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February 22 2008 PrecisionMarketing 23
With so many surveys freely available from a multitude of media agencies,
assessing the winners and losers of the online media space is never easy.
One thing is for certain – the industry waits for no one
Has search
killed online?
By David Reed
hink of online advertising and you think of and adjust your marketing to fit”.
T
search. The phenomenal growth of this entirely Mike James, managing director of online ad network Adconion,
new medium has almost overshadowed every says this is being recognised by marketers and reflected in their
other online option. space buying. “Display is as buoyant as ever. There has also been
According to the IAB/PwC study of activity in a lot of consolidation in the market.”
the UK in the first half of 2007, expenditure on He argues that behavioural targeting tools are beginning to
search accounted for 57.1 per cent of online advertising budgets, change how advertisers think about display and strengthen its role
compared to 21.5 per cent for online display. in the mix. “If somebody clicks through, but doesn’t convert, you
Although all forms of online advertising are growing, there is no can retarget them across a network with a different message or a
doubt that search is the 400lb gorilla. In a survey by Neutralize, 32 different product,” says James.
per cent of total marketing budget is now being spent online and, These tools also enable the tight coupling of search and display.
of that, search accounts for one third on average. When an individual searches for a brand or product and clicks
That may mean other areas of activity could start to suffer. In through from the search list, they can be tagged and tracked. Then
some forecasts, display will match search for growth this year, but when they return to sites within the advertising network, promo-
will then start to flatten out. But is this single-minded focus on tional messages can be used to encourage them to look again.
search marketing likely to produce the results which marketers One question this does throw up is how to assign a sale back to
are looking for? Can brands really rely on consumers to go looking specific online advertising activity. The default is to assume that
for them in order to meet their sales targets? the final click is what delivered the customer.
Nick Jones, managing director of specialist search engine mar- But typical consumer behaviour is to carry out multiple
keting agency I Spy Search, says the market is beginning to change. searches, visit a variety of sites to make comparisons, before even-
“The days of selling search against display are long gone – nobody tually purchasing.
does that anymore,” he says.
Five years ago, it was easy to divert marketing budget into
search because it was providing highly accountable activity and
was unique in its pay-per-click model. Since then, performance-
based deals have spread to virtually all online advertising options,
‘‘
You can do more with display ads – video is
putting them onto a comparable footing. realistic, there is animation, you can run more
‘‘
“Now that is the most common model. You can also do more with
display ads – video is realistic, there is animation, you can run complex ads. It is not just about pop-ups,
more complex ads. It is not just about pop-ups, pop-unders and
interstitials,” says Jones. pop-unders and interstitials
Despite the specialism of his agency, Jones says that, “we encour-
age clients as much as possible to integrate search with other mar-
keting. There has to be a push to make consumers search for your That does require sophisticated Web analytics to be in place and
brand”. also media planning and buying that takes account of what the real
This alignment needs to happen across both online and offline drivers of traffic are. Where digital activity is just part of the mix,
advertising in order to maximise the traffic achieved from spon- this view can suffer. “Online is the new kid on the block,” notes
sored search results. James.
There are a number of key drivers of this approach – aligning That view is echoed by Duncan Parry, director of strategy at
creative, so users search for terms currently in use in ads, and opti- Steak Media: “It is important to remember that the use of a search
mising auction bids so that the brand appears at the top of a search engine is only part of the consumer’s research and buying process.
list just as advertising hits in other media. They will also be exposed to advertising, or they may have received
That means optimising pay-per-click deals around specific day a piece of direct mail. During that research cycle, they may read
parts when TV ads are running, for example, or during days when articles or reviews and see online display ads long before they start
press ads or even direct mail appears. One of the problems noted typing a query into a search engine.”
by Jones is that, despite the high share of online advertising which He adds: “Some marketers have focused solely on acquisition tar-
search takes, it is still often planned as an afterthought within over- gets online and have ignored the wider buying process – missing
all marketing schedules. the opportunity to use online advertising for branding and so not
He notes that what marketers should recognise is that search, “is winning new market share beyond what search immediately offers.
a database of intentions. You can see what people are interested in This means they have missed a cost-effective opportunity to
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