Google’s had both these options running in BETA over the course of the last year, but has finally made this available only recently to almost all current Google AdWords accounts - the ability now exists within AdWords to run radio and newspaper ads all within and through the AdWords interface. Out goes the debate of the traditional new versus old media in the trite “either/or” argument, and online advertisers are starting to revisit the concept of offline in supplement to their online advertising efforts, and vice versa. The concepts are pretty ingenious, really - an advertiser selects the channel of advertising they’d like to pursue (radio and/or newspaper) and essentially is able to send out digital RFPs via Google AdWords to creative houses that then bid for the advertiser’s business (radio), or an advertiser can select, create, and deliver newspaper ads all within the AdWords interface (newspaper).
In my opinion, this a great way for traditionally online-only entities and advertisers to pursue other advertising ventures to supplement their already-existing online customer acquisition efforts and to increase reach in an area where the barrier to entry is typically fairly large (financially, limited knowledge, etc). It will be interesting to see how this changes the face of the two largest standby offline advertising mediums moving into the immediate future.
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A colleague forwarded the Kevin Federline Search Engine to me last week, and I still can’t figure out whether I should be hesitantly amused, or outright aghast. Powered by Yahoo! Search, the engine gives you a chance to win a Kevin Federline related prize every time you search (up to 20 times a day). While there hasn’t been much buzz around this, the few places that I have seen the general populous of opinions veer towards general disbelief; it will be interesting to see if Y!SM decides to tie themselves to these types of “promotions” in the future. Thank goodness they didn’t do this following the whole Britney Spears-shaving-head-then-getting-inked fiasco, or worse yet - Search with Bald Britney!
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One question we’ve heard several times from our clients is “If we’re already showing up in position one for our tradeterm under the organic results, then aren’t we wasting money on buying our trade term through paid search?” Unfortunately, this statement is only halfway correct. Let me explain: take for example, the case presented below:
In this example, we would be eHarmony and the million dollar question would be whether we should purchase the search term “eharmony” as we are already top position within the organic search results. Valid question - however, let’s consider the scenario where we do proceed with taking down our paid search efforts on the term “eharmony.” What we’d end up seeing (most of the time, anyway, reliant on whether you were logged in through your Google account, what your previous searches were, etc) is that the next competitor bidding on the term “eharmony” would end up showing in the blue background section above your organic, first position result in the SERPs. In this case, once we stop bidding on our trade term “eharmony,” the first result on the SERPs would be Match.com - a big no-no if we were indeed the folks at eHarmony. Also, if Google were to display two results in the blue box paid results area, eHarmony.com would end up being the third listed if viewing top-down, following both Match.com and Perfectmatch.com.
The moral of the story here is that actively buying and managing one’s trade terms is a first line of defense against competitors trying to steal away users that are actively seeking eHarmony (in this example) and the services they offer (those most likely to convert into a sale). For many of our clients, these trade terms are amongst the highest converting terms, at (usually) very minimal cost.
As if competitors trumping your ads wasn’t already reason enough.
-KayW
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Seattle, San Francisco and New York are typically considered the “hubbubs” when it comes to internet activity, so when we heard about SEMpdx Searchfest 2007 down in the rose city, we were quite intrigued. And intrigued we were, almost four hours and five cups of coffee later, we finally arrived in the beautiful rose city Tuesday night. A quick night spent at the Marriott City Center in downtown Portland and an early morning at Peet’s Coffee put us out on the road toward the World Forestry Center, where the event was held.
In homage to several others with whom I spoke with during the event, it turns out we were not the only ones who got lost. Google Maps had lied and instructed us to turn left off the freeway exit, whereas we were really supposed to turn right. Ten minutes later and a quick familiarization with SW Scholl’s Ferry Road, we were finally headed in the right direction.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect in terms of attendance/turnout; in my mind, I think I was expecting about a hundred or so attendees (quite arbitrarily, I might add), so I was pleasantly surprised when we arrived during the keynote speaker, Jeffrey Pruitt of iCrossing, to see the main hall filled with almost four hundred people.
The rest of the day was filled with various panels and workshops covering both SEO and SEM tactics featuring speakers from companies such as Google, Yahoo, SEOmoz, and several local Portland agencies. One of my favorite presentations was the SEO presentation given by Stoney deGeyter of Pole Position Marketing, Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz and Matt McGee of Marchex for both the information covered and insight into the ever elusive world of SEO. Another favorite of mine was the panel discussion at the end of the event featuring Dan Sundgren of eFrontier, David Roth from Yahoo, Jeffrey Pruitt from SEMPO/iCrossing, Naga Krothapalli of MSN and Eric Facas from Google. I must also add that the Q&A at the end of each session was incredibly valuable - there were quite a number of great questions from the audience and the interaction was the highest I’d seen per any usual conference.
I’m incredibly eager to see what’s in store for SEMpdx Searchfest 2008. For those of you unfamiliar, we at Internet Ad Pulse are also a part of the Northwest Internet Advertising Group or NWIAG for short, a business networking group consisting of internet advertising professionals that meets bi-monthly at various venues around Seattle (our next event is this Thursday!). I had the joy of chatting with Kent Lewis, the president of SEMpdx in regards to a possible collaboration between SEMpdx and NWIAG in the near future. If anyone has any suggestions or comments on what they might like to see at such an event, please do comment below or email me - you just might see your suggestion in action at the next event!
-KayW
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A few weeks ago, after noticing that Google finally decided to post an option to pause text ads rather than having to delete them and me announcing (read: shouting) in the office (praise hallelujah! - and check another post to come shortly for the details surrounding this new feature), a co-worker of mine joked it would be a good idea for me to start a blog featuring random SEM nuggets of golden information to share.
I thought he was kidding.
A few weeks’ time and some dev work later, here we are: Kay’s Korner (I didn’t come up with the name). This is where you’ll find helpful tips that I spent hours upon weeks upon years of time collecting just so I can share with my loving, reciprocating SEM community. Check back often for updates!
-KayW
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