Moderator: Andrew Goodman
Intro: Dana will speak briefly with an overview, and then the engines will speak briefly.
Dana Todd - SiteLab International, Inc.
What�s on my mind right now? Rank is dead. What you knew as rank before is no longer, things are getting weirder. Changes how we do things. You could say rank is unimportant, but you know that the sweet spot is in the top three, so what do you do? Banners are now �image ads.� Tools are improving. Click fraud still raising it�s ugly head. Tech limitations becoming a legal issue more often. Legal may be driving tech once again. Headline and hot topics:
Yahoo: Y! Publisher Network; Y! Audio search BETA; Ysearchblog.com (blog search); Marketing alliances program�yet still not loved by Wall Street. Still not as sexy as Google
MSN Keywords: Msn adCenter to include behavioral and demographic data?
AskJeeves anticipated PPC rollout this month.
Google gives/takes - Now that you can stay active on high impressions terms, but tradeoff is arbitrary minimum bid - Image ads: Site Targeting lets you cherry-pick network, but on a bidded CPM (minimum $2 CPM!!!) - Testing longer ad text - Video search requires special viewer and special uploader software�.why can�t they just be normal?
SE Underdogs/up-and-comers?: AOL- opens its portal to public. Buys X-drive for personal data storage (photos, video, etc). They have all the pieces to compete�will they? FindWhat merged with Miva�yawn �marriage of mediocrity? (laughs) Become.com becoming next shopping engine? Baidu goes public - is there a China search market yet? Pay per call heats up: VoiceStar and Verizon superpages.com
Dan Boberg - Yahoo! Search Marketing (apologies to Dan: I has a tech malfunction and lost most of your stuff. Replaced what I could from memory) Speaks about new increased training. Services, and partnerships. Yahoo Publisher Network will offer more categories and sub categories to choose from. Also increasing ability for both partners such as Ambassadors or referers (people that simply refer sites to Y! SM) to gain more knowledge. Partnering w/ USA Today, Walt Disney, and (something) by Boeing.
Paid search was #1 outside source for buying during holiday season. Objective : brand awareness. Search now being used for reach, engagement, and increasing awareness. Obj: competitive positioning. Companies measure positioning and work to generate a strong share of overall searches positioning/ Objectives: promotions, special offers.
David Fisher - Google
Describes the �Google-Advertiser-Website Ecosystem� and how they effect each other including the publishers. Want to look for ways to benefit everyone involved. Advertisers- complimentary way to target intended audience. Reach consumers during diff parts of the life cycle. Same powerful platform. Users - better experience, etc.
Site targeting- Target by affinities show add only on spec sites. Flexible bidding options and pricing. CPM bidding and auto ensures that you pay only the market clearing price for an impression. Creative control - advertisers can run rich text and static image ads as well as rich media formats.
Quality based bidding- minimum bids. As low as .01 cent CPCs, but also true that some will go up. �Active� or �inactive� only, no account slowing or disabling of kws. Will be determined by your maximum CPC only.
Urchin- kw analysis. Website optimization- allows for optimization (?!?) for certain browsers, software platforms, search Site overlay- visual representations.
Geo targeting - allow a variety of targeting mechanism all the way down to spots on a map or a five mile radius. Allows for different parts of the country to be targeted w/diff campaigns.
David Jakubowski - MSN Search
Brief comments. Very exited about new opportunities. Happy to announce that they are actively in the space, France and Singapore pilot is live. We have a vision for adCenter to be a one stop shop for all buying across MS. MSN Keywords product is the first step for MSN into the search marketplace. The US pilot will begin in October by invitation only. 500 already signed up, will also invite an additional thousands SEM�s/agencies. Control, flexibility and the ability to refine campaigns are the major goals of this. Advanced features: Geo-target, target by gender. day of week, day-parting.
James Speer - IAC Adverting Solutions of AskJeeves
Lots of exiting things happening. Last week sponsored listing products launched to existing customer base. Launching to everyone August 15. An untapped audience. Overlap between Ask.com and other major players is small: Yahoo!: 16%, Google: 14%, MSN 13%, AOL 9%. Old Jeeves has more sponsored links, only 3 on ask.com. This equals �cleaner� page. Reach across network though many others portals including iwon, excite, dog pile, tickle, clear channel and others.
We back our benefits with technology. Forecasting capabilities, ability to set campaign budgets at monthly level or daily targets, real time reporting, estimated traffic summary reports, and more. Personal services from your client services manager (with as little as 5k/month spent). Helping to prevent click fraud by ensuring quality of traffic is legitimate. Bid management tools from Atlas One Point. Little risk to try the new system. White papers will be available on webs ite soon. sponsored listings.ask.com will be the site to answer questions.
Ron Belanger - Carat Interactive (a buyer)
Even though we are not a search engine we decided to launch a PPC platform since everyone else is (laughs). How are we utilizing search in the larger scheme of search engine advertising (SEA)? Note difference from SEM. SEM is a DR medium: Ecom, acquiring customer, etc�while SEAdvertising allows for more things, including brand building, how to address the 85% of the marketplace that isn�t ready to buy? SE�s is one of few effective channels to reach a large audience of teens.
Pro and cons of search as a medium
Pros: Micro targeting, Leverage consumer intent, Minimal media waste, Relatively inexpensive, High customer engagement, Flexible
Cons: 70 characters of text vs. a 30 second slot that can deliver a much more powerful message. Measurment is still a challenge
Google interest and your brand. Who would buy a term like Paris Hilton? What about Carls Jr? Jessica Simpson? Dukes of Hazzard. Lindsay Lohan? Disney. Madonna? AOL is buying it already with their music channel. Good creative, good landing page. Good example of a savvy marketer.
Larger case study that AOL is doing: situation: aol decides to offer rich, deep content to general web audience. Current portfolio includes 109.7 million unique visitors per month, which makes it hard to create a collective message. Introduced aol radio, AOL television, AOL Latino, AOL music. Results indicate success. CPC had remained the same while traffic has quintupled (at least). (his company is privy to this info because they run the campaigns for AOL.)
Recap: SEM and SEA are different. Competition is fierce. Open horizon on sea. Turn consumer intent into the start of a meaningful marketing dialogue. aol,.com portal is a testament to the power of SEA.
Andrew Goodman comments that the AOL news is an inspiration (that they have taken a chunk of their marketing budget and dedicated it to SE�s.)
Q&A:
�Will search engines be providing demographic data related to their audiences?�
David F: there are 3rd parties that provide this info. Also itr is fair to assume that the audience is very broad.
David J: MSN will come out with very robust audience intelligence research tools.
Dan Borberg: Search ahs an advantage in that it can collect this data, but ahs not really used it effectively yet.
�Is it ironic that interactive media used to try to emulate traditional media, and now visa versa vis a vis (edited - thought that sounded cool :) the ability to track metrics?�
Ron: answers vaguely yes.
Question uncertain - something about tools that are difficult?
Dan: we are focused on keeping things simple, even thought here will be complexity under that simplicity. David J: Leave control of various tools in the advertisers hands.
James s: key is integration with 3rd party tools. �Why si it so hard to get numbers like market penetration or AdSense numbers and other basic information the way traditional media is?�
David (sorry not sure which one): we are focused on that in terms of providing that stuff in the future. First focus is to be able to track sales and drive business, then we will expand on that.
David F: Must be balanced against user privacy concerns. General market information is OK, but we must establish trust with users and their concerns.
�It is challenging managing 2 campaigns, now with four, are you going to encourage your customers to manage?�
Dana: Tools are able to integrate, such as Atlas. These new portals are completely different offerings, will allow a deeper understanding of the entire market.
Ron: Some clients come begging for mercy saying that it is getting more complicated. A little job security.
