Kenshoo Inks Experian Hitwise Data Deal

by Laurie Sullivan, Jun 8, 2010, 7:01 PM

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Search engine marketing and technology firm Kenshoo has signed a deal with Experian Hitwise to integrate data into its platform. The two will offer services in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. It aims to help clients immediately identify trends to tweak campaigns.

The deal to add weekly Web site search term variation data, along with downstream reporting, marks the first integration for Hitwise with a search engine marketing and technology firm. This data, drawn from the Hitwise sample of 25 million Internet users, will allow Kenshoo clients to discover and execute on new search term campaign opportunities across multiple search engines.

The advertising industry can expect to see additional partnerships, according to Luke McGuinness, vice president, partnerships and product management, Experian Hitwise. The no-cost integration for mutual clients should increase return on investment for all.

Ariel Rosenstein, director of product marketing at Kenshoo, says the service becomes available Wednesday. "Hitwise has a database of millions of Internet users and from that they extract competitive and business intelligence data," he says. "The data lets you see what drives traffic for competitors."

On Tuesday, Kenshoo unveiled a platform that integrates online and offline data using third-party software. The Call Conversion Optimization platform supports local advertisers by matching the phone call with keywords in search marketing campaigns. The platform can identify when the click turns into a call by tracking the keyword whether the person contacts the business through a landline or mobile phone.

The platform focuses on small and medium-size businesses, which typically measure return on investment (ROI) from paid-search campaigns by phone calls received. The phone numbers are not in the ads. Consumers click through to a launching page where they find the number.

Google and other search engines steer advertisers away from putting phone numbers in ads because it eliminates clicks, which generate revenue. Google prefers ads that drop searchers on a Web site landing page after clicking on the ad, rather than those that have a phone number in the ad they can call. "It's rare to see phone numbers in ads," Rosenstein says.

Click-to-call ads, which Google introduced within the past year on both mobile and PC, are different. The telephone numbers integrate with services like Skype to count clicks, which allows Google and other search engines to take a share.

Call tracking fills a gap between online optimization and offline conversions. By integrating with industry-leading call-tracking providers, the platform creates a unique closed-loop feedback mechanism between the online paid-click campaigns and the phone calls they generate, continuously optimizing keyword bids to maximize the number and effectiveness of phone call conversions.

Aside from Experian Hitwise, Kenshoo also inked "official" partnerships Demandware and Netsuite, integrating live e-commerce merchandising, inventory and promotions with automated dynamic PPC advertising campaigns.

This integration allows clients to tap into Kenshoo's RealTime Campaigns platform that enables synchronization with the ecommerce platform merchandising and sales system to automatically create and manage real-time SEM programs against dynamic inventory, merchandising and promotional changes. Interconnecting inventory and marketing data increases advertising effectiveness through higher relevancy, increased quality score and better user experience.

RealTime Campaigns automatically adjusts campaign structures and elements including ad groups, keywords, and ads, to reflect real-time ecommerce realities. It can dynamically build out massive campaigns down to the product level and employ advanced bidding algorithms. Clients gain efficiency when changes within Demandware and Netsuite platforms ripple automatically to live search marketing campaigns via custom business rules, promotional text and keyword selection.

The platform will enable clients to optimize programs using a variety of business metrics such as inventory levels, ROI targets, margins, new customer acquisition and more.

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0 comments on "Kenshoo Inks Experian Hitwise Data Deal".

1. Amin Haq from Media Flint
   

   commented on: June 10, 2010 at 12:32 p.m.

   Kenshoo continues to improve their product platform with the integration of Hitwise traffic data and phone call conversion integration.

   This article stated that Kenshoo's integration of phone call conversion data was being offered for local advertisers. I'm curious to learn why Kenshoo doesn't think national advertisers who run lead generation campaigns wouldn't benefit from phone call conversion data?

   Our experience with phone call tracking using AvidTrak www.AvidTrak.com deployed on national campaigns has shown that we can validate keyword bidding strategies with more confidence than without. Certainly, we've realized that keywords that have yielded form conversions don't necessarily work as well in yielding phone calls. What's more our clients have told us that phone call conversions (or leads) are preferred over form leads as they are more likely to result in revenue.

   While it's great that Kenshoo offers this complete dataset on its platform, I fervently hope that Google takes the plunge and starts to offer a "phone call conversion" column within its Adwords platform. This would allow 3rd party call tracking providers to push their keyword conversion data readily through an API.

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