MediaPost’s Search Insider Summit

Posted on Apr 02, 2012 by admin

Adchemy is proud to sponsor MediaPost’s Search Insider Summit (SIS) – Spring 2012, taking place April 22nd-25th on Captiva Island in Florida. SIS is a fun and focused forum that educates attendees on the most current issues facing paid search advertising and search engine optimization. This Spring’s conference will focus on the evolution of search:

Recent announcements from Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Apple, among other companies point to integrating semantic, voice, and gesture technologies into search and apps for desktop and mobile devices, as well as connected TVs. Join us to explore these technologies and how each influences search engine marketing through data, metrics, attribution, social and more.

Get in on the Fun – for free!

If you’re in charge of search engine marketing for a major brand or retailer, MediaPost offers complimentary passes to SIS. To begin the application process simply send your full contact info and one or two sentences about your role to Rob McEvily at rob@mediapost.com.

Complimentary Brand Marketer pass includes:
* Summit registration ($2995 value)
* Accommodations at the South Seas Island Resort for three nights
* No Charge Activities such as golf, fishing charter, kayaking, dophin cruise, and more
* Meals, drinks and functions over three days

We hope to see you there!

SES NY Roundup – Learnings from Our Retail Roundtables

Posted on Mar 28, 2012 by admin

I spent my week at SES New York talking to retailers and hosted two “Meet the Expert” roundtables focused on retail SEM. Retailers big and small shared their challenges and the ways they deal with them.

Starting Out

Some roundtable guests were just getting their start with ecommerce for chain stores in Mexico. The table chipped in with tips to help them:

Make sure you’re able to define and track success. If you can’t define and track success, there’s almost no point launching a paid search campaign.
Plan out the structure of paid search campaigns carefully. Make campaign and ad group naming conventions consistent with categories and products. Keep seasonal and event promotions in separate campaigns.
Bid competitively when starting out. You’ll need to break into the auction against competitors that can rely on quality score history to help their page rank.
Determine whether you need an agency. Will your company have the budget to support full-time SEMs?
Find tools and technology that can help you scale your paid search, and make sure they fit with your individual business needs. For example, would you like to manage social campaigns through the same platform? What about display campaigns?
Use ad extensions and product feeds.
Have a mobile-friendly site and extend your search campaigns to mobile.

Further Down the Road

Whether just starting out or veterans managing existing campaigns, the retailers at SES talked about facing the same challenges: deciding which parts of their product catalog to cover with long-tail keywords and relevant ads — and dedicating the time and resources to do so — versus broad-matched keywords and more generic ads. Retailers are forced to pick their battles and prioritize due to lack of resources.

Similar to the retailers we met at eTail West’s Search Summit, the majority of retailers aren’t leveraging their existing assets to discover new keywords or create more relevant ads. Existing product catalogs, on-site search query logs, and broad match reports for AdWords and AdCenter can help retailers increase their exact match keywords to serve more relevant ads to consumers.

Can Mobile Search Advertising Make or Break Retailers?

Posted on Mar 26, 2012 by Thi Thumasathit

When I’m in the middle of a brick and mortar store and I’m about to make a significant (or even insignificant) purchase, I increasingly find myself whipping out my iPhone and conducting a mobile search to see what the online price is at competitors. Sometimes, I even complete the purchase on my iPhone — all while standing in the aisle of a competitor’s brick and mortar store! Moreover, I’m perfectly content to walk out of the store empty-handed — but with iPhone in my pocket and purchase confirmation in my email inbox.

I’m doing what I call a mobile “smash and grab.” And I’m not alone, by far.

Last week Internet Retailer reported that 29% of in-store mobile researchers wind up buying online. There are two hugely important takeaways from this study:

- Retailers have an opportunity to steal customers right out from under their competitors.

- These same retailers need to safeguard their offline sales against mobile smash and grabs.

Why is this a big deal? In-store consumers are a brick and mortar retailer’s most prized audience. These are the consumers who are so purchase ready, they have gotten in their cars, driven to the store, parked, navigated thru the aisles, and have (almost) found what they’re looking for. They have taken many actions to qualify their intent. They are motivated shoppers who know what they want.

A mobile smash and grab is not just a lost sale. It’s the loss of an extremely purchase-ready customer. And, because the sale went directly to a competitor, it’s a direct shift in market share. As such, I believe mobile search can make or break retailers. And the sooner you get in on the action, the better.

For retailers to increase online profits and to avoid losing brick and mortar customers, extending paid search to mobile is crucial. Consumers are armed with so much data on the products they intend to purchase, retailers must price competitively and promote those prices through phone extensions, product extensions, product listing ads, mobile search ads, and even mobile-friendly sites.

Using mobile search ads to promote competitive prices and offer free shipping could be just the motivation that a customer needs to abandon their (physical) shopping cart at a competitor’s establishment in favor of your products and services.

Get Started Now

Because conversion rates aren’t quite on par with other channels (and because there is less competition right now), try copying your existing paid search campaigns and lowering your max CPCs. You may want to experiment with tweaking ad copy, e.g., try highlighting free shipping or discounted prices.

And of course, read up on the Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter mobile offerings to make sure you’re taking full advantage of them.

Intent in search is already high. Intent in mobile search is even higher. Retailers who climb the learning curve sooner will reap the rewards — and steal meaningful share — from retailers who are mobile laggards.

Does Google’s Semantic Search Spell Big Changes for Advertisers?

Posted on Mar 26, 2012 by admin

Earlier this month, Google made headlines in several publications regarding semantic search – updates to the search engine that would allow it to better understand a user’s intent and serve better results. The Wall Street Journal covered the update, saying that a refresh was coming to better answer users’ questions. Internet Retailer covered the story as well, speculating whether or not the changes to Google’s search engine would hurt or help advertisers. And then Danny Sullivan stepped in and explained in his methodical manner why this wasn’t NEW news, but possibly a result of Google’s PR team needing to remove focus from less positive developments.

Across all three publications, the impact of the news on advertisers wasn’t clear.

From WSJ: “It’s also unclear exactly how Google’s search ads—which appear next to search results and are handled by separate teams inside the company—would change in response to the overhaul. But people briefed on the initiative said that if the search engine better understands the meaning or intent behind people’s search queries, Google could find a way to show them more relevant ads.”

From Internet Retailer: “Google, however, expects to continue innovating new ways to present paid search ads as well as overall search results, a source familiar with the company’s plans says.”

Solving for Relevance at Scale

Interestingly enough, Adchemy is taking the same approach Google is taking — trying to better understand a user’s intent to serve better results. However, instead of improving algorithmic search results, Adchemy is focused on improving paid search results by leveraging user intent to improve relevance at scale across millions of keywords.

The fact that Google is focusing on intent is terrific validation of Adchemy’s approach. We’re confident that the online experience can be dramatically improved — to both the benefit of consumers and advertisers — if the industry can focus more on the intent behind the query, rather than just the query per se. And Google seems to think so too.

Adchemy Chosen to Speak at SES Chicago – and Offers a 20% Registration Discount

Posted on Oct 05, 2011 by admin

On the heels of closing out a successful investment round and expanding our partnership with Microsoft Advertising, Adchemy is proud to announce we will be speaking at SES Chicago. Put on your heavy coats and meet us in the Windy City November 14th-18th! Dan Morrison, our Sr. Manager, SEM (and a Chicago native), will be a featured panelist for the “Tools of the Trade for Paid Search” session scheduled Thursday, November 17, 12:15pm – 1:15pm.

SES Chicago – the leading search and social event – offers marketing and search engine optimization professionals 70+ sessions, intensive training workshops, and the opportunity to network with peers and leading industry vendors.

Use our discount code to receive 20% off your SES Chicago passes: ADCH20

Eventful Learning: eTail East and SES San Francisco

Posted on Aug 26, 2011 by admin

It’s been a busy few weeks, but there are finally a couple spare moments to give a quick recap of two events that Adchemy had a presence at: eTail East in Boston from August 8-10^th and SES in San Francisco from August 15-18^th. Hopefully someone was able to take advantage of our discount codes for these events. Keep in touch with Adchemy for deals on conferences that we sponsor and invitations to exclusive events!

eTail East – Boston

As a first-time attendee, I was excited to see so many top-tier retailers in one place speaking candidly about their challenges in search advertising and beyond. eTail’s Search Day was a fantastic way for Adchemy to get in front of retail SEMs.

Adchemy hosted a roundtable discussion during Search Day, and learned some interesting things:

A wide range of investment – The retailers that did know their budget allocation varied widely, even among those in similar verticals. Some retailers dedicate a small portion (5%) of spend to Microsoft adCenter, while others are splitting budget 50/50 with AdWords and adCenter. The most common answer seemed to be 70/30, AdWords/adCenter. In many cases, retailers had little insight into how their search advertising budgets were divided between Google, and Bing/Yahoo. This was usually due to outsourcing SEM responsibilities to an agency.
Outsourcing – While the majority of the attendees of Search Day were SEMs, a good portion were only responsible for managing relationships with agencies. Among those dealing with agencies, transparency and agile management seemed to be challenges.
Minimal product coverage – Based on limited resources, most retailers focused their time and budgets on their highest-volume and highest-margin products.
“Ah-ha!” Moment: Lifetime Value – Ben Kirschner, CEO of Coffeforless.com, directed the crowd to consider lifetime value of customers when assessing keyword value in SEM campaigns. There were a lot of pens to paper and keyboards clicking after that!

SES San Francisco

I don’t know if it was the economic woes from the week before (remember the debt ceiling and S&P debacle?), or the sheer, mammoth size of Moscone West, but SES San Francisco felt a little thinly attended at first. Sessions were, however, well-attended and engaging. Google and Bing seemed to be vying for airtime with sponsored sessions, which did not go unnoticed, and I heard someone mirror a point from another blog post of mine: competition between Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter is good for advertisers and consumers alike.

It was great to see our name and brand around the event as a sponsor, too!

For the most part, sessions (and attendees) were focused on other channels like social, mobile, and how attribution across channels should work. There doesn’t seem to be any true innovation happening in the search space, which may be the reason that advertisers, agencies, and technology companies are more focused on broadening their focus. SES itself has grown beyond a search focus to accommodate these new and interesting channels as well.

At Adchemy, we’re still convinced that there are breakthroughs to be made in search advertising, we that we are leading the way with our IntentMap Technology.

Get a 20% Discount on SES San Francisco Conference Passes

Posted on Jul 26, 2011 by admin

As a newly-minted Silver sponsor of SES San Francisco, the leading search and social marketing event, the team over here at Adchemy is very happy to relay this offer: 20% off conference passes!

If you plan on attending SES SF and would like to meet up with the Adchemy team, you can request a meeting on the conference site.

We look forward to seeing you there!

The Human Factor in Search, Part 2 – Subjectivity

Posted on Jul 15, 2011 by Thi Thumasathit

SEMs will often tell you that building a good SEM campaign is just as much art as it is a science. There are tricks of the trade and domain knowledge that a SEM can only pick up with experience, and applying this knowledge to build better campaigns is what separates good SEMs from run-of-the-mill SEMs.

This works, as long as you only have one SEM. Once your campaign gets to be big enough to warrant hiring more SEMs, that’s when you realize, every SEM has their own subjective “best practices,” and then your campaigns can become wildly inconsistent

What can become inconsistent? Practically everything in an SEM campaign can be affected by SEM subjectivity, for better or for worse. Consider the following:

Keyword Research: Which keywords are included versus not included in your campaign may be a function of what an individual SEM is interested in or knowledgeable about, instead of query volume or product profitability. For example, let’s say you sell Wii, PS3, and Xbox games. If your SEM happens to be a big PS3 fan boy and has no knowledge or interest in Wii and Xbox-specific games, you might see more PS3 related keywords in your portfolio.
How keywords are grouped: One of your SEMs might think ad groups should have 10 keywords in order to be tightly-themed. Another one of your SEMs might think ad groups can have up to 100 keywords and still be tightly-themed. Yet another SEM might agree with the first SEM with the 10 keywords per ad group rule of thumb, but yet, when it comes to actually manually grouping the keywords into ad groups, this SEM might organize the same set of keywords in completely different groups of 10. The impact? The underlying performance of different parts of a campaign might vary wildly, depending on which SEM has worked on what.
How ads and landing pages are assigned to keywords and ad groups: Different SEMs may have different rules of thumb about what makes for a good ad or a good landing page. One SEM might have a “take the 10 best ads and rotate them across all ad groups” approach. Another SEM might have a “use dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) in all ads” approach. There might be other approaches as well.

SEMs are undoubtedly an integral part of paid search advertising, and the role of the SEM is not endangered by technology. At the same time, by relying too heavily on people, advertisers may unknowingly be introducing a high degree of inconsistency in their campaigns, which can lead to longer-term manageability issues and mediocre performance. Deploying technology as much as possible helps advertisers (and agencies) to better leverage their SEMs knowledge and reduce SEM burn-out.