And just like that, Google buys DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion. There are many naysayers about this deal but as an advertiser, I love it. If Google can integrate the DoubleClick ad network into their existing ad management tool, this will be huge. Last week I attended an executive dinner hosted by WebTrends which had a few prospective clients as well as existing clients (like myself). During our discussion, we got on the topic of managing banner advertisements alongside SEM campaigns.

Tying SEM to Banner Advertising (and vice versa)
For someone like me who wants to show banner ads to people who have previously searched for terms, this is huge. Tying search to banner campaigns has been the missing link. As web marketers, we know that banner ads have an impact on search. We also know that people who search are checking out multiple sites, comparing prices, comparing features, and trying to get as much information as possible about a topic. As a brand advertiser, we can now start to merge our online strategies for banner ads and search marketing into one comprehensive, intelligent campaign. This benefits us from a budget standpoint, but will also help us target consumers to give them the most relevant advertising as possible.

Privacy advocates of the world unite in horror
The privacy advocates will certainly be opposed to this, but that’s fine — I trust Google enough to Do The Right Thing. That said, this now opens the door for companies like WebTrends and their Dynamic Search product to fully integrate banner advertising into their product since it will be part of a search engine. Of course, it will probably be a while before there is a central management interface for DoubleClick and Google AdWords, but a guy can dream, can’t he? I really look forward to the day I can tie banner advertising and search engine marketing to actual data, to see how one effects the other. Then we can start getting a true understanding of how our entire online advertising strategies are performing — from e-mail, to banner ads, to search ads.

Banner Advertising will become accessibile for small businesses on a limited budget
Let’s also not forget the network of sites Google has now “purchased” to run ads on. This may be an extension of banners available to AdSense customers, too. Sprinkle in video ads and the YouTube aquisition and Google has one powerful empire of online advertising. If they do it correctly, they’ll even make it accessible to the Common Man so small businesses can compete with the big guys. For online publishers, it will hopefully become easier to focus on producing a quality website without having to play the balancing act with several ad servers, Google AdSense, in-house ad sales, etc. to generate the most revenue. This is the quandary we’re (SuperMotors) in right now. Who has the time to constantly adjust pricing floors on various ad networks each month depending on the inventories of the various ad networks? Not us, but we have to do it anyway. It’s a never-ending battle.
It’ll be an interesting year for online advertising.

While Friday still remains at SES NY ’07, it feels like today (Thursday) was the last day. I sat in on several sessions all of which were focused around retail, search, advertising, and social media. The underlying theme of the day was looking at advertising from multiple angles and how it can help build/elevate your brand. My notes from the day are very scattered so I’ll do a recap with my own thoughts as well.

Online SEM Channel Strategy – What to do?
As I evaluate our online channel and the fact that it is like the Wild West right now, I am presented with the following dilemma:

1. As a manufacturer, we want to protect our brand name. In fact, leveraging our brand is a corporate initiative, and it should be a differentiator when people shop for blinds and shades online or offline.
2. Our products are sold in different channels: Big Box, Independent, and Online. Online presents the biggest challenge because our brand name is used to drive traffic to competitor websites. This is an easy problem to fix thanks to our legal department. However, the more interesting and complex issue is how to work with our online retail partners to get a win-win situation: we want to “own” our brand name, yet our retail partners need to advertise our brand name. What’s a consumer to do?

I don’t have all of the answers yet, but have some ideas (which I will not discuss here). The more important point is that we have retail partners who are advertising our brand name, essentially free of charge. In the blind and shade industry, brand names are either very well known, or completely nonexistent. It’s really a hit-or-miss vertical. With that said, once you start rolling in banner advertising, offline advertising, PR, social media marketing, etc. to create that brand awareness, then the online retailer SEM takes a whole different role.

Where does SEM live in the sales/conversion funnel?
There are essentially two types of searchers:

1. Consumer searches for a specific product name (sometimes including a brand name)
2. Consumer searches for generic product name

Consumers who fall into bucket #1 are further along in the sales funnel. They have been pre-disposed to your product and are more or less “in the market” now and ready to spend their money. I would argue that these consumers represent an “easier” conversion to a sale and that your SEM budget should focus heavily in this area.
Is SEM a marketing tool or a sales tool?
Consumers who fall into bucket #2 are the people who blur the lines of SEM. Is SEM a marketing tool or a sales tool? Or is it both? People using generic search terms may not have a brand top-of-mind, but if they see advertisements relating to their search that mention a brand name, they may be more likely to resonate with those ads. This is particularly true if you have other advertising and marketing in place such as banners, offline ads, PR, good social media penetration, etc. Now, combine the power of the “stickiness” of brand advertising with the online retailers who also sell our products and we’ve got an interesting situation.

Generic terms may not immediately convert, but they may be attributed to future conversions
The problem is that it’s hard to tie sales to generic search terms. They may not immediately convert, simply because the consumer falls a little higher in the sales conversion funnel and may not be ready to purchase right then and there. Unfortunately for us, too, the sales cycle is much longer for custom blinds and shades (due to ordering samples online, waiting for them to arrive, and also because of the higher price point of custom products).

Who’s to say, though, that a generic term didn’t ultimately drive the consumer towards purchasing your product at a later date. What if they came back to the search engine, looked for another term or even used your brand name this time in their search phrase, and ended up purchasing on your site (or retail partner site)? It’s certainly doable to keep track of the initial click or keyword/phrase that drove the consumer to your website for the first time. But it’s also very hard to measure the effectiveness of SEM with other “outside’ influencers such as more traditional advertising.

Fortunately, I will be able to run a baseline test of SEM for 1 to 2 quarters without any other external advertising (other than normal monthly promotions, etc. that we would normally run). I anticipate a lift when SEM begins to clicks to our website (and hopefully sales through retail partners), but even more so do I expect this when we start advertising via more traditional means. I will really be interested to see if it drives a higher conversion rate on the same SEM campaigns I had been running.

It’s hard to say, but fortunately I have tools like Omniture SiteCatalyst and WebTrends Dynamic Search to help me manage it all.

Creating the right blend of advertising – avoiding advertising silos
The ultimate goal is to create the right blend of advertising so SEM is converting at its highest possible rate when balanced with the correct amount of banner advertising, offline advertising, PR, social media, etc. I think the main problem with advertisers today is that they are looking at everything in silos. PR is measured in impressions — but how is it correlated with sales? Banner ads are measured in impressions, click-throughs, and conversions — but how do banners influence search? How does leverage social media influence customer satisfaction and repeat business?

There are so many variables that go into the marketing, management, and maintenance of a brand. Pile this responsibility on top of having to actually creating, produce, and maintain new product development and you’ve got your hands full.  Do it well and you’ve got a well-oiled machine with new product development and marketing playing off each other. Do it poorly, and you’ll find yourself in a very disconnected business with poorly performing sales funnels and weak innovation and new product development.

After a 2-week trial run of Google’s Adsense Link Units, we have removed them from SuperMotors.net because we received 0 clicks. While there are probably other areas these link units could excel in, we are really trying to avoid crowding the site with advertisements in an effort to provide an acceptable user experience.

We are testing Google AdSense “Link Units” on SuperMotors. We see a lot of sites using the Google AdSense link units to generate advertising revenue. They are a relatively small footprint and can provide very relevant content when functioning correctly. We are still inside the 48-hour ramp-up period which Google describes as:

Once the code is live on your site, relevant ads should appear within 48 hours.

This is where we have implemented them (horizontally, just below the 728×90 leaderboard banner ad) based on locations we’ve seen on other automotive-related sites:

I personally have never once clicked on these types of links simply because it produces a list of sponsored links. Seems like extra work for me and I’d rather click on relevant ads that are already displayed on the site. This may also be attributed to my behavior on sites in that I realize these are sponsored links and perhaps tend to avoid this style of link. Based on usability studies and general observations of consumers using websites, I think the more often than not, they are under the impression that the text-based links are for pages within the current site they are visiting.

Will report back as to whether or not revenues increase substantially with the addition of these link units.

Yesterday I learned that one of our ad networks, Tribal Fusion, is part of a larger entity called Exponential. One of Exponential’s businesses is a company called echotopic, which is currently in beta. Echotopic is described as:

EchoTopic™ provides both small and large businesses with concrete marketing results while also enhancing the user experience through the delivery of relevant contextual advertising. EchoTopic™ delivers in-text keyword advertising campaigns on premium websites in targeted industry verticals. The program provides advertisers with opportunities to reach customers and capture their attention when they are most receptive – by placing a message directly into the text of high quality websites. It gives publishers an important source of additional revenue while also improving the user experience on their website.

We have been eye-balling contextual ad networks for the last several months for SuperMotors in an effort to monetize the user-generated content on the site (which comes in forms of installation articles, syndicated content, forum posts, and registry entry descriptions about members’ ATVs, boats, cars and trucks, motorcycles, snowmobiles, and personal watercrafts). We have applied to be a beta tester for their service and hope to be able to dip our toes into this ad network to see how effective it is.

I’ve been keeping tabs on other bloggers who monetize their sites, and kudos go out to them for being able to nearly make a living off of posting messages. However, we have a very loyal userbase of repeat customers and need to carefully balance the use of advertising with the user experience that they have come to know.

More on contextual advertising as we align with a network that likes the content we have to offer.