• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, December 10, 2015

Capturing demand in search isn't easy, but Neal Zamore, VP of Consumer Marketing at Avis Budget, thinks he found a way. He delivered the opening MediaPost Search Insider Summit keynote with a bit of a downer. He spouted off a bunch of depressing numbers, along with the fact Facebook recently reported consumer engagement is down 10%. He says

The problem: people searching. If we understand search and people we have a chance to solve the problem. Search required completion. When you're looking for something you keep going until you find it. Zamore goes on to define people using a theory from Fernando Flores. Tune into the summit's live stream (and archived) to discover how it all turned out.

In short, Avis Budget has not run television ads for about two years, but wanted to find a way to capitalize on its competitor's ads. It began to running more search ads during the times TV ads for competitors would run. The company significantly upped the bids on generic keywords related to car rentals, which drove up conversions and decreased cost per acquisition by 10%.