While data drives display advertising and allows advertisers to serve specific ads to specific users and change messaging to users who have viewed your message before, advertisers are still relatively blind to users behind search. This is one of the topics discussed at i-com International Conference on Online Media Measurement in Portugal this week.

According to Chris Copeland, CEO of GroupM search in the US, the problem of lack of visibility to the searcher is still masked by the outstanding Direct Response performance of search. “One of the problems is that without the third party ad serving, there are extreme limitations in attribution and bidding. Without third party serving it is hard to attribute the search to other media and to value the consumer based on the information that we know about him.”

“We undervalue some users, and overvalue others because of lack of data,” he said. “Today, there is no ability to change messaging for users who search multiple times.”

At the same panel, Henry Eccles from Google argued that the search channel has an impact beyond direct response. At Google, he said, they divide the value of search into four pieces:
1. Direct response and traffic generation—the conversions that happen directly after the search.
2. Latent conversion, beyond the last click—these are conversions that take a long time to materialize, sometimes over one month.
3. Online to off line, the impact of online advertising on offline sales—this is projection the value of search in the offline world. According to Google, using econometric modeling they see an increase in off-line sales as a result online display advertising.
4. The branding effect of search— according to Google, the text of paid search by itself has a branding effect. Nevertheless, the branding effect is maximized when users are exposed to both paid search text and visit the website.


Lots of food for thought. So is now the time?

Ariel Geifman, Research Analyst

Online audience targeting has a very promising proposition. Rather than the spray and pray mentality, you handpick your target audience based on billions of data points and powerful predictive analytics and math. The value for advertisers and marketers that the vendors are promising is a razor sharp reach to the target audience and increased effectiveness.

While this may sound like the holy grail of online advertising, why is this revolution “just behind the corner” for so many years? While online search marketing is a $25 billion industry, targeting amounts to only $1 billion according to eMarketer estimates.

This is the question tackled by Rishad Tobaccowala, Member of Management Board at VivaKi, and the keynote speaker at the OMMA Behavioral conference that convened on Thursday in New York.
“We are so concerned about the plumbing that we forget about the poetry,” he argued. “If I have to spend two to three hours per week just to keep on top of what is going on in the targeting industry, it means that it is a very complex industry and that is not trivial. It also means that it is a share game, where too many people are competing for about 1 billion dollars.”

According to Mr. Tobaccowala, vendors are focusing too much on what data they are using and how they structure their database instead of on their clients. The industry has a myriad of acronyms, jargon and terms that are constantly changing and are hard to stay on top of. “The agency people are busy,” he said.
The targeting industry that uses data to understand and target clients is not implementing its own competency on itself. “While the targeting industry has the best tools in the world to understand and target customers, they should implement this talent on growing this industry,”he said. “Furthermore, the industry has positioning itself for private equity and venture capital rather than focusing on customers”.

Mr. Tobaccowala says that the industry should form partnerships with broad offering so that agencies will not have to deal with managing many specialized vendors. “Search, which has $25 billion in revenue, has only three competitors. The behavioral, which is a $1 billion industry, nobody even knows how many competitors there are.”

The industry should think broader about people. They need to think about many aspects of data. “Clients pay money for outcomes, and process.” In process, he said, clients like continuous improvement, and the targeting industry does improve. Clients would like service, which the industry does about 50%. Currently, the industry throws around terms and different approaches. His solution is to form partnerships, since nobody will work with 20 vendors in a $1 billion industry.

As far as outcomes, Mr. Tobaccowala argues, the industry has more challenges. You pay for insights, and this industry is best able to provide insights. Another outcome that you pay for is inspiration, but currently the targeting industry mostly provides desperation and frustration.

The targeting industry needs to think about how to better relate with their audiences. “If you speak only about which data you merge you are not selling your product. I want to have a great shower; I don’t care about the condition of the plumbing.”

Currently, the industry is still in a share of industry battle rather than thinking about how to grow the industry, he said. Share battles are for declining industries; growing industries should have room for everyone.



Ariel Geifman, Research Analyst

Contemplating whether to choose search or display for your next campaign? How about both? In a new study, Eyeblaster Research explains how the search and display channels complement each other. Each channel works better on a prospective customer at a different stage in the marketing funnel, thus generating touch points all the way from the initial awareness to purchase.


According to the study, each channel plays a unique role in the campaign. While search harvests prospective customers that are already in the marketing funnel, it reaches a limited number of people. Display increases reach by soliciting as many customers as possible and moving them into the funnel.


For the purpose of this study, Eyeblaster Research analyzed hundreds of cross channel search and display campaigns that were delivered through Eyeblaster’s Channel Connect for Search (CC4S). CC4S enables effective management and integration of search and display campaigns, unified reporting and easy comparison of cross channel results. According to the analysis, 72% of the conversions of cross channel

search and display campaigns are a direct result of the display channel while only 28% are the result of the search channel.


Nevertheless, cross channel campaigns create a powerful combination by pushing customers into the
marketing funnel and pulling them towards the purchase. With cross channel search and display campaigns, advertisers can enjoy both worlds—the broad reach of display advertising and the focused targeting of search marketing.


For the full research, follow this link.


Ariel Geifman | Research Analyst

In order to help advertisers and agencies understand how to get the most out of their holiday campaigns, Eyeblaster Research analyzed the 2009 online holiday shopping trends. Our latest Research Note shows that while there was an elevated conversion activity throughout the holiday season, some days generated far more conversions than others.  In the 2009 holiday season, conversions peaked around Cyber Monday, during the last five days before Christmas, and during the sales period after Christmas.

Voting with their mouse, shoppers sent two signals to advertisers.  First, customers responded to sales and discounts offered by online retailers, particularly during Cyber Monday and After Christmas Sales.  Second, although online shoppers cannot take the items from the shelf back home right away, they still wait for the last days before Christmas to do their shopping. 

These trends have further meaning beyond holiday shopping.  Even as the economy emerges out of a deep recession, consumers are still very aggressive in bargain hunting.  Thrifty consumers are looking for value, and when they find it, they are willing to open their wallets.

For the full research, please click on the following link.

Click here to download the Research Note on Holiday Conversions.

Ariel Geifman | Research Analyst

While 63% of publishers price display advertising using CPM, 30% of publishers now use CPC according to a survey by Econsultancy and the Rubicom Project cited by eMarketer in December 2009. JP Morgan notes that in the past 5 years, performance based display advertising, such as CPC, gained market share over the CPM based models. The report projects that in a recession environment, spread of performance based models is likely to accelerate, as advertisers place a higher value on a clear ROI.

In CPM, or Cost per Mille, the advertiser is charged a fixed amount for every one thousand impressions. CPC, or Cost per Click, is a pay per performance scheme, in which the advertiser is charged only for clicks.

While some may argue that publishers should be paid according to their ability to generate clicks, publishers only carry a partial responsibility for the generation of a click. The CTR is also affected by the vertical, ad size, format and particularly the ingenuity of the creative. Thus, when publishers are paid by the click, their compensation is at the mercy of others in the advertising chain who make decisions that affect the success of the campaign. Another concern is whether clicks are the proper metric for discerning the success of a campaign. In many verticals, the actual purchase is made in off-line stores, and therefore the value of the ad is in its retention rather than the click. (more…)