The AdNews NGen Blog: Why Search ISN'T boring...

31 March 2014

We’ve all been in meetings when search is brought up and everyone (except the ‘search guy’) yawns. As a “search guy” I feel for those in such situations, the uneducated, the misguided and the confused.

I get the feeling that search is seen as a little boring by the majority of media agencies, dare I say it, beige?! Whilst search traditionally may have been a little dry, the channel has evolved and so should our view of it!

Below I’ve listed just a few reasons of why search isn’t boring and why we should be paying attention to it. Hopefully you’re not bored already and will take the time to digest my rationale, giving me a chance to impose my search biased view upon you…

Real Return on Investment (ROI) $$$
Let’s be honest, when clients pay media agencies to advertise on their behalf they want to see results! search is one best ways to do this, with proper tracking in place you can calculate a true Return on Investment to the nearest $1. No other form of marketing and communication offer ROI as real as this (& no, I don’t work for Google). That’s not boring!

The ability to target users who have already seen your advertisement
Imagine you work in outdoor and someone has seen your ad and is interested… now imagine that you can retarget that person in real time and serve them an ad in the best outdoor spot possible.

In this traditional form of marketing it’s not “seamlessly” possible, in search it is!

You can retarget users who have clicked on your ad in the past and serve a subsequent ad with stronger relevance to their specific online behaviour and in a more efficient ad position. You can retarget users across search, the Google Display Network (GDN), YouTube & Gmail! That’s not boring!

PLA – Product Listing Ads
Over the last two years Google has developed the ability to advertise by identifying ecommerce search queries, effectively you can now serve users an ad with a picture of your product, price and short description. Case studies have shown that advertisers have doubled and even tripled revenue by utilising PLA’s well. That’s not boring!

Ad extensions
Over the past few years Adwords (the Google ad serving platform) has begun to roll out new ways to make your ads look better, increasing performance. Currently you can utilise, sitelink extensions, call extensions, location extensions and image extensions (see picture below).


Sydney Hotels - Google Search

So the next time you think search is boring consider these points and ask yourself the question, is my use of search boring, am I utilising all that is now available and more importantly am I working with the right search partner?

Jonathan Vanmidde
Search campaign manager
Starcom Mediavest Group

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