|
|
|
|
| CONTEXTUAL ADS: THE NEXT SEARCH WAVE? |
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
New York, Peking Park 40th btwn Park & Mad. (100 Park Ave.)
|
eMarketing gets more targeted
Advertising gets smarter and Search gets more targeted. This discussion on a powerful new development on the Internet caps off a year of exploring the new frontiers in marketing, advertising and relationship-building.
CONTEXTUAL SEARCH & ADVERTISING:
By Alan Brody
Search engine marketing is big ($2.6 billion) but contextual advertising, according to the iBreakfast speakers, is likely to be 20 times bigger.
The magic of those numbers is in the idea that people spend 5% of their time online in search but 95% browsing through web pages.
Contextual advertisers hope to place their ads on the right pages so their messages relate to the neighboring information.
The reality of this market, which is still relatively new, is being tested.
We don't know, for example, if people are likely to click as much on a destination page as they do on a search page. We also find that since advertisers pay more for a contextual ad click than they do for a keyword search click, that it is not always worth paying the premium.
The issue is where are viewers in the buying cycle? If it is too early it is probably not worth the premium; but if you catch them at the right point, it may well be worth it. The solution is form of behavioral tracking but the industry is not quite able to offer this feature for a number of reasons ranging from the technical to those of public controversy.
For the November iBreakfast we met with Jay Sears, whose company ContextWeb aggregates the placement and management of these text-based ads. Their solution is to auction placement opportunities to advertisers along the same basis as Google and Overture pay-for-clicks.
Rasheed Wiggins, co-founder of AdRelief, offers a roughly similar service but for display, rather than text ads.
In both cases, the companies claim the doubling, tripling and even quadrupling of click-through rates and a strong, though somewhat smaller bump-up in conversions
Kevin Lee, CEO of Did-It.com whose company manages search engine marketing campaigns offered a more measured approach to this phenomenon, describing its best and worst practices.
The bottom line: the future of marketing is a canny combination of search keywords, contextual placement and behaviorial tracking, assuming as Kevin, puts it, the privacy zealots let marketers do what they have to do.
For more information on the presentations visit the following:
sears@contextweb.com
rasheed@adrelief.com
Kevin Lee's articles:
http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/strat/
SPEAKERS:
Rasheed Wiggins, AdRelief, ,
Kevin Lee, Did-it.com, ,
Joe McWilliams, HighBeam, ,
Jay Sears, ContextWeb, ,
Andrew Wagner, TrafficBuyer, ,
|
|
|
|
|
