• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, September 17, 2010

Search engine marketing has become a necessity these days. While it can raise a company's position in query rankings through optimizing a Web site, or drive potential buyers to that Web site through paid search ads, it also offers benefits for a variety of online marketing strategies such as attribution management and the clicks that lead consumers to conversions.  

Ad clicks have expiration dates. I guess it's necessary or ad networks could take advantage of advertisers and charge them for the click as far out as they could prove the ad led to conversion.

All companies want click, but the best ones move customers to a conversion in a reasonable amount of time. Determining that time frame is something with negotiating with ad networks. But to negotiate you need data.

ClearSaleing provides that data to American Greetings so it can negotiate rates for ad calls on display networks. Conversions within 30 days are typically not negotiated. The ad network would say it served and tracked the display ad within a 30-day window, though most people would agree the display ad probably had nothing to do with that conversion.

Personally, I believe everything a consumer comes in contact with during their daily routine influences the buying decision. Maybe the person was going to make the purchase, but something interrupted the process. Or maybe they were truly on the fence. And, when they hopped off they decided they really wanted the item and came back just inside the 30-day window.

Tessa Fraser, senior marketing Manager for paid search and online media at American Greetings Interactive, negotiated a lower cost per acquisition of between 20% and 30% from the display networks she works with by leveraging data, according to Adam Goldberg, ClearSaleing co-founder.

ClearSaleing can time stamp and date the ads on the network along the purchase path, the chronological sequence of events the consumer takes in route to conversion. The technology monitors and indentifies the search keywords and paid search ads clicked on before the consumer makes the purchase. Factoring in the price of the product, cost for advertising, and client's cost of goods, ClearSaleing can determine profit.

Forrester Consulting issued a study detailing the value advertising analytics provider ClearSaleing provides to clients. The study, titled The Total Economic Impact of ClearSaleing, indicates a 605% adjusted return-on-investment (ROI) for companies relying on the company's attribution management platform, along with benefits of time savings, eliminating waste and more.

The research found companies using ClearSaleing experienced a net present value of more than $2.3 million, in addition to improving efficiencies in decision making and media buying and increasing productivity in automation and reporting.

Clients now have the tools and the data to negotiate better display buys. ClearSaleing integrates with the ad servers like Dart to get to the display data. For example, Dart monitors the impressions it serves up to someone who converted. The ClearSaleing tracking code on their site monitors whether it's a natural search, direct navigation, or something else. From that information a purchase path is born.

That path includes overall search activity, organic searches and paid search impressions, to evaluate if the trends are a defining shift or just a temporary blip. Knowing this how much can you save?