• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, September 12, 2011

The ability to create the perfect paid-search ad that is supported by continually changing keywords and bids to target potential customers online can bring in higher return on investments and online and offline sales.  

Creating the perfect -- or near-perfect -- search marketing campaign comes down to having the technology to analyze consumer search behavior in real-time, as well as support promotional calendars, product inventory levels and pricing information. One partnership claims to achieve that goal.

IgnitionOne and DataPop announced a partnership Monday in the United States that drove a 140% increase in revenue attributable to paid search for ABetterStay.com, a LeisureLink site for consumers that provides travelers with deals on hotel and resort properties. The company achieved the results during the travel season from better engagement with ads and more effective keyword bid automation and campaign management, mostly due to the Microsoft and Yahoo marketplace alliance.

While IgnitionOne's Digital Marketing Suite manages ABetterStay.com's paid-search campaign and automates keyword bids in real-time, the DataPop platform improves the relevancy of the search campaign's content by creating and changing keywords, ad creative and landing pages as the availability of rooms changes. This means IgnitionOne's ability to track consumer interaction with pages across the Web in real-time allows DataPop's technology to create and change keywords on the fly to support campaigns on Yahoo, Bing and Google, as well as landing pages. The integration of core elements from both companies drives better bid and ad optimization.

Parent company LeisureLink has realized success working with DataPop, which helped make the transition to combine separate search campaigns for Yahoo and Microsoft on AdCenter.

A comparison of LeisureLink's results, using separate Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter accounts in 2010 vs. the post-transition single account results in 2011, reveals that total clicks to ABetterStay.com more than doubled -- about 125% -- and its conversion percentage rate rose by 72%. Simultaneously, cost per clicks (CPC) fell by 29%, and the return on ad spend that LeisureLink realized on the combined Yahoo and Bing marketplace jumped 90%, compared with Google AdWords.

Dave Schwartz, DataPop head of client services, said the improvements are limited to the travel industry or ABetterStay.com campaigns. The company expects similar results for Bag, Barrow or Steal -- a Washington-based company that rents high-end luxury handbags that it will begin supporting in the near future.

It's a simple concept, really. Technology improves the relevancy of search advertising while keeping costs in line and increasing ROI. Remembering the words written in a DataPop marketing piece puts the partnership in perspective. The copy reads: Millions of customers already tell you exactly what they want when searching for certain keywords.

It remains unclear, however, whether with these results, the partnership will remain a partnership and not an acquisition by IgnitionOne parent company Dentsu. When asked about DataPop's future, Jason Lehmbeck, DataPop CEO and founder, said "we are aggressively building out our platform based on the enthusiasm we've heard loud and clear from the market for a solution like DataPop."

IgnitionOne continues to acquire companies by building out offerings. In August it acquired AdJug, an online display exchange serving up more than 3 billion ad impressions monthly to about 67 million unique users.