MSN adCenter Launch: The NLC Perspective

If you weren’t there, or you didn’t hear, the OFFICIAL launch of the Canadian version of MSN AdCenter – or Microsoft AdCenter, rather - was last night. Here’s the scoop…

The Scene

Picture a swanky club decked out with smoke machines, strobe lights, thumping music, flashing cameras, and a young(ish) crowd. Saturday night at an exclusive Toronto hot spot? No, the Microsoft adCenter launch party, of course!

If Microsoft set out to be all that is ‘hip and cool’, then mission accomplished. The event had all of the ingredients for a successful night (IMHO): good food, open bar, live music, and free swag (including an autographed copy of the new Sam Roberts CD).

The Presentation

Three speakers (two MS execs, one search marketing guru) spoke about adCenter’s distinct features and opportunities for marketers. Basically Microsoft’s main ‘pitch’ about their platform is the unique demographic targeting capabilities (e.g. by age, gender, etc.) that so far no other engines have come out with. Definitely something we’d like to see more of as search marketers, and an aspect to get excited about. The lower cost per click and cost per acquisition touted was also exciting, however once competition picks up in this engine, we’re not sure how long these cost efficiencies will last.

The NLC Take

If Microsoft set out to build a brand by this event, the long-term impact will remain to be seen, but I know I won’t be forgetting the name “Microsoft adCenter” anytime soon. Emblazoned on everything from the projector screens to the name tags to the Chinese food boxes (yes, boxes) to the MS-branded blue and white M&Ms in the event bag, the brand was EVERYWHERE.

The event did a great job of ‘getting us excited” about Microsoft, and all that ‘could be’ in search. But what remained unclear (and what I was hoping to understand) was how Microsoft was planning on going about chipping away at the established market share of some of its competitors in this space…namely the ‘big G’. Although MSN apparently holds a 25% market share in Canada…that’s probably about half of Google’s share – and the difference in search inventory available is quite significant. As marketers with both limited media budgets and human resources, we often have to choose between the media vehicles we employ – meaning Google over Yahoo or Yahoo over MSN or whatever the case may be. Usually that decision is based on the engine that will bring us the most potential reach in a market – and the fact remains that most consumers are still primarily using Google. Only until Microsoft Live Search is able to capture more of the Canadian ’searching public’ will advertisers begin to start to invest heavily in adCenter.

Your PPC campaign has been running for months. You have carefully monitored its progress and made adjustments regularly, but you are still not seeing any significant improvements. You’ve hit the plateau, and need some suggestions for change.

Its time for an Extreme PPC Makeover!

Just like all the ‘extreme makeover’ reality shows, your PPC campaign is getting a makeover so big you won’t even recognize it by the end.

After a campaign has been setup and have been running for months, it has enough data to support your decision for change. You are able to identify which ad groups are performing well, and which ones are not. These are some best practices when creating your PPC campaign, but its also helpful to revisit these after your initial setup as you have a better grasp of how your campaign is performing.

Makeover Recipe

1. Group by theme, this will help your ad group to be more ‘relevant’. Improved quality scores lowers your bid prices!
2. Reevaluate the current trends, make sure you have listed the keywords that people are using…today
3. Budgeting. Make sure that your better performing ad groups have enough money so that it can maximize its potential reach
4. Remove underperforming ads, these ads are just preventing your better ads to be seen
5. Try new ads! Even slight variations can make a difference, remember, different audiences often resonate to different terminology and tone of voice
6. Identify opportunities based on performance. Maybe a specific theme of items are performing exceptionally well. This should be a wake-up call for you to act on this. Maybe create new landing pages, new ads or promotions!

It is important to give your campaign enough time to test the market response, so that the statistics shown are an accurate representation of its true potential. There is no magic number to how long you should let a campaign run for before structural changes should be made, but you should allow enough time for it to ride out anomalies. (3 months sounds good to me)

Your PPC campaign can ALWAYS be improved. A refreshed set of eyes will help. Just be smart about the changes, spot opportunities and act on it. A quarterly revamp should keep your campaign fresh and healthy.

I remember what it was like to try and find things on the Net in 1995. My favourite search engine at the time was WebCrawler. When that stopped working as well, I floated around Yahoo, Lycos, and others, never quite finding what I was looking for. Back then, bookmarks and homepage “links” pages were actually a good way to get around (ah… does anyone besides me remember BBS pages of phone numbers that invariably ended up in your “high speed” 14.4 modem accidentally calling confused old ladies at 3am? How I longed for some way to just “go” to the other BBS, and not have to hang up and try the number… But I digress).

Then I found Google. Wow… was I impressed. This was great! I could find what I needed, and I didn’t need to bookmark everything that was useful. I told all my friends (who were also online - this was at University). I told my family (who I’d convinced to get online). I remember actually saying “yes, there’s this site at www.google.com… that’s g-o-o-g…” to lots (and lots) of people. Google made the “links” pages on my own sites. I was an evangelist… hook, line, and sinker.

I still love Google, and I still tell people to use it. It’s my search engine, feed reader, email, home page, map, and lots of other things besides. It’s also my job to understand it and what it all means.

Google has had an incredible level of growth over the years, and when you consider just how much it has become a part of our busy lives, it’s easy to see why. Just look at the dizzying array of options and services they offer, with new services and options offered all the time. With their motto of “Don’t be evil”, Google has enjoyed a very long corporate honeymoon.

But there are rumblings in Search Wonderland. There has been the occasional concern about privacy raised over the years, but it hasn’t come to much, really.

In the last few days, however, these rumblings have been increasing in volume, and it would appear that perhaps a full-fledged storm may be on Google’s horizon.

Take for example, a recent video voicing concern about Google produced by Ozan Halici & Jürgen Mayer - students at the University of Applied Sciences Ulm, Germany. The thesis of the video is that Google just knows too much. Robert Cringely also recently posted an article on PBS called When Being a Verb is Not Enough, about Google secretly buying up bandwidth rights. John McBride wrote recently of his concern with some U.S. government officials signing nondisclosure agreements with Google during negotiations regarding the new data center in North Carolina. Jeremy Zawodny (from Yahoo) notes that Google has been buying up a lot of digital information archives.

Now granted, it’s not quite time to break out the tinfoil hats and move underground. Some of these claims are somewhat doubtful, and some are a little sensationalized. But regardless of what conclusions you may draw, it certainly does seem to be the case that Google may no longer be the “little” Search Engine that could do no evil, in the public eye.

Just recently, Google’s flagship video sharing site, YouTube, handed over personal information to News Corp’s Fox network in response to a subpoena. Now, a group of media companies are accusing Google of encouraging copyright theft. Maybe these situations aren’t Google’s fault, but it’s not good optics for a company that has control of such a staggering amount of personal data.

Google recently changed its system, so that users who are signed in will receive more personalized results for their searches. This means that future search results can be, at least in part, based on the individual’s past search behaviour. This is a valuable service that I personally subscribe to, but now it will be offered as the “default” search for users who are signed in. Even the folks over at Bruce Clay are a little concerned about a recent patent Google filed to rank content, based on the writer, and not just the content itself.

Do these new options affect your privacy? Probably not, since Google may already have had that data in your account, anyway. But now it may become more apparent to casual users that Google does have that information, or at the very least can have have that information. And people might start to think about the fact that one corporation may be tracking all their searches, queries, interests, and perhaps even website visits, tying it all back to their personal account.

So while nothing, really, has changed recently, there are signs that storms may be brewing on the horizon for Google in the near future. Will the coming debates mean some users move over to the other large search engines? We’ll have to wait and see. But this could get interesting.

The Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) conducts a survey every year to gain insight into key search marketing industry trends in North America.

The results of the 2006 survey have just been released…and all signs point to the fact that this industry is not going to slow down anytime soon.

As one of the perks of being a SEMPO member, we have access to the full survey reports, so will (graciously) share what we see as the key highlights:

• Advertisers spent $9.4 billion on search engine marketing (SEM) in 2006, a 62% increase over 2005 spending
• Spending will grow to $18.6 billion by 2011 in North America
• Google Adwords remains the most common paid search service at 96%, while 86% of advertisers have run campaigns on Yahoo!, and 68% have used MSN
• The top SEM objectives cited by advertisers were ‘direct sales’ at 58%, followed by ‘brand awareness’ at 57%
• Many advertisers (36%) report creating brand-new budgets to fund their SEM initiatives. The rest reallocated their existing budgets towards SEM from offline marketing channels such as print (20%), direct mail (16%), TV (13%), and newspaper (13%).

What do these numbers mean for marketers?

Here’s what we make of the survey results:
# 1: You need to invest in SEM to remain competitive. As your competitors increase spending on SEM, you may risk losing out market share if you don’t get in the game, or invest accordingly.

# 2: It’s time to start allocating a larger budget to online marketing. It may be time to re-evaluate the traditional marketing tactics that you swear by - are they really driving a demonstrable ROI, or would these dollars be better used for SEM initiatives?

# 3: You may want to think about other search engines. Google is still king, but no longer the be all and end all. Other engines are gaining increasing visibility by both users and advertisers. With Yahoo and MSN both releasing new platforms, it is anticipated their usage by savvy advertisers will increase further.

#4: Measurement should be a priority, if it isn’t already. Marketers are now looking to their SEM program to drive not only ’soft’ objectives such as enhancing brand awareness, but also quantifiable goals such as increasing sales. For this reason, accurate measurement of SEM activities is going to be even more imperative than before.

#5: Search Marketing is not going away. There have been a lot of critics of SEO and paid search in the past, but the ongoing refinements to both organic and paid search algorithms have resulted in better spam filters and a much better user experience. Advertisers are finding that this medium is highly measurable and cost effective. These two facts alone will likely maintain a strong focus on search for years to come.

Now you may be thinking that our point of view is biased, because of course we’d want the interest and investment in search to continue! But the cold, hard facts don’t lie - we’re just making logical sense of them. You can take it or leave it, but don’t be surprised when we turn out to be right in the end. And just like Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks at the Grammys, I won’t hesitate to proudly say “ha, ha!” to all naysayers.

As you may know, link building is becoming more and more important to online marketing and search engine prominence. Gone are the days you could carefully place keywords on your page and expect to rank in the top 3 spots for a competitive term. Now, your sites’ reputation and history are factored in along with on-page text as to where your page ranks for your key terms.

Online marketers have, of course, adapted their strategies to deal with this changing environment. Link building is a buzzing industry that has spawned a variety of services. You can buy text links, purchase blog reviews, try to get a site on digg, or just go ahead and outsource link building to a consultant or partner.

Some links are free, some you have to work for, and some you have to pay for. When it comes to paid links, many companies are confused as to how much to pay. In reality, there is no hard and fast way to determine how much a link is “worth”, but there are a few ways you can estimate how much you should pay for a link.

The main factors you should evaluate before purchasing a link is:

• Subject of the Site - the subject of the website should be related to yours in some way. While you don’t need to actually get a link from a competitor, the site should probably speak about the same topic. For example, if you are a shoe shop, perhaps a shoe store directory or fashion site may be a good link
• Audience - An audience that is likely to find value in your site is basically a must. Take some time to investigate the site - find out who it talks to, and how. Does the site address your target audience? For example, a “bargain discount shoe” site may not be a good fit for a shoe shop selling upscale designer and couture brands. However, an supplier for a particular industry may find great value in a link from an industry association.
• Traffic Volume - No matter how relevant the website is, it may not help you if it has no traffic at all. You can use a tool like Alexa to help you determine the traffic volume of a site, but note that it will show you the traffic rank for the top-level domain, and not necessarily the page you want the link from.

One great tool you may also want to look into is the free calculator from TextLinkAds. While this tool will probably not address your specific circumstances, it can give you an inkling of how much an ad may be worth. When using this tool, be aware that it does not address factors such as relevancy of traffic, etc. You must make these judgment calls yourself.

It can be easy to get carried away and purchase a link simply because a site has a high ranking in the search engines, or seems to have high traffic. Just keep in mind that if you purchase links which address your target market, you are getting better value out of your marketing budget. There is no site out there that can guarantee everyone a higher search engine ranking, simply from its’ “golden link”. Purchasing links with care and with an eye to addressing your market can help ensure that your promotional dollars more effectively spent in the long run.

There is so much focus on Google lately that sometimes it is easy to forget that there are other search engines out there. Search engines doing exciting things, with a wide audience and dedicated users. Let’s catch up on just a few of the interesting things that Yahoo is offering lately.

Yahoo Video

While perhaps not enjoying the popularity of YouTube, Yahoo video is still a worthwhile place to find and submit movies online.

Yahoo Answers

When Google Answers went away, Yahoo answers may have been the winner. Users can ask any question, and have it answered by others in the community.

Yahoo Mindset

This service allows you to customize your results based on whether you are looking for products and services, or just researching a topic.

Site Explorer

Ever wanted to know more about what Yahoo thinks of your website? You can with Site Explorer. You can also add feeds for your site.

Yahoo Local

Find products and services that are near you.

MyBlogLog

This site allows you to see who is actually visiting your blog, and learn more about them

Pipes

This (blazing) new service allows you to take RSS feeds from multiple places, mash them together, and create your own, custom feed. While this service is somewhat geek heavy, it does offer a great way to customize your own news and information. You can find out more about pipes on Jeremy Zawodny’s blog

Yahoo Calendar

Keep track of appointments and events online, and even sync with your Outlook or PDA, so you always know where you’re supposed to be. This service also goes well with Yahoo Notepad which lets you make notes that you can access from anywhere (and sync with your Outlook or PDA, etc.)

Yahoo Buzz

Want to know what people are searching for how often, and what the trends are? Find more information here. There’s even a Canadian Buzz Index

Yahoo Podcasts

Some great entertainment and information can be found in free podcasts. Here you can search for the topic you are looking for.

Yahoo Widgets

We know, we know - What is a widget? Isn’t that a “catch-all” term? Widgets are also little programs that you can embed into your browser or website. They are usually entertaining or useful. Yahoo has quite a large collection of them, which you can find here.

LAUNCHcast

Create your own radio station by choosing what kind of things you want to listen to.

Yahoo Encyclopedia

Need information? Here you can search the encyclopedia to find what you need.

Yahoo Finance - Taxes

Yes, the taxman always cometh. Yahoo offers information and helpful tips in it’s (US) tax information site.

Yahoo Next

Like we said at the beginning of this post, these are only a few of the services Yahoo offers. This page outlines some of the newest services that Yahoo is working on, many of them still in beta.

Sometimes it can be easy to forget that there is more than one search engine out there. But in reality, there are a lot of very helpful services out there that are trying to make your life a little easier. Yahoo definitely has some great options to offer you.

Even though you may be outsourcing your SEM & SEO, it is still recommended that you have at least a part-time in-house resource dedicated to online marketing… why do you need this?

Your SEM company can advise you of many “best practices”, such as how to structure the navigation of your website, which keywords to use, and where. The SEO company can help you better position your site in the search engines. However, an effective online marketing campaign is composed of many tactics within a larger, unified online strategy.

An in-house online marketing manager can help ensure that all the pieces of the strategy are actually implemented. For example, search engine optimization works best when it goes hand-in-hand with a link building strategy. A link building strategy can work better when working concurrently with strategic partnership building. In turn, strategic partnerships can be easier to attain with a higher search engine prominence. Your overall marketing plan can work better for your business if all parts work together towards a unified goal.

It may be true that your SEM company may be more than happy to provide many of these services for you. For medium and larger businesses this can certainly be an effective option. But cost-conscious businesses who feel that these “extra” steps aren’t necessary should consider that, more and more, search engines take into account your “online reputation”. This is in part determined by what kind of sites link to you. The better “quality” the sites are that link to you, the more effective your SEO can be. The higher you rank in search engines, the easier it can be to get high quality sites to link to you.

One option you may want to consider is having an in-house Online Marketing Manager, guided by strategies set out your SEM company. This takes advantage of both the expertise of your SEM company, and the resources of your in-house person. For many businesses, this arrangement can strike the perfect balance.

Have you seen it? Probably you have - you and over 2.6 million other YouTube viewers. A bride - an hour before her wedding - has a screaming meltdown and cuts off her hair. It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion - horrible, but you can’t look away. And if the viewership keeps up, soon it will have been seen by more viewers than Bon Cop, Bad Cop.

In a turn of events reminiscent of last year’s “Lonely Girl” story, it turns out that the bride is aspiring actress Jodi Behan, from Toronto, Ontario. One bridesmaid is played by her sister, Jessie.

At first, it came out that the video was planned by performance artist Ingrid Haas. But about four hours ago, Sunsilk Canada issued a release that stated the video was their project, (Created by Harbinger?) ‘created to dramatize that “bad hair” is one of the challenges faced by young women, many of whom have experienced their own “wig-out” moments.’

There was nothing in the video, posted by “wigoutgirl” that tied the video to Sunsilk. So on the surface, it may not appear that the video was successful. But considering that Sunsilk has chosen to come clean at the moment of highest media coverage might suggest otherwise. Had you heard of Sunsilk before? Now you have.

Pehaps the intent was to create a “wigout” platform from which to launch a wider campaign. Perhaps it was simply buzz generation that can now be capitalized on. Either way, it has served to generate buzz to an incredibly successful degree. Will this buzz be a good thing for the company? Is “all publicity good publicity”? We should find out over the next few days. It’s definitely an issue to keep an eye on, as progressive companies continue to experiment on marketing’s edge.