Placement targeting (previously known as Site Targeting) is a Google product that allows advertisers to place text, display, video and gadget advertisements on hand-picked sites within the Google ad network. Many of the long-tail sites in the network aren’t available for purchase through a typical media buy. This makes the product interesting in that it enables advertisers to target niche audiences in various creative formats with minimal waste.

A great example of this is a recent campaign we did for our client, Levi’s®. The Levi’s® Brand & Nike Jordan Brand announced a collaboration of limited-edition toe-to-head fashion packages branded 23:501. The appeal of this type of product is limited to a very niche segment of young, urban males commonly called “sneaker heads.”

Running on top sites for young men (MTV, ESPN, etc.) would have led to a buy with a ton of wasted impressions and may have seemed overly commercial to the fickle “sneaker head” audience. The solution was to run on influential sneaker culture sites through the Google ad network. This allowed Levi’s® to reach the right audience, in the right mindset, with very little waste and a minimal budget. Levi’s® Senior Manager of Internet Marketing was “very happy to be able to reach this hard to find audience in a cost effective manner.”

The next time you are looking to target a niche audience I suggest taking the time to explore the options available in the Google network.

Article by Haley Brothers

Last Friday Google announced that they would start allowing advertisers to buy all keywords, including trademarks, in the UK and Ireland.

Google detractors will cite this as a blatant attempt at driving incremental revenue from branded clicks. Advertisers will balk at having their biggest competitors alongside their trademarked terms. Brands that already spend millions to drive online customers to search for their brand may now have to spend even more to mitigate the potential losses to paid search competitors.

While this policy is not new (US advertisers have long been able to buy trademarked keywords), it’s probable that the UK will be much more affected by this change, as competition for a smaller pool of inventory will tempt small brands to piggy-back traffic from bigger brands.

Implications for the UK landscape aside, the benefit to the consumer is the most important consideration. Surely intention on a branded keyword is absolute. If one searches on the keyword “Expedia,” he/she may be expecting to retrieve Expedia’s website. This is probably true in 99% of cases.

Is it then not intrusive to consumers to have other brands alongside? The contrary argument (the one advocated by Google) is that this gives the customer choice. Surely, it is only fair that if Last Minute offers a better deal on a holiday to Malaga, then the customer should know about it.

Search by its very nature is not a push medium.  If a customer uses Google to search for “holiday to Malaga,” then his/her decision has been made. Therefore, the likelihood of me being swayed for a different holiday choice is unlikely. However, if someone is in the research process on Expedia and then sees a listing for Opodo, the user may visit Opodo as well.

 There is fundamentally nothing unfair here to the consumer. The word “Expedia” has created a conversion for Opodo. It is easy to be critical of Google for allowing this, but in reality a brand’s identity can never really be contained in a bubble. We’ve long been able to criticize brands online and recommend better brands.

All brands are at the peril of consumer opinion; this new trademark policy is simply expands the extent to which brands are diluted online and consumers maintain control. Google is empowering consumers with ultimate choice at the expense of all advertisers.

Article by Nathan Levi

During last month’s Omniture Summit, Omniture announced a new strategic partnership with Baidu.com, the leading Chinese search engine.  The web analytics company released the following statement:

 “As marketers incorporate China into their online search campaigns, Omniture and Baidu.com will be ready with the technology integration to manage the metrics from those campaigns.”

The proposed technology integration will need to include upgrades on how SiteCatalyst reports Chinese letters. Character confusion prevents optimization and measurement of paid and organic search marketing through analytics.  There have been long running issues with web analytics applications, Omniture SiteCatalyst included.

Many analytics applications are still incorrectly interpreting Chinese characters and returning the wrong search keywords.  Google Analytics, for one, reportedly returns Chinese characters as “????” in its analyses. The partnership between Omniture and Baidu will hopefully allow for better Chinese integration in search reports.   

The partnership is not entirely altruistic of Omniture. The current cost of the Omniture products is a bit out of scope for many popular Chinese sites, and Google Analytics through its free offerings and WebTrends through a line of legacy clients currently have a much stronger hold on the market.  The web analytics giant stands to gain increased visibility in the Chinese market through the arrangement.

As evidenced by the opening of a new Taiwan office in the beginning of 2008, Omniture is targeting China for serious growth.   The future will tell how this partnership develops and how it will affect Baidu.com’s growth in US markets.

Article by Joel Collymore

Microsoft and Yahoo! swapped some letters this week that likely don’t seem to convey a lot lovey dovey feelings. First Microsoft sent a letter to the Yahoo! board. Yahoo! responded with a formal rejection. Depending on how Yahoo’s pending Q1 revenue looks, we may be in for a long fight or a fire sale.

David Berkowitz talks about Search Marketing By The Book.

We know how important content is on the web. William Flaiz discusses how to Wordsmith the Web.