• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, January 19, 2016

It didn’t happen overnight. In fact it took several long years of planning and strategic acquisitions for iProspect, now under parent company Dentsu Aegis Network, to build its position as OMMA Search Agency of The Year. One of those buyouts brought in Covario, which in 2013 won the title for the third consecutive time. The leadership team steps into the spotlight, but this time under a new umbrella.

Jeremy Cornfeldt, president of iProspect U.S., and team understand that “behind every search is a person.” This is how they think about search engine optimization and paid search strategies. Rather than start with keywords, the team begins with audiences to build cross-channel campaigns supported by content to reach the correct people. The company uses a proprietary technology it calls Consumer Connection Survey, similar to the Nielsen Global Consumer Confidence Survey, to help better understand the behavior of consumers and those at major enterprises who make business purchase decisions.

An acquisition in late 2014, Rockett Interactive, bolstered the agency’s attribution offering to help it understand the impact of a client’s media spend on consumer behavior even when it’s not directly connected to a sale. iProspect didn’t stop there. Both the Covario and Rockett Interactive acquisitions helped iProspect move into new industry verticals such as electronics, expand geographically, and improve attribution services.

The rate of change in search — SEO and paid — requires a large agency to move like a nimble startup. It also requires the agency to stay one step ahead of the competition. By offering a combination of advertising and merchandising, something iProspect continues to build out. The team calls it auction-based merchandising, and it’s exploring the concept with brands such as Intel.

The strategy requires customer data, the ability to closely monitor inventory levels, tying it into an advertising strategy. When someone needs a new computer, for instance, they may do a search on a retailer’s Web site. The query returns available options that blend into the results while the consumer browses product categories. One option in particular stands out. iProspect calls option-based merchandising, something the industry will see and hear more about in 2016. It helps consumers by providing information on available stock, rather than screaming at them, and it helps the brand by giving it more control over marketing and advertising on retail Web sites.

For Intel, the campaign was a massive global undertaking spanning seven countries, five languages and 40 retail partners. Automation supported by data told the campaign the products to promote, ad copy to leverage, keywords to target, and the combinations that will drive the highest returns. The results yielded a 7% increase in share of units sold, and a response rate in the first quarter of 2015 that exceeded the industry average by 240%.

With a willingness to take risks and try something new, iProspect’s team put the wheels in motion to form a global enterprise search group, supporting name brands such as Bank of America, Intel, Lenovo, NetApp, Sitecore, and Epicor similar to the way it does the consumer group. More companies have begun to realize the similarities between customers — enterprise and consumer — requiring synergies to run the two. This group draws on the challenging parallels to build out services from which both benefit.