Moderator:
Anne F. Kennedy, SES Advisory Board, International Search Strategist, Beyond Ink USA
Speakers:
Eli Goodman, Media Evangelist, comScore, Inc.
Zephrin Lasker, CEO and Co-founder, Pontiflex
Alan Osetek, President, Resolution Media
Dana Todd, Vice President of Performance Innovation, Performics
Eli: Brand marketing has been mainly offline, but is moving more and more online, especially in search and especially for big brands.
Dana: Want it to be measurable and see ROI. Branding is not just exposure to a brand over and over. There is no funnel. People don’t suddenly go into buying mode just because they’ve been exposed to something. We need to test with search, it’s not just about the next big idea.
Alan: it’s all about people and where they’re spending their money. The CMO doesn’t want to see huge changes in structure, but it can change slowly over time, naturally. Probably in the next 3-5 years.
Zephrin: Brand customers have very specific CPG goals. I wonder if we need to change the way we measure things.
Anne: Emotional persuasion is something that is hard to measure.
Eli: We’re in the business of measuring people. You can measure favor ability and likelihood of purchase.
Anne: The metrics are going to get better about measuring people’s emotional response. What about retargetting?
Alan: 3 weeks ago simplify has instant keyword retargetting to go into real time bidding exchanges on keywords. It finally brings the worlds of search and display together. This is going to be an interesting trend to follow over the next year.
Eli: The idea of retargetting is going to continue to evolve, even over different devices. The ability to display messages based on user intent over time across multiple media platforms.
Alan: Privacy issues are going to be a concern with persisting identity across multiple platforms.
Dana: The open graph works in a limited way right now, there aren’t big wins, but interesting wins. People want targeted ads. You don’t like car ads unless you’re wanting to buy a car. Mobile is essentially a walled garden. It all gets mashed up in your phone, so the way it’s going to work is a combination of social and mobile.
Zephrin: mobile is what is going to give you those personalized recommendations, but you’ll be able to turn it on and off.
Anne: are we actually going to search with keywords.
Dana: how many people are actually using Siri? I’m not a believer that voice activated search is there, but augmented reality searches or bar code scans show intent without using keywords. 30% of people surveyed have scanned a bar code in store. 67% have looked for competitive pricing information in store. Why do in store bar code scanners only give the price, why don’t they give reviews and product info?
Eli: what I like to think of the future of search is not keywords and links, but what other types of opportunities are there that are more fun or more efficient. Starwood hotels web site now has an explore feature that shows interactive pictures that help you figure out what type of resort you would like without typing in keywords or changing filters. They use that to deliver back the list of hotels that they think you would like. Talking, browsing, image searching, UPC, are all types of search that don’t use keywords.
Anne: we welcome your comments.
Audience: what is going to stop google from blocking all tracking?
Eli: google is looking at the long game. How can they start squeezing more money out of search? It’s not a privacy thing, it’s a way for them to drive marketers back to paid search.
Zephrin:
Dana: there are workarounds like sending logged in users to a secured site.
Allan: you need to give users a reason to log in. Google is building an ecosystem around logged in users.
Audience: I’m in analytics and I’m interested in your opinion about the funnel. What do you see as replacing the funnel as useful metrics?
Dana: We’re working on a replacement model, but it’s a big jumbled mess. The outliers create randomness that create significant event.
Eli: look at the results you’re looking for and work backward from there. Brainstorm what are all the ways someone can find their way to the objective. Detach yourself from a linear model because there are multiple ways to get there.
Dana: influencers are important, but they don’t buy.
Anne: how about a magnet?
Audience: what is your opinion on Google+ ?
Eli: there was a huge rush at the beginning, but there were some huge missteps at the beginning, especially no brand pages. How sticky is it? What’s it going to be moving forward? Will bing and yahoo be able to take down google? Not unless the search actually performs the service. From a statistical perspective it leveled out and the engagement metrics are flat.
Alan: you don’t need more than one dominant social network. What does it mean to be social? Is it a layer, is it a platform? Google has a great number of products that people use and if it’s just an additional layer to that it will succeed.
Zephrin: facebook’s success was it was a great way to upload pictures? Does google already have a killer app like that they’re planning to use? If so
Eli: people don’t eat a half-baked pie. Think things through before you launch. Google should have listened to the complaints.
Allan:
Dana: as a marketer you should pay attention to google+ because it’s google. You have to play their games because they’re all connected in some way. It’s ripe for experimentation for search and you need to claim your space.
Audience: what is the future of local search?
Eli: local search is going to evolve and they’ll figure that out before they get social right. Coca cola’s mobile strategy because they want to influence impulse decisions.
Allan: 80% of search is around home. even though you may make small purchasing elisions in hyper local situations, but the majority of purchases are going to be done around the home zip code.
Dana: there is a huge amount of work between national and local versions of the same brand.
Anne: what are the top things you should be looking at immediately?
Eli: analytics are important. There are sources that are free. Look at your site numbers to hel you come up with strategy. Be vocal to google and other places you have relationships so they know what y want.
Zephrin: local, mobile, keyword retargetting, build a data warehouse. Look for the easiest thing to start with.
Anne: marketing is not so tidy and it’s not getting any tidier.
What do YOU think? Let me know...