Connected Advertising Blog

There was a time, 15 – 20 years ago or more, when media plans consisted of distinct media, each with a life of its own. The only connection they had was their relative impact on TRPs, reach and frequency. If there was one media that appeared to be too expensive, you simple asked where you could make up the TRPs. Perhaps this is a bit of a simplification, but not much. The challenge in today’s environment is that, too often, digital media is viewed through a very similar lens.

When planning digital media, there is a disconnect between the channels. Search budgets are allocated irrespective of display, email is treated independent of social (if there is a social component) and offline activities are seldom weighed when planning online efforts. What the traditional planning process misses is the inherent integration of all these aspects, whether it is intended and managed, or not. It goes beyond leveraging synergies. By ‘disconnecting’ these channels, you run the real risk of undermining their inherent value.

Not too long ago, there was an argument that leveraging the synergies of the digital channels was the sole purview of the national advertiser. With the advances in our understanding of consumers, and the capabilities of technology, this is no longer the case. Consumers are fine-tuning their own experiences on the web and mobile to target localized content. Between geo targeted ad delivery on the internet, re-marketing technology, and GPS enabled mobile devises, local businesses have as much at stake, and opportunity, with integration as do the national advertisers; perhaps more. With each channel, such as display, social or mobile, we can see the connections between channels.

The fact is, people don’t often click on display ads. But, it would be a mistake to assume that this means display is not effective. People who are exposed to display ads, will search for the company or product in the search engines, or type the company website into their browser. In fact, according to a ComScore study there is a 45.7% lift in site visits as a result of exposure to display ads over a 4 week period. If you are not managing your search campaign in synergy with display, you’ll not only miss opportunities, but you’ll also make false attributions.  Your search campaign needs to highlight keywords, ad copy and landing pages that are directly related to the display ads. One of the most dangerous pitfalls in online advertising is creating experiences that diverge from consumer expectations. If your display ads set up expectations that are not experienced through your search, you’ll lose the customer. Unfortunately, when not integrating the two, you’re likely to assume the search campaign stumbled; not seeing the connection to the display program that initiated the search in the first place. By planning from an integrated approach, you’ll leverage the synergies and minimize the mistakes.

Social networks are growing and many consumers see this as the primary mode of communicating online. According to Nielsen, the average user of social media has increased their time in the space by 143%. In total, Americans are spending 210% more time on social networks than a year ago. Email, offline, and even online display advertising can all leverage the power of social media by providing customers with an easy way to become a fan or a follower. Of course, you’ll need to give people a reason. For small businesses, using the social networks can drive customers to the store, running time sensitive offers; Inventory can be move with very targeted messaging; create unique content messaging to niche areas of your customer base. One click from an email, or a display ad, or visit driven by in-store POS can be the start of long relationship with customers. But, it can only happen if you seen the connections between the different media.

Every year it seems like we have more reasons to believe we live in a world of change. Over 2009 and moving quickly into 2010, mobile has exerted itself as a true medium for non-phone two way digital communication. Google is aggressively pushing forward with integrating online and mobile experiences so users can research at their desktop and have the same information available on their mobile. While display advertising is still nascent, location based searches are growing strong. So, you have to managed your location information online. If you don’t, users can easily receive old or even entirely wrong information about your business. Understanding how your address and phone number are managed online is key to developing successful mobile experiences – the two are very connected. Search marketing has also evolved to present click-to-call phone numbers as well as URL. Facebook and twitter have mobile services that let people take the social network with them wherever they are. On the mobile platform, we are seeing the convergence of location information, search, social and display advertising. If you don’t manage the integration of your digital advertising, consumers could very easily have 3, 4 or even more very different experiences with your business, all on the same 3 inch screen.

Integration, and targeted advertising, are available to businesses of every size. I’ve only highlighted a few examples of the inter-connectedness of digital advertising. All are within the control of small and medium size businesses. Whether you take the reins directly, or have an agency handle the heavy lifting for you, make 2010 the year you decide to integrate your digital marketing efforts.

When I was in a large agency years back, we were told by researchers that consumers were healthier, conscientious about their weight, and eating better. Yet, when you looked at IRI scanner data from the supper markets, chips, cookies and candies did not take a hit. In fact, they were out pacing other food categories.

An article in Vovici reminds us that we have to be vigilant in our attention to what the consumer does as well as what they say they do. The example is the mp3 player. Engineers think gigabytes of storage, consumers think number of songs. Who’s right?

Well, both. When we look at search queries, consumers don’t search for “500 song mp3 players,”  they search for “4GB mp3 players”. But, when you look at the qualitative research, according the the article, consumers are thinking of song capacity.

Though traditional search tactics tell us to match ad text closely to query strings, we need to be more sophisticated. A user may query in GBs, but read ad copy in “song counts” for mp3 players. Perhaps they have been trained to think one way and speak another. Or perhaps, we are really missing an opportunity.

Either way, understanding the qualitative data of consumer thinking, and the quantitative data of consumer behavior, can lead to unique and better converting combinations of keywords and ad copy.

Market Share report from Net Appliance is being quoted as showing google getting eighty percent of the search share.

However, before anyone starts quoting these things, they should be aware of the methodology.

The first skew is that the measurement is not of search, but of visitors to specific sites that happen to deploy NetApps tools. Knowing nothing substantive about these site, we cannot assume the visitors are truly representative of the search engine users.

Additionally, how the sites market themselves also makes a difference. With 76% actively marketing in PPC, the strategies they employ have a great influence on the profile of the searchers.

Additional estimates about the website population:

76% participate in pay per click programs to drive traffic to their sites.

43% are commerce sites

18% are corporate sites

10% are content sites

29% classify themselves as other (includes gov, org, search engine marketers etc..)

Nothing NetApps is doing is wrong. My concern is with media outlets that cover them without, at the very least, articulating the methodology of the data gathering.

InformationWeek quoted the results. Then, PCWorld sited InformationWeek. InformationWeek also quoted another share measurement report that was based on a similar type of set up. However, this company kept talking about “hits.” Not sure, but in our area, hits as we define them (every element on a rendered page is a ‘hit’) has no real meaning. Perhaps it does, but without clarification, we cannot assume so.

Finally, Danny Sullivan pointed out several years ago at SEW (sorry, I couldn’t find the link), search share shifts are not terribly important until they demonstrate a clear trend that also crosses a threshold. So, seeing Google move from the 40-50% share range to the 50-60% range share and then 60%+ share, this is meaningful.  A -0.2% move in share (Bing) is not only insignificant, it is not worthy of space in any column…Unless the headline reads, “FLASH… nothing’s changed”.

“…just because we beat the competition yesterday doesn’t mean that the competition isn’t going to come back and crush us tomorrow.”

Steve Baldwin MediaPost 4/6/2009

As we look at the brand, particularly online, we have to acknowledge that there are places where we are building brands, and places where we are mostly leveraging them. What makes this difficult is that there is no clear and absolute delineation. In the ‘old’ world, television was seen as the place to build brands. Newspapers or yellow pages leveraged them (with some building going on)… directing people to where to find ‘it’ and make the purchase (over simplification, but you get the idea). Today, even television is not completely dedicated to brand building, but has elements of leveraging. How do we know which we should be doing?

Building a brand is all the stuff we do before the consumer is ready to buy. Leveraging the brand is what we do when the consumer is ready to make the purchase; it is when we pull together the ‘feeling’ and equity we have created, then relate this to the consumer and their immediate need. We leverage the Brand as we sell the product or service. Which one we are doing at any point in time is less about us, and all about the consumer; at least it should be.

What brings me to this point is the perspective that the “brand” keywords are upper funnel and need to be controlled by the parent company, presenting the brand’s message. On the surface, this rationale may appear solid. However, this is the web. Old perceptions of how the brand is used by the consumer no longer apply. When someone types in “Honda”, they are as likely looking for a place to buy a Honda CR-V as they are trying to figure out what the “Honda” brand stands for and what types of cars Honda has. Brand messaging control in search is about the company. Understanding the intent of the search is about the consumer.

While this conversation regularly comes up in search, the same discussion needs to happen around display. Geo-targeting, behavioral targeting and other user profiling capabilities allow us to learn about consumer intent. As they visit sites, they may indicate that it is no longer time to tell them about Honda’s great quality, but instead focus on the great gas mileage of the Civic, or even the service and quality of a specific dealer. We have to be more open to the intent in order to provide the consumer with the right information.

In reality, everything we do either builds or diminishes the brand. We know that the web changes the way we interact with the consumers, but brands need to understand that it also means we have to be prepared for a much wider range of messaging than just the brand’s highlights. It is very likely that, when someone uses a branded keyword term, the best service a brand can provide is to step back and let a local dealer lead the conversation. If this is the case, but the brand insists on leading with a very upper funnel message, instead of leveraging what they have built, they end up diminishing it and frustrating the consumer.

I know this is old news. I’ve said it, many others have said it also. Search and display advertising work together. Search is more than just directional. It is also brand… myopically the purview of display. But it is more than just having a search campaign, and a display campaign. It is important to keep these two coordinated to ensure optimum results.

Recently, two studies were released that lends credence to the interaction of search with the brand(Enqurio), and search and display (Yahoo! / ComScore) in a synergistic lift in results. First, the Yahoo!/ ComScore study on display and search together.

What I find interesting in this study is the disparity between online metrics (lift in pages views) and off-line metrics, lift in sales ($ per purchase or incremental sales).

Display and search collectively did not demonstrate synergistic impact on page views. A 46% lift from search and 37% lift in display, collectively a 68% lift. There is a redundancy in the lift. In other words, some of the page views you received would have come with either search or display alone. Unfortunately, most online marketing analysis stops at this level.

Now take a look at incremental in-store sales; whether measure in $ / purchase, or total dollars spent, there is a synergistic lift. In other words, a lift beyond simply the lift percentage of the two ad types summed. In-store total dollars lift was 43% for search and 15% percent for display when run independently. If these two were simply complementary, we would expect a total dollars spent lift of 58% when run together, (adding the two together). If they were only partially complimentary (some redundancy, as in page views), then we would expect something less than 58%.

But, that is not what happens. In the case of search + display, 43% + 15% = a 90% lift in incremental in-store dollars. This is a classic case of the value of the whole being greater than the sum of it’s parts. The other off-line metrics show similar, though not as strong, synergy between the two.

So, there are two conclusions here:
1)    Where ever possible, measure every effort / campaign all the way to the sale. Stopping short (like page views) does not tell the real story. In this case it short-changed the program, in others, it may exaggerate it’s impact. Get to the sale.
2)    As I have said, search and display work together. SEMs need to learn, understand and partner with display advertising / marketers to optimize the programs.

To provide some sense of why these two things may work together, I turned to the second study. It was done by Enqurio this past July. Simply put, brands appearing in organic and paid listings earned a considerable lift in Brand awareness. The results for branded and non branded terms directionally were the same. I’ll just briefly hit on the non-branded.

“Fuel Efficient Cars” top organic and top paid listing combined helped Honda achieve a 16% lift in un-aided brand awareness (Roughly 50% up to 66%). One would think that Honda should be at the top of everyone’s list in this category, yet they had exceptional improvement with organic and paid top spots in search. Now, before you go and get discouraged thinking you have to get top in both, either one (paid or organic) on it’s own demonstrated very good lift, with paid doing marginally better.

I always say bring it to the sale, or as close as you can. Brand recognition is great, but almost meaningless if it does not encourage purchase. The study showed an 8% lift in intent to purchase with top spot in both organic and paid. This study had to stop at intent, but it is closer, and demonstrates the benefit of search on the brand and sales.

Both studies show that search marketers need to expand. Drop the blinders, embrace search not only for its direct marketing prowess, but also it’s brand building ability. Recognize, learn and leverage the synergy between search and display. Our world has changed, you need to stay ahead of the curve to maintain the value to your company or clients.

I truly appreciate the road AOL and others are trying to travel. As I wrote before, search never has been a stand alone, and we are quickly approaching the time when folks will no longer be able to pretend otherwise. As AOL and others seek to enhance their properties through technological integrations such as Tacoda’s BT network, or Revenue Sciences remarketing abilities, they have an even bigger hurdle to meet: Getting their account service teams well versed in the different verticals, and more importantly, how they work together (I dislike even using the term ‘vertical’… gives credence to the idea that these are separate when they are not.)

While the media properties are spending a great deal of time creating these opportunities, and heavily promoting them in the press, they are simultaneously allowing their account services team to remain woefully ignorant. I can tell you, I hear the frustration in their voices when they have to admit that I know as much or more about these things as they do. So, here is my suggestion to the ‘powers that be’ in the AOL’s of the world: Stop treating account / client service teams as conduits and start treating them as consultants, giving them the corresponding education to back it up.

I can not tell how much money they have lost because they forced the CS teams into situations where they are simply meeting makers trying to connect our team with someone, somewhere who knows something about the 10% of their media that happens to be the subject of our interest. Compound that with the fact that, no matter how closely related another ‘product’ may be, should you bring it up, they have to say that you need to speak to someone else (and then they have a conversation between themselves as to who that person might be). I think this is a tremendous waste of talent.

I’m not here to help the media properties make more money. But, if they do, then that means my team found a great opportunity for our business. The bottom line is, as long as the media continue to silo these opportunities, we, the advertisers, lose money (or make less money, however you want to view it).