search engines

With search engines like Google now also serving display ads, Acceleration's director of search marketing anticipates that search marketers will play a greater media planning role.

We don't need to go into too much detail about recent acquisition activity, but Google buying DoubleClick, Microsoft buying aQuantive and AOL buying TACODA gives us a good indication that major search players are fast becoming more than just search engines. It's clear that they are no longer the realm for search marketers alone.

With this channel now offering both search and display advertising services in one place, it poses the question of who should be responsible for buying more "traditional" forms of online media, through Google or any search engine for that matter: paid search marketers or traditional online media planners?

Let's look at how traditional online media planners buy.

1. They receive a detailed brief from the client.
2. Request for proposals are sent out.
3. Proposals are accepted, rejected or further negotiated. If niche site placements are unavailable there is usually some form of run of site at a low CPM or certain placements are given as a value add.
4. A media plan is developed including creative specifications.
5. The media plan is approved, rejected or modified.
6. Media placements are booked and inventory reserved, usually by way of a contract/insertion order.
7. Once all the placements have been set up, clients supply creative and tracking tags to media owners directly, or give the creative to the agency for implementation.
8. Campaigns go live.

The media planning process is generally based on the same core of activities, with every individual doing things slightly differently. The process is quite a laborious one, with lots of up-front negotiating, dealing with over-delivery and under-delivery issues, and having to reconcile what was bought vs. what was delivered, all while still ensuring that clients get value from their spend.

When buying impressions on a CPM basis, the onus is on the publisher to serve the ads, with the planner having very little room to maneuver. If the impressions don't deliver the desired results or meet the correct objectives, there isn't much to negotiate with.

With Google Site Targeting, although impression levels are not guaranteed, this can become an advantage when the placement doesn't perform, as you can remove it just as you would an under-performing keyword. With Google, planners have the ability to test, remove, add new sites, change creative, test different landing pages and optimize CPM, whenever they want, and in real time. Not too different from paid search is it?

It could be argued that search marketers already are -- to some degree -- taking on the role of media planning, incorporating content-targeted ads and more recently site-targeted campaigns into the overall mix. However, this has usually been limited in scope because of the inability to know where your ads were being placed, and the inability to serve ads through a third party.

However, Google has recently introduced placement performance reporting for the content network, which provides advertisers with increased transparency into the performance of ads on the Google content network. The "Placement Performance" report provides site-by-site performance metrics -- including clicks, impressions, cost and conversion data (if tracked through Google) -- for domains or URLs where ads have appeared. Although this level of reporting is not currently available through Google's API, I would like to think it will be available at some point in the future. This means that you would be able to track conversion by site placement, using the same technology currently used for managing paid search marketing programs. This gives marketers and agencies more incentive to use this channel in a more effective manner.

While the third-party serving issue still exists, you only need to consider the pending Google/DoubleClick deal, and what this will do for managing search and display as an integrated channel. Understanding the interplay between media and search is going to be invaluable.

I don't believe online media buyers and planners are looking at Google as a complete source of media yet, which may be a little short sighted, especially as the Google network is well documented as the leading ad network on the planet with a claimed reach of over 88 percent (of internet users, one assumes); 0.5 billion-plus page views a day on the network; and 706 million visitors per day to the network.

There is a huge opportunity for traditional online media planners to utilize the real benefits of the Google network, making their job a lot easier in the process.

Nowadays, search marketers are being asked to take on projects that have traditionally fallen to online media planners: buying advertising on targeted sites. Search marketers understand and know the Google system well, but perhaps its time for traditional online media planners and paid search marketers to work more closely together. The opportunities to do so are only just beginning to surface.

Wayne Lieb is the search marketing director at Acceleration. Read full bio.