• by Staff Writers , September 5, 2008

Finalist - Online Media: Search

Kate Bergren, search marketing associate director; Mike Melone, strategy director

SMG search used search to help ESPN capitalize on the hype surrounding the Mitchell report - the report that detailed the use of steroids among baseball players - with paid search listings that drove more than 33,000 clicks to ESPN.com within the first 12 hours of the report's release. SMG had set up PPC campaigns and optimized ESPN.com for keywords like "Mitchell report," "steroids" and "baseball" before the press conference began. And less than 15 minutes into the conference, searchers were directed to ESPN.com, where they could watch it via streaming video. It was a coup, as no other paid search advertisers had gone live at the time - and SMG continued to optimize ad copy and landing pages in the wake. As a result, the entire campaign generated nearly 66,000 clicks with a CTR of almost 12 percent.