Yahoo!, the short sighted view of search.

As Yahoo! evolves its search algorithm and pushes forward with its Google partnership, we need to be clear that Panama is not and never can be adwords in function, nor in spirit. 

On Google, there is a long tail. If you are smart enough to recognize a search term that others are not bidding on (or doing so minimally), or have optimized an obscure term, you are rewarded. You have a relatively minimum bid landscape to reduce your cost and you can isolate the phrase to maximize ROI. You can even go further and isolate the match type, recognizing that someone who types in a phrase exactly might (and often does) behave very differently than someone who clicked on a broad match delivery. As the markets mature, others jump in, raising the price of the keyword (and thus Google's revenue), and you move on to another group of phrases. It works out well for the advertiser, as they get more sales, and it works for the searcher, as we have to be smarter about what we put in front of them and how we treat them post-click.

Yahoo! however does not care. After all, why let you get a click for $0.25 on a long tail term when they can map that term to a more popular one and drive a $1.00 cpc? It does not matter to Yahoo! that the post click behavior is different. Nor is Yahoo! willing to take the long-term view (like Google) that will not only deliver higher quality search results, but could actually increase their revenue by helping develop the number of phrases that have value to advertisers. 

Think about the Google deal. Yahoo! has far fewer phrases on which advertisers are bidding, or terms on which they are bidding very low. This was imposed on advertisers because of the mapping of larger groups of keywords to a single keyword or phrase. There was no value in bidding on these keywords, and Yahoo! did not care; they forced an artificially higher cpc that could not be optimized. Google, however maintained a system where we can optimize to the long tail, making our ability to optimize based on post click behavior easier, and thereby increasing the value of these long tail terms. Now that Google has fostered the market for these terms, Yahoo! is going to de-map many of their terms (they have already started), so that they can benefit from the mature market that we were able to create with Google. 

Unfortunately, the inventory on Yahoo! is going to dilute the value that was built up in the Google ecosystem... not that Yahoo! cares; they'll get their revenue. Yahoo! would not work with us (advertisers) to develop the value within their own search product. Instead, they waited until the value was created within Google, and then decided to de-map keywords for advertisers in order to serve up the Google ad. If the metrics on Google's adwords program are skewed, then we have to drop the bids or drop out of the keywords. For those who think Yahoo! won't be big enough to matter, remember, we are dealing with a large number of low volume, long tail terms. Small changes make a big difference in the back end metrics.

Beyond the search terms themselves, Yahoo! match types are not optimization friendly either. On Yahoo!, if you are bidding on a standard match basis (meaning you show up when the user types in your keyword / phrase), you can be trumped by different terms that are on advanced match bidding (meaning Yahoo! decides there is some relationship between the search and the keyword).  Yahoo!  has made it so this is likely, based on the bid amount. So, even if you have an exact / standard bid against a keyword, Yahoo! will see what other keywords in your account might actually qualify, and then de-dupe the keywords based on ranking... The bid amount is very influential. Look at the impression distribution, it varies widely from day to day. Yahoo! will tell you that is because users' search patterns change widely day-by-day.  Our experience shows us otherwise... there are trackable patterns, not wide swings.

(We know that this is also technically possible on Google. But, you can see your impression share in Google reports that clearly indicate that your exact match keywords are not getting pushed aside. Yahoo! has no view into this.)

Unlike Google, Yahoo! does not encourage multiple match type bidding. It doesn't matter that their are two different post-click behaviors based on the match type. The system was designed to lump everything together, and then see where they (Yahoo!) can make the most money.

What Yahoo! has not figured out (that Google figured out a long time ago), is that the post click value is what advertiser care about. Yes, they give lip service to this concept. But, when they deliver a search product that actually backs up the rhetoric, we can start to believe that they get it. Give us:  true match type bidding, keyword delivery unfettered by mapping, real reporting, truly targetable negative keyword implementation (match type, no limits). Until then, they will follow well behind Google with a me-too (Panama) product that appears designed to maximize short term per-click revenue while giving no care for the long-term devaluation of the Yahoo! product.

Google is no longer going to de-activate keywords, and will have on the fly Quality Score

Google is removing the min bid rules.

Essentially Min bids and inactive keywords are out. Instead, you will see a First Page bid estimates and keywords will always be active (though not always showing because of relatively low QS). The other change will move from periodic quality review and score updates to dynamic, on-the-fly scoring. At this time, I am focused on the minimum bid changes. 

What this means to you depends on where you are in the marketing chain. From the campaign managers to the product managers, these changes can have very little, or a very big impact. There are however, much broader implications for those who are managing the spectrum on online activity and relationships. In some cases, there is only one channel that a company will use. While I believe this is very limiting to the potential benefit, it is easier for someone to manage - fewer plates spinning. It is only justified if there are no venues for exploiting more online channels. For those who choose the harder, but more profitable road of managing multiple channel types, this gets interesting. 

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Affiliate / e-tail program managers will have to pay attention to the landscape with the new changes. There are several ways to manage the search landscape ranging from no bidding to a free for all. Though they are quite common, I have never been a fan of bid caps as a way to manage programs. The market is too dynamic for a fixed value to have relevancy over time. As a way to keep some people out, there is a strategy to set bid caps so low that you know it is below reasonable minimum bids ( a de facto "no bid" rule). So, it is possible that players who would not spend the min $1.00 or $5 or $10, can now appear for $0.50. Discouraged from the market place before, these people placed virtually no price pressure on keywords. Now, they have a chance to enter the market, get some results and start appearing. Do you have any mechanism to maximize profit by ensuring only your best partners are showing up?

Before you think, "no bidding on my brand" as a way to keep it easy, be leery of this relatively lazy strategy - it is the realm of the naive and ignorant. With it, your life may seem easier, but you give up a chance to let your best partners help you while simultaneously exposing your marketing underbelly to the competition.

Competing brands or products will now find it easier to enter your bid landscape. If you are Sony and none of your affiliates or e-tailors are allowed to bid on your brand, minimum bids often made it cost prohibitive for your competitors to do so as well (quality score issues created high minimum bids). So, you could possibly control your brand's bid landscape (for many categories, even the minimum bids have not discouraged bidding on competitive brand keywords). This is no longer true. Mitsubishi, Sharp and others will not be hit with minimum bids and can enter your playground much more easily. So rather than have e-tailors that target segments of your customers to whom you cannot cater, you have given up the landscape to your competitors.

While this has always been an issue for the "no-bid" group, the reality becomes even more severe once the Minimum Bid is removed as a competitive obstacle. I can tell you, we will leverage it; any good SEM will. Your best defense to to build up a small, but strong group of e- tailors that will promote your product and services. Take up the bid landscape for your brand with partners that can leverage segments of your market where they are stronger than you are. This is not an issue of duplicate listing. It is an issue of directing users to experiences which are truly geared for their stage in the buying cycle or buying motivation.

Some segments are upper funnel. Corporate sites provide a level of confidence and information sources that upper funnel users are looking for. Other sites, typically e-tail sites with time and resources to optimize against conversion, are far more adept and managing the lower end of the funnel.  Well over a year ago, I vented against the branded keyword sales being a given.
 

I have seen first hand the differences in subtle changes, importance of MVT for the experience and managing SEM based on long term / annual trend performance.

Combine this with a compensation structure that encourages performance rather than one which simply encourages spending (cost plus) and the right partners, and you can develop a channel that is motivated to drive down market costs (their margins are directly affected) while maximizing your sales. 

This change in Google's policy provides and opportunity for online marketers to evaluate their search programs and how they will manage the diverse consumer base. They can either take the easy way out and limit sales, or they can maximize their market potential.

When she is ready to listen, do you know what to say?

Seth Godin:
Are they Ready to Listen? (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/07/are-they-ready.html)

A simple and at the same time often missed thought, Seth Godin points out the issue of timing in marketing.

To prove his point, he did some field research (impromptu it appears):

"Every single one a demographically perfect match for my handbook. After 100,000 people had walked by and we'd sold only one book, I lowered the price from around $10 to $1 just to prove my point--that it wasn't the book and it wasn't the price, it was the ability of the audience to listen that mattered."

Here he had what was the perfect product, with the perfect audience and his sales were abysmal. Sometimes the market is just not ready to listen.

Oddly, even in search, where someone raised her hand and says "I'm listening", we can see drastic swings in sales or other end metric. Take a look at time of day conversions, time of week, month, year, geography, etc. Conversion rates can vary greatly.

So, this begs the question: When she is ready to listen, do you know what to say?

When a person searches, does she click on your ad because it has the right message, or  because nothing is right and she is just hunting down the list? Even if you're the best in a group that is bad, your ad is still bad. Getting the right ad, in front of the right search at the right time is an iterative process. It is not a case of making your ad different for difference's sake, but for the consumer's sake.

The search term (not the keyword), is the key indicator of what the consumer wants to hear. It is the nuance of the search term that needs to inform the messaging. By vigilantly combing the query data, you can identify new ad groups with more focussed messaging and important negatives that will help you ensure that you direct the searcher to the appropriate campaign / ad group. This can be tedious and manual work. But, failure to do this on a continual basis can create mediocre results from an otherwise stellar product.

Further, if you are familiar enough with your consumer, you may know that the same search term has different meanings based on the time of day, week, or month;  same keyword,  different message. Early in the month may be the time she is collecting product information, while later, she is looking for a reason to buy from you. If you help her in the beginning, you have a better chance of getting her to listen later. Try too hard to sell her in the beginning and you lose an opportunity for the sale later.

Continual copy and experience testing are key to being sure you are ready when the consumer tells you she is listening. Search is about nuance; what the consumer is telling you and, in turn, what you are saying in response. The only way to know if you heard correctly is to test, continually.

In short, by paying attention to, and understanding where, when and how the consumer tells you she is listening, you have a better chance of telling her what she wants to hear... just like any relationship.

SEM best kept secret is actually an open violation of Google's rules

Secondary Search: Search Marketing's Best Kept Secret By Larry Organ is one of those articles that just makes me wonder how far out of touch some, usually well informed and respected, people are about search. I am all for having an objective view of our search programs. But to suggest that running a second search team, bidding on the same keywords to obtain multiple positions for your site without acknowledging the fundamental problems could make one believe this is a quick and easy path.

"Having a second, walled off team allows organizations to do things that would be impossible under a single roof. For example, the major search engines make it very difficult to lock up multiple paid positions within a single search campaign. But a secondary search team makes this an easy-to-achieve goal. An organization's primary SEM team can concentrate on gaining top placement for primary keywords while a secondary team can focus on lower positions."

On the face of it, this is a direct violation of Google double ad serving policy. Google will link the two accounts that are trying to do this. If you think you can simply create a second site, Google will catch that too and link the URLs. If people spend the time trying to do the right thing, rather than finding ways to mess with the rules, they would get better, longer-term results.

"Testing is another advantage. Any time an organization can see its primary SEM efforts (the control) compared against an entirely separate campaign (the test), great insight can be gained."

My experience is that good testing structure needs good coordination. You can not tell your core SEM team to do nothing while the other team makes changes. You're playing two different positions (assuming you can keep Google in the dark),  you are going to get different results. If you are isolating a variable, you do not need two teams to do this. The whole concept ignores some fundamentals of search. Consider that Google has a sliding (though secret) scale for using CTR in the quality score; it is based on ad position. The vary idea is that ads in different positions will get different results. This is not a reflection on the team that holds either spot on the listings. If you want to run a true test, focus on the copy utilized within a position, or the message connected to the landing page, or the point within the funnel to which you deliver the
prospect, or a host of any other variables. But to give one team positions 1-3 and another 3-6 or 6-9 and then compare the results is not a test.

If you want to compare the prowess of two agencies, fine. Give them separate assignment, normalize the results and see who comes out on top... then select ONE. 

"And, of course, having multiple suppliers for any business process is the best way of keeping vendors honest."

I have never liked this motivation for a business practice. If you believe your vendors, or employees are going to screw you as soon as they get a chance, dump them, now. Don't create a situation that de-motivates honest partners and employees. Structured correctly, a good relationship rewards employees or agencies in proportion to their contribution to your success, thus minimizing the potential for getting complacent. I have always believed in looking for ways to motivate good partners rather than treat everyone like a potentially bad partner. You can not make someone honest. Either they are or they are not. Choose honest partners and accept the risk that sometimes we choose poorly, then move on.

Larry Organ has long and successful career as an entrepreneur and perhaps he has used, or does use this strategy currently. But, for most organizations, this path is not as straight forward as it would appear. Focus on good SEM / SEO. Gaming the system, which is what this strategy is, will only be short lived at best.

Promotions... build them and they will come?

In the early 90's, one of the clients I had was an auto after-market repair chain that was a mix of corporate owned and franchise locations. The corporate client opened a new store not too far from a franchisee. The franchisee was up in arms. He shouted that the corporate location was stealing his customers, and as proof he showed a decreasing sales trend vs the prior year. The client asked us to run some numbers. Since we were 'third' party and both had business with us, the analysis would be accepted by both.


Well, to combat the corporate location, the franchisee began a series of promotions. x% off brake jobs, every x oil change free, free labor on exhaust installation, etc. The promotions worked really well... at lowering his average sale. It turns out, he was just running the promotions in store. There was no out-bound advertising to draw people in (or very little actually). So, while the corporate location did virtually nothing to decrease his customer base, his promotion-focused 'solution' did a lot to decrease the value of that base.

So, this is the lens through which I read the clickz article, "Promotions Could Overtake Display and Search Says Report" According to the study, search and display will peak, then decline while promotions will overtake them. The study was done by Borrell and Associates ( CEO Gordon Borrell) According to the study, display advertising is flat at about $12.6B and will decline by 1/2 over the next four years. "What's driving it is an overall dissatisfaction or nagging feeling on the part of advertisers that their advertising isn't working, or that they're overspending on it," said Borrell. "With the Internet, they can go straight to consumers. If they're having a sale, they can put it up on their Web site and consumers will come to them, and if their Web site is good enough, consumers will keep coming back."

"With the Internet, they can go straight to the consumers."  I am not sure how. Decrease the display advertising, decrease the search
advertising, and anti spam laws are terrifying companies. How exactly do they go straight to the consumers with the promotions? The answer would appear to be, " put it up on their Web site and the consumers will come to them..". So, they are not attracting as many new customers (if any at all), and for any  customer that would come to the site anyway, they will give them a discount - promotion.

Now, contrast Gordon Borrell's perspective with that of Jon Brancheau,(15 minute video) from GM.  GM's director of media operations, Jon Brancheau, reveals the truth about the company's digital budget allocations in a frank chat from the 2008 iMedia Driving Interactive Summit. He is bullish on the digital space.  Far from seeing digital as not working, this is a place to push the boundaries.

I cannot see a 50% decline in display advertising. As for it being flat the past 2 years, there has been an inventory influx with social media over that time. This has been high volume, low CPM inventory. Contrary to a retraction, as behavioral targeting improves and the niche value of the individual areas of inventory are identified, I believe this will increase. These low value segments will fine their place in the advertising ecosystem and help it grow.

I am not sure that Gordan Borrell believes in the 'build-it-and-they-will-come' myth that was debunked years ago. But the general sense of the article would lead one to believe that this is nearly so.
If we believe the advertising is not working, then we should fix it before we start leaving money on the table with unadvertised promotions. There really is no reason for any online advertiser to wonder if their efforts are working. We can track minutia. If we are unsure of performance, it is not a lacking of the media, but a lacking of our imaginations. There are many ways to tag metrics to our advertising. And it will probably cost less than running unadvertised promotions.

Check out idatatools for more advertising info

Google's form filling bot a benefit to some, scares others.

Google's form filling bot a benefit to some, scares others. Kevin Heisler's article in SEW points out a dilemma that Google faces; in an attempt to homogenize the desires and intents of the masses, they will please some while angering, annoying or frightening others. I am not nearly as bothered by this as Kevin. As this question popped up in some communications in my company, my response was...

 

"Google has been inundated with questions as to why pages are not showing up in the index, only to explore the issue and find out that the only way to get to the pages in question is to submit a form of some type. The most obvious is  corporate home pages where the user has to select the country / region in a drop  down (Matt's example). Until this new release, Google couldn't crawl the pages from the home page. Other examples include product selection, category information where you  have to tell the site, via a form, what you want. Web masters and publishers  have be frustrated by their in ability to get a lot of content indexed because  managing it requires data driven applications and the use of forms. This is  Google's attempt to rectify the problem."

For those really worried about this, blocking the bot from sub pages can be done." 

Matt Cutts has a good post on this.

I think another aspect of blocking the bot is the robot.txt. As Matt says, "If you’d prefer that Google not crawl urls like this, you can use robots.txt to block the urls that would be discovered by crawling through a form." These URLs should probably be part of the robot.txt file anyway. But if not, this should not be too arduous a task to add them.
Any way, like so many other "things" Google, this seems bigger at first than it will in hind sight.

Enamored with Technology... the Google - ization of us all.

At AdTech last week, I was going to meet some folks for dinner. I knew the
name of the restaurant and the street name, that's it. No address. So,
I pulled out my blackberry, went to Google, and wham! nothing. There
were some reviews, but not a listing. Next Yahoo! Go!. nothing. Again,
some web sites with reviews. Then Live. Bingo. No websites, no links.
just Name, Address and Phone number. Then click, a map. Oh, and I was
probably just a few feet from a yellow pages directory in the room. But, I wanted to use the technology. To me, this would seem like an obvious search. A mobile device and a specific restaurant name. Live knew (or guessed) exactly what I wanted. The other two were clueless. 

But, I wanted it to work. I wanted technology to provide the answer. So, while it took a bit longer than I'd like, 1 of the 3 did work for me. But this got me thinking, 'are we too enamored with technology?' I could have picked up the phone, talked to concierge and had my directions faster. But, I didn't. 

I see this take place in SEM all the time. Bid management tools, algorithms that can tell you (so they say) when someone is ready to buy, or can optimize your media program. I was on a call the other week with an agency that appeared to rely nearly 100% on statistically driven bid management programs. I wish I could say these things worked. But they don't. Sure, they can do what you tell them, adjusting bids based on historical inputs and manage to your parameters. But they can not 'read' the market. Adjusting to the unexpected is too cumbersome, and anticipating the new is impossible. If 'it' is not in the historical data, whatever 'it' is can not be considered by the technology. 

People, however are very good at this. We know how our competition and consumers respond. We know our clients and their marketing calender. We can anticipate, and adjust and optimize. We can also take risks. This is where the rewards come from. Try something you've never done and see what happens. Algorithms can't do this SEO suffers from the same problem (but I think they get more feisty about it). SEO is a very manual service. No two SEO experts will agree on every 'best' way to do things. Computer programs that analyze your site are useless. A good SEO person will admit and adjust to stumbles. SEO programs will keep blundering along. 

In a world where we really want technology to solve problems (and it does have its place among our tools), sometimes it is hard to accept that the real answer is not a technological one. Its human. 

Experience, perception, anticipation, risk taking and hard work. These are the hallmarks of a good SEM shop.

Google diverting users to paid search listings

We know that many searchers use the engines as navigational tools. Often,
users type the name of the company or site into the search box and go
to the the organic result. It is simple and easy. Even if you miss-type
the name, the engines have become smart enough to know what you want. Now,
Google is leveraging that habit to increase the paid search exposure. 

I have no real problem with Google or Yahoo! displaying paid listings against the brand names. I think it is healthy. But the way they are doing it is crossing the line. Google is corralling the users down a path like a live stock. They are taking learned behavior that they cultivated and turning it around to force an unnecessary search purely for the purpose of having a second shot at monetizing the user. Then, offering them an extremely bad experience. If you type "best buy" in to the search, you get the results:

 

Notice that there is a 'search bestbuy.com' box just below the organic listing. As a user, this leads me to believe I am going to Best Buy. I am not. Instead, I am diverted to a page of Google paid search listings along with organic listings on Google for the best buy site. Again, one might say that this just gives users more options. Unfortunately, it presents the user with a VERY poor experience related to Best Buy. But, it does however, allow Google to present their paid search results. Type in "Panasonic tv." Is the best return for this search really the pedestal? How much reading does the user have to do to figure out what they might want?

Once you click to the page,to get to:

You now have to re-enter your search if you want another product.

Best Buy has determined that there are several products that users
usually want when they type in 'Panasonic tv'. Along with this, their experience testing provides insight into how best to present this to the users. They have also provided options to the consumer that can help them refine their quest even further. Google simply and arrogantly delivers a link that ends in a less than good experience. To get to something useful, you have to take 2-3 additional steps. This is bad for the consumer, bad for Best Buy and ultimately, will be bad for Google.

Google has often told us that their primary concern is user experience. What is better, a list of algorithmic returns based in general search knowledge gained by Google, or targeted returns with refined presentations based on the very focused experience of a retailer? Despite all their best efforts, Google is not able to delve into our experiences as online retailers. They sit in judgment of our experiences, deeming them poor, when we know as retailers that consumers prefer what we have (otherwise we wouldn't do it...we'd loose money). That is their right. But this hypocritical twist is about monetizing the search that was best served through the organic experience.

The user experience is clearly bad. If this were just some two-bit spammer site, I'd say 'who really cares?' But, this is Google, the champion of consumer experience. They justify their position with quality rankings on the basis of 'user studies'. 'Users' want more information, deeper links and more options. As retailers, we know that consumers get frustrated when they know what they want but can not find it, or have to work too hard to locate it. Based on their queues, we use our experience to delivery what they want, including options. We can provide easy links to options that help the consumer. Google's 'search' circumvents all that. It delivers the user to a poor experience that the retailer had no opportunity to cultivate. It frustrates the consumer and will hurt the retailer.  This is a way to monetize and complicate a
consumer experience. Is this in response to paid search clicks being down? Is it an attempt to please Wall Street? Google is about business, but even with that in mind, this is too hypocritical. 

Is that Local Search, or just Geo-targeted?

The way I see it, local search is not just about a technical definition, it is a mindset. I started out in local search and at the time, the technology was not quite what it is today. But as I said, its as much a mind set as it is a technology. 

Geo targeting is about what makes areas similar. No...seems counter intuitive?  Most companies enter into geo targeting grudgingly. They look for as much commonality as they can between areas, see what is not common and make a decision about the value of changing what they do for each area. For efficiency sake, they hope that they have as few differences as possible and try to cater to the lowest common denominator. Where it makes sense, they will vary what they do. In search, they have the ability to message differently by area, adjust to the area's bid landscape and generally take into account some of the differences between areas. 

However, what is the up shot? Is the bidding efficiency worth the extra work? Does message management have an ROI impact? While the answer is usually yes (at least in our industries) the fact that most marketers constantly strive to minimize the 'break down' of the geographies is very telling about the mindset of Geo targeting. If they could make all areas fit into one, nice big area and still make the same profit, they would do it.

Local search is about what makes an area unique. When you really get into local search, the last thing you want to do is find commonness with other things. There is a bit of pride in the distinctiveness of the business, the people and the town. You look for those things which have a real sense of the area. You can't fake it either. In the Chicago last summer, there was a series of beer commercials on the radio that tried to 'be local'. They got some of the names right, but the way they were said was clearly not 'local'. It was disingenuous; I bet you heard the same voice actor throwing out some lines about your town as well.

Out-of-towners can do local marketing in your area (or mine). But they have to have a natural curiosity about the business and, more importantly, about the people. They need to want to know what makes them unique.

I've heard that local search is when you are driving the consumer to a local business. Technically, perhaps, but what is being done differently for each location? In one of our industries, there is a 'leader' with locations throughout a large region of the US. They have the same ad running in all geographic areas. Technically, this is part of a local search program (I presume), but the ads do nothing to speak to the area around the locations. Maybe this works, but our experience is that every location's customer base is distinct, so our search team is managing messaging to the location level. Is there some commonality? Sure. But, we are constantly trying to see what makes one different from the others, and leverage that into an ad and an experience that optimizes the performance. 

Is your program technically local? It is if it has a local destination, geo targeted paid search, locally targeted SEO efforts, map listings, iYP, and all the other online 'local' search stuff. But, is it local at heart? Will a person in Albany, NY be treated like the person from Miami, FL? Search in general, and local search in particular, is about the individual searcher. A true local search program is the epitome good SEM.

Yahoo! Search is Opening Up

Yesterday Yahoo posted an announcement about a new enhancement to their search product.
Today, Amit Kumar presented this evolution at SMX West.

The new focus is on completing tasks. Relevant media, task oriented links, Structured data. The ranking in SERPS remains that same, but the results are more focused based on what the site owner believes the user is trying to do. It can provide additional links directly on the SERP, ratings, sending links, products, media etc. Instead of having the engines 'guess', we can use our knowledge of what the user needs.

The features and enhancements are app based. There will be data feeds and information providers give to Yahoo! via the apps to which site owners can gain access, add their listings and create better SERPs for their users. These feeds may be third party ratings, product reviews, media etc. The site owners can turned these feeds on / off. Just how this will be shall be announced over time in the near future.

A question on Yahoo!'s commitment to this came up: What if publishers push forward only to have Yahoo! pull the plug. Amit pointed to the overall commitment to the open platform as an indication of it's seriousness and support.

Question on timing. Since we are a closed group and won't blog about it.[[[-mage no longer avilable----] But...
App Prototype development can take about 1/2 day. If you put it on your own listing, it can go live quickly. (Sony puts a product app for Sony.com) If it is open to others to add to their site, then the app will be submitted to an approval process (Sony's app used by retailers).

Just some thoughts. Think about Auto manufactures providing review feeds, spec feeds, images, or video. Theses feeds can be provided as a Yahoo! app that dealers can then add to their listings. Any product manufacturer can do this. Menus for restaurant chains? Product reviews from Consumer Reports? This really opens up great information access at very relevant times. These data sets, media, and other information can be used by many sites, and the providers of the information gain exposure and traffic. This is a great tool for the site publishers and for consumers.

If the information is bogus, users will have the ability to report abuses

Microsoft Live and Targeting the Hispanic Marketplace - or not.

I received an email last week from Joe Spector who launched the dating site QuieroLatino.com, targeted to the Hispanic market. He was put off by AdCenter's lack of targeting ability toward one of the fastest growing segments of the US population and wrote about his experience here. 

I would say that it was not just the lack of targeting ability, but what set Joe off was the refusal to even accept sites that are in Spanish. I understand this in the early parts of development, as the resources to match and understand any Language is daunting. But, to have come this far along and not add it to the basic service is a poor oversight. The truth is, AdCenter, and Microsoft in general, is really bad at Search. They have made little progress in expanding market share. After targeting French Canadians and English speaking North Americans, they pretty much focused on repackaging their search service (live.com) and integrating into the MS applications. 

While I understand Joe taking offense at their lack of acknowledgment of the importance of the Hispanic Market, the reality is that MS has just thrown up its arms with search in general. This isn't so much a dis of a particular market as it is a symptom of general ineptitude in the technology and marketing of search. Thus, MS is trying to buy what they can't build. 

Taking a step back from Search, SEW has a good perspective from Maria Lopez-Knowles, senior vice president of MRM Worldwide, about Hispanic marketing online. She even recognizes MSN's Hispanic portal as a good example of the way to communicate to a bi-lingual market... the US Hispanic market. However, it is more than language. There  is more than "one" Hispanic market. The Hispanic market is another example of people separated by a common language. Argentinian, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Honduran, etc are distinct cultures that share a common language. Mix this with the impact of Latino immigrants and pop-culture-influenced- 1st-generation-bi-lingual Latinos, and the divisions become more fragmented, even within households. 

Mid last year, I spoke with Jon Santiago of Media 8  about communicating to the Hispanic Market (His firm specializes in marketing communications in South America and the Hispanic population in the U.S.). While he recognizes that in-language plays a role and markets his clients accordingly, he is quick to point out that in-culture is the key. This is a daunting task for any marketer. It means more than the one variable of language. It means an acknowledgment of many cultures under one label.

MSN's oversight is annoying. However, by focusing on the key cultural drivers of the various segments within the Hispanic Market, it becomes clear that there are many paths to successfully communicating and marketing to this diverse group within the U.S.. The use of an English language landing page, with links to the Spanish language content is not only an acceptable path, but one which may be in-line with the dual language mode of living pointed out by Maria Lopez-Knowles.

Google Share sees slight decline

In November last year, I wrote a piecefor SEMPO
Global Search Blog regarding the plateau that I see for Google. Earlier this month, I
submitted a piece to Search Engine Watch which included my belief that
there will be a reduction in Google share by  Q4. I was wrong. It
actually happened in December 2007. Google is down slightly to 56.3% in December from 57.7% in November.

Ranked by Searches (U.S.)

Provider	Searches (000)	Share of Searches	Searches per Searcher
Google Search	4,062,536	56.3%	37.9
Yahoo! Search	1,273,688	17.7%	22.4
MSN/Windows Live Search	995,899	13.8%	31.7
AOL Search	339,761	4.7%	10.0
Othere.....

Source: Nielsen Online, MegaView Search

Why does this matter? Well, considering that Google is and will remain the
leader in search for the foreseeable future and that search will
continue to grow, it doesn't really affect the numbers in any negative
way, yet. It does, however, provide an opening. One through which we
can see that other options are viable and profitable. As this happens,
more opportunities can fall upon Microsoft and Yahoo!. I believe that the market needs the competition. Even as analysts call (SEW) for Yahoo! to break off search and outsource to Google, I think there is a long term benefit even to Yahoo! shareholders in the dedicated Yahoo! effort to search. With more brand dollars being
considered for search, and the search product itself expanding to
potentially include images and different ways to deliver results, these calls for divesting the core technology are premature.

With continued strength in the display / publisher side and the nascent
nature of search (relative to the potential applications), Yahoo! is
uniquely positioned to package search and display advertising to
optimize the ROI for advertisers. Give up the tech side of search, and
the synergistic opportunities go way.

The vital non-search part of search

Planning for any marketing campaign is challenging. Most of what we
read about starting the program is focused on keywords, campaigns, urls,
etc. These all should be. But there is a missing element. In today's
dynamic business environment, there is a lot that search marketers need
to coordinate along with the campaign itself.

I have read about launched campaigns being rejected or with an
inflated min bid because the site was down. Or the product page text
was not search engine friendly, or the offers did not match up. So, a
quick review of things to proactively get into.

1) Server Maintenance Schedule. Most maintenance does not
necessarily take down the sites. However, this is the time when the
site is very vulnerable. If something is going to happen, now is the
time.

Why care. Don't launch just before or during these times. The
engines are going to inundate your servers with bot hits to get content
and assess access. Depending on your campaign, this can be significant.
While normally not an issue, if something happens with maintenance,
these hits can complicate it. It also will be a problem for your
campaign's validation and quality score assessment if the server goes
down.

2) Production schedule. This is important in two areas. One, like
server maintenance, this is vulnerable time. But, it is also a time
when hidden problems can happen. Where content or pricing is not what
you thought. This is particularly true with dynamic content or product
sites. In my view, it is best to closely coordinate this effort and
confirm the target page content prior to launching any new campaigns.
With existing campaigns, this is a time to double check the landing
pages.

3) Marketing campaigns. As we move products and services through the
development cycle at an ever increasing pace, the opportunity for the
outbound messaging to fall behind the product offering also increases.
By not waiting for new offers or product information to be given to you
and working your way into the pre-launch discussions, you'll be sure that whatever you're launching is in sync with the products.

4) Site design and development. How many times have you launched a
product only to learn that the landing page is generic, or full of
images and no or little text relevant to the product? Anyway, long
before the launch of any search campaign, you need to involve yourself,
at some level, with site design and development.

5) Analytics, reporting and application development. These are
related to each other and usually are in place well before the process
of creating search campaigns even begins. This is all the more reason
why search people need to be well ingrained in the overall business. It
is too late to raise your hand as you put your campaigns together and
ask for special development, reporting or analytics support. Again,
insert yourself in the long range process involved with these areas.

I have said many time that search marketers need to be more than
just search marketers. They need to be good marketers and involved in
there company's business. Get involved beyond search.