Haiku 2.0 -- 2009 Edition

By Aaron Goldman
Appeared in MediaPost's Search Insider

FOR MY FIRST COLUMN OF 2009, I thought I'd give Haiku 2.0 another try and share my outlook for the year, 95 characters at a time.

A New Year Is Upon Us,
A Time to Reflect; What Will Become
Of Search With the Economy Wrecked?

We Have Not Yet Seen
The Extent of the Trauma; Don't Pin
All Your Hopes to Mr. Barack Obama.

Once the Holiday Sales
Are All Tallied Up, Methinks We'll
See Many a Corporation Go Belly Up.

No Government Bailout
For Online Retailers; Time to Add
To That List of Dot-Com Failures.

Brands That Survive Will
Have Limited Cash; Discretionary
Budget Will Be a Thing of the Past.

For Marketers, The Answer
Is Quite Clear; Optimize Each Penny
Or You'll Soon Be Out on Your Rear.

Don't Be Afraid to Toot
The Digital Horn; CMO's Finally Get
There's More to the Web Than Porn.

No Doubt the Best Bang
For Your Buck is in Search; Turn to
The Big G -- Not the One at Church.

You Can Hope You Can Pray
But In the End, Search is the One
Place You Can Show Profit on Spend.

And Whether You Go Paid
Or Au Naturale; Search is Your Last
Lifeline -- No Phone-a-Friend Call.

All You Search Marketers
In the Budget Chase; Rely on Data
Not Emotion When Making Your Case.

Post-Click Activity Must
Be Addressed; Mine Web Analytics
And Propose Multivariate Tests.

As for the Google, 2009
Will Be Intense; Finally, Display
Ads on SERPs, Not Just Via AdSense.

Live Search Will Get its
Fancy New Name; But Without Volume
It Won't Be a Player in this Game.

Now Yahoo, Old Pal, If I
May Be So Bold; Your Best Chance
To Make it is to Get Yourself Sold.

And Dear Ask.com, Holding
Strong at #4; Bring Back Old Jeeves
Your Engine's Become a Slight Bore.

A Note to Bid Management
Vendors and Tools; Turn the Focus
To Integration, Not Just Bid Rules.

Technology Can Only Take
Us So Far; Apply Search Insights to
Other Channels and You Will Go Far.

One Last Warning Lest We
Become Big-Headed Giants; Remember,
It's Just SEM, Not Rocket Science.

So As You Set Out To
Conquer '09, Speak Softly and Carry
Big Data Files and You'll Be Fine.

Search Agencies are Dying … Finally

By David Gould, President

I’ll be happy when this week is over. Hopefully we’ll be done with prognosticating on 2009 and we’ll be spared reading any more of the sage seers’ obligatory lists of predictions that come with each New Year. That said, looking to the future is healthy and necessary, but sometimes the clearest view of the future has its roots in the past.

Aaron Goldman’s recent post regarding bid management technologies got me to thinking about where the search agency industry has been and, of course, where it’s going. In its nascent stages, search agencies truly operated in a silo. Advertisers looked to search agencies to execute this “new thing” called search. As the value of search became apparent and search agencies began to grow, they generally took one of two paths.

Some inventoried the plethora of manual tasks required to set up and manage a search campaign and realized that the process could be automated. In fact, they realized that it had to be automated for a search campaign to achieve any real scale. These are the agencies that hung their hat on technology development and developed bid/campaign management tools.

Other agencies saw themselves as marketing services agencies that specialize in search. They focused on how search could be leveraged as a marketing tool either in a silo or more recently as part of a more comprehensive marketing strategy. These agencies didn’t invest heavily in technology, but no doubt used it to provide search solutions to clients.

Ironically, the divergent paths that these agencies took are now converging again. The purveyors of technology solutions are realizing that, in many cases, their highest potential clients are not the advertisers, but other agencies. Agencies without a proprietary search campaign management technology are being pelted with solicitations from companies offering the latest tools with all the bells and whistles.

So if these two breeds of search agencies are beginning to merge, what does that mean for search agencies as a whole? As we rapidly approach the Xanadu that is search technology perfectly merged with search strategy, search is becoming less of a mystery and more widely accepted as an integral part of the holistic marketing mix.

The very thing that search agencies have strived for will be the very thing that drives them to extinction. We’ll see acceleration in the trend of search agencies broadening their scope of services or being absorbed by larger full service agencies … in essence, the death of the pure play search agency.

It’s already happening. Take a look at the Ad Age list of Top 25 U.S. search agencies. Those at the top of the heap are already doing more than just search … stay tuned.

FindResolution.com: A Year in Review

By Betsy Carpenter, Coordinator, Marketing & Strategic Partnerships

Last year, on January 14, 2008 Find Resolution was born. Although it is not quite our blog’s birthday yet, it seems appropriate to kickoff 2009 by reporting on the success of the past year.

Over the past (almost) 12 months, Find Resolution has published 379 postings from a variety of in-house RM search experts. Looking back, you might be thinking, “Wait a minute lady, there are postings here from before 2008!” You would be correct, but none of those were actually posted until after 2008. The postings shown prior to 2008 were all Resolution Media bylines we decided to post on our blog for easier, more efficient archiving purposes.

Anyway, in 2008 our blog received over 26,000 pageviews from over 10,000 unique visitors! Among the many topics covered on our blog, Mobile Search, Paid Search, and the Future of Search were the most visited blog labels (named in rank order). Although it is hard to say what blog postings were most successful, here are our top 10 ranked by number of pageviews and comments.

Remember, Find Resolution was created as a community space. We truly appreciate all feedback and comments – it is the only way we know how to best serve you (our readers) in the future. Thank you to all who have contributed in making our blog successful. Cheers to an even better 2009!

Top 10 Posts by Pageviews:

1. With A/B Testing – You Don’t Think, You Know
2. Google Analytics Ready for Battle
3. 2009 Predictions for Search Marketing
4. A Quick Lesson in Title Tag Optimization
5. Can Google Predict the Election?
6. What’s Different About Mobile SEO (Part 1)
7. Search Marketers Have Lost Their Heads
8. Google SearchWiki: Wikity Wikity Whack?
9. Building Links with Big Brand Websites, Part 2
10. Domain Regulations that will Change the Face of the Web

Top 10 Posts by Number of Comments:

1. Words to Live By: Notable Quotables & Advice
2. SERFs UP!
3. What’s in Your RSS Reader?
4. 2009 Predictions for Search Marketing
5. Got Game? Search Does.
6. 2008, the Year of ??? (Part 1 of 2)
7. Testing, Benchmarking, Strategy and That Other Word…
8. Be the Ruler of Your Domain
9. There’s no S-T-R-A-T-E-G-Y in Testing Technologies
10. Domain Regulations that will Change the Face of the Web