David Dalka attends and reports business events and conferences to discover the future of business where technology, organizations and customer exeperience meet. Also serves as emcee, moderator and motivational business keynote speaker.
Search Engine Marketing, SEM
Anand and I recently shared a great conversation. Contextweb’s ContextAd is the only true REAL-TIME marketplace for buying and selling ads using patent pending Contextual Targeting technology (Patent Publication No.: US-2002-0123912-A1). You can learn more details here.
Anand is extremely interesting to talk to and I appreciate his views on a wide variety of issues. I look forward to learning more about him and hearing his ideas for the future.
The eagerly anticipated launch of Crazy Egg (or do you say Crazyegg?) is here!
Crazy Egg allows you to “Visualize Your Visitors” and gives you a clear picture of where your visitors are clicking and allows you to enhance your site’s results. By inserting a simple few lines of code, Crazy Egg allows you to see where people are clicking on your site and generate reports via overlay, list and heatmaps. The product has already been used on sites at leading ecommerce retailers who have given it a big thumbs up. For my blog, Crazy Egg during helped me learn to rearrange and eliminate non-performing categories for a cleaner and more useful look, thanks Crazy Egg!
To see an example of the types of reports available – they have a demo that nicely cross promotes Pronet Advertising.
Crazy Egg will also likely one day make a great Harvard Business Case study on how to launch a web property for the following 7 reasons:
1) They have always been transparent since day 1, public and open about their idea and primary vision – no NDA talk EVER! (I hope everyone learns from this?)
2) They used case studies that focused on client’s needs of early adopters in the blogosphere to tout the products benefits. This made the value proposition more clear to people.
3) The above two items enabled viral marketing to occur organically. I can’t say enough about the importance of this.
4) They sought out critical influencers to try the product and then asked for feedback.
5) Crazy Egg actively used this feedback in a timely manner to innovate and improve the product in numerous ways. This laser sharp focus on customer listening was critical.
6) The product is amazingly simple to install and activate and this reduces the barriers to adoption and usage. Many web products skip this important step.
7) Upon launch, a refined, non-beta product was delivered giving an optimal customer experience. Interesting and all too rare a concept these days.
Congrats to Hiten Shah, Neil Patel and the rest of the Crazy Egg team, they’ve worked tremendously hard to make this product a success and I’m certain this hard work will pay off.
Google Blogoscoped linked to posted video of Danny Sullivan’s interview of Eric Schmidt at SES and Danny also posted (link removed) full press conference transcript that Google posted – wish I would have known that this was out there – it would have been helpful to me and I’ve bookmarked the page – props to David Krane and his PR team Google for posting that including the retracted comment portion – in other words if you read this please read the whole thing! I would urge him to change the segmentation of this information however as this transcript was not sent out via the normal Google product promotion press release channels like email.
RustyBrick points out an article suggesting that Google has hit the “topping point“.
This includes Andy Hagan’s and Aaron Wall‘s recent 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006.
Steve Rubel is challenging marketers to think like Venture Capitalists.
Rustybrick wrote an amazing post on the new SES API session – my PC was in dead battery mode and no plug available mode during this session. Please enjoy his post. He did mis Erynn B. Petersen’s of Microsoft because they accidently went to questions before she gave her speech, which was an awkward moment that she handled amazingly well. I had a nice chat with her afterwards, she is one of the people who really gets what this is all about and for that I appreciate her.
This is a great session that reminds me of how much search is like financial services, where there are a number of vendors that provide mission critical API’s – the fact that API’s are just starting to become transparent to the masses is a sign of how early in all of this we truly are.
After Eric Schmidt was interviewed by Danny Sullivan, he held a press conference.
But first Eric stopped in the restroom and shook my hand shortly thereafter without washing his hands per reports of an SES attendee (it’s weird learning things like that 2 days later).
Learnings from this experience: Bring your business card, ask a specific and short question or risk having the tough parts missed.
The most surprising thing to me is that he only really holds press conferences about once a quarter. Think about that one of the busiest, hectic and arguably most controversial companies of our time that generates more news in a week than many companies used to generate in a year only has a press conference once a quarter. I wonder what Don Tapscott would think? Hmm, I just checked and actually Eric was quoted on the sleeve of Don’s 2003 book, the Naked Corporation! Think of how much the world has changed in those three years. Wow!
Below is my summary of the finer points of this rapid fire interaction (wish I could type faster) – minus the one area where he retracted a statement after continued pushback. It was very odd because in one way I felt sorry for him for being pounded on in a harsh way and in another way I felt he wasn’t being fully forthright and maybe even somewhat evil… I guess I’m trying to get across that the scene was very tense, terse and emotional.
Reporter: Can you say more on partnerships, Google as the affiliated partner, etc.
Eric: Dmarc is going to go well. Viacom/MTV suggested that taking content and putting video advertising at the beginning. Finding a way to monetize them is the hard part. We are doing well in search and content. Radio is coming out soon. The other two are starting now.
Reporter: Can you discuss the economics…
Eric: The forward commitments are much, much larger.
Reporter: Regarding the Kinderstart lawsuit.
Eric: It’s probably is best that I not comment on that.
Reporter: The AOL thing, how can it be impossible to happen at Google?
Eric: We have very specific plans about it. I’d rather not divulge them. (awkward silence in the room)
Reporter: Many people, do not know the difference between paid and natural search. Could you do more?
Eric: Yes certainly we could although I think most people know. (I’d like to hear more elaboration on this issue as would the reporter that asked it)
Reporter: Can you update us on Adsense policy?
Eric: Sites sometimes don’t follow the guidelines due to third parties. We have been tightening our guidelines.
Reporter: Update on Microsoft…
Eric: General Counsel made some claims. We’ll see where it happens. Google is more efficient, more scientific, etc. We will get more – $12 Billion of a $500 Million industry.
Reporter: Can you discuss video pricing model and cultural trends.
Eric: We will use an Adwords model. Development of social networks as lifetime models eventually. Myspace, it’s of the scale of instant messaging.
Abhilash Patel
Who needs a VP Search?
– Anyone with offline media budgets
– If you separate Sales and Marketing – you need a VP Search
How big should a company be that deserves a VP?
How big is the SEM budget?
Are you prepared to go after 70-80% of search traffic.
What does the VP do?
Progress on a daily basis: Constant Execution.
Harmony with web-technical teams.
Independent growth stats?
The argument for in-house SEM/SEO & Vendor Outsourcing.
Greater control
Marshall Simmonds, Chief Search Strategist, The New York Times
CEO – Define Search Strategies
If you are not integrating – you are left behind.
Selling Search to NYT
– “Pope Dies” not people converge on Vatican
– Communication
Optimize articles, not front page
Develop metrics – important to quantifying success later
Got rid of registration wall. (it was a big deal)
Sean Smith – Citibank
We are marketing in a more targeted way. Internet acquisition has passed mail.
90% of my job is communicating why I’m here. You are educating and driving strategy.
Search is not a volume driver for us. It’s about getting the right users to obtain cards and get them.
Basic legal update was presented – you can read this elsewhere.
Edelman – new suit against Yahoo! Alleges spyware in publishing network causing clicks.
Special claims process. Claims process being overseen by a federal judge. What deos click fraud mean. Plaintiff’s lawyer said we are giving up positive praise. Yahoo will have customer panels. John Slade is pleased that these things are settling as it allows the freedom to start talking.
Shuman made a very short statement that shared John’s sentiment.
Paul Vallez (Ask) – they have been trying to learn from Yahoo! and Google.
How big is click fraud? Tom Cuthbert says 14.1% is the figure he sees overall. He did not discuss variability.
Shuman published study that shows fictitious clicks. 17 pages – Shuman says page loads are causing these.
Reports submitted to Google there are Yahoo ads included. Shuman claims some people have reported over 100% percent.
Lori Weiman reprimanded Shuman for not sharing the report with the panel in advance because it made it impossible to respond to Shuman’s points.
Tom Cuthbert – reasonableisnotenough.com
Media rating council. IAB is a publisher network and is not the right panel.
Jessie commented on John’s positive contributions. Then pointed to Shuman for issues with
Shuman stated a number of invalid click efforts ongoing from Google.
Jessie then challenged for Shuman to agree that data both sides was necessary. Shuman agreed.
There was a lively and choppy question and answer session (as always).
Analysis: Yahoo! is clearly collaborating with customers to work to solve the issues. Google is clearly trying to move from defense to offense – but I’m uncertain what this accomplishes in the long term. Can’t wait for next time.