Greenlight's Search Blog

What impact could Facebook make in search?

With recent news that Google is more forcefully entering the social realm by integrating Google+ into its results, what about Facebook? What impact could it make in search?

Research conducted by Greenlight  found that 50% of Google users have clicked on a sponsored listing in Google at least once and equally, 50% of Facebook users have engaged with Facebook advertising to the same extent.

This means that users have similar attitudes towards Google as they do towards Facebook advertising. 

This would suggest that Google’s huge comparative returns from advertising come from the fact that people will simply click far more frequently on Google ads than they will do on Facebook ads. This is all the more impressive when you consider that the average user will spend almost five times longer on Facebook than on Google. Read more here.

SEO practitioners don’t typically share their operational methods. Our sector is reliant on gaining competitive advantage through hoarding methods and techniques for just long enough to benefit from them, and then sharing them to gain some love and respect as a bonus.

This also extends to methods for displaying SEO data and visualising performance. For instance, search agencies never willingly allow their reports to be seen by their competitors.

Therefore, I want to break rank somewhat and present three interesting ways to display SEO data and information, methods that I’ve not seen others use out there and that are increasingly becoming standards within my own companies.

SEOs spend a huge amount of time painstakingly ensuring they are up to date with the latest algorithmic changes, as well as the mania of the actual task of optimisation itself, but little attention is given to what comes after, i.e. presenting the results in interesting, innovative and ultimately strikingly useful ways.

SEOs need to remember that their job isn’t done until someone can very quickly see the results and therefore appreciate all the hard work! Read more here.

I’m going to start my prediction by winding back the clock a bit, to July 2009, when Google launched its so called “brand algorithm update” (officially titled “Vince” for the trivia buffs amongst you).  This update attempted to incorporate user search  behaviour and click patterns directly into the algorithm, so that searching for keyword X, not finding anything of interest, then immediately searching for a particular Brand Y, would help Brand Y rank for keyword X even in the absence of the usual ranking signals.  As it happened, at the time Google turned this new algorithm element up too high, resulting in too much emphasis being put on user search behaviour and causing some very strange search results, such that Vince was rolled back in fairly short order. 

What does any of this have to do with SEO in 2012?  Well, even though Google bungled the implementation of Vince I think the intention was pretty clear: what users search for can tell search engines about the strength of a brand, because the strength of a brand directly influences those searches. 

What is the best means of influencing brand perception online?  Right now I would argue social media.  At the same time, more and more marketers are cottoning on to the fact that social media can dramatically catalyse SEO campaigns, by increasing the speed of accrual and volume of natural links pointing to a site, as I wrote about at length in the last issue of the Greenlight magazine.

All of this is known information, so here’s my prediction: next year, the confluence of user signals influencing search engines’ perception of brand strength, and everyone being on the “social media helps us build links” band wagon, will make 2012 The Year of Social Link Building.

You could argue that this has already happened, but I don’t think I’m alone in believing that collectively we’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible when SEO and Social are properly integrated.   Sure, people have been creating infographics and promoting them virally for two or three years (to the extent that many infographics these days are starting to seem a bit “me too”), and the idea of link bait of all stripes has been around for considerably longer. Don’t get me wrong, that kind of activity is still important as part of a campaign, but what I’m talking about are full blown, off the wall campaigns that integrate innovative content, competitions, blogger outreach, social, PR... the lot.   In fact, why stop at online? Make TV shows! Throw events!  I know from some of the stuff being planned with our clients that we will be, and I’m very excited about it.

It’s time to stop thinking of SEO as a bubble, time that SEO becomes more than SEO, more than just links.  It’s SEO = Digital PR.   SEO = your brand.  Next year marketers who think like that when planning their campaigns will win, and those who do not will be “also-rans”.

It seems when looking generally at the social media landscape there are a lot of things developing, but nothing that jumps out as the next big thing. Some clever things like relocation and augmented reality are still struggling to gain the full respect of the tech community let alone the general public.  This has led me to much head scratching, deep thoughts of the Jack Handey persuasion, and hours trolling blogs for some much needed persuasion/inspiration.

During my inspiration scavenger hunt my mind kept coming back to a quote by Chris Poole, founder of 4chan, that I had bookmarked a month or so ago.  "[Some social sites] would have you believe that you're a mirror," he said, "but in fact, we're more like diamonds." - multi-faceted. When I first read it, it struck me. And, each time I’ve returned to it, I’ve found myself equally inspired.

I, for one, Anna O’Brien am not the same person day to day. In the words of a 90’s pop song that may be better left unrevived, “I’m a bitch. I’m a lover. I’m a child. I’m a mother. I’m a sinner. I’m a saint. I do not feel ashamed…” Well, that’s not quite true. I do feel ashamed. I feel very ashamed. I am the first to admit that there are thoughts, ideas, and dreams I have that I never want anyone other than my closest friends to know. Still others that I don’t want anyone to know. Those secrets I am only comfortable sharing with strangers on the internet cloaked in anonymity. These are the juicy bits that will come in the tell-all book my brother’s sister’s cousin will write. I fear it.

What I am getting at in a not so subtle way is that, social media as it stands now, does not support myriad different relationships and personalities we have. While sites like Reddit and 4chan appeal to the user who wishes to share information [read troll] cloaked in anonymity, Facebook provides a mass audience live feed that even your mother would feel comfortable reading. And she will. Often. However while these sites currently thrive, they live at opposite ends of the spectrum and both only currently provide a single use view. 

When Mr. Poole first made his point, he was attempting to attack mainstream social sites in their approach. What he did inadvertently was attack his own in the discussion. The future of social media and the prediction I am most certain of is that somehow one of these mainstream sites will evolve to allow you to become more multi-faceted. This is more than Google circles or Facebook friend groups. Those cater to organisation of content rather than the accurate portrayal of multi-dimensional identities.

What might this look like? It’s hard to say. Perhaps it will be multiple usernames underneath a single user identity. Maybe it will be the ability to choose to post content to a public feed anonymously. Something tells me whatever the solution will be, it is likely going to be much more exciting than that.  And that’s a good thing. Personally, I think social media could use a little more genuine innovation and excitement these days.

For more, read our Predictions magazine with contributions from Microsoft, Yahoo and Google and watch our Predictions video.

2011 has been a busy year for the Search industry with Google acquiring Invite Media and Teracent. As we head into 2012, Google is about to officially launch its DoubleClick Search V3 platform - DS3 - a bid management programme which will combine Yahoo and MSN into an AdWords type interface, and significantly invest in the Double Click platform, specifically Double Click for Advertisers (DFA) and the Exchange. As advertisers will we really need to invest elsewhere when Google could potentially provide it all? 

One of my predictions in 2008 was that Google would, by 2009, have expanded into display advertising following its acquisition of Double Click. In 2009, three of my five predictions for 2010 hinted at a new wave of display, pegged ‘performance display’. Two years later the Double Click acquisition and some incredible developments such as Remarketing and Placement Targeting have turned a once struggling Content Network (AdSense to the Publishers), into a success story - one we now know as the Google Display Network (GDN). 

Google’s noteworthy acquisitions and investments this year combined with the mighty AdWords suggests that by the end of 2012, not only will 90% of advertisers Search budgets be in AdWords but also that this trend is set to be the case for Display as well.

Where does this leave other networks such as Yahoo, if Google could potentially provide it all?

The last ten years is evidence that when Google sets its sights on expanding and changing the digital space, it does it properly. However, if Google is creating a one-stop-shop for all digital advertising, where does this leave the other networks? And as advertisers do we really need to invest elsewhere when Google could potentially provide it all?

Interestingly, in the last twelve months, Yahoo has finally woken up to the integration of Search and Display. It now strategically places its two teams together, making it easier for advertisers to get into the Right Media Exchange (RMX) and the Direct Response (DR) networks. Also with the Search Alliance finally hitting the UK in 2012, this should improve Yahoo and Bing’s combined search efforts. However optimistic this may sound, it is obvious there is a long way to go before Google starts to see a dent in its market share.

Assuming Google and Yahoo pull this off; I believe this will support another big subject being debated by online marketers across the UK – attribution - one of the biggest buzz words for 2011 and definitely a hot topic for 2012. If all of my advertising budget can be spent in one place (this one-stop shop scenario) then surely it makes my attribution modelling easier and more transparent.

What is clear is that the developments Google has made in 2011 and the past few years should see it become a serious authority - if not the leader in Display, overtaking Yahoo, as well as Search by the end of 2012.

For more, read our Predictions magazine with contributions from Microsoft, Yahoo and Google and watch our Predictions video.

 

Google has revealed it will imminently be integrating Google+ into its search results, to deliver search results that better reflect your preferences and also incorporate content shared by people in your Google+ Circles. This is a major change to how Google’s search results are assembled and so we want to give everyone a brief overview of what this really means for us as marketers.

So, what will actually be changing?

Firstly, it’s important to stress that the fundamentals are not changing; they are just being supplemented by social elements. Natural search results will remain and will be determined in the same way as they are now (relevant content + links + engagement signals), and Paid Search ads will still operate within the same model. That said, the changes are significant and breathe life into something we could call ‘Social Search’, something at Greehnlight have been expecting for a while and are incredibly excited about. The key changes in a nutshell:

 1.     Google+ content to be integrated into search engine results pages (SERPs)

If you have a Google+ Brand page as a business, any content you post will appear within the natural search results for anyone that has you in their circles, assuming it is deemed relevant to their search. This can be beneficial (Google+ content produced by you gets wide exposure) or a threat (a negative review about you posted by someone with an extensive Circle membership will get increased exposure). The opportunity here is that if you were to create great viral content, then it could be shared by lots of people and therefore appear in the results for lots of people.

 2.     Relevant Google+ Brand pages to be showcased in the SERPs

Google will be suggesting relevant Google+ profiles to follow in the search results when searches are made. For instance, if you searched for ‘music’, Google would display options for you to add the Brand pages of ‘Britney Spears’, ‘Snoop Dog’, etc. to your circles. If you then did that, their content would appear regularly in your search results. This could be beneficial as this promotion of Google+ Brand pages to the populace will grow the number of people who add you to their Circles, giving you a captive audience to market to and consolidate your presence in their future search results. There are a number of threats here too though – if you don’t have a Google+ page right now, you’ll potentially leave yourself open to your branded search results being hijacked by people pretending to be your brand, but you will also not be amassing people who have added you to their Circles, whilst your competitors might be. This will obviously result in reduced visibility and mindshare for you over time.

 What should we/you be doing to respond?

 A brand wanting to take advantage of these changes (or not fall victim to them) would need to undertake several activities:

 1.     Create a Google+ Brand page immediately

This would need to be carefully put together to ensure that it appeared official, useful and worthy of people adding to their Circles. This should also be optimised to ensure it ranked for your brand search terms.

 2.     Put a Google+ content strategy in place

Once you have constructed your Google+ Brand page, you’ll need a content strategy designed to deliver high quality, engaging content, consistently to that audience (i.e. daily!). Content that not only begs to be shared, but also content that uses search terms and themes that your audience might be searching for, therefore increasing and broadening your rankings. For instance, if you were a company that sold computer games, you’d want to have regular Google+ content that showed which were the top 10 most purchased games (or anything else that we know people are searching for in Google). If people have you in their Circles they’ll see this content in their search results when they conduct relevant searches – but also this content would encourage other people to add you to their Circles too. Content essentially needs to be used to increase your exposure to those people that already have you in their Circles, but also compel others to add you for the first time because there is an incentive to do so. And this should be aligned to the list of search terms we target for you already in natural and paid search.

 3.     Benchmark your activity against the competition

As with most things, it’s important to ensure that you’re keeping close tabs on how well your competitors are doing – particularly in terms of the number of people that have added them to their Circles over time.

 This is perhaps the biggest change to Google in the last five years and, as such, cannot be ignored. It’s a huge opportunity for brands and businesses to increase their rankings and also extend their search presence into the realms of CRM, PR, and more.

Nothing helps to pass an otherwise dull day in front of a computer screen faster than some capital T Tunes and those clever people at Spotify have found yet another way to make the soundtrack of your life even more excellent. The recently launched Spotify Apps provides music lovers everywhere with shiny new features, from more intuitive music recommendations and personalised playlists to gig tickets and streaming lyrics.

The preview version is currently available to test drive for free, excellent for those like me who enjoy all things free. Indeed, I only have a free subscription anyway. However, a warning to the spend-thrift. After about 3 minutes playing with the apps I’m giving serious consideration to forking out the hefty fee for a Premium account just so I will be able to use Spotify on my mobile.

The app that first won me over was Moodagent. It intuitively creates a playlist around a chosen song based on 4 moods: sensuality, tenderness, happiness and angriness. How one differentiates between a sensual and tender song is beyond me but never mind, you now have music for your next romantic evening! You can adjust the ‘curve’ of your playlist according to mood and tempo—complete with quite cool visualization too. Personally, this is going to REVOLUTIONIZE my gym experience. Click ‘Anger’. Progressively increase tempo. Calorie burning. Ahoy!

The other app I suspect will get plenty of use from me is Songkick. It scans your playlists and tells you when your favourite bands are playing in a city near you. It’s very user friendly and only takes a minute to build up a list of the bands you specifically want to track. You can then head over to the main Songkick site and register an account to make a personalized calendar of gigs. Fully interactive, this calendar lets you keep track of gigs past and future: by updating set lists, uploading photos, adding videos, etc.

The “social jukebox” Soundrop is another app of note.  It integrates with Facebook, allowing you to login and see when your friends are playing music, so you can discover and listen together. Friends can join your music “spot” directly from Spotify, and vote tracks up or even add new songs. You can do likewise - choose to join a friend’s spot to do the same or just simply enjoy their spot like a radio station.

More impressive however, is the We Are Hunted app. It keeps you on top of cutting edge music by providing a constantly updated playlist of 100 tracks that are currently trending online, allowing you to filter by genre.

What does the future of Spotify apps have in store? This is limited only by the imaginations of music geeks and the skills of clever dev teams. Independent software developers have been asked to write new apps to add even more features to the online music streaming service. According to the Spotify website, new, better, more intuitive apps are already in the pipeline. For now, I’m off to stage some flash karaoke in the office with the TuneWiki. Any takers?

After a lengthy period of beta testing, Google has made Product Listing Ads widely available to advertisers in the UK. This new product ad format compliments the product ad extensions (figure 1) already available in AdWords. This new addition is likely to have a significant impact on the look, feel and dynamic of the search engine results pages (SERPs).  Currently, few seem to be making use of this new functionality. However, in the run up to the festive season and beyond, advertisers in the retail space should wise up and get in on the game as quickly as they can.

Fig.1 Product ad extensions

Google product ads are currently available in two formats:

- Product ad extensions - an expandable link within the ad to reveal related products

- Product ad listings – these new keywordless ads match content within your Google Merchant Centre feed to the users’ search query. They currently appear at the top right side of the page. The product listing ad format has been available in the US since November 2010 and Google claims “users are twice as likely to click on Product Listing Ads than on text ads in the same location”.

Fig.2 Product ad listings

The Impact

Whilst there is nothing surprising about Google’s claim, it is a statement that should raise alarm with competing advertisers in this space - enter Quality Score. Although many factors of the notorious Google Quality Score are shrouded in mystery, it is a well known fact that one of the primary determinants for the calculation of this metric is Click-thru Rate (CTR). If CTR’s are doubling for product ads, what impact will this have on the CTR of the competing ads on the SERP’s? There will inevitably be a significant decrease for the standard text ads, which might in theory, cause a decrease in quality score for advertisers not employing product ads. Some advertisers might see this as an unfair penalisation for running the traditional text ad format; unless Google is factoring the presence of product ads into the quality score calculation. My view is that it is, however, Google has  given no official indication this is the case.

A Sign of Things to Come?

The SERP displayed in figure 3 serves as a possible insight into the future of the Google ad space.  From what in years gone by was a static, text-heavy beast, the addition of these new formats make the current SERP a far more engaging and interactive place. The combination of expandable links, product descriptions, product images and price points give the modern day SERP the feel of an actual web page. Through its testing phase, Google has found users are engaging far more with images than with text, so this move has the feel of natural progression.

Google will claim this progression benefits both the user and advertiser alike; however the true motive behind this evolution is obvious. Increased user interaction with the sponsored listings bears a positive correlation with Google’s bottom line.

Fig.3 SERP displaying product ad extensions and listings

Currently there appear to be just a small number of advertisers utilising this additional functionality. I expect that once those who are late to the party begin to take notice of the effect on their CTR’s and the knock-on effect on sales volumes, they will have little choice but to sit up and take notice.

Soon these product ads will become commonplace on the SERPs. How will Google attempt to accommodate the demand from advertisers to have product ads appearing? If they have such a significant effect on ad performance, will this stimulate a rush to increase Cost per Click (CPC) bids to hit those top positions?  

These are questions that will be answered in the coming months as these ad formats mature. For the moment, advertisers in the retail space should endeavour to get in on the game as quickly as possible to capitalise on the peak trading season in the run up to Christmas.

 

Google has long been the catalyst and evolution of search. However Google has come up against a fierce and game-changing competitor. The competition in question is not however a singular brand or company, it is a completely new marketing channel – social media. Rather than fight it, Google has embraced social media within its results pages, and for advertisers and marketers alike, it is important to fully understand the benefits and potential shortcomings of Google’s “social extensions”, namely Seller ratings, and Plus One.

In 2011 alone Google has rolled out a number of improvements, including advanced remarketing, improved logic to serving of sitelinks, umpteen refinements to ad creative and display urls’, local extensions, enhanced tablet and mobile targeting, instant preview, and a new version of Google Analytics.

Arguably, two of the most significant features for Google to roll out across AdWords was its “social

extensions”, namely Seller Ratings, and Plus One. There has been much debate of late regarding the impact of social media on SEO, but social media Engagement within AdWords? – This really was something different for us to think about and digest.

What has changed?

Google continues to change the landscape of search, both from a natural perspective, and paid. Its constant refinement of the AdWords system is what keeps us marketers on our toes and eager to find and test new ways of driving incremental revenue to our clients.

What are Social Extensions?

Seller rating extensions (figure 1) display the merchant star rating for companies that meet a certain criteria. The ad extension will show up below the paid media ad in question and show the merchant star rating, along with the number of reviews present on Google Product Search. In addition, you can click through the review total to read the reviews on Google Product Search. Needless to say, merchants that qualify for seller rating extensions have an advantage as shoppers are determining which ads to click through on Google. Again, minor enhancements to paid media ads can make a big difference, particularly when competition is fierce and budgets are limited.

 

April 2011 saw the launch of Google’s latest development to leverage the social graph for its search results. While the company has used social cues from Twitter and Flickr for more than a year to improve organic rankings, Google has now created its own recommendation function, extending it to both paid media and organic search.

The feature is simply called “Plus One” (figure 2). You will be familiar with Facebook adverts and likes, the concept is not dissimilar. When users are logged into Google, they will be able to rate individual search results and adverts by clicking the “Plus One” symbol. Their friends will then see the endorsement.

 

Social Extensions’ impact on Paid media

As yet, these social extensions have no direct impact on the all-important, mysterious holy grail of Google Quality Score. However, we can safely assume that it is only a matter of time before these, and other social signals start to have an influencing factor on the algorithm, and therefore performance on the account.

Marketers are already finding ways to utilise these extensions to influence a number of key performance indicators (KPi’s) such as Click-thru Rate (CTR), Cost per Click (CPC) and Conversion Rate (CVR). For example, advertisers wanting to stand out from the crowd in the search engine results pages (SERP) have, with good effect, implemented the Seller Rating extension within their AdWords account.

We initially found for a number of advertisers that having the Seller Ratings as part of the adcopy resulted in an increase in CTR, which over time improved Quality Score. However, with an increasing number of

advertisers using Seller Ratings, these quick win improvements in CTR are arguably no longer possible, or at least are not as significant as they once were.

The Plus One extension on the other hand has a far greater potential impact on the performance of an advertiser’s paid search campaign. I as a user am likely to be more inclined to buy something from a site if it has been recommended, or Plus One’d by someone within my “circles” and therefore trust.

The Shortfalls of Social Extensions

 Both social extensions do lend themselves to brands that sell good products / services and/or provide good levels of services. All brands are going to want to achieve as many positive seller ratings as possible, as well as being Plus One’d by vast numbers of users. In theory, this should mean I am able to see which advertiser is likely to give me a pleasurable shopping / user experience, after all, users are not going to Plus One or provide a positive seller rating if they receive poor experience, right? Well, there are either functionality flaws or limitations which mean users are not necessarily going to be aware of any negative levels of feedback. Firstly, Google allows users to Plus One an ad but not a Negative One. So again, in theory an advertiser may have 20 Plus One’s, yet 1000 people have had a very poor level of service and would have Negative One’d them given the opportunity or functionality. Therefore, on face value, the advertiser with 20 Plus One’s looks good value and one where I would have little reservation in spending my money with.

Presumably then, Seller Ratings would be far more impartial as they allow for users to add a negative review should they wish. However, unfortunately it is not quite so clear cut as the advertiser can opt in (providing they achieve a certain, very easily achieved, criteria), or opt out of displaying the Seller Ratings. Again, theoretically, if an advertiser received a number of negative reviews which could have a detrimental impact on KPi’s such as CTR, and CVR, they could simply disable the ad extension, once again potentially hiding valuable social signals away from the end user.

Arguably, it is too early to really understand the full impact of Plus One on paid media results and it’s not really something as marketers we can completely influence. With Seller Ratings on the other hand, marketers have some interesting choices to make. By implementing Seller Ratings, are you prepared to sacrifice one of the most significant influencers of CTR in paid media – Site Links? If your strategy is to target the positions down the right hand side of the SERP, positive Seller Ratings can give you a step change in performance and should at least be part of a comprehensive testing schedule.

The future of Social Extensions and Paid media

I wish I knew what the future of paid media looked like, but given the developments and refinements that Google continues to make, we should not be surprised to see a far more joined up social and paid media experience, one that integrates more than just Google’s Plus One and Seller Ratings into Google’s SERP. (Figure 3)

 

Integrating search results that your friends have engaged with would be a far easier integration for the likes of Facebook than Google’s approach of trying to create its own social network and then shoehorning it into the search results pages. Google also has another major obstacle, the development that had set it apart from the competition – Quality Score. In my view, Google is still trying to work out how to implement social engagement to its Quality Score algorithm, without sacrificing the main reason people chose to use it – relevancy and quality of results.

Ultimately Google will find a way and it is clear social media and social extensions within paid media are here to stay and continue to grow. So it is time to fully embrace it and find innovative ways to continue to drive performance for advertisers.

Everyone is aware of product placement, the deliberate incorporation of a product or brand into a movie, television episode or other media vehicle to promote it to the viewing audience, typically in a subtle way to create affinity and recognition over time.

However, there’s more to product placement than simply placing a Papa John’s pizza box in clear view in a major sitcom.

From a marketer’s perspective that is only one facet of how what appears on TV can impact on what consumers then think about and do, and it isn’t limited to just brand placement, recognition and recall either.

In reality, what people view on television can trigger actions beyond the direct and obvious result of traditional product placement. Increased two-screen behaviours now mean that peoples’ online search behaviour is more closely aligned to, and increasingly triggered by, what they are experiencing on their TV device in that moment in time.

If marketers had more insight into what those associations and triggers might be it would open up a whole host of new opportunities for intelligent targeting within search, social, display, email and more.

Example 1: The X Factor USA on FOX

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last decade you’ll know the phenomenon that is the X Factor and that it is of immense commercial value to ITV in the UK, FOX in the US, and those contributors involved in its development, production and promotion.

You’ll also likely know that they enjoy a product placement deal with Pepsi to the tune of $60m. This means the inclusion of Pepsi bottles in every other shot and emblazoned across the screen at any opportunity. Whilst this does most definitely raise Pepsi’s visibility,

it doesn’t lead to people typing ‘Pepsi’ into Google. We know this because undertaking a correlation analysis we can see that air times for X Factor do not correlate with Pepsi searches in Google.

Search queries for X Factor do however correlate, and to a huge degree, with searches for fashion terms. For instance the following fashion queries are all positively correlated to 0.8 or above with X Factor searches, which maths people tell me is ‘a lot’: Read more here.

3 interesting ways to display SEO data and information in innovative and strikingly useful ways

SEO practitioners don’t typically share their operational methods. Our sector is reliant on gaining competitive advantage through hoarding methods and techniques for just long enough to benefit from them, and then sharing them to gain some love and respect as a bonus.

This also extends to methods for displaying SEO data and visualising performance. For instance, search agencies never willingly allow their reports to be seen by their competitors.

Therefore, I want to break rank somewhat and present three interesting ways to display SEO data and information, methods that I’ve not seen others use out there and that are increasingly becoming standards within my own companies.

SEOs spend a huge amount of time painstakingly ensuring they are up to date with the latest algorithmic changes, as well as the mania of the actual task of optimisation itself, but little attention is given to what comes after, i.e. presenting the results in interesting, innovative and ultimately strikingly useful ways.

SEOs need to remember that their job isn’t done until someone can very quickly see the results and therefore appreciate all the hard work! Read more here.

I’m going to start my prediction by winding back the clock a bit, to July 2009, when Google launched its so called “brand algorithm update” (officially titled “Vince” for the trivia buffs amongst you).  This update attempted to incorporate user search  behaviour and click patterns directly into the algorithm, so that searching for keyword X, not finding anything of interest, then immediately searching for a particular Brand Y, would help Brand Y rank for keyword X even in the absence of the usual ranking signals.  As it happened, at the time Google turned this new algorithm element up too high, resulting in too much emphasis being put on user search behaviour and causing some very strange search results, such that Vince was rolled back in fairly short order. 

What does any of this have to do with SEO in 2012?  Well, even though Google bungled the implementation of Vince I think the intention was pretty clear: what users search for can tell search engines about the strength of a brand, because the strength of a brand directly influences those searches. 

What is the best means of influencing brand perception online?  Right now I would argue social media.  At the same time, more and more marketers are cottoning on to the fact that social media can dramatically catalyse SEO campaigns, by increasing the speed of accrual and volume of natural links pointing to a site, as I wrote about at length in the last issue of the Greenlight magazine.

All of this is known information, so here’s my prediction: next year, the confluence of user signals influencing search engines’ perception of brand strength, and everyone being on the “social media helps us build links” band wagon, will make 2012 The Year of Social Link Building.

You could argue that this has already happened, but I don’t think I’m alone in believing that collectively we’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible when SEO and Social are properly integrated.   Sure, people have been creating infographics and promoting them virally for two or three years (to the extent that many infographics these days are starting to seem a bit “me too”), and the idea of link bait of all stripes has been around for considerably longer. Don’t get me wrong, that kind of activity is still important as part of a campaign, but what I’m talking about are full blown, off the wall campaigns that integrate innovative content, competitions, blogger outreach, social, PR... the lot.   In fact, why stop at online? Make TV shows! Throw events!  I know from some of the stuff being planned with our clients that we will be, and I’m very excited about it.

It’s time to stop thinking of SEO as a bubble, time that SEO becomes more than SEO, more than just links.  It’s SEO = Digital PR.   SEO = your brand.  Next year marketers who think like that when planning their campaigns will win, and those who do not will be “also-rans”.

It seems when looking generally at the social media landscape there are a lot of things developing, but nothing that jumps out as the next big thing. Some clever things like relocation and augmented reality are still struggling to gain the full respect of the tech community let alone the general public.  This has led me to much head scratching, deep thoughts of the Jack Handey persuasion, and hours trolling blogs for some much needed persuasion/inspiration.

During my inspiration scavenger hunt my mind kept coming back to a quote by Chris Poole, founder of 4chan, that I had bookmarked a month or so ago.  "[Some social sites] would have you believe that you're a mirror," he said, "but in fact, we're more like diamonds." - multi-faceted. When I first read it, it struck me. And, each time I’ve returned to it, I’ve found myself equally inspired.

I, for one, Anna O’Brien am not the same person day to day. In the words of a 90’s pop song that may be better left unrevived, “I’m a bitch. I’m a lover. I’m a child. I’m a mother. I’m a sinner. I’m a saint. I do not feel ashamed…” Well, that’s not quite true. I do feel ashamed. I feel very ashamed. I am the first to admit that there are thoughts, ideas, and dreams I have that I never want anyone other than my closest friends to know. Still others that I don’t want anyone to know. Those secrets I am only comfortable sharing with strangers on the internet cloaked in anonymity. These are the juicy bits that will come in the tell-all book my brother’s sister’s cousin will write. I fear it.

What I am getting at in a not so subtle way is that, social media as it stands now, does not support myriad different relationships and personalities we have. While sites like Reddit and 4chan appeal to the user who wishes to share information [read troll] cloaked in anonymity, Facebook provides a mass audience live feed that even your mother would feel comfortable reading. And she will. Often. However while these sites currently thrive, they live at opposite ends of the spectrum and both only currently provide a single use view. 

When Mr. Poole first made his point, he was attempting to attack mainstream social sites in their approach. What he did inadvertently was attack his own in the discussion. The future of social media and the prediction I am most certain of is that somehow one of these mainstream sites will evolve to allow you to become more multi-faceted. This is more than Google circles or Facebook friend groups. Those cater to organisation of content rather than the accurate portrayal of multi-dimensional identities.

What might this look like? It’s hard to say. Perhaps it will be multiple usernames underneath a single user identity. Maybe it will be the ability to choose to post content to a public feed anonymously. Something tells me whatever the solution will be, it is likely going to be much more exciting than that.  And that’s a good thing. Personally, I think social media could use a little more genuine innovation and excitement these days.

For more, read our Predictions magazine with contributions from Microsoft, Yahoo and Google and watch our Predictions video.

2011 has been a busy year for the Search industry with Google acquiring Invite Media and Teracent. As we head into 2012, Google is about to officially launch its DoubleClick Search V3 platform - DS3 - a bid management programme which will combine Yahoo and MSN into an AdWords type interface, and significantly invest in the Double Click platform, specifically Double Click for Advertisers (DFA) and the Exchange. As advertisers will we really need to invest elsewhere when Google could potentially provide it all? 

One of my predictions in 2008 was that Google would, by 2009, have expanded into display advertising following its acquisition of Double Click. In 2009, three of my five predictions for 2010 hinted at a new wave of display, pegged ‘performance display’. Two years later the Double Click acquisition and some incredible developments such as Remarketing and Placement Targeting have turned a once struggling Content Network (AdSense to the Publishers), into a success story - one we now know as the Google Display Network (GDN). 

Google’s noteworthy acquisitions and investments this year combined with the mighty AdWords suggests that by the end of 2012, not only will 90% of advertisers Search budgets be in AdWords but also that this trend is set to be the case for Display as well.

Where does this leave other networks such as Yahoo, if Google could potentially provide it all?

The last ten years is evidence that when Google sets its sights on expanding and changing the digital space, it does it properly. However, if Google is creating a one-stop-shop for all digital advertising, where does this leave the other networks? And as advertisers do we really need to invest elsewhere when Google could potentially provide it all?

Interestingly, in the last twelve months, Yahoo has finally woken up to the integration of Search and Display. It now strategically places its two teams together, making it easier for advertisers to get into the Right Media Exchange (RMX) and the Direct Response (DR) networks. Also with the Search Alliance finally hitting the UK in 2012, this should improve Yahoo and Bing’s combined search efforts. However optimistic this may sound, it is obvious there is a long way to go before Google starts to see a dent in its market share.

Assuming Google and Yahoo pull this off; I believe this will support another big subject being debated by online marketers across the UK – attribution - one of the biggest buzz words for 2011 and definitely a hot topic for 2012. If all of my advertising budget can be spent in one place (this one-stop shop scenario) then surely it makes my attribution modelling easier and more transparent.

What is clear is that the developments Google has made in 2011 and the past few years should see it become a serious authority - if not the leader in Display, overtaking Yahoo, as well as Search by the end of 2012.

For more, read our Predictions magazine with contributions from Microsoft, Yahoo and Google and watch our Predictions video.

 

Google has revealed it will imminently be integrating Google+ into its search results, to deliver search results that better reflect your preferences and also incorporate content shared by people in your Google+ Circles. This is a major change to how Google’s search results are assembled and so we want to give everyone a brief overview of what this really means for us as marketers.

So, what will actually be changing?

Firstly, it’s important to stress that the fundamentals are not changing; they are just being supplemented by social elements. Natural search results will remain and will be determined in the same way as they are now (relevant content + links + engagement signals), and Paid Search ads will still operate within the same model. That said, the changes are significant and breathe life into something we could call ‘Social Search’, something at Greehnlight have been expecting for a while and are incredibly excited about. The key changes in a nutshell:

 1.     Google+ content to be integrated into search engine results pages (SERPs)

If you have a Google+ Brand page as a business, any content you post will appear within the natural search results for anyone that has you in their circles, assuming it is deemed relevant to their search. This can be beneficial (Google+ content produced by you gets wide exposure) or a threat (a negative review about you posted by someone with an extensive Circle membership will get increased exposure). The opportunity here is that if you were to create great viral content, then it could be shared by lots of people and therefore appear in the results for lots of people.

 2.     Relevant Google+ Brand pages to be showcased in the SERPs

Google will be suggesting relevant Google+ profiles to follow in the search results when searches are made. For instance, if you searched for ‘music’, Google would display options for you to add the Brand pages of ‘Britney Spears’, ‘Snoop Dog’, etc. to your circles. If you then did that, their content would appear regularly in your search results. This could be beneficial as this promotion of Google+ Brand pages to the populace will grow the number of people who add you to their Circles, giving you a captive audience to market to and consolidate your presence in their future search results. There are a number of threats here too though – if you don’t have a Google+ page right now, you’ll potentially leave yourself open to your branded search results being hijacked by people pretending to be your brand, but you will also not be amassing people who have added you to their Circles, whilst your competitors might be. This will obviously result in reduced visibility and mindshare for you over time.

 What should we/you be doing to respond?

 A brand wanting to take advantage of these changes (or not fall victim to them) would need to undertake several activities:

 1.     Create a Google+ Brand page immediately

This would need to be carefully put together to ensure that it appeared official, useful and worthy of people adding to their Circles. This should also be optimised to ensure it ranked for your brand search terms.

 2.     Put a Google+ content strategy in place

Once you have constructed your Google+ Brand page, you’ll need a content strategy designed to deliver high quality, engaging content, consistently to that audience (i.e. daily!). Content that not only begs to be shared, but also content that uses search terms and themes that your audience might be searching for, therefore increasing and broadening your rankings. For instance, if you were a company that sold computer games, you’d want to have regular Google+ content that showed which were the top 10 most purchased games (or anything else that we know people are searching for in Google). If people have you in their Circles they’ll see this content in their search results when they conduct relevant searches – but also this content would encourage other people to add you to their Circles too. Content essentially needs to be used to increase your exposure to those people that already have you in their Circles, but also compel others to add you for the first time because there is an incentive to do so. And this should be aligned to the list of search terms we target for you already in natural and paid search.

 3.     Benchmark your activity against the competition

As with most things, it’s important to ensure that you’re keeping close tabs on how well your competitors are doing – particularly in terms of the number of people that have added them to their Circles over time.

 This is perhaps the biggest change to Google in the last five years and, as such, cannot be ignored. It’s a huge opportunity for brands and businesses to increase their rankings and also extend their search presence into the realms of CRM, PR, and more.

Nothing helps to pass an otherwise dull day in front of a computer screen faster than some capital T Tunes and those clever people at Spotify have found yet another way to make the soundtrack of your life even more excellent. The recently launched Spotify Apps provides music lovers everywhere with shiny new features, from more intuitive music recommendations and personalised playlists to gig tickets and streaming lyrics.

The preview version is currently available to test drive for free, excellent for those like me who enjoy all things free. Indeed, I only have a free subscription anyway. However, a warning to the spend-thrift. After about 3 minutes playing with the apps I’m giving serious consideration to forking out the hefty fee for a Premium account just so I will be able to use Spotify on my mobile.

The app that first won me over was Moodagent. It intuitively creates a playlist around a chosen song based on 4 moods: sensuality, tenderness, happiness and angriness. How one differentiates between a sensual and tender song is beyond me but never mind, you now have music for your next romantic evening! You can adjust the ‘curve’ of your playlist according to mood and tempo—complete with quite cool visualization too. Personally, this is going to REVOLUTIONIZE my gym experience. Click ‘Anger’. Progressively increase tempo. Calorie burning. Ahoy!

The other app I suspect will get plenty of use from me is Songkick. It scans your playlists and tells you when your favourite bands are playing in a city near you. It’s very user friendly and only takes a minute to build up a list of the bands you specifically want to track. You can then head over to the main Songkick site and register an account to make a personalized calendar of gigs. Fully interactive, this calendar lets you keep track of gigs past and future: by updating set lists, uploading photos, adding videos, etc.

The “social jukebox” Soundrop is another app of note.  It integrates with Facebook, allowing you to login and see when your friends are playing music, so you can discover and listen together. Friends can join your music “spot” directly from Spotify, and vote tracks up or even add new songs. You can do likewise - choose to join a friend’s spot to do the same or just simply enjoy their spot like a radio station.

More impressive however, is the We Are Hunted app. It keeps you on top of cutting edge music by providing a constantly updated playlist of 100 tracks that are currently trending online, allowing you to filter by genre.

What does the future of Spotify apps have in store? This is limited only by the imaginations of music geeks and the skills of clever dev teams. Independent software developers have been asked to write new apps to add even more features to the online music streaming service. According to the Spotify website, new, better, more intuitive apps are already in the pipeline. For now, I’m off to stage some flash karaoke in the office with the TuneWiki. Any takers?

After a lengthy period of beta testing, Google has made Product Listing Ads widely available to advertisers in the UK. This new product ad format compliments the product ad extensions (figure 1) already available in AdWords. This new addition is likely to have a significant impact on the look, feel and dynamic of the search engine results pages (SERPs).  Currently, few seem to be making use of this new functionality. However, in the run up to the festive season and beyond, advertisers in the retail space should wise up and get in on the game as quickly as they can.

Fig.1 Product ad extensions

Google product ads are currently available in two formats:

- Product ad extensions - an expandable link within the ad to reveal related products

- Product ad listings – these new keywordless ads match content within your Google Merchant Centre feed to the users’ search query. They currently appear at the top right side of the page. The product listing ad format has been available in the US since November 2010 and Google claims “users are twice as likely to click on Product Listing Ads than on text ads in the same location”.

Fig.2 Product ad listings

The Impact

Whilst there is nothing surprising about Google’s claim, it is a statement that should raise alarm with competing advertisers in this space - enter Quality Score. Although many factors of the notorious Google Quality Score are shrouded in mystery, it is a well known fact that one of the primary determinants for the calculation of this metric is Click-thru Rate (CTR). If CTR’s are doubling for product ads, what impact will this have on the CTR of the competing ads on the SERP’s? There will inevitably be a significant decrease for the standard text ads, which might in theory, cause a decrease in quality score for advertisers not employing product ads. Some advertisers might see this as an unfair penalisation for running the traditional text ad format; unless Google is factoring the presence of product ads into the quality score calculation. My view is that it is, however, Google has  given no official indication this is the case.

A Sign of Things to Come?

The SERP displayed in figure 3 serves as a possible insight into the future of the Google ad space.  From what in years gone by was a static, text-heavy beast, the addition of these new formats make the current SERP a far more engaging and interactive place. The combination of expandable links, product descriptions, product images and price points give the modern day SERP the feel of an actual web page. Through its testing phase, Google has found users are engaging far more with images than with text, so this move has the feel of natural progression.

Google will claim this progression benefits both the user and advertiser alike; however the true motive behind this evolution is obvious. Increased user interaction with the sponsored listings bears a positive correlation with Google’s bottom line.

Fig.3 SERP displaying product ad extensions and listings

Currently there appear to be just a small number of advertisers utilising this additional functionality. I expect that once those who are late to the party begin to take notice of the effect on their CTR’s and the knock-on effect on sales volumes, they will have little choice but to sit up and take notice.

Soon these product ads will become commonplace on the SERPs. How will Google attempt to accommodate the demand from advertisers to have product ads appearing? If they have such a significant effect on ad performance, will this stimulate a rush to increase Cost per Click (CPC) bids to hit those top positions?  

These are questions that will be answered in the coming months as these ad formats mature. For the moment, advertisers in the retail space should endeavour to get in on the game as quickly as possible to capitalise on the peak trading season in the run up to Christmas.

 

Google has long been the catalyst and evolution of search. However Google has come up against a fierce and game-changing competitor. The competition in question is not however a singular brand or company, it is a completely new marketing channel – social media. Rather than fight it, Google has embraced social media within its results pages, and for advertisers and marketers alike, it is important to fully understand the benefits and potential shortcomings of Google’s “social extensions”, namely Seller ratings, and Plus One.

In 2011 alone Google has rolled out a number of improvements, including advanced remarketing, improved logic to serving of sitelinks, umpteen refinements to ad creative and display urls’, local extensions, enhanced tablet and mobile targeting, instant preview, and a new version of Google Analytics.

Arguably, two of the most significant features for Google to roll out across AdWords was its “social

extensions”, namely Seller Ratings, and Plus One. There has been much debate of late regarding the impact of social media on SEO, but social media Engagement within AdWords? – This really was something different for us to think about and digest.

What has changed?

Google continues to change the landscape of search, both from a natural perspective, and paid. Its constant refinement of the AdWords system is what keeps us marketers on our toes and eager to find and test new ways of driving incremental revenue to our clients.

What are Social Extensions?

Seller rating extensions (figure 1) display the merchant star rating for companies that meet a certain criteria. The ad extension will show up below the paid media ad in question and show the merchant star rating, along with the number of reviews present on Google Product Search. In addition, you can click through the review total to read the reviews on Google Product Search. Needless to say, merchants that qualify for seller rating extensions have an advantage as shoppers are determining which ads to click through on Google. Again, minor enhancements to paid media ads can make a big difference, particularly when competition is fierce and budgets are limited.

 

April 2011 saw the launch of Google’s latest development to leverage the social graph for its search results. While the company has used social cues from Twitter and Flickr for more than a year to improve organic rankings, Google has now created its own recommendation function, extending it to both paid media and organic search.

The feature is simply called “Plus One” (figure 2). You will be familiar with Facebook adverts and likes, the concept is not dissimilar. When users are logged into Google, they will be able to rate individual search results and adverts by clicking the “Plus One” symbol. Their friends will then see the endorsement.

 

Social Extensions’ impact on Paid media

As yet, these social extensions have no direct impact on the all-important, mysterious holy grail of Google Quality Score. However, we can safely assume that it is only a matter of time before these, and other social signals start to have an influencing factor on the algorithm, and therefore performance on the account.

Marketers are already finding ways to utilise these extensions to influence a number of key performance indicators (KPi’s) such as Click-thru Rate (CTR), Cost per Click (CPC) and Conversion Rate (CVR). For example, advertisers wanting to stand out from the crowd in the search engine results pages (SERP) have, with good effect, implemented the Seller Rating extension within their AdWords account.

We initially found for a number of advertisers that having the Seller Ratings as part of the adcopy resulted in an increase in CTR, which over time improved Quality Score. However, with an increasing number of

advertisers using Seller Ratings, these quick win improvements in CTR are arguably no longer possible, or at least are not as significant as they once were.

The Plus One extension on the other hand has a far greater potential impact on the performance of an advertiser’s paid search campaign. I as a user am likely to be more inclined to buy something from a site if it has been recommended, or Plus One’d by someone within my “circles” and therefore trust.

The Shortfalls of Social Extensions

 Both social extensions do lend themselves to brands that sell good products / services and/or provide good levels of services. All brands are going to want to achieve as many positive seller ratings as possible, as well as being Plus One’d by vast numbers of users. In theory, this should mean I am able to see which advertiser is likely to give me a pleasurable shopping / user experience, after all, users are not going to Plus One or provide a positive seller rating if they receive poor experience, right? Well, there are either functionality flaws or limitations which mean users are not necessarily going to be aware of any negative levels of feedback. Firstly, Google allows users to Plus One an ad but not a Negative One. So again, in theory an advertiser may have 20 Plus One’s, yet 1000 people have had a very poor level of service and would have Negative One’d them given the opportunity or functionality. Therefore, on face value, the advertiser with 20 Plus One’s looks good value and one where I would have little reservation in spending my money with.

Presumably then, Seller Ratings would be far more impartial as they allow for users to add a negative review should they wish. However, unfortunately it is not quite so clear cut as the advertiser can opt in (providing they achieve a certain, very easily achieved, criteria), or opt out of displaying the Seller Ratings. Again, theoretically, if an advertiser received a number of negative reviews which could have a detrimental impact on KPi’s such as CTR, and CVR, they could simply disable the ad extension, once again potentially hiding valuable social signals away from the end user.

Arguably, it is too early to really understand the full impact of Plus One on paid media results and it’s not really something as marketers we can completely influence. With Seller Ratings on the other hand, marketers have some interesting choices to make. By implementing Seller Ratings, are you prepared to sacrifice one of the most significant influencers of CTR in paid media – Site Links? If your strategy is to target the positions down the right hand side of the SERP, positive Seller Ratings can give you a step change in performance and should at least be part of a comprehensive testing schedule.

The future of Social Extensions and Paid media

I wish I knew what the future of paid media looked like, but given the developments and refinements that Google continues to make, we should not be surprised to see a far more joined up social and paid media experience, one that integrates more than just Google’s Plus One and Seller Ratings into Google’s SERP. (Figure 3)

 

Integrating search results that your friends have engaged with would be a far easier integration for the likes of Facebook than Google’s approach of trying to create its own social network and then shoehorning it into the search results pages. Google also has another major obstacle, the development that had set it apart from the competition – Quality Score. In my view, Google is still trying to work out how to implement social engagement to its Quality Score algorithm, without sacrificing the main reason people chose to use it – relevancy and quality of results.

Ultimately Google will find a way and it is clear social media and social extensions within paid media are here to stay and continue to grow. So it is time to fully embrace it and find innovative ways to continue to drive performance for advertisers.

Everyone is aware of product placement, the deliberate incorporation of a product or brand into a movie, television episode or other media vehicle to promote it to the viewing audience, typically in a subtle way to create affinity and recognition over time.

However, there’s more to product placement than simply placing a Papa John’s pizza box in clear view in a major sitcom.

From a marketer’s perspective that is only one facet of how what appears on TV can impact on what consumers then think about and do, and it isn’t limited to just brand placement, recognition and recall either.

In reality, what people view on television can trigger actions beyond the direct and obvious result of traditional product placement. Increased two-screen behaviours now mean that peoples’ online search behaviour is more closely aligned to, and increasingly triggered by, what they are experiencing on their TV device in that moment in time.

If marketers had more insight into what those associations and triggers might be it would open up a whole host of new opportunities for intelligent targeting within search, social, display, email and more.

Example 1: The X Factor USA on FOX

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last decade you’ll know the phenomenon that is the X Factor and that it is of immense commercial value to ITV in the UK, FOX in the US, and those contributors involved in its development, production and promotion.

You’ll also likely know that they enjoy a product placement deal with Pepsi to the tune of $60m. This means the inclusion of Pepsi bottles in every other shot and emblazoned across the screen at any opportunity. Whilst this does most definitely raise Pepsi’s visibility,

it doesn’t lead to people typing ‘Pepsi’ into Google. We know this because undertaking a correlation analysis we can see that air times for X Factor do not correlate with Pepsi searches in Google.

Search queries for X Factor do however correlate, and to a huge degree, with searches for fashion terms. For instance the following fashion queries are all positively correlated to 0.8 or above with X Factor searches, which maths people tell me is ‘a lot’: Read more here.

2012: The Year of Social Link Building

I’m going to start my prediction by winding back the clock a bit, to July 2009, when Google launched its so called “brand algorithm update” (officially titled “Vince” for the trivia buffs amongst you).  This update attempted to incorporate user search  behaviour and click patterns directly into the algorithm, so that searching for keyword X, not finding anything of interest, then immediately searching for a particular Brand Y, would help Brand Y rank for keyword X even in the absence of the usual ranking signals.  As it happened, at the time Google turned this new algorithm element up too high, resulting in too much emphasis being put on user search behaviour and causing some very strange search results, such that Vince was rolled back in fairly short order. 

What does any of this have to do with SEO in 2012?  Well, even though Google bungled the implementation of Vince I think the intention was pretty clear: what users search for can tell search engines about the strength of a brand, because the strength of a brand directly influences those searches. 

What is the best means of influencing brand perception online?  Right now I would argue social media.  At the same time, more and more marketers are cottoning on to the fact that social media can dramatically catalyse SEO campaigns, by increasing the speed of accrual and volume of natural links pointing to a site, as I wrote about at length in the last issue of the Greenlight magazine.

All of this is known information, so here’s my prediction: next year, the confluence of user signals influencing search engines’ perception of brand strength, and everyone being on the “social media helps us build links” band wagon, will make 2012 The Year of Social Link Building.

You could argue that this has already happened, but I don’t think I’m alone in believing that collectively we’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible when SEO and Social are properly integrated.   Sure, people have been creating infographics and promoting them virally for two or three years (to the extent that many infographics these days are starting to seem a bit “me too”), and the idea of link bait of all stripes has been around for considerably longer. Don’t get me wrong, that kind of activity is still important as part of a campaign, but what I’m talking about are full blown, off the wall campaigns that integrate innovative content, competitions, blogger outreach, social, PR... the lot.   In fact, why stop at online? Make TV shows! Throw events!  I know from some of the stuff being planned with our clients that we will be, and I’m very excited about it.

It’s time to stop thinking of SEO as a bubble, time that SEO becomes more than SEO, more than just links.  It’s SEO = Digital PR.   SEO = your brand.  Next year marketers who think like that when planning their campaigns will win, and those who do not will be “also-rans”.

It seems when looking generally at the social media landscape there are a lot of things developing, but nothing that jumps out as the next big thing. Some clever things like relocation and augmented reality are still struggling to gain the full respect of the tech community let alone the general public.  This has led me to much head scratching, deep thoughts of the Jack Handey persuasion, and hours trolling blogs for some much needed persuasion/inspiration.

During my inspiration scavenger hunt my mind kept coming back to a quote by Chris Poole, founder of 4chan, that I had bookmarked a month or so ago.  "[Some social sites] would have you believe that you're a mirror," he said, "but in fact, we're more like diamonds." - multi-faceted. When I first read it, it struck me. And, each time I’ve returned to it, I’ve found myself equally inspired.

I, for one, Anna O’Brien am not the same person day to day. In the words of a 90’s pop song that may be better left unrevived, “I’m a bitch. I’m a lover. I’m a child. I’m a mother. I’m a sinner. I’m a saint. I do not feel ashamed…” Well, that’s not quite true. I do feel ashamed. I feel very ashamed. I am the first to admit that there are thoughts, ideas, and dreams I have that I never want anyone other than my closest friends to know. Still others that I don’t want anyone to know. Those secrets I am only comfortable sharing with strangers on the internet cloaked in anonymity. These are the juicy bits that will come in the tell-all book my brother’s sister’s cousin will write. I fear it.

What I am getting at in a not so subtle way is that, social media as it stands now, does not support myriad different relationships and personalities we have. While sites like Reddit and 4chan appeal to the user who wishes to share information [read troll] cloaked in anonymity, Facebook provides a mass audience live feed that even your mother would feel comfortable reading. And she will. Often. However while these sites currently thrive, they live at opposite ends of the spectrum and both only currently provide a single use view. 

When Mr. Poole first made his point, he was attempting to attack mainstream social sites in their approach. What he did inadvertently was attack his own in the discussion. The future of social media and the prediction I am most certain of is that somehow one of these mainstream sites will evolve to allow you to become more multi-faceted. This is more than Google circles or Facebook friend groups. Those cater to organisation of content rather than the accurate portrayal of multi-dimensional identities.

What might this look like? It’s hard to say. Perhaps it will be multiple usernames underneath a single user identity. Maybe it will be the ability to choose to post content to a public feed anonymously. Something tells me whatever the solution will be, it is likely going to be much more exciting than that.  And that’s a good thing. Personally, I think social media could use a little more genuine innovation and excitement these days.

For more, read our Predictions magazine with contributions from Microsoft, Yahoo and Google and watch our Predictions video.

2011 has been a busy year for the Search industry with Google acquiring Invite Media and Teracent. As we head into 2012, Google is about to officially launch its DoubleClick Search V3 platform - DS3 - a bid management programme which will combine Yahoo and MSN into an AdWords type interface, and significantly invest in the Double Click platform, specifically Double Click for Advertisers (DFA) and the Exchange. As advertisers will we really need to invest elsewhere when Google could potentially provide it all? 

One of my predictions in 2008 was that Google would, by 2009, have expanded into display advertising following its acquisition of Double Click. In 2009, three of my five predictions for 2010 hinted at a new wave of display, pegged ‘performance display’. Two years later the Double Click acquisition and some incredible developments such as Remarketing and Placement Targeting have turned a once struggling Content Network (AdSense to the Publishers), into a success story - one we now know as the Google Display Network (GDN). 

Google’s noteworthy acquisitions and investments this year combined with the mighty AdWords suggests that by the end of 2012, not only will 90% of advertisers Search budgets be in AdWords but also that this trend is set to be the case for Display as well.

Where does this leave other networks such as Yahoo, if Google could potentially provide it all?

The last ten years is evidence that when Google sets its sights on expanding and changing the digital space, it does it properly. However, if Google is creating a one-stop-shop for all digital advertising, where does this leave the other networks? And as advertisers do we really need to invest elsewhere when Google could potentially provide it all?

Interestingly, in the last twelve months, Yahoo has finally woken up to the integration of Search and Display. It now strategically places its two teams together, making it easier for advertisers to get into the Right Media Exchange (RMX) and the Direct Response (DR) networks. Also with the Search Alliance finally hitting the UK in 2012, this should improve Yahoo and Bing’s combined search efforts. However optimistic this may sound, it is obvious there is a long way to go before Google starts to see a dent in its market share.

Assuming Google and Yahoo pull this off; I believe this will support another big subject being debated by online marketers across the UK – attribution - one of the biggest buzz words for 2011 and definitely a hot topic for 2012. If all of my advertising budget can be spent in one place (this one-stop shop scenario) then surely it makes my attribution modelling easier and more transparent.

What is clear is that the developments Google has made in 2011 and the past few years should see it become a serious authority - if not the leader in Display, overtaking Yahoo, as well as Search by the end of 2012.

For more, read our Predictions magazine with contributions from Microsoft, Yahoo and Google and watch our Predictions video.

 

Google has revealed it will imminently be integrating Google+ into its search results, to deliver search results that better reflect your preferences and also incorporate content shared by people in your Google+ Circles. This is a major change to how Google’s search results are assembled and so we want to give everyone a brief overview of what this really means for us as marketers.

So, what will actually be changing?

Firstly, it’s important to stress that the fundamentals are not changing; they are just being supplemented by social elements. Natural search results will remain and will be determined in the same way as they are now (relevant content + links + engagement signals), and Paid Search ads will still operate within the same model. That said, the changes are significant and breathe life into something we could call ‘Social Search’, something at Greehnlight have been expecting for a while and are incredibly excited about. The key changes in a nutshell:

 1.     Google+ content to be integrated into search engine results pages (SERPs)

If you have a Google+ Brand page as a business, any content you post will appear within the natural search results for anyone that has you in their circles, assuming it is deemed relevant to their search. This can be beneficial (Google+ content produced by you gets wide exposure) or a threat (a negative review about you posted by someone with an extensive Circle membership will get increased exposure). The opportunity here is that if you were to create great viral content, then it could be shared by lots of people and therefore appear in the results for lots of people.

 2.     Relevant Google+ Brand pages to be showcased in the SERPs

Google will be suggesting relevant Google+ profiles to follow in the search results when searches are made. For instance, if you searched for ‘music’, Google would display options for you to add the Brand pages of ‘Britney Spears’, ‘Snoop Dog’, etc. to your circles. If you then did that, their content would appear regularly in your search results. This could be beneficial as this promotion of Google+ Brand pages to the populace will grow the number of people who add you to their Circles, giving you a captive audience to market to and consolidate your presence in their future search results. There are a number of threats here too though – if you don’t have a Google+ page right now, you’ll potentially leave yourself open to your branded search results being hijacked by people pretending to be your brand, but you will also not be amassing people who have added you to their Circles, whilst your competitors might be. This will obviously result in reduced visibility and mindshare for you over time.

 What should we/you be doing to respond?

 A brand wanting to take advantage of these changes (or not fall victim to them) would need to undertake several activities:

 1.     Create a Google+ Brand page immediately

This would need to be carefully put together to ensure that it appeared official, useful and worthy of people adding to their Circles. This should also be optimised to ensure it ranked for your brand search terms.

 2.     Put a Google+ content strategy in place

Once you have constructed your Google+ Brand page, you’ll need a content strategy designed to deliver high quality, engaging content, consistently to that audience (i.e. daily!). Content that not only begs to be shared, but also content that uses search terms and themes that your audience might be searching for, therefore increasing and broadening your rankings. For instance, if you were a company that sold computer games, you’d want to have regular Google+ content that showed which were the top 10 most purchased games (or anything else that we know people are searching for in Google). If people have you in their Circles they’ll see this content in their search results when they conduct relevant searches – but also this content would encourage other people to add you to their Circles too. Content essentially needs to be used to increase your exposure to those people that already have you in their Circles, but also compel others to add you for the first time because there is an incentive to do so. And this should be aligned to the list of search terms we target for you already in natural and paid search.

 3.     Benchmark your activity against the competition

As with most things, it’s important to ensure that you’re keeping close tabs on how well your competitors are doing – particularly in terms of the number of people that have added them to their Circles over time.

 This is perhaps the biggest change to Google in the last five years and, as such, cannot be ignored. It’s a huge opportunity for brands and businesses to increase their rankings and also extend their search presence into the realms of CRM, PR, and more.

Nothing helps to pass an otherwise dull day in front of a computer screen faster than some capital T Tunes and those clever people at Spotify have found yet another way to make the soundtrack of your life even more excellent. The recently launched Spotify Apps provides music lovers everywhere with shiny new features, from more intuitive music recommendations and personalised playlists to gig tickets and streaming lyrics.

The preview version is currently available to test drive for free, excellent for those like me who enjoy all things free. Indeed, I only have a free subscription anyway. However, a warning to the spend-thrift. After about 3 minutes playing with the apps I’m giving serious consideration to forking out the hefty fee for a Premium account just so I will be able to use Spotify on my mobile.

The app that first won me over was Moodagent. It intuitively creates a playlist around a chosen song based on 4 moods: sensuality, tenderness, happiness and angriness. How one differentiates between a sensual and tender song is beyond me but never mind, you now have music for your next romantic evening! You can adjust the ‘curve’ of your playlist according to mood and tempo—complete with quite cool visualization too. Personally, this is going to REVOLUTIONIZE my gym experience. Click ‘Anger’. Progressively increase tempo. Calorie burning. Ahoy!

The other app I suspect will get plenty of use from me is Songkick. It scans your playlists and tells you when your favourite bands are playing in a city near you. It’s very user friendly and only takes a minute to build up a list of the bands you specifically want to track. You can then head over to the main Songkick site and register an account to make a personalized calendar of gigs. Fully interactive, this calendar lets you keep track of gigs past and future: by updating set lists, uploading photos, adding videos, etc.

The “social jukebox” Soundrop is another app of note.  It integrates with Facebook, allowing you to login and see when your friends are playing music, so you can discover and listen together. Friends can join your music “spot” directly from Spotify, and vote tracks up or even add new songs. You can do likewise - choose to join a friend’s spot to do the same or just simply enjoy their spot like a radio station.

More impressive however, is the We Are Hunted app. It keeps you on top of cutting edge music by providing a constantly updated playlist of 100 tracks that are currently trending online, allowing you to filter by genre.

What does the future of Spotify apps have in store? This is limited only by the imaginations of music geeks and the skills of clever dev teams. Independent software developers have been asked to write new apps to add even more features to the online music streaming service. According to the Spotify website, new, better, more intuitive apps are already in the pipeline. For now, I’m off to stage some flash karaoke in the office with the TuneWiki. Any takers?

After a lengthy period of beta testing, Google has made Product Listing Ads widely available to advertisers in the UK. This new product ad format compliments the product ad extensions (figure 1) already available in AdWords. This new addition is likely to have a significant impact on the look, feel and dynamic of the search engine results pages (SERPs).  Currently, few seem to be making use of this new functionality. However, in the run up to the festive season and beyond, advertisers in the retail space should wise up and get in on the game as quickly as they can.

Fig.1 Product ad extensions

Google product ads are currently available in two formats:

- Product ad extensions - an expandable link within the ad to reveal related products

- Product ad listings – these new keywordless ads match content within your Google Merchant Centre feed to the users’ search query. They currently appear at the top right side of the page. The product listing ad format has been available in the US since November 2010 and Google claims “users are twice as likely to click on Product Listing Ads than on text ads in the same location”.

Fig.2 Product ad listings

The Impact

Whilst there is nothing surprising about Google’s claim, it is a statement that should raise alarm with competing advertisers in this space - enter Quality Score. Although many factors of the notorious Google Quality Score are shrouded in mystery, it is a well known fact that one of the primary determinants for the calculation of this metric is Click-thru Rate (CTR). If CTR’s are doubling for product ads, what impact will this have on the CTR of the competing ads on the SERP’s? There will inevitably be a significant decrease for the standard text ads, which might in theory, cause a decrease in quality score for advertisers not employing product ads. Some advertisers might see this as an unfair penalisation for running the traditional text ad format; unless Google is factoring the presence of product ads into the quality score calculation. My view is that it is, however, Google has  given no official indication this is the case.

A Sign of Things to Come?

The SERP displayed in figure 3 serves as a possible insight into the future of the Google ad space.  From what in years gone by was a static, text-heavy beast, the addition of these new formats make the current SERP a far more engaging and interactive place. The combination of expandable links, product descriptions, product images and price points give the modern day SERP the feel of an actual web page. Through its testing phase, Google has found users are engaging far more with images than with text, so this move has the feel of natural progression.

Google will claim this progression benefits both the user and advertiser alike; however the true motive behind this evolution is obvious. Increased user interaction with the sponsored listings bears a positive correlation with Google’s bottom line.

Fig.3 SERP displaying product ad extensions and listings

Currently there appear to be just a small number of advertisers utilising this additional functionality. I expect that once those who are late to the party begin to take notice of the effect on their CTR’s and the knock-on effect on sales volumes, they will have little choice but to sit up and take notice.

Soon these product ads will become commonplace on the SERPs. How will Google attempt to accommodate the demand from advertisers to have product ads appearing? If they have such a significant effect on ad performance, will this stimulate a rush to increase Cost per Click (CPC) bids to hit those top positions?  

These are questions that will be answered in the coming months as these ad formats mature. For the moment, advertisers in the retail space should endeavour to get in on the game as quickly as possible to capitalise on the peak trading season in the run up to Christmas.

 

Google has long been the catalyst and evolution of search. However Google has come up against a fierce and game-changing competitor. The competition in question is not however a singular brand or company, it is a completely new marketing channel – social media. Rather than fight it, Google has embraced social media within its results pages, and for advertisers and marketers alike, it is important to fully understand the benefits and potential shortcomings of Google’s “social extensions”, namely Seller ratings, and Plus One.

In 2011 alone Google has rolled out a number of improvements, including advanced remarketing, improved logic to serving of sitelinks, umpteen refinements to ad creative and display urls’, local extensions, enhanced tablet and mobile targeting, instant preview, and a new version of Google Analytics.

Arguably, two of the most significant features for Google to roll out across AdWords was its “social

extensions”, namely Seller Ratings, and Plus One. There has been much debate of late regarding the impact of social media on SEO, but social media Engagement within AdWords? – This really was something different for us to think about and digest.

What has changed?

Google continues to change the landscape of search, both from a natural perspective, and paid. Its constant refinement of the AdWords system is what keeps us marketers on our toes and eager to find and test new ways of driving incremental revenue to our clients.

What are Social Extensions?

Seller rating extensions (figure 1) display the merchant star rating for companies that meet a certain criteria. The ad extension will show up below the paid media ad in question and show the merchant star rating, along with the number of reviews present on Google Product Search. In addition, you can click through the review total to read the reviews on Google Product Search. Needless to say, merchants that qualify for seller rating extensions have an advantage as shoppers are determining which ads to click through on Google. Again, minor enhancements to paid media ads can make a big difference, particularly when competition is fierce and budgets are limited.

 

April 2011 saw the launch of Google’s latest development to leverage the social graph for its search results. While the company has used social cues from Twitter and Flickr for more than a year to improve organic rankings, Google has now created its own recommendation function, extending it to both paid media and organic search.

The feature is simply called “Plus One” (figure 2). You will be familiar with Facebook adverts and likes, the concept is not dissimilar. When users are logged into Google, they will be able to rate individual search results and adverts by clicking the “Plus One” symbol. Their friends will then see the endorsement.

 

Social Extensions’ impact on Paid media

As yet, these social extensions have no direct impact on the all-important, mysterious holy grail of Google Quality Score. However, we can safely assume that it is only a matter of time before these, and other social signals start to have an influencing factor on the algorithm, and therefore performance on the account.

Marketers are already finding ways to utilise these extensions to influence a number of key performance indicators (KPi’s) such as Click-thru Rate (CTR), Cost per Click (CPC) and Conversion Rate (CVR). For example, advertisers wanting to stand out from the crowd in the search engine results pages (SERP) have, with good effect, implemented the Seller Rating extension within their AdWords account.

We initially found for a number of advertisers that having the Seller Ratings as part of the adcopy resulted in an increase in CTR, which over time improved Quality Score. However, with an increasing number of

advertisers using Seller Ratings, these quick win improvements in CTR are arguably no longer possible, or at least are not as significant as they once were.

The Plus One extension on the other hand has a far greater potential impact on the performance of an advertiser’s paid search campaign. I as a user am likely to be more inclined to buy something from a site if it has been recommended, or Plus One’d by someone within my “circles” and therefore trust.

The Shortfalls of Social Extensions

 Both social extensions do lend themselves to brands that sell good products / services and/or provide good levels of services. All brands are going to want to achieve as many positive seller ratings as possible, as well as being Plus One’d by vast numbers of users. In theory, this should mean I am able to see which advertiser is likely to give me a pleasurable shopping / user experience, after all, users are not going to Plus One or provide a positive seller rating if they receive poor experience, right? Well, there are either functionality flaws or limitations which mean users are not necessarily going to be aware of any negative levels of feedback. Firstly, Google allows users to Plus One an ad but not a Negative One. So again, in theory an advertiser may have 20 Plus One’s, yet 1000 people have had a very poor level of service and would have Negative One’d them given the opportunity or functionality. Therefore, on face value, the advertiser with 20 Plus One’s looks good value and one where I would have little reservation in spending my money with.

Presumably then, Seller Ratings would be far more impartial as they allow for users to add a negative review should they wish. However, unfortunately it is not quite so clear cut as the advertiser can opt in (providing they achieve a certain, very easily achieved, criteria), or opt out of displaying the Seller Ratings. Again, theoretically, if an advertiser received a number of negative reviews which could have a detrimental impact on KPi’s such as CTR, and CVR, they could simply disable the ad extension, once again potentially hiding valuable social signals away from the end user.

Arguably, it is too early to really understand the full impact of Plus One on paid media results and it’s not really something as marketers we can completely influence. With Seller Ratings on the other hand, marketers have some interesting choices to make. By implementing Seller Ratings, are you prepared to sacrifice one of the most significant influencers of CTR in paid media – Site Links? If your strategy is to target the positions down the right hand side of the SERP, positive Seller Ratings can give you a step change in performance and should at least be part of a comprehensive testing schedule.

The future of Social Extensions and Paid media

I wish I knew what the future of paid media looked like, but given the developments and refinements that Google continues to make, we should not be surprised to see a far more joined up social and paid media experience, one that integrates more than just Google’s Plus One and Seller Ratings into Google’s SERP. (Figure 3)

 

Integrating search results that your friends have engaged with would be a far easier integration for the likes of Facebook than Google’s approach of trying to create its own social network and then shoehorning it into the search results pages. Google also has another major obstacle, the development that had set it apart from the competition – Quality Score. In my view, Google is still trying to work out how to implement social engagement to its Quality Score algorithm, without sacrificing the main reason people chose to use it – relevancy and quality of results.

Ultimately Google will find a way and it is clear social media and social extensions within paid media are here to stay and continue to grow. So it is time to fully embrace it and find innovative ways to continue to drive performance for advertisers.

Everyone is aware of product placement, the deliberate incorporation of a product or brand into a movie, television episode or other media vehicle to promote it to the viewing audience, typically in a subtle way to create affinity and recognition over time.

However, there’s more to product placement than simply placing a Papa John’s pizza box in clear view in a major sitcom.

From a marketer’s perspective that is only one facet of how what appears on TV can impact on what consumers then think about and do, and it isn’t limited to just brand placement, recognition and recall either.

In reality, what people view on television can trigger actions beyond the direct and obvious result of traditional product placement. Increased two-screen behaviours now mean that peoples’ online search behaviour is more closely aligned to, and increasingly triggered by, what they are experiencing on their TV device in that moment in time.

If marketers had more insight into what those associations and triggers might be it would open up a whole host of new opportunities for intelligent targeting within search, social, display, email and more.

Example 1: The X Factor USA on FOX

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last decade you’ll know the phenomenon that is the X Factor and that it is of immense commercial value to ITV in the UK, FOX in the US, and those contributors involved in its development, production and promotion.

You’ll also likely know that they enjoy a product placement deal with Pepsi to the tune of $60m. This means the inclusion of Pepsi bottles in every other shot and emblazoned across the screen at any opportunity. Whilst this does most definitely raise Pepsi’s visibility,

it doesn’t lead to people typing ‘Pepsi’ into Google. We know this because undertaking a correlation analysis we can see that air times for X Factor do not correlate with Pepsi searches in Google.

Search queries for X Factor do however correlate, and to a huge degree, with searches for fashion terms. For instance the following fashion queries are all positively correlated to 0.8 or above with X Factor searches, which maths people tell me is ‘a lot’: Read more here.

Predictions of a multi-faceted identity for Social Media in 2012

It seems when looking generally at the social media landscape there are a lot of things developing, but nothing that jumps out as the next big thing. Some clever things like relocation and augmented reality are still struggling to gain the full respect of the tech community let alone the general public.  This has led me to much head scratching, deep thoughts of the Jack Handey persuasion, and hours trolling blogs for some much needed persuasion/inspiration.

During my inspiration scavenger hunt my mind kept coming back to a quote by Chris Poole, founder of 4chan, that I had bookmarked a month or so ago.  "[Some social sites] would have you believe that you're a mirror," he said, "but in fact, we're more like diamonds." - multi-faceted. When I first read it, it struck me. And, each time I’ve returned to it, I’ve found myself equally inspired.

I, for one, Anna O’Brien am not the same person day to day. In the words of a 90’s pop song that may be better left unrevived, “I’m a bitch. I’m a lover. I’m a child. I’m a mother. I’m a sinner. I’m a saint. I do not feel ashamed…” Well, that’s not quite true. I do feel ashamed. I feel very ashamed. I am the first to admit that there are thoughts, ideas, and dreams I have that I never want anyone other than my closest friends to know. Still others that I don’t want anyone to know. Those secrets I am only comfortable sharing with strangers on the internet cloaked in anonymity. These are the juicy bits that will come in the tell-all book my brother’s sister’s cousin will write. I fear it.

What I am getting at in a not so subtle way is that, social media as it stands now, does not support myriad different relationships and personalities we have. While sites like Reddit and 4chan appeal to the user who wishes to share information [read troll] cloaked in anonymity, Facebook provides a mass audience live feed that even your mother would feel comfortable reading. And she will. Often. However while these sites currently thrive, they live at opposite ends of the spectrum and both only currently provide a single use view. 

When Mr. Poole first made his point, he was attempting to attack mainstream social sites in their approach. What he did inadvertently was attack his own in the discussion. The future of social media and the prediction I am most certain of is that somehow one of these mainstream sites will evolve to allow you to become more multi-faceted. This is more than Google circles or Facebook friend groups. Those cater to organisation of content rather than the accurate portrayal of multi-dimensional identities.

What might this look like? It’s hard to say. Perhaps it will be multiple usernames underneath a single user identity. Maybe it will be the ability to choose to post content to a public feed anonymously. Something tells me whatever the solution will be, it is likely going to be much more exciting than that.  And that’s a good thing. Personally, I think social media could use a little more genuine innovation and excitement these days.

For more, read our Predictions magazine with contributions from Microsoft, Yahoo and Google and watch our Predictions video.

2011 has been a busy year for the Search industry with Google acquiring Invite Media and Teracent. As we head into 2012, Google is about to officially launch its DoubleClick Search V3 platform - DS3 - a bid management programme which will combine Yahoo and MSN into an AdWords type interface, and significantly invest in the Double Click platform, specifically Double Click for Advertisers (DFA) and the Exchange. As advertisers will we really need to invest elsewhere when Google could potentially provide it all? 

One of my predictions in 2008 was that Google would, by 2009, have expanded into display advertising following its acquisition of Double Click. In 2009, three of my five predictions for 2010 hinted at a new wave of display, pegged ‘performance display’. Two years later the Double Click acquisition and some incredible developments such as Remarketing and Placement Targeting have turned a once struggling Content Network (AdSense to the Publishers), into a success story - one we now know as the Google Display Network (GDN). 

Google’s noteworthy acquisitions and investments this year combined with the mighty AdWords suggests that by the end of 2012, not only will 90% of advertisers Search budgets be in AdWords but also that this trend is set to be the case for Display as well.

Where does this leave other networks such as Yahoo, if Google could potentially provide it all?

The last ten years is evidence that when Google sets its sights on expanding and changing the digital space, it does it properly. However, if Google is creating a one-stop-shop for all digital advertising, where does this leave the other networks? And as advertisers do we really need to invest elsewhere when Google could potentially provide it all?

Interestingly, in the last twelve months, Yahoo has finally woken up to the integration of Search and Display. It now strategically places its two teams together, making it easier for advertisers to get into the Right Media Exchange (RMX) and the Direct Response (DR) networks. Also with the Search Alliance finally hitting the UK in 2012, this should improve Yahoo and Bing’s combined search efforts. However optimistic this may sound, it is obvious there is a long way to go before Google starts to see a dent in its market share.

Assuming Google and Yahoo pull this off; I believe this will support another big subject being debated by online marketers across the UK – attribution - one of the biggest buzz words for 2011 and definitely a hot topic for 2012. If all of my advertising budget can be spent in one place (this one-stop shop scenario) then surely it makes my attribution modelling easier and more transparent.

What is clear is that the developments Google has made in 2011 and the past few years should see it become a serious authority - if not the leader in Display, overtaking Yahoo, as well as Search by the end of 2012.

For more, read our Predictions magazine with contributions from Microsoft, Yahoo and Google and watch our Predictions video.

 

Google has revealed it will imminently be integrating Google+ into its search results, to deliver search results that better reflect your preferences and also incorporate content shared by people in your Google+ Circles. This is a major change to how Google’s search results are assembled and so we want to give everyone a brief overview of what this really means for us as marketers.

So, what will actually be changing?

Firstly, it’s important to stress that the fundamentals are not changing; they are just being supplemented by social elements. Natural search results will remain and will be determined in the same way as they are now (relevant content + links + engagement signals), and Paid Search ads will still operate within the same model. That said, the changes are significant and breathe life into something we could call ‘Social Search’, something at Greehnlight have been expecting for a while and are incredibly excited about. The key changes in a nutshell:

 1.     Google+ content to be integrated into search engine results pages (SERPs)

If you have a Google+ Brand page as a business, any content you post will appear within the natural search results for anyone that has you in their circles, assuming it is deemed relevant to their search. This can be beneficial (Google+ content produced by you gets wide exposure) or a threat (a negative review about you posted by someone with an extensive Circle membership will get increased exposure). The opportunity here is that if you were to create great viral content, then it could be shared by lots of people and therefore appear in the results for lots of people.

 2.     Relevant Google+ Brand pages to be showcased in the SERPs

Google will be suggesting relevant Google+ profiles to follow in the search results when searches are made. For instance, if you searched for ‘music’, Google would display options for you to add the Brand pages of ‘Britney Spears’, ‘Snoop Dog’, etc. to your circles. If you then did that, their content would appear regularly in your search results. This could be beneficial as this promotion of Google+ Brand pages to the populace will grow the number of people who add you to their Circles, giving you a captive audience to market to and consolidate your presence in their future search results. There are a number of threats here too though – if you don’t have a Google+ page right now, you’ll potentially leave yourself open to your branded search results being hijacked by people pretending to be your brand, but you will also not be amassing people who have added you to their Circles, whilst your competitors might be. This will obviously result in reduced visibility and mindshare for you over time.

 What should we/you be doing to respond?

 A brand wanting to take advantage of these changes (or not fall victim to them) would need to undertake several activities:

 1.     Create a Google+ Brand page immediately

This would need to be carefully put together to ensure that it appeared official, useful and worthy of people adding to their Circles. This should also be optimised to ensure it ranked for your brand search terms.

 2.     Put a Google+ content strategy in place

Once you have constructed your Google+ Brand page, you’ll need a content strategy designed to deliver high quality, engaging content, consistently to that audience (i.e. daily!). Content that not only begs to be shared, but also content that uses search terms and themes that your audience might be searching for, therefore increasing and broadening your rankings. For instance, if you were a company that sold computer games, you’d want to have regular Google+ content that showed which were the top 10 most purchased games (or anything else that we know people are searching for in Google). If people have you in their Circles they’ll see this content in their search results when they conduct relevant searches – but also this content would encourage other people to add you to their Circles too. Content essentially needs to be used to increase your exposure to those people that already have you in their Circles, but also compel others to add you for the first time because there is an incentive to do so. And this should be aligned to the list of search terms we target for you already in natural and paid search.

 3.     Benchmark your activity against the competition

As with most things, it’s important to ensure that you’re keeping close tabs on how well your competitors are doing – particularly in terms of the number of people that have added them to their Circles over time.

 This is perhaps the biggest change to Google in the last five years and, as such, cannot be ignored. It’s a huge opportunity for brands and businesses to increase their rankings and also extend their search presence into the realms of CRM, PR, and more.

Nothing helps to pass an otherwise dull day in front of a computer screen faster than some capital T Tunes and those clever people at Spotify have found yet another way to make the soundtrack of your life even more excellent. The recently launched Spotify Apps provides music lovers everywhere with shiny new features, from more intuitive music recommendations and personalised playlists to gig tickets and streaming lyrics.

The preview version is currently available to test drive for free, excellent for those like me who enjoy all things free. Indeed, I only have a free subscription anyway. However, a warning to the spend-thrift. After about 3 minutes playing with the apps I’m giving serious consideration to forking out the hefty fee for a Premium account just so I will be able to use Spotify on my mobile.

The app that first won me over was Moodagent. It intuitively creates a playlist around a chosen song based on 4 moods: sensuality, tenderness, happiness and angriness. How one differentiates between a sensual and tender song is beyond me but never mind, you now have music for your next romantic evening! You can adjust the ‘curve’ of your playlist according to mood and tempo—complete with quite cool visualization too. Personally, this is going to REVOLUTIONIZE my gym experience. Click ‘Anger’. Progressively increase tempo. Calorie burning. Ahoy!

The other app I suspect will get plenty of use from me is Songkick. It scans your playlists and tells you when your favourite bands are playing in a city near you. It’s very user friendly and only takes a minute to build up a list of the bands you specifically want to track. You can then head over to the main Songkick site and register an account to make a personalized calendar of gigs. Fully interactive, this calendar lets you keep track of gigs past and future: by updating set lists, uploading photos, adding videos, etc.

The “social jukebox” Soundrop is another app of note.  It integrates with Facebook, allowing you to login and see when your friends are playing music, so you can discover and listen together. Friends can join your music “spot” directly from Spotify, and vote tracks up or even add new songs. You can do likewise - choose to join a friend’s spot to do the same or just simply enjoy their spot like a radio station.

More impressive however, is the We Are Hunted app. It keeps you on top of cutting edge music by providing a constantly updated playlist of 100 tracks that are currently trending online, allowing you to filter by genre.

What does the future of Spotify apps have in store? This is limited only by the imaginations of music geeks and the skills of clever dev teams. Independent software developers have been asked to write new apps to add even more features to the online music streaming service. According to the Spotify website, new, better, more intuitive apps are already in the pipeline. For now, I’m off to stage some flash karaoke in the office with the TuneWiki. Any takers?

After a lengthy period of beta testing, Google has made Product Listing Ads widely available to advertisers in the UK. This new product ad format compliments the product ad extensions (figure 1) already available in AdWords. This new addition is likely to have a significant impact on the look, feel and dynamic of the search engine results pages (SERPs).  Currently, few seem to be making use of this new functionality. However, in the run up to the festive season and beyond, advertisers in the retail space should wise up and get in on the game as quickly as they can.

Fig.1 Product ad extensions

Google product ads are currently available in two formats:

- Product ad extensions - an expandable link within the ad to reveal related products

- Product ad listings – these new keywordless ads match content within your Google Merchant Centre feed to the users’ search query. They currently appear at the top right side of the page. The product listing ad format has been available in the US since November 2010 and Google claims “users are twice as likely to click on Product Listing Ads than on text ads in the same location”.

Fig.2 Product ad listings

The Impact

Whilst there is nothing surprising about Google’s claim, it is a statement that should raise alarm with competing advertisers in this space - enter Quality Score. Although many factors of the notorious Google Quality Score are shrouded in mystery, it is a well known fact that one of the primary determinants for the calculation of this metric is Click-thru Rate (CTR). If CTR’s are doubling for product ads, what impact will this have on the CTR of the competing ads on the SERP’s? There will inevitably be a significant decrease for the standard text ads, which might in theory, cause a decrease in quality score for advertisers not employing product ads. Some advertisers might see this as an unfair penalisation for running the traditional text ad format; unless Google is factoring the presence of product ads into the quality score calculation. My view is that it is, however, Google has  given no official indication this is the case.

A Sign of Things to Come?

The SERP displayed in figure 3 serves as a possible insight into the future of the Google ad space.  From what in years gone by was a static, text-heavy beast, the addition of these new formats make the current SERP a far more engaging and interactive place. The combination of expandable links, product descriptions, product images and price points give the modern day SERP the feel of an actual web page. Through its testing phase, Google has found users are engaging far more with images than with text, so this move has the feel of natural progression.

Google will claim this progression benefits both the user and advertiser alike; however the true motive behind this evolution is obvious. Increased user interaction with the sponsored listings bears a positive correlation with Google’s bottom line.

Fig.3 SERP displaying product ad extensions and listings

Currently there appear to be just a small number of advertisers utilising this additional functionality. I expect that once those who are late to the party begin to take notice of the effect on their CTR’s and the knock-on effect on sales volumes, they will have little choice but to sit up and take notice.

Soon these product ads will become commonplace on the SERPs. How will Google attempt to accommodate the demand from advertisers to have product ads appearing? If they have such a significant effect on ad performance, will this stimulate a rush to increase Cost per Click (CPC) bids to hit those top positions?  

These are questions that will be answered in the coming months as these ad formats mature. For the moment, advertisers in the retail space should endeavour to get in on the game as quickly as possible to capitalise on the peak trading season in the run up to Christmas.

 

Google has long been the catalyst and evolution of search. However Google has come up against a fierce and game-changing competitor. The competition in question is not however a singular brand or company, it is a completely new marketing channel – social media. Rather than fight it, Google has embraced social media within its results pages, and for advertisers and marketers alike, it is important to fully understand the benefits and potential shortcomings of Google’s “social extensions”, namely Seller ratings, and Plus One.

In 2011 alone Google has rolled out a number of improvements, including advanced remarketing, improved logic to serving of sitelinks, umpteen refinements to ad creative and display urls’, local extensions, enhanced tablet and mobile targeting, instant preview, and a new version of Google Analytics.

Arguably, two of the most significant features for Google to roll out across AdWords was its “social

extensions”, namely Seller Ratings, and Plus One. There has been much debate of late regarding the impact of social media on SEO, but social media Engagement within AdWords? – This really was something different for us to think about and digest.

What has changed?

Google continues to change the landscape of search, both from a natural perspective, and paid. Its constant refinement of the AdWords system is what keeps us marketers on our toes and eager to find and test new ways of driving incremental revenue to our clients.

What are Social Extensions?

Seller rating extensions (figure 1) display the merchant star rating for companies that meet a certain criteria. The ad extension will show up below the paid media ad in question and show the merchant star rating, along with the number of reviews present on Google Product Search. In addition, you can click through the review total to read the reviews on Google Product Search. Needless to say, merchants that qualify for seller rating extensions have an advantage as shoppers are determining which ads to click through on Google. Again, minor enhancements to paid media ads can make a big difference, particularly when competition is fierce and budgets are limited.

 

April 2011 saw the launch of Google’s latest development to leverage the social graph for its search results. While the company has used social cues from Twitter and Flickr for more than a year to improve organic rankings, Google has now created its own recommendation function, extending it to both paid media and organic search.

The feature is simply called “Plus One” (figure 2). You will be familiar with Facebook adverts and likes, the concept is not dissimilar. When users are logged into Google, they will be able to rate individual search results and adverts by clicking the “Plus One” symbol. Their friends will then see the endorsement.

 

Social Extensions’ impact on Paid media

As yet, these social extensions have no direct impact on the all-important, mysterious holy grail of Google Quality Score. However, we can safely assume that it is only a matter of time before these, and other social signals start to have an influencing factor on the algorithm, and therefore performance on the account.

Marketers are already finding ways to utilise these extensions to influence a number of key performance indicators (KPi’s) such as Click-thru Rate (CTR), Cost per Click (CPC) and Conversion Rate (CVR). For example, advertisers wanting to stand out from the crowd in the search engine results pages (SERP) have, with good effect, implemented the Seller Rating extension within their AdWords account.

We initially found for a number of advertisers that having the Seller Ratings as part of the adcopy resulted in an increase in CTR, which over time improved Quality Score. However, with an increasing number of

advertisers using Seller Ratings, these quick win improvements in CTR are arguably no longer possible, or at least are not as significant as they once were.

The Plus One extension on the other hand has a far greater potential impact on the performance of an advertiser’s paid search campaign. I as a user am likely to be more inclined to buy something from a site if it has been recommended, or Plus One’d by someone within my “circles” and therefore trust.

The Shortfalls of Social Extensions

 Both social extensions do lend themselves to brands that sell good products / services and/or provide good levels of services. All brands are going to want to achieve as many positive seller ratings as possible, as well as being Plus One’d by vast numbers of users. In theory, this should mean I am able to see which advertiser is likely to give me a pleasurable shopping / user experience, after all, users are not going to Plus One or provide a positive seller rating if they receive poor experience, right? Well, there are either functionality flaws or limitations which mean users are not necessarily going to be aware of any negative levels of feedback. Firstly, Google allows users to Plus One an ad but not a Negative One. So again, in theory an advertiser may have 20 Plus One’s, yet 1000 people have had a very poor level of service and would have Negative One’d them given the opportunity or functionality. Therefore, on face value, the advertiser with 20 Plus One’s looks good value and one where I would have little reservation in spending my money with.

Presumably then, Seller Ratings would be far more impartial as they allow for users to add a negative review should they wish. However, unfortunately it is not quite so clear cut as the advertiser can opt in (providing they achieve a certain, very easily achieved, criteria), or opt out of displaying the Seller Ratings. Again, theoretically, if an advertiser received a number of negative reviews which could have a detrimental impact on KPi’s such as CTR, and CVR, they could simply disable the ad extension, once again potentially hiding valuable social signals away from the end user.

Arguably, it is too early to really understand the full impact of Plus One on paid media results and it’s not really something as marketers we can completely influence. With Seller Ratings on the other hand, marketers have some interesting choices to make. By implementing Seller Ratings, are you prepared to sacrifice one of the most significant influencers of CTR in paid media – Site Links? If your strategy is to target the positions down the right hand side of the SERP, positive Seller Ratings can give you a step change in performance and should at least be part of a comprehensive testing schedule.

The future of Social Extensions and Paid media

I wish I knew what the future of paid media looked like, but given the developments and refinements that Google continues to make, we should not be surprised to see a far more joined up social and paid media experience, one that integrates more than just Google’s Plus One and Seller Ratings into Google’s SERP. (Figure 3)

 

Integrating search results that your friends have engaged with would be a far easier integration for the likes of Facebook than Google’s approach of trying to create its own social network and then shoehorning it into the search results pages. Google also has another major obstacle, the development that had set it apart from the competition – Quality Score. In my view, Google is still trying to work out how to implement social engagement to its Quality Score algorithm, without sacrificing the main reason people chose to use it – relevancy and quality of results.

Ultimately Google will find a way and it is clear social media and social extensions within paid media are here to stay and continue to grow. So it is time to fully embrace it and find innovative ways to continue to drive performance for advertisers.

Everyone is aware of product placement, the deliberate incorporation of a product or brand into a movie, television episode or other media vehicle to promote it to the viewing audience, typically in a subtle way to create affinity and recognition over time.

However, there’s more to product placement than simply placing a Papa John’s pizza box in clear view in a major sitcom.

From a marketer’s perspective that is only one facet of how what appears on TV can impact on what consumers then think about and do, and it isn’t limited to just brand placement, recognition and recall either.

In reality, what people view on television can trigger actions beyond the direct and obvious result of traditional product placement. Increased two-screen behaviours now mean that peoples’ online search behaviour is more closely aligned to, and increasingly triggered by, what they are experiencing on their TV device in that moment in time.

If marketers had more insight into what those associations and triggers might be it would open up a whole host of new opportunities for intelligent targeting within search, social, display, email and more.

Example 1: The X Factor USA on FOX

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last decade you’ll know the phenomenon that is the X Factor and that it is of immense commercial value to ITV in the UK, FOX in the US, and those contributors involved in its development, production and promotion.

You’ll also likely know that they enjoy a product placement deal with Pepsi to the tune of $60m. This means the inclusion of Pepsi bottles in every other shot and emblazoned across the screen at any opportunity. Whilst this does most definitely raise Pepsi’s visibility,

it doesn’t lead to people typing ‘Pepsi’ into Google. We know this because undertaking a correlation analysis we can see that air times for X Factor do not correlate with Pepsi searches in Google.

Search queries for X Factor do however correlate, and to a huge degree, with searches for fashion terms. For instance the following fashion queries are all positively correlated to 0.8 or above with X Factor searches, which maths people tell me is ‘a lot’: Read more here.

Google will overtake Yahoo to become king of display advertising in 2012

2011 has been a busy year for the Search industry with Google acquiring Invite Media and Teracent. As we head into 2012, Google is about to officially launch its DoubleClick Search V3 platform - DS3 - a bid management programme which will combine Yahoo and MSN into an AdWords type interface, and significantly invest in the Double Click platform, specifically Double Click for Advertisers (DFA) and the Exchange. As advertisers will we really need to invest elsewhere when Google could potentially provide it all? 

One of my predictions in 2008 was that Google would, by 2009, have expanded into display advertising following its acquisition of Double Click. In 2009, three of my five predictions for 2010 hinted at a new wave of display, pegged ‘performance display’. Two years later the Double Click acquisition and some incredible developments such as Remarketing and Placement Targeting have turned a once struggling Content Network (AdSense to the Publishers), into a success story - one we now know as the Google Display Network (GDN). 

Google’s noteworthy acquisitions and investments this year combined with the mighty AdWords suggests that by the end of 2012, not only will 90% of advertisers Search budgets be in AdWords but also that this trend is set to be the case for Display as well.

Where does this leave other networks such as Yahoo, if Google could potentially provide it all?

The last ten years is evidence that when Google sets its sights on expanding and changing the digital space, it does it properly. However, if Google is creating a one-stop-shop for all digital advertising, where does this leave the other networks? And as advertisers do we really need to invest elsewhere when Google could potentially provide it all?

Interestingly, in the last twelve months, Yahoo has finally woken up to the integration of Search and Display. It now strategically places its two teams together, making it easier for advertisers to get into the Right Media Exchange (RMX) and the Direct Response (DR) networks. Also with the Search Alliance finally hitting the UK in 2012, this should improve Yahoo and Bing’s combined search efforts. However optimistic this may sound, it is obvious there is a long way to go before Google starts to see a dent in its market share.

Assuming Google and Yahoo pull this off; I believe this will support another big subject being debated by online marketers across the UK – attribution - one of the biggest buzz words for 2011 and definitely a hot topic for 2012. If all of my advertising budget can be spent in one place (this one-stop shop scenario) then surely it makes my attribution modelling easier and more transparent.

What is clear is that the developments Google has made in 2011 and the past few years should see it become a serious authority - if not the leader in Display, overtaking Yahoo, as well as Search by the end of 2012.

For more, read our Predictions magazine with contributions from Microsoft, Yahoo and Google and watch our Predictions video.

 

Google has revealed it will imminently be integrating Google+ into its search results, to deliver search results that better reflect your preferences and also incorporate content shared by people in your Google+ Circles. This is a major change to how Google’s search results are assembled and so we want to give everyone a brief overview of what this really means for us as marketers.

So, what will actually be changing?

Firstly, it’s important to stress that the fundamentals are not changing; they are just being supplemented by social elements. Natural search results will remain and will be determined in the same way as they are now (relevant content + links + engagement signals), and Paid Search ads will still operate within the same model. That said, the changes are significant and breathe life into something we could call ‘Social Search’, something at Greehnlight have been expecting for a while and are incredibly excited about. The key changes in a nutshell:

 1.     Google+ content to be integrated into search engine results pages (SERPs)

If you have a Google+ Brand page as a business, any content you post will appear within the natural search results for anyone that has you in their circles, assuming it is deemed relevant to their search. This can be beneficial (Google+ content produced by you gets wide exposure) or a threat (a negative review about you posted by someone with an extensive Circle membership will get increased exposure). The opportunity here is that if you were to create great viral content, then it could be shared by lots of people and therefore appear in the results for lots of people.

 2.     Relevant Google+ Brand pages to be showcased in the SERPs

Google will be suggesting relevant Google+ profiles to follow in the search results when searches are made. For instance, if you searched for ‘music’, Google would display options for you to add the Brand pages of ‘Britney Spears’, ‘Snoop Dog’, etc. to your circles. If you then did that, their content would appear regularly in your search results. This could be beneficial as this promotion of Google+ Brand pages to the populace will grow the number of people who add you to their Circles, giving you a captive audience to market to and consolidate your presence in their future search results. There are a number of threats here too though – if you don’t have a Google+ page right now, you’ll potentially leave yourself open to your branded search results being hijacked by people pretending to be your brand, but you will also not be amassing people who have added you to their Circles, whilst your competitors might be. This will obviously result in reduced visibility and mindshare for you over time.

 What should we/you be doing to respond?

 A brand wanting to take advantage of these changes (or not fall victim to them) would need to undertake several activities:

 1.     Create a Google+ Brand page immediately

This would need to be carefully put together to ensure that it appeared official, useful and worthy of people adding to their Circles. This should also be optimised to ensure it ranked for your brand search terms.

 2.     Put a Google+ content strategy in place

Once you have constructed your Google+ Brand page, you’ll need a content strategy designed to deliver high quality, engaging content, consistently to that audience (i.e. daily!). Content that not only begs to be shared, but also content that uses search terms and themes that your audience might be searching for, therefore increasing and broadening your rankings. For instance, if you were a company that sold computer games, you’d want to have regular Google+ content that showed which were the top 10 most purchased games (or anything else that we know people are searching for in Google). If people have you in their Circles they’ll see this content in their search results when they conduct relevant searches – but also this content would encourage other people to add you to their Circles too. Content essentially needs to be used to increase your exposure to those people that already have you in their Circles, but also compel others to add you for the first time because there is an incentive to do so. And this should be aligned to the list of search terms we target for you already in natural and paid search.

 3.     Benchmark your activity against the competition

As with most things, it’s important to ensure that you’re keeping close tabs on how well your competitors are doing – particularly in terms of the number of people that have added them to their Circles over time.

 This is perhaps the biggest change to Google in the last five years and, as such, cannot be ignored. It’s a huge opportunity for brands and businesses to increase their rankings and also extend their search presence into the realms of CRM, PR, and more.

Nothing helps to pass an otherwise dull day in front of a computer screen faster than some capital T Tunes and those clever people at Spotify have found yet another way to make the soundtrack of your life even more excellent. The recently launched Spotify Apps provides music lovers everywhere with shiny new features, from more intuitive music recommendations and personalised playlists to gig tickets and streaming lyrics.

The preview version is currently available to test drive for free, excellent for those like me who enjoy all things free. Indeed, I only have a free subscription anyway. However, a warning to the spend-thrift. After about 3 minutes playing with the apps I’m giving serious consideration to forking out the hefty fee for a Premium account just so I will be able to use Spotify on my mobile.

The app that first won me over was Moodagent. It intuitively creates a playlist around a chosen song based on 4 moods: sensuality, tenderness, happiness and angriness. How one differentiates between a sensual and tender song is beyond me but never mind, you now have music for your next romantic evening! You can adjust the ‘curve’ of your playlist according to mood and tempo—complete with quite cool visualization too. Personally, this is going to REVOLUTIONIZE my gym experience. Click ‘Anger’. Progressively increase tempo. Calorie burning. Ahoy!

The other app I suspect will get plenty of use from me is Songkick. It scans your playlists and tells you when your favourite bands are playing in a city near you. It’s very user friendly and only takes a minute to build up a list of the bands you specifically want to track. You can then head over to the main Songkick site and register an account to make a personalized calendar of gigs. Fully interactive, this calendar lets you keep track of gigs past and future: by updating set lists, uploading photos, adding videos, etc.

The “social jukebox” Soundrop is another app of note.  It integrates with Facebook, allowing you to login and see when your friends are playing music, so you can discover and listen together. Friends can join your music “spot” directly from Spotify, and vote tracks up or even add new songs. You can do likewise - choose to join a friend’s spot to do the same or just simply enjoy their spot like a radio station.

More impressive however, is the We Are Hunted app. It keeps you on top of cutting edge music by providing a constantly updated playlist of 100 tracks that are currently trending online, allowing you to filter by genre.

What does the future of Spotify apps have in store? This is limited only by the imaginations of music geeks and the skills of clever dev teams. Independent software developers have been asked to write new apps to add even more features to the online music streaming service. According to the Spotify website, new, better, more intuitive apps are already in the pipeline. For now, I’m off to stage some flash karaoke in the office with the TuneWiki. Any takers?

After a lengthy period of beta testing, Google has made Product Listing Ads widely available to advertisers in the UK. This new product ad format compliments the product ad extensions (figure 1) already available in AdWords. This new addition is likely to have a significant impact on the look, feel and dynamic of the search engine results pages (SERPs).  Currently, few seem to be making use of this new functionality. However, in the run up to the festive season and beyond, advertisers in the retail space should wise up and get in on the game as quickly as they can.

Fig.1 Product ad extensions

Google product ads are currently available in two formats:

- Product ad extensions - an expandable link within the ad to reveal related products

- Product ad listings – these new keywordless ads match content within your Google Merchant Centre feed to the users’ search query. They currently appear at the top right side of the page. The product listing ad format has been available in the US since November 2010 and Google claims “users are twice as likely to click on Product Listing Ads than on text ads in the same location”.

Fig.2 Product ad listings

The Impact

Whilst there is nothing surprising about Google’s claim, it is a statement that should raise alarm with competing advertisers in this space - enter Quality Score. Although many factors of the notorious Google Quality Score are shrouded in mystery, it is a well known fact that one of the primary determinants for the calculation of this metric is Click-thru Rate (CTR). If CTR’s are doubling for product ads, what impact will this have on the CTR of the competing ads on the SERP’s? There will inevitably be a significant decrease for the standard text ads, which might in theory, cause a decrease in quality score for advertisers not employing product ads. Some advertisers might see this as an unfair penalisation for running the traditional text ad format; unless Google is factoring the presence of product ads into the quality score calculation. My view is that it is, however, Google has  given no official indication this is the case.

A Sign of Things to Come?

The SERP displayed in figure 3 serves as a possible insight into the future of the Google ad space.  From what in years gone by was a static, text-heavy beast, the addition of these new formats make the current SERP a far more engaging and interactive place. The combination of expandable links, product descriptions, product images and price points give the modern day SERP the feel of an actual web page. Through its testing phase, Google has found users are engaging far more with images than with text, so this move has the feel of natural progression.

Google will claim this progression benefits both the user and advertiser alike; however the true motive behind this evolution is obvious. Increased user interaction with the sponsored listings bears a positive correlation with Google’s bottom line.

Fig.3 SERP displaying product ad extensions and listings

Currently there appear to be just a small number of advertisers utilising this additional functionality. I expect that once those who are late to the party begin to take notice of the effect on their CTR’s and the knock-on effect on sales volumes, they will have little choice but to sit up and take notice.

Soon these product ads will become commonplace on the SERPs. How will Google attempt to accommodate the demand from advertisers to have product ads appearing? If they have such a significant effect on ad performance, will this stimulate a rush to increase Cost per Click (CPC) bids to hit those top positions?  

These are questions that will be answered in the coming months as these ad formats mature. For the moment, advertisers in the retail space should endeavour to get in on the game as quickly as possible to capitalise on the peak trading season in the run up to Christmas.

 

Google has long been the catalyst and evolution of search. However Google has come up against a fierce and game-changing competitor. The competition in question is not however a singular brand or company, it is a completely new marketing channel – social media. Rather than fight it, Google has embraced social media within its results pages, and for advertisers and marketers alike, it is important to fully understand the benefits and potential shortcomings of Google’s “social extensions”, namely Seller ratings, and Plus One.

In 2011 alone Google has rolled out a number of improvements, including advanced remarketing, improved logic to serving of sitelinks, umpteen refinements to ad creative and display urls’, local extensions, enhanced tablet and mobile targeting, instant preview, and a new version of Google Analytics.

Arguably, two of the most significant features for Google to roll out across AdWords was its “social

extensions”, namely Seller Ratings, and Plus One. There has been much debate of late regarding the impact of social media on SEO, but social media Engagement within AdWords? – This really was something different for us to think about and digest.

What has changed?

Google continues to change the landscape of search, both from a natural perspective, and paid. Its constant refinement of the AdWords system is what keeps us marketers on our toes and eager to find and test new ways of driving incremental revenue to our clients.

What are Social Extensions?

Seller rating extensions (figure 1) display the merchant star rating for companies that meet a certain criteria. The ad extension will show up below the paid media ad in question and show the merchant star rating, along with the number of reviews present on Google Product Search. In addition, you can click through the review total to read the reviews on Google Product Search. Needless to say, merchants that qualify for seller rating extensions have an advantage as shoppers are determining which ads to click through on Google. Again, minor enhancements to paid media ads can make a big difference, particularly when competition is fierce and budgets are limited.

 

April 2011 saw the launch of Google’s latest development to leverage the social graph for its search results. While the company has used social cues from Twitter and Flickr for more than a year to improve organic rankings, Google has now created its own recommendation function, extending it to both paid media and organic search.

The feature is simply called “Plus One” (figure 2). You will be familiar with Facebook adverts and likes, the concept is not dissimilar. When users are logged into Google, they will be able to rate individual search results and adverts by clicking the “Plus One” symbol. Their friends will then see the endorsement.

 

Social Extensions’ impact on Paid media

As yet, these social extensions have no direct impact on the all-important, mysterious holy grail of Google Quality Score. However, we can safely assume that it is only a matter of time before these, and other social signals start to have an influencing factor on the algorithm, and therefore performance on the account.

Marketers are already finding ways to utilise these extensions to influence a number of key performance indicators (KPi’s) such as Click-thru Rate (CTR), Cost per Click (CPC) and Conversion Rate (CVR). For example, advertisers wanting to stand out from the crowd in the search engine results pages (SERP) have, with good effect, implemented the Seller Rating extension within their AdWords account.

We initially found for a number of advertisers that having the Seller Ratings as part of the adcopy resulted in an increase in CTR, which over time improved Quality Score. However, with an increasing number of

advertisers using Seller Ratings, these quick win improvements in CTR are arguably no longer possible, or at least are not as significant as they once were.

The Plus One extension on the other hand has a far greater potential impact on the performance of an advertiser’s paid search campaign. I as a user am likely to be more inclined to buy something from a site if it has been recommended, or Plus One’d by someone within my “circles” and therefore trust.

The Shortfalls of Social Extensions

 Both social extensions do lend themselves to brands that sell good products / services and/or provide good levels of services. All brands are going to want to achieve as many positive seller ratings as possible, as well as being Plus One’d by vast numbers of users. In theory, this should mean I am able to see which advertiser is likely to give me a pleasurable shopping / user experience, after all, users are not going to Plus One or provide a positive seller rating if they receive poor experience, right? Well, there are either functionality flaws or limitations which mean users are not necessarily going to be aware of any negative levels of feedback. Firstly, Google allows users to Plus One an ad but not a Negative One. So again, in theory an advertiser may have 20 Plus One’s, yet 1000 people have had a very poor level of service and would have Negative One’d them given the opportunity or functionality. Therefore, on face value, the advertiser with 20 Plus One’s looks good value and one where I would have little reservation in spending my money with.

Presumably then, Seller Ratings would be far more impartial as they allow for users to add a negative review should they wish. However, unfortunately it is not quite so clear cut as the advertiser can opt in (providing they achieve a certain, very easily achieved, criteria), or opt out of displaying the Seller Ratings. Again, theoretically, if an advertiser received a number of negative reviews which could have a detrimental impact on KPi’s such as CTR, and CVR, they could simply disable the ad extension, once again potentially hiding valuable social signals away from the end user.

Arguably, it is too early to really understand the full impact of Plus One on paid media results and it’s not really something as marketers we can completely influence. With Seller Ratings on the other hand, marketers have some interesting choices to make. By implementing Seller Ratings, are you prepared to sacrifice one of the most significant influencers of CTR in paid media – Site Links? If your strategy is to target the positions down the right hand side of the SERP, positive Seller Ratings can give you a step change in performance and should at least be part of a comprehensive testing schedule.

The future of Social Extensions and Paid media

I wish I knew what the future of paid media looked like, but given the developments and refinements that Google continues to make, we should not be surprised to see a far more joined up social and paid media experience, one that integrates more than just Google’s Plus One and Seller Ratings into Google’s SERP. (Figure 3)

 

Integrating search results that your friends have engaged with would be a far easier integration for the likes of Facebook than Google’s approach of trying to create its own social network and then shoehorning it into the search results pages. Google also has another major obstacle, the development that had set it apart from the competition – Quality Score. In my view, Google is still trying to work out how to implement social engagement to its Quality Score algorithm, without sacrificing the main reason people chose to use it – relevancy and quality of results.

Ultimately Google will find a way and it is clear social media and social extensions within paid media are here to stay and continue to grow. So it is time to fully embrace it and find innovative ways to continue to drive performance for advertisers.

Everyone is aware of product placement, the deliberate incorporation of a product or brand into a movie, television episode or other media vehicle to promote it to the viewing audience, typically in a subtle way to create affinity and recognition over time.

However, there’s more to product placement than simply placing a Papa John’s pizza box in clear view in a major sitcom.

From a marketer’s perspective that is only one facet of how what appears on TV can impact on what consumers then think about and do, and it isn’t limited to just brand placement, recognition and recall either.

In reality, what people view on television can trigger actions beyond the direct and obvious result of traditional product placement. Increased two-screen behaviours now mean that peoples’ online search behaviour is more closely aligned to, and increasingly triggered by, what they are experiencing on their TV device in that moment in time.

If marketers had more insight into what those associations and triggers might be it would open up a whole host of new opportunities for intelligent targeting within search, social, display, email and more.

Example 1: The X Factor USA on FOX

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last decade you’ll know the phenomenon that is the X Factor and that it is of immense commercial value to ITV in the UK, FOX in the US, and those contributors involved in its development, production and promotion.

You’ll also likely know that they enjoy a product placement deal with Pepsi to the tune of $60m. This means the inclusion of Pepsi bottles in every other shot and emblazoned across the screen at any opportunity. Whilst this does most definitely raise Pepsi’s visibility,

it doesn’t lead to people typing ‘Pepsi’ into Google. We know this because undertaking a correlation analysis we can see that air times for X Factor do not correlate with Pepsi searches in Google.

Search queries for X Factor do however correlate, and to a huge degree, with searches for fashion terms. For instance the following fashion queries are all positively correlated to 0.8 or above with X Factor searches, which maths people tell me is ‘a lot’: Read more here.

Social Search is finally here!

Google has revealed it will imminently be integrating Google+ into its search results, to deliver search results that better reflect your preferences and also incorporate content shared by people in your Google+ Circles. This is a major change to how Google’s search results are assembled and so we want to give everyone a brief overview of what this really means for us as marketers.

So, what will actually be changing?

Firstly, it’s important to stress that the fundamentals are not changing; they are just being supplemented by social elements. Natural search results will remain and will be determined in the same way as they are now (relevant content + links + engagement signals), and Paid Search ads will still operate within the same model. That said, the changes are significant and breathe life into something we could call ‘Social Search’, something at Greehnlight have been expecting for a while and are incredibly excited about. The key changes in a nutshell:

 1.     Google+ content to be integrated into search engine results pages (SERPs)

If you have a Google+ Brand page as a business, any content you post will appear within the natural search results for anyone that has you in their circles, assuming it is deemed relevant to their search. This can be beneficial (Google+ content produced by you gets wide exposure) or a threat (a negative review about you posted by someone with an extensive Circle membership will get increased exposure). The opportunity here is that if you were to create great viral content, then it could be shared by lots of people and therefore appear in the results for lots of people.

 2.     Relevant Google+ Brand pages to be showcased in the SERPs

Google will be suggesting relevant Google+ profiles to follow in the search results when searches are made. For instance, if you searched for ‘music’, Google would display options for you to add the Brand pages of ‘Britney Spears’, ‘Snoop Dog’, etc. to your circles. If you then did that, their content would appear regularly in your search results. This could be beneficial as this promotion of Google+ Brand pages to the populace will grow the number of people who add you to their Circles, giving you a captive audience to market to and consolidate your presence in their future search results. There are a number of threats here too though – if you don’t have a Google+ page right now, you’ll potentially leave yourself open to your branded search results being hijacked by people pretending to be your brand, but you will also not be amassing people who have added you to their Circles, whilst your competitors might be. This will obviously result in reduced visibility and mindshare for you over time.

 What should we/you be doing to respond?

 A brand wanting to take advantage of these changes (or not fall victim to them) would need to undertake several activities:

 1.     Create a Google+ Brand page immediately

This would need to be carefully put together to ensure that it appeared official, useful and worthy of people adding to their Circles. This should also be optimised to ensure it ranked for your brand search terms.

 2.     Put a Google+ content strategy in place

Once you have constructed your Google+ Brand page, you’ll need a content strategy designed to deliver high quality, engaging content, consistently to that audience (i.e. daily!). Content that not only begs to be shared, but also content that uses search terms and themes that your audience might be searching for, therefore increasing and broadening your rankings. For instance, if you were a company that sold computer games, you’d want to have regular Google+ content that showed which were the top 10 most purchased games (or anything else that we know people are searching for in Google). If people have you in their Circles they’ll see this content in their search results when they conduct relevant searches – but also this content would encourage other people to add you to their Circles too. Content essentially needs to be used to increase your exposure to those people that already have you in their Circles, but also compel others to add you for the first time because there is an incentive to do so. And this should be aligned to the list of search terms we target for you already in natural and paid search.

 3.     Benchmark your activity against the competition

As with most things, it’s important to ensure that you’re keeping close tabs on how well your competitors are doing – particularly in terms of the number of people that have added them to their Circles over time.

 This is perhaps the biggest change to Google in the last five years and, as such, cannot be ignored. It’s a huge opportunity for brands and businesses to increase their rankings and also extend their search presence into the realms of CRM, PR, and more.

Nothing helps to pass an otherwise dull day in front of a computer screen faster than some capital T Tunes and those clever people at Spotify have found yet another way to make the soundtrack of your life even more excellent. The recently launched Spotify Apps provides music lovers everywhere with shiny new features, from more intuitive music recommendations and personalised playlists to gig tickets and streaming lyrics.

The preview version is currently available to test drive for free, excellent for those like me who enjoy all things free. Indeed, I only have a free subscription anyway. However, a warning to the spend-thrift. After about 3 minutes playing with the apps I’m giving serious consideration to forking out the hefty fee for a Premium account just so I will be able to use Spotify on my mobile.

The app that first won me over was Moodagent. It intuitively creates a playlist around a chosen song based on 4 moods: sensuality, tenderness, happiness and angriness. How one differentiates between a sensual and tender song is beyond me but never mind, you now have music for your next romantic evening! You can adjust the ‘curve’ of your playlist according to mood and tempo—complete with quite cool visualization too. Personally, this is going to REVOLUTIONIZE my gym experience. Click ‘Anger’. Progressively increase tempo. Calorie burning. Ahoy!

The other app I suspect will get plenty of use from me is Songkick. It scans your playlists and tells you when your favourite bands are playing in a city near you. It’s very user friendly and only takes a minute to build up a list of the bands you specifically want to track. You can then head over to the main Songkick site and register an account to make a personalized calendar of gigs. Fully interactive, this calendar lets you keep track of gigs past and future: by updating set lists, uploading photos, adding videos, etc.

The “social jukebox” Soundrop is another app of note.  It integrates with Facebook, allowing you to login and see when your friends are playing music, so you can discover and listen together. Friends can join your music “spot” directly from Spotify, and vote tracks up or even add new songs. You can do likewise - choose to join a friend’s spot to do the same or just simply enjoy their spot like a radio station.

More impressive however, is the We Are Hunted app. It keeps you on top of cutting edge music by providing a constantly updated playlist of 100 tracks that are currently trending online, allowing you to filter by genre.

What does the future of Spotify apps have in store? This is limited only by the imaginations of music geeks and the skills of clever dev teams. Independent software developers have been asked to write new apps to add even more features to the online music streaming service. According to the Spotify website, new, better, more intuitive apps are already in the pipeline. For now, I’m off to stage some flash karaoke in the office with the TuneWiki. Any takers?

After a lengthy period of beta testing, Google has made Product Listing Ads widely available to advertisers in the UK. This new product ad format compliments the product ad extensions (figure 1) already available in AdWords. This new addition is likely to have a significant impact on the look, feel and dynamic of the search engine results pages (SERPs).  Currently, few seem to be making use of this new functionality. However, in the run up to the festive season and beyond, advertisers in the retail space should wise up and get in on the game as quickly as they can.

Fig.1 Product ad extensions

Google product ads are currently available in two formats:

- Product ad extensions - an expandable link within the ad to reveal related products

- Product ad listings – these new keywordless ads match content within your Google Merchant Centre feed to the users’ search query. They currently appear at the top right side of the page. The product listing ad format has been available in the US since November 2010 and Google claims “users are twice as likely to click on Product Listing Ads than on text ads in the same location”.

Fig.2 Product ad listings

The Impact

Whilst there is nothing surprising about Google’s claim, it is a statement that should raise alarm with competing advertisers in this space - enter Quality Score. Although many factors of the notorious Google Quality Score are shrouded in mystery, it is a well known fact that one of the primary determinants for the calculation of this metric is Click-thru Rate (CTR). If CTR’s are doubling for product ads, what impact will this have on the CTR of the competing ads on the SERP’s? There will inevitably be a significant decrease for the standard text ads, which might in theory, cause a decrease in quality score for advertisers not employing product ads. Some advertisers might see this as an unfair penalisation for running the traditional text ad format; unless Google is factoring the presence of product ads into the quality score calculation. My view is that it is, however, Google has  given no official indication this is the case.

A Sign of Things to Come?

The SERP displayed in figure 3 serves as a possible insight into the future of the Google ad space.  From what in years gone by was a static, text-heavy beast, the addition of these new formats make the current SERP a far more engaging and interactive place. The combination of expandable links, product descriptions, product images and price points give the modern day SERP the feel of an actual web page. Through its testing phase, Google has found users are engaging far more with images than with text, so this move has the feel of natural progression.

Google will claim this progression benefits both the user and advertiser alike; however the true motive behind this evolution is obvious. Increased user interaction with the sponsored listings bears a positive correlation with Google’s bottom line.

Fig.3 SERP displaying product ad extensions and listings

Currently there appear to be just a small number of advertisers utilising this additional functionality. I expect that once those who are late to the party begin to take notice of the effect on their CTR’s and the knock-on effect on sales volumes, they will have little choice but to sit up and take notice.

Soon these product ads will become commonplace on the SERPs. How will Google attempt to accommodate the demand from advertisers to have product ads appearing? If they have such a significant effect on ad performance, will this stimulate a rush to increase Cost per Click (CPC) bids to hit those top positions?  

These are questions that will be answered in the coming months as these ad formats mature. For the moment, advertisers in the retail space should endeavour to get in on the game as quickly as possible to capitalise on the peak trading season in the run up to Christmas.

 

Google has long been the catalyst and evolution of search. However Google has come up against a fierce and game-changing competitor. The competition in question is not however a singular brand or company, it is a completely new marketing channel – social media. Rather than fight it, Google has embraced social media within its results pages, and for advertisers and marketers alike, it is important to fully understand the benefits and potential shortcomings of Google’s “social extensions”, namely Seller ratings, and Plus One.

In 2011 alone Google has rolled out a number of improvements, including advanced remarketing, improved logic to serving of sitelinks, umpteen refinements to ad creative and display urls’, local extensions, enhanced tablet and mobile targeting, instant preview, and a new version of Google Analytics.

Arguably, two of the most significant features for Google to roll out across AdWords was its “social

extensions”, namely Seller Ratings, and Plus One. There has been much debate of late regarding the impact of social media on SEO, but social media Engagement within AdWords? – This really was something different for us to think about and digest.

What has changed?

Google continues to change the landscape of search, both from a natural perspective, and paid. Its constant refinement of the AdWords system is what keeps us marketers on our toes and eager to find and test new ways of driving incremental revenue to our clients.

What are Social Extensions?

Seller rating extensions (figure 1) display the merchant star rating for companies that meet a certain criteria. The ad extension will show up below the paid media ad in question and show the merchant star rating, along with the number of reviews present on Google Product Search. In addition, you can click through the review total to read the reviews on Google Product Search. Needless to say, merchants that qualify for seller rating extensions have an advantage as shoppers are determining which ads to click through on Google. Again, minor enhancements to paid media ads can make a big difference, particularly when competition is fierce and budgets are limited.

 

April 2011 saw the launch of Google’s latest development to leverage the social graph for its search results. While the company has used social cues from Twitter and Flickr for more than a year to improve organic rankings, Google has now created its own recommendation function, extending it to both paid media and organic search.

The feature is simply called “Plus One” (figure 2). You will be familiar with Facebook adverts and likes, the concept is not dissimilar. When users are logged into Google, they will be able to rate individual search results and adverts by clicking the “Plus One” symbol. Their friends will then see the endorsement.

 

Social Extensions’ impact on Paid media

As yet, these social extensions have no direct impact on the all-important, mysterious holy grail of Google Quality Score. However, we can safely assume that it is only a matter of time before these, and other social signals start to have an influencing factor on the algorithm, and therefore performance on the account.

Marketers are already finding ways to utilise these extensions to influence a number of key performance indicators (KPi’s) such as Click-thru Rate (CTR), Cost per Click (CPC) and Conversion Rate (CVR). For example, advertisers wanting to stand out from the crowd in the search engine results pages (SERP) have, with good effect, implemented the Seller Rating extension within their AdWords account.

We initially found for a number of advertisers that having the Seller Ratings as part of the adcopy resulted in an increase in CTR, which over time improved Quality Score. However, with an increasing number of

advertisers using Seller Ratings, these quick win improvements in CTR are arguably no longer possible, or at least are not as significant as they once were.

The Plus One extension on the other hand has a far greater potential impact on the performance of an advertiser’s paid search campaign. I as a user am likely to be more inclined to buy something from a site if it has been recommended, or Plus One’d by someone within my “circles” and therefore trust.

The Shortfalls of Social Extensions

 Both social extensions do lend themselves to brands that sell good products / services and/or provide good levels of services. All brands are going to want to achieve as many positive seller ratings as possible, as well as being Plus One’d by vast numbers of users. In theory, this should mean I am able to see which advertiser is likely to give me a pleasurable shopping / user experience, after all, users are not going to Plus One or provide a positive seller rating if they receive poor experience, right? Well, there are either functionality flaws or limitations which mean users are not necessarily going to be aware of any negative levels of feedback. Firstly, Google allows users to Plus One an ad but not a Negative One. So again, in theory an advertiser may have 20 Plus One’s, yet 1000 people have had a very poor level of service and would have Negative One’d them given the opportunity or functionality. Therefore, on face value, the advertiser with 20 Plus One’s looks good value and one where I would have little reservation in spending my money with.

Presumably then, Seller Ratings would be far more impartial as they allow for users to add a negative review should they wish. However, unfortunately it is not quite so clear cut as the advertiser can opt in (providing they achieve a certain, very easily achieved, criteria), or opt out of displaying the Seller Ratings. Again, theoretically, if an advertiser received a number of negative reviews which could have a detrimental impact on KPi’s such as CTR, and CVR, they could simply disable the ad extension, once again potentially hiding valuable social signals away from the end user.

Arguably, it is too early to really understand the full impact of Plus One on paid media results and it’s not really something as marketers we can completely influence. With Seller Ratings on the other hand, marketers have some interesting choices to make. By implementing Seller Ratings, are you prepared to sacrifice one of the most significant influencers of CTR in paid media – Site Links? If your strategy is to target the positions down the right hand side of the SERP, positive Seller Ratings can give you a step change in performance and should at least be part of a comprehensive testing schedule.

The future of Social Extensions and Paid media

I wish I knew what the future of paid media looked like, but given the developments and refinements that Google continues to make, we should not be surprised to see a far more joined up social and paid media experience, one that integrates more than just Google’s Plus One and Seller Ratings into Google’s SERP. (Figure 3)

 

Integrating search results that your friends have engaged with would be a far easier integration for the likes of Facebook than Google’s approach of trying to create its own social network and then shoehorning it into the search results pages. Google also has another major obstacle, the development that had set it apart from the competition – Quality Score. In my view, Google is still trying to work out how to implement social engagement to its Quality Score algorithm, without sacrificing the main reason people chose to use it – relevancy and quality of results.

Ultimately Google will find a way and it is clear social media and social extensions within paid media are here to stay and continue to grow. So it is time to fully embrace it and find innovative ways to continue to drive performance for advertisers.

Everyone is aware of product placement, the deliberate incorporation of a product or brand into a movie, television episode or other media vehicle to promote it to the viewing audience, typically in a subtle way to create affinity and recognition over time.

However, there’s more to product placement than simply placing a Papa John’s pizza box in clear view in a major sitcom.

From a marketer’s perspective that is only one facet of how what appears on TV can impact on what consumers then think about and do, and it isn’t limited to just brand placement, recognition and recall either.

In reality, what people view on television can trigger actions beyond the direct and obvious result of traditional product placement. Increased two-screen behaviours now mean that peoples’ online search behaviour is more closely aligned to, and increasingly triggered by, what they are experiencing on their TV device in that moment in time.

If marketers had more insight into what those associations and triggers might be it would open up a whole host of new opportunities for intelligent targeting within search, social, display, email and more.

Example 1: The X Factor USA on FOX

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last decade you’ll know the phenomenon that is the X Factor and that it is of immense commercial value to ITV in the UK, FOX in the US, and those contributors involved in its development, production and promotion.

You’ll also likely know that they enjoy a product placement deal with Pepsi to the tune of $60m. This means the inclusion of Pepsi bottles in every other shot and emblazoned across the screen at any opportunity. Whilst this does most definitely raise Pepsi’s visibility,

it doesn’t lead to people typing ‘Pepsi’ into Google. We know this because undertaking a correlation analysis we can see that air times for X Factor do not correlate with Pepsi searches in Google.

Search queries for X Factor do however correlate, and to a huge degree, with searches for fashion terms. For instance the following fashion queries are all positively correlated to 0.8 or above with X Factor searches, which maths people tell me is ‘a lot’: Read more here.

A first look at the new Spotify apps

Nothing helps to pass an otherwise dull day in front of a computer screen faster than some capital T Tunes and those clever people at Spotify have found yet another way to make the soundtrack of your life even more excellent. The recently launched Spotify Apps provides music lovers everywhere with shiny new features, from more intuitive music recommendations and personalised playlists to gig tickets and streaming lyrics.

The preview version is currently available to test drive for free, excellent for those like me who enjoy all things free. Indeed, I only have a free subscription anyway. However, a warning to the spend-thrift. After about 3 minutes playing with the apps I’m giving serious consideration to forking out the hefty fee for a Premium account just so I will be able to use Spotify on my mobile.

The app that first won me over was Moodagent. It intuitively creates a playlist around a chosen song based on 4 moods: sensuality, tenderness, happiness and angriness. How one differentiates between a sensual and tender song is beyond me but never mind, you now have music for your next romantic evening! You can adjust the ‘curve’ of your playlist according to mood and tempo—complete with quite cool visualization too. Personally, this is going to REVOLUTIONIZE my gym experience. Click ‘Anger’. Progressively increase tempo. Calorie burning. Ahoy!

The other app I suspect will get plenty of use from me is Songkick. It scans your playlists and tells you when your favourite bands are playing in a city near you. It’s very user friendly and only takes a minute to build up a list of the bands you specifically want to track. You can then head over to the main Songkick site and register an account to make a personalized calendar of gigs. Fully interactive, this calendar lets you keep track of gigs past and future: by updating set lists, uploading photos, adding videos, etc.

The “social jukebox” Soundrop is another app of note.  It integrates with Facebook, allowing you to login and see when your friends are playing music, so you can discover and listen together. Friends can join your music “spot” directly from Spotify, and vote tracks up or even add new songs. You can do likewise - choose to join a friend’s spot to do the same or just simply enjoy their spot like a radio station.

More impressive however, is the We Are Hunted app. It keeps you on top of cutting edge music by providing a constantly updated playlist of 100 tracks that are currently trending online, allowing you to filter by genre.

What does the future of Spotify apps have in store? This is limited only by the imaginations of music geeks and the skills of clever dev teams. Independent software developers have been asked to write new apps to add even more features to the online music streaming service. According to the Spotify website, new, better, more intuitive apps are already in the pipeline. For now, I’m off to stage some flash karaoke in the office with the TuneWiki. Any takers?

After a lengthy period of beta testing, Google has made Product Listing Ads widely available to advertisers in the UK. This new product ad format compliments the product ad extensions (figure 1) already available in AdWords. This new addition is likely to have a significant impact on the look, feel and dynamic of the search engine results pages (SERPs).  Currently, few seem to be making use of this new functionality. However, in the run up to the festive season and beyond, advertisers in the retail space should wise up and get in on the game as quickly as they can.

Fig.1 Product ad extensions

Google product ads are currently available in two formats:

- Product ad extensions - an expandable link within the ad to reveal related products

- Product ad listings – these new keywordless ads match content within your Google Merchant Centre feed to the users’ search query. They currently appear at the top right side of the page. The product listing ad format has been available in the US since November 2010 and Google claims “users are twice as likely to click on Product Listing Ads than on text ads in the same location”.

Fig.2 Product ad listings

The Impact

Whilst there is nothing surprising about Google’s claim, it is a statement that should raise alarm with competing advertisers in this space - enter Quality Score. Although many factors of the notorious Google Quality Score are shrouded in mystery, it is a well known fact that one of the primary determinants for the calculation of this metric is Click-thru Rate (CTR). If CTR’s are doubling for product ads, what impact will this have on the CTR of the competing ads on the SERP’s? There will inevitably be a significant decrease for the standard text ads, which might in theory, cause a decrease in quality score for advertisers not employing product ads. Some advertisers might see this as an unfair penalisation for running the traditional text ad format; unless Google is factoring the presence of product ads into the quality score calculation. My view is that it is, however, Google has  given no official indication this is the case.

A Sign of Things to Come?

The SERP displayed in figure 3 serves as a possible insight into the future of the Google ad space.  From what in years gone by was a static, text-heavy beast, the addition of these new formats make the current SERP a far more engaging and interactive place. The combination of expandable links, product descriptions, product images and price points give the modern day SERP the feel of an actual web page. Through its testing phase, Google has found users are engaging far more with images than with text, so this move has the feel of natural progression.

Google will claim this progression benefits both the user and advertiser alike; however the true motive behind this evolution is obvious. Increased user interaction with the sponsored listings bears a positive correlation with Google’s bottom line.

Fig.3 SERP displaying product ad extensions and listings

Currently there appear to be just a small number of advertisers utilising this additional functionality. I expect that once those who are late to the party begin to take notice of the effect on their CTR’s and the knock-on effect on sales volumes, they will have little choice but to sit up and take notice.

Soon these product ads will become commonplace on the SERPs. How will Google attempt to accommodate the demand from advertisers to have product ads appearing? If they have such a significant effect on ad performance, will this stimulate a rush to increase Cost per Click (CPC) bids to hit those top positions?  

These are questions that will be answered in the coming months as these ad formats mature. For the moment, advertisers in the retail space should endeavour to get in on the game as quickly as possible to capitalise on the peak trading season in the run up to Christmas.

 

Google has long been the catalyst and evolution of search. However Google has come up against a fierce and game-changing competitor. The competition in question is not however a singular brand or company, it is a completely new marketing channel – social media. Rather than fight it, Google has embraced social media within its results pages, and for advertisers and marketers alike, it is important to fully understand the benefits and potential shortcomings of Google’s “social extensions”, namely Seller ratings, and Plus One.

In 2011 alone Google has rolled out a number of improvements, including advanced remarketing, improved logic to serving of sitelinks, umpteen refinements to ad creative and display urls’, local extensions, enhanced tablet and mobile targeting, instant preview, and a new version of Google Analytics.

Arguably, two of the most significant features for Google to roll out across AdWords was its “social

extensions”, namely Seller Ratings, and Plus One. There has been much debate of late regarding the impact of social media on SEO, but social media Engagement within AdWords? – This really was something different for us to think about and digest.

What has changed?

Google continues to change the landscape of search, both from a natural perspective, and paid. Its constant refinement of the AdWords system is what keeps us marketers on our toes and eager to find and test new ways of driving incremental revenue to our clients.

What are Social Extensions?

Seller rating extensions (figure 1) display the merchant star rating for companies that meet a certain criteria. The ad extension will show up below the paid media ad in question and show the merchant star rating, along with the number of reviews present on Google Product Search. In addition, you can click through the review total to read the reviews on Google Product Search. Needless to say, merchants that qualify for seller rating extensions have an advantage as shoppers are determining which ads to click through on Google. Again, minor enhancements to paid media ads can make a big difference, particularly when competition is fierce and budgets are limited.

 

April 2011 saw the launch of Google’s latest development to leverage the social graph for its search results. While the company has used social cues from Twitter and Flickr for more than a year to improve organic rankings, Google has now created its own recommendation function, extending it to both paid media and organic search.

The feature is simply called “Plus One” (figure 2). You will be familiar with Facebook adverts and likes, the concept is not dissimilar. When users are logged into Google, they will be able to rate individual search results and adverts by clicking the “Plus One” symbol. Their friends will then see the endorsement.

 

Social Extensions’ impact on Paid media

As yet, these social extensions have no direct impact on the all-important, mysterious holy grail of Google Quality Score. However, we can safely assume that it is only a matter of time before these, and other social signals start to have an influencing factor on the algorithm, and therefore performance on the account.

Marketers are already finding ways to utilise these extensions to influence a number of key performance indicators (KPi’s) such as Click-thru Rate (CTR), Cost per Click (CPC) and Conversion Rate (CVR). For example, advertisers wanting to stand out from the crowd in the search engine results pages (SERP) have, with good effect, implemented the Seller Rating extension within their AdWords account.

We initially found for a number of advertisers that having the Seller Ratings as part of the adcopy resulted in an increase in CTR, which over time improved Quality Score. However, with an increasing number of

advertisers using Seller Ratings, these quick win improvements in CTR are arguably no longer possible, or at least are not as significant as they once were.

The Plus One extension on the other hand has a far greater potential impact on the performance of an advertiser’s paid search campaign. I as a user am likely to be more inclined to buy something from a site if it has been recommended, or Plus One’d by someone within my “circles” and therefore trust.

The Shortfalls of Social Extensions

 Both social extensions do lend themselves to brands that sell good products / services and/or provide good levels of services. All brands are going to want to achieve as many positive seller ratings as possible, as well as being Plus One’d by vast numbers of users. In theory, this should mean I am able to see which advertiser is likely to give me a pleasurable shopping / user experience, after all, users are not going to Plus One or provide a positive seller rating if they receive poor experience, right? Well, there are either functionality flaws or limitations which mean users are not necessarily going to be aware of any negative levels of feedback. Firstly, Google allows users to Plus One an ad but not a Negative One. So again, in theory an advertiser may have 20 Plus One’s, yet 1000 people have had a very poor level of service and would have Negative One’d them given the opportunity or functionality. Therefore, on face value, the advertiser with 20 Plus One’s looks good value and one where I would have little reservation in spending my money with.

Presumably then, Seller Ratings would be far more impartial as they allow for users to add a negative review should they wish. However, unfortunately it is not quite so clear cut as the advertiser can opt in (providing they achieve a certain, very easily achieved, criteria), or opt out of displaying the Seller Ratings. Again, theoretically, if an advertiser received a number of negative reviews which could have a detrimental impact on KPi’s such as CTR, and CVR, they could simply disable the ad extension, once again potentially hiding valuable social signals away from the end user.

Arguably, it is too early to really understand the full impact of Plus One on paid media results and it’s not really something as marketers we can completely influence. With Seller Ratings on the other hand, marketers have some interesting choices to make. By implementing Seller Ratings, are you prepared to sacrifice one of the most significant influencers of CTR in paid media – Site Links? If your strategy is to target the positions down the right hand side of the SERP, positive Seller Ratings can give you a step change in performance and should at least be part of a comprehensive testing schedule.

The future of Social Extensions and Paid media

I wish I knew what the future of paid media looked like, but given the developments and refinements that Google continues to make, we should not be surprised to see a far more joined up social and paid media experience, one that integrates more than just Google’s Plus One and Seller Ratings into Google’s SERP. (Figure 3)

 

Integrating search results that your friends have engaged with would be a far easier integration for the likes of Facebook than Google’s approach of trying to create its own social network and then shoehorning it into the search results pages. Google also has another major obstacle, the development that had set it apart from the competition – Quality Score. In my view, Google is still trying to work out how to implement social engagement to its Quality Score algorithm, without sacrificing the main reason people chose to use it – relevancy and quality of results.

Ultimately Google will find a way and it is clear social media and social extensions within paid media are here to stay and continue to grow. So it is time to fully embrace it and find innovative ways to continue to drive performance for advertisers.

Everyone is aware of product placement, the deliberate incorporation of a product or brand into a movie, television episode or other media vehicle to promote it to the viewing audience, typically in a subtle way to create affinity and recognition over time.

However, there’s more to product placement than simply placing a Papa John’s pizza box in clear view in a major sitcom.

From a marketer’s perspective that is only one facet of how what appears on TV can impact on what consumers then think about and do, and it isn’t limited to just brand placement, recognition and recall either.

In reality, what people view on television can trigger actions beyond the direct and obvious result of traditional product placement. Increased two-screen behaviours now mean that peoples’ online search behaviour is more closely aligned to, and increasingly triggered by, what they are experiencing on their TV device in that moment in time.

If marketers had more insight into what those associations and triggers might be it would open up a whole host of new opportunities for intelligent targeting within search, social, display, email and more.

Example 1: The X Factor USA on FOX

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last decade you’ll know the phenomenon that is the X Factor and that it is of immense commercial value to ITV in the UK, FOX in the US, and those contributors involved in its development, production and promotion.

You’ll also likely know that they enjoy a product placement deal with Pepsi to the tune of $60m. This means the inclusion of Pepsi bottles in every other shot and emblazoned across the screen at any opportunity. Whilst this does most definitely raise Pepsi’s visibility,

it doesn’t lead to people typing ‘Pepsi’ into Google. We know this because undertaking a correlation analysis we can see that air times for X Factor do not correlate with Pepsi searches in Google.

Search queries for X Factor do however correlate, and to a huge degree, with searches for fashion terms. For instance the following fashion queries are all positively correlated to 0.8 or above with X Factor searches, which maths people tell me is ‘a lot’: Read more here.

Google Product Ads – Changing the Face of the SERPs

After a lengthy period of beta testing, Google has made Product Listing Ads widely available to advertisers in the UK. This new product ad format compliments the product ad extensions (figure 1) already available in AdWords. This new addition is likely to have a significant impact on the look, feel and dynamic of the search engine results pages (SERPs).  Currently, few seem to be making use of this new functionality. However, in the run up to the festive season and beyond, advertisers in the retail space should wise up and get in on the game as quickly as they can.

Fig.1 Product ad extensions

Google product ads are currently available in two formats:

- Product ad extensions - an expandable link within the ad to reveal related products

- Product ad listings – these new keywordless ads match content within your Google Merchant Centre feed to the users’ search query. They currently appear at the top right side of the page. The product listing ad format has been available in the US since November 2010 and Google claims “users are twice as likely to click on Product Listing Ads than on text ads in the same location”.

Fig.2 Product ad listings

The Impact

Whilst there is nothing surprising about Google’s claim, it is a statement that should raise alarm with competing advertisers in this space - enter Quality Score. Although many factors of the notorious Google Quality Score are shrouded in mystery, it is a well known fact that one of the primary determinants for the calculation of this metric is Click-thru Rate (CTR). If CTR’s are doubling for product ads, what impact will this have on the CTR of the competing ads on the SERP’s? There will inevitably be a significant decrease for the standard text ads, which might in theory, cause a decrease in quality score for advertisers not employing product ads. Some advertisers might see this as an unfair penalisation for running the traditional text ad format; unless Google is factoring the presence of product ads into the quality score calculation. My view is that it is, however, Google has  given no official indication this is the case.

A Sign of Things to Come?

The SERP displayed in figure 3 serves as a possible insight into the future of the Google ad space.  From what in years gone by was a static, text-heavy beast, the addition of these new formats make the current SERP a far more engaging and interactive place. The combination of expandable links, product descriptions, product images and price points give the modern day SERP the feel of an actual web page. Through its testing phase, Google has found users are engaging far more with images than with text, so this move has the feel of natural progression.

Google will claim this progression benefits both the user and advertiser alike; however the true motive behind this evolution is obvious. Increased user interaction with the sponsored listings bears a positive correlation with Google’s bottom line.

Fig.3 SERP displaying product ad extensions and listings

Currently there appear to be just a small number of advertisers utilising this additional functionality. I expect that once those who are late to the party begin to take notice of the effect on their CTR’s and the knock-on effect on sales volumes, they will have little choice but to sit up and take notice.

Soon these product ads will become commonplace on the SERPs. How will Google attempt to accommodate the demand from advertisers to have product ads appearing? If they have such a significant effect on ad performance, will this stimulate a rush to increase Cost per Click (CPC) bids to hit those top positions?  

These are questions that will be answered in the coming months as these ad formats mature. For the moment, advertisers in the retail space should endeavour to get in on the game as quickly as possible to capitalise on the peak trading season in the run up to Christmas.

 

Google has long been the catalyst and evolution of search. However Google has come up against a fierce and game-changing competitor. The competition in question is not however a singular brand or company, it is a completely new marketing channel – social media. Rather than fight it, Google has embraced social media within its results pages, and for advertisers and marketers alike, it is important to fully understand the benefits and potential shortcomings of Google’s “social extensions”, namely Seller ratings, and Plus One.

In 2011 alone Google has rolled out a number of improvements, including advanced remarketing, improved logic to serving of sitelinks, umpteen refinements to ad creative and display urls’, local extensions, enhanced tablet and mobile targeting, instant preview, and a new version of Google Analytics.

Arguably, two of the most significant features for Google to roll out across AdWords was its “social

extensions”, namely Seller Ratings, and Plus One. There has been much debate of late regarding the impact of social media on SEO, but social media Engagement within AdWords? – This really was something different for us to think about and digest.

What has changed?

Google continues to change the landscape of search, both from a natural perspective, and paid. Its constant refinement of the AdWords system is what keeps us marketers on our toes and eager to find and test new ways of driving incremental revenue to our clients.

What are Social Extensions?

Seller rating extensions (figure 1) display the merchant star rating for companies that meet a certain criteria. The ad extension will show up below the paid media ad in question and show the merchant star rating, along with the number of reviews present on Google Product Search. In addition, you can click through the review total to read the reviews on Google Product Search. Needless to say, merchants that qualify for seller rating extensions have an advantage as shoppers are determining which ads to click through on Google. Again, minor enhancements to paid media ads can make a big difference, particularly when competition is fierce and budgets are limited.

 

April 2011 saw the launch of Google’s latest development to leverage the social graph for its search results. While the company has used social cues from Twitter and Flickr for more than a year to improve organic rankings, Google has now created its own recommendation function, extending it to both paid media and organic search.

The feature is simply called “Plus One” (figure 2). You will be familiar with Facebook adverts and likes, the concept is not dissimilar. When users are logged into Google, they will be able to rate individual search results and adverts by clicking the “Plus One” symbol. Their friends will then see the endorsement.

 

Social Extensions’ impact on Paid media

As yet, these social extensions have no direct impact on the all-important, mysterious holy grail of Google Quality Score. However, we can safely assume that it is only a matter of time before these, and other social signals start to have an influencing factor on the algorithm, and therefore performance on the account.

Marketers are already finding ways to utilise these extensions to influence a number of key performance indicators (KPi’s) such as Click-thru Rate (CTR), Cost per Click (CPC) and Conversion Rate (CVR). For example, advertisers wanting to stand out from the crowd in the search engine results pages (SERP) have, with good effect, implemented the Seller Rating extension within their AdWords account.

We initially found for a number of advertisers that having the Seller Ratings as part of the adcopy resulted in an increase in CTR, which over time improved Quality Score. However, with an increasing number of

advertisers using Seller Ratings, these quick win improvements in CTR are arguably no longer possible, or at least are not as significant as they once were.

The Plus One extension on the other hand has a far greater potential impact on the performance of an advertiser’s paid search campaign. I as a user am likely to be more inclined to buy something from a site if it has been recommended, or Plus One’d by someone within my “circles” and therefore trust.

The Shortfalls of Social Extensions

 Both social extensions do lend themselves to brands that sell good products / services and/or provide good levels of services. All brands are going to want to achieve as many positive seller ratings as possible, as well as being Plus One’d by vast numbers of users. In theory, this should mean I am able to see which advertiser is likely to give me a pleasurable shopping / user experience, after all, users are not going to Plus One or provide a positive seller rating if they receive poor experience, right? Well, there are either functionality flaws or limitations which mean users are not necessarily going to be aware of any negative levels of feedback. Firstly, Google allows users to Plus One an ad but not a Negative One. So again, in theory an advertiser may have 20 Plus One’s, yet 1000 people have had a very poor level of service and would have Negative One’d them given the opportunity or functionality. Therefore, on face value, the advertiser with 20 Plus One’s looks good value and one where I would have little reservation in spending my money with.

Presumably then, Seller Ratings would be far more impartial as they allow for users to add a negative review should they wish. However, unfortunately it is not quite so clear cut as the advertiser can opt in (providing they achieve a certain, very easily achieved, criteria), or opt out of displaying the Seller Ratings. Again, theoretically, if an advertiser received a number of negative reviews which could have a detrimental impact on KPi’s such as CTR, and CVR, they could simply disable the ad extension, once again potentially hiding valuable social signals away from the end user.

Arguably, it is too early to really understand the full impact of Plus One on paid media results and it’s not really something as marketers we can completely influence. With Seller Ratings on the other hand, marketers have some interesting choices to make. By implementing Seller Ratings, are you prepared to sacrifice one of the most significant influencers of CTR in paid media – Site Links? If your strategy is to target the positions down the right hand side of the SERP, positive Seller Ratings can give you a step change in performance and should at least be part of a comprehensive testing schedule.

The future of Social Extensions and Paid media

I wish I knew what the future of paid media looked like, but given the developments and refinements that Google continues to make, we should not be surprised to see a far more joined up social and paid media experience, one that integrates more than just Google’s Plus One and Seller Ratings into Google’s SERP. (Figure 3)

 

Integrating search results that your friends have engaged with would be a far easier integration for the likes of Facebook than Google’s approach of trying to create its own social network and then shoehorning it into the search results pages. Google also has another major obstacle, the development that had set it apart from the competition – Quality Score. In my view, Google is still trying to work out how to implement social engagement to its Quality Score algorithm, without sacrificing the main reason people chose to use it – relevancy and quality of results.

Ultimately Google will find a way and it is clear social media and social extensions within paid media are here to stay and continue to grow. So it is time to fully embrace it and find innovative ways to continue to drive performance for advertisers.

Everyone is aware of product placement, the deliberate incorporation of a product or brand into a movie, television episode or other media vehicle to promote it to the viewing audience, typically in a subtle way to create affinity and recognition over time.

However, there’s more to product placement than simply placing a Papa John’s pizza box in clear view in a major sitcom.

From a marketer’s perspective that is only one facet of how what appears on TV can impact on what consumers then think about and do, and it isn’t limited to just brand placement, recognition and recall either.

In reality, what people view on television can trigger actions beyond the direct and obvious result of traditional product placement. Increased two-screen behaviours now mean that peoples’ online search behaviour is more closely aligned to, and increasingly triggered by, what they are experiencing on their TV device in that moment in time.

If marketers had more insight into what those associations and triggers might be it would open up a whole host of new opportunities for intelligent targeting within search, social, display, email and more.

Example 1: The X Factor USA on FOX

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last decade you’ll know the phenomenon that is the X Factor and that it is of immense commercial value to ITV in the UK, FOX in the US, and those contributors involved in its development, production and promotion.

You’ll also likely know that they enjoy a product placement deal with Pepsi to the tune of $60m. This means the inclusion of Pepsi bottles in every other shot and emblazoned across the screen at any opportunity. Whilst this does most definitely raise Pepsi’s visibility,

it doesn’t lead to people typing ‘Pepsi’ into Google. We know this because undertaking a correlation analysis we can see that air times for X Factor do not correlate with Pepsi searches in Google.

Search queries for X Factor do however correlate, and to a huge degree, with searches for fashion terms. For instance the following fashion queries are all positively correlated to 0.8 or above with X Factor searches, which maths people tell me is ‘a lot’: Read more here.

The role and impact of social extensions in paid media

Google has long been the catalyst and evolution of search. However Google has come up against a fierce and game-changing competitor. The competition in question is not however a singular brand or company, it is a completely new marketing channel – social media. Rather than fight it, Google has embraced social media within its results pages, and for advertisers and marketers alike, it is important to fully understand the benefits and potential shortcomings of Google’s “social extensions”, namely Seller ratings, and Plus One.

In 2011 alone Google has rolled out a number of improvements, including advanced remarketing, improved logic to serving of sitelinks, umpteen refinements to ad creative and display urls’, local extensions, enhanced tablet and mobile targeting, instant preview, and a new version of Google Analytics.

Arguably, two of the most significant features for Google to roll out across AdWords was its “social

extensions”, namely Seller Ratings, and Plus One. There has been much debate of late regarding the impact of social media on SEO, but social media Engagement within AdWords? – This really was something different for us to think about and digest.

What has changed?

Google continues to change the landscape of search, both from a natural perspective, and paid. Its constant refinement of the AdWords system is what keeps us marketers on our toes and eager to find and test new ways of driving incremental revenue to our clients.

What are Social Extensions?

Seller rating extensions (figure 1) display the merchant star rating for companies that meet a certain criteria. The ad extension will show up below the paid media ad in question and show the merchant star rating, along with the number of reviews present on Google Product Search. In addition, you can click through the review total to read the reviews on Google Product Search. Needless to say, merchants that qualify for seller rating extensions have an advantage as shoppers are determining which ads to click through on Google. Again, minor enhancements to paid media ads can make a big difference, particularly when competition is fierce and budgets are limited.

 

April 2011 saw the launch of Google’s latest development to leverage the social graph for its search results. While the company has used social cues from Twitter and Flickr for more than a year to improve organic rankings, Google has now created its own recommendation function, extending it to both paid media and organic search.

The feature is simply called “Plus One” (figure 2). You will be familiar with Facebook adverts and likes, the concept is not dissimilar. When users are logged into Google, they will be able to rate individual search results and adverts by clicking the “Plus One” symbol. Their friends will then see the endorsement.

 

Social Extensions’ impact on Paid media

As yet, these social extensions have no direct impact on the all-important, mysterious holy grail of Google Quality Score. However, we can safely assume that it is only a matter of time before these, and other social signals start to have an influencing factor on the algorithm, and therefore performance on the account.

Marketers are already finding ways to utilise these extensions to influence a number of key performance indicators (KPi’s) such as Click-thru Rate (CTR), Cost per Click (CPC) and Conversion Rate (CVR). For example, advertisers wanting to stand out from the crowd in the search engine results pages (SERP) have, with good effect, implemented the Seller Rating extension within their AdWords account.

We initially found for a number of advertisers that having the Seller Ratings as part of the adcopy resulted in an increase in CTR, which over time improved Quality Score. However, with an increasing number of

advertisers using Seller Ratings, these quick win improvements in CTR are arguably no longer possible, or at least are not as significant as they once were.

The Plus One extension on the other hand has a far greater potential impact on the performance of an advertiser’s paid search campaign. I as a user am likely to be more inclined to buy something from a site if it has been recommended, or Plus One’d by someone within my “circles” and therefore trust.

The Shortfalls of Social Extensions

 Both social extensions do lend themselves to brands that sell good products / services and/or provide good levels of services. All brands are going to want to achieve as many positive seller ratings as possible, as well as being Plus One’d by vast numbers of users. In theory, this should mean I am able to see which advertiser is likely to give me a pleasurable shopping / user experience, after all, users are not going to Plus One or provide a positive seller rating if they receive poor experience, right? Well, there are either functionality flaws or limitations which mean users are not necessarily going to be aware of any negative levels of feedback. Firstly, Google allows users to Plus One an ad but not a Negative One. So again, in theory an advertiser may have 20 Plus One’s, yet 1000 people have had a very poor level of service and would have Negative One’d them given the opportunity or functionality. Therefore, on face value, the advertiser with 20 Plus One’s looks good value and one where I would have little reservation in spending my money with.

Presumably then, Seller Ratings would be far more impartial as they allow for users to add a negative review should they wish. However, unfortunately it is not quite so clear cut as the advertiser can opt in (providing they achieve a certain, very easily achieved, criteria), or opt out of displaying the Seller Ratings. Again, theoretically, if an advertiser received a number of negative reviews which could have a detrimental impact on KPi’s such as CTR, and CVR, they could simply disable the ad extension, once again potentially hiding valuable social signals away from the end user.

Arguably, it is too early to really understand the full impact of Plus One on paid media results and it’s not really something as marketers we can completely influence. With Seller Ratings on the other hand, marketers have some interesting choices to make. By implementing Seller Ratings, are you prepared to sacrifice one of the most significant influencers of CTR in paid media – Site Links? If your strategy is to target the positions down the right hand side of the SERP, positive Seller Ratings can give you a step change in performance and should at least be part of a comprehensive testing schedule.

The future of Social Extensions and Paid media

I wish I knew what the future of paid media looked like, but given the developments and refinements that Google continues to make, we should not be surprised to see a far more joined up social and paid media experience, one that integrates more than just Google’s Plus One and Seller Ratings into Google’s SERP. (Figure 3)

 

Integrating search results that your friends have engaged with would be a far easier integration for the likes of Facebook than Google’s approach of trying to create its own social network and then shoehorning it into the search results pages. Google also has another major obstacle, the development that had set it apart from the competition – Quality Score. In my view, Google is still trying to work out how to implement social engagement to its Quality Score algorithm, without sacrificing the main reason people chose to use it – relevancy and quality of results.

Ultimately Google will find a way and it is clear social media and social extensions within paid media are here to stay and continue to grow. So it is time to fully embrace it and find innovative ways to continue to drive performance for advertisers.

Everyone is aware of product placement, the deliberate incorporation of a product or brand into a movie, television episode or other media vehicle to promote it to the viewing audience, typically in a subtle way to create affinity and recognition over time.

However, there’s more to product placement than simply placing a Papa John’s pizza box in clear view in a major sitcom.

From a marketer’s perspective that is only one facet of how what appears on TV can impact on what consumers then think about and do, and it isn’t limited to just brand placement, recognition and recall either.

In reality, what people view on television can trigger actions beyond the direct and obvious result of traditional product placement. Increased two-screen behaviours now mean that peoples’ online search behaviour is more closely aligned to, and increasingly triggered by, what they are experiencing on their TV device in that moment in time.

If marketers had more insight into what those associations and triggers might be it would open up a whole host of new opportunities for intelligent targeting within search, social, display, email and more.

Example 1: The X Factor USA on FOX

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last decade you’ll know the phenomenon that is the X Factor and that it is of immense commercial value to ITV in the UK, FOX in the US, and those contributors involved in its development, production and promotion.

You’ll also likely know that they enjoy a product placement deal with Pepsi to the tune of $60m. This means the inclusion of Pepsi bottles in every other shot and emblazoned across the screen at any opportunity. Whilst this does most definitely raise Pepsi’s visibility,

it doesn’t lead to people typing ‘Pepsi’ into Google. We know this because undertaking a correlation analysis we can see that air times for X Factor do not correlate with Pepsi searches in Google.

Search queries for X Factor do however correlate, and to a huge degree, with searches for fashion terms. For instance the following fashion queries are all positively correlated to 0.8 or above with X Factor searches, which maths people tell me is ‘a lot’: Read more here.

TV and search: associative marketing in a two-screen world

Everyone is aware of product placement, the deliberate incorporation of a product or brand into a movie, television episode or other media vehicle to promote it to the viewing audience, typically in a subtle way to create affinity and recognition over time.

However, there’s more to product placement than simply placing a Papa John’s pizza box in clear view in a major sitcom.

From a marketer’s perspective that is only one facet of how what appears on TV can impact on what consumers then think about and do, and it isn’t limited to just brand placement, recognition and recall either.

In reality, what people view on television can trigger actions beyond the direct and obvious result of traditional product placement. Increased two-screen behaviours now mean that peoples’ online search behaviour is more closely aligned to, and increasingly triggered by, what they are experiencing on their TV device in that moment in time.

If marketers had more insight into what those associations and triggers might be it would open up a whole host of new opportunities for intelligent targeting within search, social, display, email and more.

Example 1: The X Factor USA on FOX

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last decade you’ll know the phenomenon that is the X Factor and that it is of immense commercial value to ITV in the UK, FOX in the US, and those contributors involved in its development, production and promotion.

You’ll also likely know that they enjoy a product placement deal with Pepsi to the tune of $60m. This means the inclusion of Pepsi bottles in every other shot and emblazoned across the screen at any opportunity. Whilst this does most definitely raise Pepsi’s visibility,

it doesn’t lead to people typing ‘Pepsi’ into Google. We know this because undertaking a correlation analysis we can see that air times for X Factor do not correlate with Pepsi searches in Google.

Search queries for X Factor do however correlate, and to a huge degree, with searches for fashion terms. For instance the following fashion queries are all positively correlated to 0.8 or above with X Factor searches, which maths people tell me is ‘a lot’: Read more here.