We are sitting in on the Everything But Google: Alternative Search Marketing Options panel. Andrew Goodman is moderating the panel this afternoon.
First Up Sage Lewis, Search Engine Watch Expert & President of Sagerocks.com.
Sage talks about how there is more media to buy now than ever before, but there is not more money to spend and that there is a larger risk envolved if you don’t know what you are doing. Sage wants to talk about some ways to buy media other than Google.
The first way he talks about is buying media through bloggers (Pay Per Post). Sage discusses that ask.com is a great source because its cheap good traffic.
The next one on his list is superpages.com he goes on to state that overall it converts very well.
Facebook business center allows you to buy ad space based on demographic, which at there are over 23 million people at facebook.
Quigo allows you to target newspapers and magizine, its pay per click and you can target specific locations.
Sage showcases through his own study that Yahoo! and MSN converts very well, He shows that Superpages, ASK and Looksmart has a much lower cost per click. Sages give us 3 tips,
Tip 1 – Buy alternative advertising through referrals
Tip 2 – Be every clear about your goals and time frames
Tip 3 – Allocate 10 – 25% of your online budget to testing
Next up is Jay Sears, EVP, Strategic Products and Business Development, Context Web
Jay wants to talk about three things today:
– why search is not advertising
– why companies have spent 10B+
– Trends you should be watching
Jay says that search is at the bottom the pyramid, and content is at the top of the pyramid. He states that there is only so much search, the other part of the surfers time is spent elsewhere.
Targeting content vs search – When your targeting content you want to go wide versus search where you want to be as specific as possible.
Jay states that the display market is highly fragmented, there are over a million advertisers that hold market share.
He shows data that there are over 120 thousand blogs created each and every day.
The platforms that are being created with help aggregate all these sources for display advertising.
Trends that Jay has seen:
– Display / content advertising is the next battle ground
– Innovation is self service
– Buyers and sellers become traders
Next up is Jonathan Ewert, President and CEO, Looksmart
Jonathan talks about whats happening in the market, he talks about when ad prices on big search engines goes up it drives the need to diversify ad spend.
Very hard to touch Google’s reach
Search advertising networks are contextual searches in the internet outside of search engines.
Search ad networks can provide geo targeting capabilities and lower prices than main stream search engines.
Next up we have Dustin Kwan, Senior product manager, ASK Sponsored listings
They reach over 55 million unique visitors
Extend your reach for additional searchers
Dustin states you will see lower CPA and CPC with ASK than you will Google, Yahoo!, and MSN
Top three under-unitized ASK tools
1. dynamic insertion codes – similar to dynamic keyword insertion. You can add additional information such as feed source, measure ad performance, and combine multiple codes for tracking
2. Keyword Prospecting Report – provides a list of undersold and or have low bids. You can find high volume keywords to expand you reach, find keywords with less competition, and test out keywords at lower bid rates.
Dustin makes note that just because a keyword words for you on one network doesnt mean it will work for every other network.
3. Run of category targeting – Ability to target your ads to specific categories. Currently have 38 target-able categories. It has a very high impression and click rate. Dustin states not to use it for exact match targeting but use it for broad match.
Last up we have Mary Berk, Senior product manager, Microsoft
Mary says that Microsoft is here because they are the smallest of the big three, it was kinda of funny 🙂
Overview:
– Building a network
– Diversity is Good
– Quality of Traffic
Microsoft is really focused on running an ad network. Mary states that Microsoft has options that Google doesn’t have.By providing fast and easy plug and play solutions to import campaigns into these networks will make it more appealing to switch over.
Ad Center / live search now called Microsoft Advertsing
Led overall conversation rates by 3.8%
Mary talks about looking at other engines to discover:
-CPA
– Different traffic and audience types
– Different publishers
New tools will now allow you to easily import your campaigns from Google
Now providing adcenter analytics
Next adcenter desktop which is an offline editor for your campaigns
Now have a new community site for Adcenter for you to ask all your questions.
