• by David Berkowitz , August 1, 2006

"People spend only 5 percent of their time searching, but search commands over 40 percent of the online advertising market."

Someone has to cite that supposed fact--"the line"--at every Ad:Tech to illustrate the disconnect between Internet usage and media spending. What kills me is that they always get away with it. The line was offered most recently at Ad:Tech Chicago by Shawn Riegsecker, founder and president of Centro, the local online media services firm. Anyone who knows him or who's heard him speak will attest that he's brilliant, and that's another reason why the line is so persistent; it's always said by one of the smartest people at the conference.

Even some of the industry's resident Mensa members can use a refresher course on the fundamentals of online marketing. If you think "the line" holds water, this column's for you.

First, remember that search marketing is a 100 percent pull channel. There's nothing else like it. Even word of mouth or buzz marketing, heralded as a holy grail, can't make that claim. If I tell you that Chick-fil-A serves the tastiest fried chicken sandwiches east of the Mississippi, the message could be lost on you. Maybe you're not hungry, or you're a vegetarian, or you don't live near Chick-fil-A, or you contracted food poisoning the last time you ate somewhere that I recommended (sorry). Yet if you're in Atlanta searching for a between-meeting pit-stop and Chick-Fil-A comes up in a search, you can bet it's going to matter.

Second, offline events drive online searches. Consider, if you will, Lance Bass. His rank in the Yahoo Buzz Index, which records search trends, was hovering at around zero for as far back as the Index goes, and then last week shot up to 293, a change of 21,402 percent. What could move the needle that much overnight? If he died, cured cancer, or was elected president, maybe he'd have moved up to about 100, but he did something far more important: he came out of the closet.

We often talk about various media driving activity in other media or channels. A TV campaign leads people into stores; a direct mail drop leads people to Web sites; a billboard drives people to search engines. Take a step back though, and the most important medium or channel can best be described as "life." A heat wave drives sales of air conditioners, wars lead people to watch cable news and call their parents, and a boy band has-been who announces his sexual orientation soars to top the Buzz Index for a day and helps Us Weekly sell a few more newsstand issues. These events don't happen in any medium; they simply happen.

What does someone do when such an event happens? He accesses one of three channels:

1) Communication (in-person, phone, e-mail, instant messaging)
2) Content (TV, newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias, news sites, blogs)
3) Commerce (Yellow Pages, stores, e-commerce sites, catalogs)

For instance, with the heat wave breaking in New York this week, typical responses might include:

1) Calling Mom to tell her not to spend too much time gardening; complaining about the weather around the watercooler.
2) Reading every weather report, and even watching the reporter on NY1 (the local Time Warner news station) interview a crazy old guy with a metal detector at Coney Island.
3) Calling the air conditioner repairman; stocking up on Cold Stone ice cream.

Connecting all of these activities is this invisible blanket: search.

The person in this scenario will use search to find the number of his air conditioner repairman (and maybe his mom), locate the nearest Cold Stone Creamery, and find a quick weather forecast. Then when he watches NY1, he'll Google "humidex" to find out the meaning of the term they keep referencing. His mother will complain of some obscure disease, and he'll search for more information, even though he knows she's only suffering from hypochondria. When the air conditioner repairman says he's booked through Christmas 2009 thanks to global warming, our relentless searcher will find the nearest Target on Yahoo Local, after first conducting a generic search on "air conditioners" and learning Target stocks them.

It's possible Target would find this consumer on a news or weather site, but he's much more attuned to Target's message when he's searching for air conditioners. The other 95 percent of time he's online, he may be hot, it may be summer, and the message may get noticed among all the competing elements on the page, but only with search is his primary intent to receive that message and, if it fits, act on it.

Search may account for only five percent of his online usage, but it's the five percent that matters most to most advertisers who want to reach him.