You need to know: Drake Morton

Get Your Search House In Order

For The Holidays

by Stephen DiMarco , Friday, November 6, 2009

The numbers are in. The National Retail Federation (NRF) is, not surprisingly, predicting another dip in holiday spending in 2009, starting with an 1% drop in sales during the eighth-largest U.S. spending holiday, Halloween.  It’s a dismal outlook for marketers, but one that doesn’t have to leave us scratching our heads and biting our nails until the actual sales figures are reported.

Even with dour consumer spending and strained marketing budgets, smart marketers can adjust their marketing strategies to divert search traffic from rivals and gain an online competitive advantage. (more…)

Good Information: Drake Morton

And Now: The New News Regime

by Gord Hotchkiss , Thursday, October 8, 2009

This week, I moderated a session at SMX about real-time search. Personally, I find the convergence of social and search to be perhaps the most significant trend of 2009. Social adds an entirely new dimension to search. Traditionally search has been used to find “what” you wanted to know more about. Social adds the dimension of time. Suddenly, relevance isn’t the only measure. Search now needs a “stale date,” a measure of the freshness of the results.
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Google continues to grab market share in the battle of online search

Are You Measuring Real Success?

by Todd Friesen , Friday, April 17, 2009

I’ve been doing SEO for 10 years now. I was there to witness the passing of Infoseek (RIP), Black Monday at AltaVista and the unstoppable rise of Google. In all that time and through all that change there is one thing that has remained constant and generally never ceases to amaze me.

People still have very little idea how to measure success online. There a few recurring scenarios that pop up all the time when I’m talking to potential clients about search marketing:
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Good Information: Drake Morton

Display Ads Lift Paid and Organic Search 155%

The presence of display advertising significantly affects click-through and search style across paid and organic searches and such ads can lift both types of search an average of 155%, according to a study by Specific Media, writes MarketingVox.

The study, which demonstrates a correlation between display advertising and search, finds that consumers exposed to display advertising are more likely than unexposed consumers to search for brand terms (such as “BMW” in the automotive category), and segment terms (such as “635 CSi”). (more…)

Excellent Read: Drake Morton

It’s about the people!!

Bid Management May Not Be A Commodity

But It’s Not A Differentiator

by Aaron Goldman , Wednesday, December 24, 2008
What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

Bid management tools, not SEM agencies, are becoming increasingly undifferentiated. In fact, there are arguments that equate SEM agencies to mere bid management providers that perpetuates the myth that we’re all the same.

Now, before going any further, let’s turn to Wikipedia. After all, if Wikipedia says it, it must be true. Wikipedia defines a commodity as “anything for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market… Commoditization occurs as a goods or services market loses differentiation across its supply base, often by the diffusion of the intellectual capital necessary to acquire or produce it efficiently.” (more…)

Remember Reading is Good For The Brain! Drake Morton

Optimization Beyond The Landing Page

by Phil Leggiere , Wednesday, September 3, 2008
IN THE ERA OF THE long-tail marketers, content providers and, of course, merchandisers, have come to the realization that deep catalogs are critical to consumer engagement, and with it, winning share of time, share of wallet and share of mind. Customizing and optimizing all that deep content, however, requires building new bridges between IT and marketing, as Mark Wachen, Optimost managing director at Interwoven, explains next. (more…)

You need to Understand This: Drake Morton

Thoughts On Demographic Search Engines

by Rob Garner , Wednesday, August 27, 2008

ON FRIDAY, FELLOW SEARCH Insider columnist Janel Landis started a discussion around the viability of demographic based search engines. This is in the wake of recent publicity around IAC’s  RushmoreDrive, which themes its algorithm as a “search engine for the black community,” and is based on  Ask.com search history,   geographic research (also referred to as “geo-biasing”) and focus group research.  After a few days of reviewing the results, it appears to me that demographically targeted engines may have a strong shot at developing a user base, and that IAC may have a shot at regaining some lost credibility as a top-tier search provider.
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Need to Read: Drake Morton

Are You Maximizing Your Search Efforts With Email?

by Loren McDonald , Wednesday, July 16, 2008

I WAS ASTOUNDED TO SEE the results of a recent Email Experience Council survey  in which marketers ranked search marketing near the bottom of seven marketing channels for its synergy with email.

No great surprise about the top-ranked channel: 38% of respondents rated direct mail and catalogs as being email’s ideal marketing mate.
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Must Know: Drake Morton

Trust-Based Targeting

by Steve Smith , Wednesday, July 2, 2008

One frontier of cutting-edge behavioral targeting is the push toward analyzing anonymous cookie data to predict probable consumer responses with ever greater control for the marketer. In the conversation below, Ariel McNichol and Julia Johnston, co-founders of mEgo, outline a radically different approach, allowing consumers to choose the kinds of messaging and targeting behaviors that fit their own needs and interests.

Behavioral Insider: In approaching the challenge of monetizing social media, what have you learned from the targeting attempts and strategies of some of the large social networks?
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