DoubleClick Performics Official Blog

"Search" beyond the "Search Engines"

Here's a short presentation on broadening "search marketing" beyond the major search engines, from the "Beyond the Usual Suspects" panel at today's eComXpo. Other panelists, Anton Konikoff (Acronym Media) and Chrysi Philalithes of MIVA presented on second tier engine opportunities. My presentation covered some of the long term implications of "unified" (or universal) search and social sites, and how search skills can be leveraged to engage audiences there.

"'Search' beyond the 'Search Engines'" presentation (PDF)

Contact me or your DoubleClick Performics account representative if you have any questions.

Cam Balzer
VP, Emerging Media

PS: I'm actually quite a bit taller than Kevin Spacey, but he's won two more Oscars than I have. (Original Usual Suspects poster.)

Chief Marketer column: holiday peak day planning

Cam Balzer's monthly column on ChiefMarketer.com looks at some of the expected shopping patterns in the upcoming holiday season and how to plan marketing budgets accordingly: Multichannel Holiday Strategies for Monday through Sunday.

Here's how the seasonal sales patterns have looked for the last couple of years across our client base. Each year's data is lined up from Thanksgiving through Christmas, which falls a different number of days out each year, but is always the  nadir of the season. The first gray bar is offline retail's so-called "Black Friday." The remaining bars are the four cyber-mondays. This season we'll have a fifth to take into account in budgeting.

Please contact your DoubleClick Performics account team if you have any questions about this year's holiday trends.

SMX Local Presentation - Clicks to Conversions Panel

Here's my presentation from the "Tracking Clicks and Calls to Conversions" panel at SMX Local/Mobile in Denver. Drawing on the experiences of our DoubleClick Performics Local team, and from running "cross-channel" search campaigns for financial services and retail clients, I argue that search has never been a simple "click to conversion" closed loop. Local and  mobile search require these cross-channel attribution issues to be tackled more directly, and doing so will help the industry better position search marketing as a strategic marketing vehicle.

Farewell "Clicks to Conversions": It Was Never Actually That Simple Anyhow

In addition to my big-picture take on the topic, the panel included:

• Christine Churchill from KeyRelevance with some basic, advanced and "graduate level" tips on tracking search conversions across channels
• Cid Jenkins from eStara, whose call tracking capabilities build on their core click-to-call and click-to-chat offerings
• Michael Murray from AOL, presenting on a pretty revolutionary "loop closing" platform called ShortCuts that lets consumers fulfill online and offline coupons by linking them to a store loyalty card.

Cam Balzer
VP, Emerging Media

"Unified Search"

Our Emerging Media team at DoubleClick Performics periodically releases briefs on topics relevant to our clients and partners. Questions from clients about two recent developments in search--the announcement of "universal search" by Google and the release of Ask 3D--spurred us to research the overall trend we are calling "unified search". You can download the full Unified Search Brief (PDF). Or, if you'd like a brief overview of the topic, check out Cam Balzer's column on ChiefMarketer.com: What Marketers Must Understand About Unified Search.