Search: Innovations
Search and Social Media: Your Guide to Bing and Google on The Road to Social Media
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Written By Noah Mallin | October 29, 2009 | Share This
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This week’s article by yours truly in the Huffington Post asks if Google is turning it’s back on its core values by limiting social search to folks with both Google profiles and social media profiles. Earlier in the week, my colleague Mark Pilatowski wondered whether the engines would be able to deal with the spam factor inherent in real-time search.
Before diving into the implications of real time and social search integration to the biggest search engines (excluding YouTube), it’s important to know the basics and the background to what these new deals mean to marketers and the brands who love them. Presented below is everything marketers need to know about the Bing and Google social search deals.
Search and Social: Will the Twitter Firehose Become a Sewage-Filled Spam Hose?
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Written By Mark Pilatowski | October 22, 2009 | Share This
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As most of you probably know Bing and Google announced that they have finalized agreements with Twitter to begin incorporating Tweets into their search engine results. Everyone seems to be overjoyed and excited about this. Search engines are excited because they get access to the Twitter firehose and they can begin providing real time results in the SERPs. Twitter is happy because they are finally getting paid. Searchers are happy because they can now get real time results for queries that deserve it, like breaking news. Everyone seems to be overjoyed about the possibilities and I myself am very interested to see how this all plays out. I do have one concern and that is how are Bing and Google going to deal with the issue of spam when it comes to real time search via Twitter results?
Search News: Google Spreading Tentacles Wider into Ad Exchanges?
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Written By Shivan Durbal | September 17, 2009 | Share This
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Rumor has it that in the near future, possibly within the next two weeks, we may see Google’s invitation only DoubleClick ad exchange marketplace door swung wide open to all buyers and sellers. This is according to ClickZ, but as such it’s still only rumor. As Mia Wallace said in Pulp Fiction “When you little scamps get together, you’re worse than a sewing circle.”
Still, assuming it’s true; Google could bring the worlds of search and display marketing closer together than ever and finally impose tools and measurement on display that we’ve been using for years in the search marketing field.
For those search marketers out there that are unfamiliar with ad exchanges in the display advertising space, in effect they are a support structure for the sale of undervalued, unused or remnant banner advertising inventory.
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?
Search News: Ask Thinks Pink in Non-Profit Partnership
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Written By Ruth Nightengale | September 14, 2009 | Share This
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Despite the innumerable times the work we do is described as “not curing cancer,” there is now a search engine trying to do just that. Or at least help the cause along. Starting today, Ask.com allows you to personalize your Ask homepage in an effort to educate other users about the fight against breast cancer. While the focus of this partnership between Ask and the non-profit Susan G. Koman for the Cure is attention and education, Ask will also be donating up to 50 cents for each user who selects the Search for the Cure page skin and answers the questions on their branded ad panel at the top of their search page:
The branded panel is interesting in that it incorporates a one-click button to donate, as well as the standard array of social media buttons to let people on sites like Facebook know about your interest in finding a cure for breast cancer. Aside from being for a good cause, this is an innovative way for a search engine to partner with a non-profit in a “takeover” of their homepage, and I expect to see more of this in the future.
Search News: Google’s Move Left Leads to Double-Digit Rise in Clicks
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Written By Alex Staunton | August 27, 2009 | Share This
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Take this and let’s move it over an inch. It doesn’t sound like much of a change, but for Google, it’s huge. Google recently moved their ads over to the left a skosh, snuggling them closer to the organic results like Nick Cannon and Mariah Carey after a long day of shopping. While the average user probably noticed nothing, we in the search marketing industry have obsessed over what this change might mean for campaigns.
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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5 Questions: Collecta CEO Gerry Campbell
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Written By Noah Mallin | June 29, 2009 | Share This
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Collecta, a new real-time search engine, went live in beta on June 18th.They intro themselves on their homepage by saying “The web is alive with real-time information. So why search a stale archive? Collecta monitors the update streams of news sites, popular blogs and social media, and Flickr, so we can show you results as they happen.” This is ambitious stuff at a time when real-time is the buzzword in both search and social media circles.
To find out more about Collecta I asked their CEO, Gerry Campbell, to answer our patented 5 Questions. Campbell has a great blog, LuckyRobot.com where he admits to getting “…fired up about making new things.” He’s had a rich and varied background across information media companies like Reuters and AOL and has also been an active investor and advisor to a range of startups.
So what does Gerry Campbell have to say about Collecta and real-time search? Read on…