We all know that copy is an important element in managing paid search campaigns. It’s no longer just about getting your keywords in the top positions or having 20 different bid strategies. It’s important to make smart decisions on your messaging to get the right customers and create a positive experience after the click happens. Wouldn’t it be great to see the performance of a keyword along with the ad that actually contributed to the conversion? Well now with our new Ad/Keyword Segmentation Report you can understand which pairing of keyword and copy returns the best results and further refine your ad groups.

Speak to your DART Search TAM to learn more about this report. You can find it by navigating to Search Related reports in DART Search and then choose Ad/Keyword Segmentation Report. Now that you know it’s available, be sure to look out for upcoming tips and tricks on how to better take advantage of this report.

Wondering how you can be more efficient in managing your paid search campaigns? Are there features in DART Search that you just don’t know how to take advantage of? Well look no further than the weekly Dish on DART Search. We’ll be bringing you tips and tricks from our very own Technical Account Managers who are dedicated to assisting our customers on implementation of DART Search and managing search campaigns.

Did you know that every DART Search Technical Account Manager is certified on both the Google and Yahoo! Engines? Each individual is required to pass a test covering all areas of managing search campaigns to become an AdWords Qualified Individual and a Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador. So tune in next week for the start of our series of tips and tricks on using DART Search.

Congratulations to our very own David Fall, vice president of product management, search technology, for his second term on SEMPO's Board of Directors! David will be serving as Treasurer and Co-Chair of the Metrics and Standards Committee this year, and plans to continue to play an active role over the next two years.

DoubleClick's participation on the Board provides opportunities to contribute in discussions about better advancement of search advertising, streamlining the process, and educating and informing the search community at-large.

I read a blog post recently that gives advice to advertisers looking for an SEM. The blogger insists that in today's world an SEM firm must have a solid background in global equity markets and hedge funds. The article states, in so many words, that a minimum requirement for an SEM should be that it has a former Wall Street executive on staff.

Now, I've got a bit of advice for all of you SEMs out there. Before you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire a VP from Wall Street, consider the following free advice:

• Know your advertiser's objectives. Does the advertiser want to increase brand awareness? Does the advertiser have an ROI objective? Does the advertiser have a set budget, or is the sky the limit as long as the ROI target is being reached? Finding clarity regarding goals and objectives with your client is essential to building a successful online marketing program.
• Break campaigns into focused Ad Groups. Make sure that the ads in each Ad Group are appropriately paired with the keywords. Start with the advice provided by your search engine representatives, and adjust from there, based on performance and ingenuity.
• Develop and maintain relevant ad copy and landing pages. Bid management is only one factor among several which affect ad ranking. Build compelling, relevant copy that attracts consumers to click on your ads. Keep the content up-to-date. Test copy variations in distinct Ad Groups and compare performance. Make sure that the landing pages are relevant to the copy and to the keywords.
• Use the Geo-Targeting tools provided by the search engines. Make sure the ads are appropriately targeted towards geographic regions. Don't waste budget targeting ads towards geographic regions which don't match your target audience.
• Use match types intelligently. Explore broad, phrase, and exact match types. For each keyword, test the various match type options. Some keyword/match type combinations may result in too many clicks that don't convert well for you -- identify these combinations and eliminate them from your program. Also use negative keywords to filter out irrelevant matches.
• Study the interaction between keywords and conversions. Just because a consumer searches for "flight to Vegas" doesn't mean he or she will book a flight to Las Vegas. The consumer may end up purchasing a bus ticket to Yonkers. Know the profit margins associated with the various conversion types so that you can set CPA or ROAS goals accordingly. If there are wide variances in profit margin in your product mix, make sure you are using a bid management system that allows you to assign goals based on the conversions as well as the keywords.
• Make sure you are using a tracking, reporting, and bid management tool with a data accuracy policy. You need good data to make good decisions. Your technology provider should give you timely and accurate click and cost data, taken directly from the search engines. Make sure your technology provider does not use unreliable referrer data for bid management calculations.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. Search marketing is complex, but that's not a good excuse to abandon common sense.

Good Luck and Happy Holidays.

If you liked our post about Cyber Monday, join DoubleClick Performics next week on December 4th at 2 p.m. Central for our Web event Holiday ’07 Reality: Early Lessons and Learnings from Black Friday and Cyber Monday with guest speaker Lauren Freedman, president of the e-tailing group.

DoubleClick Performics regularly partners with online retail expert Lauren Freedman to provide our advertiser and publisher clients with valuable insight into best practices. Lauren will share some preliminary findings from the e-tailing group's 10th Annual Mystery Shopping study and her thoughts from a review of a few affiliate publisher sites.

So, yesterday was Cyber Monday. Next Monday will also be Cyber Monday and so will the Monday after that and the one after that. The big story about Cyber Monday this year seems to be how not big Cyber Monday is when considered with the entire holiday shopping season. At DoubleClick Performics, we've been emphasizing that every Monday between Thanksgiving and Christmas is, in fact, a Cyber Monday.

We recently issued a news release highlighting what we consider to be the holiday shopping seasonal arc. DoubleClick Performics has found that, although weekend online sales might be slow, they pick up on Mondays when people return to work and research the items they didn’t purchase over the weekend. As the week progresses, consumers turn back to search and arm themselves with product information for weekend shopping.

Retailers however, have certainly gotten on board with this first Cyber Monday of the season and looking around it appears as though "Free Shipping" is the incentive of the day or a "Cyber Monday Sale" on specific products. It's fantastic to see retailers using Cyber Monday as online promotional fodder, but what can be done in the next few weeks as we approach Christmas?

While reviewing some of the press coverage on Cyber Monday this year, I stumbled upon a non-scientific CNN Money poll that stated 39% of respondents (at the time of this writing) plan to do most of their holiday shopping online. Add the 7% who plan to do all their shopping online and we've got almost half looking to do most or all their shopping online.

Most of these people probably did not complete their holiday shopping yesterday. If they are anything like me, they are waiting till the (almost) last minute. We encourage our retail clients to manage their budgets accordingly and prepare for the weekly and overall arc that takes place during the holiday season: allocate a larger budget in early December, don't set your caps too low, and adapt copy for to each phase of the season; early in the season focus on research, price and selection and late in the season focus on closing the sale as well as shipping/delivery issues.

Sales, so far, appear to be steady in spite of greater economic concerns. The jury is still out but search certainly remains a dynamic marketing vehicle that consumers continue to turn towards.
Alright, anyone for Cyber Tuesday? Wait! I mean, get back to work!

Integration of SEMDirector Paid Insight and DoubleClick’s DART Search Offers New Method of Implementing and Monitoring Paid Search Campaigns

SES SAN JOSE (SAN JOSE, Calif.) AND NEW YORK, – August 21, 2007 – SEMDirector, the leader in search marketing automation software, and DoubleClick Inc., the premier provider of digital marketing technology and services, announced today at the 2007 Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, Calif., the formation of an alliance to deliver comprehensive paid search execution capabilities to large advertisers. Through this alliance, large advertisers can now get a closed loop system to launch search campaigns through DART Search and gain complete performance visibility through SEMDirector’s Paid Insight technology.

"Both DoubleClick, through DART Search, and SEMDirector, through its Marketing Action Platform, focus on building scalable solutions for managing the world’s largest paid search programs," said Craig Macdonald, vice president of marketing, alliances and product management for SEMDirector. "Through our integration with DART Search, SEMDirector can automate the collection of data necessary to devise global strategies around paid search advertising within SEMDirector’s Paid Insight product, and then make those strategies operational within DART Search."

This fusion of DoubleClick and SEMDirector technologies enables customers to leverage the DART Search paid search campaign management processes while automatically tracking all performance data within SEMDirector Paid Insight™. Through SEMDirector Paid Insight, advertisers can analyze campaign performance by geography, product, agency, platform or language. Strategies developed via SEMDirector Paid Insight are then executed through changes to bid strategy within DART Search across search engines globally. This process is in production now at a large high technology manufacturing organization where the search campaigns are managed by DoubleClick Performics, the performance-based marketing division of DoubleClick.

“The complexity of large search programs, like those targeted by DoubleClick and SEMDirector, demand the type of technological integration we are launching today, “said Dave Fall, vice president of search product management for DoubleClick. “Our best in class, scalable search campaign management technology, combined with SEMDirector’s expertise in search marketing automation, make this integration a must-have for all our joint customers.”

The combined solution from SEMDirector and DoubleClick is now commercially available.
For more information on SEMDirector Paid Insight, please visit http://www.semdirector.com/productsEnterprise.shtml. For more information on DoubleClick’s DART Search, please visit http://www.doubleclick.com/us/products/dart_search/.

Here's one more example of DoubleClick's unparalleled level of integration with the search engines. MSN has just issued an online collaboration tool called SPOCK, which is exclusively for the purpose of facilitating communication between MSN and DoubleClick. Based on Microsoft's Sharepoint application, SPOCK will facilitate sharing of information about the AdCenter API, product releases, new features, and the like. It allows DoubleClick employees to ask questions and discuss client issues. DoubleClick is the first company to which MSN is making this type of customized application available.

We are pleased to announce the release of the latest version of DART Search on Saturday, July 14th, 2007. In this release, we will upgrade DART Search with the following new features:

Yahoo Geo-Targeting in DART Search

DART Search users can now use geo-targeting at the campaign level for Yahoo. This feature allows you to target prospective customers in the geographic locations that your company supports. By default, your geo-targeting preference is set to display ads to your entire market, which is the country or multi-country region in which you are advertising. Yahoo Geo-Targeting lets users take control of their targeting with three distinct types of geo-targeting:

• Your entire market
• Your State, Territory, or Province
• Your City or Surrounding Area

Additional Reporting Columns

We added the following columns to the DART Search Account, Campaign, Group, Type, and Category reports:

• Cost Per Action Fee
• Cost Per Order Fee
• Average Position

Along with the features outlined above the DART Search team has made great strides enhancing the UI speed, Data Processing capabilities and the Scalability of DART Search. For more information about this product release, please visit the DART Search website.

It's not just the last click – or is it?

A number of studies have highlighted a growing concern that the logic of attributing conversions to only the last click just doesn’t always hold. With some claiming it’s not only the last click but the last search click that matters when evaluating user intent, it’s become increasingly difficult to parse truth from fiction and, more importantly, understand how to buy, plan, and optimize digital media.

With these concerns in mind DoubleClick has developed the Exposure to Conversion Report (E2C). A new advanced report, available in DFA’s ReportCentral, the E2C will allow customers to view up to 10 exposures leading to a conversion. Exposures will include display (Rich media, video and standard) views and clicks as well as DART Paid Search clicks. Information available for each exposure can include campaign, site, site placement, creative and timing details. You will also be able to select up to 20 spotlight activities to designate as conversions to evaluate user pathways (ad exposures) driving to each.

The E2C offers the opportunity to gain better insight into the way your media allocation strategy drives conversions. You will be able to determine for yourself whether it is display, search and display, or just search that is in fact driving your customers to convert. Ultimately, the E2C affords deeper understanding of how search and display influence conversion for your campaigns and how you can optimize your media spend to maximize ROI.

The Exposure to Conversion report will be available in DFA’s ReportCentral beginning July 21st. For pricing and enablement information please contact your Account Manager.