Category Archives: Search Marketing

Is it Time to Relabel ” Marketing?

First published September 15, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Last week, I asked the question, “Is the word ‘search’ the right label for what we do on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other engines?” When Internet search debuted in the early 90s, it was probably pretty accurate. But today, the concept may have passed the label by.

And, if that is true, then the same is probably true for “search marketing.” The main gist of my argument last week was that the word “search” implies the expenditure of a significant effort with no guarantee of a successful outcome. But today, more than ever, we look to these engines to connect us with information and functionality. We want to “do” things when we click through to the other side of the search results.

I also said that it was difficult to find any one label that covers all our intentions when we turn to a “search” engine. In the beginning, when the Web was one large bucket of ill-formed data, “search” worked as a universal label. But that’s not true today. Now, the Web is becoming increasingly structured, and a search engine that excels at bringing order to unstructured data often falls disappointingly short when it comes to actually getting stuff done. In trying to be the universal Swiss Army Knife of the Web for many common tasks, Google (or Bing) doesn’t do any of them particularly well, we’re starting to find.  For many tasks, a dedicated and specialized app often does a far better job of meeting our expectations.

Again, this starts to define the conundrum currently facing search marketers. When the label we used was “search,” our job was simply to make sure our sites were “found.” Within the parameters defined by “searching” (to explore in order to discover), our job was straightforward: reduce the exploration effort required on the part of the searcher by moving our sites into a more “discoverable” position.

But what if we substitute some of the other labels I suggested last week for the word “search”? Suddenly, our job becomes much more complex.

Let’s start with “connection.” In this case, buyer s already have an idea that the right online destination exists, so they also have a preconceived notion of what they would find there. In game theory, this is called “expected utility.” In this case, our job is not simply to make the site easy to find, but also to make sure it’s a relevant match for our prospect’s expectations. If it isn’t, we may capture the click but miss the conversion. And that puts a whole new spin on search marketing. To understand how to create a “connection,” we have to understand what happens on both sides of the click: pre-connection and post-connection.

This requires us to delve into our prospect’s “frame of mind.” Again, the words used here provide a clue for what’s required as a marketer. A “frame” colors our entire view of things. There’s even a term for it in psychology: the “framing effect.” It’s categorized as a cognitive bias, which means that our frames determine our reality. To be successful “connection” marketers, we have to be familiar with our prospect’s “frame” of reference. When we are, we can provide a relevant and persuasive post-click path.

But “connection” wasn’t the only alternative label I proposed. What about “action” or “fulfillment?” Again, both ask us to substantially stretch our horizons as a marketer.

“Action” is an even more determinant label than connection. If we’re looking to take “action,” each step interposed between the end goal and the prospect is another level of frustration. Here, our job as “action” marketers is to remove as many of the steps as possible between intent and action. Actions are usually well defined and specific. We should be equally as specific in the alternatives we provide our prospects. Our calls to action should be a clear invitation to “do” things.

“Fulfillment” is a little tougher nut to crack. To be “fulfilled” can take several forms. Is there an emotional component? How would the prospect define “fulfillment”? Is the post-click result a step towards fulfillment, or does it take a prospect all the way there? A successful “fulfillment” marketer should be part psychologist and part clairvoyant.

Given the challenge we have in even attaching a label to what it is we do, it’s no wonder that recent analyst reports are all reporting a common theme: the best search marketers are expanding into other services. We’re expanding beyond “search” into “social,” “mobile,” “local,” “display” and other channels. It’s not so much that “search” is passé, rather it’s that “search” isn’t really the right label anymore. I’m not sure that “social” or “local” are any better. Personally, I think the perfect word, whatever it turns out to be, should clearly identify “why” people are online rather than “what” they’re doing online.

What’s in a Word?

First published September 8, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I served for six years as a director of the Search Engine Marketers Professional Organization. Every six months or so, we’d get together to talk about the future of the organization. As you can imagine, the future of an organization catering to industry professionals is inextricably linked to the future of the industry itself. So, our conversations weren’t so much about the future of SEMPO as they were about the future of search — and by extension, the future of search marketing.

Every time we embarked on this task of joint navel and crystal-ball gazing, we ran smack dab into the same dilemma: How do you define search? What is search? Should it even be called search any more? Esther Dyson, among others, thinks the term “search” may have outlived its usefulness. Perhaps “connection,” “fulfillment” or “action” has a better connotation. At least these words imply there’s something of substance on the other end of the search. They hint at successful outcomes. When Microsoft debuted Bing, the company sought to differentiate the product by calling it the “Decision” engine – “Bing is a search engine that finds and organizes the answers you need so you can make faster, more informed decisions.”

For me, words are important, so in trying to define the future of our industry, the words we choose to represent the concept tell us something about our feelings towards it.

Let’s start with “search,” the generic label we currently use: to “search” is to attempt to discover something. We search for a needle in a haystack. We search for a missing child or a runaway fugitive. We search for the truth. All seem to indicate an expenditure of significant effort but no guarantee of success. Given the state of the Internet when search engines debuted, it was an apt moniker. But today, that’s no longer the case. Today, I suspect, we launch almost every search with a clear expectation that somewhere out there, the information we seek exists. All we need is the right connection to it.

Given that, perhaps a “connection” engine is a better choice. To “connect” is to link known entities. Unlike with “search,” when we use the term “connect” we know our objective exists and we’re just trying to find the shortest path between points A and B.  The word better captures the navigational usage of search, which accounts for a huge percentage of total queries. I’ve used the term myself in the past when I’ve said that search is the “connection” between intent and content.

But even “connection” implies a certain statelessness. While it better captures our intent than does the verb search, I don’t know if it adequately represents the dynamic and participatory nature of our online activities. Whereas the verbs we used to use to define what we did online implied passive observance — “look,” “browse” and “surf” (I never did get that one, but at one time using it made you sound uber-cool) —  we now “book,” “post,” “comment,” “”tweet,” “buy” and participate in dozens of much more active ways, using more active verbs. Where once we went online to seek and consume information, we now want to “do” things.  We expect to do things. And so we use Google or Bing to find the right tool to allow us to do those things. That’s the rationale behind suggestions like “fulfillment” (to carry out, to satisfy or to develop to full potential) and “action” (something done or performed). Certainly, for some search tasks, calling Google or Bing an “action” engine would be a more appropriate description.

For some tasks — but not all. And that’s the problem we kept running into when we tried to define what search is. It’s tough to keep in any one box. It tends to be squishy and amorphous. And it has the habit of expanding into the ever-developing niches and crevasses of the online landscape.

So, was Bing right to call itself a “decision” engine? Is that the missing label that encapsulates all we look for in an engine? Do we need something to help us make better decisions (to compare and choose between alternatives)? It’s at least as good as “search”, and probably better, because it takes it one step further. It makes the assumption that the information about the best alternatives will be served to us by the engine.

While you might think this is just a frivolous exercise in semantics, I disagree. I think this question speaks to something fundamental in the evolution of search. We use words to label concepts — and when the labels no longer fit, it’s because the concept itself has changed. If we have trouble applying a word to something, it’s probably because we think of it in a different way than we used to. I believe this is true of search. And if we think of “search” differently, it means we must also think of “search marketing” differently.

Until next week…

The ZMOT Continued: More from Jim Lecinski

First published July 28, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Last week, I started my conversation with Jim Lecinski, author of the new ebook from Google: “ZMOT, Winning the Zero Moment of Truth.”  Yesterday, Fellow Search Insider Aaron Goldman gave us his take on ZMOT. Today, I’ll wrap up by exploring with Jim the challenge that the ZMOT presents to organizations and some of the tips for success he covers in the book.

First of all, if we’re talking about what happens between stimulus and transaction, search has to play a big part in the activities of the consumer. Lecinski agreed, but was quick to point out that the online ZMOT extends well beyond search.

Jim Lecinski: Yes, Google or a search engine is a good place to look. But sometimes it’s a video, because I want to see [something] in use…Then [there’s] your social network. I might say, “Saw an ad for Bobby Flay’s new restaurant in Las Vegas. Anybody tried it?” That’s in between seeing the stimulus, but before… making a reservation or walking in the door.

We see consumers using… a broad set of things. In fact, 10.7 sources on average are what people are using to make these decisions between stimulus and shelf.

A few columns back, I shared the pinball model of marketing, where marketers have to be aware of the multiple touchpoints a buyer can pass through, potentially heading off in a new and unexpected direction at each point. This muddies the marketing waters to a significant degree, but it really lies at the heart of the ZMOT concept:

Lecinski: It is not intended to say, “Here’s how you can take control,” but you need to know what those touch points are. We quote the great marketer Woody Allen: “‘Eighty percent of success in life is just showing up.”

So if you’re in the makeup business, people are still seeing your ads in Cosmo and Modern Bride and Elle magazine, and they know where to buy your makeup. But if Makeupalley is now that place between stimulus and shelf where people are researching, learning, reading, reviewing, making decisions about your $5 makeup, you need to show up there.

Herein lies an inherent challenge for the organization looking to win the ZMOT: whose job is that? Our corporate org chart reflects marketplace realities that are at least a generation out of date. The ZMOT is virgin territory, which typically means it lies outside of one person’s job description. Even more challenging, it typically cuts across several departments.

Lecinski: We offer seven recommendations in the book, and the first one is “Who’s in charge?” If you and I were to go ask our marketer clients, “Okay, stimulus — the ad campaigns. Who’s in charge of that? Give me a name,” they could do that, right? “Here’s our VP of National Advertising.”

Shelf — if I say, “Who’s in charge of winning at the shelf?” “Oh. Well, that’s our VP of Sales” or “Shopper Marketing.” And if I say, “Product delivery,” – “well that’s our VP of Product Development” or “R&D” or whatever. So there’s someone in charge of those classic three moments. Obviously the brand manager’s job is to coordinate those. But when I say, “Who’s in charge of winning the ZMOT?” Well, usually I get blank stares back.

If you’re intent on winning the ZMOT, the first thing you have to do is make it somebody’s job. But you can’t stop there. Here are Jim’s other suggestions:

The second thing is, you need to identify what are those zero moments of truth in your category… Start to catalogue what those are and then you can start to say, “Alright. This is a place where we need to start to show up.”

The next is to ask, “Do we show up and answer the questions that people are asking?”

Then we talk about being fast and being alert, because up to now, stimulus has been characterized as an ad you control. But sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s a study that’s released by an interest group. Sometimes it’s a product recall that you don’t control. Sometimes it’s a competitor’s move. Sometimes it’s Colbert on his show poking a little fun at Miracle Whip from Kraft. That wasn’t in your annual plan, but now there’s a ZMOT because, guess what happens — everybody types in “Colbert Miracle Whip video.” Are you there, and what do people see? Because that’s how they’re going to start making up their mind before they get to Shoppers Drug Mart to pick up their Miracle Whip.

Winning the ZMOT is not a cakewalk. But it lies at the crux of the new marketing reality. We’ve begun to incorporate the ZMOT into the analysis we do for clients. If you don’t, you’re leaving a huge gap between the stimulus and shelf — and literally anything could happen in that gap.

Marketing in the ZMOT: An Interview with Jim Lecinski

First published July 21, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

A few columns back, I mentioned the new book from Google, “ZMOT, Winning the Zero Moment of Truth.” But, in true Google fashion, it isn’t really a book, at least, not in the traditional sense. It’s all digital, it’s free, and there’s even a multimedia app (a Vook) for the iPad.

Regardless of the “book” ‘s format, I recently caught up with its author, Jim Lecinski, and we had a chance to chat about the ZMOT concept. Jim started by explaining what the ZMOT is: “The traditional model of marketing is stimulus – you put out a great ad campaign to make people aware of your product, then you win the FMOT (a label coined by Procter and Gamble) — the moment of truth, the purchase point, the shelf. Then the target takes home the product and hopefully it will live up to its promises. It makes whites whiter, brights brighter, the package actually gets there by 10:30 the next morning.

What we came out with here in the book is this notion that there’s actually a fourth node in the model  of equal importance.  We gave the umbrella name to that new fourth moment that happens in between stimulus and shelf: if it’s prior to FMOT, one minus F is zero, ‘Zero Moment of Truth.'”

Google didn’t invent the ZMOT, just as Procter & Gamble didn’t invent the FMOT. These are just labels applied to consumer behaviours. But Google, and online in general, have had a profound effect on a consumer’s ability to interact in the Zero Moment of Truth.

Lecinski: “There were always elements of a zero moment of truth. It could happen via word of mouth. And in certain categories, of course  — washing machines, automotive, certain consumer electronics — the zero moment of truth was won or lost in print publications like Consumer Reports or Zagat restaurant guide or Mobil Travel Guide.

But those things had obvious limitations. One: there was friction — you had to actually get in the car and go to the library. The second is timeliness  — the last time they reviewed wash machines might have been nine months ago. And then the third is accuracy: ‘Well, the model that they reviewed nine months ago isn’t exactly the one I saw on the commercial last night that’s on sale this holiday weekend at Sears.'”

The friction, the timeliness and the simple lack of information all lead to an imbalance in the market place that was identified by economist George Akerlof in 1970 as information asymmetry. In most cases, the seller knew more about the product than the buyer. But the Web has driven out this imbalance in many product categories.

Lecinski: “The means are available to everybody to remove that sort of information asymmetry and move us into a post-Akerlof world of information symmetry. I was on the ad agency side for a long time, and we made the TV commercial assuming information asymmetry. We would say, ‘Ask your dealer to explain more about X, Y, and Z.’

Well, now that kind of a call to action in a TV commercial sounds almost silly, because you go into the dealer and there’s people with all the printouts and their smartphones and everything… So in many ways we are in a post-Akerlof world. Even his classic example of lemons for cars, well, I can be standing on the lot and pull up the CARFAX history report off my iPhone right there in the car lot.”

Lecinski also believes that our current cash flow issues drive more intense consumer research.  “Forty seven percent of U.S. households say that they cannot come up with $2,000 in a 30-day period without having to sell some possessions,” he says. “This is how paycheck to paycheck life is.”

When money is tight, we’re more careful with how we part with it. That means we spend more time in the ZMOT.

Next week, I’ll continue my conversation with Jim, touching on what the online ZMOT landscape looks like, the challenge ZMOT presents marketers and the seven suggestions Jim offers about how to win the Zero Moment of Truth.

We’re Looking in the Wrong Place for our Attribution Models

First published June 16, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

The online landscape is getting more complex. Speaking from a marketer’s perspective, there are more points of influence that can alter a buyer’s path. At the last Search Insider Summit, John Yi from Facebook introduced us to something he called Pinball Marketing. It’s an apt analogy for the new online reality.

Hoping for a Strike

In the past, marketing was like bowling. You would build a campaign with sufficient critical mass and aim it toward your target, hoping at the end of the campaign (or lane) your aim was good enough, and the ball/campaign had enough kinetic energy (measured in REACH X FREQUENCY X AD ENGAGEMENT) to knock down all the potential customers.  If you think about marketing in this perspective, it explains the massive amount of pain traditional marketers are feeling as they pull their bowling-shoe-clad feet from the old world and gingerly dip their toes in the new. The bowler was in control (theoretically) and the success or failure of the campaign lay in her hands alone. The paradigm was simple, clean and linear, just the way we marketers like it.

The new game of marketing is much more like pinball. The intersections between a buyer’s decision path and a product’s marketing presence are many, and each can send the buyer off in a different direction. Some of those intersection points are within the marketer’s control — and some aren’t. Marketers now have to try to understand engagement and buyer impact at each of these intersections and, in the process, try to piece together a map of the buyer’s journey, assigning value in the appropriate places.

Repealing Newton’s Law

But even though the frenetic path of a pinball gets us a little closer to today’s marketing reality, it still doesn’t get us all the way, because there’s one fundamental difference: pinballs don’t have brains. Nor do they have emotions, feelings, or needs. Pinballs are just little metal spheres that obey the laws of physics.

And therein lies the difference.  How much more challenging would pinball be if, rather than relying on Newtonian physics to set the path of a ball coming off a flipper, it could decide whether it wanted to go right, left or simply stop dead in its tracks, refusing to go one inch further until you showed it a little more respect.  As physicist Murray Gell-Mann once quipped, “Imagine how hard physics would be if particles could think.”

As we try to understand what influences our buyers, we tend to apply something like the laws of physics to unraveling attribution. We apply formulas to various touchpoints, mathematically weighting their respective values. We can weight it to the first click, the last click, or divvy up the value based on some arbitrary calculation. But, in the end, as we try to figure out the new rules of marketing, we tend to forget that these balls have brains.

Go to the Source

If we want to understand what makes buyers buy, we should ask them. We should base attribution models on decision paths, not arbitrary formulas. We should walk through the buying landscape with our prospects, seeing how they respond at each intersection point. And when we build our attribution models, we should base them on psychology, not physics.

Is this approach harder than the holy grail of a universal attribution formula (or even multiple variations of said formula)? Absolutely. It’s fuzzy and sometimes messy. It tends to squirm around a lot. And unlike Newtonian physics, it depends on context. What I’m proposing is riddled with “ifs” and “maybes.” In short, it’s human in its ambiguity, and that’s really the whole point. I would much rather have ambiguity that’s somewhat right than clarity that’s completely wrong.

There is No Blank Slate in Marketing

First published May 26, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

In 2002, Steven Pinker wrote a book called “The Blank Slate.” For 509 pages, Pinker argues that when it comes to our brains, and by extension, our minds, there is no such thing as a blank slate. While our destinies are not predetermined by our genes, there are certainly hardwired mechanisms that influence the paths we take.  It’s not solely nature or nurture, but a combination of both. Our minds are neither perfectly malleable plastic (the “blank slate” of behavioralists) nor are they cast in stone. In the end, you cannot deny human nature.

Recently, Google has been spending a lot of time talking about the Zero Moment of Truth, or ZMOT for short. In effect, they’re saying that when it comes to influencing a buyer, Pinker’s argument is also applicable. In marketing, as in psychology, there is no such thing as a blank Ssate.

Former Procter and Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley started this market-driven quest for truth a few years ago when he introduced the first and second moments of truth. The first (abbreviated as the FMOT) was when the customer is standing in front of the store shelf, trying to decide which package to pick up.  It’s been labeled the most important moment in all of marketing. The second moment of truth is what the customer actually experiences when she uses the product.

But Google, led by ZMOT evangelists including U.S. director of sales Jim Lecinski, is stepping backwards from the FMOT to show that there’s a whole chain of activity that now leads up to the FMOT, which has received the collective Zero Moment of Truth label. It appears that we marketers need a crystallization of the ultimate moment of decision where the balance of a consumer’s mind is tipped in favor of our product.  To use the blank slate metaphor, it’s the moment when the “brand” is seared into our cortical grey matter.

Google is correct in drawing attention to the substantial research that precedes most purchases. The biggest change in the marketplace has been the balancing of Akerlof’s information asymmetry in favor of the buyer. No longer does the seller hold all the cards in the typical transaction. We buyers research because we can. It’s the way we not only mitigate risk but also explore the expected utility of a purchase.  These are fundamental components of decision theory.  The mechanisms that drive decision theory haven’t changed, but the information available to us certainly has.

But even with all this access to information, we still approach buying decisions with our all-too-human biases and foibles. Our online research is filtered through brand beliefs and emotional prejudgments. Even on the search results page, that most brand-agnostic of advertising pallets, brand is a powerful predictor of behavior.  If we launch a search by using a generic product category term, we often have a short list of brands we expect to see bubble to the top of the results page. There is no blank slate here waiting to be impressed upon. There is a sometimes-vague notion of brand preference waiting to be confirmed by Google’s algorithm. And we scan the results page guided by our expectations and preconceptions.

The ZMOT landscape is a difficult thing to map. Google is providing some guidance through the new ebook,, with some practical advice for marketers. This should be a valuable addition to the marketer’s virtual bookshelf. Jim is a smart marketer and Google has privileged access to all of our ZMOT behavior. But, as with everything in marketing, there will be no hard and fast rules. One of the challenges in producing repeatable results in an experimental setting is to control the variables that could impact outcomes. But one of those variables is human nature, and when the experimental setting is marketing, you’re just going to have to accept the fact that there will always be a significant degree of unpredictability.

Uncovering the “Curse of Captiva”

First published May 5, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

“May you live in interesting times….”

Just about the time you’re reading that line, I’ll be kicking off the Search Insider Summit on Captiva Island, Fla., with it.  I think those six words pretty much sum up the theme of the three-day event.

Here’s the thing about that well-known quote – it’s both a blessing and a curse. On the surface, it appears to be a benevolent wish of good will, but lurking just under the surface lays a malevolent storm that can rip organizations and institutions apart.

The origins of the so-called “Chinese Curse” are murky, but according to Wikipedia, it may be related to the Chinese proverb: “It’s better to be a dog in peaceful times than to be a man in chaotic ones;” perhaps one reason why we should let “sleeping dogs lie.” This is all well and good if we have any choice in the matter, but we really don’t. Chaos, especially in our chosen field, is the new normal. Like it or not, we live in interesting times.

Personally, I like it, even though it can get exhausting at times. I’m one of those perverse individuals who thrive on chaos and change. If things become too placid for too long, my inclination is to get a big stick and stir things up. I’m driven by the belief that there must be a better way. But I know not everyone shares that view. For many, if not most, change brings uncertainty, which usually comes knocking with its traveling companions: stress and anxiety.

Change, in various forms, is pretty much all we’ll be talking about at Captiva. If change was a sure bet, a trading of the mediocre for the improved, there really wouldn’t be much to talk about. Change would be sought, embraced and systematically incorporated into everything we do.

The problem with change is that there are no guarantees ensuring you’ll end up in a better place. It’s tossing that which you know in the bucket and taking a chance on drawing a new lot in life that could be better, the same, or worse — perhaps much worse. And there’s the rub. Humans don’t approach such decisions rationally.

There’s a lot of unusual psychology at play here, covered by numerous economic behavioral theories like endowment effect, loss aversion, disposition effect and Kahneman and Tversky’s Prospect Theory. The long and the short of it is that most times, we believe a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. And attitudes of that sort generally freeze change right in its tracks. We have not evolved to be born risk takers. This tendency can create bizarre behaviors that defy logic: like investors being much more willing to sell stocks that have gained in value than those that have decreased. We’ve all done that, with the unshakable belief that we can recoup our losses. But a purely statistical analysis of that theory would blow it to smithereens.

Through most of our history, the genetic evidence would seem to vindicate this aversion to risk. That we’re still around points to its success as a survival strategy. But current times are not representative of our general history. There are times, this being one of them, when external factors in our environment force us to make changes and embrace risk. Those that hesitate are lost.

During these times, it’s the nimble and adaptable that thrive. Bulk and baggage are impediments. Reinvention is the name of the game. It’s the prerequisite of living in interesting times.

Search Breaks Out of the Box in Park City

First published December 9, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Wow! The Search Insider Summit is in full swing in Park City, Utah and for the first time in six or seven Summits, I’m not there. I don’t mind saying, it’s feeling kinda weird.

Laurie Sullivan and the team, including your emcee Aaron Goldman, did a bang-up job putting the show together. I did have some limited involvement, looking on from the sidelines as they lined up the speakers and nailed down the agenda. They’re touching on all the hot topics: the convergence of display and search, social and search (pretty much everything and search); new platforms to allow for more effective targeting; the ongoing changes on the SERP; using data to make smarter marketing decisions; and yes, once again, how mobile will change everything (and this time, it’s really true!).

The agenda is a broad one, reaching into virtually every aspect of online activity. And really, that’s what any search agenda has to be. One of the ongoing challenges of programming the past several Summits has been where to draw the line. Despite the best efforts of many to define the search “box,” search is not a box, a channel, or a tactic. It’s what we do. And as such, it connects everything. We search in social networks. We search on mobile. And if we happen to see an ad that triggers our interest, the odds are very good that we will — you guessed it — launch a search. So a Search Summit has to be, by necessity, a Social/Mobile/Testing/Analytics/Display/Target and Segmentation Summit. You can’t keep search in a box.

I started writing this column way back in 2004. Since then (for almost 300 columns), I’ve been watching how search has seeped into every nook and cranny of online behavior. It’s become the gold standard for intercepting a consumer with intent. Search inventory forms the core of any performance marketing strategy worth its salt. Most of the things Goldman and Company will be talking about, nestled in the silver frosted peaks of Utah, revolve around extending the accountability and performance of search into other channels. Once you’ve tasted the search Kool-Aid, it’s hard to settle for any other flavor. The problem is, of course, with the keyword-restricted limits on search inventory, there’s only so much Kool-Aid to go around.

But another thing struck me while I ran down the Summit agenda: we’re talking about things we would have never talked about in 2004. We’re talking about the users on the other side of that search interface as real live people, not just volume numbers in a keyword discovery tool. Tony Fagan from Google will be talking about how constant testing helps hone your marketing skills against actual behaviors. Eli Goodman from comScore will share some tasty data about how Google Instant is changing behaviors on the results page. And, of course, you can’t dive into social media without understanding how people behave when they’re traveling with the herd.

If there’s one thing I’ve found lacking in search marketing, it’s the “marketing” part of the industry. More often than not, search plays out as a technical exercise, full of algorithms, rules and tools, rather than what marketing should be: a drive to forge relevant connections to people with needs, fears and dreams. When I programmed the Summit, I always tried to bring that perspective to the stage. I’m glad to see Laurie and her team have also kept the human part of search very much alive at this Summit.

Have fun, Search Summiters. I’ll miss you (and will see you in Captiva)!

Google: Caught in the Act of Balancing

First published November 18, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

In last week’s column, I talked about the number of changes I was seeing on the Google results page, and, in particular, how they might maintain the delicate balance between driving revenue from the page and maintaining user trust. No sooner did the digital ink dry on the column than I received an email from an old friend, Chris Knoch, formerly of Omniture and now vice president of marketing at Ready Financial. In his email, Chris included a screen shot of a rather interesting beta that Google is running:

Google-Screen-ShotIt’s hard to say, given Google’s love for beta testing, how widely spread this test is and how indicative it might be of future ad presentations, but there are a number of fascinating implications to consider here. For today’s column, I’d like to focus on one of them: the elimination of the side ads.

Side ads generate a small percentage of the sponsored clicks from the page. For most results, the top two or three ads generate over 80% of the paid clicks on the page, with the seven or eight running down the right rail splitting the remaining 20%. That’s a lot of real estate to devote to underperforming ads. Will Google’s expandable alternative, with the user choosing to see eight more ads, generate more clicks? I suspect so. Here’s why.

We judge the relevance and quality of blocks of information as a group, rather than consider them individually. The first ad in any block will dictate the performance of the block as a whole. If it’s a high quality ad, it’s saying to the user, “I’m relevant. Chances are the rest of the ads in this group could be relevant too. At least, you should spend a few seconds deciding for yourself!” But if it’s a low quality ad, it sends the message, “Don’t waste your time here. I’m not relevant, and everything below me is even worse.”

For side ads, this means that the top ad determines the depth of scanning engagement with the entire block. The position and visual treatment of the ads reinforces that it’s a “sidebar”, of secondary importance to the main purpose of the page. We won’t invest a lot of time scanning here, and if the first ad sucks, the rest of the block is doomed.

Google’s treatment provides a compelling alternative to the user. It restricts the number of ads shown to only the highest quality ones (you’ll notice that this presentation appeared on a broad query, where there would be sufficient inventory to provide high quality ads). The ads should be just as relevant to the intent of the user as the organic results, and given the query, probably more relevant. The user should be hooked. The presentation of two ads (I’d bet big money on the fact that Google will be testing both two and three ad presentations above the “more ads” button) gives a ready-made consideration set for the user. We’ve known for some time now that users “chunk off” a result set in groups of two or three results (maximum four) and consider them as a group. There are natural visual barriers (the related search suggestions) that reinforce the visual presentation of the top ads as a group. What this means is that the user will judge relevancy, and if the first two (or three) ads pass the test, there’s a high likelihood that the set will be expanded.

When the set is expanded, the entire visual balance of the search results set is changed to the benefit of the advertisers, but the user initiates it. The user has given the ads an implicit vote of confidence, and by doing so, all organic results are pushed down out of visual scanning range. My guess is that this will result in much higher engagement with the ads, virtually eliminating the sidebar blindness that has typically plagued right-rail ads.

It’s a perfect example of maintaining user trust while driving more revenue. Based on this beta, I’d have to say, “Well done, Google!”

Google’s Recent Changes: Here There Be Monsters

First published November 11, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Something’s brewing in Mountain View. Google’s geared up the SAR (Screwing Around Rate) of its results page to unprecedented levels. We have Google Instant, Place Search and Google Previews all rolling out in the last few months. And from around the blogosphere, there’s rumors of testing that allows users to show 11 sponsored ads on top and also the telling switch of the label “Sponsored Links” to simply “Ads.” So what do Google strategists have up their sleeves?

The recent changes at Google prompted me to dig out a research paper we wrote a few years ago called “Search Engine Results: 2010.” In it, I interviewed Marissa Mayer along with a dream team of search pundits and usability experts. A lot of what we’re seeing today was hinted at in those interviews.

For example, Mayer said: “If you imagine the results page, instead of being long and linear, and having ten results on the page that you can scroll through — to having ten very heterogeneous results, where we show each of those results in a form that really suits their medium, and in a more condensed format. When you started seeing some diagrams, some video, some news, some charts, you might actually have a page that looks and feels more like an interactive encyclopedia.”

Michael Ferguson, who was the UX lead at Ask, which had just rolled out Ask 3D (which, in hindsight, was well ahead of its time), went further: “There might be a time you might see people advertising and providing content not just on web pages and blogs etc. but with short discrete self-contained video answers and audio answers that come up either as sponsored or relevant content. So you might have a breaking down of search marketing that takes some of the things that have been learned like optimization and designing good text ads and seeing how that would work when you’re delivering an audio 20 second pitch or delivering an audio content that drives traffic to your site.”

There’s a delicate balance that must be respected when you’re combining the presentation of advertising and the way we search for information. As the results themselves become increasing rich and interactive, advertisers won’t be very happy if the ads start to lag behind in terms of visual prominence. Mayer touched on this: “As you know, my theory is always that the ad should match the search results. So if you have text results, you have text ads, and if you have image results, you have image ads. So as the page becomes richer, the ads also need to become richer, just so that they look alive and match the page. That said, trust is a fundamental premise of search. Search is a learning activity.”

It’s this trust that makes the presentation of advertising a precarious proposition on the search results page. We’re not there to find ads, we’re there to find relevant information. If ads are highly relevant, we’re receptive. If they’re not, we’ll skip over them. We accept ads not as ads, but as potential paths to relevant information.

This is an important distinction. If ads start to look too much like ads we start to skip over them. And that decision is made in milliseconds, before the relevance of the information that lies on the other side of the ad is even considered.

This phenomenon is called banner blindness. Jakob Nielsen explains: “If they put up display ads, then they will start training people to exhibit more banner blindness, which will also cause them to not look at other types of multimedia on the page. So as long as the page is very clean and the only ads are the text ads that are keyword driven, then I think that putting pictures and probably even videos on there actually work well. The problem of course is they are inherently a more two dimensional media form, and video is 3 dimensional, because it’s two dimensional – graphic, and the third dimension is time, so they become more difficult to process in this linear type of scanned document ‘down the page’ type of pattern.”

I believe that Google is now responding to the multi-screen search challenge. Search on a desktop needs to be different than search on a mobile device or on a tablet. Mayer’s “encyclopedia” format makes sense here. But experimentation and the resulting change come at the potential price of alienating users.

Why have ads been the least changed part of the search page? It’s certainly not because advertisers have been demanding that they remain as boring lines of text. It’s because Google, along with Bing and Yahoo, are acutely aware of how important that trust is. The nature of our engagement with ads on a search page is far less straightforward than you might think. There’s a lot of subtle psychology at play here.  In the words of Hector Barbossa, “You’re off the edge of the map now mate, and here there be monsters!”