• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, February 9, 2009

For those who feel they need super powers to deal with the increasingly complex world of search and pay-per-click campaign management, Clickable this morning will introduce a new version of its online campaign management performance tracking and management system that its developers claim has "bionic" powers.

"We have the technology, we can rebuild it," Vernon Steward, vice president-product management, and the engineer behind Clickable's new Pro 2.0 system, quipped, invoking phrases from the "Six Million Dollar Man," the 70s TV series that ingrained the concept of bionics in the American culture. And even though Clickable's product tour features a bionic arm straight out of "The Terminator," the developers say the latest version of their system isn't science-fiction, but utilizes superior science to take the "friction" out of the search management process.

Version 1.0 of Clickable's system did that by enabling small, and medium-sized search marketers and agencies to seamlessly manage campaigns across the major disparate search providers: Google, Yahoo and MSN. Version 2.0 utilizes new technology to enhance that process and expand it into new performance-based ad formats enabling image ads, mobile ads and even map and location-based campaigns.

Clickable is able to make these adjustments, because its developers tape directly into Google's API, or "applications programming interface," and provide streamlined processing that optimize campaigns and provide recommendations based on the industry's 100 leading best practices. The system is even more dynamic than that, says Clickable Co-Founder-CEO David Kidder, because the industry's best search campaign practices are constantly evolving and require perpetual revision.

Kidder calls the approach "actionable analytics," and says it gives smaller campaign managers the ability to adapt and improve their campaigns on-the-fly as general industry practices evolve.

Clickable's system is winning favor, not just with the small and medium-sized search marketers it originally set out to service, but with larger marketers and even some big ad agencies. Reed Elsevier's Nexus/Lexus service utilizes the system both for its own campaign management, as well as for a new retail search marketing system it recently launched. The Weather Channel also has embraced it, as have many top agencies that use it for smaller accounts that cannot justify big search management teams at the agency.

Among the specific elements of the new Clickable product release, the biggest in its history, are:

??Emerging Google Ad Formats - including Image (banners), Local Business (maps) and Mobile (text and image) - to give marketers more opportunities to connect with their customers.
* Keyword Filter And Bulk Edit features enabling agencies and advertisers to quickly search, edit and export high volumes of keywords across all advertising networks and accounts, all at once and with great flexibility.
* A Conversion Tracking system that enables advertisers to easily measure ROI with one simple, independent tracking system.
* An enhanced recommendation engine system.