Performics Performance Marketing Blog: SEM, SEO, Social & Display

Search Happenings

Posted by JC Longbottom, Marketing Analyst

From the Engines:

·         MSN: Paid search tips for Valentine’s Day.

·         Yahoo! beats expectations: search strong.

·         Google makes changes to their Double Serving policy.

Other Topics of Interest:

·         Microsoft still interested in buying Yahoo!’s search business.

·         Danny Sullivan: analysis of all the 2008 search share numbers.

·         Layoffs at AOL.

·         Obama inauguration sets standard for online live video streaming.

Some Fun Stuff:

·         The most infamous Super Bowl ads.

·         Snowball war hawks have to settle for a skirmish.

·         Growing concern in Wyoming about horseback riding under the influence.

Earnings Reports Show Search’s Strength in Tough Economy

Posted by Dan Malachowski, Product Marketing Manager (Search and Performance Media)

Google and Yahoo! beat analyst expectations last quarter (October-December 2008) and Microsoft fell just short.  These earnings reports give us some insight into the strength of search from October through December 2008, even though the economy was reeling.  Year-over-year revenue increased 18% for Google and stayed flat for Microsoft’s Online Services Division, while Owned and Operated search revenue was up 11% year-over-year for Yahoo!.  Google also saw an 18% increase in paid clicks, while Yahoo! noted that query volume was up 10% and Revenue Per Search was up in the single digits.  High costs hurt net income for everyone, but the reports show that in terms of revenue, search was strong.

Highlights:

Google

·         Q4 earnings report was mostly positive

·         Google reported revenues of 5.7 billion (October to December 2008), an 18% increase over the same period last year and a 3% increase over Q3

·         50% of this revenue was international

·         Aggregate paid clicks (Google.com and content network) increased 18% year over year

·         Net income was $382 million as compared to $1.29 billion in the third quarter of 2008

·         Google’s net income was negatively affected by employee stock compensation costs and their declining investments in Clearwire and AOL

·         Earnings per share of $5.10 beat analyst estimates by 15 cents despite the downturn in the Internet advertising market

·         Google had 20,222 full-time employees at the end of Q4, up from 20,123 at the end of Q3
Full report

Online Retail Spend and Sales Forecast for 2009 (Part 2 of 2: The Forecasting Exercise)

Posted by Michael Conway, Program Manager (Paid Search)

Remember that when trying to predict the future, you’ll most likely not be 100% accurate, so you must set expectations accordingly.   The second thing to remember is that complexity does not necessarily equal accuracy.  Translation: when presenting your forecast, set expectations with room for error and make the logic behind the forecast simple. 

The first thing to do is research the market a as whole.  In December, eMarketer put out an executive summary projecting retail e-commerce growth for 2009- bottom line percentage growth expected to be 4.1%.  This growth percentage hinges on online shopping growing 6.2%, but online spending per shopper decreasing by 2%.  There are other numbers out there and different retailers may see more growth than others.  For instance, Wal-Mart will probably exceed the market because discounters tend to perform better in down economies, whereas higher ticket sites may not perform as well.  Bottom line is unless you fit into those two categories, all things being equal, clicks will grow 6.2% and average order will decrease 2% in 2009.

Search Happenings

Posted by JC Longbottom, Marketing Analyst

From the Engines:

·         Google beats the street: Q4 and fiscal year 2008 results.

·         Microsoft earnings: 5,000 layoffs.

·         Tips from Google on how to drive more conversions while spending  less.

Other Topics of Interest:

·         Adweek: the future of search.

·         Google SearchWiki showing “preferred sites” for some users.

·         Obama turns Whitehouse.gov into an online community.

·         Jim Cramer interviews Eric Schmidt.

·         Why search is still performing in the dismal economy.

Some Fun Stuff:

·         Penguins get married.

·         Another penguin scared of water.

Local Implications of Google’s URL Policy Change

Posted by Dan Malachowski, Product Marketing Manager (Search and Performance Media)

In today’s MediaPost, Craig Greenfield, Performics’ Vice President of Search and Performance Media, takes a look at the most significant event in local search in 2008- Google AdWord’s ban of vanity URLs.  This change has posed challenges for many car dealers, coffee shops, and retailers who are located near each other and share the same root URL, such as www.example.com/firststreet and www.example.com/secondstreet. Craig explores ways that paid search advertisers can deal with this challenge.

Read the entire article over at MediaPost.

Search Happenings

Posted by JC Longbottom, Marketing Analyst

From the Engines:

·         Google widens search share gap in December.

·         The scoop on Yahoo’s new CEO, Carol Bartz.

·         Google: most popular searches of 2008 by country.

·         Live Search to be default engine for Dell and Verizon.

·         New features of Google Local Business Ads.

Other Topics of Interest:

·         Google well over a million advertisers.

·         Bringing Internet advertising technology to TV.

·         New Google favicon.

·         Compete looks at peaks for 2008 online holiday shopping.

·         AdGooroo: Google shows 58% more ads in Q4.

·         How to improve your Quality Score.

Some Fun Stuff:

·         A puppy’s mother hen.

·         “A heavyset man with a visible potbelly and a ninja costume unsuccessfully tried to steal two different ATMs.”

Paid Search Outperforms Overall E-commerce for the Holidays

Posted by Chris Costello, Senior Manager, Digital Research

One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to use more bullet points.

 

·         Performics reports that average year-over-year retail sales posted a 15% increase over last year for the holiday season, defined as November 1 through December 23 to correspond to comScore’s definition.

·         We define this as the growth for an “average retailer,” which takes the average daily sales across a group of retailers that meets certain threshold requirements and sums it across all the days in the season.  Using this metric allows us to control for changes to our client roster over time, and while it is somewhat sensitive to outliers, it provides a consistent basis for comparison.

·         This number may seem out of alignment with comScore’s report of a 3% decline, but when you look back over the last several years, search revenue (at least based on Performics’ internal numbers) has always outperformed overall e-commerce, although that gap is narrowing as the paid search channel matures (see below).

 

	comScore holiday growth*	Performics holiday growth
2008	-3%	+15%
2007	+19%	+33%
2006	+24%	+63%
2005	+25%	+73%
2004	+29%	+128%
* source: comScore

 

Performics POV: Google Adds Dates to Result Page Snippets

Posted by Sam Battin, Senior Search Specialist (Natural Search)

The beginning of some snippets in Google’s search results pages now include a date.  This does not happen for all search results, and where a date appears for a page in one site, it may not necessarily appear for all pages in that same site.  Why is Google doing this, what date are they using, and what could this mean for your natural search strategy?

The following screenshot of a Google results page shows how only certain snippets in a site will contain a date.  In the first result, Google has added the date “Aug 23, 2007 …” at the beginning of the snippet, while the second result’s snippet has no date:

 

Search Happenings

Posted by JC Longbottom, Marketing Analyst

From the Engines:

·         Google announces product ideas blog.

·         Verizon picks Microsoft for mobile search.

Other Topics of Interest:

·         Display advertising boosts search.

·         The future of Google.

·         The big list of 2009 marketing predictions.

·         JP Morgan: long-term dominance for performance based ads.

·         The future of vertical search.

·         Facebook reaches 150 million users.

Some Fun Stuff:

·         Police spoil children’s vacation to Africa.

·         A dedicated student.

Online Retail Spend and Sales Forecast for 2009 (Framing the Conversation: Part 1 of 2)

Posted by Michael Conway, Program Manager (Paid Search)

2009 being the year of the ox in the Chinese animalistic calendar seems somehow appropriate.   People will be grinding the year trying to keep their job, pay their mortgage and/or save money in order to make up the gap in their net worth left by the aftermath of the stock market crash and housing price dump.  This presents a challenge if you’re not a retailer named Wal-Mart or Dollar Store.  Nonetheless, all is not lost: with gas prices recently around a five year low, money being pumped into banks and a big stimulus package being written, some economists are optimistically predicting the US to limp out of recession in the middle of 2009.  So what does this mean for e-commerce?

It means investment should be increased in performance based advertising initiatives like paid search.  eMarketer is still forecasting a 4.1% increase in overall e-commerce retail sales, even though retail overall may not grow at all in 2009.  There will be considerable pressure to justify advertising budgets, thus forcing retailers to divert less measurable advertising dollars to concrete ROI driven programs.   

Recommendation: increase your paid search budget and lower the ROI goal.  Online shoppers will continue to increase as adoption from retail stores and Internet access increase albeit at a slower rate.  So there is opportunity out there to increase market share efficiently.  Nevertheless, each transaction will likely be smaller and shoppers will spend more time searching before they convert.   Therefore, the return will be smaller and the investment greater. 

In this environment, those in charge of signing off on budgets will feel better about investing in something that gives a measurable ROI and an opportunity to grow.