Get More from Search - Trends in Search & Social Media

The economic downturn has decreased revenues in nearly every sector of business, including digital advertising. Yet, because of the shift, the digital sector has quickly become a haven for more traditional ad budgets. The Internet is viewed as the most measurable medium and its performance-based ad models are becoming increasingly attractive for offline campaigns that lack the deep metrics and engagement factor that digital media provides.

Local advertising deserves ample attention in this shift since it accounts for 55% of all ad spending. The total ad market in 2009 was over $235 billion; more than $130 billion of that was spent on local ads, as reported by BIA/Kelsey in its new report: “U.S. Local Media Annual Forecast.”

By 2014, local advertising is predicted to account for 25 percent of all digital media advertising. A “steady shift toward digital media” will cause online spending to increase to $37 billion by that time, up from $15 billion in 2009. While local will grow, the BIA/Kelsey report also foresees larger than previously forecasts declines in newspapers and direct mail.

Mobile will drive a good deal of the local advertising growth. Most people now have Internet access via their mobile devices and when we’re on the move, we’re thinking and engaging at a local level. Thus, cohesive mobile campaigns will not only help businesses, it will serve the mobile subscribers directly or indirectly seeking local products and services. As more mobile ad formats are delivered, the mobile ad market could see even greater gains.

Tweet This  Post by Jennifer Gosse.

Vortaloptics custom search engines include revenue components that empower its clients to maximize the return on investment from their engines. Since the engine is completely controllable by the client, they can improve the relevancy of the search results and also place key partners and affiliates into their engines.

Vortaloptics never recommends listing irrelevant content just to profit from clicks, but rather consults our clients to focus on the most relevant content that users are seeking and match advertising, affiliates and partners to the search results pages to those search phrases to build a better user experience.

Because the content on our client results pages is hyper-relevant to the search terms and those results pages provide contextual ad and partner content, the ROI from clickthroughs is typically much higher for our clients than from traditional ads placed on blogs, for instance.  Search results page ads typically outperform regular page advertisements anyway, but because our clients can control the content of their results pages the ROI is on average, 10 times greater.

Affiliate marketing—using one website to drive traffic to another—is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers’ marketing strategies.

With clients being able to hone in top performing ads, they can now focus on the search phrases and clickthroughs that pay the most. Optimizing your website revenue is particularly important in a tough economy. One way to do this is to seek out the top affiliate programs and add as organic search content and banner listings.

As an example, Speedy Cash is launching a new affiliate program with one of the highest commissions per lead in the financial payday loans industry. Vortaloptics’ local search clients could signup for the Speedy Cash affiliate program and insert banners, text links and search results into their search engine for this payday loans affiliate program. When users search for or click on the financial services subcategory, the Speedy Cash program can receive prominent placement.

Being able to maximize revenue efforts by focusing on the top paying affiliate, partner and advertising initiatives makes good business sense. A well placed $85/lead link is worth the effort over a $1/lead program. Vortaloptics provides the technology to help administrators quickly focus their efforts on the top ROI programs and provide better value to their users.

Tweet This  Post by David Gosse.

A new shopping behavioral trend has emerged in recent months: the info shopper. Fiscal responsibility is top of mind and whether we need or want something, we’re going to pour over the details before we spend our hard-earned cash.

Even offline purchases are scrutinized these days. People are increasingly suspect of TV ads, particularly frustrated with the lack of critical decision-making information available via the traditional format. Consumers are pursuing their curiosities online, learning a lot and gaining confidence throughout the process. 92% of respondents to a recent survey by Penn, Scoen and Berland have more confidence in the information they glean rather than in store clerks or other sources. Cars, homes, computers and medical care are top info-seeking areas, with 4 out of 5 shoppers gathering data online before buying.

As is usually the case, consumer behavior is changing more rapidly than marketers of products. People want full disclosure upfront. Dyson’s model of sharing the secret of their unique products with customers builds trust and increases loyalty.But many companies fail to divulge details that have become necessary for consumers to even consider buying their products.

The trend manifests in everything from big ticket items to daily personal care products. For instance, instead of just buying the same shampoo they’ve always purchased, people want to know whether it will work well with their hair type, color, whether the plastic is recyclable, what the ingredients are and what other shoppers think of the shampoo. Trivial information perhaps to some, but important to others who care more about value then ever before. After all, why waste money on a purchase that isn’t in the good to excellent category when better buying decisions are a few clicks away?

Well-informed decisions are now a right, not a luxury. That’s why aggregator and search sites will become more valuable, as they mash-up content from reviews,  manufacturers and press, giving buyers more of an unbiased story from which they can draw their own conclusions.

Tweet This  Post by Jennifer Gosse.

SEOptimise’s blog, “Five online marketing New Year’s resolutions,” provides five healthy reminders for your 2009 goals, especially if you’re still not optimizing your online marketing potential via search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) quite like you should.

Resolutions include: set a budget, start a blog, focus on your auidence, seek experts (especially when you don’t exactly know what to do), and be personable (build relationships, don’t base your online voice on tooting your brand’s horn).

Don’t let fear or failure or the unknown daunt your marketing resolutions. Sure, there are signficant changes in the economy, consumer behavior and online marketing techniques. While our realities are undergoing constnat evolution, there are certain SEO truisms that still reign supreme, such as: lots of relevant, keyword-rich content; great inbound links and proper site architecture and fomratting.

Focus on the basics, put forth a plan for this year and just take the first steps. A little action, even if imperfectly executed, is better than procrastinating for a better quarter, a bigger budget or a more stable economy. Go forth and resolve to better position your site and establish better relationships with your audience in 2009!

Tweet This  Post by David Gosse.

SearchIgnite reports a 33% increase in retailer’s ad spending over last year illustrates that retailers are likely pouring more dollars into search campaigns which can be monitored and tweaked in real-time.

Roger Barnette, president of SearchIgnite notes: “Advertisers are shifting more dollars to paid search and digital media. Retailers want media they can buy on a performance bases to track and measure.”

Despite a decline in overall consumer spending, people are steadily purchasing goods over the Internet. Observationally, retailers are offering more incentives earlier in the season than is typical,  likely incentivizing consumers to go ahead and make necessary and discretionary purchases.

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Online advertising data offers some light in the current economic do. Third quarter figures reveal an 11 percent increase over 2007, coming in at $5.9 billion, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The first nine months of revenues set a new record, climbing 14% over the same period last year. This data not only shows that Internet advertising has continuing to grow as predicted, it reveals that its becoming a haven for ad dollars in the downturn. Continually hailed as the most cost-effective and measurable method of reach customers, online shines while other ad outlets fade.

Tweet This  Post by David Gosse.