Rebecca Lieb opens the sessions discussing that this session is something new for SES. They will talk to some extent about integration and there will be plenty of time for questions. How many people do other advertising beyond search. A good majority of the people raised there hands showing there is other success beyond search.
First up is Tessa Wegret from Enlighten, who is a column for ClickZ that writes on media buys each Friday. She will talk about integrating different competent with search. Blogs can help boost search engine ranking and there are many benefits to using them. They are dynamic, interactive, sincere. 50 million Americans (30% of American internet users) visited a blog in Q1 2005. The effect on search engine rankings is caused by frequent updates and unique content. Many companies are linking the blog to their corporate websites. She gives an example that she contributes to a Toronto newspaper. Sh found a small real estate firm, trying to compete with the Remax and big budget clients. The small firm started a blog, in several weeks they were able to achieve top rankings for “Toronto real estate”.
There is a downfall to the blog/search relationship. 4.12 million blogs created to date. 66% of blogs not updated in last two months. Over 1 million blog maintained for one day only, never updated again. Splogs (spam blogs) are also a problem, as they serve as link farms, and senseless text and creating a lot of search clutter. Organic/natural optimization is more challenging. The solution is to combine a blog marketing with enhanced search marketing efforts.
Her next topic is about rich media multimedia search. There are ad campaigns part of brand identity, and the good one evoke pride in being associated with your brand. There is increased broadband adoption fueling consumer search for online video and audio content. What a lot of marketers are doing is posting there rich media on there websites. Some do this as a directory or make it searchable. They make sure the advertising is accessible to “trend disseminators”. The major search engines will also be able to spider the rich media and make it available to users. Many online advertisers still not integrating search. There is a disconnect between online marketing campaigns. Search isn’t only scientific, there is a real art to writing the ad copy in your campaign. Use the PPC copywriters for your organic copywriting. She quotes (Bernstein?): “The essence of your competitive advantages lies in the mental capital you have built up in the buyers heads.” Good presentation.
Hollis Thomases from Web Ad.vantage is up second she starts to explain about her company and go into what happened in the Old Days. Then there was no text ads in search, only display ads. There was a place called GoTo, but no one really went to GoTo or Overture to search. Yahoo used to have a hybrid logo text ad that did very well. She says its shame they did away with that as it was very successful for clients.
Non-search supporting search is brought up. You begin with PPC search and she says there is limited inventory on these engines. You can’t manufacture more searches. You serve re-targeting pixel. It records if there is no purchase by consumer. They will later on and see same consumer served display ads. There is a behavioral competent to this as well, by using keywords to trigger behavioral targeting. The last part of non search supporting search is niche/affiliate audiences. The long tail search terms will drive traffic & / or sales to identify new sites on which to advertise. Additionally you can use offer sites as fertile testing grounds to reveal what language and offers will help drive traffic and or sell product (example Cool Savings).
The next areas she covers is integration, considerations and best practices. Be sure to consider character restrictions in search. Look at lead time for new keywords. Altering landing page content to meet with search editorial approval. You may also want to hedge your impression based ad spend, such as testing responses to offers in search before display. Many keywords, not so many variations on display. Display is more expensive to produce (especially rich media). Another tactic is to keep exclusive, stronger special offers for non search to increase likelihood of response. Finally, she recommends to not be afraid to test.
Some pitfalls to avoid. You access to/control of organic & PPC campaign such as performance data, ad copy, client side division of labor into silos. So can display ads impact search? For online “generic” “non-wow”; ads impressions have to be really high and very visible. For every creative, clever ads these tend to be more viral.
