Or shall I put it another way…

Ask.com: The Official Search Engine of NASCAR

Yes!  A brilliant stroke by the Ask marketing department, and one that just might revive their diminishing market share to a livable level.  Alliteration aside, there are a few concerns that come to mind immediately.  Will this work?  Don’t they worry about hitching their wagon to a fossil fuel burnin’ sport?

Yes, this will work.  NASCAR fans are nothing if not loyal.  Having spent some time in the Carolinas, the NASCAR heartland, I was amazed at the popularity of Tide detergent.  Southerners don’t actually care one way or another for the intrinsic qualities of Tide versus All or Gain, but they sure as sugar know who put 93 Octane in Darrell Waltrip’s gas tank, and that was Tide.

While we can all worry about Peak Oil and fossil fuel use, there is a marketing reality to consider.  There already is a search engine that’s tied to progressive issues, Google.  There can’t be two firms in the same industry with the same marketing hook.  Remember when Hollywood studios kept releasing similar asteroid/comet movies, then animated ant movies, then romantic comedies starring Matthew McConaghey and Kate Hudson?  Well, it just goes to show that duplicating someone else’s strategy leaves us all poorer for the effort.  And hey, somebody has to zig when everybody else zags (or is it the other way around?).

In a year where the New York Times is reporting on NASCAR’s falling revenues and fleeing sponsors, Ask is stepping in at just the right time.  First, they’re probably getting a hell of a deal (automakers, take a note), the NY Times story indicates that drivers and the league are having to slash their budgets by one third this year.  My guess is advertisers are driving this by offering less this year, and the league has no choice but to take a cut in a tough advertising market.  Another masterful stroke by Ask.com which the automakers don’t get, they historically compete against one another to win NASCAR fans’ affections.  That’s three carmakers duking it out in a limited pool of buyers.  Ask.com will be the only search engine for NASCAR, prime recruiting ground with long term potential.  My suggestion to whichever of the big three automakers is left next year, call the ad:tech conference and offer to be their official car.  Last time I was there, they didn’t have a single car sponsor, but had three major search engines fighting for attention!

And while it’s easy to poke fun at the NASCAR fan and position them as a mindless yokels, eager to glom onto some marketing pitch, they are a lot savvier than we think.  After all, if buying one five-bladed razor over another will ensure you get to watch your favorite cars race and crash at two hundred miles per hour while you crack a few cold ones with your pals every Saturday and Sunday, wouldn’t you pick up the Fusion?

Any way you look at it, Ask should come out a winner from this sponsorship.  Next time I have a burnin’ question about which drivers have longstanding feuds, I’ll be sure to ask the official search engine of NASCAR.

Over the past two months, we have been working with Yahoo! on a problem we first observed in July with one of our accounts. The matching methodology, “Advanced Match” in Yahoo!’s parlance, was not delivering traffic as we understood the system to work. We now have confirmation that Yahoo! has been breaking their own guidelines with regard to delivering traffic.

Let’s start with how Yahoo! describes their matching system:

Pretty clear, right? All the things that we SEM folks have come to know and understand. (For more irony read Yahoo!’s own advice for their matching system here).  One thing worth mentioning, all new accounts, campaigns and adgroups launch on advanced match by default, which also happens to increase Yahoo!’s bottom line substantially.

Now let me direct your attention to exhibit 2: highlights from a recent phrase match report I analyzed for a client when our results started decreasing:

My initial reaction to this report: AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!

A more considered response: while it is true that all trade schools are schools, not all schools are trade schools. As my firm is only interested in advertising to individuals looking for specifically “trade schools,” as our keyword selection attests, we object to Yahoo! displaying our very specific ad to anyone who happens to query “school.” It is a waste of our money, and this practice does not conform to Yahoo!’s own explanation of how their system works.

According to their help section (see Yahoo Advanced Match image above), matching happens in the following forms: exact, singular/plural variations, common misspellings, in a phrase, separated by word[s] or in a different order. So let’s look at Yahoo!’s Search Query Report; taking into account these seven options for advanced match, try to understand how the search query “trade” is relevant to our keyword “trade schools” or how “east LA” is relevant to “east LA college.” You will notice that our full root keyword is nowhere to be found in most of these matches. Not only does this affect advertisers but also results in poor quality for the end user.

The most unethical part to this is the fact that the report required to even diagnose this HUGE issue (Yahoo! Search Query Report) is not freely available in Yahoo!’s interface―clearly free access to this would open up a huge can of worms―and was never brought to our attention by Yahoo! It was only through scrutinizing our client’s results and seeing unexpected declines that we started requesting this report.

Now that I’ve freaked you out (and if you work in SEM, you should be floored by this practice), you will need to do something about it. In the short term, here is what you must do:

• Switch all Yahoo! keywords to standard match. The only time you will not be hit with this atrocious matching issue is if you switch everything to standard match, at least until Yahoo! changes their policy to what they claim to offer. Traffic volume will decrease because your ads will not display for as many keywords, but it will be better quality traffic, thus increasing potential for conversions.

This wouldn’t be good advice without a few provisos, so here are a few:

• If your campaign is performing poorly now, adjust everything to standard match. This will give you some time to follow the next steps and put together your game plan.
• Refine your negative keyword lists. This can be done at an account and adgroup level.
• Review your matching and be specific. Don’t set your whole account to advanced match. Instead, bucket your keywords into adgroups based on what you feel will work better as advanced or standard and change matching accordingly.

1. Note: Standard matching includes plurals and common misspellings
2. Advanced match is where Yahoo! is hitting advertisers with poor matching, so select your keywords wisely

• Yahoo! only allows 250 negatives, not much when we are looking at their poor quality matching, so prioritize your negatives wisely across account and adgroup levels.
• Request a Search Query Report from Yahoo! Use this report to include more specific keywords rather than just relying on advanced match. Yes, there is a possibility that not all of your keywords will be approved; however, it is heavily dependent on how you put them through editorial with the match type.

This is a terrible problem, and these fixes are only half measures. The real solution is to get together as an SEM community and hammer Yahoo! into submission on this issue. They have screwed up immensely, and it is costing all of their advertisers in wasted adspend (to Yahoo!’s benefit, don’t even bother feigning surprise) and costing the end user in poor-quality results. This is unacceptable behavior, and ultimately We the SEMers need to show our displeasure in a variety of ways.

Yesterday’s Washington Post presented online advertising bloggers such as myself with this gem.  The gist of the article, “Facebook Ads Target You Where It Hurts,” is that the author was offended by what she perceived as over-the-top targeting by advertisers, which was allowed by Facebook.  Unfortunately, Rachel Beckman does not understand the way advertisers are allowed to target on Facebook, thus creating one the biggest journalistic faux pas– presentation of misleading information.

It is important to understand exactly how an advertiser might target their ads to understand where the flaws are in this article, so let’s go straight to the source and take a look.  I’ll go through the steps in question and show you screenshots so you can judge for yourself.

We begin by clicking the small “advertising” hyperlink at the bottom of the Facebook login page, bringing us to two options: Social Ads and Facebook Pages.  For this, I am only interested in Social Ads.

The process is pretty straightforward from here.

Step 1: What URL do you want your ads to direct traffic to?

Step 2: Write a compelling ad and include an interesting picture.

Step 3: Target your ad. Here are your options:

The third step is where Ms. Beckman gets it wrong.  You can only go so far with your targeting, and it is all based upon user-provided data.  For this example, I know my product will appeal to cat lovers, but that is too broad for my limited advertising dollars.  Therefore, I added a few corporations which have a reputation for being somewhat sinister, figuring that any cat lover who works for them might also be an “evil” cat lover and a potential Bonsai Kitten customer.  Drilling down to this level has provided me with approximately 100 people, who I can hit over and over again with a small budget until I convince them of the wisdom and aesthetics that only Bonsai Kitten can provide.

The same is true of the advertiser who placed the Muffin Top social media marketing ad which so offended Ms. Beckman.  They did not know that Ms. Beckman was concerned about her weight, but they did know a few generalities about America and a few specifics about Ms. Beckman.  Starting with the newsworthy, The Post recently reported that two thirds of all adults in America are overweight or obese.

If I’m an advertiser of a diet product, I can thus conclude that showing an ad to a random set of 100 Americans will net 66 potential customers for my product.  Taking it a step further, we all know from anecdote that brides-to-be universally worry about how they will look in “the dress.” Therefore, if we target women who are engaged, we almost guarantee* ourselves close to 66%  who are overweight, while the remaining 34% will be self conscious about their weight anyway.  It seems their guess was correct and they effectively reached Ms. Beckman, causing her to evaluate their ad (though not perhaps in the way they wished).

Ms. Beckman’s points on the targeting are correct up until this assertion: “Facebook Ads, which targets users’ presumed areas of interest (or psychological soft spots).”  They do no such thing.  All of the psychological aspects are inferred by the advertiser from anecdote and statistic.  The fact that they are correct only indicates that the advertiser did their job, not that Facebook colluded with them to dig in to users’ most fundamental insecurities.  Further, it is the advertiser doing the targeting, not Facebook.  Facebook set up a system with rules and information available for advertisers, the users provide that information.  I hold that Facebook should not be accused of violating some sort of public trust.  Ms. Beckman even recounts how Facebook revised its rules based on user complaints such as hers.

Fundamentally, this type of targeted advertisement serves both user’s and advertiser’s interests, resulting in a more efficient advertising market and better returns for all involved, end user included.  I am a cyclist, and the fact that Facebook, Google and others see fit to serve me predominantly cycling-related ads benefits me more than when I am watching “male” TV programming and see ads for lite beer and Chevrolets.

I welcome this type of targeted advertising, and as an online marketing professional, will continue to use it to reach my client’s marketing goals.  Bonsai Kitten anyone?

*Statistical variation notwithstanding.

From our friends at Ars Technica comes news of a settlement between ValueClick and ill-used customers and affiliates.  The gist of the matter is that “allegedly”, ValueClick was negligent in their due diligence with regard to some affiliates inserting spyware elements into their ads.  Once installed, this malware would then be able to do all manner of bad things, from innocently stealing future leads from competing affiliates, to malicious uses of the end  users machines.  While I always like to see resolution to outstanding conflicts, I can’t say I feel the least bit sympathetic towards ValueClick.  Their reputation in the industry is not exactly stellar.

From my own experience, we entertained a proposition from ValueClick about two years ago to deliver leads at a flat CPA.  Our only stipulation was that none of the traffic could be incentivized.  For those not familiar, incentivized traffic is something like “fill out this form, get a free iPod!”.  The problem is obvious, the user is not interested at all in your offering of life insurance, secondary education or nearly anything else, but rather doing what it takes to get a free iPod.

So after making it very clear that we weren’t interested in incentivized traffic, we were ready to go, and asked for a screenshot of how our ad process would be delivered to the end user.  The first page of their example was “Get a free surf and turf dinner, click here to start!”, which then lead to our page.

Needless to say, we cancelled the deal before it started.

What this tells me is that the tried and true lessons of business are the same anywhere you go.  If you aren’t straight with people, it will catch up to you in the end.  If you run an honorable and fair business, you will keep your nose clean and have fewer headaches in the long run.

This morning while optimizing a search campaign on Yahoo based on this weekend’s results, I ran into something extremely common in the SEM industry, the misleading graph. It happens all the time, a graph view is default set to a time period or volume interval that essentially presents the data in a way that doesn’t visually reflect what is actually going on.

The graph I was looking at was rather innocuous, but annoying nonetheless, the first view I saw was impressions, and looking at my two day view, it got my attention. From one day to the next, there appeared to be a twenty degree upward slope. Now, on a standard graph, you would expect that kind of slope to correlate to a rather noticeable increase. However, once I took another sip of coffee and glanced at the interval, I noticed it had been foreshortened to start at 1,925 impressions, and rose to just over 2,000 impressions, about a 3.5% increase in impressions. Once I flipped over to the “Clicks” view, any cause for worry was dispelled, clicks did not change at all Saturday to Sunday.

The problem is the interval setting which Yahoo is using, more specifically, it’s defined by their system without any input from the user, so you never know what the system will give you. To illustrate, I’ve created two graphs off of the same data in Excel, only changing the interval range.

Note that one graph looks like there is a large amount of variation, the other indicates a very small variation. If we are talking about a value like impressions, where the numbers are large, the second graph would be a more accurate visual representation. Conversely, if we are looking at something like clicks or conversions with small numbers, a graph with the sensitivity of the former would be most accurate.

Call me a stickler for accuracy, but I’m much more in favor of allowing users to override a default setting in order to make the tools work better. Take note, Carl Icahn, if you want to improve the value of Yahoo, help the people who help make this company a success… and let me know if you ever want an exhaustive list of things your search marketing engineers need to fix, I’ll be happy to oblige.

Our friends over at ArsTechnica have reported that in the coming months Google will team up with Yahoo and Adobe to develop an algorithm to spider Flash webpages.  WOW!  It’s about time, but WOW!

This was the thorn in the side of webdevelopers and search marketers for years.  Clients love flash because of the sharp looks and slick packaging you can do, search people hate it because Flash is all pictures, and thus does not get its content indexed in Google, or anybody elses, massive online indexes.  This will potentially solve the problem, allowing clients and their marketing teams to dance a happy dance.

According to Ars:

“Google says it’s able to do this by developing an algorithm that ‘explores Flash files in the same way that a person would,’ by clicking buttons and manually going through Flash content”

So if we must infer, Google has finally developed A.I., and is setting it loose on the world… what’s the name of their new algorithm, SkyNet?

Joking aside, this will be fantastic for SEO folks, who will have more things to figure out in the near term, but an easier job in the long term.  Thanks again Google.

In a recent article on GameIndustry.biz, Alex St. John, founder of Wild Tangent explains their departure from game interrupting advertisments.

You may remember Wild Tangent from agonizing late night registry cleanings of years past, the other name for what they were up to is “AdWare.”  Well, in 2007, they switched to standard IAB model of ads before the games start, and here’s what St. John has to say about their results:

“You sell it with standard media sales force, part of a standard IAB ad unit. It sells great, it’s easy to scale, it is easy to explain, it is easy to measure, and it works for any kind of game.” Wild Tangent’s ad revenues went up 400 per cent the minute they switched to this model in 2007, according to the GameIndustry.biz article.

This leap of faith paid off because they conformed to a system which Google has pioneered for years, put simply “Don’t Screw Up the User’s Experience!” Invasive and obtrusive ads generally lead to aggravation of your users, and it is not uncommon for those users to then blame the advertiser for the intrusion, or for their AdWare hassles in general.

I’m glad to see Wild Tangent experiencing success while doing the right thing.

This week brought the SEM industry quite the Easter Egg when none other than Bill Gates himself announced MSN AdCenter’s new recipe for success… paying users to buy things! The program works like a cash back rebate system for a credit card, refunding some amount of money to buyers on completion of a sale by way of gift certificates redeemable with fine merchants such as “eBay, Barnes & Noble.com, Overstock.com, Sears, Zappos.com, and WPP.”

My first thought is that I recognize all of these merchants–they have some sort of discount deal with every online entity you can think of.  For instance, my healthcare company has a “marketplace” links section where I can find a discount deal for several of these merchants. My credit card company and bank also have links to these and other usual suspects soon to sign on with MSN’s new plan. My point is that if you are shopping at these places, you can already get an upfront discount if you go through any number of affiliate-type deals, so I’m not sure the consumer will be gaining a lot with this affiliate deal.  Another flaw was pointed out by Slate’s Chadwick Matlin regarding price consistency.

Second, and the elephant in my office, all of this is contingent on MSN AdCenter working properly, allowing PPC managers to start accounts, and set up ads fluidly and quickly. The IO process alone makes this a big pill to swallow, but let me just demonstrate how AdCenter behaves on a typical May afternoon. (full disclosure, I grabbed the first screenshot a day later when it was working properly again).

This is how AdCenter is supposed to look:

Great right? Looks like a more or less functional interface. For me, that lasted about two adgroups into creating a new campaign before the rails started coming off the whole thing. Pretty soon it looked like this:

Whoa!, where did all the html go? That’s right, it started just going to the site’s wiry undercarriage without the pretty chassis to impress me. Well, it was still functioning, so I just plugged away through another adgroup until…

Yep, another error message, the second one in a week, which is saying a lot as I almost never get them from Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, or any of several tier B engines.

So, no matter how much they are paying people to shop at Zappos, the Achilles heal of Microsoft’s online initiatives is, and has been, AdCenter’s persistent glitches and general difficulty to use.  Until that changes, I find it highly unlikely that their grand schemes will pay off.

Not if they can’t even get adCenter to work, let alone rival the features and functionality of AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing.

As I surmised earlier, Microsoft was putting a lot of eggs in it’s “we’ll buy Yahoo” basket. While this deus ex machina scheme instead collapsed in Steve Balmer’s Shrek-like hands, we account managers suffer most.

The best adjective I can use to describe adCenter is “banged-up,” and how appropriate that seems this afternoon when simply logging into an account proves too much for their system. Did I mention that Microsoft is a SOFTWARE company? These types of online software systems should be their bread and butter, but they are total wrecks compared to the slick package of AdWords, or even the mediocre Yahoo Search Marketing platform (which had its own problems hinging upon merger news to address).

I don’t know what will come of the new talks on some sort of MicroHoo! collaboration, but I just cross my fingers that it will in some way make a more user friendly system for account managers to work with.

The attitude at Microsoft and Yahoo today must be something like the Sunday brunch after a wedding where the bridal party got into a fight, and the wedding was called off. Each camp is brooding and thinking what could’ve been, if only…

The clear loser to me is Microsoft, their PPC and display businesses are both “banged up”, and neither product works very well (I do use both, and can attribute multiple disasters and near disasters to AdCenter and Atlas). Microsoft seemed to go into stasis as the talks of a merger warmed up, and for anyone crossing their fingers that AdCenter or Atlas would see improvements even if the Yahoo deal went bust, four words for you: Don’t Count On It.

The best thing to come out of this disaster of a deal was that I realized how much Steve Balmer is starting to look like Shrek:

(courtesy NY Times)

(trademark- Dreamworks SKG c/o IMDB.com)

I can’t think of the cartoon that Jerry Yang resembles, so suggestions on that front are welcome.

I’d call Jerry the winner, even though their stock takes a massive hit, Yahoo stays independent. While the greedy shareholders will try and tear his head off, I think they’ll pull through. This brings up an interesting question, while the shareholders own the company, is the board required to always act in a way that brings the highest profit, even at the expense of destroying/selling the company? Isn’t this a form of corporate cannibalism that should be rejected?

Either way, search marketers will have to sit and wait for any other company to match Google’s excellent line of marketing products. I’m not holding my breath.