Memo to David Cohen: Don’t Hate - Innovate
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Written By Reprise Media | October 13, 2005 | Share This
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(Reprise Managing Partner Peter Hershberg weighs in on some recent rumblings over the state of search marketing.)
I’ll give David Cohen the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was simply trying to ruffle some feathers when he titled his most recent ClickZ article, “I Hate Search.”
But while the title may be a bit overstated, I don’t doubt that the frustrations David touches on in his column are real. And I’m sure that he speaks not only for himself, but for a high percentage of “large, multinational, integrated communications agencies” as well.
Not surprisingly, David’s already been taken to task by Danny Sullivan and Gary Stein for putting together such a flawed argument, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to share some additional thoughts of my own.
Cohen writes:
“If the major search players were to improve organic search so it delivered exactly the results consumers are looking for, the need for paid listings would be reduced. Cutting off the hand that feeds them isn’t in search engines’ best interest, so search players artificially limit organic results’ precision.”
There’s no question that organic search can be improved. In fact, at last week’s Web 2.0 conference, Google SVP, Omid Kordestani, shared Larry Page’s sentiment that Google “still doesn’t work very well.” When your business has greater than 50% market share and you’re still not satisfied with its performance, it’s obvious that there’s room for improvement.
That said, this is easier said than done. Given the nature of the way search engines group and rank a set of search results, you’re always going to have people who are trying to game the system. While Google has arguably done a better job of identifying and filtering out spam than other engines, they will always face the same problems that we see in a variety of places in the offline world - specifically, that “cheaters” are always one step ahead of “enforcers” because you can’t identify and test for that which you don’t already know exists.
This is the reason why professional athletes who use newly developed performance-enhancing drugs are able to get away with it for some period of time. And it’s the reason why radar detectors have allowed drivers to get away with exceeding the speed limit for years. Similarly, by the time the search engines are able to identify and filter out irrelevant results from their indexes, the spammers have moved on to a new tactic. It’s a game of cat and mouse.
Paid listings, on the other hand, are typically subject to a human editorial review process. Because the accuracy and relevancy of these ads can be monitored before they go live, they can sometimes provide a more satisfying user experience than organic search. But there’s no way to apply the same review process to natural search results - there are far too many pages on the web. (As someone who worked at Ask Jeeves, where we tried to manually build a database of answers to the world’s questions, I have firsthand knowledge of how challenging that can be.)
It’s also worth noting that there’s been some recent progress in the area of delivering the exact results a searcher is looking for. Ask Jeeves has done a very good job of building out their “Smart Answers” feature, providing users with information ranging from flight delays to music references right on their reply pages.
It goes without saying that the effort to create a more satisfying search experience often comes at the expense of “paid clicks.” But Ask Jeeves has been around long enough to know that if they don’t provide relevancy, there won’t be any users to click on those links at anytime.
Cohen also writes:
“There’s really no benefit to the volume of business in paid search.”
While it’s true that agencies like UMI, who are used to consolidated buying power that leads to price discounts, don’t enjoy the same benefit in the search channel, spending money does have its advantages.
As Gary pointed out in his blog entry, API access is key to creating and managing large scale SEM campaigns. The engines have a variety of agreements that govern how much access an individual client or agency have to their API’s.
Generally speaking, the more money you spend, the more access you get without incurring additional cost. And if an advertiser can change their bids, keywords, match types, or any other campaign variable more frequently than their competitor can, they have gained a significant advantage. I know firsthand that not only are most large agencies not only don’t use taking advantage of API’s, but they don’t even know what they are.
Because some of the major interactive agencies have been slow to embrace search, they clearly have not recognized the advantages that significant spend can provide. This is also due to the fact that many “traditional” interactive agencies look at advertising as a “people” business with little regard for the technologies that can provide them with competitive advantages. That is simply the old paradigm and it’s about to collapse.
Cohen continues:
“If someone wants to outbid you on a word or phrase, consider yourself preempted. In relationship-driven businesses such as TV, print, and even online display advertising, preemption usually leads to a phone call with the sales organization. The relationship (and clout) one has with the property typically leads to a mutually agreeable solution (make goods, bonus impressions, etc.).”
What’s so bad about having the playing field leveled? In fact, this may be what I like best about search marketing. I can’t think of any other medium that does a better job of aligning the interests of all three constituencies involved in the advertising process.
Among other reasons, search works because of its cost-per-click pricing model. Because advertisers can name the price they’re willing to pay for inventory, they can ensure that clicks are profitable for them. The publisher featuring those ads generates revenue each time that same click is made.
And perhaps most importantly, the consumer’s need for a product, service, or piece of information has been satisfied. Empowering the consumer to decide which ads can afford to be at the top of the list doesn’t seem like such a bad thing to me. This more democratized approach eliminates the politics that governs many corporate channels, advertising in particular.
Another point Cohen makes:
“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.”
Danny has (not surprisingly) done a good job of addressing this piece in his blog post. Search engine marketing is much broader than keywords, a few lines of text, and a bid price. It’s a conversational system that includes not only the ad on a search engine reply page, but the landing page that a user clicks through to and any other steps involved in the conversion process. They all need to be consistent with each other and streamlined in a way that it’s easy for the consumer to complete a transaction.
With respect to “being replaced by an open auction,” I don’t see that happening anytime soon. Buying an ad on Yahoo’s homepage will always take some degree of negotiation between buyer and seller, not to mention the fact that a sophisticated creative shop will need to create the actual advertising assets.
But David is dead-on when he acknowledges that like it or not, more money is being poured into search. Not only that, marketers are becoming increasingly aware of how logical and efficient auction-based markets are.
As I noted in previous post, we’ve seen this trend manifest itself in bids on ads in RSS, bids on behavioral advertising, bids on the “automotive” category in Quigo’s AdSonar network…It’s like one broad pool of content networked together by advertising.
I’ve sat in meetings with Media Directors at some of the world’s largest agencies who have confessed that they’re hesitant to show their clients just how effective search marketing can be. After all, their clients would demand that additional dollars be reallocated to a channel that they’re not particularly competent in, thereby exposing the agency and potentially impacting its earnings.
But it’s clear that those days are coming to an end. David Cohen and the rest of the interactive agency world can evolve with the times or we can start taking bets on which SEM will become the next Avenue A.
Topics: Search: Innovations |
Ive spoken to David and his anger for search comes out clear. He is a young guy frustrated by the fact that he cant buy a relationship in search to better his clients he hates that its driven by the best results and not a connection to someone. David knows nothing about one of the biggest advertising slices of today and he is head of the digital division of UMI Microsoft pull your money out now.
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