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GroupM Search Study Reveals Advertisers Could See CPC Increase Up To 78% With Yahoo & Microsoft Search Alliance Transition

by Cindy Kerber Spellman ~ September 20th, 2010

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Financial Implications of the Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance

The analysts in our Predictive Insights unit here at GroupM Search have been busy researching the financial implications the Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance will have on advertisers in order to help our clients prepare for the upcoming transition. The study revealed cost-per-click implications and how increased competition will impact CPCs as paid search advertisers move to one platform. Our analysts also identified a window of volatility advertisers will experience post-transition before the marketplace settles. Below is our press release on the topic; you may also download the white paper for a deeper look into the study.

Advertisers could see a cost-per-click (CPC) increase up to 78 percent above current Bing CPCs as a surge of competitors move to one platform with the Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance transition, a study completed by GroupM Search revealed.

Based on the impact two industry milestones had on advertisers – Yahoo’s introduction in 2007 of Panama and Microsoft’s transition in 2009 from MSN Live to Bing, GroupM Search projects a three-week period of volatility post-transition before costs begin to settle. At the campaign level, advertisers can expect an average increase of 64 percent over current Bing CPCs for unbranded keywords and 78-percent for branded keywords during this time. Once the marketplace settles, CPCs on Bing will rest at 13 to 23 percent above current Bing CPCs for unbranded and branded keywords, respectively.

“Any time you interject change into the auction you invite pricing pressure,” said Chris Copeland, chief executive officer of GroupM Search. “In this case, we see historical evidence that suggests regardless of the bid tools and the preparation, a period of short-term volatility will exist.”

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The Search Alliance: A Study In Listening To Advertisers First

by Chris Copeland ~ July 27th, 2010

We are close to 60 days from the formal transition of most advertisers to the Bing platform as part of the Yahoo-Bing search results merger. Over the next two months a lot of ink will be spilled about the expected impact, with prognostications about the ability of the combination to challenge Google and what could go wrong (which would make the former topics moot). In advance of this, I want to give you one early indicator why this combination is something different from what most in the search space are used to seeing.

Over the past few weeks representatives from Yahoo and Bing have visited search marketing agencies with a series of updates on the transition. These updates include status items such as progress reports, timing and checklists of things to do before the big switch. As these visits were taking place, a formal release was made public with appropriate quotes from each party. With the pending shift less than two months away, the knowns are finally outweighing the unknowns. And that brings me to an important revelation that matters for advertisers today, but may also be significant in the search marketplace for tomorrow.

Yahoo and Microsoft are listening to advertisers and their agencies. In this business it is common practice to hear what advertisers have to say, but then listen to consumers. Google built its highly successful search business by putting nothing above the consumer experience and providing the highest relevance possible to those individuals who use the service. This has created consistent friction with advertisers, who want to find a more productive way into the process than just cutting a check to show up when Google decides it best for the end user. Unfortunately for advertisers, while the Google model has been successful, historically it has not produced the kind of game-changing innovation in ad formats or opportunities that get advertisers to make dramatic shifts in how they allocate budgets or think about a channel.

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Microsoft's End to Bing Cashback Takes Differentiation With It

by Cindy Kerber Spellman ~ June 4th, 2010

Almost a year after launching Bing and revitalizing their Cashback program, Microsoft is bringing an end to their Bing Cashback Shopping and Bing Cashback Search rewards programs, effective July 30. Cited reasons include less than desired profitability and lack of adoption. Microsoft hoped the program would change user behavior of Bing usage by getting users to use Cashback habitually to incent purchases. The official announcement is available on Bing’s Search Blog.

This news is disappointing in terms of the opportunities Cashback presents for advertisers and the needed differentiation a program like Cashback brings for an engine to be competitive in the marketplace. On the heels of Yahoo’s end of the Paid Inclusion program at the start of 2010, this is now two key variants in the marketplace gone from challengers to Google.

Cashback was introduced as a differentiator for Bing when it launched and took significant work on the part of their advertisers and agency partners to implement. Advertisers who invested in IT developments to support site integration for Cashback’s premium program will surely feel a sense of wasted long-term opportunity. Ultimately, this program felt partial baked upon launch, and with significant changes to the Bing focus and leadership, it is safe to say it never released its full potential and thus went the way of many “differentiating” products brought to the search market. Continue reading >>

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Toyota Recall: Search & Social Meltdown

by Joseph Cowan ~ February 25th, 2010

In a world of instant everything, food, phone, news and stock price changes, one would think that in a marketing or public relations crisis, a company or competitor would use any media at their disposal to strategically position themselves and leverage their product in a media storm. As an example, let’s look at Toyota. In the news now for weeks owing to an issue with their brake pedals, floor mats and now maybe even their automotive computer systems. Toyota reacted slowly and the media has been relentless. Consequently in January, Ford and Chevy both outsold Toyota, while Toyota sales dropped 16% (Reuters, Feb 2 2010).

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Search Marketing Strategies in Defense of Conquesting Campaigns and Online Brand Trauma

by Bhak Tanta-Nanta ~ February 2nd, 2010

I was reading a post by Sarah Tillitt the other day regarding conquesting campaigns (search campaigns where companies buy the branded terms of competitors) and her entry struck a chord with me because conquesting campaigns and reputation management invariably come up during the course of any search marketer’s career. It’s one of those sticky points where brands get really fired up about, but aren’t really sure how to respond to. I was fortunate enough where the first incident I had to handle had a three month window of time. This is most often not the case. I was doing search for a very large pharmaceutical company whose patent for a flagship drug was coming to an end and they needed a search strategy to protect against the attack of the generics.

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How SEO Can Help Your Paid Search Campaigns

by Eric Baggett ~ January 26th, 2010

It’s common for businesses to ask how SEO is going to help their paid search efforts. This is an often misunderstood relationship, and when working with Fortune 500 companies, you can’t simply say because I said so. So, I thought I’d tackle this with a three-fold approach:

1. Market Share

2. Improved Metrics

3. Revenue

Market Share

For small service-oriented or e-Commerce businesses, click-through-rate and conversions are paramount. However, for large companies, brand recognition is an equally important component of search marketing. Combining organic search with paid campaigns increases exposure for important branded and non-branded key phrases, ensuring that you are in front of your target audience at critical times. It’s pretty simple math – more listings means more chances someone will see one of your listings and associate your company with the search term. When presented with a viable opportunity to increase exposure and position your company as the industry leader, why wouldn’t you?

Filed under: Organic Search, Paid Search | 2 Comments >>

Image Ads Expand Paid Search Campaign Opportunities

by Michael Solomonov ~ January 12th, 2010

Looking for new (and exciting) opportunities for your paid search campaign? Trying to go beyond the same ol’ boring text ads? If so, this post is for you.

Both Google and Yahoo are constantly enhancing their paid search offerings, and this time, they are turning to images, although in two completely different ways. Google’s feature is called Promote Your Image (PYI), and will be used to test run an image with a text ad in its Global image search section results. Yahoo will focus more on the main search engine results and will also offer videos, quick links, etc (Yahoo Image Search).

Sounds complicated? It’s actually pretty simple.

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Conquesting Campaigns: Beneficial Branding Tool or Not Worth the Trouble?

by Sarah Tillitt ~ December 22nd, 2009

Do a search for almost any product or service and you’ll most likely see a variety of paid ads on the results page. Search marketers often talk about the importance of “being there” when a potential customer is looking for you. But some advertisers don’t want to be there just when their own customers are searching; they’d like to be present when their competition’s customers search as well!

Campaigns that target the competition by bidding on competitor brand terms are known as conquesting campaigns. Do a search for BMW and you’ll see an ad for Infiniti in the results. A search for the home store Linens ‘n Things shows an ad for Macy’s housewares department within the results. What are some of the benefits of conquesting campaigns? What are the downfalls?

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The Great Thanksgiving Search Campaign That Might Not Have Been

by Bhak Tanta-Nanta ~ December 10th, 2009

I do believe if you saw me today, you’d say that I’m absolutely beaming with delight. We had a large paid search campaign for a client of ours targeting the Thanksgiving holiday and now that all the data is in, I’m pleased as punch to say that for a campaign that had impression levels that were above the Account average, we scored double digit CTR’s. Excellent work, pat ourselves on our backs, a job well done, correct?

Well, no. Actually, it should be a “NO!,” and definitely a “NOOO!” if you ask my boss. But I don’t know if I can write that. The reason that the buck doesn’t stop at the CTR’s performance is because we are well beyond the era of judging a campaign by impressions, clicks and CTR. We’re not doing ads in newspapers, radios and magazines, we’re Search Marketing, and quite frankly, search marketing should be held to a gold standard because of its ability to exact a response or action beyond any other marketing medium (in general) besides perhaps face-to-face sampling programs.

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Geo-Targeting and PPC: A way to boost your conversion metrics

by Allana Banks ~ December 8th, 2009

While looking at the Sunday paper one morning, I began to daydream about how much money I would save if I would just commit to coupon clipping. I then saw a coupon for a client that I work for and noticed that they had a call to action to find recipes and tips online. I thought it would be nice to see how many people would actually use the coupon or take it a step further and use search to get recipes to use the product. I felt it was great that they were using print advertising to bring awareness of their recipe site but wondered why they didn’t utilize paid search to promote their free standing inserts. So for their next Free Standing Insert (FSI), we decided to test the geo- targeting feature (that I discussed in my last blog post) to target certain markets that would receive the FSI in their local paper and see if there was a lift in recipe prints for the promoted recipe. After discussing with the client, we felt that this would be good to test since their next insert would be for one of their most popular recipes. In my mind, this was a no brainer, but looking at it through the eyes of the client, there are so many marketing verticals utilized and sometimes one can forget the ease and simplicity of search and how it can boost other marketing efforts. Here are a few tips on how to tie different marketing platforms together to boost sales or conversions of a particular product.