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Now I don’t want to sound like I’m a Google-basher because obviously they’re very successful, they’re very big – we all use search all the time and some users are more sophisticated than others. But the question I’d argue is we don’t really understand well enough yet what happens before search, what’s driving that demand, what’s forcing people into search and therefore what alternatives exist. And I think smart advertisers will be the ones that start to understand how search fits within the whole process, rather than just ‘Let’s get in and do loads of paid search and see how much money we can spend?’


Let’s say I make a purchase and a little further down the line, the person who takes the sale goes ‘He came in from Google. Let’s give Google the value of that sale.’ And I’m thinking hang on a second, I actually read the review in ‘What Hi-Fi’. I started buying this because I watched the Gadget Show. So the demand was stimulated elsewhere, and that’s the same shopping process that people go through for the vast majority whether it’s holidays, financial products, electronic consumer goods, whether it’s B2B services. People will broadly follow a similar pattern.


NJ: When is it best to use paid search? NS: Paid search is really good when you’re looking at tactical or seasonal campaigns. When you are looking at short-term up weights, you’re hitting the end of the month and we need to bring some volume in, then that’s when it’s a very flexible tap that you can turn off and on.


The downside is that popular keywords are really expensive. If you’re active in the finance category, God help you!


This is what search has always been about - relevancy; to people getting the relevant listings to the relevant results to what they’re searching for. I don’t see why how much an advertiser is prepared to pay is having any impact on how relevant that listing is to people, unless you go back to what we said earlier: unless you’re in the purchase mode.


HIT ME! HOW TO GET YOUR BUSINESS TO PUNCH ITS WEIGHT 0NLINE 5


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