Charged with lack of response. Advertisers expected to seek the death penalty, unless defense attorney Kevin Ryan can sway the jury.
Contextually relevant search represents a vast inventory of opportunity on destination sites delivered with the hope of generating responses for advertisers. The problem is, users won’t click on results that aren’t relevant. If user doesn’t click, has the contextual search initiative failed? Moreover, are we structuring relevancy the way it should be structured?
Innocent until proven guilty. Yeah right, that strategy worked for O.J. (read: got away with murder), but it seems poor response has tried and convicted this aspect of search marketing sans representation from the likes of Johnny Cochran. Today, I am the self-appointed council for contextual search marketing and my defensive strategy relies upon two critical requirements for the short and long term success of “destination listings.”
One, destination listings have been mislabeled by both publishers and search engine marketing firms. Subsequently, advertisers have demanded similar response rates to utility-based search returns. Two, the architecture behind destination listings cannot accommodate wide-scale relevant results.
Defense Exhibit A: Language and Matching
Can a search engine determine the difference between polish (auto wax) and Polish (the language) and place destination listings accordingly? Not quite. Many of us have heard examples of an airline’s paid destination listing appearing beside a news story relating to a plane crash. Examples like this are far too common and force response rate dilemmas to the back seat behind negative brand impact.
So how is matching accomplished? As a general rule, search sites use a form of keyword scan to match listings and site content to a destination area. Therein lies the problem, according to Lance Podell, president of content search for Kanoodle.com, the paid listing bid-for-location provider. Before heading over to Kanoodle, Mr. Podell was involved with developing the mapping system for Sprinks (purchased by Google last year) that pioneered contextual search.
“Using the ‘polish’ example, when you buy this keyword, you get nail polish, car polish and polish language listings,” Podell says. “This occurs as a result of the scanning architecture being inherently inadequate for the task. As was Sprinks’, Kanoodle’s approach is based on a category hierarchy which places a greater emphasis on content relevance.”
A category mapping system is pretty earth-shattering news and a whole new way to think of and administer contextual links. Innovations such as this may be the reason Kanoodle now is growing by leaps and bounds and its content partners now include highly-regarded firms such as CBS MarketWatch. Of course, this particular system flies in the face of keyword scan architectures. Though a human review element exists with other content matching systems, the category-based system would seem to be a vastly superior way to accurately match relevant content with destination listings.
Defense Exhibit B: Thinking and Searching
Many advertisers and agencies have complained to me that in order to effectively optimize listing placement, they need to Chinese menu the specific websites in which these listings appear. This is currently not possible or practical for search providers. The root problem being that we, as an industry, have sold contextual search inventory up the river by not creating a separate expectation level for the advertiser. Creative execution of your contextual or destination listing program is possible in lieu of site-specific scrutiny.
Consider awareness. Destination listings allow an advertiser to expand beyond simple directive search. Maybe your client introduces a hot new convergence PDA/ wireless telephone that has the capability of serving weather updates into the phone wherever the user goes. The advertiser wouldn’t (or couldn’t) position against the weather keyword in a directive utility search result. But in order to build awareness of this new wonder product, the weather keyword could work. And, since there is a lot more destination listing inventory out there, the search is not relegated to “available” searches. In this capacity, a contextual search becomes an awareness-driving vehicle and should be measured and held accountable as such.
If the listing does not fit, you must resubmit.
Overture allows advertisers to bid on contextual search inventory separate from directive search listings, and other publishers are expected to follow suit in this arena. But now is not the time to let copy slide. Destination link campaigns may require an advertiser to open a different account or use individual tracking URL’s to measure messaging effectiveness, but if that’s what it takes, do it.
Defense Exhibit C: Success and Cost
This month, eMarketer released a search engine marketing report that, among other things, shed some light on the contextual cost conundrum. For two case study firms in different industries, NewGate Internet compared results for paid search and contextual search on Google— showing higher average costs per click, catastrophically lower clickthrough rates, a higher cost per registration and a significantly lower share of spending.
Of course it did all that, but why?
The users’ mind set is different in a destination area when contextual links are viewed, yet we hold contextual inventory to the same standard as directive search. This is the same moronic backward strategy that painted online marketing into the direct “response only” corner in the first place. However, today we have credible resources like Dynamic Logic and Insight Express to help us qualify secondary impact of advertising that does not initiate a click, but somehow does initiate a sale or desired activity at some point. Unfortunately, most SEM firms haven’t needed to use these tools to prove the value of search. To that I can only say: no time like the present.
Closing Argument
Ladies and gentlemen of the advertising community jury, my client is innocent. I ask you to consider all of the facts before sending this pillar of innovation in the search engine advertising community down for the dirt nap.
With creative thought and smart execution, destination listings can be an invaluable resource for you. Above all, as an advertiser, you have choices for contextual search that you may not have with directive search, since there are no traffic or reach monopolies in this space. That is to say, a tier two search provider with a good contextual or destination listing program can effectively compete with tier one players.
Clearly, my client has shown considerable improvement in behavior and performance, despite being unfairly labeled, and deserves another chance.
About the author: iMedia search columnist Kevin Ryan’s current and former client roster reads like a “who’s who” in big brands; Rolex Watch, USA, State Farm Insurance, Farmers Insurance, Minolta Corporation, Samsung Electronics America, Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Panasonic Services, and the Hilton Hotels brands, to name a few. He is currently Director of Market Development at IPG’s Wahlstrom Interactive where he provides guidance in directional online marketing to Wahlstrom’s prestigious list of clients and sister agency brands.
Meet Kevin Ryan at Search Engine Strategies on March 2, 2004.