Google and Overture representation in this forum drew a substantial first day crowd, at the Search Engine Strategies Conference. These guys were there to discuss some of their new programs and current developments.
David Fischer, Director for Google’s AdWords started out with Google’s new Image ads program. Pretty much the same story as AdWords for all intents and purposes, difference being (as you may have guessed) you have the ability to have an image served instead of a text ad.
Talk about search engine advertising at WebProWorld
Second on his list of was their new Smart Pricing program designed introduce a new layer of relevance to click through results and discount the price of less relevant. As David so aptly observed, “not all click are created equal” and the idea behind SmartPricing is to create a system whereby lower converting clicks will cost less than clicks that convert at a higher rate.
Last thing on the Google’s plate in this track was a brief discussion about their local targeting. David exhibited some fairly amazing drill down capabilities. We’re not talking about plain ol’ circle-radius. Google has been playing with circles long enough it seems and now wishes to offer a variety of novelty shapes for your searching pleasure. Squares, triangles – lots of other polygons I don’t know the names of too, I’m sure. Basically you pick you points and their local targeting will connect the dots -neat stuff.
Overture continues to add to its repertoire of tools for clients. Dan Boberg, Director of Strategic Alliances gave us an overview of some of Overture’s latest toys. We’ll be talking some more with Overture this week so look for some more details to come, I will say the SearchOptimizer sounds promising though.
The most memorable quotes from this session didn’t come from Google or Overture however. Dana Todd, one of the founding partners for SiteLab International, was the lead off speaker and really had the crowd’s attention right of the bat with some great quotes and a few good natured barbs flung in Google’s direction. Here are a few of my favorites:
“The Internet accounts for approximately 14% of user’s media consumption, but only 3% of total media budget.”
“After roughly 7 years in existence, the Internet accounts for almost 3% of total U.S. advertising. Reaching that level roughly twice as fast as cable (TV) did in the 80’s”
“(Google) launched something called ImageAds. Which looks suspiciously like a banner ad network, but since Google invented it, it’s much different”
Mike is a manager at Murdok. He has been with Murdok since 2000.
