Search: How-To
Search and Social Media: Mom Power Drives Marketing Results
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Written By Ruth Nightengale | December 7, 2009 | Share This
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The fact that women are powerful is hardly news, but recent studies suggest that moms may very well represent the National Power Grid for the United States.
In a white paper published by Advertising Age, The Rise of the Real Mom, the Boston Consulting Group states that moms control $4.3 trillion of the $5.9 trillion U.S. consumer spending total, or 73% of household spend. The Shriver Report, issued in October, found that women are the major breadwinners in 40 percent of families. And just last week, Google released another study on moms they are calling Four Truths about Moms and Search, created in collaboration with BabyCenter and two different research vendors between October 16 and November 17 of this year.
Ad Week: What Do You Want to Know About Search Re-Targeting?
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Written By Noah Mallin | September 15, 2009 | Share This
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Here’s your chance to get a panel question asked without ever leaving the warm soothing glow of your computer screen. As part of Advertising Week Reprise Media’s Senior Vice President of Business Development Dan Kashman will be leading a panel at next week’s OMMA Global New York, Tuesday September 22 at noon titled Leveraging the Power of Search Re-targeting for Marketing Plans.
The best part is that we want your input into what questions to ask the panel, either in the comments here or on Twitter at @dankashman. Dan will incorporate as many of your questions as he can into the panel discussion.
The panel will explore opportunities for re-marketing to searchers after they’ve left Google, Yahoo, Bing or their other engine of choice, specific search re-targeting offerings from networks and other providers, best practices for segmentation and messaging, and the privacy implications inherent in this approach.
For those who are unfamiliar with it, search re-targeting allows advertisers to match display ads to search users based on keywords that they’ve recently searched for. It’s becoming a key tool in the marketer’s shed, amplifying and strengthening the ability to hit the right consumer with the best message.
We know that marketers and businesses have a lot of questions about search re-targeting, and we want to hear them from you directly. So, what questions would you like to see Dan ask the panel?
Paid Search: CARS Lifts Boats, but Not the Ones with Holes
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Written By Sean McDonald | August 13, 2009 | Share This
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I have always been fond of truisms - particularly the one that goes “a rising tide lifts all boats.” According to the elves at Wikipedia, this concept “is associated with the idea that improvements in the general economy will benefit all participants in that economy.” Search marketing is affected by macro-economic shifts just like most other sectors of the economy, and sometimes we are foresighted enough to anticipate the tide coming in.
Search News: Yahoo and Microsoft Deal Begs The Question: Nature or Nurture?
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Written By Noah Mallin | July 30, 2009 | Share This
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By now I’m assuming you know that Microsoft and Yahoo have signed a groundbreaking 10 year deal that sees Microsoft’s Bing search technology replacing Yahoo’s search engine and Yahoo’s sales team taking the lead on high-end search sales for both channels. This is just the kind of news that sends us into our search geek clubhouse here at Reprise Media, where beers are opened, feet are kicked up, and opinions start flying around the room like mosquitoes in a swamp (apologies to Dan Rather.)
One of the most interesting takes was an offhand comment from Vice President of Media John Chan. While sipping on his 40 he pointed out that for many of our paid search campaigns, campaign performance was noticeably better on Bing than on Yahoo. There are three reasons this might be:
Search News: Branded Search Marches On with Google Video Plus Box
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Written By Emil Panzarino | July 22, 2009 | Share This
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Google released (or I should say re-released) a new product earlier this year for paid search results called the “Video Plus Box”. This is an interesting opportunity for advertisers who focus less on an absolute conversion and have more interest in the branding and awareness possibilities that search holds.
It also makes sense for advertisers who have a strong visual component to their product or pitch – film and television promotion comes to mind. On the other hand advertisers that are more focused on e-commerce- getting people to their site and converting and/or monetizing their paid search traffic in some way- might find this feature to be counterproductive to their core goals.
The Video Plus Box allows a searcher to watch a video within a paid search ad by expanding the plus box {+} link. An early form of this product had been released last year as one of Google’s many alpha tests. It went away for a few months but came back earlier this year as (you guessed it) one of Google’s many beta tests.
Users of Google are no strangers to the general concept of “expand plus box” links in their search results. Google has been showing this feature in their organic listings for quite some time. In 2006 Google introduced the feature that would allow a user to see maps for local businesses within the organic results:
In May 2007, it was blended into their universal search, allowing users to watch videos from YouTube and Google Video inside the organic search results. It was a quick way to play videos without having to load the entire page of a video hosting site. For whatever reason, Google only limited the plus box to its own video sites (YouTube and Google Video), while showing thumbnails and metadata for other sites:
Here’s what the Video Plus Box looks like before activation by the user:
Here’s what it looks like expanded:
Here’s a quick rundown of how it works:
- A paid search ad shows up on a Google as normal, but also includes a small link to preview a video.
- If a user clicks on the headline link as normal and goes to the brands website, as cost per click is incurred.
- If a user clicks on the (+) and expands the ad to watch the video, a CPC is incurred.
- After clicking to watch the video, if the user clicks through to the brand’s website, an additional CPC is not incurred.
- Only 1 CPC is ever incurred per 1 impression
What the “video plus box” does on the user end is encourage the searcher to find out more about the brand and its offerings by having them interact more with the actual paid search ads. Obviously this can deter the user from clicking through to a landing page. The upside of this is branding. Users can still have a chance to interact and learn about a brand without leaving the Google search environment. The downside is that users might abandon the process before a more valued ROI action is completed.
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Search News: Yahoo Shopping Flops with King of Pop
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Written By James Song | July 2, 2009 | Share This
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Unless you were living in an undersea cave, you know that “King of Pop” Michael Jackson passed away last week. As has been reported, websites around the world were affected when the story broke around 4:30pm EST. Visitors per minute to new websites worldwide increased 30% and social networking sites such as Twitter experienced network lag and outages due to the thousands of users simultaneously trying to update their status. The phrase “Michael Jackson died” became the highest search query on Google that day, which was so overwhelmed by the query volume that they initially thought they were experiencing a network attack.
This made me wonder about the impact of current events search queries on search marketing campaigns. On Thursday evening I searched ‘Michael Jackson died” on Google and saw a paid search ad in 1st position for Yahoo Shopping:
Search News: Google Adds More Match Types to Play With – How Not To Get Burned
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Written By Vicky Fudali | June 25, 2009 | Share This
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As you optimize your campaigns and check your settings in AdWords, some new options may seem to have appeared on your screen. Don’t worry, you’re not seeing things. Google has recently made two match type enhancements available to help you manage your campaigns even more efficiently – Broad (session based) and Automatic Matching. Please note these enhancements do not replace the traditional big four match types when setting up campaigns – Broad, Phrase, Exact, and Negative. These new enhancements should be seen as being more for analysis and campaign improvement. Read on to see how these match type enhancements can assist advertisers in campaign management.
Search Innovations: The Branding Value of a Search Impression
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Written By Emil Panzarino | June 17, 2009 | Share This
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What is the branding value of a search impression? While most search folks are trampling over and pushing aside impression data to get to the almighty click and conversion data, I ponder the question: Is there a significant branding importance associated with a search text impression?
When we think of branding within Internet marketing, we typically think of Page Takeovers, Interstitials, Page Skins, and a variety of other intimidating sounding nomenclatures.
In fact, some industry-ers scoff at the notion that search (or any text ad) could have any significant value when it comes to branding or awareness. And because the cost of impression is on a per click basis, some search planners /agencies have gone as far as removing impression data from client reporting altogether.
Search How-To: Marketers Need to Understand Google’s Share Of Voice (SOV) Reports
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Written By Stephen DeAngelis | June 9, 2009 | Share This
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Last year Google introduced Impression Share reports to their list of reporting options, giving AdWords users greater insight into the performance of their Search campaigns. Fully understood, these reports can be invaluable in calculating projections, measuring the impact of offline advertising on online campaigns, as well as in day to day optimizations.
Currently, Google offers four types of Impression Share reports: Impression Share, Lost IS (Budget), Lost IS (Rank), and Exact Match IS. Here’s a breakdown of each report:
SEO: Good SEO Means Good Client Communication
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Written By Mark Pilatowski | May 12, 2009 | Share This
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I have been immersed in the world of SEO and search engine marketing for nearly 10 years. In that time I have also become fluent in a language that most of the world has never heard, let alone understands. This is the case for most specialists no matter what the profession or industry. When you are communicating with peers you use the insider language that you and your peers understand. If a normal person were to overhear a couple of SEOs discussing their work they would probably walk away wondering what they hell they were talking about and why they were let out of the mental health facility without any meds. The language of SEO can seem like Greek to most people but when it comes to dealing with clients it pays to translate.