• The Winning Ticket: The Trifecta Of Intention Marketing
    For me, the two minutes of thoroughbred racing on the first Saturday in May that is the Kentucky Derby is my favorite sports moment. So I want to put into horse-wagering terms why the race is far from run in search, and how hitting a trifecta is a broader marketing decision.
  • Google And Microsoft: Signs of Hubris, Signs of Humility
    From my admittedly limited vantage point, I've noticed a subtle but significant shift in what's coming out of the respective campuses of Microsoft and Google. And it's not so much the innovations, although it certainly resonates there. This has to do with attitude and culture. This is the touchy-feely stuff that I chalk up to gut instinct, with no empirical backing. So, take it for what it's worth, but I will say that my gut has a pretty good track record.
  • Marketing In The Moment
    When I speak of marketers needing to be "in the moment," I am not referring specifically to real-time search, social, or the real-time Web. This refers to becoming fully connected to your audience -- directly and indirectly -- and even more so, also being present and engaging with your audience in a meaningful way.
  • Why Facebook Will Kick Google's Posterior
    It's decided. We are no longer fans of brands, or companies, or music groups, or movies. Instead, we like them. So says Facebook, and what Facebook says, goes. "We would still prefer to have 'fans' not 'likers' -- what do you think?" said some friends on their Facebook page, and the general response is that people prefer fans. But so what? The difference between fans and likers is perhaps negligible, and certainly not worth getting worked up over. But when Facebook made everyone's personal details public by default, making it nearly impossible to reverse, we reacted in almost exactly …
  • Great Time To Be A Marketer: Social Energizes Search
    All those SEOs out there have a whole new dimension to focus on as they work to optimize Web sites not only for search engines, but also for Facebook. Keyword lists will take on whole new dimensions as semantics, target markets, personal interests, and rising and falling memes become a critical part of deploying ads on Facebook.
  • Personalized Results And Paid Search Are Not A Match
    Recently, I was doing some routine campaign QA for one of our clients when I ran into something that stopped me dead in my tracks. I was searching on Google for one of the client's automotive model names when, much to my dismay, I was shown a listing from a completely different ad group within the client's account. The listing that should have shown had language that was specific to that car model's name, but the one that did show was tailored for the broader automotive brand name. I soon realized that the ad that was shown was from an …
  • Captiva-Ting Conversations From The Search Insider Summit
    I promised MediaPost a wrap-up (from the programming chair's perspective) of last week's Search Insider Summit. Honestly, from the moment that Brett Brewer from Microsoft first fired up Pivot to the final moments of day three, when Jen Milks and Michelle Prieb from Ball State gave us a glimpse into the minds of Gen Next, I couldn't have asked for anything more from my presenters. Here are a few of the many highlights from three days of SIS:
  • Search Insider Summit Buzz-O-Tweeter
    Last week saw the annual spring migration of search geeks down to Florida for the Search Insider Summit. After attending the previous seven shows and tracking the buzz, I had to turn the reigns over to Frank Lee of The Search Agency for on-site buzz tracking -- which is very scientific, mind you -- and settle for remotely monitoring the #mpsis tweet-stream. Here are the top ten buzzwords dropped by conference attendees, with some context for each one from Frank -- and a little added commentary from me -- along with the tweet I think best captured the sentiment.
  • Sometimes It's Best Not To Search
    A woman I know needs heart surgery. "I was starting to come to terms with it, but then I looked up the procedure on Wikipedia," she says. "Now I'm all freaked out again." Well, of course. This is a case where additional information doesn't offer additional comfort -- quite the opposite. And surgery isn't the only area where further information can be detrimental....
  • Google As 'Good Guy'
    Those of us who've been in the interactive biz for a while have grown accustomed to all the grumbling about Google. But to those Google detractors who've been loudly cheering from the sidelines whenever Google launches a product that fails (and it's done so many times) or lumbers into the crosshairs of government regulators, all I can say is "be careful what you wish for." Case in point: Apple, whose new OS-embedded ad platform was just announced last week. I'm not bashing Apple's products here or claiming Steve Jobs isn't a Super Genius, but I don't know of another technology …
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