particular problem by dropping the pro-white site from its Google AdSense For Search program for reasons it wouldn't say (see also New Google WebSearch Program Pays Publishers For Searches for more about that program).

Finally, some additional kudos to little Mirago, a UK-based service has let you pick and choose where your search ads show in its network since October 2003. Why? Because its chief technology officer Derek Preston was at our SES conference in August 2003, heard advertisers complaining they wanted control and went back to implement it for Mirago. Didn't take a team of PhDs to make it happen, so I don't think we've got a big technological hurdle for Google or Overture to overcome. They just have to want to do it.

Here's a past forum thread on the topic of advertiser choice: Protest PPC Engine Content Partner Distribution.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:30 AM | Permalink

January 4, 2005

1500 Advertisers Now Part of ThomasB2B Network

Word in Media Post: Thomas to Send PRWeb Sponsored Ads, that the ThomasB2B PPC ad network that debuted in September will soon begin placing ads on the PRWeb news release site.

The ads will appear on results pages when users type search terms into PRWeb's query box--possibly in a column next to the organic results...ThomasB2B, a joint venture of search engine FindWhat.com and online directory company Thomas Global Register, has so far signed up about 1,500 advertisers--with a heavy concentration of manufacturers of conveyors, pumps, capacitors, and other industrial electronics.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:21 PM | Permalink

Local Search Lacking Ads

Local search is hot? Not yet among advertisers, ClickZ finds in Local Advertisers Lack Search Zeitgeist. It takes the top local search terms in 2004 from Google (the first time the company has reported these) and discovers that only 1 in 20 bring up ads. Now there's a benchmark to test against next year!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:25 AM | Permalink

Search Spend To Rise 25-30% in 2005

Media forecaster Jack Myers predicts search spending will rise 25-30 percent this year, based on a survey of 225 ad industry executives. A few more details here from DMNews, Forecast: 2005 Online Ad Spend Will Rise 30%, and also from this summary at Myers's own site.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:35 AM | Permalink

Pro Pay-Per-Call

Dick Larkin's a long-time yellow pages hand who's spoken on the topic at our SES show before. In Pay-Per-Call Will Revolutionize Online Advertising, he looks at why he thinks pay-per-call systems will be a big hit.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:14 AM | Permalink

December 20, 2004

Poor Relevancy and Automated Search Ads

Greg Linden points to interesting BoingBoing post about some "silly" Adword ads from Amazon and eBay showing up on Google.

I'm glad to read that I haven't been the only one to notice the poor relevance that's possible with automated listings.

For example: eBay ads on Google let us know that they have: bastards, idiots, mothers, lost children and even Nazis for sale.

Btw, this is not only an issue at Google. Overture also shows that eBay has lost children for sale. Over at Shopping.com and Amazon.com, plutonium is available.

Actually, the use of automated listings and poor relevance is hardly a new issue. In 2002, Danny wrote discussed the topic in the members version of this article.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:34 PM | Permalink

December 13, 2004

Study: Impact Of Engines on Consumer Buying

Comscore is out this morning with a study (sponsored by Overture) about the impact of search engines on consumer buying. You can read the full release here.

Highlights include:

+ Using a combination of online behavioral observation and consumer survey data, comScore estimated that 92 percent of all buying activity following a CE/C [a consumer electronics or computer] search occurred offline.

+ Generic product search terms (e.g. “camera,” “plasma television” or “PDA phone”) accounted for more than 70 percent of total search volume, while trademarked retailer terms (e.g. “Best Buy,” “Gateway.com”) accounted for 20 percent and specific product terms (e.g. “Canon digital camcorder,” “HP notebook nx9010”) accounted for 10 percent. The study found that while generic terms accounted for the majority of purchase conversion (61 percent), branded terms (either retailer or product terms) were approximately 30 percent more likely to result in an online purchase.

+ The comScore research found that while 85 percent of searchers do indeed conduct additional CE/C searches later in the shopping process, the majority of consumers continue to use the same search term type (either generic or branded) with which they began the search process. Since 83 percent of consumers start their search process with a generic term and only a relatively small percentage later search using a product-specific term, retailers or manufacturers that invest solely in product-specific keywords will miss more than 80 percent of CE/C searchers.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:12 AM | Permalink

December 8, 2004

Google, House Ads & Competing With The Hand That Feeds

Andrew Goodman has a brief complaint about doing a search on Google and finding one of the horizontal ad positions used as a house ad to promote how you can track flights via Google itself: More at Should Google Be Competing with its Advertisers? (If So, How Much?).

I think Google, like other search engines, definitely wants to get it in front of searchers that it offers special content or features. But using up one of the limited ad spaces? That's not the way to go. It upsets Andrew, for one. And heck, it upsets other advertisers, as well.

Google has its own OneBox results area that comes below ads. Keep the promotion to that, and advertisers will stay happy, plus users won't be confused about an ad that isn't necessarily an ad but instead a search suggestion.

For some background on house ads at Google -- and Yahoo -- see a mention I did in association with a Washington Post article on the topic back in July. I disagreed with much in that article, as my comments on explain, but the idea of not using actual ad space for self-promotion I agreed strongly with.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:16 AM | Permalink

December 6, 2004

DoubleClick Says Black Friday Was Good For Search Marketing

DoubleClick has released figures relating to search marketing over the "Black Friday" post-Thanksgiving heavy shopping weekend that found traffic, conversions and spending was up among the search marketing campaigns it manages on behalf of clients.

The company compared activity among clients of its Performics subsidiary to normal daily activity. Only paid listing traffic was analyzed. Findings:

  • Average daily clicks nearly doubled, an increase of 85 percent.  
  • Average cost-per-click dropped slightly, 2 percent, but total amount spent on ads was 82 percent higher, if I'm reading the press release correctly. In other words, terms were a little bit cheaper, but the amount of traffic they generated was up -- or clients were willing to let budgets go more -- or perhaps both.  
  • Conversion rates were said to be nearly double, a 98 increase. Revenues were said to have more than tripled.  
  • Sunday was tops in terms of traffic increase (92 percent rise and revenue (272 percent rise), but Friday had the best increase in conversion, a 259 percent rise.

My main quibbles with the figures:

  • Other factors could be responsible besides some consumer take-up of ads over the weekend. Performics might have a different mix of clients, better conversion techniques in place or clients may simply be willing to spend more -- though some of these differences will be slight, given the comparison to a "average" day occurs in a time period only a few months prior.  
  • The press release talks of comparing the weekend shopping period with the "Q3 daily average" for 2004. In other words, the activity within this unique three-day shopping period in 2004 is compared to the average of activity for the entire July-September 2004 period. That's not an apples-to-apples comparison, though it does give some sense of how the weekend compares to normal daily activity. NOTE: Previously I'd written figures were compared to the Q3 average of 2003 and listed the months incorrectly as Oct-Dec. 2003.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:31 AM | Permalink

December 5, 2004

Citysearch Debuts Pay-Per-Call Service

More pay-per-call services to report on.

Citysearch has launched a pay-per-call service called PFP-Calls.

The new product allows local merchants to track business leads through the number of phone calls they receive. Merchants are charged a fee per call and when an advertising cap is reached the toll free number (which appears throughout the site) is removed and replaced with the local, non-metered number (which only appears on the merchant's information page). A bit more info in the news release.

FindWhat launched a pay-per-call service in September. Last month, Forbes published a story about Inegio, a company providing the pay-per-call technology to FindWhat.

I wonder if pay-per-call fraud will be a topic in 2005. (-:

Posted by Gary Price at 8:40 PM | Permalink

November 8, 2004

Local Search and Pay-Per-Call Technology

The Forbes article: Search Engines Go Local, offers an overview of the local search scene, and focuses on Ingenio, the company providing the pay-per-call technology for FindWhat's new service.

Ingenio plans to start a job that Google started but didn't fully finish. Under Google's pay-per-click advertising model, advertisers pay only after users have clicked on the ad. Ingenio is going after a model it describes as pay-per-call.

The results, [Marc] Barach [Ingenio's chief marketing officer] says, are pretty promising. "What we have found so far is that businesses are willing to pay ten times more for leads generated over the phone than for leads generated from a Web site.

Investors in Ingenio include eBay and Vulcan Ventures.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 4, 2004

Overture Considering Flat Rate Pricing

I've written before that we'll see a move away from bidding on keywords in favor of paying for leads, regardless of the terms used by those leads/searchers to find us. Now Overture says it's something they are considering: flat rate pricing to make search easier for small and medium sized businesses. More from this ClickZ article, Yahoo!'s Overture Looks At Simpler Models to Court Advertisers.

I can see that coming -- just as I can see flat rate pricing making life easier for big advertisers, as well. If you're Nike, and you want to be tops for shoes, writing a big giant check for guaranteed top placement makes a lot more sense that trying to manage thousands of keywords. It'll come.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 2, 2004

Local Search will Fuel Paid Search Market

An interesting paradox: Despite the fact that many early paid search advertisers were small businesses, there hasn't been a big shift in advertising dollars from traditional media. Data from a recent telephone survey of 500 small-and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), with 100 or fewer employees, revealed that only 5 percent had adopted search engine marketing.

In today's SearchDay article, Local Search: Missing Pieces Falling into Place, guest writer Greg Sterling suggests that local search may be the catalyst that causes advertising dollars to shift away from traditional channels and into search marketing. If so, we're just at the beginning of the "boom" in the paid search market, far from the saturation point that many online pundits are claiming.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 1, 2004

Search Ads Used By More Than "New Breed" Advertisers

According to Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News, Google and other search companies are tapping into a new breed of advertiser and don't yet covet the dollars General Motors and other large companies spend on television ads.

Not so. Not at all. Not by a long shot.

Search advertising remains new, but it is hardly dominated by small mom-and-pops who've never advertised before. Plenty of businesses small and large, new to advertising and experienced, make use of the space. I've talked with the full range of them at our various conferences.

Search isn't best viewed as attracting a "new breed" of advertiser. Instead, it's better understood as new advertising medium that has sprung up. Yes, this new medium has attracted a new breed of advertiser who understands how search ads work. However, there are plenty of the old breed who use it as well.

And believe me, Google wants those big GM ad dollars. So does Overture and other search media. If they didn't, they wouldn't be funding research showing the tie between search ads and branding, as they did with the IAB recently.

For more on that, see our forum thread Branding Boosted By Paid Ads, Research Says or my Search Can Provide Brand Lift, Study Finds article for Search Engine Watch members.

More comments on Gillmor's article also from Greg Linden: Google and the long tail.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 14, 2004

Another Push For Candidates To Buy Search; Dean On Yahoo

Via John Battelle, Google for President from Slate is another take on the idea that political candidates should be making use of search advertising. But some other articles have been better, in that they include comments from some actual campaigns. For a roundup of those, see Candidates Missing Out On Search Ads. I've still yet to see anyone actually talk directly with the Bush and Kerry campaigns themselves, however.

Well, if the US presidential candidates won't come to the search engines, the search engines will come to them. At least Yahoo to former Democratic contender Howard Dean, that is. He's now shilling (and yelling) for Yahoo Local. Check out the radio spot via the Yahoo Search Blog: Howard Dean on Yahoo! Local.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 11, 2004

Online Advertising Will Stay a National Medium

Kevin Newcomb writes, "JupiterResearch reports that despite heavy investments in online classifieds and local search, online advertising will remain a national ad medium for the foreseeable future...."In the next 18 to 24 months, we see national advertisers targeting locally rather than local pizza shops advertising online. Companies like Google and Yahoo! are launching new options to attract them, but the shorter-term growth will be driven by national advertisers targeting locally," he [Niki Scevak of Jupiter Research] said...Classifieds dominate local online advertising, followed by local search and display advertising. While local search has been getting attention from search giants like Google, Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves, JupiterResearch predicts that it will fail to keep pace with overall online ad spending. Locally-targeted display ads, which currently have a negligible impact on local ad spending, will grow in importance, according to the report.

More in the article: Study: Mostly National Advertisers Will Buy Local Ads.

Posted by Gary Price at 7:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 8, 2004

FindWhat To Carry Verizon SuperPages Paid Listings

Local paid listings from Verizon's SuperPages program are now to be distributed though FindWhat's distribution network. More details from the FindWhat press release.

Last year, Verizon licensed technology from FindWhat to build the SuperPages.com Pay Per Click program that launched in May.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 4, 2004

Candidates Missing Out On Search Ads

From Business 2.0, an interesting article saying that political campaigns are failing to consider search in their marketing mix: Political Campaigns Are Missing the Boat on Paid Search. The Dean campaign found it effective. But others haven't got on-board. Good quotes. Thanks to Search Engine Guide for the tip.

Meanwhile, an article from MediaPost, Pew Study Reports Meager Spending On Web Ads By Political Campaigns, discusses a new survey of online media ads for campaigns. Don't get your hopes up about getting some real stats on political search spending, however. The survey only tracked banner ads. Survey can be found here: Presidential Campaign Advertising on the Internet.

Here's also some other articles on search and political ads:

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 30, 2004

New Tool Blocks Paid Search Engine Listings

I wonder what Google, Yahoo and others will have to say about a new version Super AdBlocker that removes paid listings from about 20 search engines?

Older versions of the product blocked pop-ups, pop-unders, rich media, Flash, and some spyware but this is the first time that sponsored results can be blocked.

A bit more from the news release and this page that explains why someone would want to block sponsored listings.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 23, 2004

AOL Testing Listings from Classifieds on Search Results Pages

AuctionBytes reports about a new AOL advertising project.

>From the article, "[AOL] appears to be in stealth mode with another ecommerce-related service it is currently testing. The pilot appears to be a customized program in which contextual listings from its Classifieds section appear at the top of the search results page, just above Google AdSense listings."

Posted by Gary Price at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 20, 2004

Search Spending Continues To Rise -- But Contextual Is Lumped In

In the second quarter of this year, paid search advertising was nearly $1 billion -- a 29 percent rise from the same period as a year ago. It also makes up 40 percent of all online ad spending. This is according to new figures from the Interactive Advertising Burean and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

However, I'm fairly positive that contextual ads -- which are NOT search advertising -- are nonetheless lumped into these figures. That's because I don't see a separate category for contextual. If this is the case, then the figures are misleading. They give no idea what's really fueling the rise -- more spending on search, more spending on contextual or what???

More details from MediaPost here: Search Expands Role As Online's Ad Engine. And Gary tells me when the actual report is out for the public, you should be able to find it here.

Want to comment or read discussion of this topic? Please visit this thread in our forums: Online Advertising Coming Back: Search Surging.

Postscript: The report is now available. The definitions DO include contextual ads as "contextual search" and part of search spending. That's bad. On the upside, spending on "site optimization" IS included, so the figures aren't purely on the advertising side of things.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 15, 2004

FindWhat Launches Pay-Per-Call Ad Program

FindWhat Launches Online/Offline Performance-Based Ads Source: Clickz

>From the article, "As with FindWhat.com's pay-per-click service, advertisers bid for placement in search results which are displayed on sites in the FindWhat.com Network, which includes portals such as Excite, NBCi, Search.com and MetaCrawler, along with Yellow Pages directory SuperPages.com. The placement of the pay-per-call ads on the page will vary on each distribution partner's site, though FindWhat intends that the ads be kept separate from existing pay-per-click ads to avoid confusion. Instead of bidding on keywords, as in the pay-per-click service, advertisers bid on relevant categories and choose the geographic area where they want their ads to show. Advertisers only pay when someone calls a trackable toll-free number included in the ad copy, as opposed to the pay-per-click service where advertisers pay whenever someone clicks on their ad. The minimum bid for pay-per-call is $2, compared with $0.05 for pay-per-click."

Posted by Gary Price at 2:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 13, 2004

Targeted ads are the new kid on the Net block

Targeted ads are the new kid on the Net block Source: Canadian IT A look at behavioral targeting. Tacoda Systems Inc., Revenue Science Inc., and Burst Media are mentioned.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 12, 2004

Comment: The big brand battles to come

Comment: The big brand battles to come Source: Netimperative, Sep. 10, 2004 Kate Burns, head of advertising for Google in the UK, offers a couple of comments on the future of banner ads.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

See More Posts From:

This Week | This Month

  var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-564586-7"); pageTracker._setDomainName(".searchenginewatch.com"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); window.collarity_appid = "incmedia"; //> //>
Top Jobs
more Jobs

Account Manager
Varick Media Management New York, United States

Reporting and Data Analyst
Varick Media Management New York, United States

Publisher
Confidential Leading Publisher New York, United States

Director, Online Acquisition Marketing - Consumer (eCommerce, SEM/SEO)
Barnes & Noble.com New York, United States

White Papers
more Research

0