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3) Paid search builds brands before SEO kicks in.Showtime said that many of its shows are generic terms ("Weeds," "Meadowlands," "Dexter"), so as it works on optimization, it buys search ads when news of the show breaks.
5) Search research creates entire businesses. Fox said it saw that the most popular gaming search term was "cheats," so it created a site around that. Without advertising, it ramped up to reach 2 million unique visitors in a year and a half.
6) Previous campaigns inform the future. Showtime not only uses search results from one season to inform future seasons, but search volume can impact which characters and actors are featured and promoted.
8) Sync search with offline campaigns. Showtime coordinates its paid search campaigns around offline campaigns such as TV commercials to capitalize on the extra traffic.
9) Awareness precedes search. Yahoo said search works best once consumers are aware of what they're looking for. Most of the awareness will happen offline, though Yahoo also plays a role in the awareness created online, which drives search, leads people to a given site, and then to an action that usually happens offline, such as watching a TV show. Yahoo's goal is to be a platform that drives awareness.
11) Search engines are the new Web browsers. It's now ingrained for people to enter Web site URLs into search engines. If people go to a search engine and see 10 different choices, NBC said a company needs to present itself as the best option.
12) Pay attention to off-site SEO. NBC said 40% of search engine optimization is on-site, 60% off-site (such as with link development). Blog outreach is one way NBC fosters the link building.
13) Video and image search are just starting to become viable for consumers. Blinkx compared technology that indexes videos' metadata to reading the title of a book and saying you read the whole book. Today Blinkx can identify written words within videos, such as street signs. Facial recognition is one of the next big hurdles.
14) Not all searches are created equal. Yahoo compared two types of searches that happen after a TV show airs. One is to catch up -- the searcher missed the episode but wants to joint the water-cooler chatter. The other searcher saw the show and wants to go deeper, potentially to participate in some way. It's an example of how similar searches can express needs for very different types of content. The onus is ultimately on marketers to meet those needs, though search engines are working on that too.
Focusing on any one of these nuggets can help you get more out of search. Thanks to all of the speakers for providing so much gold to mine:
Marc Esper, vice president of search, NBC Universal; Federico Grosso, senior vice president of business development, Blinkx; Robert Hayes, senior vice president/general manager-digital media, Showtime; Jyri Kidwell, entertainment category director - search marketing, Yahoo; James Lamberti, senior vice president search & media, comScore Networks; Bill Macaitis, vice president of online marketing, Fox Interactive Media; Adam Stewart, vertical director of media & entertainment, Google; and Dema Zlotin, founder & vice president of strategic services, SEMDirector.