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RSSEven Google has gotten in on the act. Eric Schmidt was quoted in a Wired interview as saying, of the search giant, consumers should "think of it first as an advertising system." Now pardon me for speaking out of both sides of my mouth, but "Thank you for your honesty" and "What?!?!?"
For years, Google has been about organizing the world's content and I'm sure its principals would still tell you that's what it is about. Yet even Google has acknowledged the shift we witnessing. The real question for advertisers is, what business is their search agency in -- and why does it matter?
Most search agencies have staked their livelihood on keywords. The epicenter of all activity is the keyword. They attribute credit to the keywords, they credit assists and give weighting to keywords, they worry about the long tail of keywords and they invest millions upon millions in the development of technology to manage those keywords in a multitude of ways.
And therein lies the problem. What search marketing now faces the dawning of an evolution --an evolution from media as a communication platform into a transaction platform. Keywords are conduits. Consumers, as always, are the Holy Grail of the channel.
The media business has long been based on predicting user behavior. Media is placed where we believe consumers will be. Whether it is moviegoers sitting at home watching "Grey's Anatomy" on Thursday night or men reading Sports Illustrated and wanting to see shaver ads, advertising's track record is a history of planning and buying around where we predict people are and what appeals to them
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But search changes that. Search is all about matching consumer intent with advertisers' content. It is seeing the field before we act. Search behavior, whether it is someone buying an air conditioner when temperatures hit a certain point or buzz around a new TV show debuting, can and will change the way all other media is planned and bought.
The closer we get to understanding where people are in the funnel in search, the better we can communicate. Search is not simply a vehicle to push product or even build brands. It is a diagnostic for all other media. A recent study was able not only to correlate search and display advertising, but search and offline media. It told us how those channels impacted engagement in the search channel. This correlation -- between an advertiser's search program and their other media -- helps us with all levels of planning, from the levels of GRPs needed to move the needle to the positioning and exposure needed in the search marketplace
When we are able to start sharing our cross-channel intentions and planning off of these insights, we as advertisers, both on the client and the agency side, become smarter and more connected.
This is the business I am in. The question is, what business are you in?
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Advertisers running pay-per-click campaigns are advertising. Themselves or their agencies are in the business of promoting their wares depending on the interest expressed by users through their search queries.
Obviously, with Search, it is much easier to know what users are after since they describe them in their keywords, and it is a very transparent advertising medium, but it remains nonetheless advertising.
Google is coming of age. Acknowledging that Search Engine Marketing is advertising and that Adwords provides an advertising platform is the first step towards understanding, for this young media owner, that they are part of the same advertising world as the older medias above the line.
With this acknowledgment comes the fact that this medium should be approached in a similar manner as the other media, with consumer understanding at heart and integration a key driver. This is where media agencies can deliver their expertise.
SearchPhare.com
This will only happen when the sponsored search becomes totally irrelevant to the consumer. If the terms the planners use are true to the content on their site, it's a service -- not an annoyance.
sure, a good ad and relevent product may catch my fancy. and sure, Internet-driven TV and other directly measurable video systems, will allow for much better accuracy in terms of actual viewership numbers and demographics, rather than the current predictions, but that will not change intent of those being entertained, will it? who knows, maybe more precise measurements will simply prove out the current demographic predictions?
as for google wanting to be seen as an advertising system...duh! if they wanted to be seen just as a search engine and an organizer of the world's information, then why the move into radio advertising? they aren't providing any consumer search service there. why move into print advertising? again, no consumer search or organizing service there either. Satellite TV? i repeat, no consumer search organizing service there either. it is painfully obvious that Google's overarching goal, other than not doing evil, is to become the world's most connected, most efficient, most powerful ad agency. if that means owning the media where the ads are placed, like Google's search on Google.com and YouTube, well those just happen to be more convenient and higher margin ad distribution channels, right?
finally, do you really need to view search behavior to know that people buy air conditioners when the temperatures reach certain points? maybe you could explain a little how search elevates this rather common-sense insight?