1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page; 
2. Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and, 
3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community. 

The changes show a continued and clear commitment to the Google+ social network as noted by Stephen Hall, Sr. Partner, Director, Global Search for Catalyst online, a GroupM company. “This is a move to help push adoption of G+ on brands.  Growing your community/circles from a brand perspective, as well as increased sharing, should dramatically increase brand usage, given the vast potential increases in traffic from improved rankings.  This gets interesting for many brands as it forces them into the ‘content creator’ category. So for those that are not historically creating content, there is going to need to be a shift in the way that they are marketing their products and services.”

While many expected Google to move in this direction, there was clear unrest in some corners of the worldwide web over this move to a definition of a consumers’ world that is from Google and by Google. Twitter’s general counsel Alex Macgilivray, tweeted, in part, “Bad day for the Internet” and later the company, which once had a relationship with Google, expanded to say “For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the Internet. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone,” Twitter continued. “We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.”

Google’s response put all responsibility for any wider reach from Google back on the rest of the companies dedicated to cultivating the social graph. As reported in AdWeek and Search Engine Land, Google Fellow Amit Singhal said, “Facebook and Twitter and other services, basically, their terms of service don’t allow us to crawl them deeply and store things. Google+ is the only [network] that provides such a persistent service. Singhal added that “if others were willing to change, we’d look at designing things to see how it would work.”

For now, Google will begin rolling out these new features to all users and brands are likely to have little choice but to further engage with Google+ and the continued content creation required to distinguish. Dan Cristo, Director of SEO Innovation for Catalyst, advised, “One major thing I would expect brands to look out for is increased competition in the organic space. Previously, your organic search competitors were primarily websites. This is changing to now include anyone in a searchers social graph. Not only will preferences of ‘friends’ emerge in results as an answer to a question before a brand, those friends will be prompted to respond in real-time in this new world. Brands want to be the ones answering consumers’ questions. In order to earn that right, brands need to attain the same intimacy level friends have in the social graph, and act more like a friend as opposed to a brand.”

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search , and was  published on MediaBizBloggers, Jan. 24, 2012.  Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss.

100 days after kicking off brands who jumped on the Google+ bandwagon at launch, Google has rolled out Google+ Pages, re-opening the door for businesses to move onto their social network platform. At first glance, Google+ may appear to some as just another social network.  However, Google+ represents a different type of social platform and carries greater meaning for a brand’s potential across the entire Google network. It has been placed at the center of all Google initiatives and, as such, the strategy necessary for success is unique – but critical – for brands.

In recent months, GroupM Search CEO Chris Copeland sat down with Google’s product and social execs, including Vic Gundotra, Bradley Horowitz and Christian Oestlien, to discuss the company’s vision for Google+. Drawing from these conversations and identifying the significance and potential for brands long-term via Google+ Pages, Copeland has developed keen perspective on the platform itself, why strategy is critical for brands, and important actions brands and marketers can take today to set course for success on Google+ and across the Google network.

Read more about these insights in the GroupM white paper shared below. If you want to chat more about it with Chris, follow him on Twitter at @SearchBoss.

Google Launches Google+ Pages for Businesses: Insight from GroupM Into Why A Google +Pages Strategy Is Crit…

People can be summed up based on their natural reaction to the following statement: “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.”

Read that statement to 10 people and you’ll likely get seven people who nod and wax poetic about the journeys they have taken. Then you’ll get three hearty souls that call shenanigans and boldly proclaim that you can keep your journeys, they’ll enjoy more destinations and outcomes.

And that’s the problem with search – it is neither a good journey nor a satisfactory destination.

In recently-released research from GroupM Search, we identified that in key verticals the average duration for a consumer from initial engagement with search, social media, or a brand site to purchase is close to two months. Over that time people have roughly 10 engagements with those three types of sites before converting. If search is supposed to be making our lives better, it has an odd way of doing it if it means decisions come over a period of 60 days and need close to a dozen interactions.

And that’s the problem with a search engine. It is not a destination engine and it is not a discovery engine.

The problem with Bing, the decision engine, is that it is a decision engine for the masses. Facebook inclusion and broader data sets to analyze from the Yahoo alliance can be considered differentiations in today’s market place, but they fall short. Right now, the data we have shows Bing is at best a second opinion engine for many who are Google first users. The reason is that Bing, at the end of the day, is not doing anything that different with the experience. If Bing, or anyone else, wanted to be a destination engine they would create a truly one-to-one engine that uses your signal base to serve up an Apple Genius experience inside your search. Just because a user expressed explicit intent doesn’t mean that it is being matched in the results. The problem is advertisers are spreading their investments around to the potential of the masses versus the singularity of the person. What’s failing consumers at present is not the advertiser match of content but the ability to operate on a platform that facilitates a bidding scenario based of the expectation that a single connection is going to happen and nothing more will be needed.

In this environment consumers spend exponentially more time inside Bing or another engine versus off-site with the constant click and return to search again behavior. The trade-offs for brands are greater investment and depth of exposure happening off-site in exchange for being hyper targeted with an ability to minimize the touch points. If Microsoft were to take the name of another project, Looking Glass, and use the concept of going down the rabbit hole on site with a heavy dose of personal attention, we might truly have a destination engine for brands and consumers alike.

The counter to a destination mindset is that of the journey and its exploration and discovery. If Malcolm Gladwell is right and it takes 1,000 repetitions to become proficient in your craft, then we need engines that encourage better behavior to allow for an appreciation of the experience of the journey.

The behavior being taught today is one where users learn to search, click, return, and repeat. There’s no feedback loop coming back into the engine in a natural way as to the worth a user found from the previous query and/or click.

Today we see more snippets of rich data being included that is designed to help inform the first click but means nothing to us upon return. An engine that would allow curation and evolve based on our behaviors is what more people want than the current model, I believe. This is about the buying process. We know search is used to find products, prices, deals, and opinions. Yet, to go from start to finish is about forcing an individual to select what looks best after an engine has ranked the sites and then requires personal memory to retain the key elements.

Dream with me of an engine that provides the ability to notate your findings, register the most appealing elements, and further refines itself upon that data – not the standard set of generic content that it believes the masses want to see. If people want to discover and explore, then facilitating that is only as meaningful as the ability to let that information reside beyond their individual brains and use it for a greater good. A true discovery engine takes the implicit (I want to go on vacation) and turns it, via discovery, into an explicit (Le Meridien Paris). The role engines play in getting from A to B can be powerful and helpful because it has the ability to iterate the process so that searching becomes discovering and implicit becomes explicit.

For advertisers, the worth of a word becomes measured by the worth of the person along the path and the models that evolve. Nothing is simple when it comes to discovery and destination, but the alternative that exists today is something people don’t want.

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and was  published in ClickZ, April 26, 2011.  Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss.

Google has made various forays into the social world with some more successful (in Brazil anyway) than others.  However, it is clear that through their Profiles pages, and their less invasive tactics like the Google Places pages, that gathering social data from its users is high on Google’s list of things to do.

Enter the +1.  Nicely non-invasive and with the ability to help guide search results both from a direct (on the SERP) and indirect (on the website) point of view.  It’s simple, in tradition with Facebook’s “Like” button; and for now, it’s positive — there is no “-1” button…yet. But but the choice of a number makes this nicely scalable for Google, should they choose to make this a sliding scale.  As I mentioned in my previous post, Microsoft is well positioned to do something similar with their Windows Live service, and I really hope they do. Incorporating both the WinLive and Facebook networks for social data seemingly would deliver more targeted and insightful results, as well as protect Bing against any future changes to the Facebook relationship.  (For full disclosure: Microsoft is a client I work on.)

Time will tell how adoption for Google’s +1 system works out.  They’ve made a great move in making it simple for users and it lives in a format users are familiar with. Also, because they’re Google, webmasters will be likely to adopt their on-page system to help their websites rank too.  Google’s +1 will likely end up being a good source of data for Google, and, in time, could help level their field  with Bing’s Facebook partnership.

I am personally excited because I have my sights set on not just being #1 for me, Chris Copeland, in the engines, but am now turning my focus toward the self-gratification that comes with having the most Twitter followers that hang on my every self-serving and validating 140 burst of brilliance from my @SearchBoss handle.

Actually, the paragraphs above have almost not a word of truth in them, but they do make a point – one that seems to have been lost in the gold rush surrounding the latest digital trend. You see, if you asked me to describe my personal philosophy, it would be more “Act like you have been there” than “I’m a Golden God.” But, apparently somewhere in the last few years, that philosophy came to mean that I wasn’t old-school, just old — at least in our industry.

My job is not about building the brand of Me first. If the adage is true that you can’t take it with you, I have to believe that goes beyond the material possessions to the immaterial of the social sphere. I only need a retweet from St. Peter at the pearly gates when the time comes — not from 1,000 of spambots before I leave this world.

I’m not a rocket scientist or doing brain surgery every day, but what we do in advertising does have a purpose and a meaning. If you care about this business, then you approach your job with a hearty desire to impact the masses – not with your self-fulfilling messages, but rather by connecting consumers with brands and being relevant. It’s not Don Draper sexy 99.44% of the time, but it has its moments.

People in the business of search and social have confused promotion of ideas and material performance with promotion of self. They are measuring their impact by follower counts and printed and spoken self-references. Let’s be clear that this problem is not an epidemic, but more prevalent than ever before.

Some people have “the goods,” and earn respect by the way they handle their business and their unflinching willingness to do the right thing to ensure success. And then there are so-called experts who now advise others on how to construct programs to maximize follower counts and enhance rankings through the superficial and timely with a kind of excess that would make a Kardashian weep with jealousy.

Years ago, I used to joke that people would attend a search conference for four days and suddenly become qualified to hang out a shingle and go into business as a consultant. The acceleration of technology has been such, that in the social media space you can seemingly skip the conference, hit a couple of websites, gorge your Twitter account with meaningless followers chasing keyword-laden tweets, and bypass doing any work.

If Chris Copeland ends up #1 on Google or Bing as a result of an article that celebrates Chris Copeland, written by Chris Copeland, then so be it. That’s the way the game is played today, and I can handle that. But, while others are worried about being experts in self, the Zen of Me, the tao of I, I’m worried about next. And next isn’t about me; it’s about a platform in a garage or dorm room — and it’s certainly not being developed by someone tweeting how friggin’ cool it’s going to be when finished.

Look at the great digital successes of the past decade, and you see companies that have reached the top by doing the work first — not by talking about it. Someday Chris Copeland will walk away from advertising – and, like a majority of the folks in this industry, there will be no highlight reel on the work I did for me. The people, the work, the recognition from others will speak for me far better than anything I can say about me, Chris Copeland.

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and published in MediaPost’s Search Insider, Wednesday, March 9, 2011. Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss

What struck me during the discussion was just how important the integration of search has become and the increasing smart ways that brands are using the consumer intention expressed in search to not only shape their media buying but the way in which their business will come to market in the near and long term

With that, here are a few quotes from the panelists that I thought help give perspective on search, its place in the broader context of brand marketing and where things are headed.

How important is search in your organization, and what has the evolution of the usages of search been like for your company?

“The biggest shift for us in terms of the evolution of search is that if there’s a big shift in business results, either up or down, senior leaders first ask – what’s happened in search? What did we do that was good or what did we do that was bad?  It is truly a line item on my media plan every day.”

– Matt Van Dalsem, Vice President, Blackrock

Search is clearly favored as a great direct response vehicle — but what are the non-DR applications you have found to be successful?

“The way we look at brand and other category keywords is how to flight them out. We’re in a competitive category and we’ve had situations where the competition shows up for our brand. So you have to use search broader, for example, for visibility, to communicate your program’s value to your consumer, or to protect your own media.”

– Jeff Holecko, North American Media Manager, Kimberly-Clark

How are you thinking about the growing importance of developing content for relevant connections, either through SEO or other means?

“We’ve spent the last four years centralizing our media buying and planning activity. In essence we’ve turned the aircraft carrier and are making sure our teams are developing content that can readily be available to those interested in our enterprise offering. We’ve gone through the “cast the widest net” approach to get us to the right approach. We’re learning what’s happening at different stages and what’s meaningful at that point. So, our next step is creating dynamic and compelling landing page experiences. This focus on the content perspective and site informational perspective is where we want to go as a search team.”

– Dan Fleetwood, Director, Global Search Marketing, SAP

And finally, what is one trend that you see search playing a role in for your business in 2011?

“I would like to see how search plays into mobile, make sure e-content is on demand wherever consumers want it, and to make our content accessible to everyone.”

– Matt Van Dalsem

“For us, how we connect with moms is important. The intersection of search and social is very important for moms, and it’s very important for us. It is where we’re putting our toe in and is where we are watching.”

– Jeff Holecko

“For us it is seeing how mobile develops. Whether it’s demand generation or mobile discovery, how people are using mobile devices is what I’m interested in. Also, we’ve spent the last few years building our search team and building integrated teams. In the next year we’ll focus on bringing those together and having a synergy across display, social, search and SEO integration.”

– Dan Fleetwood

It’s always fascinating to end the year with a look back and predictions about what is to come. My key takeaway with brands is that they need help making the data complexities simple while not minimizing the opportunities that this data provides.

These brands are living this now. So whenever we start with predictions, we have to listen to what the marketers in the space are saying, because their dollars will shape many of these predictions’ viability.

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and published in MediaPost’s Search Insider, Friday, December 10, 2010. Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss

This weekend, the Colts and Saints will battle to determine the king of the football hill during Super Bowl XLIV. A month into 2010, there are battle lines across the search landscape that also bear watching. These battles will shape the devices, platforms and consumer experience for this year and many to come. Here’s your quick primer of the battles, the stakes and what to watch for to determine who has the upper hand.

DOJ vs. Insert Big Digital Player Name Here

Right now the Department of Justice is reviewing, among other things, both the Yahoo and Bing search partnership and the Google acquisition of AdMob in the mobile space. As the Internet continues to fragment at its edges, the core players continue to grow stronger and stronger. Everyone knows the dominance Google has in search; now the company wants it in display and may have bought it in mobile. At this point the DOJ has an enormous challenge to determine if either of these deals end broader competition in the marketplace. 

Yahoo/Bing vs. Market Share

If you assume for a second that the Yahoo + Bing marriage is going to happen, then the question is, what does it mean for advertisers and the marketplace. That answer ultimately boils down to market share gains. Right now, Yahoo is doing its best to sell any valuable assets (with HotJobs joining the list of sold assets) and retain destination status. The news on the search share front has been mixed with regards to this partnership. Yahoo’s losses have translated into Bing’s gains. Clearly, the new Bing is better than the last iteration of Microsoft Live Search, but what does Act 2 look like? We are approaching the year mark for Bing, and we’ve yet to see anything major on the ad side with formats or features. Bing’s minimal variants from Google aren’t taking traffic from the dominant #1 player in the space.

Google vs. Apple

Most expect that even with the Yahoo-Microsoft mash-up, attention will be focused on integration, and that innovation will suffer. Well, prevailing wisdom had been that Google could innovate its heart out and expand the desktop search lead. Then along came the Nexus One and a firestorm of trash talk between the powers that be at Apple and Google about what their devices are and the others are not. Suddenly, one can’t help but wonder if Google’s about to go start a Holy War for the “Cool Kids” crown with Apple, while leaving the store unmanned. Google’s trick in search advertising has been a good one, but it has yet to capture the imagination around social, mobile or even technology the way other digital pioneers have. I have to think this is a mountain the company longs to conquer, but at what cost?

Social/Real-Time Search vs. The Hype

You can’t read a blog or newsletter on the search or social space without your head exploding from all the pontification about the potential of social search. There’s no doubt that the Google mission for organizing the world’s information gets infinitely harder when you bring immediacy into the equation and the information is Web-based, in micro-formats like status updates from Facebook and tweets.

That being said, the hype about how this will change the world of intent and search as we know it seems out of proportion to the real value it has today. This is an area where I think the hype is at Year of Mobile circa 2007/2008 levels. Someday, people will tell you they were on this bandwagon when it left the station, but will fail to mention they had to sit on that hard wood for a good two years waiting for meaning movement.

And finally, the Super Bowl. Colts and Saints. The best of 2009; two teams that started 13-0 now playing for the Lombardi trophy. The outcome? Too much Peyton, and end score of 38-20 favoring the Colts. If only these other battles were as easy to predict.

How many relatives, co-workers, friends?
How many presents to buy, wrap and send?
Overwhelmed by my tally I began my plight
“How on earth does Santa do it?” I wondered this night.

The store shelves near bare, the pickings were slim
Had I waited too long? Was the outlook now grim?
Back to my home, I flew with resolve
                          Booted up my computer to search, find, and solve.

On Google! On Yahoo! MSN, Bing and Ask!
Find “Last Minute Christmas Deals”, now this is your task!
To the top of the page, to the top of the list
What deals would I find too good to resist?

Digital camera for dad, video games for bro
Coffee maker for mom, a new phone for the beau.
Holiday gift baskets, sent pre-arranged
Desk toys for the Secret Santa Exchange.

No waiting in lines. No fighting the crowds.
“My shopping is done!” I shouted out loud
No wrapping, no packing, no decorating the loot!
Great deals were found, free shipping to boot!

Warm and snug by the fire, sipping my wine
Reflecting on my good fortune, finding gifts so divine
My to do list is done, I’ve nothing left to do
but tweet my good wishes, and share a Facebook photo or two.

For all those like me, who have not yet started
Fulfilling  Christmas wish-lists for their hopeful hearted
Avoid the rush and madness of the Christmas kind
I wish you happy searching and to all a good find!

How many relatives, co-workers, friends?
How many presents to buy, wrap and send?
Overwhelmed by my tally I began my plight
“How on earth does Santa do it?” I wondered this night.

The store shelves near bare, the pickings were slim
Had I waited too long? Was the outlook now grim?
Back to my home, I flew with resolve
                          Booted up my computer to search, find, and solve.

On Google! On Yahoo! MSN, Bing and Ask!
Find “Last Minute Christmas Deals”, now this is your task!
To the top of the page, to the top of the list
What deals would I find too good to resist?

Digital camera for dad, video games for bro
Coffee maker for mom, a new phone for the beau.
Holiday gift baskets, sent pre-arranged
Desk toys for the Secret Santa Exchange.

No waiting in lines. No fighting the crowds.
“My shopping is done!” I shouted out loud
No wrapping, no packing, no decorating the loot!
Great deals were found, free shipping to boot!

Warm and snug by the fire, sipping my wine
Reflecting on my good fortune, finding gifts so divine
My to do list is done, I’ve nothing left to do
but tweet my good wishes, and share a Facebook photo or two.

For all those like me, who have not yet started
Fulfilling  Christmas wish-lists for their hopeful hearted
Avoid the rush and madness of the Christmas kind
I wish you happy searching and to all a good find!

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.