Efficient Frontier Insights

Efficient Frontier Launches Into Display With Real Time Bidding

We are thrilled to announce our official entry into display advertising with the industry’s first fully integrated display and search marketing optimization platform.  Our new display offering includes real-time bidding capabilities and applies our proven portfolio approach for optimization in auction-based display buying.   As with search, our portfolio approach allows advertisers to leverage predictive modeling to forecast performance outcomes based on goals.

We are the first company to provide a platform that integrates biddable display with search marketing, allowing advertisers’ total campaigns to be more holistically optimized for greater Return on Investment (ROI).  The Efficient Frontier platform is integrated with the large advertising exchanges including Yahoo!’s Right Media and Google’s AdEx.  Additionally, Efficient Frontier utilizes Google’s real-time bidding technology and application programming interface (API) to improve results for its clients.

Over the last year, we have been hard at work building and refining our offering in display.  A number of valued customers worked with us during the early days of our product and I want to thank them for their partnership.  Without the trust of our clients we would not have accomplished so much so fast.

The exchange market is evolving very rapidly.  We are extremely excited by what our platform can do today.  Real time bidding is a capability that allows us to control and activate our optimization in a way that delivers enhanced value to our clients.  Undoubtedly, there are many significant developments to come in the months and years ahead and we look forward to being at the forefront of the industry.

Justin Merickel

Broad vs. Exact Matching -- Are you Over or Under Exposed?

In my latest SearchEngine Land “Analyze This” column, http://searchengineland.com/broad-vs-exact-match-types-the-hard-data-40053, I take on the issue of broad and exact match types.   I decided to tackle this issue because search managers are often asked the question if they are over- or under-exposed on broad and exact matches.

The findings corroborate what most of us already know. Adding broad matches will get you more volume but will cost you more per click. This appears inevitable. The quality score on the broad match keyword should be lower than an exact match on and hence CPCs should be higher.     However, there are a number of other factors to keep in mind outlined in my story.  These will help set expectations both for you and your organization and avoid unnecessary heartburn.

Dr. Sid Shah

Is Bing about to Bang? – Data from our UK Search Engine Performance Report

In addition to the Q1 2010 U.S. Search Engine Performance Report, we also produce a UK version which looks at spend data from a sample of our UK advertisers. Similar to our friends in the U.S., spend for UK advertisers grew a healthy 21% when compared to Q1 last year. Overall return on investment (ROI) in search is up 6% YoY as consumer’s return to purchasing with a more favourable economic outlook. Consistently, the increase in query and click volume is another indicator of this strong consumer demand.

The Efficient Frontier report also appears to be in line with the IPA Bellwether report, published last week, which agreed confidence was up in the sector.
 
The news this quarter focuses on Bing. As we wrote back in October, the big Bing marketing push we saw in the U.S. really affected their share in a positive way. This quarter, Bing made a splash in the UK via various UK advertising mediums including TV.  Although on a smaller scale than in the U.S., Bing did gain spend share this quarter from Google while Yahoo! remained flat. Bing also saw the highest increase in impressions and clicks QoQ out of the search engines and saw a 9% increase in click share on last quarter. Bing spend share in Q1 2010 increased to 4.7% which represented YoY and QoQ gains of 9%. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues.

Also in this quarter’s UK Search Report, we have included an international spend chart for the first time due to popular demand. Although we produce a separate U.S. Search Engine Performance Report, it is interesting to see spend comparisons for different markets together in one place. Looking at Efficient Frontier’s International Customer Index, the market share split between the engines shows Google still dominates when coupled with its Content Network in UK, USA, France, Germany and Australia. Yahoo! has maintained dominance in Japan against Google Search.

We are just as enthusiastic as our U.S. colleagues about the positive Q1 trends we are seeing and we also increase our SEM growth prediction for 2010 to 20%.
 
The Q1 UK Search Report can be downloaded from our website and the full press release can be found here. Comments gratefully received!
 
Merinda Peppard
Global Marketing Manager

Welcome News for SEM as Spend Grows 20% YOY

We’ve just released our Q1 2010 US Search Engine Performance Report.  And there is a lot of good news for the industry.  Spend is growing at a nice clip (+20%) driven by continued strength in retail.  Query and click volume is up suggesting consumer use of search continues to expand at a strong pace.
 
Interestingly, we’re seeing a lower Q4 seasonal retail spike as search engine marketing becomes a more consistent (and significant) part of retailers monthly marketing programs.  As a result, our sequential Q4 to Q1 drop in 2010 was less than half the rate of the same period a year ago.  We believe the strength in retail will continue through 2010 assuming the broader US economic recovery continues its slow march forward.
 
The quarter held good news for Bing and Google but not so good news for Yahoo!.  Bing continues to post impressive growth rates expanding both click and spend share 45% vs. Q1 2009.  Bing remains at just 5.5% of clicks, however, and Google does not appear to be slowing down closing in on 75% share of clicks.  Yahoo’s search losses continue to pile up as their Q1 share of clicks fell to 18.7% from 21.3% in Q1 2009.
 

Overall, our client base is enthusiastic about the results SEM delivered Q1 and optimistic that the remainder of the year will continue on a positive path.  As a result of the positive Q1 trends and positive client sentiment, we believe year on year SEM growth in the US will approach 20%. We’re coming back into solid growth in search, and that’s very good news for our industry.   

Key Points for US SEM in Q1 2010 include:

• Year on Year (YoY) growth was up 20% with a Quarter on Quarter (QoQ) drop of 8% which was less than half previous year’s sequential drop;
• Spend in the retail sector grew 32% Year on Year (YoY) with a relatively moderate 27% Quarter on Quarter (QoQ) decline from the high in Q4;
• Google’s share of clicks and spend rose to 75%;
• Bing increased its share of clicks and ad spend 45% YoY to 5.5% and 6.5%, respectively.

Contact me at justin.merickel@efrontier.com with questions.

Things are looking up - This is no April Fools joke!

We had mentioned in last month’s post that the travel sector had started showing signs of recovering and that we expected this trend to continue. The latest numbers corroborate our expectation. Travel CPCs jumped 21% in the last month, the first such jump we have seen in a long time. Further, the March CPCs were 11.5% higher than last year indicating this sector may be recovering at last.

Retail continues to show strength. While CPCs increased only 2% month over month, they are 10.5% higher than last year. The automotive sector also had a good month. CPCs jumped 12% month over month and are 25% higher than last year. Finance remains flat both MoM and YoY. All in all a strong March.

As we plugged these numbers into our analysis for the upcoming quarterly report, several patterns emerged that surprised us. (Hint: its generally good news for the industry). Stay tuned !

Dr. Siddharth Shah
Director of Analytics