The debate is not new to the space. In fact, it’s one of the most common historical debates in all forms of commerce.

How much do you entrust your advertising campaigns to your partners? A shocking number of marketers are relying on service providers, flipping the switch on their automated bid platforms for PPC and walking away. But truly effective search takes so much more strategy, resources and the all-important human touch required to efficiently meet goals.

When looking for the perfect partner for your campaign, it’s important to keep a few key questions and practices in mind while making this critical decision. Here’s a closer look at how to identify a true partner.

Goal Setting

Does your partner help you identify your goals and objectives? Search should not be an aimless venture. After all, you are investing in PPC for a reason.

The first step of any campaign should be to figure out what that reason is. Are you trying to lower your cost per acquisition? Or do you want to drive more traffic to your lead form?

A great partner will help you identify those goals and work with you to map KPIs and reports directly to your goals so that together you can quickly and efficiently test, tweak and optimize campaign performance.

Strategy

Once you have identified your goals, the next step is to map out a strategy to achieve them. A partner should be able to help you understand, create and implement all the critical components that make up your ideal PPC strategy – from keyword selection to creative development to a unique landing page designed to keep people engaged and direct them toward the intended action, whether that is filling out a lead form or converting into a sale.

On the other hand, a service provider who is not invested in your success will typically deliver a generic one-pager highlighting their offerings, leaving it up to you to piece together a strategy on your own.

The Optimization Cycle

Whatever your goals and strategy might be, the optimization cycle must be viewed as critical and continuous. This is where a human touch and expert eye can really make a difference on your bottom line. Campaign performance can vary by the day of week, time of day, season or countless other factors, and continuous testing, refining and optimizing is the only way to ensure you are maximizing the performance potential of your campaign.

It’s uncommon for businesses to have the dedicated resources to handle this continuous process, and even if the resources are available in house, a third-party partner brings experience, expertise and the added benefit of being able to leverage insights and trends across verticals to more quickly and efficiently optimize campaign performance.

Transparency

Communication is key when you are entrusting your campaign strategy to a partner. You should never have to wonder how your advertising is performing or what steps are being implemented to improve results.

When evaluating partners, ask to see examples of reports they provide clients. They should be clear and include actionable insights. Having a dedicated account management contact or team that is available to walk through reports, discuss campaign strategy and other day-to-day activities is also important and can help increase your organization’s knowledge of how PPC performance impacts other channels and bottom-line business goals.

Joint Ownership

Lastly, it’s a good idea to look for a partner whose economic interests are aligned with yours. Some service providers have moved toward a performance-based model, and they will share in the risk for sub-optimal performance and benefit from great performance. When your partner’s bottom line relies on yours, you can rest assured they are going to go the extra mile to ensure you succeed!

Armed with the above considerations, organizations can find an ideal partner to help them achieve their search marketing goals more efficiently.

However, Jellyfish brings something different to the table, or better yet, to your wallet. Self-proclaimed the “Internet’s first buying engine,” Jellyfish has eliminated all advertising and instead shares its revenue with you, the consumer. Retailers are encouraged to use their advertising dollars to lower the end price of products and Jellyfish shares at least half of every dollar they earn when you shop and buy. Rather than rank retailers on the site in terms of how much they are spending on advertising, as many sites presently do, Jellyfish, currently in its beta stages, ranks product search results by the end price.

Jellyfish founders Brian Wiegand (CEO) and Mark McGuire (President) call it a shift from Pay Per Click to Value Per Action, or VPA, advertising. ADOTAS spoke recently with Brian Wiegand to get to the bottom of this new shopping animal.

Wiegand and McGuire had been observing the adverse relationship that consumers seemed to have with advertising. As people began purchasing Tivos and satellite radios, blocking pop-ups and turning blind eyes to online ads, the entrepreneurs sensed that much of conventional advertising was becoming ineffective.

“Interruptive advertising [that is] in your face can really upset a consumer and that type of advertising has really exhausted itself,” says Wiegand. “And you can only advertise and interrupt so many people so many ways before they ignore it.” On the retailer side of things, methods like the Price Per Click model are currently beginning to struggle with click fraud, complicated web analytics, and the basic fact that many advertising dollars miss. To Wiegand and McGuire it seemed like the perfect opportunity to create a system where shoppers actually wanted to receive advertising if it somehow benefited them.

The Jellyfish model was the ultimate solution, creating an environment where, as Wiegand puts it, “the more advertising you receive, the more value it is to you, the consumer.” The CEO believes that the VPA model is an advertising trend that has been around for years. Any instance that provides a consumer with money or some value for exposure to advertising follows this model. Superbowl ads, for example, provide entertainment in exchange for interaction with the ad. Wiegand feels that many people are coming to terms with the fact that advertising is moving to an environment where consumers will have the ability and technology to control when they interact with ads. Unless there is a tangible benefit that results from interacting with advertisements, the ad will not succeed.

In developing the logistics of the Jellyfish system, the founders wanted everything to be simple and appealing to the average consumer. Issues of advertising models and transparency and paying for consumer attention would be reserved for the retailer relationship. All that consumers would need to know is that when you make a purchase in the same way you would on any shopping site, at Jellyfish, you get a share in cash back or the advertising that is spent to get your attention.

The site matches up buyers and sellers in a patent-pending marketplace in which interruptive advertising is replaced with added value for online shoppers. At least half of the advertising revenue generated from each sale is shared with the consumer. Because retailers compete to get to the top of search rankings by increasing the amount of cash back that will be provided to consumers, Jellyfish hopes to maximize savings for the consumer.

“The Jellyfish model really levels the playing field for retailers,” said Adrienne Hartman, Internet Business Manager at ShoeMall.com. “With the transparent Jellyfish model, ShoeMall competes and the customer is more satisfied with her experience, knowing that she got the best price possible in the end.”

The method is similar to major Pay Per Click search engines, but those engines keep all of the monetary value the advertising competition generates.

“For advertising to survive in a world where the consumer has ultimate control, it must be directly valuable. That is the major shift we are making at Jellyfish; turning advertising dollars into added customer value that they seek out. Instead of Price Per Click (PPC), we call it Value Per Action (VPA),” added Mark McGuire, President of Jellyfish. “This system allows consumers to turn the tables on advertising, and make it work directly for them when they are shopping online.”

A full consumer launch for Jellyfish.com is scheduled for this Fall.