6 Internet Marketing Game Changers?

It's been a big few months in the digital media world with a flurry of announcements, new product launches and acquisitions.

I've been watching intently as the 'big boys' have been playing a classic game of 'one-upmanship' and had their PR machines in overdrive.

But what do all these announcements actual mean for brands, agencies and businesses in Australia and will it actually change they we develop strategy and reach customers?

Below are just 6 Internet Marketing annoucements - some are a few months old some a couple of weeks - what they all have in common is they have the potential to be game changers.

1. Microsoft launches Bing - May 28th 2009
What Microsoft says is a 'decision engine' and not a search engine, Bings promise is to help searchers find what they are looking for faster.

Bing was launched with a massive $100 million advertising budget in May with the objective of gaining market share from Google, which it has been doing, ever so slowly, with growth from 8% to 8.9% market share in the first 2 months of launch.

The Bing marketing campaign in Australia was offically launched on August 17th 2009 and according to ninemsn's blog: "The cross-platform campaign utilises the strength of PBL Media starting with television commercials on Channel Nine and Go!, followed by advertisements online across the ninemsn network and in print within ACP magazines in the coming months"

2. Google announces Google Wave - May 28th 2009
To a much larger audience of 4,000 tech elite, Google announced the launch of Wave at the same time Microsoft announced the launch of Bing. No coincidence.

Google Wave is new communication and collaboration tool for the Interent - think email on steriods.

But Wave is much bigger than being just a new appliaction, it is also a new communication protocol for the web and if adopted mainstream certainly has the ability to change the game.


3. Microsoft does search deal with Yahoo! worth $9 billion - 29th July 2009
In a 10 year $9 billion deal, Microsoft and Yahoo! announce a key partnership that will see the new Bing search engine power Yahoo! search results and Microsoft pay Yahoo! 88% of sales of search ads on Yahoo’s own sites.

Premium search advertising will still be managed by Yahoo! and self-serve advertising will be run through Microsoft's AdCenter. Full terms of the deal can be found at Mashable.


4. Facebook buys Friendfeed - August 10th 2009
August 10 2009 was a crazy day with 3 big announcements around social media and its collision course with search.

First off was the announcement that Facebook was acquiring Friendfeed in a deal worth $50 million.

Friendfeed is social media aggreagation service that allows you to combine all your social media profiles into a single 'life stream'.

While not huge in Australia (yet), Friendfeed is gaining huge popularity in the US and right after the Facebook announcement I saw a surge in subscribers to my friendfeed.


5. Facebook launches Real Time Search - August 10th 2009
One of the most powerful features of Twitter is its real time search - the ability to search conversations and news in real time.

With millions of conversations and hundres-of-millions of tweets what better place to turn to for answers, rather than waiting weeks or even months for Google to index webpages?

Real time search is compressing time and the competition for market share of real time search quiries is heating up.

With a much larger user base of 250 million members, Facebook announced their version of real time search, which allows the vast number of status updates and Facebook conversations to be indexed and searched as they are happening.

Sponsored search ads are powered by Bing on Facebook's search results page.

6. Google annouces 'Cafine', their new search engine - August 10th 2009
In the real time search battle Google also has been toiling away on their new search product code named 'Cafine'.

Google claim that Cafine will improve the speed, accuracy, size, and comprehensiveness of Google search. Translated this means real time search.

I have given it a test at the public test site and it certainly is fast and does return more recent results, which in my tests where more relevant.

So do all of these deals have any relevance in Australia?
You bet. While there is high fragmentation of audience it is very interesting to see look at the most popular sites in Australia. Below is a chart of the top 10 websites by share of visits. 2 things really stand out for me:
A. The top 10 sites have almost 28% of website visits. While this doesn't paint an accurate picture around engagement and time on this sites it does show concentration around a small number of web properties.

B. While they all have seperate ad sales teams and product offerings it really is 2 horse race between Google and Microsoft. Let me explain.

Through Google Australia, Google and Youtube, Google has 3 of the top 10 sites. Google also provide search ads for eBay and mysapce.

Microsoft also has 3 of the top 10 sites with Windows Live Mail, ninemsn and Microsoft, but they also own a share of Facebook and the new Yahoo search deal will see their search distribution grow to include 5 of the top 10 sites.

It's a very exciting time to be working in the Internet industry with change the only certainity.

This article was posted by Matt Forman. Matt is a Google Qualified AdWords Professional and Managing Director at Traffika. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattforman.

Socialnomics - The Audience Has Already Shifted.

I've been thinking about the Socialnomics video I recently saw up on youtube. There is certainly some very big numbers being thrown around in it. Working in Internet and Social Media you sometimes take for granted the medium and accept collaborative communication as just second nature.

While some of the numbers are presented slightly out of context, the video still clearly shows that the audience has already shifted and continues to shift. Social Media has changed the way people communicate.

If brands hope to have any chance to reaching consumers they have to change the way they communicate to.

If you haven't had a chance to see the video yet, I've embedded it below.

Should We Be Believing What Google Tells Us?

I was ready to take on board Google Chief Economist, Hal Varian’s recent post on the Inside AdWords blog that conversion rates don’t vary much with ad position. Hal Varian states that conversion rates vary by less than 5% across positions and therefore the bottom line is that conversion rates don’t vary much across position. This is great news for search engine advertisers. If we are to believe the Word of Google then we can optimise our AdWords accounts confident in the fact that improving our ad position will increase our click through rates and therefore increase our sales as our conversion rates will stay the same.

But I’m not that confident Hal and his team’s claim is valid on a case by case basis. What bugs me is that there is no reference in the post to what sample size they used to calculate this claim. Is this across every keyword in every AdWords account ever? Is it across a wide range of industries? Are these conversions e-commerce transactions, newsletter subscriptions, membership signups or all of the above?

Traffika’s own client data shows that conversion rates can vary dramatically across ad positions. Focusing on finding the “sweet spot” as far as ad position is concerned can be a costly and counter productive exercise. You are far better off focusing on maximising your return on investment through hands on optimisation techniques .

Determined to track down further substantiating evidence, I found Engine Ready’s PPC ad position study which completely contradicts Google’s Chief Economist in that the difference between the best conversion rate and the lowest conversion rate was over 20%. Results from the Engine Ready study showed that position 7 provided the best conversion rate by far. Position 3 recorded the lowest conversion rate and the better conversion rates were at position 4 and lower. Engine Ready sourced their conclusions from a sample size of over 192 million impressions and over 2 million clicks from various industries and varied conversion goals. So does this mean if the main goal for your PPC campaign is conversions then you should optimise your AdWords account to ensure your ads appear only in position 7 or not show in the top 3 positions?

Not at all. There are way too many variables that combine to create a conversion that both the Google study and the Engine Ready study do not take into account. The effectiveness of a landing page's ability to convert, the power of ad copy to garner a click, and indeed the relevance of the keyword itself to a searcher's intent. Just to name three.

The one thing I do agree with in the Engine Ready study is my own belief that searchers who read more than the top three ads typically have a higher intent to purchase. Targeting and converting searchers using the Awareness-Interest-Desire-Action model is a discussion best left for a future post though.

The important thing to remember is that ad position is not the most important factor in your SEM campaign. Having clearly defined goals including your target cost per conversion and cost per click as well as a clearly defined target market before you start your search engine marketing campaign and then making sure you do everything you can to hit those targets is.

This article was posted by Bret Buckland. Bret is a Google Qualified Adwords Professional and SEM Campaign Manager at Traffika. You can follow Bret on Twitter @bjbuck

Making Sense Of Ad Words Trademark Policy (or Why Won’t Britney Spears™ Let Me Sell Her Product)

I have been pondering the ins and outs of the Google’s trademark policy quite a bit recently. Apart from the couple of questions relating to the policy when I took my Google Advertising Professional exam I had not seen the trademark policy in action until Traffika starting managing a large ad words account for an Australian company that resell a lot of trademarked brands.

Google’s trademark policy is split in two. Trademarks that cannot be used in ad copy and trademarks that cannot be used as keywords. Up until recently if you were advertising in the US, Canada and the UK you could not use a disallowed trademark in your ad copy but you could use it in your keyword list. Google has fought and continues to fight legal battles to make this so.

On the 4th of June Google expanded the list of countries that can use trademarks in their keyword lists (but not in the ad copy). Unfortunately, Australia is still on the, now much shorter, list of countries that Google will investigate the use of trademarks as keywords.

I learnt about this the hard way when I created new ad groups, ads and keyword clusters themed around a large number of trademarked brand and product names in the Ad Words account I mentioned earlier. One of them was for a Britney Spears™ endorsed product. Not realising the true implications of Ad Words trademark policy at the time, I was a little surprised when just under 10% of the ads including the Britney Spears™ ads came back as disapproved due to the inclusion of trademark terms in the ad copy. I removed the offending terms and the new ads were approved. I was a little surprised to note a few days later that the Britney Spears™ ad group had not received any impressions considering that Britney Spears™ is the topic of on average over 1,000,000 searches daily around the globe.

All the ads were approved, all the keywords were showing as eligible, but hovering over the keyword informed me that the keywords themselves were “pending review” due to trademark policy.

The reasoning behind not being able to use trademarks in the ad copy I can understand and appreciate. Brands need to be able to maintain their brand image and ensure brand message integrity.

Not being able to use a trademark in your keyword list has me in two minds though.

It makes sense to prevent your competitors from using your trademark to advertise their own version of a product. You can submit a trademark complaint to Google which they will investigate and effectively stop that competitor from using your trademark. I highly recommend taking this action where appropriate.

The phrase “will investigate” is a bit misleading though. Google itself does not register trademarks. They will indeed investigate complaints made by trademark owners or authorised agents. As I found out the hard way, Google will then add this trademark to a list of trademarks that have at some time been the subject of a trademark complaint. This prevents future advertisers from using the trademark as their keywords and/or in their ad copy.

What if one of these future advertisers is in fact a reseller of your product? Have you now effectively hamstrung one of your distribution channels?

In the case of my Traffika client, these are not competing products, these are products that are either manufactured or endorsed by the trademark owners and available exclusively through third party distribution channels. Britney Spears™ does not sell them herself. They are available exclusively via third party distribution channels.

It is important to note that just because a term is a trademark does not mean that you cannot use it in your Ad Words account. In fact the only way to find out if a keyword on Google’s trademark list is to submit an ad and keyword for approval. Bearing in mind that Google will only tell you if the ad copy has been disapproved. You need to manually check for a keyword.

Sorry Britney Spears™ it looks like you're getting paused and your budget allocated to Jennifer Lopez™ (trademarked but no complaint made as yet).

This article was posted by Bret Buckland. Bret is a Google Qualified Adwords Professional and SEM Campaign Manager at Traffika. You can follow Bret on Twitter @bjbuck

Reaching Global Audiences With Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has almost become mainstream with more and more marketing managers giving it a slice of the marketing budget pie.

With its immediacy, accountability and cost management benefits, it is easy to get carried away with the huge size of global audiences that SEM makes readily accessible. But before jumping into a global search engine marketing campaign it pays to do plenty of planning.

We have a number of clients that sell into the global marketplace from their Australian base and SEM is a key component in their online marketing strategies. Before SEM can even be recommended as a marketing channel it is important to follow a structured evaluation framework that considers:

1. Language. Are you going to be targeting only English speaking countries, English search quires within non-english speaking countries or does your product translate to many languages?

2. Product Suitability. This seems fairly obvious, but have you consider if your product is compliant with the laws of the countries you want to sell into? How are you going to ship it? Will the shipping costs keep it affordable? Do you need to adjust your pricing?

3. Market Demand. Again an obvious consideration. This is where keyword research plays an important role in evaluating the market opportunities. At this stage it is critical that enough time be given to understanding how people in different cultures look for information.

We often see large variations in search queries between English speaking western cultures and vast differences in the phrases people use in non-english speaking countries. If you are considering a non-english SEM campaign it's imperative you conduct the keyword research in the local language and do not just translate the English search terms.

4. Ad Copy. Is the ad copy going to be English or in the local language? If you are writing non-english ads, its critical you do not just translate your English ads but have them written by someone who understands the language and local grammar.

5. Campaign Structure. Do you create 1 big global campaign or do you target different regions and countries with their own campaigns? We have found Google AdWords makes it much easier to manage complex global campaigns through a single account, where Yahoo Search Marketing requires separate accounts for each country and region to be targeted.

The more granular you can structure your campaign the more control you will have over managing the outcomes.

6. Currency. Are you going to purchase your search media in Australian dollars, US dollars or in the local currency of the countries you are targeting?

So as you can see the importance of planning can not be over emphasised when considering a global SEM campaign. It is far to easy to burn through your precious marketing budget if proper consideration isn't given to the complexities of multi country / multi language search engine marketing.

If you have had success or learned some lessons using search engine marketing to sell your product or service globally we'd love to hear about it.

This article was posted by Matt Forman. Matt is a Google Qualified AdWords Professional and Managing Director at Traffika. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattforman.

Social Media in the Marketing Mix Video Series: Parts 2, 3 and 4.

We've posted the remaining videos in the social media in the marketing mix series to our Facebook page. Please find below for your convenience.

Part 2
Covers an introduction to Facebook for business in Australia and takes a look at some interesting social networking stats specific to Brisbane and Queensland.




Part 3
Part 3 of the Social Media in the Marketing Mix Series covers Twitter for Business and the essential elements of a successful Social Media campaign.




Part 4
Part 4 of the Social Media in the Marketing Mix Series provides a case study of a recent Social Media campaign for The Triumphant Child.