Evincii, a new company out of Mountain View, CA recently announced the launch of its “Search Engine in the Store” product. Geared specifically towards guiding the consumer purchase process of OTC products, the interactive machines are currently installed in a handful of drugstores on the West Coast.

The product is modeled after GPS units and designed to provide quick, relevant solutions to shoppers. It is capable of making product suggestions based on both specified search criteria and availability of products in a particular store. Not surprisingly, Johnson & Johnson is the first CPG advertiser to take advantage of this new offering.

Evincii is currently pricing marketing programs on a pay-for-performance model, meaning advertisers only pay when their specific product is recommended to a consumer using the Search Engine in the Store product. Advertisers are able to track how often their products are recommended by time, region and retailer chain, enabling the analysis of shopper purchase patterns and allowing for more informed marketing efforts.

Evincii claims that initial programs have demonstrated proven category sales lift of 3% - 6%. Certainly, having a presence at the consumer point of purchase is beneficial to advertisers. As more advertisers partner with Evincii, however, the environment could become just as competitive and cluttered as a typical search results page. In addition, without a customized research study, it’s not clear that the company is able to track consumer behavior beyond the product recommendation point, which is crucial in determining the success of the program.

Whether or not the product becomes a successful advertising platform, it is an interesting example of how search is becoming more ingrained in the consumer lifestyle. As people increasingly demand relevant, personalized information, search continues to be the preferred platform to provide it – both online and offline.

Article by Krista Gaedtke

Thus far we discussed Consolidation in the UK Travel Market and Travel & Search. This week Arianne concludes this series with a discussion on Brand Terms & Conversion Attribution.

Be aware of your brand terms. Upwards of 90% of actions can come through brand if the brand is well known. This doesn’t mean that your other keywords are not performing. There can be upwards of 7-10 paid clicks for every booking that occurs – however only about 40% of all first searches will be on brand compared to >60% of final searches. This means that it is the generic, perhaps long-tail terms that are driving people to the point of conversion – on a brand term. To ensure that these terms receive credit for the part they play, try and work with weighted objectives or attribution – which apportions out a part of the conversion and its value to each keyword that contributed. There is no one particular attribution model that works best for travel – but a very useful one is a model which excludes brand clicks from taking any share of a conversion. This may sound strange, but if the brand click is the final click in the booking process, you could argue that someone who clicked on your branded PPC ad right before buying is just as likely to have clicked on your brand’s natural listing or found your site in some other way and still converted. In this way you see the true effectiveness of your campaigns, as you can see which non-branded keywords are generating leads and driving people to convert. I wouldn’t suggest that this is the only model you use, but it can be useful to have 3 views: an overall view, a branded view and then a non-branded one. If you view these individually you can see your “true” results – including brand terms can often make your CPA or other target look artificially low.

When working with travel it is key that you understand your product. If possible have a chat with the yield/commercial teams – find out about margin, or areas that are experiencing growth or a downturn, and adjust your marketing accordingly. Look back at historical data to discover your “look-to-book” times – this can help with calculating objectives and knowing when to expect results from ad spends.

Article by Arianne Donoghue

On May 1st, the Nielsen Company released TotalWeb, a new report that combines the data from Nielsen’s Mobile and Online (PC based) measurement products in one report. TotalWeb shows the unduplicated, unique audience for over 200 leading Internet sites. In addition to unique audience, TotalWeb can provide site-level reporting of active reach, audience overlap and demographics across platforms.

Looking at the mobile and PC unique audiences for Q4 2007 leading sites, Nielsen found that on average there was a 13% increase in mobile uniques over PC-based traffic. Various online verticals of the measured sites fared better than others; the Entertainment vertical saw a 22% increase, while games and music verticals both saw 15% increases. Social Networking and search vertical audiences increased 3% and 2% on average respectively. Weather sites showed an increase of 22% over visitors specifically on home PCs; this may differ when you include work PCs.
According to Nielsen, there are 87 million US mobile users who subscribe to a mobile Internet or data package with their provider. Of these, 13.7 percent actively use Internet services each month, which means significant potential for growth. Apparently mobile has a developing audience just waiting for the creation of a viable marketing and advertising model.

As we witness long running traditional publishers move from print to an online only model, businesses are beginning to understand the importance of meeting the audience on their terms. Taking this a step further, is it possible that we may eventually see publishers shift from PC-based online to a mobile online only model? Time may yet tell.

By Joel Collymore

A new study looks at how search engines get search traffic outside their own search engines.  What is interesting is the stat that less than half of Yahoo's paid search clicks happen on its own search sites.

Yahoo! rejected Microsoft.  Was it the worst decision ever? 

William Flaiz discusses

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