For the past 10 summer weeks, I have had the opportunity to experience firsthand the booming search engine marketing industry as an intern at Efficient Frontier.
I consider myself pretty technologically literate as a college student; that is to say, I spend enough time on the internet that I have accounts on sites like Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter. And like so many others, I had only a vague notion of how Google makes all of its money - ads, somehow. I never thought too hard about or looked too closely at any of the "sponsored listings." Imagine my astonishment upon finding out that SEM is a $16.6 billion spending industry!
From Day 1 I was exposed to direct-impact client projects. EF has a great philosophy of on-the-job training, and also kindly sponsored my Google AdWords Certifications (which was the only formal studying / training I had). My experience has been extremely thorough, ranging from keyword expansions, to ad copies, to performance analyses, to client calls, to even demographic-targeting strategy in launching Facebook campaigns. The only missing aspect was bid management, but we all know that an algorithmic portfolio-theory bidding approach like EF's is the only way to go when you're managing anything more than 100 keywords!
I also really enjoyed the work environment; I had my share of food outings, ping pong, and free drinks + coffee on a daily basis, with larger events like the company picnic and the day-long SES San Francisco Expo. Being in the heart of Silicon Valley at the forefront of the rapidly evolving internet, next to tech companies big and small alike.. you can't help but be inspired to innovate and do great things, just as EF is doing for online marketing. It has been a truly different cultural (and weather-al) experience from Chicago where I go to school. I will definitely miss my time here at Efficient Frontier when the academic year starts.
Tony Yin
Intern, Account Development
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