Sorry for the reference to apple picking, but here in the Northeast we are smack in the season, and nothing beats a ripe Honeycrisp apple.  The issue at hand is that as an industry we do not have a standard way to compare Search conversions to Display conversions.  There is much digital ink spilt over how Display and Search work in tandem.  There is even a recent study put together by comScore and Starcom showing the lift when Display and Search are ran together.  So, I pose the question will we ever, or even if we should, be putting our energy into finding one?

Search recently has been the darling and did not have to justify conversion cost because we were always the lowest, but the landscape has changed.  Google has seen its CPCs more than double because search was the cheapest.  They also saw an influx of marketing spend due to the economy, which equals more online competition.  Search is measurable, so when a CMO’s rear end is on the line, they need hard facts about their marketing spend, and search can provide that.  Display has been soft.  There are a lot of publishers out there fighting for the dollar, and they are more than willing to negotiate rates.  Google doesn’t negotiate rates.  So with the decrease in a Display CPC and the targeting capabilities that ad networks have, Display conversions have become cheaper to come by.  This then brings up the conversation / question from the client of why are we spending in search when we could be putting our money in Display and getting cheaper conversions.  I don’t even want to go into the conversations we, as search providers, should be having with our client about the beauty of search and that we need to be there when an active hand raiser is requesting us.  They all have been preached and argued more than the DA of NYC has been busting politicians, but when a client becomes locked on a bottom line conversion cost, you need to plead your case the way they want to hear it.  We need to have apples just like Display.

My point of view is obvious, Display just has to place an ad on a page on a web site that the visitor (whether they see the ad or not) then becomes a conversion without doing a search before.  comScore and Starcom’s findings state that 16% of people online click on a Display ad, and that only 8% those make up 85% of those clicks.  Search has it a little harder; we actually need to convert that person as they are viewing our ads.  So by nature, Search is more engaging than display.  I question that comparing Display to Search is even something that we should doing.  Now convincing the client is a whole other issue that makes my brain hurt just thinking about it.  We don’t compare TV to search, even though some clients have tried, so why do we compare Search to Display.  Display is just a targeted TV ad with more interaction if designed right.  I am not here to cause a rift with my brothers and sisters, but to help create a resolution that allows us all to be one big happy family. 

I am curious if we came to a resolution will it actually become standard, or more of those resolutions that seem standard but come with the caveat that needs to be tailored to the client.  Let me explain this better through an example.  I want to keep a conversion a conversion, and still measure revenue that is brought in through that conversion, but I want to increase the “value” of the Search conversion.  Let’s say that since a Search conversion is an actual conversion that happened directly from our ad, that we value it 50% more than a view through conversion.  Should that 50% more value be standard across all clients (I actually don’t believe so)?  We then start treading on the whole argument that each client and each campaign will need to have percentages given out, which then puts us in quicksand.  I have not had a situation where we came to the conclusion of what percentage of value should be attributed to a campaign in a quick manner.  By the time we come to a conclusion, the campaign is over.

There are areas where Search can use a view through, but the bulk of our campaigns are click based.  Google could even one day allow their text ads to become view through based, and this could possibly be the Holy Grail that allows us all to pick apples, but right now Google doesn’t have plans for this, plus I don’t see much incremental value being added to search through view throughs.  Thus, Search is picking bananas (at least we are somewhere tropical) and Display will continue to pick apples, at least while they are still in season.  What are your thoughts?  Or do you hate fruit all together?

*The image accompanying this post is from www.pixelpicks.com.