Q1 Global Search Spend Up 16% Over Q1, 2009

Craig Macdonald

Now that February is behind us, we have a chance to see how search spending in Q1 is doing for Covario’s high tech customers. As we have reported in the past, Covario tracks spending for most of the major bell-whether high tech companies – and does so on a global basis. Through March 7th, we have been able to compare paid search advertising performance from Q1 2009 through Q1 2010 to see how advertisers are spending.  In our Global Search Spend Analysis for 2009, published in January, we forecast that growth in paid search spend in 2010 would be 15% for the entire year.  So, what are advertisers actually doing?

Spending

It is hard to compare Q4 with Q1 in any particular year since Q4 tends to be the biggest spend quarter, and Q1 the smallest.  And Q1 so far has lived up to billing.  Spending is down 10% in APAC from Q4, 20% in EMEA, and 30% in Americas, but that is expected.  What is a more relevant comparison is how the paid search advertisers are spending versus Q1 of 2009 – remembering that we saw a huge decrease in spend last year (average of 30-35% globally) as the impact of the Great Recession hit our customers.  Spending in APAC is up 25% from last year in Q1, it is flat in EMEA (+.31%), and up 22.18% in Americas.  Overall, spending is up about 16% — right on the Covario forecast.

Looking again at Q1 2009 to Q1 2010 projections as the search engine platform level, here is what we are seeing so far.

  • Google – Growth in the Americas is tracking at 20%, but is flat in EMEA and growing at 12% in APAC.  The slower growth in APAC, where overall growth is 25%, is likely due to the reduction in spend due to uncertainties around their commitment to the market over the “hacking incident.”
  • Bing – we are seeing continued growth in Bing in the Americas – 75% from Q1 last year.  The Yahoo announcement, combined with a huge advertising campaign, is having an impact.  Not so in EMEA where spend is down 30% from same time last year.
  • Yahoo – 5% growth in Americas, but impressive 40% growth in APAC – taking some share from Google in Japan and China.

So the trends we have been seeing since the summer – of Bing gaining market share, Google continuing to grow in a robust manner, and Yahoo continuing to gain market share in APAC – are continuing so far.

Key Statistics

A couple of other notable trends we are seeing.

  • CPCs are down from Q4 – however this is common.  The reduction in overall demand for keyword drives down unit costs in the first quarter.  What was most interesting was a reduction in CPCs on Google – 20%, from Q4.  This is odd.  We are investigating with our media buyers in our agency and will provide a more in depth explanation in the our quarterly report (due out first week of April)
  • CPCs are actually up  for Bing by 17% from Q4 – largely due to increased spending on the network, and increases in traffic.
  • CTRs are also up globally – by 5% — with large increases in APAC and EMEA, but 10% reductions from Q4 in Americas.

Global Ad Spend(click on graphic to enlarge)

With this increases in spending expected for 2010, however, we continue to believe that unit CPCs for advertisers will appreciate. The reductions in Q1 are consistent with previous year.

ACTIONABLE INSIGHT – Covario’s forecast for global search spending increases for the year of 15% appears to be on track, as well as our forecast of increases in CPC rates. Advertisers should expect to increase budgets by this amount in 2010 or risk losing paid search market share.

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Marketing with Search and Social Media & the Customer Lifecycle

Russ Mann

How to optimize both the attitudes of the vocal minority and the behaviors of the silent majority

The race to integrate paid (TV, Search, Display), earned (Social, UGC and SEO) and owned media (your website and distributed content) and the measurement around them to do true attribution modeling is heating up. Making this more complicated is the fragmentation and lack of structure around how Social is even defined.  Is “Social” simply the main social networking portals, such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn?  Does it include UGC videos, reviews, blogs, and bookmarkings, like YouTube, BazaarVoice, Technorati, Digg and others?   And, most importantly, where does it fit in the value equation for marketers at companies who have something to SELL?

That’s the most interesting issue – we all know earned media is important, but (i) now how much, (ii) how does it correlate with search, and (iii) how can it all be measured together?

Here are some interesting stats I was able to cobble together, using a variety of reports surrounding the 2009 holiday shopping season:

  • 60%+ of shoppers use search engines (eMarketer/RetailMeNot fall survey)
  • 30% say social media influences their decisions (Comscore Q4 State of Retail Report)
  • 13-50% say online ratings and reviews are important (eMarketer/Deloitte and Comscore Q4 SoR)
  • <10% suggest Facebook, Twitter or online videos influenced their shopping (Comscore, Shop.org eHoliday Study)

Now, we all know these studies are primarily focused around the purchase part of the buying process, and possibly the consideration stage, but these numbers are definitely directional.

Given these findings, I am suggesting and we are starting to research the following ideas:

  • Search is great for behavioral measurement, whereas Social Media is more useful for attitudinal shifts
  • Search marketing represents the silent majority, while Social tends to reflect the vocal minority
  • Search is primarily useful for acquisition marketing, whereas Social Media is primarily for post-purchase support, retention and up-sell and Net Promoter/referrals

CONSUMER BEHAVIORS AND ATTITUDES IN MARKETING ARE DIFFERENT, BUT BOTH ARE IMPORTANT

Clients and consumers often don’t do what they say they will do.  In fact, surveys often show what people “say they would buy” are different than sales receipts of what they “do buy”.  This is important to note as it exemplifies the difference of Search versus Social Media.  In Social Media, we get people talking about what they think and feel about a particular product or service (their attitude). Whereas, in Search people are “searching” and “clicking”; they are looking, comparing and often buying (their behavior).  This is not to say that one is better or more valid than the other. It’s just important to note the difference when considering how to use and measure each media type – separately or in coordination.

EXTREME MARKETING:  THE SILENT MAJORITY VERSUS THE VOCAL MINORITY

My stats above show that between 15-50% of consumers are influenced by Social Media, but I could not find any stats on what percent of consumers actually take the time to comment positively or negatively on products.  Based on other research I have read in Service Management, the general stats are that 5-10% of your customers tend to be vocal promoters, whereas 15-20% tend to be vocal detractors.  All kinds of consumer satisfaction studies show that consumers get vocal at the extremes- when they REALLY love your product or REALLY hate it.  And the average company’s vocal detractors tend to be 2-3X more than the promoters.  Not that there are MORE detractors than promoters, just that detractors tend to be more vocal than promoters.  This is the origin of the Net Promoter score, which many large companies use to measure consumer sentiment.

The point here is that only 20-30% of your customers may ever comment about you online.  Two to three times as many will actually search and shop online, and although many will be influenced by the vocal minority, one would be misled to believe that the attitude of the vocal minority is representative of the future behavior of the silent majority.  It’s an important signal to watch and influence, but it is not the absolute predictor.

THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL FUNNEL:  HOW TO USE BOTH TOGETHER

We are finding companies getting more interested in using Search and Social Media together, and questioning (i) how much to use of each, (ii) where to use each in the customer lifecycle, and (iii) how to measure the results.  A recent Comscore study suggests, however, that still over 60% of marketers are simply using numbers of blogs, tweets and posts as a metric for social media volume and simple “website traffic” from Social Media as the ROI number.

This may be a starting point, but we all agree it’s not sufficient and certainly won’t get the attention and budgets or resources from the CMO or CEO that digital marketers are looking for and requesting during budgeting season..

Thus, based on our research findings and in work with our clients, Covario has developed an initial full customer lifecycle of how to apply and measure Search and Social Media together:

chart-social

In this diagram, we apply a very popular acquisition funnel at the top (Awareness, Interest, Consideration and Purchase), and a less well-known, but still well understood, post-acquisition retention framework at the bottom (basic retention with service and support, cross-selling and upselling the client, and then getting actual referrals or Net Promoters).

One can easily see which tactics of SEM, SEO and Social apply to each stage of acquisition and retention, and Covario has launched and is in further development of the methods, the metrics and the software modules to put it all together and make it work better at the cross media optimization (CMO) level.

In a later blog, we’ll start talking about the specific metrics one should capture at each stage of the game and how to turn them into a holistic lifetime value number and customer lifecycle marketing plan, but in the meantime, we welcome your comments and input!

Actionable Insight #1: When you run a major marketing campaign or event online or offline, look for the impact of that marketing action on your Search and Social Media metrics.  By measuring what works, you can tune subsequent campaigns to maximize your overall impact.

Actionable Insight #2:
Always compare your Social Media metrics against your competitors’ – Social Media is the one place where you can get the data that allows a true apples-to-apples comparison and benchmark.

Actionable Insight #3: Create separate metrics for measuring success throughout the customer lifecycle, from awareness through purchase, retention, cross sell, and recommendation.

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Super Bowl Advertising’s Impact on Online Traffic

Craig Macdonald

With the Super Bowl played on Sunday, several of Covario’s clients who ran spots during the game are using the opportunity to measure the impact of offline ads on online traffic and brand interaction by measuring differences in search behavior over the event.  We have done this several years in a row for our customers –not just around the Super Bowl, but also around major sporting and cultural events like the Olympics and FIFA Euro Cup.  The impact of Event Marketing on search is strategically important, and intuitively surprising. 

Event marketing like the Super Bowl is different.  The size of the audience is so large, and the brand reach is so significant, that in almost every case there is a corresponding major impact on online traffic and brand interaction. What is strategic is that event marketing provides the ability for advertisers to get a strong read on how offline advertising impacts online behavior.  And this understanding can potentially be used to gauge how other investments in offline, specifically sponsorships and TV spots, drive online behavior.  We will ignore for the moment that the correlation between online spend and offline result is not really transferrable to day to day program TV spots  on online performance given the entirely different nature of the audience and the size of the audience, but it does help create a statistic about how these important channels interrelate – and they do. 

Second, the results are often intuitively surprising.  An advertiser doing a Super Bowl ad would probably enter the ad with a hypothesis something along the lines of “I will get a huge uptick in casual visitors to the site, and if they get there through paid search, I will get huge uptick in cost, as well as cost per acquisitions as the overall conversion rate will go down.”  i.e., broadcast media is a dull instrument that moves the masses, but is terrible at identifying qualified site traffic.      

This is not the result we usually see.  In the previous Super Bowl, we did this study for one of our advertisers.  Here are the results.

  • We used the time period before the Super Bowl as a baseline – so we would measure results for the 3 days after the event to the 3 days before; the 2 weeks after to the 2 weeks before; and the 3 weeks after to the 3 weeks before, and so on. 
  • We did see a big increase in the costs, clicks, impressions and general visitors to the site.  So first part of the hypothesis confirmed.  Check!
  • However, after the initial 3 day spurt where we saw the CTR and CPA increase slightly, we say two key issues – there was 3-4 weeks of sustained interest in the brand and the CPAs actually got much BETTER.  The second half of the hypothesis was rejected!
  • And this behavior is completely consistent with other studies we have done around other events like FIFA Euro Cup and the Olympics. 

  Percentage Change In Performance Before/After the Super Bowl Ad

So this leads to the question of “why?”  Apparently they were far more effective at identifying key customers segments and socializing the brand with an online call to action that drove significant results. Just through search, we saw conversions up 50-60% on a gross amount over the 3-4 weeks after then event, even though click volume goes down, and they did not return to pre-event levels until after 4 weeks, where even then they sustained a 10% higher continuous run rate than pre-event. 

Was the expenditure on the Super Bowl Ad worth it for this advertiser?  A rough estimate says that the spots run cost ~$12-15M at the time of this experiment.  The increase in online traffic just through paid search created a 4 week ROI of $3-3.5M, and an ongoing 10% higher run rate, which if attributed to the Super Bowl Ads, had a continuous value over 12 months of ~$4.0-4.5M.  We did not factor in organic or direct to site, however assuming that paid search contributes ~50% of the online results, we could say that there was ~$10M in attributable value to the organization from the ads.   So at a high level, directly attributable one year value does not justify the expenditure. And now commence with discussion of “all the other things that pulled through from this ad” from a branding standpoint – but attribution modeling is for another blog.

  • ACTIONABLE INSIGHT #1:  Attributing online value to event marketing programs like the Super Bowl is a valuable exercise.  We recommend the methodology of using the pre-event time period as a benchmark in a particular locality and comparing to the same time period post event marketing program to measure lift and change in behavior.
  • ACTIONABLE INSIGHT #2:  Event Marketing usually “works” – by this we mean that it drives large increases in traffic quickly, and conversion results within 3-4 weeks at rates far above pre-event levels.
  • ACTIONABLE INSIGHT #3:  Event Marketing has a sustainability of 4 weeks in most cases, meaning that paid search marketers should plan on increased budget levels for 4 weeks after the events, or risk going dark on keywords relating to the campaigns.
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INFLECTIONPoint 2010: Growth In Search

Tiffany Feltenberger

Covario INFLECTIONPoint 2010 brought in Mark Mahaney (Citi) to discuss the outlook for search based on Industry Trends.  While last year, we saw tremendous budget freezing and slashing, this year is showing budget increases, namely in Online Retail and Travel.  Automotive is still lugging along, and it appears that Financial Services is taking the longest to get back on track (shocker! since they initiated much of the spiraling recession).  The Search budget returning reinforces the notion that the data driven marketing techniques can reap the benefits of increases by leveraging numbers to tell the ROI story. Keep upping the ante on your analysis and providing insights for your marketing programs, and the budgets will come.

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INFLECTIONPoint 2010: Search is Not a Silo

Tiffany Feltenberger

Penny Baldwin (Yahoo) noted during her keynote address at INFLECTIONPoint 2010 that you don’t need to reach the 600 million consumers on Yahoo, but the 6 million consumers right for you.  She contends that the future of search marketing is combining the power of technology and human creativity to build business, continuing with the ongoing theme of cross-channel customization of marketing programs.  Yahoo has seen dramatic ties between the use of display image and video ads alongside a powerful search marketing campaign, and now ties social network outlets into their search programs for even more strength in brand revitalization.  Both Penny and Matt Belkin (Omniture/Adobe) spoke to the need for marketers to open up advanced analytics within search marketing campaigns.

The need to move the needle in search data analysis is evident.  Search is in a unique position when it comes to data.  There are so many ways to slice and dice it that you have to be focused on what you are trying to accomplish.  Getting the balance of initiatives and answers while avoiding being stuck in the weeds can give stakeholders the right views to engage in decision making.  Too often we use far more metrics than necessary to understand the outcomes, which leads to more curiosity and questions than actual business strategy.  Remember to continue refining, but be wary of the bog of information that can bring business growth to a standstill.  Jay Middleton (Adobe) said that agreeing on key metrics can take your business into an outpouring of increased strategic initiatives that have a greater impact on your bottom line.  Make sure that your organization is not just looking at surface metrics, but really tying together a holistic view of channels and evaluating the right numbers for these channels.

According to Mark Grote (Microsoft), and I absolutely agree, Search just isn’t sexy in the boardroom.  While the techie geek in us loves Search, it just doesn’t have the flash of a display ad or the showmanship of a video spot.  It provides nothing of viewing palate valor, so you need to take the raw data, cultivate and compare it to other channels, and turn it into a compelling story.  The bottom line is testing to discover the right media mix modeling  bringing together the right levers for your user behaviors and ultimately your conversions.

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INFLECTIONPoint 2010: Search + Social = Voice of Customer

Tiffany Feltenberger

The influence of Search from Social is undeniable, but how are you invested?  It’s no longer a one-way conversation, and the more you know, the more powerful your programs’ impact can be.  At INFLECTIONPoint 2010, Dennis Haugan (T-Mobile USA) advises us that we want to be able to enter the world of social media without seeming naïve, or even worse, blindsided by negative product perception. By building out your social monitoring, you can know consumer sentiment so that you’re prepared to have conversations when you start your foray into the world of social dialogue.

The first step to investing is keying in on listening reports which allow you to identify your key evangelists and key detractors.  Know how to engage with these bloggers and influencers to obtain more distribution (i.e. more listings in the search engines).  Design for them to fit into your overall search marketing puzzle.  Are you trying to start the buzz early?  Provide them with “first glances” or trial runs.

Barry Kresch, another panelist at INFLECTIONPoint 2010, thinks that Search and Social share vocabulary.  Social reports also provide industry terminology that you might not currently be using in your Paid Search efforts or in content on your pages to improve SEO efforts.  Keyword discovery within social can help you perform well with consumer trending.

Actionable Insights:

1) Clarify roles throughout your organization.  Maura Ginty (Autodesk) suggests building a Social Policy that includes Legal, Customer Service, Product teams and Marketing, as social media has implications relative to all departments.  Everyone needs to be prepared.

2) Create the experiences.  Give consumers the opportunity to interact with you in an online social setting, whether through participation on your site, other large social outlets or in Industry-specific community sites.

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INFLECTIONPoint 2010: Voice of Brand Effectiveness

Tiffany Feltenberger

Branding always seems elusive.  Putting together branding campaigns can affect several teams – onsite and offsite.  Get ahead of the game by organizationally preparing to respond to multi-channel brand campaigns.  On a panel at INFLECTIONPoint 2010, David Roth (Yahoo) reminded us that the key place in joint marketing efforts resides in organizational preparations. Building out response strategies at the beginning of the campaign gives you the flexibility to adapt quickly as the campaign progresses.

Organizational readiness is key in bringing about great branding campaigns.  You need to be set up organizationally to change the messaging and start the “next move” as soon as possible.  Gary Milner (Lenovo) said if you really need television ads [or other channels outside of search], you need to respond, but you have to monitor and react when the decay around that channel happens as well. As you see the attraction to your ads slow, you should alert the appropriate channels and begin the next wave.

According to Corey Carrillo (Intel), letting your branding campaign linger after its longevity can shift its positive momentum.  Keeping it fresh allows you to continue to forward brand effectiveness that in turn generates higher loyalty – monetized actions and non-monetized actions.

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INFLECTIONPoint 2010: Search Marketers Should “Think Bigger”

Tiffany Feltenberger

Shar VanBoskirk just closed her remarks at Covario INFLECTIONPoint 2010 with bold statements of how this will be the year that advanced search marketers break ahead of the pack.

1. Apply advanced analysis to your search program

  • Go beyond reporting and dig into the data – continue to increase the complexity of the questions you are asking: revenue to incremental revenue, customer counts to user profiles
  • Start using predictive analysis when building campaigns – determine which customers are likely to purchase product/complete forms/build loyalty and build campaigns around their habits
  • Optimize your campaigns consistently – ask yourself if search is the best method to reach certain types of customers; use the best offer that fits the customer

2. Build user intent profiles

  • Go beyond what keywords and search engines are being used – find out what matters to users
  • Anticipate what users are planning to do next, not just what they’re doing
  • Use multiple sources to compile the information – open up to sources outside of search-related statistics

3. Create a holistic strategy – “Think Bigger”

  • Focus on how to extend your search program – look for complementary media to drive more traffic
  • Include search in a more holistic customer program
  • Increase the avenues of impact – it is not enough to target one goal but open up your strategic goals. If you focus on lead gen with occasion branding, open up the branding channel.
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Sabotage your SEM #9: Pay to be #1

Matthias Blume

Imagine going to the store to buy 100 widgets. They cost $1.00 each. But then you notice exactly the same widgets with ever so slightly different packaging for $0.50 each. Which widgets do you buy?

Now imagine that your autocratic boss sends you to the store every day with the instructions “buy the best widgets you can buy, but spend no more than $1.00 per widget.” Which ones would you buy? Would you buy 100 widgets for $50 or 100 widgets for $100? What if your boss added “I will increase your salary by 10% of the amount you spend”?

Search marketers sometimes find themselves in exactly this situation, able to buy a certain number of clicks for a particular price, or buy exactly the same clicks for a fraction of the price. Let me provide an example. For one of our customers recently, we reduced our maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bids to about half of our previous actual CPC cost for two exact match keywords on Google. The charts below show the CPC and click performance over time for these keywords.

  • Green Line — Keyword 1: The traffic for one of the keywords responded in the stereotypical way – Google’s auction moved the ad to a lower rank, and fewer searchers clicked on it.
  • Blue Line – Keyword 2: The traffic for this ad did not change at all. We received about the same number of impressions, the same click-through rate (CTR), the same number of clicks, and the same number of conversions as before. Thus, in some cases, you can get exactly the same traffic for half the cost.Screen shot 2010-01-19 at 12.07.07 PM

We found this behavior on about half of the keywords we tested that are:

  • branded terms,
  • in the #1 paid search position, and
  • $1.00 CPC or higher.

Such keywords often account for a substantial fraction of a brand-name company’s paid search traffic and conversions, and they typically already provide excellent return on investment (ROI), even without reducing the cost. Furthermore, these are terms that the CMO might just type in to their favorite search engine and then complain “Why aren’t we in the #1 ad position?” Consequently, both agency staff and in-house search marketers are reluctant to take any risks on these keywords. But, because the spend on these keywords is also high, the potential cost savings are substantial.
There are three reasons this may happen.

  1. Google sometimes promotes an ad with a high “quality score” to the top of the SERP, putting it ahead of competitors with higher Ad Rank. You can pay to stay ahead of your competitors, but you may not have to!
  2. Sometimes dropping from 1st position to 2nd or 3rd position does not reduce the CTR or quality of visitor. This is especially true when the top ads appeal to different segments of searchers, e.g. if United Airlines and United Van Lines ads appear for the query “United”.
  3. If you reduce your bid and end up behind your nearest competitor on the SERP, that competitor’s CPC typically goes up (sometimes very significantly), and the competitor may reduce its bid in response to your change.

So a great way to sabotage your SEM is to spend more and receive no marketing benefit. This is a special case of high marginal CPC, which is a concern for every paid search keyword.

To understand marginal CPC, imagine that your autocratic boss sends you to the store every day with the instruction to “buy as many widgets as you can, but spend no more than $5.00 per widget.” The shopkeeper informs you that the more widgets you want to buy, the more expensive each one is. You can buy 100 widgets for $100, which is $1 each. Or buy 150 widgets for $300 or an average of $2 each. But if you wanted to buy 200 widgets, that would cost $800, or an average of $4 each. Remember, your instruction was to buy as many widgets as possible for less than $5 each. What should you do? Buy the 200 widgets? No! In all reality, the last 50 widgets, of the 200, cost $10 each (i.e.: [$800-$300]/50 = $10 each). If the widgets are worth $5.00 each to your company, your company’s interests would be best served by buying only 150 widgets.

Marginal CPC has also been called incremental cost per click (ICC). Based on the incremental cost, one can calculate an incremental ROI. Taking the marginal CPC into consideration in maximizing the return on paid search advertising spend has been termed positional optimization, though that is somewhat a misnomer since what matters is the amount of additional traffic gained per extra dollar spent, regardless of the absolute position.

Why does this matter? In principle, if you are not considering marginal CPC, you are not optimizing your paid search campaigns in the sense of maximizing the benefit that your advertising dollars can produce. And if you aren’t optimizing, you cannot determine whether a performance improvement is due to a strategic change or due to a tactical change, such as a bid adjustment. Thus, continuous improvement begins with an optimization methodology. In practice, it is typically possible to improve campaign performance by 20% by optimizing (considering marginal CPC) vs. just adhering to ROI constraints. Using a generic model of CTR vs. ad rank in the optimization provides some improvement. In order to obtain the full improvement, it is necessary to continuously test the marginal CPCs of high-volume keywords. This, by the way, also protects you against bid jamming.

Actionable Insight #1: If you are shopping for a bid automation system, find one that can optimize based on marginal CPC.

Actionable Insight #2: If you use a bid automation system that does not optimize based on marginal CPC, take your top 10 keywords by spend out of the bid management system and manage them by hand. You can increase their performance while simultaneously reducing your bid management fees.

Actionable Insight #3: If you set bids manually, get someone on your staff with an operations research (or similar) interest involved. This quantitative optimization perspective can substantially improve your process and campaign results.

Actionable Insight #4: In the process of writing this post, we searched for written information on which bid management systems optimize based on marginal cost per click, and only found one white paper. If you are a bid management vendor, please comment below with a link or high-level description of how you manage marginal cost per click and we will publish it here – free marketing and SEO link juice!

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Building an End-to-End SEO Solution: Why Covario Bought Netconcepts

Russ Mann

Today we announced the acquisition of Netconcepts, which is a strategic game changer in the world of SEO management for large brands.
nc-cov-header
Here’s why:

  • Covario has focused on building SaaS technologies and predictive analytics to lower the costs of keyword discovery, site and page level auditing, reporting and making recommendations on the highest ROI activities to make on a website – at least as far as SEO is concerned.  Organic Search Insight™ is our flagship platform in this area.
  • Enterprise SEO practitioners need an easier, faster, more scalable way to make changes to their sites!  The goals of the corporate IT department and pre-search engine era enterprise web content management systems are unfortunately often not aligned to leverage the best practices of SEO.  For a large advertiser, the top goal of IT is data center consolidation to drive large scale savings out of the cost structure – which leaves little room for rapid development digital marketing efforts.  Legacy url structures, load balancing programs, and poorly configured content management systems are a few examples of the types of barriers to best practice SEO at most large companies.
  • With the Netconcepts’GravityStream product, we can now vault over these problems.  We can create SEO-optimized pages, at scale, allowing advertisers to take advantage of the opportunity of SEO quickly and easily, without having to involve IT and distract them for their important other missions.

Netconcepts has focused on the retail and e-tail spaces for the past few years, and has built up a tremendous group of over 50 e-commerce and retail customers from Cabela’s to Ann Taylor to The Foot Locker, as well as several leading interactive and holding group agencies who leverage the GravityStream solution.  Combined with Covario’s strengths in the high tech, consumer electronics, life sciences, media and consumer packaged goods sectors – the two organizations now have solutions and experience in many different disciplines for SEO.

Finally, Netconcepts brings a storied reputation as one of the “original SEO shops,” and definitely one of the first to deploy licensable software as part of their offering.  Stephan Spencer and many of the team are noted authors and bloggers on the subtle science and technical details of SEO.

So we are very excited to make this acquisition, to weave the product into our SEO software platform, to bring on an incredible set of new clients, and to bring on a great new team as well.

We will be discussing the acquisition and our overall product roadmap at INFLECTIONPoint 2010 – aka Covariopalooza! – February 3rd and 4th in San Diego at the Hard Rock Hotel.  So for Covario and Netconcepts clients, make sure you register!

Actionable Insight:  If you have any questions or want to discuss the Covario-Netconcepts acquisition, write Paul Borselli at pborselli@covario.com and he will get you in touch with the right folks to answer your questions.

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