eCommerce/Lead Gen Roundtable: Aaron Goldman, Managing Partner, Connectual, led this roundtable and gathered the following key takeaways from the group:
-Exchanges: many marketers having
success with exchanges. They like having the control and not having to go thru reps. Key is to test Class 2 inventory (unreserved) thru the auction to see what works then buy it as Class 1 (reserved).
A big challenge here seems to be last-click attribution.
-Display: consensus is that search and display are handled by different teams/agencies because with display who you know and what kind
of deal you can cut is as important as how you can implement and optimize the program.
-Retargeting: lots of good feedback on Yahoo's new search retargeting offering. They are the only major
engine that let's you retarget searchers based on the query within a 15 minute window. Challenge is limited scale as ads only run on Yahoo owned and operated properties.
-Creative Testing:
tools such as Tumri and Adchemy enable multi-variate testing for display and landing pages. They idea is that "there's never a winner." There are always more variables to test and ways to improve.
-Engagement Tracking: consider tracking engagement with ads (not just impressions but mouse roll-overs) and giving credit to post-engagement sales. Per one marketer, 3x as many people engage with
ads but don't click. Engagement is highly correlative to conversions though.
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Ad Supported Media/ Portal: Matthew Greitzer, VP, Search
Marketing, Razorfish, led this roundtable. Key takeaways:
1. Our metrics in search served us well, but constrain us when we try to break into other channels
2. There is still untapped
opportunity in search marketing, but it's the hard stuff. Difficult to focus on new channels like ad exchanges when there is so much heavy lifting still in search.
3. We don't have a paradigm
to talk about social like we do with search. It's hard to have a conversation about goals, metrics or strategy when there is no common language.