Starting From Search

Know Thy Searcher

For the last week, I’ve been humbled by the flu. I’m honestly not sure what was worse, having the flu or subjecting myself to 5 days of cable TV while I lay on the couch. (I feel very close to Bob Villa now.)

While I sat on couch, cheering my white blood cells on, I did a search for "flu symptoms." I noticed a common search problem—a case of one advertiser knowing who they are talking to and others who are clearly not sure.

Search marketing like other forms of marketing, need to focus on "the who." Not the stellar British rock band of the 60s and 70s, but those who are searching. You must know who you are talking to in order for the brand message to break through the clutter. The keywords you bid on tell you "the who" and what their intent is.

This PPC ad is perfect.

It's to the point and addresses exactly what anyone searching for information on flu symptoms needs.

Tylenol, on the other hand, is wasting money (and a consumer’s time) because they don't know who they are talking to.

Simply, I don't have a "common cold," I have the flu. Based on my search—flu symptoms—what I want is pretty clear. Their PPC ad does not begin to address my intent for searching.

Next, I did a search for "flu treatments" and found the same issue. A few very good PPC ads that spoke to and leads to information about how to treat the flu. But again, Tylenol misses:

Once again, I'm not trying to treat a cold. I'm dealing with nausea, a flu symptom not a cold symptom. But, alas, Tylenol is not alone. Vicks also uses off-target copy.

PPC ads must address the intent of the searcher in order to convince them that your site has information they can use. That is why a consumer will click. For some keywords, this can be tricky to judge. Multiple ads can help you test your way into figuring out what ads speak to the consumer the best.

But in some cases, such as with flu symptoms and treatment, the intent is clear. And failing to address the consumer's need will send them clicking somewhere else.

The Right to Buy Branded Keywords

This week, 1-800-Contacts sued LensWorld for allegedly purchasing branded terms in order to show LensWorld PPC ads when users are searching 1-800-Contacts. (MediaPost reports.) The key here is one company buying the branded terms of another company.

This is not the first lawsuit of its type. The question is around if it is infringement of any sort. Currently, engines allow advertisers to buy competitive brand terms if the competitors name is not used in the actual ad copy. Complaints to engines over this are handled on a case-by-case basis.

The main problem I see with a competitor buying the branded terms of another competitor is that it drives up the cost for that brand name. Simply, you could end up paying a high pay-per-click rate for your own name if your competitor purchased your brand name as well. (Many people I know in the industry follow an unwritten rule not to buy competitor brand names, often for fear of retribution on their own brand name.)

This is a problem that is very hard to solve, and sadly, will probably have to be sorted out in the court room. Is it Google or Yahoo's job to protect intellectual property? I say no, but engines constantly find themselves in the middle of this issue.

Honestly, it's not much different than two advertisers appearing on the same page of a magazine. It is up the professionals that create the ad to distinguish it among the competitors.

Besides, every company should rank highly in organic listings for their own branded terms. If a company can not stand out on a search results page for their own branded terms, they have much larger issues than a competitors bid price.

Target's PPC Ad Fails Expectations

This time of year is very exciting for my family. We have a small pond in our backyard and when spring arrives, it comes alive with activity. The fish come out of hibernation, birds gather to bathe and drink, and my kids look for new tadpoles. My six year old started asking a lot of questions about tadpoles, so we hit the web to search for information and pictures of the frog life cycle.

When looking for what types of food tadpoles eat, I noticed the PPC ads.

Wow, Target sells everything! They even have tadpole food. Or, they don't, which is what I found when I clicked the link to their landing page.

Target could have become part of my son's exciting adventure into tadpole care. With their ad they built an expectation, then failed to deliver. Leaving me, the consumer, and a 6-year old boy, frustrated with their brand.

Why would Target place such this PPC ad? Probably sloppy set up from their search vendor. When you get into SEM—or any advertising for that matter—you have to deliver upon the expectation you build. Not meeting those expectations will cost you customers.

Spring Hill Nursery's Earth Day Sale Forgets Search

I love Spring Hill Nursery. I've been getting their catalog for years and frequently order from them. Yesterday they emailed me to let them know about their Earth Day sale.

They obviously took time to plan the sale and get the email together to send out. Yet Spring Hill did not reflect their sale messaging in the PPC banner they have for their own name. That would be a perfect place to also announce the Earth Day sale, and connect it right to their site.

I'm am not knocking email in any way, but I do get tons of it each day - and that's just the email that I want. In other words, I could have missed the Spring Hill email. As a brand, you have to be ready to consistently message to your customers in multiple marketing channels. You may never know in which channel a consumer will see and react to first.

The Importance of Trigger Points in Search

Last Friday, as I was getting ready to head home for the weekend, a Barnes & Noble email jumped into my inbox. It was about a book just covered on Oprah that afternoon called Scam Proof Your Life. Kudos for the up-to-the-second relevance of the email.

Barnes & Noble obviously knew it was going to be featured today on Oprah. The email was designed in advance and waiting for the show to air. So I ask, why did they not also launch PPC banners in tandum? They could have also been prepared in advance and set to launch at a specific time of day. Barnes & Noble missed a chance to be truly effective in leveraging the influence of trigger points.

Trigger points are the influencers that drive people to a search engine to find information. Having a good search strategy also requires an understanding of how and why people use engines.

Trigger points happen all the time - everyday - and if you recognize them as they happen, your brand can leverage search just as people are arriving at engines to begin their information quest.

The Search-to-Store Experience

Search is the most powerful way to drive traffic to sites, outshining email, banners, and other forms of online advertising. Search is also effective at driving foot traffic to brick & mortar stores. Many people conduct research online—starting at a search engine—for a product they would rather buy, or end up buying, in-store. But there is more to connecting the two beyond just providing your street address to online customers.

I developed a process that I call the Search-to-Store Experience. It is a process that enables a consumers that enters the buying funnel at a search engines to easily complete the process in a brick and mortar store. (The issue of tracking that process from start-to-finish via metrics to determine ROI is also important. Maybe I'll discuss that side in later posts.)

The focus of the Search-to-Store Experience is to connect the two channels more seamlessly and in a way that feels natural to a searcher. It is most valuable to the consumer that begins by conducting a search then switches channels to complete the sale in store. The entire process has to feel like a natural progression to the consumer.

Here are some tips in creating your own Search-to-Store Experience.

Make Usual connections between channels.
Investing in a SEM campaign to help sell blue widgets? Then have a blue widget display near the front entrance of the store. When the person that started with an online search walks in, they make the instant "there it is" connection. They'll put the blue widget right in their basket.

Contextualize messaging.
As the consumer moves along the search channel (from search, to PPC ad or organic listing, to a landing page) the messaging needs to mature with that progression. Don't repeat the same thing at each step, but rather go a level deeper. Reinforce, but open the messaging to more detail or product features. The landing page not only needs to have a picture of the product but a full description, the stores that are near them, and a printable coupon to redeem in store.

Uniform branding.
Brand messaging can easily change as it is applied in different marketing channels. Messaging in print ads need to match messaging on a web site. But importantly, messaging carried out in a search engine, either via PPC ad copy or meta descriptions in organic listings, needs to also match your brand messaging. The continuity of brand messaging is key is the different channels feeling unified to the consumer.

Connect other business areas.
If other areas of your business are connected, regardless of channel, a consumer will use the channel most convenient for them at the time. Using different doorways to your brand will feel natural. And if the branding is uniform, the consumer won't feel lost. Allowing online purchased to be returned in-store, loyalty programs and promotions to be redeemed in-store, online or over the phone. This makes any channel switches your consumers make feel like a comfortable part of doing business with your brand.

A Keyword may be Cheap, but Damaging Your Brand is Expensive

A few days ago my friend sent me an IM asking me if I knew where he could buy a bag of salt for his driveway. Here in the mid-west, Old Man Winter isn't quite done with us yet. Being a search fanatic, I quickly consulted Google by typing in "Snow Salt."

I found these two pay-per-click ads:

What exactly, are they trying to sell me? It’s certainly not snow salt.

Whenever a pay-per-click ads messaging does not match consumer expectation, it creates a disconnect that can damage a brand's reputation. As a consumer, it starts to feel like a brand is trying to trick me into a click.

Maybe "snow salt" was a very cheap keyword to bid on. But damaging a brand's reputation is very expensive.

Using Search to Build Brand Trust

Over the weekend I went to one of my favorite stores – Woodcraft. I was working on a small woodworking project and was stuck. I ran into Woodcraft, ready to buy a new tool to help me finish my task. I started talking to the manager of the store, told him my minor issue and told him I thought I could fix it by buying another tool. Instead of agreeing with me and pointing me in the direction of the tool I was eager to have the excuse to buy, the manager told me how to fix my problem with tools I already have. I ended up walking out of the store not buying a thing—and feeling empowered that I could get on with my project.

From a business perspective, I found it interesting how quickly the store manager actually steered me away from a purchase I was ready to make. While he didn't make the sale, right then, he earned my trust by arming me with the information I needed. Trust that will undoubtedly pay off in many more sales down the road.

It's important for retailers to realize that not all searchers want to buy something—or buy something now. Some searchers are looking for information, so for them, a positive search experience does not end in an immediate sale. Retailers can use search marketing to help build trust in the brand.

A brand can build this trust by creating pages on its site that provide valuable information, like showing consumers how to use their products, offer new ideas, troubleshoot, etc—and, of course, optimizing these pages so that they are accessible to searchers.

Just like I'm going to return to Woodcraft again and again, consumers who trust your brand will return. Using search to build trust eventually builds sales.

Search and Open Brands

During iCitizen, Resource President Kelly Mooney provided a glimpse into Open Branding – an innovative concept about how brands can embrace and benefit from the user-generated content model the Web has become.

Beginning to open a brand does not always mean investing in a tactic that feels fringe. It can be a challenge to convince a brand to invest in a viral video where ROI can be hard to determine. Many brands are also still trying to figure out if and how YouTube and Flickr should be part of their marketing strategies. But search is now a proven marketing initiative with easily trackable ROI and it’s a very effective first step to opening a brand.

Search has grown into the first step of every Web experience, becoming the filter by which people manage their Web experiences. According to comScore, Almost 60% of Web users use a search engine every day. Consumers have become accustomed to finding and making brand introductions in search engines.

A recent Nielsen BuzzMetrics study demonstrated that more than 25 percent of search results on Google for the world's 20 largest brands are links to consumer generated content. Search marketing and open branding go hand-in-hand.

At the end of September 2006, I launched an SEM campaign for MI Homes on the Google and Yahoo networks. The main purpose of this was to increase exposure to their brand in 13 different markets. With an industry average SEM click-through-rate of 1%, the MI Homes campaign experienced double that under the guidance of my search team.

Creating this accessibility benefited their brand, not just from increased conversions, but for the ever important mind share. A 2004 Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Nielsen/NetRatings study found that there is an effective brand lift from SEM campaigns. Consumers responded, as was evident by the high click through rate.

Yahoo Introduces Quality Score in Ad Ranking Starting February 5

Beginning on February 5, Yahoo will be changing the way they rank pay-per-click ads. The rankings currently us bid price as the ranking method, meaning the higher the bid price, the higher the ranking of a pay-per-click ad. This coming change will include bid price and a quality score to determine relative rank, similar to what is already in place with Google AdWords.

What is a Quality Score?
A quality score applied to pay-per-click ads means that bid price is not the sole ranking method. This means that an ad with a lower bid price could rank above a higher bidding advertiser. While the exact factors involved in the quality score have not been divulged by the engines themselves, one influence is historical performance and performance relative to other ads displayed at the same time. Simply, if more people click on an ad, it can be assumed by democratic process that the ad is more helpful to searchers and could get preferred rating.

The quality score was devised to try to keep the playing field even. In a pay-per-click process based solely on bid price, nothing can stop a large advertiser with big pockets from taking top spots. In theory, with a quality score feature that effect is minimized as a small advertiser could compete with Wal-Mart by strategically picking keywords and writing well-focused copy for customers. In other words, better quality ads help with better placement.

This process has been used by Google AdWords for some time now, and it does make pay-per-click campaigns a bit more of an art form than a simple function of calculating a bid price. If your SEM vendor can't tell you why your ad is not increasing in position despite bid increases, the quality score is the reason. (Interestingly enough, the quality score feature can also reveal which PPC vendors are truly savvy marketers versus those that practice "simple" SEM.)

Between now and February 5th, it would be a good idea to scrutinize your PPC ad copy. Also be prepared for some wild position fluctuations that week as well.

Search and Tax Accounting

I don’t do my own taxes anymore; I pay a CPA to handle them for me. It wasn't that difficult when it was fairly straight-forward – when I was living on my own making a few pennies a week. But as my life grew – wife, kids, and investments – doing taxes became more involved and complicated and it seemed obvious that letting an expert handle it was best. This analogy makes sense in the Search realm also, on a few levels.

First, if you are working on a small SEM campaign you may not need to hire anyone to help you with it. There are lots of small business owners that run tight, effective campaigns with a dozen or so keywords. They get the specific traffic they are looking for.

But as the project gets bigger, it gets harder to manage the account. It requires the ability (and patience) to attend to a lot of data and to constantly monitor position changes and bidding changes. With a smaller set of keywords, this is not to difficult. When the keyword list gets into the hundreds it requires multiple layers of analysis, such as gauging overall campaign success, ad group performance, specific keyword performance, copy changes, conversion rate analysis, etc. In other words, as in my tax analogy above, as it gets bigger, it also gets complicated fast. Having an expert, where all those layers of complexity feel natural, work on the account makes sure you get the best overall performance and your monies worth.

"Holiday Shopping" for Sale at Overstock

Overstock is selling "Holiday Shopping," or at least that is what their messaging says:

This is what happens if you do not pay close attention to dynamic keyword insertion. The messaging can fall apart and, like in this case, non-sensical sentences are created in the live ad.

Yahoo and Vodaphone Launch Mobile Advertising

One day after Google's CEO Eric Schmidt suggested an ad supported phone could allow for free cell service, Yahoo and Vodaphone announce they are heading that direction.

Vodafone and Yahoo! to launch advertising on mobile devices

Under the plans, customers who agree to accept carefully targeted display advertisements can expect to enjoy savings on certain Vodafone services.

Why MSN AdCenter will Fail

MSN launched AdCenter this year to close the gap with Google and Yahoo. In terms of market share, MSN sits precariously in third place trying to convince everyone they are a worthy contender.

Third place is not a position Microsoft likes to be in. Nearly every industry has a "fight-like-mad" Microsoft story. Will search marketing experience the same?

Not a chance.

AdCenter has some really nice features as part of the tool and it is easy to use. But the reason why they will not gain traction here is simple – lousy customer service. I have experienced long response times, inability to answer questions, and a basic unwillingness to engage.

Google and Yahoo reps are quick to respond, very helpful and seem to be genuinely interested in helping to set up a pay-per-click campaign that will be successful. They make it clear they are willing to help. Microsoft, on the other hand, acts like, well, Microsoft. No one wants to deal with their hubris, especially in an industry where they are third at best.

Sometimes big companies fail to realize that it is still basic customer service that can undo sales. I work with Fortune 1000 clients. I can imagine what it is like for small advertisers.

While PPC campaigns need to always be about the client’s business objectives, what do you think people like me will suggest to our clients when they ask for a recommendation? I know that I can provide great market reach and customer results with a Google/Yahoo combo. Why is Microsoft failing to help advertisers see the value in their product by treating them like they don't care?

SEO is the Click Fraud Killer

Click Fraud is a two-tiered problem. One is technological and the other public relations. One battlefield is the algorithms that ferret out invalid clicks and the other is dueling press releases and media outlets. Today’s news covers the later.

Independent click-fraud firms that sell click-fraud monitoring services are heightening the fear of click fraud. Or so Google says.

But while these firms may have a financial incentive to make the problem seem larger than it is, so to does Google have a financial incentive to make it seem smaller. Half the fight is over perception of the problem and not the problem itself.

I do agree with Google that the problem has been overstated in the media. It’s the hot topic of the moment which can be easily turned on its head, as I did in a previous post. [Post link: Doesn't It Mean Paid Search is 85% Effective?]

But what is most frustrating to me is that while there is much speculation regarding potential solutions for click fraud, I rarely see anyone talk about the most natural  solution—optimization!

SEO is the click fraud killer. A higher natural ranking means that an advertiser can spend less on pay-per-click and get the same results.

Doesn't It Mean Paid Search is 85% Effective?

Lots of hubbub this week over some recent statistics on click fraud released by Outsell Inc., and reported in the San Francisco Chronicle.

"In today's report, advertisers say that 14.6 percent of all clicks are bogus. Moreover, three-quarters of advertisers said they had been victims at least once."

Playing devils advocate: if 15% of the clicks are bogus, then doesn't that mean the other 85% are effective? Any campaign in any marketing channel that can show an 85% effective rate is a smart investment to make. Besides, the 15% statistic is only interesting if it was 11% last year—in other words, trending upwards, which there is no evidence that it is.

Search Engine Watch digs deeper into the report, questioning some of the methodology.

Obviously click fraud need to be addressed (and it is by Google, Yahoo and many others). But don't fall for calls to end search marketing budgets. Nothing has been shown to match the efficient reach of search—paid or organic.

Technorati Tags: search, click fraud

Keyword Prices Dropping?

MediaPost reports on a DoubleClick report that average keyword prices dropped in Q1. This headline appears every year.

It's a combination of more keyword competition during holiday season and a the higher return advertisers experience during the holiday season, giving them more room to increase bid prices as needed.

Marketing ramps up during hot shopping periods and cools down during other times. With the Valentines' Day/Mother's Day/Father's Day trifecta past, now may be the time to find some keyword bargains.

Technorati Tags: holiday, shopping, keywords,

Yahoo! to Release Redesigned Advertising Interface in Q3

This morning Yahoo! announced that it will release the much anticipated redesign of their advertising console in Q3 of this year.

The changes will include a more intuitive control panel, with a user-tested navigation. It is also aimed at helping advertisers to easily understand campaign results.

Also expected is better targeting for local search, so pay-per-click ads can be focused on more specific areas.

Ads will be activated in 30 minutes or less, instead of the occasional 3-day long wait that some advertisers currently experience.

There will be better forecasting to help advertisers get a better idea of what their campaigns may really cost. This is a welcome change since I have seen estimates prove to be highly inaccurate. Yahoo did not say how they will make it more accurate, but I will be eager to see how this works in practice.

Goal-based campaign optimization will also be added as a feature. Click price can be automatically adjusted based on cost-per-acquisition.

Yahoo will also be implementing what they call the Visible Quality Index. With this, ads will be scored based on quality, bid price and other variables. This score will be visible to advertisers, and will eventually determine how pay-per-click ads are ranked. Advertisers will not be able to buy the top spot solely on bid price anymore.

All these changes are welcome additions to Yahoo’s search marketing tools. After seeing another Yahoo product -- the email beta -- they appear to have really figured out how to provide powerful, yet simple tools.

Would You Pay to Skip Ads?

I have been running Gmail and Yahoo Mail side-by-side for the last month. I have found them both to be great email solutions, each offering great benefits. I’m curious to see who steals the more innovative features from the other first.

Both services advertise as part of the offering, but Yahoo lets you buy your way out of seeing ads. For $20 a year, you get several enhanced mail features plus a completely ad-free environment.

I started to wonder if users would be willing to buy themselves out of ad networks in other areas – mainly on search.

Both companies make an enormous amount of money serving pay-per-click ads as part of their search results. But would users be willing to pay to not see them?

A majority of users click on an organic link, not a paid one. But the paid links are clearly useful to many people, based on the growing profits of Google and Yahoo.

Maybe the question can be taken to a larger realm. Advertisements are finding their way into nearly every channel – including video games.

Would you be willing to pay to not see them?

TV Ads Losing Ground to Search Marketing

A new poll by Forrester Research discovered that advertisers are planning on moving ad dollars toward the web and away from TV ads, citing a decline in their effectiveness. Sixty-eight percent of those polled singled out search as a place of growing interest to replace TV ad spending.

The collision between these two channels was bound to happen. Marketers will use the most effective means to spread their brand and products. With 56% of the web population using search at least once a day, search is king.

But there are other reasons why search marketing provides great results. Consider the following:

Search marketing is an active participant in the process.
With the possible exception of the Super Bowl, people do not watch TV because they want to see commercials. TV ads interrupt the action you were participating in – watching the latest episode of Lost, for example. Search marketing, on the other hand, participates in a user’s action. A user goes to a search engine to find information and products. If you can provide it to them at that moment, the user will see that as part of the process itself, not an interruption to it.

Searchers qualify themselves.
Advertisers buy TV spots based on statistics of the type of people likely to be watching a specific show or during particular time slots. Those statistics are usually based on age, sex, and income level. But those statistics do not indicate if that segment is actually interested in buying any particular product at any particular time. Searchers provide this information upfront based on what terms they use in queries. And based on those queries, one can determine where that customer is in the buying cycle. Having your information available at that moment is extremely effective.

Less guesswork for budgeting.
TV spots are paid for upfront, even if half of the audience is getting a snack or running to the restroom when that commercial is on. In terms of a pay-per-click campaign, you only pay when someone clicks on your banner – an indication that they are interested in you!

Search effectiveness is easy to track.
How many people actually watched your TV spot? How many of those that watched it then converted in some manner? One can only estimate that effectiveness. But with search marketing such rates are easy to track, from the number of ad impressions, to how many people clicked. From there, one can even determine how much profit a search campaign is generating to a company.

While TV spots and other forms of advertising will always have their place in marketing, search marketing is an extremely effective way to target customers. As such, any well-rounded marketing strategy should include an active search component.

eMarketer’s Misinformed "Shadowy World of Search Marketing"

Each day, I receive The eMarketer Daily. Today they turned their sights on search marketing.

As part of a report they are selling, the lead article says, "Search Marketing: What’s the Problem? While the media spotlight shines brightly on Google, a new eMarketer report delves into the shadowy world of search marketing to uncover problems that may lie ahead for the industry."

One question: when did search marketing become "shadowy"? Organized crime is shadowy. Espionage is shadowy. Search marketing is, well, marketing – a legitimate way to inform customers and potential customers about products.

For some reason, the search marketing arena has been tagged with this moniker in the popular media this year.

Consider junk bond traders only want fast cash, yet no one regards the investment community as a whole as shadowy. Search marketing has a few similar characters, but no where near enough to justify a tarnished image on the industry as a whole.

I have written about the role of search marketing and its place in the greater realm of marketing as a whole, including the perception some hold about/against search marketing:

SEOs: Evil Magicians or Benevolent Interpreters?
In this article, I discussed the original and appropriate intent of a search marketer.

SEO Shady? Hardly.
I posted this in response to a Newsweek article about search marketing. Referring to us as “shady,” Newsweek must have had us confused with Enron.

Search marketing is still a young industry. As a result we will experience some growing pains. But a greater portion of this growth is general education, which eMarketer (and Newsweek) clearly still need to gain.

Search Engine Use Increasing Exponentially. Are You Taking Advantage?

Last week Nielsen//NetRatings announced the search market has grown 55% in the last year.

The Kelsey Group is predicting local search will increase 30.5% over the next four years.

Today, Nielsen//NetRatings reported that Google and Yahoo sponsored link impressions have increased 16% in the last six months. In January alone, Google and Yahoo served almost 65 billion sponsored links!

Yet with all this rabid growth in the search channel, many companies are still not investing in this method of reaching customers, new or old. Likewise, there are also plenty of interactive agencies that fail to implement anything other than the simplest of search techniques for their clients.

The marketing "sweet spot" is reaching someone with your message when they want to buy products in your niche. That is exactly what search marketing does on a daily basis – presenting results (messages) to potential customers (searchers) right at the time they are looking for the information.

Search marketing has long past its tipping point. It is here and it is going to stay. It won’t be long before more people are going to experience your brand and products through a search engine results page than a TV commercial. Why not reach them at the moment they are looking for what you offer? If you are working with an interactive agency, ask them if they can deliver competent optimization as part of the project.

I will give a tip of the hat to the Ford Motor Company, though. They recently reported they have sold more than 250,000 vehicles through FordDirect internet referrals. The oldest car maker in the world is using a new channel of marketing to sell an old technology (cars) to an audience that is growing more reliant on search.

Pontiac, on the other hand, got it all wrong.

Pontiac Features Google in Ad; Comes Up Short

As I sat watching American Idol, a TV commercial for Pontiac aired expressing the features of their cars and ended by saying, "see for yourself, Google Pontiac."

At first, I thought, "Pontiac gets it!" Clearly, Pontiac is seizing power of the search engine. They must be aware that more and more people are relying on search. They must be aware how search engines are part of the buying funnel. Right??

So I did what the commercial suggested — I Google'd Pontiac. This is what I saw:

[Pop up image: 499 x 473 pixels]

At the top is a banner ad for Pontiac. Somewhat of a waste of money since the official Pontiac site ranks number one in the organic listings.

But I clicked on the banner ad anyway to see what page it would take me to. A page that mimics the message of the commercial? A further search tie-in??

The banner goes absolutely nowhere. Literally.

[Pop up image: 500 x 542 pixels]

Repeated tests of the banner ads continued to bring the same (lack of) response.

The third banner ad, directing users to the "Pontiac Shopping Site" does not work either. Since it is a GM banner ad, I assume it was placed in cooperation of the main banner ad.

When I did get to the home page (by clicking the first organic listing), I see that the messaging on the home page is similar to what they are trying to accomplish with the TV commercial. They are encouraging users to see what others are saying about them.

They are encouraging people to interact with the Pontiac brand through Word-of-Mouth marketing. But even the results page comes up short — no Pontiac fans extolling their love for the brand or the quality of the cars.

It makes me wonder, did Pontiac Google Pontiac? Did the ad agency that produced the commercial Google Pontiac?

So I wondered, what would happen if I Yahoo'd Pontiac?

[Pop Up Image: 501 x 506 pixels]

Same banner ad, same results.

[Pop Up Image: 497 x 506 pixels]

MSN?

[Pop Up Image: 500 x 481 pixels]

Results?

[Pop Up Image: 500 x 482 pixels]

And this took place during American Idol. Forty million eyeballs about to turn into deaf ears?

Pontiac almost got it. It’s just a shame they were undone by terrible SEM execution.

Search Grew 55%. Did Your Brand Awareness?

Newly released data from Nielsen//NetRatings shows tremendous growth in online search. Measured across 60 search engines from December 2004 to December 2005, search traffic grew 55%. Google still holds a higher market share over other engines.

Did this growth in search engine usage also increase your brand awareness?

This double-digit growth shows greater reliance on search engines to find information and products on the Web. More than ever, brand awareness could very well begin with search. Not that highly designed print ad, or with a giant billboard - but that stark, search engine results page.

Search as Part of your Shopping Cart

Holiday and comparison shopping go hand-in-hand. Who doesn’t want a good deal when you’re buying a small mountain of gifts for family and friends? New data suggest that shopping and search engines now go hand-in-hand as well.

Hitwise found that 11.1% of all December shopping related visits started at Google. Yahoo! added in another 4%.

More than one of every ten holiday purchases online started at a search engine!

Search engines are becoming a natural part of the buying funnel and they make a perfect gateway when comparison shopping. Typing in more specific product names net a large return of sellers. A few clicks and a shopper can quickly see who is offering better pricing.

Look at your site stats? Where are people entering your site? It is not uncommon for well optimized, highly product driven sites to have two-thirds of site visitors enter on a product page – not your home page.

Google just became part of your shopping cart.