The first was a report from Forrester projecting interactive marketing spend in 2016, which they estimate will reach $77 billion. While the headline focused on the fact that interactive media will catch-up to television media spend by that date, an equally interesting set of figures provide a glimpse into a very different digital media world in 4 years. The report predicts that search’s share of digital media spend will shrink, as marketers disproportionately increase their investments in more sophisticated display media and really rev up their mobile media spend.

The second was an AdAge Digital piece on how veteran digital shops (most of which started in the late 90′s) were changing (and expanding) their business models. The article focused on the big search agencies – iCrossing, 360i, and iProspect – and how they’re diversifying into other areas of digital advertising. Obviously they’re looking at the same data as Forrester, and as they look to grow, they are seeing greener pastures in areas such as digital content, display advertising, and online video.

The article also talks about how shops like AKQA are expanding their focus from digital design and development into digital media (search, display, etc).

Two trends I see for the future:

• Less room for and a resulting fewer number of specialist digital shops (i.e. the search marketing agencies, or the digital content shops)
• The growing prominence of a new breed of large, integrated digital agencies, accentuated by an increased difficulty for big traditional agencies to keep up with the pace of change in digital

The question arises, is this a sign of a trend away from online advertising to other media or is it just the result of the overall ad spend pie decreasing so much that online was unable to escape it’s effects?

I say the latter.

More than anything, it was the result of one of the most irrational pull-backs in media ad spend in advertising history, more a result of an overwhelming sense of uncertainty and anxiety than a concern about the ROI of digital advertising. 

Check out this LA Times piece discussing the news and my quotes on the news.

To put it simply, Quality Score is a metric assigned by the search engine to determine your Cost Per Click and placement on the search results page. It’s in their best interest to place ads that will garner the most clicks near the top – more $$$ for them. This also ensures that their users have the best possible experience. When someone searches for “pay gas bill” (a keyphrase we recently used here) they should be presented with ads that would help them do just that. Our Quality Score for this keyword is a solid 7/10 because of a few key factors:

-the keyphrase is in the the body of the ad and the URL
-we have a high Click Through Rate (CTR)
-the landing page is relevant to the ad

Yet when I take a look at keywords of ours with low quality scores I see we have taken the same steps mentioned above yet the score is lower. This is the mystery of the Quality Score and don’t expect to solve it. But don’t let that get you down. If enough people are clicking on your ad and buying what you’re selling (both literally and figuratively) then that little imaginary number invented by Google and Yahoo shouldn’t matter to you at all.

-Rob (SEO Coordinator)

A section of the manual that Rob, one of the attendees of the PPC Summit and our new SEM coordinator, found useful was titled “Know How Users Search”. According to this article 81% of users enter more than one word when searching and 49% enter 3 words or more. Since he has recently taken over writing our keywords and ads for paid search campaigns this will definitely affect what we propose to our clients. Although we usually include a combination of both one word and multiple word keywords our focus will definitely shift toward including more 2-3 word phrases in our lists. 

If you still aren’t convinced that it’s time to rethink your search terms, how about this “3 word plus terms are generally the cheapest per click and they also get higher conversion rates depending on the keyword and quality of the landing page.” Cheaper clicks and a higher conversion rate? I thought that would change your mind.

-Diana Montante

Account Executive