Most writing about search marketing tends to be tactical tips from practitioners. Understanding Sponsored Search: Core Elements of Keyword Advertising, a new book by Prof. Jim Jansen, takes a more academic look at the field. I took some time to interview Jim to understand how his book can help search marketers and learn some of his more surprising findings.

Cambridge University Press has generously agreed to give away a free copy of Understanding Sponsored Search to one Digital Alex reader. Simply tweet a a link to the post by today (by 11:59 p.m. on 9/6/11). I’ll choose one winner at random (you’ll need to share your mailing address to receive the book).

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1. What’s the difference between your book and more practitioner oriented books?

This book focuses on the theory, models, and constructs underlying the practices that we do in keyword advertising. Naturally, every account has its own uniqueness, exceptions, and caveats. However, there are nearly always some commonalities in general principles. This book addresses these trends. It is different that the typical practitioner books (many of which are excellent!) in that it does not focus on the “how” but instead focuses on the “why”.

2. What were some of the most surprising things you learned in your research?

Having taught, researched, and implemented keyword advertising efforts for nearly more than a decade (I was co-author on one of the first published accounts of web searching using really search engine data, from Excite to
give you and idea of how long ago), it is was most surprising that the people aspects had such an effect on all aspects of keyword advertising. We hear all the time that it is always “about the customer” or “it’s all about eyeballs”, but when you systemically analyze the data, research, commentary and trends, it is just so apparent. The person (as searcher, consumer, customer) is reflected in nearly every aspect.

3. What are some common misconceptions in paid search you’d like to see dispelled?

I don’t especially like the over focus on things like quality score. Make it a good customer experience. Quality score will take care of itself.

4. What can seasoned search marketers learn from your book? What are 1-2 ideas you’d like to see them use?

Principle of Least Effort — One of the most enduring and most thoroughly research aspects of human information behavior. People will expend the least amount of effort to get the information they need. This simple principle influences keyword selection, ad creatives, ranking, and bidding. Make it as easy (and fast, and straightforward, and simple) for the customer. Again, it’s all about the person.

Don’t forget to tweet a link to this post to enter for a free copy of Jim’s book.

About Jim
Jim Jansen is an associate professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at The Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of several books, most recently Understanding Sponsored Search(Cambridge
University Press, September 1, 2011). He is currently a senior fellow at the Pew Internet and American Life Project, where he studies the uses and affordances of the Web for information searching and ecommerce, with a focus on the interaction between the person and the technology

You can buy his book, Understanding Sponsored Search: Core Elements of Keyword Advertising, at Amazon.

Disclosure: Links in this post contain affiliate codes, which help pay for my hosting. If you’d rather not use them, simply search on Amazon.

Win a Free Book: Understanding Sponsored Search by Jim Jensen

There is no shortage of search conferences to polish up your skills. So, when the folks at Distilled said they were launching a new conference in New York, SearchLove, I was skeptical. But, I’ve been on a panel with Will Critchlow before and he’s tremendously sharp and well connected in the SEO world, so I decided to ask him what makes SearchLove unique in this Q&A.

DigitalAlex readers can use the code SEARCH2011BIRD to save $200 on registration.

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1.) Okay, I have to ask: Does the search community really need another conference? What makes SearchLove unique than, say, SMX Advanced?

We felt that there was some things we could provide in a conference that are different to the experience with the big events. Our conferences are all in one track, with a much smaller number of the very best speakers we can find. Each of the speakers gets enough time to dig deep into their subject (45 minutes plus). With no expo, no sponsor tracks etc. all our speakers know that they have to bring their A game as they will be speaking in front of the full audience.

We live and die by the quality of our content – we put huge effort into the speaker prep – I personally am getting on the phone now with our speakers to plan out their sessions and we are all very heavily involved in making sure that our speakers bring tips and tricks that we would want to hear. My biggest tip for our speakers is to imagine they are speaking only to me and Rand. They have to tell us things we don’t know.

Also – while this is our first time in NYC, we have been running these events for the past few years (London, Boston, NOLA) as well as contributing to MozCon which has a very similar flavor. The attendees are telling us that what we are doing is different and is needed.

2.) Who is this conference for: hardcore SEO’s, newbies, brand marketers? You can’t answer “everyone” or I’ll stop liking you.

Definitely not everyone. I would say that experienced SEOs will get the most out of it. Newbies can learn a lot if they have thoroughly grounded themselves in the basics and are prepared to take away a load of notes for further study, but we specifically ask our speakers to go fast and deep into the advanced stuff. We get a lot of in-house guys coming as well as consultants / agency types and both get a lot out of it.

3.) I know you’re still working on the agenda, but what are people going to learn? Also, tell us about the format: lots of panels, labs, keynotes? I’m really hoping you’re going to say no panels over 3 people…

Pretty much all of our sessions are a single speaker going deep into the topic for at least 45 minutes. The only exceptions are head-to-head sessions where two speakers battle it out working towards a public vote and one live site review / live link building panel where typically Tom and Rand get on stage live to work with attendees’ sites. For the first time this year, we are also having a small number of places at a 1-1 site clinic in the breaks.

You can get the latest on the line up here: http://www.distilled.net/events/searchlove-new-york/ – we have some amazing speakers confirmed including Rand Fishkin and Wil Reynolds (who is not only from the East Coast but also rated higher than Rand or me at our last event). We have big US names like Michael Gray (graywolf), Laura Lippay and Bob Rains as well as some brits like Stephen Pavlovich and Mat Clayton who will knock your socks off. I’m very excited to hear them all speak.

We always have a big focus on link building and off-site techniques as these are so in demand. As well as that, we will cover on-site, keyword research, social media, analytics, new technologies and changes to the algorithms.

4.) Search nerds love parties. What’s the networking part of the show like?

Being a smaller show, we have great opportunities for attendees to hang out with the speakers and each other. As well as the exclusive party for attendees on the evening of Monday 31st (at the Aspen Social Club 157 West 47th Street), we have a small number of tickets left to an exclusive VIP dinner with the speakers on the Sunday night at Malloney & Porcelli.

5.) Give us an SEO nugget to tease the show: What’s a great eCommerce SEO tip?

I am currently enjoying applying some conversion rate optimization principles to SEO. In particular, using services like feedback army, usertesting.com or even mechanical turk to gauge how different segments respond to your site. Asking questions about how likely they are to share a particular page, whether they trust the site / its design etc. You can find that if you increase these things by just small amounts you see huge returns across thousands of product pages. As Google focusses more and more on trust metrics, I think this kind of approach will reap ever greater rewards.

Follow Will Critchlow on Twitter for SEO tips, @willcritchlow

SearchLove Conference: Q&A with Will Critchlow

I’m presenting on 2 different panels today: Industrial Strength PPC and eCommerce & Retail Search Marketing Tactics. Here are my presentations! I’d love to hear your tips for either topic, so leave a comment.

Presentations from SMX East: Industrial Strength PPC & eCommerce PPC Tips

Part of my job is keeping up on all of the paid search news. It’s easy to get swept up in vast and generous search community only to realize that the general marketing public doesn’t obsess about paid search like we do.

Fortunately, I had a chance to take a step back and think about PPC from a non-search marketer’s point of view for my interview on Marketwire’s Ask The Expert. In their words, “the Ask the Expert interview series is Marketwire’s way of delving into the minds of industry leaders and experts, asking them the most salient and pertinent questions that affect PR, IR and marketing communications professionals.”

In the interview, I tackled 7 broad and tactical questions about PPC:

• Where does PPC fit in the overall marketing mix?
• What are some of the trends in paid search that marketers need to know about?
• What are some of the barriers that keep people from improving their PPC ROI?
• Could you briefly explain what Quality Score (QS) is and provide us with some tips on how people can improve QS?
• Explain the correlation between PPC, SEO and Social. How do you see the three working together?
• When it comes to paid search, it’s important to try to understand the thought process of the customer.  What are your top web analytics metrics that provides this insight?  Can you provide tips on improving these metrics?
• How do you see ClickEquations evolving within the next couple years now that companies and brands have so much focus on social media?

Read the interview here. Thanks to Nick Shin for the opportunity.

Ask The Expert: My Interview about PPC on Marketwire

We’re all trying to improve our paid search performance from our current profit to our potential profit by doing better research, optimizing our campaigns and improving our site. When does it make sense to invest in technology to help you with that process?

That’s the theme of my speech today on the Search Marketing Toolbox panel at Search Engine Strategies San Francisco. I shared the 4 types of problems that prevent you from improving your profit, 43 paid search marketing tools and my Paid Search Marketing Technology Curve.

I recommend when it makes sense to invest in education and which tools you should consider, depending on how important paid search is to your company.

The Paid Search Technology Maturity Curve

This year, I was honored to be invited to present at SMX Advanced in London. I took the opportunity to vent all of my pent up anger at reports from years spent as a web analyst and Account Manager in a presentation called “4 Ways Reports Suck (And How To Fix Them).

Joking aside, I share 4 ways to make reporting more about optimization. Alex Minchin was kind enough to record my presentation for those who didn’t make it:

SMX London 2010 – Alex Cohen Tells Us Why Reports Are Useless from Alex Minchin on Vimeo.

Video: 4 Ways Reports Suck (And How To Fix Them)

Things have been quiet here on Digital Alex, because I’ve been spending a lot of time writing for Search Engine Watch and speaking at search conferences.

No rest for the weary, though, as I’m presenting a free webinar about keyword research. The webinar was organized by ClickEquations (my company) and Compete, the folks who have a great free competitive intelligence tool (and a pay one that’s much cheaper than Hitwise).

Keywords are the gateway in PPC advertising that connect your business to prospects. But, how do you find keyword niches that are profitable? I’ll talk about 2 unconventional techniques to finding the right keywords (or, rather, search queries):

1. Competitive Intelligence – Discover which words are driving traffic to your competitors sites and which ones drive engagement.
2. Search Query Mining – Uncover the real words people use before they click on your text ad and stop irrelevant clicks

You’ll leave with actionable tips and free tools  you can use immediately to improve your PPC campaigns. Space is limited. Register now!

I’m Presenting a Free Webinar on Keyword Research

Search marketing is 1% data and 99% action. But, we all spend a lot of time on reporting. This presentation, which I just delivered at SMX London, shows you 4 ways PPC reports suck and how you can fix them.

4 Ways Reports Suck (And How To Fix Them)

Google does not make money from organic search. It’s simply content they need to monetize like any publisher.

As with all publishers, their goal is to maximize revenue by:

• Increasing market share
• Improving user loyalty and product usage
• Monetizing users more effectively

In the past few years, Google has made significant improvements in the relevance of their organic search results (content) by introducing Universal Search – the integration of new types of content such as video and product listings directly into search results.

While those changes occurred, PPC ads have largely remained text only. It’s possible that as universal search has gone mainstream, clicks on paid search ads may have suffered. Something had to give.

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The Text Ad Revolution

As I noted in my post 2009: The Year AdWords Attacked Organic Search, Google made a series of changes, some rather dramatic, to their once staid text ads last year.

• February 20, 2009 – Updated Display URL Policy
• March 4, 2009 – Expandable Rich Media Ads on the Content Network (beta)
• March 11, 2009 – Interest Based User Targeting on the Content Network (beta)
• May 14, 2009 – Google Loosens Their Trademark Restrictions
• July 24, 2009 – Local Extensions for Local Business Ads
• August 6, 2009 – Google Moves Paid Ads Closer to Organic Listings
• September 17, 2009 – The DoubleClick Ad Exchange is Integrated on the Content Network
• October 29, 2009 – New AdWords Comparison Ads
• November 3, 2009 – Ad Sitelinks in AdWords
• November 11th and 24, 2009 – Product Extensions Open to All

These changes largely fall under Google’s AdWords New Ad Formats Initiative. When I was at SES Chicago, I asked Devin Sandoz, Product Marketing Manager for AdWords, about the guiding principles behind the initiative. He pointed to the evolution of organic search results as the model for the initiative.

Google is playing with the visual balance between organic and paid search to balance user satisfaction and the average revenue per click/SERP. Any combination of images, videos, PlusBoxes, icons, product listings and multiple text ad links can now appear mixed in with paid search ads.

And this is only the beginning.

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2010: The Year of Universal Paid Search

2010 will be the year of what I’m naming Universal Paid Search – the evolution of online advertising served to searchers on Google and across the web.

Universal Paid Search will be driven by 4 major trends:

1. Increased Ad Diversity
2. Moving Beyond Clickthrough Rate
3. Personalized Text Ads
4. Search Retargeting with Display

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Increased Ad Diversity

Text ads will continue to dominate most search results. However, we’ll see a greater percentage of SERPs with new ad formats and ad extensions blended into text ads, specifically:

• Product listings ads
• Product listing extensions
• Comparative Ads
• Ad sitelinks

The conditions that trigger comparative ad and ad sitelinks are somewhat limited. It’s more likely, then, that product listing ads and extensions will be the first step in increased ad diversity.

Click to Enlarge

New ad formats are more disruptive than ad extensions, so I expect that Google be more liberal with their beta tests for ad extensions. These often come in the form of their PlusBox. For example, rich media ads were introduced to the Content Network through the PlusBox earlier this year. As this analysis shows, the presence of PlusBox does increase clickthrough rates.

Click to Enlarge

I wouldn’t be surprised if we see video ads wade into the waters through the PlusBox. They’ve already tested these out in the entertainment area. PlusBox could also help recoup some of the massive drop in search spending within the pharmaceutical industry by adding a place for fair balance.

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Moving Beyond Clickthrough Rate

Universal Paid Search isn’t just about new ads, it’s also about new calls-to-action/conversion events and monetization models for Google.

Google is increasingly trying to move the customer experience from advertisers’ sites to the search results or other areas of Google.com. For example, Google is introducing ad formats to monetize ambiguous but high volume head terms in the loan industry with Comparative Ads. These ads lead users to a page where users give additional information about their query and advertisers pay if the user clicks through. These formats currently appear on a limited basis:

“At this time, Comparison Ads will only show to a small number of users in select U.S. states and is only available to a limited number of advertisers in the mortgage/refinance space. Over time, we’ll increase the number of users who see Comparison Ads offers as well as the number of advertisers able to participate”

Click to Enlarge

Other lead generation business models are probably within their sights. Similarly, new ad extensions are offering alternative actions for more specific queries:

• Form Extensions Beta allows users to fill out a form right on the SERP if the ad is in the preferred position (#1 spot above organic listings). Advertisers are charged the Max CPC for submissions.Click to Enlarge
  
• Click to Call with location extensions lets users browsing through smartphones click-to-call phone numbers in sponsored listings.

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Personalized Text Ads

As text ad change, so will the way Google serves them to individual users. Earlier this year personalized search moved mainstream with the decision to extend it to users who weren’t signed into Google.

That announcement was limited to organic search. When Google implements personalized results in organic search, they can measure the impact to customer satisfaction more directly and advertisers don’t really have a say in the process.

A similar evolution in search ads will occur, with some users more likely to see different ads or types of ads based on past interaction with search ads. However, paid search is much more complicated. Advertisers want to be target, measure and optimize variations in how their ads appear.

We’re already seeing personalized search ads with session based retargeting for broad match (here, here and here). Notably, Google introduced the feature, then reporting and still hasn’t given advertisers the explicit ability to opt into or out of this kind of advanced ad serving (with the exception of search query reports and negatives).

I expect Google will move most cautiously into personalized paid search and follow the same feature -> reporting -> control model.

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Search Retargeting with Display

Perhaps the biggest trend in Universal Paid Search isn’t about SERPs at all – Google’s move into display. In case you missed it, Google is putting a big emphasis on display in 2010:

“Our display business will give advertisers the opportunity to reach people with visual stories and narratives that they couldn’t with search-ad text,” Mr. Schmidt said on a call with analysts.

“We’ve been saying for a while that display is a big opportunity. One story you haven’t seen so far is how successful we’ve been in display, but that will come out in 2010.” (AllThingsD)

Display is an enormous component of online advertising spend and critical to Google’s continued revenue growth. Today, AdWords and display coexist primarily in the content network where advertisers can place image (and some rich media) through contextual targeting.

That model started to change when Google introduced behavioral targeting for audiences based on “interests” on the content network.

Google wants to monetize non-Google properties with their AdWords model of self-service and real-time bidding. They can accomplish this at scale through the eventual merging of AdSense and the Double Click Advertising Exchange.

There will be a mid-to-long term learning curve to get traditional performance advertisers who use search to migrate some of their budget to display whenever that integration occurs. Search retargeting, which I’m defining in this case as reaching people who’ve already visited your site from search with display ads, will bridge that gap in the short term. This isn’t news to search advertisers, since Yahoo already offers this feature.

The walls that divide search and display (and their budgets) will fall as the technology, data and training advance.

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Grappling with Universal Paid Search

Universal Paid Search will introduce more complexity and competition than ever before. Traditionally search exclusive advertisers and agencies are likely to be face pressure to test new advertising options and explore ways to integrate display into the mix.

I suggest you make friends with your Google rep to get advanced notice and access to betas.  Prepare yourselves; it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Alex Cohen is the Senior Marketing Manager at ClickEquations, a complete pay per click software platform for large advertisers and agencies.

The Rise of Universal Paid Search