iSEBA manages paid search marketing on a portfolio, or global basis, and optimizes the entire campaign rather than on a keyword by keyword basis. The tool determines the most productive keyword, position, price, time of day, and day of week combinations to bid on for the best possible results, and recalculates this information every day.

“Paid search marketing is a complex and highly competitive medium,” said Nigel Morris, CEO, Isobar. “iSEBA provides our clients with an immediate advantage not seen elsewhere in the marketplace today. The widespread adoption rate amongst clients right across the world is indicative of the results it produces.” He added that, “As with all other aspects of Isobar, this is a global initiative with substance.”

iSEBA can employ both predictive modeling to anticipate future prices and mathematical models to produce bid plans. It can also bid in any language or currency worldwide and across multiple search engine platforms including Yahoo, Google, and MSN.

2010 seems to be the magic year to which this industry clings when it comes to assessing its future success. But while we’re now used to the weekly case studies and research reports touting the boatloads of revenue set to arrive in ’10, a statement that sounds the death knell for what’s ideally been the most robust online ad model continues to spark interest.

Will CPA (Cost per Acquisition or Action, depending on your mood) kill off brand advertising/CPM in the coming years?

The persistent argument persuaded this writer to not only follow up with the source of the original comment—Joe Speiser, Co-Founder of AzoogleAds—, but pose the theory to other industry pros who sit on both sides of the fence.

True, opinions can often be laced with doses of hyperbole, but Speiser’s rhetoric, all bias aside, seems to carry some logic. With provinciality reigning in the old guard, which views the CPM metric as industry-standard, Speiser—though softening his initial IM commentary—remains adamant that the paradigm shift is inevitable. “I don’t think CPM will ever disappear entirely,” he admits, “but I do think that within less than 10 years, there will be a very significant shift of the top media buyers from the older minded CPM metric to the relatively new, but safer CPA.”

Speiser recalls the moment when CPA began to take off, emerging from the ashes of the bust with the hopes of infusing a more results-driven model. “CPA really started to take off right after the bust of 2000, and it was in that year accountability became a focus,” he says. “Advertisers and agencies couldn’t afford to spend on a CPM any longer without guaranteed results. Shareholders were clamoring for a cut back on excessive media spending with the hope of an ROI sometime in the next X years. This forced buyers to look for an alternative.”

Speiser views present-day CPA still as anything but static. “These days, while CPA has been in the shadow of CPM and CPC, it hasn’t been standing still. There have been huge advancements of measurement, and creative optimization that places many CPA campaigns on par if not above the average CPM rates.”

Considering that a CPA model plays an important role within the AzoogleAds network, Speiser’s observations can be construed as partial. But there obviously has to be valid reasons why AzoogleAds and its leadership prefer per-action over impression, and it could be proven in their growing client base and campaign metrics.

But is CPM truly destined for greener pastures, or does it still have a place within the current context of interactive advertising?

An online vet who got her start in high-tech ad sector with Freeman Associates, Fay has rapidly climbed to the top of the advertising echelon through her many years at Carat. In fact, her online prowess caught the eye of the company’s higher-ups early on, so much so in fact that they handpicked Fay to build and lead Carat Interactive in 2000. As expected, she didn’t disappoint either, turning an interactive media shop into a full-service digital marketing agency with over $800 million in billings and premium clients like Pfizer, Adidas, Gateway, Wachovia, and AOL.

But perhaps Fay’s greatest coup occurred within just the last 18 months, as she spearheaded the acquisitions of five specialist digital marketing firms — Vizium, Lot 21, Freestyle, iProspect, and Molecular. Now, all companies are nestled within the Isobar umbrella, which Fay currently serves as president of all US operations for.

So in our ongoing series of ADOTAS Conversations, we were fortunate enough to steal Sarah Fay away for a few minutes, and learn how she became a Carat chief, what the future holds for the interactive space and how she handles managing such a wide net of companies.

Hi, Sarah. So tell me a bit about your background.

I was a partner at an agency that was acquired by Carat back in 1997. When I began, we were five women and our niche was [being] a media agency for high-technology companies.

Is that Freeman Associates?

That’s right.. Carat acquired us in 1997. At that point, we did have an online advertising practice. There was a point in time, when I think about 85 percent of the advertising market that was doing online was high-tech companies.

Right. That’s what I heard.

So we kind of got dragged into it, but we were—you know, interested in it. One of our early clients was—not CMGI, but the company that became CMGI, Booklink. [CMGI founder/CEO] David Wetherall led us into his office and gave us a demonstration of the Internet, and talked about how this is a marketing platform. And we were like “Wow, this is just so cool!”

So, we were interested and started getting involved early on, and we actually became one of the major companies in New England that held events on the interactive space and became a sort of go-to place that was actually executing online advertising. That was in the days without servers, and we were really bushwhacking, like everyone else, in that space. So when Carat acquired us, they were just trying to build presence in the United States, and this gave them a geographic presence in the Boston/New England area, and also in B2B.

So tell me more about the Carat acquisition.

Actually, our acquisition became final the day [Carat North America CEO] David Verklin started. He came to join our celebration dinner and nobody had met him before! So it was the really, really early days for Carat. And when Carat was ready to get into the interactive space, valuations for the online agencies were just incredibly high at that point. They didn’t see a way in through acquisitions. They said, ‘You guys seem to be doing a lot.

Why don’t you write a business plan and we’ll look at launching Carat Interactive out of your unit in Boston, and we’ll airlift you out so that you’re no longer just part of the Freeman Group, but you’ll really be the hub for the whole agency.’ So that’s what happened. That was in 2000. That was very close to when the whole market came to a dead halt.

Right, the infamous bust.

Yes. We had investment dollars, and we were ready to go, and we had a vision for how we were going to launch this great interactive media group. We kicked off, but quite honestly, a lot of the online budgets were drying up. So it caused us to shape a very different kind of company. Really early on, we started to get into search—both organic and paid search. It didn’t take a huge budget to do that, and you could still achieve major results. We also got into the affiliate marketing practice really early on. And then, as we moved along, we realized, ‘it’s really hard to execute an online media plan without a tight connection to creative. We think we need a creative offering.’

For Carat to say, “Okay, go ahead and build a creative offering” was really a big deal, because their whole position was media independence. They said, ‘You’re going to make your own ads?’ and we said, “We need to if you want us to reach our goals.” So they allowed us to pursue a creative practice within interactive. And interestingly enough, that same phenomenon was happening in all of our company’s interactive groups—around our company in different areas of the world. So, for instance, independently, France launched a creative practice, and Italy launched a creative practice.