Rich media pickings

Just when advertisers start to get their heads around search marketing, enter blended search to shake everything up. By Steve Hemsley

Brands understand vertical search. Consumers type in keywords such as “blue bicycles” and a list of relevant bike websites appears. If someone wants to see pictures of bikes, they search images. Brands also know they must bid on the keywords they predict that their customers will use when searching, and pay when a user clicks on an ad to visit their website.

Although initially developed by Ask.com, Google gave blended search its critical mass. Last year Google devised its own model for blended search – “universal search”. In search results, alongside text, users get relevant pictures, videos, blogs and company and industry news. The video results on Google include listings from YouTube, Google Video and thirdparty sites.

The main benefit of universal search is that users are more likely to find what they are looking for the first time, without refining their search. Rival search engines have similar offerings and universal search is beginning to appear on most marketers’ radar.

It has prompted debate as to whether it is making natural, organic search more effective. There are a number of questions being asked. Will the universal model have a detrimental effect on paid search? If so, does it mean brands should look again at how they allocate their online digital spend? Also, what effect will universal search have on website positions, the search behaviour of consumers and, ultimately, the overall effectiveness of online advertising?

Integrated online marketing company Oneupweb has produced a white paper entitled Cashing In on Universal Search: Questions Needing to be Asked, Answers You Need to Know. It stresses that early adopters among advertisers will have a huge advantage in this new search world.

“No-one knows for sure what the impact will be on website positions,” says chief operating officer Lisa Wehr. “Marketers should be monitoring their search positions to see how the increased competition on the results pages, from well-optimised blogs, press stories and video sites, is affecting their position in search results. How great are the swings from day to day?”

Wehr says as pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers face having their short, text-only ads competing for attention with image-rich search results, they might have to spend more on sitespecific banners or contextual ads.

“Here there are more creative options to add flash animation, sound and video. Such a switch could have a large impact on Google’s potential revenue,” says Wehr.

Initially search experts did think Google would lose out on advertising revenue from introducing universal search. So far it has cleverly managed to limit any potential loss by selling advertising on its other inventory, such as Google Maps. These have seen a 20% increase in traffic since universal search was launched, and they have expanded the local paid options for advertisers.

Google says it remains committed to improving both natural and paid-for listings to provide better leads for advertisers.

“With universal search, we are attempting to break down the walls that traditionally separated our various search properties and integrate the vast amounts of information available,” says a Google spokesman. “It’s early days for universal search, but as the blended results are triggered more frequently by user queries in the UK, we will learn more about the usefulness of all the different results and the search behaviour of Google users.”

Acting on impulse
He says the message to advertisers remains the same. “Search is one of the most transparent, trackable and accountable channels available to marketers in businesses of all sizes,” he says. “Advertisers simply need a robust analytics tool to measure traffic and they should read and act on search data every day.”

Online competitive intelligence service Hitwise provides 1,400 clients with daily insights into how their customers are interacting with various websites and how their competitors are using different tactics to attract online business. Its UK director of research, Robin Goad, says advertisers need to realise that video is the most important emerging area in search. According to Hitwise, UK internet traffic to video websites increased by 178% year-on-year in February.

“Brands are pushing more video content because it has become another way to get a high ranking on organic search. Before, they would have resorted straight to paid search,” says Goad. “However, Paid search will remain important because there are still only limited listings on the first page, so many brands will have little choice but to pay.”

Changing landscape
Universal search is certainly starting to change the paid-search competitive landscape. Traditionally, the text in any PPC ad simply had to be creative enough to compete with the text in the natural search results. Now that a listing will include images and video, this whole area becomes more complicated. Online marketers will have to monitor advertising results much more closely and adjust their bid and placement strategies accordingly.

As well as adding well-tagged videos and pictures to their websites, advertisers will also benefit from adding industry news.

One company to do this successfully is officespace business Choregus. It includes independent news about the leased office-space industry on its website, which means it is picked up by the Google News service and included in any set of relevant universal search results.

Darren Jamieson, content editor at Just Search, says advertisers need to be aware of how Google is now putting a different emphasis on relevancy, and how news and pictures are becoming more important.

“We are already seeing people lose their firstpage rankings. But universal search does offer new opportunities if you can get on to Google News, although this isn’t always easy,” he says. “You need to update your website two or three times a day with non-biased news stories that promote your industry and not your business.”

Media agencies have had to fathom universal search quicker than their clients, so they can advise them. Total Media Digital head of search Carolina Vicente says advertisers must become more sophisticated.

“The move to include more pictures is good news for brands because consumers’ eyes are naturally drawn to images. The potential for conversion is higher,” she says. “Clients are relying on media agencies to guide them through what is a new and confusing area. Clients do not realise how cheap it is to advertise on Google maps, for instance.”

Zed Media strategic search director Georgie Harmel tells clients that universal search will encourage more clicks on natural search listings. This increased spend may have to be allocated to search-engine optimisation as well as to the inclusion of video and pictures. “The true effects will vary by sector and the keywords that users search on,” she says.

Opportunity knocks
She adds that as universal search evolves, there should also be more opportunities for paid search. “The US has recently seen the introduction of the Plus Box. This is an expandable plus sign included in paid-for listings. By clicking on it, users can access the advertiser’s video or location map.”

Mark Syal, head of Walker-I, agrees the impact on natural search and digital marketing budgets could be significant. “There will need to be more investment in content to link back to a website and everything will have to be appropriately coded so that search engines can pick it up,” says Syal. “Brands that can be their own content providers, such as film distributors, could really take advantage of universal search.”

Walker-I client Barclays Stockbrokers is already developing content to boost its search rankings. This has included putting videos of financial product seminars online.

Under suspicion
However, internet agency Netstep says many advertisers still have to fully understand SEO. “The UK under-resources SEO badly, compared with the US. In the UK, only 25% of search spend goes on SEO, while that figure is 50% in the US,” says chairman Barry Mills. “With universal search, the split should be more in favour of SEO this year, but many UK companies remain suspicious of it and substitute PPC where it really isn’t as appropriate.”

One of Netstep’s clients is Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance where the e-commerce and online channel manager Keith Bennett is aware of universal search. “It will certainly impact on our 2008 search strategy, as we try and gain coverage of SERP pensions by placing more visually- engaging content,” he says.

There is one school of thought that advertisers should be trying to create what are effectively ecosystems around their online properties and be less obsessed with getting their listings to number one.

Bill Staples, former UK manager at Ask.com and now head of search at interactive agency Sapient, says advertisers must consider different things. “Sometimes it is the other nine results on the first page that do not link to your site which are the most important,” he says. “A national newspaper article naming your services as award-winning, that appears one rank above your own website, would be an excellent outcome. Equally, a bad review from a trusted consumer advocacy website under your result would be damaging to the brand.”

The most search-savvy advertisers are already embracing universal search. They realise they need to make the best use of all their brand assets if they are to continue to stand out in the page listings.

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