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Brian Combs is the founder, senior VP of chief futurist for Apogee Search. Combs focuses primarily on corporate and service development for Apogee Search, with a particular emphasis on determining the trends and directions of the marketing industry. As an online marketing expert and Internet pioneer, Combs specializes in bringing measurability to marketing. Prior to founding Apogee Search, Combs was director of marketing and business development for Journyx, the leading provider of Web-based time and expense management solutions. At Journyx, he oversaw all marketing and strategic partnership activities.

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Love Em, Hate Em: Google Makes Us Accountable

Written on
August 6th 2008
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by Brian P. Combs  |
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googlesucks_small.jpgADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — Early this year, “Recession-Proof Marketing” was the buzzword of the minute. Now, into Q3 2008, online marketers are finding that the recession is not affecting their budgets as much as they thought and are continuing to push those marketing dollars to online initiatives. However, the scare did one notably good thing to the industry – it forced companies to take a deeper look into their return on investment. It was a significant shift in the move toward accountability in online marketing.

Now, the C-level suite is demanding that marketers not only maximize ROI, but also prove that they are using the most effective blend of marketing channels.

Traditionally, search has been very “recession-proof” not only because of its measurability but also because pay-per-click marketing is customizable – allowing marketers to set bids to align with their specific goals and optimize campaigns on the fly. In that way, PPC marketers can clearly map their marketing efforts back to their overall business objectives, minimize wasted budget and prove the ROI potential of the channel to their bosses. As the rest of the online advertising industry moves toward this model, we may begin to see more and more of the fundamentals of search marketing popping up in other channels.

Take for example a success story in pay-per-click search with Qipit. A new mobile services company with aggressive customer acquisition goals to meet, Qipit hired an “interactive marketing agency” to put together an online media buying plan for a display campaign. Before Qipit proceeded with the other agency’s recommendations, Qipit ran a Google Performance Targeting campaign to statistically determine where their ads would perform the best.

The results of the six-week Google Performance Targeting revealed the sites and target audiences that were the best performing for Qipit’s display campaign. Surprisingly, one of the “interactive agency’s” recommended top-tier target audiences was the worst performing category. A mistake like that would have resulted in six figures worth of wasted ad dollars for Qipit - precious resources in today’s economy, especially for small businesses and start ups.

Why did Google Placement Targeting prove to be the smart choice for Qipit? Because it treats display advertising like search marketing campaigns. By managing display campaigns using the same methodologies as it does with paid search, we were able to make micro-buys on behalf of Qipit across hundreds or thousands of Web sites to determine where ads perform best. Also, because we could set unique maximum CPM levels for each Web site, we had the ability to optimize campaigns to a target Cost Per Action (CPA) or Return On Ad Spend (ROAS).

“Google Placement Targeting is a valuable low cost tool which enabled us to test multiple ads across a wide range of target audiences without a long term commitment,” said Conrad Hametner, vice president of consumer marketing for Qipit. “It also allowed us to create a basis of performance benchmarks and greatly contributed to building an understanding of our target users.”

Beyond the measurability benefits, Qipit was also able to get better coverage of the Internet population since the Google content network has a much wider audience than any ad network. This allowed them to target more qualified buyers than through using the ad agency’s recommended Web sites alone.

Take a lesson out of Qipit’s play book. If your CEO is asking for measurable results and maximum ROI, Google Placement Targeting could be a critical first step in your display advertising routine.



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