70 Characters or Less

By Nathan Gawel, Paid Search Associate Director, Advertising Solutions

Try describing yourself in 70 characters or less. Can you possibly explain why George Clooney is the hottest man on the planet in 70 characters or less? People Magazine needs a whole article to do so. Well, these are all examples of what Search Marketing copywriters go through on a daily basis. Trying to fit a world of information into 70 characters or less for a text ad is not the easiest thing to do.

Luckily, the engines allow us to make statements within these characters as long as the landing page we drive to supports these statements. This practice is also known as the “one-click” rule. For example, a copywriter can call out there is a ‘70% Off Sale’ as long as the landing page supports this statement. The same used to be true for pharmaceutical claims. If you were a maker of a drug that treated depression, you could state that in your text ad, as long as the website supported that statement. This was the case until recently for 14 major pharmaceutical companies. The FDA issued them a letter informing them that they were using “misleading” and “misbranded” information.

While the FDA came across this issue "through [their] routine monitoring of promotion done on the internet,” they don’t have any official guidelines for digital media- at least, not yet. What does this mean for the future of digital media? While Barack Obama is an advocate of net neutrality and the First Amendment online, no serious discussions have taken place about other forms of regulations stepping into the digital arena. The FDA should have done a little more work and devised a plan to approach the digital space. Perhaps working with the IAB and the pharmaceutical companies to create an official policy, instead of sending a letter, would have been a good idea. How do they plan on regulating YouTube videos that are posted and/or ads that are posted on these videos? What about advertising in social blogs, Facebook, MySpace, etc? Can they regulate the millions of sites that offer advertising?

Is this the first step to future regulations of blogs? While WebMD has partnered with the FDA (good move), what will happen to Jane Doe who talks about what drugs helped her beat cancer but does not put the appropriate “lawyer-happy” terminology on her site? Will she become a “misleading” and “misbranded” site that can be shut down by the FDA? The statement above seems far-fetched-- , but so does the necessity to say “Do Not Eat” on the labels in my Beef Jerky. Apparently, someone feels it’s warranted.

Google Unveils Timeline Of Articles

Appeared in MediaPost, April 7, 2009, quoting Aaron Goldman:

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Google quietly began publishing Friday a graph identifying clusters of news stories, sources, and the time each article published in Google News. The "timeline of articles" is accessible through the link that aggregates all articles on a specific topic via any browser such as Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer.

The graph aims to give Google News users a better sense of how stories on specific topics unfold. It also fulfills the search engine's mission to give people access to more news from a variety of perspectives, according to a Google spokeswoman. "It exposes readers to viewpoints they might not have seen," she said. "It also brings publishers readers they might not have had before."

While it's easy for humans to read two news articles and decided whether they are related, it's more difficult for computer algorithms to accomplish the same task at the scale Google News operates. Determining if two articles with the word "Paris" are similar means differentiating between Paris, France; Paris Hilton; and Paris, Texas, she said.

The timeline of articles feature harkens back to the birth of Google News when Principal Google Scientist Krishna Bharat created the search engine in 2001. He couldn't find clusters of information after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. The engine, which indexes about 4,500 news sites worldwide, launched in 2002.

Aaron Goldman, consultant at Resolution Media, called the product feature "cool" because it provides a window into trending news topics. "I don't see any direct application for advertisers, so I wonder if it has something to do with Google's ongoing battle with news publications who get upset over Google profiting from their copyrighted content," he said. "By showing the timeline, it turns Google News into more of a news aggregation destination rather than a straight repository of snippets of other people's content."

Will Consumers Buy Your Brand When the Market Turns Around?

By Viji Davis, VP Client Services

I was just in one of the suburbs of Detroit over the weekend and was completely immersed in the current economic strife. Driving through town, I passed multiple foreclosure signs, empty buildings that housed failed businesses and even free land if you build or relocate a company. It was a place where the economic reality was inescapable, especially in a town that relies heavily on the flailing auto industry. The news in motor city is one that is mixed, of hope and skepticism. As I was thinking more and more about this, I find that it relates a lot to branding principles in general and what marketers should be doing now to capitalize on the marketplace.

With the Dow on the incline, Detroit analysts are optimistic about consumer intent to purchase.
8,017.59 +39.51 +0.50%
Open: 7,980.63 High: 8,019.50 Low: 7,897.24
Previous Close: 7,978.08 Volume: 308,209,779
Eastern Time

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Taking a look at Google trends, over the past 30 days, search volume for ‘car sales’ in the Detroit area is on the incline:

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What does this tell us? Consumer psychology has a lot to do with purchase intent in the marketplace. With the Dow on the rise, consumers are optimistic about the economy and are slowly inching back and entertaining the market. The more optimistic a consumer is, the more likely they will re-invest in the economy, the more likely the economy will start turning around.

However, what they will choose to re-invest in becomes the key to business success. Is your brand top-of-mind with consumers? If not, they will not choose you. Of the big 3 automakers in Detroit, Ford has always had more of the share of queries when compared to the direct competition from GM and Chrysler. This pattern continues over the past thirty days, even with the increase interest in ‘auto sales’:

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You can see that Ford is clearly above GM and Chrysler, even as they hit a peak at the end of March. As you think about this, think about the origin of ‘branding.’ According to Wikipedia, “In English Lexicon, the word brand originally meant anything hot or burning, such as a firebrand, a burning stick” and was used to “show ownership of livestock.” As the term evolved during the years, it has come to take on more of a correlation between product and mindshare. We need to remember that, the essence of branding will singe your product into the consumer psyche.

So, although, consumer perception will drive sales, if your brand does not exist within a consumer’s mindshare, that revenue isn’t coming to you. It is going to your competition.

The Truth about “The Truth About Search Engine Optimization”

By Bryson Meunier, Natural Search Associate Director, Content Solutions

At last month’s Chicago SEO Meetup, one of the attendees asked me if there was a book that he could read that would be a good primer to SEO that would allow him to learn the basics. As I often do with beginners, I recommended that he start with the Google Webmaster Guidelines, as they are something like the bible of white hat SEO, but he wanted something different. He was older, he explained, and he wanted an actual book that he could sit down and read.

Fair enough. The problem was, I didn’t learn search engine optimization from a book. I learned it at conferences, and from spending hours reading articles and debates in forums about the best ways to optimize for search engines and users. I learned it by years of doing and knowing what works and what doesn’t — the way that many professionals hone their craft. I validated my knowledge by being the first Advanced SEO graduate of SEMPO Institute, learning in Resolution Media’s training program, and continuing to challenge myself by attending industry events, following 135 authority blogs on advertising, technology, video, mobile, analytics, emerging media and search; and simply doing SEO full-time on a daily basis. To me, there’s no way that one book could help anyone be an SEO, so it’s difficult to recommend one.

But I don’t think that gentleman was asking for a book to help him be an SEO. He was simply asking to understand what SEO is and why it’s done in simple language that non-technical people can understand. For him and people like him I can now recommend Rebecca Lieb’s The Truth About Search Engine Optimization as a good starting point.

Lieb’s book is one of many SEO primers that one can buy, but it stood out to me because of who the author is, and the attention it has been getting in Search Engine Watch and Search Insider. I read it with the intention, not of learning anything new, but of finding a book that I could recommend to others looking to understand more about SEO, and I’m happy to say after finishing the book that it is exactly that.

The book is written in an easy to read style and could be finished on a longer plane ride. It contains 51 “truths” about search engine optimization ranging from “SEO is not an afterthought” (truth 6) to “Think twice about new technologies” (Truth 15) to, my favorite, “Mobile SEO is more important than ever” (Truth 50). It answers all of the basic questions that a newcomer to SEO might have about what SEO is and what they need to do to get started, including the pros and cons of in-house versus agency SEO versus a hybrid model. Toward the end of the book, Lieb touches on black hat spam tactics, but advises readers to avoid them. Her approach is white hat, her explanations may even be clear enough for my mother to understand (no offense Mom; love you), and her points are generally accurate and on target.

Generally is the key word here, as there are many areas in this book that are debatable (e.g. reciprocal links valuable? Keyword density?) and some that are just factually inaccurate (e.g. GoogleGuide.com is not owned by Google, and the mobile SEO section is largely nonsense that people were talking about three years ago with some post iPhone info thrown in), and many that will be outdated in a year or two. The writing was also the sort that you see on Clickz and Search Engine Watch, and uses a lot of the search colloquialisms (e.g. link love, link juice, etc.) that I think are more appropriate for blogs than books. It’s also not the book to teach you how to do any of the 51 things that it mentions, but the one that makes you aware of what these 51 things are, and why they’re important.

Nonetheless, if you’re in the market for a general primer, this one’s not bad—actually pretty good because it was published so recently. Oddly, it doesn’t mention anything about Twitter or semantic search, which are both already hot topics this year and may change the SEO game again, but it gives you a decent overview in a clear, general style and—though I read it on my iPod Touch-- is available in the pre-Kindle olden times reading material format that many like my Chicago SEO colleague are looking for. If you are of like mind, you will probably find this SEO book valuable in helping you understand the basic truths about search engine optimization.

If you’re new to the game and don’t mind reading online, I’d also recommend adding the following to your reading list:

Google 101

Google Webmaster Guidelines

Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

A Simple SEO Checklist

What Up, Yahoo!?

By David Gould, President

I recently had the unique opportunity to spend time with Jerry Yang (Chief Yahoo!) and Carol Bartz (CEO Yahoo!) in small group settings. The experience has been enlightening and encouraging. In mid-March, Jerry Yang invited about 12 people from a combination of agencies and advertisers in the Chicago area to breakfast. A week later, Carol Bartz hosted the leaders of seven search agencies for an open discussion in Yahoo’s New York office. I took away a number of important themes from these two meetings:

1. Yahoo! is taking a fresh approach to the market place: The very fact that in a one week span, Yahoo created venues to engage agencies and advertisers is indicative of their desire to take a fresh look at the marketplace and Yahoo’s place in it. They are taking the same approach with their consumers.
2. Yahoo! is simplifying its organization structure: Carol is focused on streamlining decision making and assigning clear responsibilities to enhance Yahoo!’s ability to react and be proactive in the dynamic marketplace. In her words, Yahoo grew up very quickly, in an ultra-dynamic marketplace with many young folks at the helm. The result is an organization with many layers, silos and shared responsibilities. Much like an application that continually has patches and updates applied to address bugs and new functionality, it eventually becomes too cumbersome to manage and a fresh new release is required to streamline the operation.
3. Yahoo! recognizes the underlying value of search: Carol made it very clear that she sees the value of search in the underlying data and insight to consumer behavior that search provides. That insight is what provides value to the Yahoo! Network as a whole. Whether the search functionality is provided internally or outsourced in some fashion is irrelevant as long as they own the data and the associated insights. Yahoo!’s goal is not to conquer the search market, but to leverage search to enhance its total service offering. Which leads me to my next observation …
4. Yahoo! is fed up with “Google-Envy”: For the past year, Yahoo! has been caught up in media frenzy of a deal with MSN. Their search market share seems to be the only metric by which the world measures their worth. Carol and Jerry are focused on getting both Yahoo! and the market and their employees to understand and value the plethora of other resources and assets that Yahoo! brings to the table.
5. Yahoo! is committed to improving partner service levels: A common theme throughout both meetings was the desire to work more closely with its agencies and advertisers to bring products and services to market more efficiently and support existing products and services more effectively. That equates to a more robust agency support structure, a revised product roll-out process (specifically committed to by Carol for search) and enhanced partner communication.

Clearly, there is plenty to tackle. The good news is that, “Yahoo!, we’re all rooting for you!”

What's The Point Of Search Marketing?

By Aaron Goldman
Appeared in Media Post's Search Insider

In my last column, I tried to put some context around future search innovation by asking, "What's the point of search?" Cribbing from Wikipedia's definition for matching theory, I landed on solving problems by using math or science to remove friction and create economically favorable outcomes for all. If this, indeed, is the point of search, then what's the point of search marketing?

Same Sh*t Different Day

Ultimately, all parties with a stake in search marketing -- consumers, advertisers, agencies, search engines, publishers, and tech providers -- are looking to create favorable economic outcomes. Consumers want to find good deals or content and will click on listings from brands that offer them. Advertisers want to drive revenue -- online, offline or both -- from paid and natural search efforts. Engines and publishers want to monetize all those queries. And agencies and tech providers want to profit by managing/automating search programs. So the point of search and the point of search marketing are clearly both about creating win-wins from a financial standpoint.

What about using math or science to solve problems and remove friction? Again, both "points" seem to be aligned here. Consumers search because they have a problem to solve and will tolerate search ads or natural listings as long as they're relevant and non-intrusive (read: frictionless). Advertisers, agencies, and tech providers use a blend of math and science -- although I'd argue there's some art in there, too -- to solve their problem of needing to drive revenue and would prefer to do that without friction (read: manual labor). Ditto for search engines and publishers.

One and the Same

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the very reason search marketing is the most powerful platform of them all -- the point (aka intent) of the consumer using the channel is perfectly aligned with that of advertisers and the rest of the marketing ecosystem looking to exploit, er, leverage the channel.

The same cannot be said for other forms of media:

TV: the problem consumers are trying to solve when flipping on the tube is typically boredom. Brands and ads aren't known for their ability to do anything about that, save one or two -- the irony with the latter, of course, is that it's consumer-generated.

Radio: same as TV with perhaps the occasional person in the car looking for traffic, sports, or weather -- not the stuff ads are made of. And the "natural listings" in radio are hardly non-intrusive -- "Today's weather is brought to you by the law firm of Ambulance Chaser, Chaser and Chaser. Have you been injured in a car accident? Call today."

Print: consumers are mainly looking for information and/or entertainment. Granted, some folks (my mom included) turn to print for deals from marketers -- but that's just on Sundays, when they dig through the coupons, a process which is certainly not without friction and involves very little math and science -- all apologies to Lester Wunderman.

Online video/display: again, the problem consumers have here is the need for information and/or entertainment. Banners and pre-rolls do not help fulfill these needs, though -- they only stand in the way of (or around) them.

And that Brings Us Back to Do...

And what of search? The problems consumers are trying to solve when they search range from information to entertainment to commerce to pure navigation -- the last two, of course, being key differentiators from the aforementioned channels. (And, before anyone dings me for not mentioning yellow pages -- yes, those books enable commerce and navigation, but does anyone really think they still have a shelf life?)

Meanwhile the solutions marketers have available to searchers include information, entertainment, commerce and, yep, navigation -- that is, as long as they're buying their brand terms!

So Now What?

If you caught the headline of this column and were hoping for some deep exploration of search marketing's branding and direct response attributes, I'm sorry to disappoint. Looking back on what I've written, the truth is there's really nothing all that revelatory here. You didn't need me to tell you that search is the most powerful marketing channel. Nor did you need me to tell you why -- in fact, I already did tell you nearly three years ago in my article, "Why Does Search Marketing Work So Well?"

That said, I did think a reminder was in order. As everyone goes ga-ga over Twitter and its prospects to be the killer search app, we have to consider if the point of the platform matches the point of the advertising. The problems people are looking to solve when using Twitter range from a need to share one's current status (you could be a Twitterebrity!) to asking for advice from peers to satisfying ADD. Of course, there's currently no advertising on Twitter; methinks that's because no one can figure out what the point of it would be, nor how it would provide a solution for overcoming ADD.

So how long will it be before a new digital platform emerges that truly intersects consumers' needs with advertising solutions? Call me crazy, but I have a hunch it's coming soon.