Covario recently did exactly this type of study — measuring the top 100 advertisers (using the latest Advertising Age ranking of total ad spend) on a series of factors related to their Facebook presence. In the process we established the Facebook Presence Score (FPS) and ranking.

Top Facebook Advertisers
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So who received the top FPS score? It was Coca-Cola that ranked No. 1 based on the weighted model at the core of the study. The model looked at the advertisers’ reach (number/ growth of followers), engagement (monthly posts, likes, comments and applications), technical construction (brand name usage, linkage to a brand’s website, use of the word “official,” etc.), and reputation (particularly negative user sites found in Facebook searches for a brand).

FPS scores range from 0 (worst) to 100 (best). Coca-Cola won out with an overall Facebook health score of 100 — two points higher than second-place finisher Hyundai. Rounding out the top five brands overall were MTV (Viacom), Disney and Bayer.

It is not surprising that Coca-Cola outscored all of its fellow advertisers. Coke has a huge fan following of more than 34 million consumers. This is combined with a solid engagement strategy, which includes offering enthusiasts more than 25 different apps to enjoy and bi-weekly posts that are each garnering an average of 236 comments and 1,749 likes. Plus, the Coca-Cola Facebook page is technically optimal, while there are no negative pages showing up in search results.

Within the overall FPS, reach is the most highly weighted factor at 40 percent. Engagement is next at 30 percent. Technical considerations follow at 20 percent. Reputational factors, especially negative ones, weigh in at 10 percent.

The best engagement score was earned by Wal-Mart. Although the giant retailer has only 25 percent of the reach of Coke, it is really engaged with its fans. Wal-Mart receives an average of 7,390 comments and 726 likes for each post. This is much higher than the amount all other advertisers in the study receive.

Actionable Insights
Since anyone can create a Facebook page representing a brand – including both enthusiasts and detractors alike – the key to a brand’s social media success is how well it interacts with its fans, We found that several advertisers have done a great job of building their fan base, but have done little to engage them afterwards. This is a squandered branding opportunity. There is another situation with advertisers who have an excellent level of engagement, but lower than expected reach statistics. This is also a squandered opportunity.

Facebook is a bit like the Wild West, where anyone can ride into town and try to rustle a brand away. That said, there is still a great deal of brand equity you can control on the world’s most popular social media platform.

To start, here’s what we suggest:

• Post and comment frequently — Let your fans know you are genuinely listening.
• Engage your enthusiasts – Develop relevant content for them to enjoy, such as apps, videos, contests and promotions.
• Let them know that it’s really you — Clearly designate your page as your brand’s official Facebook page to avoid any confusion with non-official pages.
• Post your rules of engagement – Use your page description to let fans know that you want them to treat other fans (and your brand!) with respect.
• Optimize – To ensure that your page shows up in Facebook’s onsite search results, include your “brand” name in the URL, Title and Description of your page.

You are reading a post from: Covario Actionable Insights
For more information on Covario please visit our corporate site.
Copyright © 2012 Covario Inc. All rights reserved.

A Model for Evaluating Advertisers Facebook Presence

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Why the change?

On July 4th Google declared its independence from Twitter.  This is to say that Google shut down Realtime Search, and its real-time adjunct Wonder Wheel, on July 2 as a result of Google’s agreement with Twitter going up in smoke.

While Google insists that all the contract expiration means is that Twitter will no longer have “privileged status” in its Realtime Search results, we should note that there are other sources that Google can tap into for harvesting real-time social consciousness. Namely, Google+ and Google +1.

The reasons behind the non-renewal of the contract between Google and Twitter remains unclear, but the effects have been immediate. Google Realtime Search has vanished behind a 404 error message for now.

We find this odd, because Google Realtime Search results are still being populated in web search results when there is enough real-time content gathered about the query from Google News and Blog Search links, as well as Facebook fan page updates, FriendFeed updates and beyond.

Source: eMarketer news

It does appear that Twitter, Facebook and Google are indeed building “Chinese walls” around their social content empires. While Google certainly leads the pack in generating online advertising revenues (shown above) from organizing other people’s content, social media advertising revenues had remained out of reach for Google in lieu of securing agreements (or acquiring) social content from other venues.

The war over making money off from other people’s content is dot-com age-old. What with Bing now serving up English search results in China for Baidu and locking up a deal with Apple to be the default search service on iPad, there is more pressure on Google for global search market share that ever before.

We contend that Google’s loss of access to the Twittersphere is just one skirmish in a larger war for procuring advertising dollars around social, user-generated content. The real battles are yet to be fought over who owns the content aggregated on today’s social media venues.

Actionable Insight:  For now, it’s important that search engine marketers represent their company’s goods and services on all fronts, which just means its online business as usual for us all.

Other Resources :

• As Deal With Twitter Expires, Google Realtime Search Goes Offline
• Official: The Google Wonder Wheel Is Gone
• Ad revenues they are each chasing are estimated here at SearchEngineLand.com

You are reading a post from: Covario Actionable Insights
For more information on Covario please visit our corporate site.
Copyright © 2012 Covario Inc. All rights reserved.

What Google’s Loss of Twitter Stream Means to Realtime Search?

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The first question we asked was “who manages paid social media programs?” There is an ongoing competition amongst advertisers over who should do this.  Should paid social media – buying ads on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – be done in-house or by an external agency?  And if it’s an external agency, is it the PR agency, the display agency, the paid search agency, etc.  The results of the poll question were these:

• 57% of respondents say this is done in-house.  This is a high percentage and is likely due to two factors.  SMN audience can skew toward smaller companies who do not have the budgets to justify agencies expenditures.  And, social media is still relatively new and budgets are relatively small – so they may be managed by the social media team in-house.
• Of those outsourcing to their agency, 24% are using their search agency.  This supports our hypothesis that Search Agencies will ultimately control the execution of the social media budgets – because media on social media platforms is very much like bid management on search.  It can all be done through the bid management system, it has similar dynamics from a metrics standpoint, and can be directly compared to the search programs from a performance standpoint.

Source:  Covario, Inc.  July 2011.  (n = 86)

Second, we asked “from where does the budget for paid social media programs come?”.  Our goal was to see whether the budgets are independent, coming from search, coming from display, coming from PR, or other. The results here surprised us.  Our hypothesis was that social media budgets were independent, and/or coming from the display budget.  That is not what we saw.

• 40% of the respondents said that budgets are independent.  We thought the percentage would be higher.  We have heard from our advertiser customers that in 2011, they were establishing specific social media budgets on masse – as opposed to last year where they were adjuncts to the search and display budgets or testing budgets.  40% is healthy, just a little lower than we expected.
• 42% said that the social media budgets are coming from their search budgets, and only 10% said the budgets are integrated into their display budget.  That was a big surprise.
• PR budgets are often tapped to support paid social media buying, which is slightly less than display budgets – 8%.  Mobile is only 1% of the budget supply.

Source:  Covario, Inc.  July 2011. (n = 87)

This is a key issue. It means that search marketers are driving the execution of the programs and that the budgets for social media are either being integrated into the search budgets or are independent.  If they are part of the search budget, then this puts search and social media performance in direct competition with each other and search marketers in the position of arbitrating where the spend will go.  It also shows that our hypothesis that search marketers are winning the majority of the assignments in advertisers to run social media execution largely is coming to pass.

ACTIONABLE INSIGHT #1: Paid social media programs are managed in-house for 60% of the advertisers surveyed, however, if the programs are outsourced, they are outsourced to the search agency.

ACTIONABLE INSIGHT #2: The budgets to pay for paid social media programs increasingly are integrated into search budgets (putting them directly in competition with search performance) or are stand-alone independent budgets. They are NOT coming from display budgets, at least not in this survey.

ACTIONABLE INSIGHT #3: Search marketers need to focus on creating the integrated metrics and campaign tactics for managing paid search and paid social since the responsibility for allocating the integrated budgets is falling on them.

You are reading a post from: Covario Actionable Insights
For more information on Covario please visit our corporate site.
Copyright © 2012 Covario Inc. All rights reserved.

Who Pays for Social Media Advertising? The Answer Will Surprise You.

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Background

The Google +1 button premiered back in March 2011 within Google search results with limited fanfare.  Just a couple of weeks ago on June 1st,  Google extended the +1 capability for publishers. who can now embed this voting mechanism within their content.  However, +1 now requires searches to log into their own Google account, go to Google Experimental and opt-in for the “+1 Button”.

In the broadest sense, and assuming wide adoption of this now hidden opt-in button, Google has essentially appropriated the entire web as its own social bookmarking site from which to express sentiment about the validity and relevancy of content it serves to users across its search platform.  It seems likely that this extension of Google +1 to webmasters comes from low usage of the plus one feature in the search results.    It is doubtful that searchers who use the search engine to find their way to good content would then find their way back to a search results page to then upvote that content; and Google’s +1 Button program offers no mechanism for expressing negative sentiment.

We are doubtful that we will see wide spread adoption in the short term, based partly on the new opt-in requirement to a hidden Experimental Project. But in addition to the opt-in challenge, we believe that - 

1. Publishers and website owners (beyond Google’s esteemed launch partners like Mashable, TechCrunch, Huffington Post and others) will need time to implement the feature in their already busy development schedules,
2. Users will need time to adopt  it within their search and web surfing behavior, and
3. Google will need time to assess the signals +1 generates and decide how to apply those signals within their Search algorithms.

Since the days of Google’s massive “Florida” update, the search engine behemoth has been slow to make major updates to its algorithm, testing any updates on sample sets of data servers and subjecting the updates to rigorous quality assurance processes.

How Important Will +1 Be For Search?

If Google can gain widespread adoption with its +1 Button feature, then it seems likely that it is poised to be a significant factor in search engine ranking algorithms, with no other apparent significant usage proposed by Google.  In fact, it’s no secret that Google has been steadily incorporating social signals into ranking algorithms and focusing more and more on those signals as a means to understand relevancy of content.  The sources of those social signals are currently both disparate and out of Google’s control.   So rather than continue to rely on other networks for critical information that can play a huge role in increasing the quality of Google’s core business  - Search Engine Results, by taking control of the mechanisms of expressing those signals would not only help Google with their principle source of revenue, but potentially lower their costs and increase their control.

Therefore, at this point, for an SEO campaign to be complete and to maximize results, it must contain a comprehensive Social component and “opt-in” to implement the +1 Button feature.

To underscore this point…

First, consider Google has gone on record stating definitively that publicly available Facebook data does factor in ranking, as does Twitter “author authority” and re-tweet activity.  And regardless of what the official record indicates, online tests by marketers abound regarding the effectiveness of likes and tweets and a number of other social sentiment indicators are highly correlated with ranking well in Google Results.

Secondly, Danny Sullivan’s recent Search Engine Land article showcases many examples of hard data indicating a very strong correlation between Facebook’s “Likes” (specifically after integrating the like button on a site) and increases in organic traffic. Please keep in mind that this article focused on referral traffic only, but the magnitude of the increases in referral traffic and revenue, if accurate or directionally accurate, builds a very compelling case for integrating Facebook’s “Like” button on your site.

Lastly, and cases in point:

• Tea Collection saw daily revenues increase by a factor of 10 with Facebook’s “Like” button  (per Danny Sullivan’s article), and
• Levi’s has experience an increase of 40% in overall traffic due to Facebook’s “Like” button, while before the button less than 1 % of overall traffic came from FB. (per Danny Sullivan’s article)

This study excludes any discussion of the added benefit of a boost in organic search rankings as a result of increases in Facebook’s “Likes”, but that only underscores the dual natured opportunity that Social represents. Ignoring either piece - (i) the referral (word of mouth) traffic or (ii) the SEO component  - companies not incorporating these sentiment-type buttons (ie.: Google +1, Facebook’s Like, etc.) into theier search efforts are leaving traffic, branding awareness, increased rankings, and money on the table.

Enter +1
Obviously, as the newest, possibly most formidable competitor to the Facebook’s “Like” button, Google’s +1 button may wield every bit as much power,  if not more so, in the not so distant future.    Google +1 is arguably destined to represent, assuming wide adoption, the largest set of social data available on the World Wide Web, and it is under Google’s complete control.  Every demographic of every Google account user who decides to push that +1 button is now at Google’s disposal.  Given the emphasis Google has placed on the credibility of recommendations by known contacts, and their overarching mission to serve the most relevant results to users, what could be a more accurate signal to Google for serving those results than actual, personal demographic data for a given user? Not to mention the importance Google obviously places on the behavior of users on social platforms it ‘doesn’t’ own and control (Twitter, Facebook) it’s fairly obvious that +1 behavior data does or will ultimately factor into Google’s algorithms.

Would it impact ad sales for the better?  Is it strickty organic?  Would advertisers pay more for this data, so they can buy better PPC placements and keywords?  We discussed many of these questions in our previous blog post when Google +1 launched back in March 2011, and we are still determining the impact.

Then, there is the question of +1 data being available to non-logged in users. Right now, it’s speculative, but it seems logical and plausible that once +1 moves out of Google Experimental project, and the recent and peculiar “opt-in” requirement, and into the permanent landscape of Google and its algorithms, this could in fact be the next step. If so, the implications of its significance are exponentially greater.

Conclusions
Regardless of the hidden Google Experimental project and the “opt-in” requirement for Google’s +1 Button, there are arguments both in support of being an early adopter, as well as choosing a “wait and see” position.

On the Plus side of early adoption, assuming Google’s algorithms begin to integrate +1 shares as a ranking factor, integrating it in the near term could give your company an edge over the competition.  That is if your site’s content is media rich, edgy, and generally lends itself to social sharing in the first place. Adding the +1 button would most likely make sense.

On the other hand, this isn’t the first Social experiment Google has launched, and so far none of them have been a hit out of the park (case in point – Google Buzz.) Plus, there’s the issue of abuse, similar to “Paid Likes” on Facebook, which could undermine +1 legitimacy as a search signal and ranking factor. If there is any uncertainty in your organization about making the investment of time and resources it will take to implement this +1 feature site wide while ROI remains largely an unknown (for now), then you may want to wait it out.

At the end of the day, Google or not, +1 is still an experiment.

You are reading a post from: Covario Actionable Insights
For more information on Covario please visit our corporate site.
Copyright © 2012 Covario Inc. All rights reserved.

Do You Like Google Plus?

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Even though sentiment analysis is still an emerging science (or should I say art?) its importance to the continuous online marketing conversation cannot be underestimated.  Large advertisers should learn how to measure sentiment about their brands, as well as their products and/or services in a systematic way.  Google certainly is — and I expect the sentiment signal will continue to grow as Natural Language Processing (NLP) platforms continue to produce healthier results.

Here’s some  actionable insights to help prepare for the sentiment search signal.

Reviews with Tags: Capture additional data points with review tags (pros, cons) that reinforce sentiment through previous review content or predefined tags.  Sentiment goals can be addressed by incorporating contextual relevant or positive tags.  Much like strategic keyword selection for an SEO campaign, large advertisers can add tags that help differentiate their products or services for consumers and search engines alike.

Authentic Conversation: Use corporate voices (across social platforms) to reinforce positive reactions and address negative reactions with pragmatic and authentic talking points. Actions speak louder than words.  Explicitly tell customer what you’re doing to address their concerns and you will initiate a counterbalancing social effect where the negative reactions are balanced by a new wave of relieved (neutral) or ideally positive reactions.

Be aware that increasing social spend does not necessarily equate to increases in positive sentiment.  Covario’s recent social media sentiment research demonstrates that advertising spend has no statistical correlation to brand sentiment on Twitter. This research reinforces the notion that social media conversation needs to be shaped by strategic media plans and interdepartmental cooperation.  Conversing for the sake of saying something will not suffice.

Encourage members of the executive team or influential voices within the company to actively participate in social forums.  Straightforward demonstrations of concern like asking the viral community how the company is doing can act as a catalyst for positive reactions in the social sphere.

If executive tweets sound like an internal political obstacle, lobby for sentiment initiatives by highlighting the 2010 IBM Global CEO Study where the top priority for standout organizations is “reinventing customer relationships” by maintaining a “running dialogue that includes face-to-face and social networking interaction.”  Executives can connect with customers while simultaneously enhancing Web sentiment for potential improvements in search marketing.  This can also extend to other departments, including brand management, customer service, and inventory planning.

Content 3.0: Watch for an evolving definition of search engine friendly content.  The definition is currently evolving to meet shifting methodologies of information retrieval including NLP and advanced data classification models.  Search engines are starting to ask questions around the context and meaning of text.  Was the entire article positive or negative? Was the conclusion emotionally charged?  Was the tweet cheerful? The new definition is still being formulated but sentiment and a newfound level of authenticity will likely be part of the equation.

Information retrieval models are outside the scope of this article (and my knowledge) but hopefully the following example will better illustrate the type of changes that Content 3.0 could entail.  In the Google research paper Structured Models for Fine-to-Coarse Sentiment Analysis the author discusses the problem of efficiency as it relates to sentiment data-mining.  Looking beyond product reviews, parsing the web for sentiment is a daunting task even for the likes of Google.  In order to streamline the process, search engines might evaluate ending statements where users provide closure or summation:

“The relative position of a phrase to a contrastive discourse connective or a cue phrase like “in conclusion” or “to summarize” may lead to improved performance since higher level classifications can learn to weigh information passed from these lower level components more heavily.”

In other words, search engines could parse summary statements for sentiment and use inferences to evaluate the rest of the document and assign ranking authority accordingly.  Consider a hypothetical marketing agency report where an analyst favors one agency over another with sentiment-rich closing statements.  Search engines could extract the human judgments made in concluding statement and subsequently update ranking or the authority of that particular agency’s website.  Please note that this research has no quantifiable connection to Google’s current algorithm therefore I am not suggesting sentiment optimization of summary statements (not yet anyway).  Still, it should serve as an example of how the definition of SEO friendly content might evolve in the future.

In Summary
Sentiment analysis software is fast becoming essential for intelligent and scalable monitoring of consumer conversation around brands and products. Search engines are starting to factor sentiment scores in their algorithmic calculations. This score will only increase as the technology matures. Large advertisers should start monitoring sentiment and developing the internal structure to act in response to sentiment data. Organizations should be aware of an evolving definition of search engine friendly content as a result of enhanced natural language processing techniques including sentiment analysis.

You are reading a post from: Covario Actionable Insights
For more information on Covario please visit our corporate site.
Copyright © 2012 Covario Inc. All rights reserved.

Sentiment Search Signals & SEO

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Across the world’s most successful companies, external agencies are selected to strategically outsource online and offline marketing programs – but few realize that in the process, they no longer control their own data!  In the bowels of Donovan, MediaPlex, Doubleclick, and Atlas licensing agreements there exists a contractual clause that provides the contract holder with the exclusive rights to access and use advertising spending and performance data.  The licensing for these systems is quite clear – whoever owns the license, owns the data.  And most advertisers rely on their agency to handle the ownership of this technology license thus giving control of the data to the agency.  This creates the unintended consequence that all of the data necessary to understand performance of campaigns, creative, publishers, brands, business units, and region – i.e., the key intellectual property around what makes online and offline work for an advertiser – is not owned by the advertiser.

Why is this an issue?   There are several reasons:

• Independent, Auditable Performance Evaluation. Without legal ownership of the ad serving and measurement data, the advertiser is held captive by the agency for performance reporting and analysis.  Want to know how a campaign is performing?  Ask the agency.  Want to know how much is spent in a region on a media property?  Ask the agency.  Want to audit the agency?  You can’t.  Want immediate answers to where your marketing budget is being spent or how your just-launched campaign is performing?  You’ll need to wait as the agency extracts the data, transforms it, interprets it, and then delivers it in a Power-point presentation to the advertiser.  An informal survey of our advertisers suggests that this process takes 2 – 6 weeks for most inquiries.   This is hardly a way to operate marketing in an environment where flexibility and the ability to react quickly are key traits of marketing success and company growth. Marketing can’t capture the opportunities of 24 hour feedback cycles using the existing processes.  Within the most sophisticated advertisers, groups called Media Operations or Marketing Analytics, have been created to establish sophisticated analytics skills and, in so doing, are beginning to take control over this data, yet still outsourcing much of marketing to their agencies.  In so doing, they insure an independent source of data on marketing performance and are better able to gain access and insight into marketing results.  This cannot happen without legal ownership of the key data collection systems used in both online and offline marketing performance tracking.

• Marketing Innovation. As new marketing techniques emerge, organizations need the flexibility to select specialized partners or leverage in-house capabilities to test these techniques.  In a recent example, a global technology company wanted to leverage Doubleclick retargeting strategies for its display campaigns.  Retargeting is essentially the process by which visitors to a site, who leave before making purchase, are identified by the networks for subsequent banner ads that specifically target them to reattempt their previous failed purchase.  Their agency didn’t agree with this approach, wasn’t interested in running the test, and was unable to provide complete access to their Doubleclick account.  The advertiser decided to purchase the Doubleclick license directly from Google – at the same price as the agency– and was able to evaluate the technique themselves.  The results were clear, immediate, and generated significant revenue, since retargeting is quite effective in their business.  Given the amount of innovation taking place in interactive marketing these days with mobile ads, ad exchanges, behavioral targeting, video, and improved integration of display and search data, constant testing is a necessity to drive optimal performance and meet business goals.

• Freedom to Switch Agencies. If an organization wishes to change agencies, and they have outsourced the ownership of the ad measurement system to their agency – switching agencies results in the loss of critical past performance data.  This is simply unacceptable in the current environment where historical performance data is an essential element for budgeting, planning, and executing all media.  A new agency must have access to this data for them to have a chance at improving results – which is the fundamental reason for changing agencies in the first place.

Covario believes that advertisers should take ownership of advertising measurement licenses because ownership of this data is critical for innovation, agility, and maintaining strong, auditable financial controls.  Doing so is not hard and typically does not cost more – usually the advertiser pays the same amount directly to Atlas (Microsoft), Donovan Data Systems (Donovan), or to Doubleclick (Google) as the transfer cost they received from the agency.

The benefits are many:  complete access across all internal and agency teams to this critical data, faster turn-around times on information and analytics, and far more freedom to consolidate data across all media types: search, display, video, social media, and all forms of offline media.

With nothing to lose and so much to gain, there is no reason why an advertiser should not own their own performance data.

You are reading a post from: Covario Actionable Insights
For more information on Covario please visit our corporate site.
Copyright © 2012 Covario Inc. All rights reserved.

Whose Data Is It Anyway? Why Owning Advertising Performance Data is Essential in Today’s Hypercompetitive Market

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Search has reached maturity – both paid and organic. It is no longer a matter of whether to invest in search, but rather a matter of how much and which ones – paid, organic and/or social. Three large advertisers got together on stage to discuss how they aligning spending with opportunity to allocate and/or gain budgets.

Lionel, our senior director of client services, posed the first question to the three panelists, “How do you get budget for search programs?”

The technologist explained that search is a little shy of 10% of his company’s total media spend. He didn’t use the qualifier “only” because this percentage has grown exponentially over the years.

His company, doesn’t do attribution management as was discussed in the first panel, primarily because its product is more of an “ingredient” brand. So depth of engagement is the metric they use to evaluate the effectiveness of search marketing, which is the same one they use in display.  However, in order to secure funding for search, our client and his global team uses data to show the delta of funding vs. total opportunity.

It is almost guaranteed that any target segment will cite search as a key resource for navigating the Internet to get to where and what they want.  Plus, they use it in all stages of the purchase funnel, from initial research to vendor selection, from pricing to retail options.

The great thing about being on the digital side is that we have more data to present to the accounting team then the offline side has to demonstrate its media effectiveness.

The next panelist, our financial client, uses his organization’s overriding success metric ‘Return on Equity’ to show how well their division’s search channel works.  This naturally helps justify more budget. The metric is based on how well an asset, or loan, performs over time. Internet loans perform better (i.e., fewer bad loans and more paid loans), than the loans garnered through offline channels.

When justifying budget for SEO, the financial services digital marketer positions it differently from paid search, because it is not just chasing the last click – the content created for SEO purposes actually becomes a brand asset.

Another way he justifies search budget is that he is able to better target the prospects that will generate the most return on equity. Contrary to popular belief, while traditional mass media may stimulate more demand, it can have the adverse affect of stimulating more bad-performing customers – at least in the financial sector.

Our multi-national professional services client said that his organization is so big and there are so many different types of combinations of media that they are challenged by metrics.

So he uses a missed opportunity matrix to justify more search marketing budget by showing his management that although they may be cornering the market on a key search phrase in a low volume market, they are missing the opportunity presented by similar but higher volume key search phrases.

This client uses SEO to support the paid media side, especially with keyword discovery to identify missed opportunities.

Trying to spend money at the end of quarter and throwing it at paid media does not work. By then it is too late to do the research and planning to set up the campaign for success. But building assets that can generate engagement through SEO and social media often yields the highest return.

Lionel jokingly summed things up by making the poignant observation that both the professional services and technology clients shame management into giving them more money.  All in the room laughed.   Then he got serious and turned to the three panelists and asked them, “How do you traverse politics once you have the data?”

For professional services, we need to “steal money from the right person (department).  And once you know who has the power, what their pain is and know how to present a case to alleviate that pain, you win.” He uses this approach because search does not have a high enough seat at the table to influence things.

The technologist said that he works hard to rise above the politics because his team works closely with the Finance team – providing them with transparent data that is generated by search.  This gives the accountants a window into marketing, which they don’t usually have. When he can show them data integrating offline and online media, Finance acts as his BFF.

The financial services marketer explained that his team is able to get the return that the organization needs, so budgeting is an somewhat of a easy exercise. What stops him from spending even more money is that the organization does not have the capacity to process the increased bank loans that the search channel would generate.

You are reading a post from: Covario Actionable Insights
For more information on Covario please visit our corporate site.
Copyright © 2012 Covario Inc. All rights reserved.

Covario INFLECTIONPoint 2011 Recap: Panel Session # 2 – Budgeting for Search in 2011

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• Q4’10 spending was up 8% over Q3‘10.  However, growth was up a whopping 45% in APAC and 31% in EMEA, but only a tad over 1% in the Americas.
• On a full year basis, growth in  2010 for paid search globally was up 26% over 2009 spending. This was stronger than expected at the beginning of the year, when we predicted 14-18% growth.  Q3‘10 was a surprise, with VERY strong growth.  Year-over-year growth in the Americas was 23%; in EMEA it was up more than 22%, with APAC up 53%.

The chart above shows how global spending has increased since 2007

As expected, Google continues to dominate with global market share of 78%.  Google’s paid search growth for 2010 was up 18% globally from 2009, while Yahoo was up 34% and Bing was up 84% over last year.  Of special note is Baidu of China, which had growth of 211% over 2009.

There were three key growth drivers for paid search spending in 2010.

• Google Instant is having a positive impact on growth for Google, which is benefiting from a larger proportion of all clicks being transferred from natural search to paid search as a result of the mechanics of the system.
• For Baidu, Google’s repositioning of its system in Q1‘10 caused a major shift in the market share in the China market. For Covario clients in China, Baidu now enjoys more than 80% of all paid search spending in that massive, fast-growing market – and it does not seem like this is going to change anytime soon.
• Bing-Yahoo completed its integration in the U.S., and this has driven increased spending on the combined platform overall.

All of this information is available in our latest report – Covario’s 2010 Global Paid Search Spend Analysis.   Now available on our website.

With the close of 2010 and a review of key trends looking forward in the New Year, there are some critical planning  and budgeting assumptions advertisers should take into account for 2011.

Actionable Insight 1:
Paid search spending in 2010 was up nearly 27% from 2009.  We recommend that advertisers plan for budget increases of 15-20% in 2011 for paid search — 10-14% in the Americas, 25-30% in EMEA, and 30-35% in APAC.

Actionable Insight 2:
Advertisers MUST plan on allocating budget to Facebook as part of their digital advertising media mix in 2011.  We recommend allocating 10-20% of the global paid search budget to Facebook.  The incremental spend for Facebook should come from the display budget, reducing it by a proportional amount; the paid search budget outside of Facebook spending should remain intact.

Actionable Insight 3:
Google ended the year with 78% of the global paid search market share.  We predict that in 2011 Google’s market share will contract slightly (76-78%), due to limitations on international growth.  Baidu will expand its market share above 80% in China.  Bing-Yahoo will command 15-17% of global market share.

You are reading a post from: Covario Actionable Insights
For more information on Covario please visit our corporate site.
Copyright © 2012 Covario Inc. All rights reserved.

Paid Search Spending Ends 2010 With Strong Growth in APAC and EMEA

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As with any form of earned media, there is a risk associated with this approach, since advertisers have no control over the content and tone of the messages generated by their customers. But for ecommerce advertisers with a large inventory of products, the benefits of scalable brand exposure outweigh the risks.

Search is the number one online marketing channel because almost everything people do online starts with the search. The advent of two major events within the online space and one corollary to these major events has fundamentally changed what people find when they search.

The first is the explosion of user-generated content, enabled by ever more powerful and ubiquitous social media platforms. The second is a reaction to the first – search engines show social media content at or near the top of the organic results.

The corollary to this is that the new “Google Presumptuousness,” my term for the recently launched behavioral feature of instantly showing search results based on the search term suggestions provided as users type in the search box, sometimes will finish search phrases with words that invoke research content.  For example, if the user types “cell phone,” the algorithm finishes the phrase with the word “reviews.”  The search phrase suggestion algorithm seems to think that the most relevant information to show in the organic results are those that aid top-of-the-funnel activities like research, which helps with consumers’ awareness, consideration and preference for brands and products, rather than diverting people directly to advertiser-generated content.

UGC in the form of product reviews is known to improve purchase rates when included on product pages.  Reviews also provide lesser-known improvements in the number of items purchased per visit, time on site, and decreases in product return rates. With “Google Presumptuousness,” this type of user-generated content has earned a place of respect right next to Wikipedia articles.

One case in point is Cabela’s. The company engaged Bazaarvoice, the leading provider of Ratings and Reviews solutions, to help connect Cabela’s customers with direct feedback on product pages with reviews from other customers. By using Bazaarvoice’s Ratings & Reviews, Cabela’s gave their customers a way to share their feedback about Cabela’s products right at Cabelas.com.

Cabela’s had limited technical resources available to take advantage of some of Bazaarvoice’s available options to index UGC directly on product pages. Using a simple JavaScript, Cabela’s gained the conversion benefit of customer reviews but limited their SEO value. To help improve overall search traffic, Cabela’s and Bazaarvoice wanted to inject fresh customer reviews directly into product pages. Since Cabela’s did not have the technical resources to make this change, Covario stepped in to help.

The Bazaarvoice-Covario solution allows search engines to crawl and index the UGC. The results of this solution speak for themselves”

Product pages with embedded reviews:

• Were crawled by search engines 200% more frequently
• Generated 200% more organic traffic
• Had 250% broader keyword reach (i.e., the quantity of referring search phrases to each page).

By ensuring that the search engines could crawl and index product ratings and reviews, Cabela’s can use the voices of their customers to help increase brand and product awareness through the organic search channel. Furthermore, the content that their customers produce help scale their search marketing efforts by generating keywords and search phrases that other searchers can use to find the products that they want and need.

Note: For an in-depth look at this case study, please join Cabela’s, Bazaarvoice and Covario for a webinar Thursday, Oct. 14 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, or link to the podcast afterwards on covario.com. Register for webinar now.

ACTIONABLE INSIGHT #1:
Inject freshness and richness into optimized pages.  That said, it is important to inject only a limited amount of UGC into product pages.  Injecting three to five items is usually the right amount to provide a boost to your existing SEO.  Injecting too much UGC (>10 items) can cause a dilution effect if the page’s target keywords are inconsistent with the user-generated content.

ACTIONABLE INSIGHT #2:
Rather than using generic calls-to-action like, “Read Entire Review,” “Share this Review,” or “Would you recommend this product,” consider programmatically injecting the product name into the review format, e.g., “Read the entire review about {product}.” This helps the search engines pick up the product name, along with the reviews when crawling and indexing the page.  This, in turn, brands the meta-description in the search results, which increases brand exposure.

You are reading a post from: Covario Actionable Insights
For more information on Covario please visit our corporate site.
Copyright © 2012 Covario Inc. All rights reserved.

Bottom-Up Branding

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• We recently ran a campaign for a client on paid search and on Facebook. The client is a technology company. The campaign was designed to drive visitors to a specific landing page designed specifically for the campaign. The campaign was run in seven countries – Argentina, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Thailand, and the U.S.

• In the past, we would get very low CTRs (click-through rates) on decent, but not great impression counts. The CTR rates were “display like” – in the .02 to .04% range – compared to search results in the 2 to 5% range. Essentially, a two-order of magnitude difference. Facebook would deliver more impressions, but not so much to overcome the CTRs and deliver noticeable, significant inventory.

• With this recent campaign – we saw 100X the impressions delivered on Facebook as we saw delivered through paid search on Google, Yahoo and Bing during the campaign run. The CTRs were still a two-order of magnitude below the search CTRs – essentially, for the same $1, the same number of clicks were delivered. We have not seen this before.

The key point, however, is that the inventory available on Facebook is huge and growing. On a dollar-for-dollar basis, Facebook and Google are performing the same on this particular campaign. However, when the budget was ramped up by 10X, the statistics did not degrade in any way. For 10X the spend, we delivered 10X the results – with no end in sight.  With Google performance often gated by the ability of a brand to build brand awareness and drive visitors to the search engine – Facebook seems to have accelerated growth in its inventory.

And, it is not just the U.S. As stated above, we saw results in seven countries. Facebook was consistently strong – and, in fact, even stronger within APAC countries.

The issue that I am asked over and over is: “Where should the budget come from to pay for Facebook campaigns?” For now, social media investments remain small enough that they are usually financed through incremental media budgets – and not really “taken” from any established media.

The question is – as social media spending grows, will it come from paid search or from display. I believe it will come from both digital media allocation growth and from display. It will not come from search.  Search is still performing. Facebook is performing too – better than display and comparable to search.

This note is not an indemnification of paid search. Rather, it is a recognition of the powerhouse that is Facebook. It has passed the tipping point and is delivering truly big time inventory, at comparable pricing to PPC, and with display-like CTRs.

ACTIONABLE INSIGHT #1:
Facebook must become a part of any branding campaign. It is delivering huge inventory volumes, with solid conversions. And, the performance is even stronger in APAC compared to search.

ACTIONABLE INSIGHT #2:
Marketing spend for Facebook will increase rapidly in the next 12 months – budget allocation should come from current display budgets and from incremental digital budgeting.

You are reading a post from: Covario Actionable Insights
For more information on Covario please visit our corporate site.
Copyright © 2012 Covario Inc. All rights reserved.

Facebook Has Passed The Tipping Point in Brand Advertising

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