Very Good Read: Drake Morton

Effective SEM Strategies For Online Retailers

by Janel Landis

OIL PRICES CLIMBED TO MORE than $130 per barrel last week and the impact is definitely being felt by consumers, many of whom have dramatically altered their everyday activities due to increased prices. The effect is being felt nationwide, with year-to-date petroleum demand levels lagging behind those of 2007, according to the American Petroleum Institute. Many truckers whose livelihoods depend on the shipping of goods around the country can no longer afford to continue working. Some airlines have even begun charging travelers for their first checked bag. And as a result of $4 per gallon gas prices, many consumers are driving less.
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Must Read: Drake Morton

Streamlining Discovery

by Steve Smith , Friday, May 9, 2008

“DISCOVERY” HAS BECOME ONE OF the hot new alternatives to the more common forms of behavioral tracking. One company in the space, MatchMine, lets users create MatchKey profiles of their content “likes” at MatchMine.com or one of its partners like music site Fuzz or film site FilmCrave. The technology creates this profile from the ways a user interacts with different content. Opted-in members can use the MatchKey only at a specific site or bring it with them to other sites in the growing network to inform content recommendations. We caught up with CEO Michael Troiano as MatchMine evolves from its test phase with early partners to a more expansive rollout with new partners Odeo, blogged, and others.
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Excellent Read: Drake Morton

Seeking Conversions In A

Discovery-Oriented World

by Gerry Bavaro , Monday, May 5, 2008

BECAUSE DAVID Berkowitz has been probing the issue of search vs. discovery in recent Search Insider columns (See: http://blogs.mediapost.com/search_insider/?p=770), I’d like to point out some thorny challenges faced by the search community as we move to a world where information is shared more freely via social networks and discovered through ways that might be termed “less active” — because they depart from traditional search query behavior. How exactly are agencies and marketers supposed to think about the idea of discovery as a critical component of consumer influence toward action/conversion?
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Need to Understand: Drake Morton

Search — Where Supply Meets Demand

by Janel Landis , Friday, May 2, 2008

WITHOUT DEMAND, THERE CAN BE no supply. When it comes to search engine marketing, demand must occur on one of your keywords in order for your ad to serve. As advertisers seek more volume in their search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns, typical tactics to accomplish this are to bid on more keywords or to improve click rates and conversion rates through ad copy and landing page testing. While these are essential tactics to employ, they usually only provide incremental lifts in volume. (more…)

Excellent Read: Drake Morton

The Fine Line Between Search And Discovery

by David Berkowitz , Tuesday, April 22, 2008

To search is to discover.

Perhaps there’s a Latin phrase for that, or perhaps it is what it is. The intersection of search and discovery came to mind after reading “Jump Point” by Tom Hayes, a thought-provoking snapshot of the near future when there are three billion people connecting online. Hayes references how central discovery has become to the online experience; we’ll return to his perspective momentarily.
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Understanding the Basics: Drake Morton

Email Production: Keeping the Wheels

On Your Program

by Aaron Smith , Thursday, April 10, 2008

MOST ANYONE WHO’S DRIVEN an email program would agree: it’s a volatile, high-speed, NASCAR-style ride. As you zoom along the racetrack — avoiding the potholes of ever-changing business goals, competing stakeholders, deliverability issues and rendering errors — keeping the wheels on requires precision, a tough hide, plain old elbow grease and dumb luck.
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You Need to Understand: Drake Morton

Do Consumers Know Their BT?

by Steve Smith , Friday, April 4, 2008

WITH THE TERM “BEHAVIORAL targeting” only now popping into the public lexicon, it seems fair to ask whether consumers, around which privacy and tracking controversies swirl, even know what the words mean. And so the new survey of users’ knowledge and attitudes towards BT by consumer privacy group TRUSTe and TNS is one of the first benchmarks we have on general attitudes about this specific kind of tracking. We asked Colin O’Malley, vice president of strategic partnerships and programs, TRUSTe, to drill into some of the surprising results.

Behavioral Insider: Do consumers even know what behavioral targeting is? Can they distinguish it from other types of ad targeting?
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 More Search Marketing Strategies

For The Next Decade

THE emergence of search-as-research, one of several growing practice areas that will reshape search engine marketing over the coming years. This column, part three of a four part series, examines ways search marketers are getting smarter about measuring success, and the implications this trend has on search marketing strategies in the future.

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Recommended Reading by: Drake Morton

Awareness, Engagement And Sentiment —

The New Measures of Search?

by Chris Copeland , Friday, March 21, 2008

ANYONE WHO HAS DEALT with Google knows that one of the unwavering points of view coming from Mountain View and beyond is that if the system is working for you, there should never be a cap on what you should spend. The rationale goes that if you are able to hit your metrics using Google, then you should constantly have 100% share of voice — and the checkbook should remain open while they hand you the pen to put your signature in place, leaving it to them to fill in the amount. As a direct response vehicle, it is a difficult position to argue. If you need to sell 1 million widgets and do it at a given cost per widget sold, and Google can deliver, that, then why stop the pipe? The company has even developed a new system that spends any leftover budget as the system sees fit to help out advertisers in this cause. (more…)

Drake Morton recommended read:

More Search Marketing Strategies

For The Next Decade

THE emergence of search-as-research, one of several growing practice areas that will reshape search engine marketing over the coming years. This column, part three of a four part series, examines ways search marketers are getting smarter about measuring success, and the implications this trend has on search marketing strategies in the future.

(more…)