Blocking and
tackling to reach the next phase before worrying about integrating emerging technologies will become the focus for 2009, said Searchlgnite President Roger Barnette at the Search Insider Summit in Park
City, Utah on Friday.
Panelists agreed that the basics would become a focus next year, but some also believed that brands would begin to move deeper into mobile, local search and
video.
That includes integrating mobile and video into display advertising and adapting it to search, said Dayna Moon, product sales director at Platform A. "As search marketers, we will be
asked to improve efficiencies and maximize ROI," she said, emphasizing that understanding the new mind frame that brings results becomes key-- whether in display, search and SEO, or mobile, local
search and video.
Consumers are beginning to look for local information on mobile devices, but David Berkowitz--director of emerging media and client strategy at 360i, who led the
discussion--asked panelists what's next for local search tied to mobile applications that marketers can tap into.
As search engines become smarter with capabilities such as integrated
geographical targeting, marketers will have an opportunity for mobile and local personalization. The technology continues to emerge, but a key change in 2009 will be the way that consumers find video
on the Web and on mobile devices.
Until now, viral has been one of the major ways that consumers have consumed video--but as more professional video content comes online, users are using search
strategies to locate and consume video. One of Google's biggest miscalculations was the way it tried to generate video ad revenue from YouTube, according to Tom Wilde, CEO at EveryZing. "Google has
many advertisers on AdSense, and YouTube has a tremendous audience, but they tried to bolt a direct-response mechanism onto a brand audience and it hasn't worked--it didn't work," he said. "Google
will have to create a new ad platform if they are to monetize YouTube."
When asked whether Google has become better at targeting ads against content or context in a news article, Wilde said
that Google's biggest advantage is data, and that search and contextual matching is a long-tail gain. Gaining enough statistical data on the long tail to make match decisions and improve click-through
rates is really a data game, and that's where Yahoo and Microsoft will struggle, he said.