• by September 23, 2005

Pushing the envelope even further, these finalists are finding innovative ways to use the search medium.

WINNER

Agency: Mediacom's Beyond Interactive

Client: CheapTickets

Mediacom's Beyond Interactive increased the number of CheapTickets.com keywords it managed by 2,900 percent, to well over 100,000. Even with that many terms, the team devoted individual attention to the highest-volume keywords, and also documented the precise correlation between position and return on investment for each keyword. The agency tested copy in real time for most high-volume keywords. Sales from CheapTickets' paid search efforts grew at more than twice the growth rate for the industry in 2004.

Agency: Fathom Online/San Francisco

Client: Intuit

In August 2004, Intuit asked Fathom Online to increase the efficiency of its search engine marketing campaign for the QuickBooks product. The program started with an effort to convince consumers to sign up for a free trial. Fathom created keywords and tracked clickthroughs and conversions, seeing an early increase in conversions to 6 percent from

Agency: Posner Advertising

Client: Avalon Chrystie Place, AvalonBay Communities, Inc.

For Avalon Chrystie Place, a luxury rental community located on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Posner Advertising built a Web site that combined Flash and search engine optimization. When visitors come to the Avalon Chrystie Place Web site, the technology identifies what type of user the visitor is (Web browser, search engine robot, or mobile device), and displays the site content in an accessible format. Within 45 minutes of its launch, the Avalon Chrystie Place site was indexed on all major search engines.