On Nov. 6 I stood, along with 72,000 others, and screamed, then stared in disbelief as a once-in-a-generation thoroughbred race horse named Zenyatta attempted to have her greatness realized. Zenyatta, a six-year-old mare, came to the hallowed Churchill Downs for the 2010 Breeders Cup, the de facto All Star races to determine the best of the best, in horse racing. Never before in her previous 19 starts had the massive horse tasted defeat, and in this, her final race, she stood a mere two minutes from the kind of greatness that surpasses the momentary and transcends generations.

The race played out like every other Zenyatta race, with her in the very back and a mad dash down the home stretch to reach the finish line. Yet on this day, a horse by the name of Blame found his own moment of greatness. Running on his home track, he found the kind of outcome that few in the crowd — and fewer watching around the world — had expected.

On the four-hour drive home with my long-time gambling partner, we discussed the outcome, what could have been, and the emotions of the moment. Over dinner I suggested that what we came within a head bob of seeing was greatness realized. That got me thinking about what happens in our business every day that puts us in a position to do just that. A lot of coverage leading up to the event had dissected what it took to bring Zenyatta to this moment, and it’s clear that whether it’s a race horse or a business, many of the same elements go in to achieving greatness.

It’s safe to say that preparation and people are key components in any successful endeavor. There are few instances where someone has enough talent or resources to simply show up without doing the work – and win. Likewise, the person who wins an award is rarely an individual with no support system. Even in individual endeavors, be it an election or solo sport, you will always find a network of talent behind the face that contributes to the outcome.

Our business continues to undergo seismic changes that require constant evolution. When I started in this business it was a very loose collection of stand-alone companies trying to form an industry on the back of relationships and business deals. The potential was unknown, but there was a linked energy between the effort and the reward. No one knew quite what to expect, but they were committed to the race because they felt a passion for it.

Last year, Zenyatta won the 2009 Breeders Cup Classic and was retired by her owners. That retirement lasted only long enough for everyone around her to realize that they had broken the bond between the investment they had made and the opportunity to see greatness realized. Zenyatta could have rode off as an undefeated horse with little doubt about her quality, but the people responsible for her ultimately felt that the connection of purpose and reward was too great.

As start-ups have turned into media buying company acquisitions and broader digital agencies, this is the piece of the greatness equation that seems to have been broken. The Breeders Cup is a five-million-dollar race, so there is clearly a financial reward in the sport itself. But there’s a deeper motivator at work today in that business, and perhaps ours. Blame was retired within 24 hours of beating Zenyatta because the stud fees his barn can now receive will never be higher.

By most earnings reports in 2010, the advertising business has seen a pleasant return to form. In spite of sizable ad spend cuts and reductions in staff, the talent that remains is clearly doing more with less. Likewise, clients are expecting more with less spend, but not necessarily less work on our part. As we know, the effort can’t be faked. It may be done with fewer people or dollars but the work is still required to realize whatever potential may exist. What’s unclear in this case is the real outcome we’re seeking.

Blame is an example of a horse realizing greatness for a moment, and in return, bringing incremental wealth back to its owners. No one will ever consider Blame to be a generational or transcendent horse, and that seems to be OK with his connections,who feel they have gotten what they wanted from the animal and now can translate that into a solid earning reports.

I am, by most accounts, a zero-sum person. I am passionate about my work and equally passionate about competition, specifically sports. As Herm Edwards once famously said, “You play to win the game.” And that’s the attitude I take whether it’s in business or outside competition. Until standing sideline at the racetrack on that Saturday, I had never seen so clearly an example of greatness realized through defeat. Yet, there it was: a horse, its jockey, trainer and owners all devastated by the finality of the last outcome in Zenyatta’s career. But greatness was realized because they were all seeking a higher impact. The connections of Zenyatta were linked to elevating not just a horse in a single race, but an industry, an industry that has seen far better days.

Not unlike the advertising business, they had their fortunes tied to an outcome that is beyond a single competition. Zenyatta didn’t win that day, but her business did for the future to come.

Are we setting ourselves up for that kind of greatness? Are we linking the success our people have with our organizational success? Do we connect our client business goals with our advertising programs and ensure that we all win together, or are we content with the short- and mid-term impact?

We all serve multiple masters, and as Blame showed, it’s possible to realize greatness in the moment. But do we strive for momentary reward — or are we prepared for greatness realized on a larger scale?

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and published in MediaPost’s Search Insider, Friday, November 26, 2010. Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss

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.”

The study was completed by GroupM Search’s Predictive Insights unit, a team comprised of econometric statisticians and mathematicians with expertise cultivated in the area of search marketing. GroupM Search looked at current and historical paid search campaign data to estimate cost implications and how long it will take advertisers to return to equilibrium after this shock to the market. The study included campaign data of 12 market-leading clients who have maintained a steady presence on both Yahoo and Microsoft’s search networks dating back to 2007.

The insights from this study are important for advertisers because it allows advanced preparation for what to expect from this transition.

“If three-week volatility and CPC increases can be countered through better understanding of competitive sets, sophistication of those advertisers and what strategies they use today, then this research will have served our client base well,” said Copeland.

One of the most important insights from the study is the understanding of the number of advertisers with paid search campaigns unique to Yahoo that potentially will now be running on the Microsoft adCenter platform. Within the search marketing campaigns analyzed, on average only 27 percent of the advertisers’ competition for branded and unbranded keywords were running on both Yahoo and Bing. GroupM Search projects that advertisers unique to Yahoo moving to adCenter could lead to a 74-percent increase in competition levels on Bing than exist at present.

This increased competition will be the greatest factor for the amplification in paid search costs, the study revealed. In a pay-per-click auction system, such as paid search, the number of competitors matters greatly in the final price of the item because each competitor vies for its desired position.

“The industry has long known the variances of performance between Yahoo and Bing. What we found and what we believe has the biggest material impact for advertisers are the vastly different competitive sets between the two,” said Copeland. “When you put such a large set of new advertisers of varying sophistication into the mix, you are going to see a less stable CPC marketplace.”

On the heels of the Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance transition, however, comes the peak of the holiday season when paid search sees its greatest surge in advertisers and CPCs. With this unique timing, the marketplace could experience bidding variables it hasn’t seen before and it could be early 2011 before everything settles and the “new CPC” is realized.

Copeland added, “It is essential for all parties to get this right and we support the decision to go forward ahead of the 2010 holiday season. However, this predicted fluctuation, combined with holiday bidding strategies, means it could be three to four months before the new normal is set.”

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.

With this new search alliance it has been interesting to witness the openness to ideas from both sides in how best to sell and then to package solutions out of two similar, yet distinct, systems. The biggest win for clients is the news that Rich Ads in Search (RAIS), a Yahoo creation, will be available as part of the Search Alliance. Originally neither party was comfortable committing to any inclusion for the program. As it stands today, RAIS will be on Yahoo and efforts are being made to attempt to bring the offering to Bing at some point, if not in the initial phase of the alliance transition. The pricing model for the product itself isn’t perfect, but innovation is a rare commodity in search ads — and for this product to be available is a big deal.

Additionally, the powers that be have worked hard on smaller, more tactical details to ensure that whether it’s the optimizing or the shaping of a buy, advertisers can get some of the best of either world. Areas of investment include:

1.  The ability to apply 1,000s of negative keywords at the campaign and ad group levels.

2.  Control over search and content distribution by choosing:

a) Only Yahoo/Microsoft owned and operated properties;

b) Only Yahoo/Microsoft partners; or

c) All Yahoo/Microsoft owned and operated properties plus partner sites.

Additionally, advertisers will be able to do domain blocking for both search and content.

3.  A complete shift to the Bing match types using the standard exact, phrase and broad matching technology.

4.  Yahoo Canonicalization will be going away completely.

There are additional advertiser and agency issues still needing to be addressed, including daily budgeting concerns based on Bing historical behavior, and the inability to buy Bing and Yahoo as two distinct networks. However, at least for now, the signs show us that Bing and Yahoo are not only taking the business of the alliance seriously, they are taking the business of their advertisers seriously as well.

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and published on MediaPost’s Search Insider, Friday, July 23, 2010. Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss.

“The user interface on Google has changed very little since its inception,
and I think it’s their core vulnerability.”
- Irwin Gotlieb, Global CEO, GroupM

Irwin Gotlieb was quoted in an article for India’s The Economic Times discussing the future competition that would challenge Google’s dominance. Gotlieb suggested that the challenge was likely to come from an unknown in a garage somewhere; he doubted the it be on the algorithm front but rather the user-experience side.

The timing of this article had a fabulous intersection for what was one of the most memorable sporting days in U.S.-England history. Simultaneously, the USA and England soccer (futbol, if prefer) teams were playing for their lives in the World Cup. England carried through with a 1-0 win over Slovenia only to see their pesky afterthought competitors from the U.S. score a stoppage time goal from Landon Donovan to win the Group over England.

As remarkable as the U.S. outcome was, it was not even close to the most amazing U.S.-England sports outcome of the day – and an interesting example of how the commentary about Google’s blind spot could eventually be exposed.

Just as the U.S. and England matches were winding down, a buzz started among some of the sports-specific Twitter accounts I follow about a first-round tennis match at Wimbledon between American John Isner and Nicolas Mahut of France.

The match started Tuesday and was called overnight at two sets apiece. It resumed on Wednesday, and when the buzz picked up, it was, at that time, tied in the fifth set at 30-30. The match was bordering on records for duration and games played at Wimbledon and steaming toward Open Era tennis records. By the time it was over, the fifth and final set qualified as the longest match on its own. The original record for longest match in the open era was just over six-and-a-half hours. This one? It went close to 10 hours!

So, where does Google fit into this? The answer today is nowhere. I use Google and Bing frequently every day. Yet even when I was searching for Wimbledon to shortcut to the live results from the Official Site, I would have had no idea this epic tennis match was taking place. The Google score tracker on the result page failed to possess the AI to discern history in the making. Even a portal like Yahoo didn’t register the history.

Then again, country singer Kellie Pickler (who got engaged) was out-trending Landon Donovan who won the game for the U.S. soccer team, so make of that what you will.

My point, as it relates to search evolution, is that we have to examine what we know (expressed intent) and how we see that delivered to the benefit of users. A few weeks back, Google launched background images on the home page. Not a new idea; Bing has used it since launching last year. Yet, the public expectation of what Google should look like led to a swift removal — the outcry was strong against the change.

In the past, Google and others have tried to incorporate the searches and feedbacks of others, but the general public seemed uninterested. My passion for sports is an expressed behavior. When I get behaviorally targeted ads, they usually involve sports or Vegas. If Google is truly, as John Battelle once contended, the keeper of the database of intention, then they have to gain public blessing to do something with it. Right now, the public is withholding — and their core business is not equipped to capture on it alone.

If change is to come, then perhaps it has to come from someplace new.

If the contract of agreement between users and Google has long since been written, then re-writing that is a daunting task. Likewise, while Twitter and even Facebook have allowed me to become informed of my friends and topics of interest, they are still woefully ill-equipped to respond with advertising that is tangential to my previously-expressed intentions.

Perhaps it’s Apple which has changed the user interface through their devices, specifically the mobile and now tablet devices. Or maybe, as Gotlieb suggested, it will be someone else, in a garage, that writes the contract with users that compiles intent data, like Google, and marries it with a unique experience, like Apple or Facebook. The trick is to do it in such a way that brings more brands into the discovery phase, so when consumers express previous intent, it can benefit them at any time.

As for the tennis match, for a second straight day, it descended and play was suspended, this time at 59-59 in the fifth set. Much like the user interface of the future, still undecided.

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and published on MediaPost’s Search Insider , Friday, June 25, 2010. Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss

As you read this, I will be standing somewhere on the grounds of my favorite sports destination, Churchill Downs. For me, the two minutes of thoroughbred racing on the first Saturday in May that is the Kentucky Derby is my favorite sports moment. The weekend encompasses three of my favorite things: sports with gambling attached, golf and plaid. It also gives me a great excuse to tie my hours of research into the writing of this column.

Last week I spoke at Search Insider Summit and it seemed like people couldn’t help but fall all over the linkage between search and everything else. “Search is a verb” moderator Gord Hotchkiss cried out; search and social were cited multiple times, real-time search was hailed as game-changing, and Facebook had a speaking role. Even Aaron Goldman’s annual trending topics Buzz-O-Meter was decidedly not search-centric.

Ultimately, I believe this will all be true; but I fear we’ve put cart before horse a bit and want to put into horse-wagering terms why the race is far from run in search, and how hitting a trifecta is a broader marketing decision. In horse racing a trifecta bet is selecting the horses that will finish first, second and third in that exact order. Trifectas pay well, but are not easy to pull off.

In the new-media world that has sprung from search, we suddenly have an active participant in the consumer, expressing intent through the platform and expecting appropriate responses from the advertiser. This is a key difference from the origins of traditional advertising, where the consumer was passive and, therefore, mattered much less on a one-off basis than today.

What I witnessed at SIS and see happening more and more is a focus on two pieces of the ticket. More and more I hear people advocating social and intention marketing because the consumer is engaged and expressing intent. Fully valid rationale — except when it’s tethered only to the location. Time and time again I hear people saying the reason to do social is because your consumers are there and talking about you. Since when did pressing advertisers to market out of fear lead to productive relations and results?

My problem is, we seem to be losing sight of the advertiser’s value in the equation. The focus on the role of Google, Yahoo, Bing or Facebook should not be understated, but as the platform, it’s a constant. Consumers are there, so the logic goes “we need to be there.” But simply showing up is a bit like picking horses based on the color of the jockey’s silks. It’s an option — but you won’t win too often.

Instead, what we continue to push marketers to invest in is the relationship they aspire to create with consumers. Understanding the platform only matters if you can leverage it to your gain. And that gain comes from better site experiences, better brand assets and forming connections that establish your brand and work towards purchase and loyalty. If your owned media assets are not up to the challenge, then you might as well bet on the long shot. It will come in once in a while, but it’s not a long-term strategy. For every Mine that Bird (last year’s 54-1 Derby winner) there are dozens of horses that go off at worse odds and never come close. It seems advertisers are being rushed into being there, whether that’s buying ads on Google or suddenly having to do Promoted Tweets without properly understanding what they bring to the table.

Brands need to recognize everything can be an asset. Yet the reality is, for something to be an asset it has to have value to both the brand and the consumers. And it also must fit into the platform. When you bet on your brand and create assets that align with consumers on their own course, you have a winning trifecta. Now for your Derby Trifecta “guess”: Awesome Act – Ice Box – Sidney’s Candy.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them — Shakespeare, “Twelfth Night”

I’ve spent most of the last month engaged in a knowledge quest to better anticipate the direction major players in search and social media are planning to take in the coming 12 months. The tour kicked off in Redmond, Wash. with Microsoft and concluded last week with a visit by Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz to discuss the current and future state of Yahoo with the GroupM Search leadership. It’s probably no accident that the bookends of this process are two players in the space who are banking on greatness coming from the combined power they bring to the marketplace.

What was clear to me after these discussions is that these companies have a shared plan on the path forward, as well as divergent objectives and strategies for their own properties. What’s not as clear is whether these companies are setting out to achieve greatness or rather hoping that they can bottle the lightning and have it thrust upon them.

The Yahoo/Microsoft deal moves the market needle up for Microsoft from its own level. That helps relevancy from an algorithm point of view, but what about allowing advertisers to improve relevancy directly?

For years I’ve howled at the moon over third-party ad serving in search. If the end goal of relevancy is to give users the best connection to their expressed intent, then allowing advertisers to stop advertising when people don’t click on them time after time, or switching up creative based on inactivity on the brand listing would be an improvement, right? We continue to gravitate toward a single platform that will ultimately allow advertisers to buy search and display. So, if you are Microsoft, why not provide more intelligent and valuable solutions for advertisers in this area?

That being said, there’s one piece of this deal that I continue to hear little about. Today, advertisers buy two distinct marketplaces. At the conclusion of this deal, advertisers will suddenly buy Yahoo and Bing as one: same bid, same creative, single view of keyword-level reporting. Most advertisers know that these marketplaces behave quite differently. A recently released SEMPO study of the search industry detailed that barely 50% of all advertisers surveyed are buying Yahoo, and fewer still buy Bing; therefore, you need to simplify and engage the masses better. Still, when you attempt to increase the supply of advertisers and force the existing ones to blend their bidding, the likely outcome is a cost increase, which threatens to pale the impact experienced today when you buy a single answer via Google.

Compounding this is the present decision of Yahoo not to migrate Bing Cashback into their offering. One of the few areas where Bing has really distinguished itself in year one is in this area. Advertisers who today message and bid based on their variable Cashback offers now must do so knowing that a vastly larger portion of the market share will not be afforded the benefit of the listing; and the price value being made is done without full value being returned from Yahoo. I sense a desire to study and get deeper on this from Yahoo, but a program that comes to market without this is a hole in the results page.

Speaking of which, nothing surprised me more than the statement from Yahoo that the Bing algo and paid content represents only two of 24 elements that go into creating a results page. Yahoo has kept and continues to work around the fringe on innovation to the format and construction of this experience.

What will be interesting is to see where and how Yahoo tries to create value for its audience to stem the tide of market share losses seen in the last few months. Spend any time with Yahoo at a high level and you’ll find a strong commitment to a unique experience around search, including beyond just what gets ported over from Bing. This is crucial for market share growth.

More importantly long term than giving up search technology for Yahoo is its decision to get away from toolbar distribution deals. These deals have dramatic sway over search share and Microsoft is more than willing to buy ahead of organic growth. For Yahoo to keep its base it has to evolve, and there are signs, mostly verbal at this stage, of doing that.

On both sides of the fence, Yahoo and Microsoft have much to gain, and lose, in the coming months. Advertisers have warranted concerns about technology and transitions and the players have to keep pace with Google while trying to be integrated.

But those are table stakes for this game. People like to suggest that search is in its early innings; and while that may be true, this is no excuse not to compete from the outset. If the goal is to be in the game and to be viable as another choice, then the industry is about to settle for good. This is no time or place for the faint of heart — and fortunately for Yahoo, that’s not a phrase you’d ever associate with Bartz. Harry Gray, former chairman of Mott Corp, once said, “No one ever achieved greatness by playing it safe.” Now is your time, Yahoo and Microsoft. Be bold, be great.

Paid search advertising has always provided us with the ability to target users who are showing intent for a certain product, service or general information. Providing users with the ability to look up information while performing other tasks, such as shopping, adds a new dimension to the consumer mindset. For example, a search for “Wal-Mart” on a desktop computer could mean that the consumer is looking for any random item, such as The Da Vinci Code.  Typing the same keyword in an eReader could mean that a user may be looking for a hard copy of the book, while a consumer sitting in traffic could simply be looking for the nearest store location that carries this New York Times best seller.

To take it another step further, consumers searching for movie titles on mobile phones in the morning or early afternoon would most likely be looking for information about the movie and previews.  That very same search query in the evening could be geared towards finding movie reviews, showtimes and locations of where the movie is playing.
 
So what does this mean for brands looking to expand their digital reach? More media channels, touch points, and much more granular targeting, including time of day, will likely yield higher conversion rates and ROI.
 
These new targeting opportunities are very similar to the way mobile advertising was back in 2006-2008 when competition in the space was low, and many were hesitant to explore opportunities with this emerging media. But look at it now.  It is 2010, and advertisers include mobile advertising as a viable portion of their digital campaigns.

When you start to wonder what’s going to happen with the next generation of advertising, understanding intent and monetizing the where and when of search activity seems like the golden ticket.

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.

I will try to illustrate with flowing, painted words the reason Search Marketing should move beyond that bygone era with a hypothetical story from a fictional client’s point of view:

I just took out a huge loan against my house to start my own business. I’m going to sell widgets. BUT, I don’t sell run-of-the-mill widgets, I sell luxury widgets! Widgets polished to such a shine that they feel creamy in your hands.  I’m literally betting my house that when consumers find out about my widgets, they’ll never go back to the other widgets again. I decide that I’m going to use search marketing to reach my consumers and hire a search engine marketing company to handle the initiative. I need to go big and hire experts on this because my house (and most probably my marriage) hangs in the balance.

So imagine now, that the Search Engine is the street that my business is on. Our store is established in the Widget selling district (and for those of you who aren’t familiar, the widget district is right next to the garment district in NYC) and the search engine marketing company is a whole army of people on the street with sandwich boards directing people to my store.

All the people on my street are seeing my sandwich boards (impressions) and you know what? My sandwich boards are nice and a ton of people are coming in to my store (clicks) and my sandwich board people tell me that 25% of people on the street are coming into my store (CTR).

That’s where the bygone era stops – and with 25% CTR, they pat their backs and walk away.

As the store owner, I’m thrilled that 25% of the people walking down my street in the widget district are coming into my store, but the problem is, I can’t tell who just walked in off the street because they knew of my store compared to who saw a sandwich board and walked in. I also can’t tell what the people are doing in my store. Are they stepping in and just leaving because they don’t like my store (bounce), are they walking down all my widget aisles and seeing all my widgets in a decadent array of designer colors, and if they are, which aisle do they like the most(click path)? And ultimately, are they touching my widgets? Buying my luxurious widgets? Signing up for my Weekly Widget Newsletter? Watching my sales people demonstrate the buttery smooth Widget (all conversion types).  I’d also like to know how much I had to spend to get one person to buy my widget so I know if I should keep the sandwich board people or not (cost per conversion).  These are just some of the basic things I, as a business selling a product, would be interested in knowing if I had an actual store. So as you can see, stopping at impressions, clicks and CTR doesn’t really help me connect the dots as to whether my marketing efforts are helping or hindering.

So let’s map that back to my stupendous Thanksgiving search promotion and what does that mean for the client?  Well, that’s proprietary company information…HA!

Happy Holidays, everyone!

“[Social media] is giving us another way to help influence people’s propensity to search.”

Barbara Basney, Director, Global Advertising, Xerox
Wall Street Journal, 10/22/09

The Wall Street Journal reported today in an article, “Shift in Search-Ad Tactics Seeks More For Less,” a shift in thinking and strategy around search marketing for advertisers as they seek to capture a broader audience online with greater efficiency. The shift, which includes more relevant targeting and the integration of search and social media, is evident in the marketing strategy of three leading advertisers highlighted in the article.

For example, the WSJ reports telecom giant Sprint Nextel is prioritizing keywords based on where the consumer is in the purchase funnel, including tying to “phrases consumers tend to search for when they are close to making a purchase.”

Volkswagen, whose advertising in the few decades of my life has always seemed to capture the essence of the changing generations, is “driving” efficiency by coordinating the brand’s search marketing program with hundreds of dealers at a local level. They’re also using search and social to support the launch of their 2010 GTI hatchback, bringing mobile, Twitter and YouTube together with an innovative racing game for the iPhone and iTouch.

And lastly, Xerox, whose approach to social search is giving their brands new life online with social media campaigns, including a spoof video that generated more than a million hits. Combined with their visibility on other social forums, the buzz from that campaign “translated into a 65 percent surge in searches related to the brand and the subject of the campaign.”

The writer suggests the shift is likely to be more dramatic on the heels of the findings of recent research from GroupM Search, comScore and social media agency M80 revealing the interplay between search marketing and social media. (Whitepaper: “The Influenced: Social Media, Search, and the Interplay of Consumption and Consideration”)

Search marketing continues to prove its undisputed value, but as GroupM Search CEO Chris Copeland (Twitter: @SearchBoss) states in the article, “We can buy all the keywords we want, but for every advertiser that does that, there are at least five others that do the same thing.”

This broader view of the integration of the channels is just one strategy in giving brands a place to live online with relevant visibility. Yet, I sense it’s a strategy of the future that will become critical for advertisers in terms connecting with consumers and maintaining an efficient marketing ROI. With social search, brands become a natural part of the online conversation in forums where consumers are spending time, and can capture the activity that results from that exposure with strategic search execution that delivers greater efficiency.

To access the Wall Street Journal story directly, click here. (Story preview available only; full story available with subscription.)

You can access the full story for free with the help of Google News. Go to Google News and keyword search all or part of the headline (I suggest: “shift in search”). Click on the story from there which will bring you to the full version.

The Influenced: Social Media, Search and the Interplay of Consideration and Consumption

A study announced today by GroupM Search, comScore and M80, exploring the interplay of search marketing and social media, reveals the dramatic correlation influenced discovery of brands through social media has with search behavior, including more lower-funnel searches and increased paid search click-through-rates (CTR).

The study,“The Influenced: Social Media, Search and the Interplay of Consideration and Consumption,” explored the correlation between social media exposure and search behavior across different verticals, including automotive, consumer packaged goods and telecommunications.

Key findings include:
- Consumers exposed to a brand’s influenced social media and paid search are 2.8x more likely to search for that brand’s products

- There was a 50% CTR increase in paid search when consumers were exposed to both influenced social media and paid search

- There was a 42-point lift in searcher penetration around brand product terms when consumers were exposed to both influenced social media and paid search compared to paid alone

What the study tells us is bigger than correlation, making the topic at large, Discovery. We’ve learned how internet users discover and engage with brands in social media and how that discovery influences search behavior. The findings help us to better understand how the intent expressed by consumers via search is established through social media exposure and the interplay between the two channels.

Of note, it further validates our view that generating upper-funnel awareness and influencing consideration through influenced social media (social media leveraged by a brand advertiser) can produce better down-the-funnel performance with paid media, such as paid search. In our white paper, we expand on the findings and address the value of the synergy between paid, owned and earned media. Additionally, we address the state of media today, challenges advertisers face, and introduce the discussion of Media Delivery and Media Discovery and the new thinking we must consider in making maximizing engagement that drives lower-funnel activity.

As CEO of GroupM Search-The Americas Chris Copeland addresses in the whitepaper,:

“As advertisers come to recognize a need to create greater connections on a one to one level with consumers, they also must acknowledge a shift in their approach to advertising. If they agree with the assessment that media delivery in traditional forms has a limited impact given the threats identified above, then it is equally important to understand the new advertising mandate of media discovery.

Media discovery represents a shift in approach where allowing your brand to be central to the conversation but doing so in a manner that uses your brand, its products and the assets associated with both at the center. Media delivery has been about using buying clout to drive scale and push out paid media to broad swaths of consumers. Media discovery is about using the owned and earned media that a brand can produce to its advantage.”

He later concludes the implications for digital advertising at large:

“At this stage of digital advertising development, the goal has to be investing more intelligently to get people into your brand consideration and drive them through the process to a location well suited for paid media effectiveness, such as paid search.”

On Tuesday, October 6, GroupM Search, comScore and M80 will sharing the findings and implications of the research for the first time publicly. Check it out at SMX East at 1:30 – 2:45 p.m. in Room 1A03.