Efficient Frontier Insights

Efficient Frontier Search Theatre - AdTech London

Ad:Tech London 2009 is next week and this year we will be hosting our very own Search Theatre, nearby to the Google University.

Efficient Frontier will run seminars covering Search Engine Marketing on both days of the show and we invite you to join us alongside our special guests to hear about best practices, trends and future advancements. Plan your day below. 

We do hope you can join us!
Merinda Peppard, European Marketing Manager

Efficient Frontier Search Theatre
22nd September Timetable

10:30 – 11:05
What’s around the Corner? Trends in Search Engine Marketing
Merinda Peppard, European Marketing Manager, Efficient Frontier
Siddharth Shah, Director of Business Analytics, Efficient Frontier

As the largest search engine marketing firm, Efficient Frontier has access to tremendous amounts of search engine data. Join them for an overview of the most recent quarterly search engine performance report. Hear how the recession has affected consumer search trends and what we are likely to see in the future. 

11:50 – 12:25
Bada Bing: The new Microsoft with Marks & Spencer
Craig Brown, Search Media Analyst, Microsoft Advertising
Charlotte Rogers, Account Director, Efficient Frontier

Master search marketing with the experts. Join Microsoft and Efficient Frontier as they present a best practice guide to optimising Microsoft (Bing). Walk through a Marks & Spencer case study with Efficient Frontier and hear how best to use Microsoft’s functionality. Find out if Bing is right for your business. 

13:10 – 13:45
The Road Ahead: The Future of Biddable Media
Jonathan Beeston, Client Services Director, Efficient Frontier

Search engines are rapidly becoming a “one-stop platform” where marketers can bid on, manage and track all of their advertising campaigns – including paid search, display and video ads. What are these Ad Exchanges and what does advertising in a biddable marketplace mean for advertisers?

13:50 – 14:25
Quality Score and best practices with Google
Siddharth Shah, Director of Business Analytics, Efficient Frontier

Quality Score is incredibly important but is also difficult to handle. Join Efficient Frontier as they present a best practice guide to optimising your Google search campaigns. Also Learn how you can optimise each component of the Quality Score and ensure the ad reflects user intent. 

14:30 – 15:05
Google Content – are you missing a trick?
Phil Dance, Client Development Manager, Efficient Frontier

Users now have more control over which sites they target on Google’s contextual advertising product, Google Content. Gain insights into the inner workings of Google Content and learn how to get the best out of the Adsense platform. Find out why Efficient Frontier advertisers have increased spend on Content by 71% year-on-year.

15:50 – 16:25
In-house or Agency? A frank guide to your SEM options
Toby McAra, Manager, Efficient Frontier

Feeling the budget squeeze and thinking of going inhouse? Efficient Frontier takes a look at the benefits of taking your search marketing in-house and using a specialist agency. We dissect the UK agency and technology landscape and simplify the different services on offer. When is implementing fancy technology simply a waste of money? 

16:30 – 17:05
The Science of Integration: SEO & PPC
Jane Copland, Senior SEO Consultant, Ayima Search Marketing
Jonathan Beeston, Client Services Director, Efficient Frontier

During this session, Efficient Frontier team up with search engine optimisation experts Ayima Search Marketing to highlight the practical, actionable techniques that will make an immediate difference to your sites' placement in organic search results and how to connect your dynamic PPC activity to receive optimal return on your search investment. 

View the timetable for day two here: 23rd September Timetable

Follow the data...not the position

When we take onboard new clients, we find that some clients have a predetermined idea on which position on the Search Engine is the best. Some advertisers believe position 1-3 on Google is a must. Putting aside any branding or defensive PR reason for being placed at number one, one of the first things we try to educate new clients is to let the data dictate your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) position.  The following case study shows the importance of letting the data work its magic and give you a better ROI.
 
Recently, a German travel client used more than 3900 keyword constraints in order to influence its overall performance. A keyword constraint is the maximum/minimum CPC or maximum/minimum position rule for each individual keywords.  Soon, 90% of the daily budget was used to fulfill these constraint targets and only 10% of the budget was actually used to optimize keywords and increase real performance.
 

By taking away the majority of constraints, the complete daily budget was available to have the keyword market develop and to use the data generated from Efficient Frontier's portfolio optimization technology. Monitoring the performance very intensely, the following development was encountered.

When looking at Efficient Frontier's simulations this step became even more obvious. When the constraints were taken away, uplifts can be expected immediately. In this case, we saw an ROI increase of 96% (day to day) and 45% (week to week) just by taking away keyword limitations and letting the invisible hand of the optimizer take over. Since then, the free market environment has allowed the performance to improve continuously.

So if ROI is your key objective,  resist the need to seek the top SERPs positions and liberate your keywords from their constraints to improve performance and ROI.

Julian Stank
SMS Hamburg Germany

‘TWAS THE QUARTER BEFORE CHRISTMAS ...

Preparing Retailers for Holiday Season, 2009

To ensure this year's holiday season will be merry and bright for retail advertisers, planning should begin now in order to maximize Q4 performance and round out the year on the best note possible. Time is of the essence, particularly given the sluggish state of affairs seen in the first two quarters of the year.

The Ghost of Christmas Past

Evaluate holiday performance from years past to use as a guide for Holiday 2009 budgets and likely performance. Holiday 2007 may be a better indicator for this year, as Holiday 2008 was an anomaly for most advertisers. When setting or optimizing bids, use technology that incorporates both longer term historical data and recent data with the option to apply weighting to each depending on seasonal trends, marketplace dynamics or business needs.

Fatten the Goose

Consider month-to-month marginal cost per transaction when planning budgets for the holiday season. If your marketing budget allows you to flow dollars between months, monitor performance closely as we inch towards prime holiday spending. As ROI begins to increase, leave yourself in a position to chase revenue instead of being bound by limited budgets.

'Tis the Season

Identify keywords that are sensitive to seasonal peaks and valleys. Current keyword performance should be compared to previous holidays/sales and more aggressively bid up to forego waiting for modeling to catch up. Remember to do the same thing when leaving the season - pulling bids back down when you know conversions will slow.

Make a List and Check it Twice

Consult your buyers to identify which products are likely to be "hot" and "cold" during the upcoming holiday season. Prepare your list of new keywords and ads well ahead of time so that your technology can learn and build adequate models in time for peak shopping. Try constraining these keywords in the beginning to ensure they will remain in the auction given they will have zero to little historical data. Finally, cull your keyword list and pause terms relating to products no longer carried or in stock.  

It's Been Said, Many Times Many Ways

Decide whether it will be more profitable to push items pre or post sale when determining when to incorporate holiday messaging in copy. Any changes to ad copy can affect your quality score and lead to higher CPCs in the short term, so only push these out where the returns will outweigh the costs.

Deck the Halls

Consider running more Content and Display campaigns over the holidays - CPCs are generally lower than Search so take advantage of the volume opportunities. And if you're able to boast percentage off, free shipping, or any kind of sale messaging for the holidays, definitely revisit Content. Clear value proposition is a strong call to action, especially for retailers, enticing browsers away from the publisher's page and leading to conversions on yours.

There is much to consider when planning for the holiday season, but doing this work up front will save you valuable time and money and most importantly, you'll get what you wished for and avoid lumps of coal.

Angela Overhoff
Director, Account Development

Thoughts from Ad:Tech Chicago

I spent the last few days at Ad:Tech in Chicago. My high level conclusion is that the industry is much closer to establishing a framework to approach digital media. Let me explain what I mean.

Not too long ago, search was the new channel and everyone wanted to learn how to effectively use search engine marketing. Today, search is most often the entry point into digital marketing. The search-focused panel that I participated in was primarily Q&A, and the questions were more advanced than I have experienced historically. The audience asked about modeling and attribution, honing in on some of the challenges we face in SEM today.

Similarly, I felt like display is starting to find its footing in balancing brand and performance. Adam Curry of MTV fame, and now at Mevio.com, and others discussed the challenges in making display break-through for advertisers. Both in the examples showed and in the ensuing conversation, it struck me that there is a realization that the standard banner is limited in its influence. It's unlikely a campaign relegated to the standard banner unit could create the next Tony the Tiger for Frosted Flakes or Jared for Subway. In contrast, the 30-second spot in TV provides just such an opportunity – as long as the audience isn't fast-forwarding. That's not to say that great creative marketing can't be done online, but rather that it’s unlikely to originate in the confines of a banner.

As a result of its limitations, the general perception of the industry appears to be that banner advertising will increasingly become the realm of performance marketing. The rapid innovations in performance display, including display and data exchanges, are accelerating the banners primary shift to a performance vehicle. Clients appear to have a better grasp on their performance display strategy today than they did 6 months or a year ago.

Where does that leave brand marketing online? Adam Curry spoke a lot about custom implementations and "branded entertainment" as the way to move the needle for brand campaigns online. The CMO of OfficeMax talked about their "Elf Yourself" campaign which I see as a good example of branded entertainment. And video continues to be a hot topic both in use and measurement for brand advertising.

So we start to get a picture of the framework for digital marketing. Search and display advertising becomes the core performance campaign with advertisers capitalizing on the biddable media and dynamic creative delivery to maximize results. Pure brand efforts will focus on video, custom implementations or branded entertainment. 

And as for social? Well, the Twitter session at Ad:Tech Chicago was packed to the gills. There's always something new to tackle. And that's what we love about world of digital media!

Justin Merickel
Vice President, Marketing and New Product Development

It's déjà vu all over again

Digital is different, a brave new world, a new paradigm. Well, not exactly.

As the trend of spend switching from traditional to digital marketing channels shows no sign of slowing and as digital marketing solutions jostle for position, it's easy to think that "digital" and "new media" are, well, different from "old" media.

As advertisers evaluate digital marketing solutions, they should do so with a mindset that is far from new, and that dates from the earliest days of using mainframe computers to solve marketing problems. Although the offline direct response industry is now declining, it grew substantially and had a lifespan of many decades precisely because marketers were able to operate at large scale efficiently and measure their results so well.

Direct response media such as direct mail, telemarketing and Direct Response TV delivered clear understanding about customer segments, products, media and offers that made money and those that didn't; about what could be tested and measured in order to increase response; and about finding the segment/product/media/offer combination that would outperform and become the "control" against which all else was tested.

As advertisers hunt for the green shoots of recovery from this recession, they would do well to buy those digital marketing solutions that offer the same tried and true measurability and predictability of direct response, and that make setting and meeting business objectives so much easier.

Chris Enticknap
UK Sales Manager