The second day’s last session, Beyond The Majors where Jeffrey K. Rohrs joins us again as moderator with speakers Scott Greenberg, SVP, Advertising Services, Marchex; Anton E, Konikoff, Founder and CEO, Acronym Media; Matt Greitzer, Director of Search Marketing, Avenue A|Razorfish; T. J. Kelley, VP, Marketing, LookSmart and Tom Paraboschi, Director of Advertising Sales and Agency Relations, MIVA.
Anton Scott Greenberg was the first to discuss on what to expect and how to make the best beyond the 3 major search engines. Anton E. Konikoff even goes on to declare June 5 International Second Tier Search Appreciation Day.
When should we shift or consider using second tier engines?
- Large budgets and not enough inventories on GYMa
- Opportunity to lower blended cost/conversion
- Brand defense imperatives
- Client/boss insists on diversification
- Really good looking search engine reps.
Why should we shift to 2nd tier engines?
- Lower CPC than majors (1 cent)
- Better and unique positioning
- Fewer bidders -> more winners
- Different footprint
- Tap into niche audience segments
- High-touch customer support
Share of paid search budgets:
- 1% of search market share == $100 million in revenue, $1 billion in market cap – Don Dodge, Microsoft
- At Acronym, we spend 15% (incl International)
- Important Considerations to know before shifting to 2nd tier engines
- Secondary engines do not typically offer conversion tracking
- Lack of APIs and integration with big management tools ? manual reporting and optimization is often necessary
- Typically results are not real time – could be up to 48 hours delay
- Do not always report on same metrics
More aspects to consider:
- Features: some do not offer geo-targeting, budget options by campaign, landing page testing and multiple ad copy
- Distribution is not always top-notch
- Click fraud potential is thought to be higher
- Not always clear editorial guidelines
Matt says to start with low bids and test, test, test. Dedicated landing pages might be worthwhile, evaluate your situation. He recommends sharing your conversion data with the vendors; you’ll save time.
Next is Matt Greitzer to speak on 2nd tier engines. On 2nd Tier Spending, his company (Avenue A|Razorfish) :
- Spent last year (06) $151,000,000
- Of that, considerably less than 1% went to 2nd Tier engines
Challenges according to him are:
- Operation barriers – it requires a lot more effort with every new engine you add as they are not always compatible. One needs to learn a new UI which takes more time.
- Quality Issue – both real and perceived quality problems. Customers don’t want to test things that ‘aren’t going to work’. Change the notion that 2nd tiers are of lesser quality and are less desirable.
- Low Volume – If you’re going to get 2% incremental volume, is it worth the extra hours a week that you’re going to put into it or should you spend that time on your google campaign? Is the amount of benefit you’re going to get from working w/ a second tier engine going to be worth the extra 2-4 hours a week you’ll be spending on it.
Matt gives useful tips like:
- Possible success in verticals for B2B, particularly with Business.com and Industry Brains. Also Quigo and Pulse360.
- In the travel space, he likes Trip Advisor, they offer good traffic.
- For the retail space, he likes Shopzilla, Pricegrabber, NexTag, Shopping.com. He says to expect a 10-20% increase in volume. However, for this you need to do feed management.
Up next is local boy, Scott Greenberg of Marchex. Business of Marchex Search Marketing is based on:
- Pay Per Click Network
- Contextual Network
- Search Marketing Services
Marchex PPC Differentiators:
- Focus on traffic quality
- Our won websites plus top distribution partners
- Unbilled clicks at 10%-12%
(Industry standard: Google 5-10%, Yahoo 10-15%)
Most of the time, Scott talks about the history of Marchex, their growth and what they’re bringing out by the end of the month.
Next comes LookSmart’s VP, Marketing, T. J. Kelley.
The LookSmart PPC Network consists of ISPs, Niche Publishers, Mainstream Publishers, Niche Search Sites, LookSmart Consumer Sites, Web Portals, Toolbars, and Meta Search Sites. He touts LookSmart’s extended reach as a way of cutting down the time you have to spend on getting out there. They have publisher growth and are able to serve out ads further. They have average daily search queries of 400 million and a fairly low average CPC. Technology (adCenter, api, scalable platform) and Client Services (campaign tracking)
So I’d like to focus on these three: Niche Publishers, Mainstream Publishers and Niche Search Sites to show you how we’re going about growing our traffic and increasing exposure for our advertisers.
Next and last is Tom Paraboschi, who starts his talk by saying 45% of people’s time online is spent browsing. This means, 2nd tier engines have an opportunity to be in places that are not search.
At MIVA, they have noticed changes like:
- Focus on quality not quantity
- Vertical specific traffic
- PPC beyond acquisition for branding purposes
- SEM used to support PR
- ATL integration
- Many advertisers are being priced out of the majors.
Recently MIVA launched their Precision Network, a vertically focused PPC, which spans over 18 business categories, has lower volume and higher value, was developed in response to advertiser demand and is ROI focused. It is now out of beta.
Tom goes through the case study of True.com
Objectives:
Increase membership for leading US dating site and help drive brand awareness
Strategy:
Precision Network campaign developed for the ‘dating’ vertical. Mix of brand, generic, specific and seasonally focuses keywords.
Quality needs to grow as well as quantity–verticalization is the first step
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