Jon Beeston has pinged me with some UK-specific research on search spend over here in Blighty.
Good news for Microsoft is that their spend is up 0.5% on Q4 2007!
Check out the rest of the Efficient Frontier Search Report Here.
I recorded a webcast at Haymarket’s offices in Hammersmith last week:
Topics include:
Featuring a range of industry folk including me, Flemming Madsen from Onalytica, BSkyB’s Scott Gallacher and Neil McCarthy of Latitude.
The webcast will be available from Wednesday, April 30 at 12pm BST.
A few weeks back I commented on some comments about adCenter on Kieron’s Blog.
The adCenter Community Team do check out other people’s blogs & forums, as well as our own, so we can get a sense for the pulse in the advertising community, what people are saying, how they feel about our products and services and, most importantly, how we can improve.
Kieron emailed me back and asked for an interview – so here it is!
Guy Phillipson from the Interactive Advertising Bureau does a really great job in showcasing some of the products and services available to marketers via “Search”.
Sponsored by Latitude, I found this little gem by clicking on a banner (who’d of thought eh?) on the Media Week website.
Kudos to Marketing Magazine for bringing this kind of initiative to the marketing masses.
Next week I’ll be in Dublin for Search Marketing World 2008. The inaugural conference last year was a great success. A short, sharp injection of searchification with a keynote from Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land and tracks for the newbie and advanced search marketer alike.
Chris Sherman is officiating this year and I’ll be speaking on a panel with Google and Yahoo! getting quizzed on all sorts of interesting topics I’m sure.
So if you’re reading this in Dublin register here. If you don’t live in Ireland why not take advantage of a great one day conference and enjoy a few pints of the black stuff while you’re there!
The Irish Independent have written a great article to introduce the conference….
….and not a single Search Engine Marketing Blog among them 🙁
Check out the Observer’s Chart and tell me what you’d like to see in there?
The Policeman’s Blog is a favourite of mine!
OK so I’m a slow typer! This is just a quick write up of another great session I attended at SES London.
Following on from his solo performance at SMX Stockholm, Google’s Adam Lasnik again took the stage for the Universal, Blended & Vertical Search session ably accompanied by Andrew Goodman from Page Zero Media, Mike Grehan and Jeff Revoy from Yahoo!
Kevin Ryan kicked us off by explaining that these new type of search engine results were seeing higher CTRs, with fewer users clicking through to the second page. Having images, video and news results populating the page was doing away with the “10 blue link” phenomena, making it harder for search marketers to use traditional methods to drive traffic to their sites.
Not being backward in coming forward, Kevin came straight out and asked whether there was an inherent bias towards YouTube or FlickR results appearing in Google and Yahoo! respectively.
Mike thought there was simply more of a richer experience for users with Andrew saying that in 3-4 years there’d be more and more of an emphasis on in-house properties featuring more and more in the SERPs. Both G & Y! said there was no bias but in Google’s case we’re not surprised YT gets more of a look-in as they have huge database of video to choose from.
So are site-builders thinking about universal search when they start designing their sites? The consensus was this new angle was filtering through, but that site-owners still need to get the basics right and struggle to get the content they have indexed.
As far as G were concerned all queries do pass through a universal search filter but results depend on the query. If the query lends itself to a visual result then it will appear. Y!’s approach to pretty much the whole session was one of relevancy. If relevant to a particular query, then a blended result would show.
Then Adam then mentioned something about chocolate – but I can’t read my notes………so will move on 🙂
When asked about how decisions are made regarding the display of results, Adam again (as he did at SMX Stockholm) explained he’s a “search quality guy” and nowt to do with ads! Decisions are made on a query by query basis and there were no plans that he knew of to display universal search ads on a paid basis.
Social Search was touched on just as the guys on the analytics panel had discussed earlier. Is it a new breed of spam? How do you measure a conversation? Can we take it too far or are we still hooked on the direct response metric?
Jeff said it depended on how you filter the data, you need to ask questions of the conversation depending on its context.
Is social search adding value? Well Andrew said you’re going to get a lot of junk, so users need help to filter down to the “wisdom” of the individual. He then touched on personalisation, using past data to determine what a user might be most interested in.
So how is this going to happen? Through a secret sauce, experimentation, Google surveys 1% of users, we’re still on a journey (!). Andrew wanted “more openness, more inclusion.” Mike wants to see more video from different sources, although Adam was quick to point out that before Google bought YouTube the videos stayed on the site and were not “syndicated” via search.
SuperGuru Tips:
• Mike – get ready to change
• Andrew – be local, be social
• Adam – create compelling content
• Jeff – be relevant
There’s no doubt that these kind of results are just the tip of the iceberg and how we’ll see search providers display results in the future. We’ve all been dipping the toe in and experimenting – check out what Live Search thinks of Amy Winehouse!
The businesses that are savvy and get into the rich, indexable content game will see great early results. But you don’t have to be a big business either. If you’re a “builder in Richmond” I’d love to find a search result showing a short video of you showing off your recent work. Any £50 digital camera can take a half-decent video these days, so put down that cup of sweet tea and get shooting.
I’ll be at Search Engine Strategies London on all 3 days from 19th to 21st February next week.
I’m doing quite a bit of work this weekend to clear the decks so I can immerse myself in all the sessions, all the talking, and I might be found with a beer in my hand on some, if not all, of the evenings.
Going to conferences like this one is a must if you work in this industry.
Why?
1) You can’t call yourself a marketer if you don’t know what’s going on in your own market.
2) You’ll hear from a lot of good speakers from all disciplines, so expect to learn something new!
3) You’ll hear some bad speakers who’ll give you confidence that you’re not that bad a presenter after all.
4) You’ll hear some good speakers who’ll deliver ideas you think are tosh. It’d be boring if we all agreed.
5) You’ll hear some bad speakers talking about stuff you know better than they do – It could be you up there next year!
6) You get out of the office!! Look the weather forecast!
7) It’s a great networking opportunity – I bet you pick up some business!
8) I may have something of interest to announce at the Search Advertising Forum on Thursday 21st Feb at 11am!?
9) Islington is a very hip part of town with loads of great pubs and restaurants in which to close that deal!
10) You’ll never have to traipse to the docklands ever again……….we hope!
The Internet Advertising Bureau have launched a comprehensive, 65 page booklet on advanced search marketing techniques and trends.
Microsoft sits on their search council along with Google, Yahoo! and a host of agencies and industry luminaries.
For this publication I was very kindly asked to write the introduction.
The publication includes tips and tricks on a plethora search related disciplines including:
Combining natural and paid search
Demographics
Geographic and behavioural targeting
Bid management strategies
Advanced analytics
Copywriting for search
Cross media integration
Multi channel search
Global search culture
Download here: IAB Advanced Search Marketing Handbook
Check out this article I contributed to on Search Engine Land – Shari Thurow asked me and Dixon Jones, among others, to fly the British flag and let US marketers know how they should market to us across the pond.
Got a lot of traction on Sphinn too 🙂
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