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

Applying Paid Search Optimization Techniques Beyond the Search Engine Results Page

Posted by Craig Greenfield, SVP, Performance Innovation

This blog was orginally posted on emarketing & commerce

In 2010, Forrester’s The Future of Search Marketing report predicted that “search marketing will become an umbrella term that applies to using any targeted media to help an advertiser get found.” Forrester was right. It’s now clear that search isn’t limited to being just a channel.  Search is the science of understanding intent and acting on it to efficiently connect people to your brand—no matter if that connection is made on a search engine, social networking site, display network, affiliate network or other emerging medium. To foster these connections, search engine marketing best practices can be extended well beyond the search engine results page.

First, I’ll consider how traditional paid search techniques can be applied to display advertising to drive new-to-file customers. Like search, biddable display provides advertisers with targeting capabilities to find the right customer at the right price.  While search marketers create segmentation via keywords to find the right audience, display marketers create segmentation via data sources. For example, during back-to-school season this past year, one of Performics’ apparel retailer clients sought to efficiently boost year-over-year daily sales though performance display. Like we do with search campaigns, we restructured the retailer’s display campaign at a more granular level (31 different ads in 2011 versus 6 ads in 2010) to support product/offer testing.  The restructure revealed deeper audience insights, helping us buy only the impressions we wanted (i.e. the right placements at the right price). We also increased relevance through site retargeting (i.e. serving display ads to people who visited the advertiser’s website but didn’t take action). These strategies resulted in a 211 percent year-over-year increase in average daily sales at a 120 percent return on investment.

Search Plus Your World’s Impact on Paid Search & SEO

Topic: Google’s incorporation of social and personal content to the SERP
Opportunity: Achieve prominent search visibility through Google+ presence
Channels Impacted: Organic search, paid search, social

Google recently began rolling out its new “Search, Plus Your World” features to the search engine results page (SERP).  The update introduced two new features that significantly impact paid search marketing and SEO:

1. People and Pages: The SERP now prominently features the Google+ Pages of both people and brands—for branded and generic queries—even when the searcher isn’t logged in
2. Personal Results: When logged in, the Google SERP now shows the searcher’s personal photos and posts from Google+ and Picasa.  Personal results include the searcher’s own content, as well as content shared with the searcher.  This new content is exclusive to the searcher, so everyone’s SERP is different.

People and Pages: Search Implications

Since Google+ Pages for Businesses launched, we’ve advocated that having a branded Google+ Page is essential for your search campaigns (see Why Your Brand Needs a Google+ Business Page Now).  We noted that the primary reason to create a Google+ Page was to aid your SEO efforts.  For instance, social content from brands is increasing achieving prominent visibility on the Google SERP, especially for branded searches.  We told brands to expect to see their Google+ Business Pages in the top organic results for branded keywords very soon.  What we didn’t expect was the prominence that Google would give Google+ Business Pages.  For instance, the below search for “fashion” gives H&M’s Google+ Page visibility equivalent to a position-1 paid-search bid, even when the searcher is not signed in:

Retailers Spent 58% More on Paid Search this Holiday vs. Last, Driving 53% More Clicks

Posted by Ryan Hornacek, Analyst, Strategy & Analytics

The biggest paid search story of holiday 2011 was that Performics’ aggregate group of retailer clients made early-season investments that led to incremental clicks throughout the entire season.  Every holiday, we see retailers increasing paid search spend earlier and earlier.  Early investments allowed our retailers to level off spend later in the season, but maintain large YoY click increases during the critical holiday weeks.  This was most apparent in the final week before the ground shipping cutoffs (Week 11 on the below chart), where clicks were up 52% YoY but spend was only up 26%.  The effect of early investment also showed in CPCs during the three critical weeks following Thanksgiving (Weeks 9, 10 and 11 on the below chart).  CPCs during this time period were consistently lower than last year (a 3-week average YoY decline of 10%).

In total, Performics’ retailer clients spent 58% more on paid search in Q4 2011 vs. Q4 2010, driving 53% more clicks YoY.  Despite the large increase in spend, CPCs finished the quarter just 5% higher.

We closed out the year with a post-Christmas uptick in clicks as a result of increased spend.  Clicks were up 51% in the week following Christmas (Week 13 on the below chart), while spend was up 64% YoY.  The last-minute spending push caused a slight bump in CPCs, which were up 8% for the week.  However, in the final days of the year, CPCs finally fell back to their pre-Thanksgiving levels.

Holiday Online Sales Wrap-Up

Posted by Cristina Lucero, Research Associate

For the holiday season-to-date, $35.3 billion has been spent online, marking a 15% increase versus the corresponding days last year (comScore).  The most recent week (ending Dec. 25) witnessed $2.8 billion in spending, an increase of 16% versus the same week last year.  Peak online holiday spending occurred on Nov. 28th (Cyber Monday); according to comScore, “online retail sales topped $1.25 billion that day—the heaviest online shopping day in history.”

Mobile’s Influence on Holiday Foreshadows a Huge Mobile 2012

Posted by Cristina Lucero, Research Associate

Traffic from mobile devices accounted for 18.3% of overall Web traffic on Christmas Day according to an IBM survey (up from only 8.4% a year ago).  Of total mobile traffic, 7% came from iPads, 6.4% from iPhones and 5% from Android smartphones.  In terms of Christmas Day online sales, 14.4% came from mobile devices, up from 5.3% on Christmas Day 2010. 

Mobile device activations also shot up on Christmas Day, indicating that many people received tablets and smartphones as gifts this year.  Android and iOS device activations averaged around 1.5 million per day in December versus 6.8 million activations on Christmas Day alone (Flurry).  And of course, new devices need new apps—prior to Christmas day, December app sales were steady around 1.8 million a day, but on Christmas Day, app downloads jumped 125% to 242 million (Flurry):

Last-Minute Holiday Shopping Trends

Posted by Cristina Lucero, Research Associate

As holiday approaches, shoppers will become heavily reliant on discounts and sales to help with last-minute holiday gifts.  A PriceGrabber survey found that 41% of shoppers plan to shop between Dec. 21 and Dec. 24.  In fact, 43% said that they believe the best discounts can be found during that time period; another 43% indicated that they’re too busy to finish their holiday shopping earlier; 26% admitted to procrastinating; 22% think last-minute shopping is fun; and 10% are waiting for year-end work bonuses.

Other last-minute shopping trends include:

• To date, the average person has completed 46.5% of their shopping.  At the same time last year, the average person had completed 49.5% of their shopping.  (BIGresearch).
• 80% of U.S. shoppers plan to buy gift cards this season (NRF)
• 9% of shoppers will wait until January to purchase holiday gifts.  By gender, 11% of men say they’ll wait until January to buy gifts vs. 8% of women.  (PriceGrabber).
• 27% of shoppers indicated that they plan to shop for last-minute gifts on sites like Groupon and LivingSocial (PriceGrabber)

The Year of Free Shipping

Posted by Cristina Lucero, Research Associate

According to comScore, over the last two weeks, more than 63% of all online purchases were accompanied by free shipping—that’s up roughly 10 percentage points over the same period last year.  In previous years, 47% of shoppers said they would abandon an online purchase if they discovered at checkout that shipping wasn’t free (comScore).  Because free shipping has become a priority for many online shoppers, “Free Shipping Day” was created to encourage online shopping without accruing additional shipping costs.  This year, Free Shipping Day was Friday, Dec. 16 and more than 2,000 merchants offered free shipping with delivery by Christmas Eve in the contiguous United States.  According to comScore, Free Shipping Day saw shoppers spend $1.072 billion online, a 14% YoY increase.

The Latest Online Holiday Sales Forecasts: Revised Upward

Posted by Cristina Lucero, Research Associate

For the first 46 days of the November/December 2011 holiday season, online spending increased 15% YoY to $30.9 billion according to comScore.  This increase has caused the National Retail Federation (NRF) to revise its holiday forecast upward, expecting holiday sales to rise 3.8% this year to a record $469.1 billion. NRF’s initial forecast called for anticipated sales growth of 2.8%.  While a 3.8% sales increase is considerably above the ten-year average sales increase of 2.6%, it’s still lower than the 5.2% increase the retail industry saw last year.

In addition, NRF’s most recent holiday survey found that the average American has completed far less of their holiday shopping than in previous years—an indication that many shoppers bought for themselves in November and have plenty of holiday shopping left to do.

Holiday Paid Search Metrics Continue to Rise YoY, But Have Peaked for the Season

Posted by Ryan Hornacek, Analyst

Last week, online retailers started to flatten out paid search holiday spend. As a result, our aggregate group of retailer clients' YoY spend was only up 26%, compared to 43%, 65%, and 97% over the previous 3 weeks. This decline was more a result of advertisers investing in paid search earlier in the season and maintaining that level rather than a decrease in spending. In fact, our retailers increased YoY paid search investment every week during the holiday season, not just the last part of the season as they did last year.

Furthermore, paid search spend—and clicks—have peaked for the season. As spend levels off, clicks have also leveled off, up 52%, roughly the same amount as the previous week. And as the market has been more stable this year, retailers have been able to find more efficiencies in their campaigns. The result is CPCs down YoY for the third consecutive week. During the 12/11 to 12/17 week, CPCs were 17% lower YoY. This week—as we cross the holiday ground shipping cutoff—we expect spend, clicks and CPCs to decrease further.

Post-Cyber Week Paid Search Metrics Remain Strong; YoY CPCs Fall for Second Consecutive Week

Posted by Ryan Hornacek, Analyst

During the week of 12/4 to 12/10, our aggregate group of retailer clients spent 43% more on paid search than they did the same week in 2010, gaining 53% more YoY clicks.  Although spend was still up 43%, this is the lowest YoY spend increase we’ve seen this holiday season since the week of 10/16–10/22 (where spend increased 38%).  This shows that retailers have tapered-off spend increases after huge YoY increases during Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.   However, we do expect retailers to make major spend pushes in the coming week, especially on Free Shipping Day. 

Additionally, we’ve now seen two consecutive weeks of lower YoY CPCs.  During the 12/4 to 12/10 week, CPCs were 7% lower than the same week last year.  It will be interesting to see whether CPCs remain low as competition heats up again on Free Shipping Day.  The below charts and graphs show YoY trends in clicks, spend and CPC: