Red Bricks Media’s News Blog

by Andy Leinicke, Media Director, PPC

According to Alexa, YouTube is generating more page views than facebook, myspace, and even Google itself. It holds an enormous inventory for advertisers that has remained largely untapped – until now.

Google recently invited me to one of its Advertiser Forums in Mountain View. There, I got to see all of Google’s new video advertising products firsthand, including exciting YouTube opportunities.

Getting Started
There are two questions you need to ask to get started with a Google video program. The first is which network to run in. Google has two: the Google Contextual Network, and YouTube (it’s important to note that YouTube now includes streaming premium partners).

The second question to consider is which format your ad will take. Google now has lots of exciting format options. I’ve listed formats and video networks below:

*InVideo ads are currently only available to advertisers with managed accounts.

Click to Play (CTP) ads have been around for a while. It’s possible to load these via AdWords and target across the Content Network in the same way as text or image ads.

YouTube Video Ads, on the other hand, run exclusively on YouTube and need to be arranged manually. They can be broadcasted for a mass audience on YouTube’s home page or targeted by category or by search terms. Here is an example of a video ad for Rolling Rock that plays on the YouTube homepage:

The ad directs to a cool, engaging microsite customized for this campaign:

Companion ads are 300X250 pixel units that appear next to your custom home page placement or beside videos on a YouTube Watch Page (the pages where you actually view videos are called Watch Pages). Here is Google’s mock up for a Companion Ad:

An InVideo ad is a dynamic flash overlay that appears on the bottom of a video while it’s playing. Google claims that this ad unit is much more welcome than other approaches such as pre-rolls or post-rolls. Users can expand or click on these ads and, unlike other YouTube tactics, the InVideo ad has direct response promise. In fact, Google claims that beta advertising programs have shown amazing click through and conversion rates using InVideo. Here is an example of a BMW Google InVideo ad at work:

The InVideo ad is completely controlled by the user. If the ad is good enough (Red Bricks Media can test for this), users will click through to an expansion and eventually a destination url:

YouTube’s social functionality gives users a brand new way to experience video. Another opportunity to advance your marketing efforts on YouTube is by utilizing their channel feature. Anyone can create a YouTube Channel for free. Channels are like an iTunes playlist and a MySpace page all in one. Here’s a Channel that some old friends of mine at Teton Gravity Research recently made:

TGR makes some of the best surfing and skiing movies out there. This YouTube Channel lets them build an online community that generates ticket and DVD sales.

But it’s possible to think even bigger with Channels. YouTube can create a custom Brand Channel with site-like functionality and special promotion features. Brand Channels have highly customizable interfaces, including a special logo area at the top. An example of this is the “Living Legends” Brand Channel:

This Brand Channel allows users to upload videos of themselves asking questions to legendary rock stars like Mick Jagger which Mr. Jagger responds with his own video post. Marketers can use similar technology to promote contests.

It’s easy to see that Google has introduced a vast array of ways to interact with audiences using video. Contact a Red Bricks Media rep to learn how Red Bricks Media can design a proposal that’s right for you.

by Ryan Hailey, Campaign Operations Manager

The Comparison Shopping network, like any other media channel, certainly has some costs, barriers to entry, and common pitfalls and errors that would make an otherwise seemingly profitable marketing channel…well…not so profitable. In order for a CSE campaign to be successful, it is necessary for a company to analyze all its facets and weigh the costs and potential benefits of self-managing versus delegating CSE management. We’d like to share some insights gained by researching this rapidly growing market.

An Emerging Market:

Comparison Shopping Engines are becoming the largest online business-to-consumer medium. They allow consumers to quickly compare prices, access product information and reviews, and make purchases within a few clicks of a mouse. New studies have shown that 60% of online consumers use a CSE prior to making a purchase. CSEs are also responsible for over one third of all e-commerce sales ($54.3 billion in 2007) and have more market share than auction sites and shopping portals combined.

The top four independent CSEs: Bizrate, Shopping.com, Shopzilla and NexTag now own over 61% of the shopping search market, according Hitwise. Google Product Search, Yahoo Shopping, and MSN Shopping combined own less than 15% of the market. These independent comparison engines obviously have differentiated themselves offer a better user experience.

The CSE Landscape:

There are dozens of comparison shopping engines, each trying to differentiate themselves from the rest. Some tout themselves as delivering the lowest priced product matches, while others find a niche that deliver only certain kinds of products, whether it is electronics, baby gifts, or healthcare goods.

Many advertisers who lack the necessary time and resources to examine the entire CSE market tend to opt into only the largest ones, such as Shopping.com, Shopzilla, NexTag, and Bizrate. While these well-known engines do represent a big chunk (roughly 60%) of the comparison shopping market, advertisers who choose only the major CSEs are missing out on a sizeable portion of the market. This is a common faux pas that advertisers make when they manage their CSE efforts in-house as opposed to outsourcing management to online marketing professionals.

In order to maximize potential revenue and product/brand visibility in the CSE market, advertisers must survey the entire CSE landscape. Once this is done, the advertiser can exclude comparison sites that don’t suit their campaign’s motive and choose those sites that do.

CSE Pricing:

When surveying the CSE landscape, pricing models should play a very important role in the decision of which CSEs to opt into. There are three pricing models that shopping engines use: Cost per Click (CPC); Cost per Order or Cost per Acquisition (CPO/CPA), and free, and it is also worth noting that many of the larger CSEs require a minimum investment or deposit that varies between sites.

Cost per Click is the most common pricing model, where advertisers pay for every time an ad is clicked, and is also the most similar to typical Pay-Per-Click campaigns. Some CSEs that follow the PPC model charge a fixed cost-per-click rate for each product type depending on the margin, whereas others allow competitive bidding, which gives the advertiser the opportunity to build out a CPC optimization strategy.

The CPO/CPA pricing model, used by Shop.com and Jellyfish, is also very attractive since it is basically a risk-free investment; you are only charged when the consumer purchases the product.

The last and most popular pricing model is the “free” model. Only a few CSEs use this model, including Google Product Search and TheFind.com. Their profits are derived from selling ad space on their results pages. A common strategy for advertisers that are just entering the CSE market is to start by launching campaigns only on the free portals. This will allow the advertiser to gauge the competition and see how aggressive to be. In the end, however, opting into as many CSEs that suit and help achieve campaign goals is typically the best practice.

Campaign Development and Product Categorization:

Shopping engine placements are contextually pertinent because they’re delivered, along with other related products, on a keyword basis. Product ranking in the search results will be determined by how well a merchant’s keyword search term matches the keywords related to a product’s title, description, and other relevant information provided in the product data feed.

Choosing the right keywords in the product titles and descriptions definitely helps with achieving higher placement. For advertisers that are already managing PPC or SEO campaigns, a CSE campaign can simply be an extension of that, since you already have a developed keyword universe.

However, a new level of complexity is added when bidding at the product level rather than at an ad group or keyword level. A common pitfall in managing CSE campaigns involves product categorization. If an advertiser mis-categorizes its products (i.e. toys, electronics, clothing, etc), they can drastically harm the campaign by either paying too high a CPC or risk not having their product listed. To ensure products are listed and are in the best position possible, advertisers need to optimize their data feed.

Data Feed Management and Optimization:

The largest challenge in CSE management lies with uploading relevant information to different comparison engines. Only a few CSEs, known as “crawlers,” will actively search retailers’ websites and gather information to upload on their comparison site. All others require the advertiser to format and manually upload relevant information via XML.

Relevant information is generally consists of developing and maintaining variable fields, such as keyword-driven product titles and descriptions, file headers, display and destination URLs, product categories, price, model number, UPC, manufacturer name. This must be done for each separate comparison engine and every time product information changes, so it becomes an incredibly tedious task when managing multiple CSE campaigns.

The solution is using a third party Data Feed vendor such as MerchantAdvantage, Quigo, or SingleFeed. Each Data Feed vendor’s offering varies slightly, depending on the size, depth, and dynamics of the product catalog. Pricing schemes and CSE compatibility also vary between the vendors. We use Data Feed tools to centralize data feed management across multiple engine upload formats, meaning the advertiser only needs to enter all information once.

The Data Feed tool formats the information and uploads it to all CSEs. Data Feeds require frequent modification and many companies do not have the resources to invest. But, if an advertiser ultimately decides to have a full-scale CSE campaign, finding the right Data Feed tool is essential for success.

Many sellers make the mistake of relegating Data Feed management to the in-house IT Department since they deem it a technical process. The problem is that the information that goes into the feed is marketing material. Some very useful blogs and websites that contain valuable information about Data Feed Management and Optimization are: www.loveyourfeed.com, www.csestrategies.com, http://wordpress.com/tag/comparison-shopping-engines/.

Campaign Management and Testing:

In starting out a CSE campaign, advertisers should be able to get their feet wet without huge costs or time constraints. They can manage a CSE campaign manner similar to most PPC campaigns.

A majority of CSEs follow the CPC model, allowing the opportunity to bid on a product of keyword level. Users can remove underperforming products just as they would pause keywords in a PPC campaign. Advertisers need to frequently evaluate their campaign in order to understand consumer behavior in search as well as industry trends. This is in part why sellers turn to advertising and industry professionals for CSE management.

Advertisers should also take an active role in landing page development and testing. Each landing page serves as a sort of home page, making not only the case of why to buy the product, but why they should buy the product from you. Advertisers can also test by changing product descriptions, discounts, and special offers. Most of all, advertisers need to be constantly evaluating their campaigns to maximize CSE potential.

The Price Factor – Barriers to Entry:

While price can be a large factor in your CSE ad placement, each engine uses its own particular algorithm for ranking and displaying search results. Each also has different criteria and charges for participating merchants. Most of the major search engines use product price as a common sorting focus, followed by store rating and reviews, popularity, relevancy, and placement bids. In fact, about 70% of click-thrus on comparison sites are not on the seller with the lowest price.

It would be prudent to say that upscale sellers may have a more difficult time seeing positive results in their CSE endeavors. However, they still have the opportunity to advertise any niche products they may have and look for areas that aren’t covered by their competitors.

Sources:
http://searchengineland.com/070504-105037.php
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3628428
http://www.comparisonengines.com/
http://www.csestrategies.com/
http://www.loveyourfeed.com/
http://www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog/2007/07/24/feed-optimization/
http://www.ecommerceoptimization.com/comparison-shopping-listing-guide/
http://multichannelmerchant.com/webchannel/affiliate/marketing_shopping_around_0101/
http://www.seobrien.com/2006/10/comparison-shopping/small-businesses-rejoice/
http://www.revenuetoday.com/readarticle.php?name=Comparison+Shopping+Engines+Drive+Sales
http://www.channeladvisor.com/comparison_shopping/summary.html
http://www.hitwise.com/

by Kelly Olson, VP Accounting and Finance

By now you’ve probably heard of the recent major milestones Google has achieved, including being selected as the world’s most admired brand, surpassing Microsoft as the world’s most visited website, and attaining a market capitalization larger than that of IBM. Another milestone of sorts has been Google’s ability to scare a surprisingly large number of industries including: advertising, entertainment, publishers, computer hardware and software manufacturers, and telecoms. And yes, they’ve even managed at times to make enterprising little startups like us uneasy. Each quarter the Red Bricks Media management team meets to review our business performance and refine our strategy. As part of our meeting we review our threats, and, as many other companies have done, Google has definitely made our list. So while some companies have responded by suing (e.g. Viacom) or others by seeking government intervention (ironically MSN & AT&T!); we thought we’d take a much less aggressive approach and turn the tables a little bit by speculating on what Google views as its top threats. For just as IBM dominated the 80’s and Microsoft the 90’s, so to may Google face a day when its meteoric rise plateaus.

So what causes Google CEO Eric Schmidt to lose sleep at night? What causes Sergei and Larry to toss and turn in restless slumber? Here then, without further ado, are the top 5 threats to Google’s dominance.

5. Peer Search

Is Google worried about peer search? This is where people or experts rank search results to provide more interesting and relevant results than an algorithm can yet provide. Maybe a year ago this type of search worried Google. This was when Yahoo acquired del.icio.us (that’s a pain to write by the way) and Flickr (for photos). Heralded by many as the next way to search, neither has seemed to do much to help Yahoo shore up their eroding search market share. The problem with this model is that most people don’t have the time to invest in rating their search results. We want the results to our search inquiry fast, and we want it now, and Google continues to best facilitate this motive, which is why they are probably not too concerned with peer search.

4. Other Search Engines

So does Eric Schmidt lose much sleep at night because of other search engines? Nah, probably not. Like any good executive you should never underestimate your competition, however, from their recent track record Yahoo and MSN have not done anything to show they’re going to soon be grabbing search market share back from Google (and lest we forget, Yahoo had around 31.8% of the search market at the beginning of 2006, now down to 26.8% as reported by Comscore). Perhaps Google should be most concerned with new search engines that promise to improve the search experience. One potentially exciting example is Powerset. This startup has gotten some significant investors lined up behind it and claims to dramatically improve search with their yet to be launched natural search algorithm. Still, it’s tough to see that any startups would scare Google that much. Google can always buy any of these engines that start to get too big.

3. Microsoft and Yahoo Merger

Like a couple of 800 pound gorillas courting each other, Microsoft and Yahoo have made overtures that they at some point might merge. The question is whether there is a strong business case for the merger, or if these discussions are more driven by fear of Google. If neither Yahoo nor MSN has demonstrated they are good at search, what’s to suggest that they will get it figured out together? Combine two lab technicians and you still don’t get a rocket scientist. Yet the threat of MSN suddenly getting Yahoo’s 26.8% search share, combined with the significant cash they are sitting on must make Google uneasy.

2. Content

Obviously this is a big one and is why Google purchased You Tube. But was this the best strategy for Google to get its hand on content? Recent developments such as Viacom’s lawsuit suggest the answer may be no. The issue for Google is how it will monetize the content on You Tube. The easiest strategy is to charge for downloads or through user subscriptions, but without access to proprietary content, how does Google get people to pay to see the latest amateur video? Would you pay to see someone with great dance moves perform at a junior high talent show (the most viewed video of all time on You Tube)? Certainly Google gets an amazing amount of eyeballs through the site, but monetizing these with banner ads certainly won’t contribute much to the bottom line. And, an even bigger threat to Google from content, and what should make Google even more nervous, is that someone such as Yahoo or Wikipedia will figure out how to leverage the visitors that come to their site for content to stay for search as well. And if this happens Google’s search market share could start to drop dramatically–a serious threat to their future growth.

1. Lack of Revenue Diversification and Loss of Focus

You may recognize the story of a startup company that with disruptive technology grew to a monstrous size and in the process scared the pants off its competitors, triggered lawsuits for their monopolistic behavior, developed huge cash reserves and decided to try all different types of new business endeavors to help derive a return from these assets? If you said Microsoft, of course you’re right, and if you’ve checked their stock price recently it is basically flat since 2001. Why is it flat? Because many of the endeavors outside of their core business of software have not been profitable. By focusing on too many, non-profitable strategies, will Google follow Microsoft’s path? As we saw with Web 1.0, ventures that get money for free tend to not do a good job of creating revenue from that money. And it appears from Google’s 2006 10k filing that about 99% percent of its revenue still comes from search. So while Madison Avenue, Hollywood and other industries are all running scared, Google has not made much in the way of inroads into these other verticals. The question is then, as the search market matures, will Google’s new ventures become an unprofitable distraction from their core specialty of search or will they in fact be able to diversify their business into these other arenas? The failure to convert their home run in the search space into other profitable ventures is the biggest threat faced by Google, and hopefully, given all the other executives losing sleep because of Google, has contributed to some restless nights for Google’s own management team.

by Sharon Crost, Account Director

Got ROI? Our client’s ROI is a daily pre-occupation at Red Bricks Media. New marketing opportunities in buzz and wikis and mobile and video are quickly emerging – it’s like being a kid in a virtual candy store. With all of this choice, how can a new school portfolio be selected and managed for an optimum return? The formula is simple: design a strategically aligned investment, and develop a measurement system to optimize the returns.

To select a champion investment, use strategic criteria as a guideline for your portfolio. A new marketing opportunity will: 1) be based on creative insight into the customer experience for the product or service 2) be clearly aligned with the company’s brand identity and 3) provide interest and value to the customer. Take your current company as an example. Think about the character of your brand and your customers. Your campaign strategy will best match this character with a universe of potential opportunities.

When the right portfolio is established, a measuring system can be put in place, aligned to the campaign objectives. Traditionally, marketing programs returns could be projected through focus groups, through the marketing researchers who caught you in the shopping mall, or by phone interviews or questionnaires. The process was long and expensive and sample sizes were relatively small.

Today, using performance marketing techniques and analytical tools, quick and inexpensive results are available by monitoring internet interaction, much less pervasively and with impressive sample sizes. For example, in a week of online media placement, Red Bricks Media can accurately track more than a million impressions, measuring the user’s experience and tracking conversions. These techniques allow the Red Bricks Media team to commit to success metrics, and rally behind them, constantly testing and tuning, using real data to optimize a full portfolio of new marketing campaigns. The optimum combination of portfolio choices and performance metrics ensures that our clients get the maximum return for their precious marketing investment.

Want more ROI? Contact your Red Bricks Media team for more information.