WebProNews

Do Search Marketers Need One More Ad Vendor?

I'm constantly asked which search engines a rookie paid search advertiser should work with. Obviously, everyone should take part in Google AdWords, because Google covers half or more of all searches. Most marketers should also look at Yahoo!, which handles about one-quarter of all searches—their Panama platform has made them an even more interesting choice for ad spending.

Organic Search Marketing - Too Much Work?

I read Tom Foremski's post, "Is search broken?" over a month ago, and I responded at the time by comparing the work you do for search with other ways of getting attention. But I keep thinking about the question Tom asked, and I think I have a better answer today than I did back then.

Marketing: Perfection is Dead

I've spoken ad nauseum about how we have to stop obsessing about carefully, slowly, deciding the exact right way to do our marketing. It's comforting to believe that you have it right, but it's an unattainable dream—you never have it right.

Measuring Time Spent

Andy Beal and Bryan Eisenberg are both asking good questions about the new "time spent" metrics that Neilsen/Netratings is introducing. Andy wants to know how time spent is calculated (good question) while Bryan assumes that it is time spent in the browser and asks more good questions. Are we missing the boat on metrics here?

Search Marketing and Direct Marketers

Monday, I presented to the Direct Marketing Association at their B2B Marketing Conference on the subject of Return on Search Marketing Investment. I love talking to direct marketers, because they understand how to market on the Web, but they don’t know they do. When I show them how to take what they know and apply it to this new online world, watching the light bulbs go on is very gratifying.

Marketers Should Care About Google's DoubleClick Deal

For those of you who turn off your computers on the weekend, you should know that Google announced Friday that it spent over $3 billion to acquire DoubleClick, of banner ad network fame. You can read from other people what this means from Google's point of view—I don't think that is very important to marketers. So what is important about this to marketers?

SES - Moran Presents on Organic Search Benchmarking

I was really taken aback today when I presented at Search Engine Strategies today in New York. I remember the first one I attended back in 2001 in Boston—there were about 300 people there, I recall.

SES - In-House Search Marketing

For several years, I did the in-house search marketing tracks at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York, but I asked Danny Sullivan to give me different session this year, on organic search benchmarking, which I posted on yesterday.

Online Customer Panels

Everyone knows about SurveyMonkey and Web analytics programs, but I heard about something new (at least to me) last week—online market research. I attended an AMA Webcast on Community Marketing on March 29 where one of the topics was how to attract online customer panels that provide high quality market research.

Google's Free Multivariate Testing

I've written before about multivariate testing, an emerging technique for rigorous analysis of just what persuades customers to convert. But some companies have been stopped in the past by the cost of licensing a multivariate testing tool. Yesterday, Google Website Optimizer, a multivariate testing tool, emerged from a restricted beta test and can be used by any Google AdWords advertiser for free.