PardonMyFrench

Google Paid Search versus Organic Results for your Brand Terms

To buy brand terms or not to buy brand terms, that is usually the question all brand marketers ask, but especially political ones. There are certain fundamental tactics that are the foundation of great search campaigns, and buying your own brand terms, rather than just relying on organic listings is one of them. Before we dive into why paid search is essential, let’s  quickly look at data to understand how we came to our conclusions.

I looked at Google search data between October 1 and November 3, 2020 for a competitive Senate campaign. During that time, I saw more than 5.2 million organic searches and our ads appeared more than 3.2 million times in paid searches for our Senate client.  Then I looked at search terms that had clicks from both organic listings and paid ads. For example, “Senate Client Name” had organic listing clicks and paid ad clicks during this period. We found 39 of these search queries and those searches delivered 50% of all paid search impressions. That should jump at you because there were another 1.6 million paid search impressions that didn’t generate ANY organic search clicks, and those impressions delivered 1/3 of all donations from paid search. 

So which does better when a paid ad and an organic listing appears at the same time?  I found that: 

• Paid ads generated 160% better click thru rates and 155% better conversion rates than organic listings. 
• Paid ads brought in 72% of all conversions and had 168% better average donation per click than organic clicks.  
• So paid has better conversion rates, better click thru rates and higher average donation per click. Winner, right? Well, maybe but organic listings have their own story to tell.  We found that:
• Organic listings deliver twice as many clicks via twice as many impressions. 
• The average donation from organic search was over 300% higher than paid’s average donors.

So what do we make of this data? Clearly if someone already knows your client an organic listing will probably deliver higher average donors and a lot more clicks to your website. If I had to guess the reason for higher average donors, it’s due to more large donors. If you are looking for a lot of small dollar donors, paid ads seems to be the way to go. Paid ads have higher click thru rates, higher conversion rates, and the average donation per click is better. 

So you might ask yourself, what built-in advantages do paid ads have over organic listings? Well plenty. 

1. Creative Variety: Besides rotating in different messaging (which you should be doing) and different ad formats (responsive, static, and dynamic keyword insertion), you can quickly change the messaging to take better advantage of fast moving stories.
2. Landing Page Testing and Optimization: You can send clicks into different pages and update the messaging to reflect the ads
3. Top of Page Results: Paid ad positions can dominate the top of the page and when it it’s a mobile page, there are even less positions available to you.
4. Your Ads Stand Out and Are Flagged as Ads: In the example above, the campaign website isn’t even above the fold. People have to scroll to get to it. Very often, Google has tons of information ahead of your organic listing  An official listing, Wikipedia, Knowledge Boxes, Top Stories, Questions, and Images. That’s a long way to go to find your organic listing for your campaign website.

Yes, buying brand terms costs money but they deliver higher click thru rates, conversions, and ultimately higher donations per click. Only about 1/3 of your impressions will result in a paid ad click, but when they do click it’s super important. 

Buying brand terms works and it’s the only way to make sure your campaign site gets top priority. In a hotly contested race, I would never ignore paid ads on brand terms and without paying for those ads, you have no guarantee that the searcher will donate to your campaign and besides about 2/3 of the searchers will click on the organic brand listing anyway.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Political Search Conquering in 2020. Is It Still a Thing?

So does being #1 on your opponent’s brand terms really matter anymore? Historically marketers had to be first, and if they weren’t, well, they weren’t running a very comprehensive search campaign. The same thing extended to politics, but this race is proof that this strategy is changing.

While running digital advertising for a high profile 2020 Republican Senate campaign we encountered his opponent buying our brand terms and occasionally appearing higher in the search results than our ads. Was that a reason to panic or a change in strategy? My candidate won reelection in a big fashion, but let’s take a micro look on paid search strategy and the changes in the political search over the years to see if ad position is still king and find out if  search conquering is useful anymore.

What is search conquering? Simply, it is running your own text ads on your competition’s brand terms.  Back when I worked at the online brokerage firm DLJDirect, it was common practice to buy your competitor’s terms and run ads on them. In fact, when I joined Campaign Solutions - CDIAds back in, wow, 2007 and started working on the McCain for President Campaign, I brought that tactic with me. We even had an article published in The Hill that cried foul when I bought Rudy Giuliani’s brand terms and ran McCain for President ads on them; that got me called into the office with our founder because it was too soon in the process to do something like that. Who knew?  Later on in the 2008 cycle, however, we definitely took advantage of Barack Obama’s search traffic and there were plenty of articles that wrote about it. However, that was 2008. Is it still a thing?

Well before we answer that, let's roll back a few years to the last presidential election cycle. Back then, Google Search was really just a pay per click game. Sure, there was enhanced cost per click and later on Cost Per Action (CPA) bidding, but really at the end of the day it was cost per click. Bidding on your opponent’s brand terms, in theory, would drive everyone’s cost per click up (there were always quality scores and page rankings, but let’s not get sidetracked). While it might look like you were stealing traffic, unless you really wrote some slimy text ads, that was never an issue. 

In this cycle, we’ve had the rise of the machine learning and this truly beautiful goal of ROAS (or ROI, Return On Investment, for those not fond of Google’s terms). If you set up your  tracking correctly and have enough conversions, you can have Google place your ads based on your ROI objective (I like to set it at 130%). Now based on the ROI objective, Google’s machines are in the driver’s seat when it comes to bidding —> when to raise your bids, when to lower them and when to increase your spend to capture all that extra traffic. Google’s machines can also expand your search terms, if you use broad matches. ROI optimization is not quite set it and forget it because your search terms need to be monitored, you need to set geo targeting and create well written text ads, but it’s quite a long way away from just adjusting your bids.

There is also another substantial change since the Dark Ages,  but it has to do with the organic search listings. As you can see from the screen shot, there is a lot more information found in the search results—knowledge box on the right, news on the top, Twitter results, the official page and wikipedia. That’s a a lot to compete with. The other major change is the rise in mobile traffic. Mobile results cut back on the amount of paid search positions and that becomes extremely important in rankings.

In the height of competition between the Republican Senate Campaign that I was managing and the Democratic Senate campaign, search really took off. I was getting emails via the campaign from people all over the country complaining that the Democratic Campaign’s ads were “on top of” our ads, but should that really matter any more?

I guess there is some value, but who really wins in the end? Well Google, since it certainly is not the campaign that is using this strategy. Why? I can guarantee you the ROI from this type of bidding is bad because of the way the organic page is built (nobody is stealing traffic) and a little thing called quality score which is likely causing the opponent to pay more for the same clicks.

When you peel back the envelope and look at the results from  inside your geo target (state or district), there might be some value in showing strength, but that’s a PR call. I’d argue to ignore it. On the national level where you are trying to fundraise, it definitely doesn’t matter, especially with an ROI bidding strategy (having Google optimize your ads based on your ROI objective). 

For example, here is Auction Insight data from our national search  campaign. What you can see is that our Senate Campaign was at the absolute top of page 85% of the time (that’s the very tippy top which really helps on the mobile side) while our Democratic opponent was only at the very tippy top 9% of the time on of our brand searches. So what does this all mean in the end? Well let’s answer some questions…

1. Do you have your national search optimized on ROI? If yes, then who cares?
2. Is your in-geo target search optimized for ROI or impression share? 
1. If ROI, once again who cares?
2. If impression share, maybe, but you need to be careful because really Google wins.
3. What do your mobile results look like? If you are 90%+ on the absolute top of page, then who cares? If you are below 90% but it’s ROI optimized, it’s a judgement call but if it’s still high, you shouldn’t care.

So, was our Democratic Opponent a Search conqueror? Well the data says no. The election results say no. Plus, the ROIs for our campaigns were greater than 200%. So, is there a place for Search Conquering Strategy? Only if you like or need to needle your opponent, otherwise, the only winner in your strategy is Google who makes even more due to increased bids on more clicks.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

How to Start Digital Advertising for Restaurants

As I write this post, I'm down in my southern NJ home. As some of you long time readers know, when the weather gets warmer, my family heads to the southern NJ beaches. Father's Day also just passed about 2 weeks back. One of our favorite things to do when we migrate south is to eat in some of the best restaurants in the state. In fact, years ago I tried starting a restaurant review blog called ieatoutalot.com. It's still live but I haven't posted in a while; believe it or not, it's a lot of work to blog on eating out and when you frequent the same places, it becomes a little repetitive. Anyway, what's Father's Day and the south NJ restaurants have to do with digital advertising? Well it occurred to me that it was actually hard to find if anyone was running specials or had anything special going on for Father's Day. 

I've helped a few restaurants over the years with their digital advertising. Here's what I suggest. Let me know your thoughts.

DIGITAL ADVERTISING TIPS FOR RESTAURANTS

Generally speaking, Google Ads (aka AdWords) is not your best choice. Sure you should be running some ads but given how much attention it takes to run a restaurant, I think it is only valuable for certain holidays and I'm not sure Father's Day is one of those. Like my last post, you do need to have Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to understand where your traffic is coming from, what they are searching on, and who they are. That needs to be done. However, here's what I'd recommend....

1. Build Your House File - So it's dirt cheap to send email. Have you heard? There are a few restaurants that I subscribe to that I think do a great job with their email campaigns. When I get an email from them, it's usually their specials and events which is awesome. I actually unsubscribed from a restaurant today. Not because they sent me too much emails but because they allowed other people/events to email to their list. My favorite restaurants that I receive email from are Redwoods, St. Moritz, and Metropolitan Seafood. They send me emails on specials and special dinner events. For me, their emails are a must read.
2. Facebook and Instagram - You are probably doing an awesome job posting your specials and events. However, believe it or not, I'm not seeing your posts on a timely basis. There are two reasons for that. The first is the FB newsfeed algorithm. If I like a post or interact with a page, I'll start seeing more. If I scroll on by, I'll see less of it and maybe not even on time. The second reason is, not everyone is so glued to their social media that they see them in the timeframe you want them to see it. Running a great dinner special on Tuesday? Awesome except how many of them see it on Wednesday. Don't let that happen to you. The best thing to do is to run promoted post advertising targeted to your followers so they see you post on the day you want to see it. So for that Tuesday special, starting running it Monday evening and end it Tuesday evening. Let's say 7PM Monday - 7 PM Tuesday. Then Tuesday start your Wednesday special. Depending on how many page likes you have, this might amount to just a few dollars a day but I guarantee you people will see it when you need them to see it.
3. Google Local Listing - Make sure you control your Google Local Listing. You can add pictures, update your hours, even post weekly specials. This listing is even more important than ever before because very often it has the prime real estate on your search results page and if people keep interacting with it, perhaps you'll get a high priority in Google Map results for more generic searches. It's a simple process but between keeping your searches up to date on your restaurant local listing the better your organic search results will be. Did I mention Google Map results for more generic searches?
4. Paid Yelp/Open Table Ads - Yes I went there. You know the review websites you love to hate. I've read tons of complaints on how they hold you hostage. How a single bad review can cause you problems. Also, how everyone with an internet connected device is now suddenly a NY Times restaurant critic. Look I've left my share of bad reviews, but in my opinion the place was truly dreadful and did something that deserved a bad review. Very frequently, if I think the place is ok, say a 2-3 star restaurant, I just refrain from posting. Unfortunately, I do think this is one your best places to advertise because people are LOOKING TO EAT OUT. That means they are searching for you. Don't leave it to chance. You should be running paid advertising. Bite the bullet. Do it. Here is a screen shot of two ads from two restaurants that really don't need to run them but are anyway.
5. Paid Google Search Ads - Yes last and unfortunately it really is least on this list. Yes you should be running Google Search ads but I can't recommend updating them daily. Maybe seasonally if you have different menus or different hours. I'd recommend a very robust Brand campaign where you buy up versions of your name and when people click, you should take them to a form to capture their email and contact information. Maybe in exchange for a free dessert or if you have a loyalty program, free points. Now some of you might be thinking, why do I need paid search when you just told me to work on my Google listing. That's simple, a large percentage only click on paid ads AND you can (and should) rotate in at least three different ad creatives. That's not possible with your local listing. Additionally, I'd recommend some very tight (10-15 mile radius) generic search on restaurant keywords. Don't spend a ton here unless you see results. Oh and BTW, you should have conversion tracking set up for click to calls from the ads as well email sign up so you can get an idea of how your ad campaign is doing besides just generating clicks to your website.
6. Google Analytics - Besides using GA for tracking email signups, site visits, and bounces you should also have remarketing audiences enabled so you can start to build up a pool of people that visited your website. Then you can remarket to those cookies when they start searching again (yes this is a great idea) or you can run display ads. Basically, you tie your GA account to your AdWords account. Then create audiences in GA and export them to your Google Ads (AdWords) account. Finally, set up your campaigns targeting these audiences. This is probably too much for you to do as a restaurant owner but it's really easy for a good pay per click consultant.

 

And that's it. Those are my digital advertising quick tips for restaurants. Let me know your thoughts.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

How to Start Advertising Online: Part 1 Tracking via Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager

No matter who we meet with and no matter the industry, I usually start with the same question. Can I have access to your Google Analytics account? I usually get one of two answers: 1) Sure but my developer might get upset and 2) What's Google Analytics?

Answer #1 usually means it's a basic setup especially if you are a small business without eCommerce and when I look in, I can see the need for some basic upgrades. If it's Answer #2, that usually means you have no idea it was added and probably don't have access to it. Granted Google Analytics is usually something your web designer put on there and they are usually the ones that have carnal knowledge of it, but it's still very important for your business. You should know why you need it and the basics reports you should be looking at.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is simply Google's free website tracking tool. I don't care what kind of business you are, if you have a website, GA needs to be installed (note: you actually shouldn't be installing GA's code anymore but instead Google Tag Manager but humor me for a few minutes). As a business owner, there are really only a few reports you should care about. Don't get me wrong, there are tons of reports and information available to you, but if you are worried about stocking shelves or going over a legal case, you don't have time to dig into everything. So here's what you need to do...

1. If you can take online orders on your site, make sure you have someone enable eCommerce tracking
2. Someone needs to create a filtered view for you. What's a filtered view? Think of GA as just a machine that gathers website data and then displays it in easy to read format. Think Garbage In = Garbage Out. Filters can better organize the data. For example, do you care about international traffic? If not, filter it out. Is Facebook.com and fb.com the same traffic source? Yes of course it is, then you need to replace some of the source information. Do you use your website as your homepage? Yes, then filter out your IP address.
3. Enable audiences and demographic reporting. Audiences are how you build retargeting lists and if you don't enable them for all, you get nothing. The same person also should create audiences of people who buy your product, make conversions, and visit important pages of your site. You need to link those audience with a Google Ads (aka AdWords) account.
4. Finally, someone needs to create conversions or goals. For example, email signups.
5. And even though you don't need it in the initial setup, you need to be aware of how to construct click thru links so your source and medium track through. You need to visit Google's URL builder and familiarize yourself with the source, medium, and campaign variables. Sending an email out to your house file? You want the URL builder to look like this: www.ericfrenchman.com?utm_source=email&utm_medium=hf&utm_campaign=summer so the source in your report says "email" rather than direct/(none)

Once you have those 4 to 5 basic steps accomplished (it's really easy and it would take me about 15 minutes to take care of it), there is only one real report you need. It's the source/medium acquisition report. Someone can set it up for you so you receive it every Monday (for example). It's found on the left side under Acquisition-->All Traffic-->Source/Medium. You can adjust the date range. The report shows you HOW your visitors got to your site (did that ad in the local news site really get traffic?), whether they were new or returning, how much they bought or signed up for email, and a bounce rate. A bounce rate is simply a stat that shows you the % of times someone visited the one page they landed on and then immediately left. If you are paying for that traffic and you get a 90%+ bounce rate, that's really bad.

Another useful report is the geographic report so you can see where your site visitors are located. That's under Audience-->Geo-->Location. Also, under the same Audience tab you can see the demographics of your site visitors (you might be asked to enable so enable so you can see what your audience looks like).  Finally, the other useful (really must have if you are eCommerce) is the transactions report which you can find under Conversions-->eCommerce-->Transactions. This is the report to see what product has been selling.

What is Google Tag Manager and Why You Need It?

OK so I sold you on why you need Google Analytics and the basic reports you should be looking at on at least on a weekly basis. So why do you need Google Tag Manager? Simply GTM allows you to have your website developer place one set of code (called a container tag) on all pages of the website and then allows you (if you want to play around with it) or your developer to then add multiple tracking tags in the GTM platform. So the very first tag you would put in would be basic Google Analytics. Your next codes? Google Ads (AdWords) and then most likely Facebook and perhaps Bing. So now instead of having multiple tracking codes on your website, you put them in the GTM platform and then tell GTM when to fire the tags. Your developer (or someone like me) can assign triggers that tells GTM when to fire the tag (all pages or completed sale or sign up for email). Most likely they would also set up multiple GA tags to track eCommerce, Goals, and more. I'm not going to go into details because the odds are you aren't going to do it yourself and if you want to do that, there are better sources online to help you with it. However, here's what you need to know when asking for GTM to be added:

• Ask your developer to add Google Tag Manager rather than Google Analytics
• When they grumble, it's a sign that they don't know what GTM can do and just want to slap a GA code on but insist on GTM.
• Once they add GTM, they need to set up triggers (eCommerce, Goals like email signup), and multiple GA tags (one for basic, one for eCommerce, one for your Goals). Someone like me can have this setup in about 30 minutes.
• Then add in multiple tags with triggers like Google Ads, Facebook, etc

And that's it. If you have questions, let me know below and I'll answer them (I really will). Just remember, add (or ask to add) Google Tag Manager first and then add Google Analytics to the GTM platform. Setup basic filters in GA, activate eCommerce if you need it, setup goals, and then monitor your reports on a weekly basis. Good luck.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google Ads Universal App Campaign Setting is Not Universally Good

I know it's been a while since I've posted. I've been very distracted lately and when ideas pop into my head for a post, if I don't act on them it's usually too late. So, this is a post I thought about making a year ago but didn't act fast enough. So here goes...

Google Ads Universal App Campaign Settings is really not that great and I think it's a necessary evil if you have want to promote your app. It needs an upgrade badly but I'm afraid that Google's move into more automated campaign management means more of the same and less customizations rather than more. My biggest issue (and I'm not alone) is that you really can't optimize the campaign. You basically hand the keys over to Google to promote your app, hoping Google can deliver at your CPA. It's basically a magic box where you input basics like a link to your app, link to a YT video and some ad images. Yes I do believe after some time Google can deliver app downloads at your allowable cost but I want more control and I want it faster. I want more visibility but it's not there. What can you change? Not a whole heck of a lot.

SETTING UP A GOOGLE UNIVERSAL APP CAMPAIGN

When you set up a Universal App campaign, you can choose the following:

1. Which App Store you want to promote downloads from
2. Location options including exclusions. Note, when you do set this up Google automatically defaults to an option that infers location interest which I can't stand. Yes it works for restaurants and stores but when you are trying to specifically target people in an area you need to adjust this.
3. Target CPA
4. Budget, language, start and end dates
5. Creative Assets where you can specify a YouTube video, 5 lines of text, and images to upload

What else can you do? Well you need to make sure you set up your app conversions. If you don't have that then you are just throwing your money away with a Universal App Campaign setting. Here's what that looks like: Notice the grey text below the setting you typically could change; all of that "Not Editable" language. Yes that means you can't edit how Google counts App installs. Now, for me most of the settings are what I recommend except for one. That's the conversion window of 30 days. That means if someone clicks on a Google ad and installs the app within 30 days Google will attribute it back to the campaign. I'd shorten it to 2 days but can't. I've seen other clients want to change the attribution model but I usually go with last click too.

UNIVERSAL APP RESULTS

So after you get going you'll have to look in a few spots to see how you are doing. First if you want to see the creative results you click the Ad Assets tab and you can see results by the assets you've uploaded. Think your video should get served more because it performs the best? Guess again, you can't do that. 

Next you can click on overview and you get some pretty charts. You'll see a tab for devices but can you shut off any? No. Right below that is a tab for Network? Want to shut off say the display network? No can do. Next box over is time of day/ day of week targeting. Want to change that? Sorry, not available. Finally right above that you get a box for location results? Want to change that. Actually you can. That one is allowed (whew). How about adding some negative keywords? Nope.

When you dig around looking for help from Google you get basic platitudes about how to find the right user and how to optimize your universal app campaign. What does Google recommend? Add in more creative assets and adjust your bids slowly. That's nice. Looking for more tips? Well don't call their help line because after explaining your problem, you'll get no more answers than what's on those links. So what can you do? 

ERIC'S TIPS FOR OPTIMIZING YOUR UNIVERSAL APP CAMPAIGN

1. Follow Google's advice and just make tweaks to the creative and adjust your bids.
2. Maybe setup separate campaigns on your own breaking up search, display, and YouTube. That can work but you run into a few issues. The first is, you need to send your clicks somewhere. Your choices are the app store link or your website or perhaps a landing page hanging off your website. You will most likely run into some Quality Score issues sending into the app store link because it isn't your domain while the website/landing page adds extra steps. Sending them into your domain can help your QS issues but now you added at least one step to your user downloading the app.
3. My favorite option --> The Hybrid Option. If your results look anything like mine, maybe you can run both. Maybe you run Universal App Campaign settings for search and video and a separate campaign for the Display Network clicking through to a landing page. GDN campaigns use relevancy but I've found the penalty a lot less severe than search.

I get that Google wants to move to more programmatic optimizations. I'm willing to give Google some control but not letting me opt out of networks, optimize ads, etc is a bit much. Google will say, we can do it better but as of right now, I don't see it. There are differences between apps and the users of those apps; not being able to make changes is a problem. There are good work arounds that give you control and I suggest you do them. Good luck.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

 

 

 

 

 

 

Think Twice Before Getting that Cheap .US from GoDaddy (or anyone else)

Just last week I bought a new URL for restaurant reviews - the very awesome IEatOutALot.com and of course during the GoDaddy checkout process I was upsold to a .US domain and threw it in my cart.   As usual GoDaddy automatically added private registrations which of course is great, so I left that in my cart but something bugged me at the final checkout.  It appeared that private registration was only added once.  I tried poking around and figured to myself, not sure what's going on but let me keep going.  So I moved on  - all excited about my new blog and went over to Typepad to set up the domain mapping and design..

GoDaddy Private Registration

The next day I was still playing around with the design when I got a call from a random number I didnt recognize.  I picked it up - not sure why and it was from "tech support".  After less than a minute I realized it was a spam call and hung up.  Later on in the day, I got another call and this one was easily recognized as a telemarketer - you know, the long pause and then the crowded call center.  This call mentioned GoDaddy and website support so I hung up.  

I then called GoDaddy and after a few minutes with a very nice customer service rep we determined that the calls were coming from the non-private registration of the .US domain.  The rep didn't realize that .US domains couldn't be private registered and of course I was a little surprised too.  So, I told her I'm getting calls and emails from the registration and she had no solutions on how to shut them off.  I did the only thing I could do which was delete the .US domain and asked for my $3 back.

Now you might be thinking - well how is this GoDaddy's fault?  Simple - go buy some domains and see how often they cross sell you into other products.  Go see how they preload the private registration in your cart (screen shot to the right) but where is the warning that the .US domain loaded in your cart CAN NOT be private registered?  It's not there unless you dig into the terms and conditions which isn't very fair.

If GoDaddy pushes products and even pre-loads your cart with a private registration, shouldn't they also load up a warning that one of your cart items can't take advantage of the private registration.  I think they should because the phone calls and spam emails are brutal.  If you know of a better solution for .US registration, I'm all eyes and ears.  If you are buying .US domain keep the non-private registration in mind because the spam calls and emails are brutal.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Running Ads on Snapchat - Your Best Way to Reach 13 - 34 Year Olds

I had the chance to try out advertising on Snap Chat recently.  I thought it would be a great way to get some quick easy press for a client and a great way to get noticed by younger users.  Well it turns out the above assumptions were true.  Not familiar with Snap Chat?  Well, let me give you a quick over view and some good reasons to try it for your advertising.  Note, I’m not being paid or asked by Snap Chat to do this.  I actually love the product (phew - got that PSA out of the way).

Snap Chat is basically like a closed environment (if you want it to be) where you can post videos and photos that don’t live forever for someone to find in the future when they are doing opposition research on your campaign for President.  You know, all those dumb, fun photos that you don't want everyone to see?  It’s perfect for Snap Chat (and to the Snap Chat fans out there, which includes me,
that was meant to be complimentary). It’s just not for those nude pics which I frequently get asked for… Personally, I like posting to Snap Chat when I’m at an event or doing something fun and fantastic.  I still make a lot of posts to Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook but Snap Chat is really for my close friends so that I can make them jealous OR to communicate with my teenagers.  And (BTW I love starting a sentence with AND even though I should have used a semicolon {I also love semicolons and try to use them whenever I can) if you do have teenage kids, you better fire up your account and figure it out quickly.  Don’t worry, your kids can give you a tutorial and the other good news is that you probably won’t find a ton of your friends on there, yet.

As of right now, there are only a few ways to advertise on Snap Chat.  The first is a sponsored Geo Filters.  Geo Filters are filters for photos and videos that can let your viewers know where your picture/video was taken.  I didn't try that out for my advertiser, not because I didn't like the idea ,but we were advertising around a specific event and the better advertising options were taken.  Here’s an example of a Geo Filter (not paid).

The next opportunity are Sponsored Lenses.  Lenses are ways for you to jazz up your photos.I like using this one:  My kids really love the lens that flips heads if two people are in a picture.  Again for this one client I wasn’t able to try this; not that I didn’t like it, it just didn’t fit in.

The third option and the one I used (yeah!  about time right?) was their 3V creative which is really a 10s video incorporated into their Live Stories or Discover.  You can buy it via a specific audience that’s available (could be a liveramp integration for targeting your customized audience) or just by buying a specific story.  A Live Story are video curated by Snap Chat editors and you can view them and submit your own videos.  Whenever I post to Snap Chat I always look for Live Stories but unless I’m in NYC or a specific hot event, I don’t usually find them.  Discover are curated posts made by publishers (ex-ESPN, WSJ).  

So why advertise with Snap Chat?  Pretty simple. Their audience is young and highly engaged (try ignoring the Snap Chat iPhone alerts when you are  driving 2.5 hours down the shore with your teenagers).  According to a presentation I received from Snap Chat, more than 60% of the United States’ 13-34 year olds are active Snap Chat users.  Yeah 60%.  Try finding them on Facebook (well you can but if the rest of the Snap Chat users are like my kids, they aren’t there).  Want some Snap Chat engagement? On average, users view 60 Snap Chat videos per day.  I don’t think I do anything 60 times per day - well if you ignore bodily functions.

If you are looking for a younger audience, then Snap Chat is definitely you should give a try.  If possible, I’d definitely try sponsoring a Live Story.  That’s what I tried to do but it was already sold out so my advertiser ended up in the Discover channels.  If you also have an ongoing monthly ad plan and want to reach the younger generation, then Snap Chat is a must use.  If you aren’t an advertiser or marketer and are reading this post, go sign up for Snap Chat and have some fun with your video and pictures; go an enjoy what all of your super fabulous friends are doing while you sit at home and try to binge watch The Walking Dead.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

 

 

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Google Tag Manager - Turning Your Marketing Side to the Coding Dark Side

Admit it.. All those years of working in online advertising you had to rely on your coders and site owners to implement your tags, you were always just a little bit jealous.  If only marketing could implement some basic codes.  All those years of getting the pixels and writing an email to your website and/or programming teams asking to implement your tags and telling them which pages to add the tag.  You'd pray you communicated properly, only to find out once in a  while your conversion counts matched your click counts (unless you are giving away free beer).  Well with this version of Google Tag Manager you can embrace your coding dark side and it least manage your conversion and marketing tags while controlling most of what you need to do.  Google Tag Manager is definitely a way for you to manage your conversion and remarketing programs while at the same time only turning towards your programming team when you really need some help.

I first heard of GTM about a year ago and I looked like a complete idiot.  I just landed a new client and I dutifully passed on Google AdWords and remarketing codes to the client for implementation.  I waited a day or two and checked out the code on the thank you pages and couldn't see my pixels.  When I followed up I was told they were implemented via Google Tag Manager which sent me scurrying off to see what that was.  

GTM version 1 wasn't very good so I really didn't pay much attention to it.  It was a way to consolidate my tracking tags on one platform.  Basically, you add the Google Tag Manager container codes to the pages of your website and then using the platform you implement the tracking and conversion pixels.  

So a year passes and I didn't pay a lot of attention to it other than it was a way to make my programmers a little happier with working on my projects.  Then I received notification in one of my Google Analytics accounts about getting Google Tag Manager certified by taking their fundamentals in GTM class.  I decided to take the plunge while sitting on the beach in Avalon NJ and was I ever surprised about how useful GTM 2.0.  It's so useful that I don't even take a whiff on setting up a new advertising account without thinking through the tracking setup.

 The Good in Google Tag Manager

There are a lot of great things about GTM but the most important part of GTM is the ability to give the marketer complete control over which tags are included and how they are fired. Before GTM it really was an adhoc process with little controls. Here's how it works from a marketing perspective.

1) Setup your own Google Tag Manager Account and then get a container code for each domain you are managing.  Have your programmers DELETE all other marketing pixels including Google Analytics and install your GTM container code on EVERY page of your website.  If you are an agency, it is better for the client to set it up and give your agency permission.

2) Figure out what types of actions you want to track and what they are.  Let's keep things simple and say you want to track email signups, sales, and build a remarketing list.  For each one of these actions, you'll need to know how they are defined - changes in URLs (thank you page), changes in messages, submit buttons or even all pages (especially for GA and remarketing tags) as well as how you want the event fired - page view, page load, DOM, and etc.

3) If your actions are based off of simple URL changes (like a confirmation page being served) you really don't need a lot of help from your coders.  You can actually DO THIS YOURSELF.  What you are doing is creating Triggers of your events.  Here's a simple list from one of my accounts.  I set all of these up myself - just needed to know the URLs.

4) Next up you need to set up your Tags.  Your Tags are just what you think they are - pixels from your media partners that you want implemented.  Some of the tag setups are already preloaded but for the most part you are creating custom HTML tags for your media parters.  DoubeClick, AdWords, and Analytics are already preloaded so you'd select them from the list and then add some of the ID numbers from those pixels.  Mind you, you still need to generate the conversion and remarketing pixels on each platform first and then instead of emailing your coder, you are taking care of it yourself.  Other tags I've implemented are Twitter, Facebook, Bing, Adaptv, and more.  For the most part all of the Tags are custom HTML but a few are image based (Adaptv was image based).  

So to setup Tags you need to know which Triggers to fire the Tags with.  Your Google Analytics (for a simple setup) should be ALL PAGES as well as your individual Remarketing tags.  Your Conversion Tags should be served when an event is triggered that you want to count (sales completion, email signup, etc).  Here's a sample list of my tags.  I've only had a few problems with this but that will be listed in The Bad section.

5) Before publishing you can use a preview tool and preview how your pixels fire.  Basically follow the steps of what you want to track (in a different window of your browser) and watch the preview pane to see which tags are firing and when.  If you aren't getting the expectations you want, then start checking your triggers and tags to make sure it is set up properly.

6) You can also pass transaction values into Google Analytics and back to AdWords for reporting and optimization.  It involves something called a Data Layer which is really a temporary field that your code can access to pass information from the page into say Google Analytics.  More on this in a second. 

In the end, a simple setup should take you under an hour to build and you should have control over your tags and triggers.  It's even easy to add more triggers in and tell your tags when to fire and when not to fire.  However, there is a hard side to this....

The Bad in Google Tag Manager

Most of what you need to do in GTM is very straight forward and your website manager and programmers will love you for simplifying the additional codes on your page and the fact that you pushed managing the codes from them to yourself (where it should have belonged in the first place).  However, there is a bad side to GTM

1) Passing variables like transaction amounts into the Data Layer for use in Google Analytics.  This isn't easy no matter how pretty Google makes it seem when the transaction amount is passed in a confirmation page URL.  I've watched that video almost 100 times AND I had to reach out and read this Google Tag Manager expert's blog for help.  Long story short on this is you need to create variables in GTM which isn't hard as well as in Google Analytics which isn't hard either and then create a custom report in GA to report on these new variables.  That's straight forward enough BUT you do need your programmers support in implementing additional tags on your transaction pages to actually create the Data Layer variable.  If you look closely on my Tags and Triggers you'll see a GA tag that is serve on DOM Ready transactions.  That's basically the same GA pixel duplicated but the trigger is a DOM ready event on the transaction page.  It had to be on the DOM event (and not page view or load) for the transaction to be picked up. You'll need help with that from someone who is writing code for your website.

2) Cross Domain tracking is another issue that seems like it should be solved easily using this lesson from Google but to be blunt, I'm not 100% sure if it works or not.  Basically the issue is whether other domains (say a transaction site or shopping site) and/or subdomains are passing variables and data properly through to your main GA account.  The only way for you to confirm whether cross domain tracking is working is if you look in your GA reports and it looks like what you'd expect.  I had trouble with passing the transaction amount from one subdomain to another subdomain so I ended up down this rabbit hole that after a few weeks, looks like it is fixed.

3) You are not a programmer.  Repeat it.  Say it again.  Memorize it.  Yes you are dealing with URLs, cross domain tracking, Data Layer variables, and implementing pixels that used to be done by your programmers but you are NOT ONE OF THEM.  Basically, you are taking a job from them that you should have been doing in the first place, only there wasn't an elegant way for you to do it.

The Ugly in Google Tag Manager

There isn't much that's ugly about GTM.  I did find two things that frustrate me still.  

1) There are a lot of mix ups between the old and new versions of GTM.  GTM 2.0 is a giant leap forward from the original version but unfortunately Google still maintains steps and procedures from GTM 1.0 and even if you ask them for help, often times you'll get redirected to an older page.  For example, in this instruction there aren't any cookie configurations even though Google still directs people to that page

2) I think Google sugar coats some of these procedures too much.  When I first contacted my programmers about passing transaction values into the Data Layer, Google made it look so easy but it wasn't.  Once you get beyond the basic GTM configurations you'll need to involve your coders and you'll need to do more than just pass them a link for it to get implementations.

I hope you are still with me at this point.  In the end, Google Tag Manager puts the conversions and remarketing in the hands of the marketers where it belonged in the first place.  It is an awesome tool that will have your website owners and programmers thrilled you have taken some work and management off their plates while also simplifying the amount of pixels on your website.  Just tread carefully when you start trying to implement Data Layer variables, cross domain tracking, and anything else like triggering an event off of a click to a button because you'll be sitting down with your programmers again.

Happy tagging and PardonMyFrench,

Eric

 

Voter File Advertising = Moby Dick to Political Marketing Ahabs

Since the start of this political season, the rage among a lot of online political advertisers is buying online ads using matched voter file (that's taking the an email file and matching them with a publisher).  Nearly every ad buy I put together usually ends up with a discussion whether I want to use voter file matched cookies which I answer with umm no. Why would I want to use that garbage?  Their answer is, well, the CPMs are only 20% higher plus you know that you are targeting known Republicans, plus everyone else is doing it.  I don't buy that everyone is doing it, but...

My answer is still no.  Waste of money. Waste of time, plus SURPRISE I have more experience with political online ad buying, especially voter file marketing.  It's nothing new.

Now before I continue my bash let me explain that I have nothing against companies that supply the data to match, nor do I have any issue with Facebook's new marketing (I'm bullish on that).  I do think there is demand from newer political online marketers who only want to target known Republicans because that's how they've been doing it in direct mail since 1975.  Anyway, here's why it is foolish.

I started doing political advertising back in 2006.  Back then, we supplied AOL and Yahoo with Republican voter files.  I never successfully completed a match with MSN because they were too slow and required too much of either an upfront fee OR a large guaranteed ad buy. We used voter file marketing for McCain's Presidential run.  

The CPMs were higher and the results, well, let's just say that the results were not 20% better.  In fact, I got better results with running Google Display Ads fired off via keywords than any data file match.  So, it was a waste of money and certainly my time when I'd rather focus on content where my ads appeared.  Of course by 2012 with so many new targeting networks people have forgotten what worked or didn't work in the past.  So, if I don't like voter file marketing, what do I like doing:

ERIC'S FAVORITE 1:1 MARKETING TECHNIQUES IN 2012

1. Build your own retargeting audience in Google or AdRoll.  Yes build your own.  People that click on your ads, visit your website, donate, etc.  You know what?  Other than the money it costs to run ads, it's free to build your audience.
2. Build your own voter file targeting in FB.  Load up your own email list to FB and let FB anonymously match your files and build an audience for you.  Why is this better than the big voter file match?  It's YOUR OWN LIST and it's free.
3. Email marketing (yeah that still works real well)
4. Google Search - why?  These are people looking for your message or YOU.
5. Content Targeting  - match your choice keywords with content so your ads appear when the content makes sense.  You know why that works?  Because it is cost effective.
6. Facebook interest targeting - it's the best out there and cheap.

A pure voter file marketing campaign is the last thing I'd buy. If I had branding dollars, I'd move to partners like Twitter, Pandora, Hulu, and YouTube before I'd spend a dime on a pure voter file buy.  

Is voter file marketing all the rage?  I don't care and neither should you.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Hey Marketing Genius - Your Facebook Advertising Is Awful

To The Marketing Genius Running Bad Facebook Advertising:

I don't get it.  Your Facebook advertising is awful.  It's almost like you are 18 years old and just started reading a marketing 101 book. Or worse yet.  You are robbing your clients blind with high agency fees.

Yes, Google Advertising is hard.  It requires logical campaign design, optimization, and an understanding of search.  Perhaps you've given up with Google or your clients figured out you don't know anything.

Facebook isn't hard.  It's actually very intuitive and very easy to use.  Yes you can setup multiple campaigns and multiple ads.  You can use some bid management help, but at the end of the day, the platform is easy to microtarget people based on interest and demographics.  So there's no reason for the following lousy political ads....

Elizabeth Warren (Democrat for Senate from Massachusetts): I live in NJ.
 I'm a registered Republican.  Probably show up in the conservative bucket.  I don't susbcribe to multiple political accounts.  I should NOT be in your target.

Debbie Wasserman Schulz (Head of the DNC): Same as Elizabeth Warren targeting above. Just really bad ad targeting.

George Allen (Republican running for Senate in Virginia): The ad targeting was good.  I dont like the ad because it gave me the impression that his campaign is on life support...(snicker away)

Obama LGBT: Well the targeting is way off here.  Wrong political category (for the most part), wrong Presidential candidate,  and it is very easy to add in narrow interest targeting to find people in the LGBT target. However, not to be outdone, The Mitt Romney campaign (sorry) has the worst targeting

Now.  I'm not a facebook fan of Mitt Romney.  I was following him since 2008 but during the 2012 Primary I didn't want friends thinking I supported him, so I unliked him.  Plus, I found the posts not very informative.  They then hit me with a lot of ads which of course was the correct target.  That was fine but they stopped.

So now, I get served individual ads based on potential microtargets.  However, all of these microtargets are so easy to find, its inexcusable to not use them.  And, Facebook has matured so that just getting likes is not that compelling + it's not very helpful for your strategy if someone is in multiple micro targets or coalitions.

Romney Hispanic Target: Umm, I don't like Romney and I'm not Hispanic.   The Hispanic target is the ONLY broad match target under the Ethnics category.  CHECK THE BOX.

Women for Romney: Listen folks, Facebook was founded to help Zuckerberg get a date.  Use the gender targeting.  Try using something more than just a friend of mine liking the page for your targeting.

Young Americans for Mitt: I'm 45.  As young and immature as I like to be, I'm pretty sure 45 is not in the Young American target.  Use the age targeting.

So to summarize, I've been served ads meant for women, young voters, Hispanic voters, LGBT, and out of state liberal/progressive ads.  I can actually rationalize the Warren + Debbie Wasserman Schulz ads as testing into the active politics broad category but the rest of the lifestyle targeting by President Obama and especially Romney for President are just poor.  

I havent seen any more poorly targeted Obama ads but the Romney ads just keep coming.  It doesn't make any sense.  If you really want to build up facebook coalitions, why not try to put the correct demos in your coalition.  Sure maybe it costs you a little more money to add the demo, but doesn't that make the most sense to have the purest coalition as possible?  It's easy, try it.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. By the way, The Obama Campaign is still serving LGBT ads.  It's really a poor display of the lifestyle targeting available in Facebook and demonstrates that The Obama Campaign is not technologically savvy.

P.P.S Oh and not to be outdown by lousy facebook marketing, Romney is now targeting me with Hispanic versions of his ad.  Really, hit the ethnic targeting. Its there and available.

Edmunds.com: Email or Spam and Social Listening

On April 13 I received an email from Edmunds.com.  The email thanked me for subscribing to the Edmunds newsletter.  I received it about 9:30 AM EST and I was a little upset.  Sure it's easy to get my email and I get a ton of spam, but usually I just unsubscribe and move on. Not this time because most of the spam comes from unscrupulous types, not from a major brand.  So I sprung into action.

First thing I did was hit the unsubscribe link thinking it might be a one click unsubscribe.  If that link did the job the first time, I probably  would have moved on.  Unfortunately, Edmunds does not employ a one click unsubscribe.  I had to get another email with a link to unsubscribe again.  At that point I got a little upset and decided to let Edmunds know.

So I took to Facebook and Twitter.  I really wasn't expecting too much other than a place to spread my displeasure with Edmunds quickly.  However, they surprised me.  They did have their social ears on and reached out to me in Twitter and Facebook very quickly. 

A friend of mine who works at Twitter happened to call me that day and said "I found it very funny watching you take on Edmunds."  Well as I explained to my friend and to Edmunds there were only two reasons for receiving that unwanted email subscription - a friend added me or Edmunds added me.  It could not have been myself.

Well after some time and contacts with me via Facebook and Twitter it turned out that a few years ago I did signup for Edmunds but then unsubscribed.  I dont remember why but it seemed that Edmunds added me and a bunch of other previously unsubscribes this past morning in error.  Mystery solved....

However, Edmunds turned a bad situation into a decent resolution.  I was hopping mad when I got that email in the morning and figured with my social reach I could let as many people as possible know they shouldnt trust Edmunds with their contact information.  However, instead of sticking their head in the sand Edmunds reached out to me quickly and cooled off this hothead.  

I still don't like their two step unsubscribe, but Edmunds definitely took my issue seriously and resolved it in a professional manner.  Nicely done,

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Revisiting PMF - See More on Google versus The US Government

*******I wrote this post in 2006, I think.....Wow, I was quite the author back then.  I think with Google changing their privacy policy, I think this is an interesting post******

 

I lot of friends, including my wife, have said to me, "why are you so harsh on Google lately?" This kind of surprises me because I don't think I have been. Sure this is the third article I've written on Google as of late and you are probably wondering if I may dump blospot and pop over to Typepad instead.

Let me set the record straight. I love Google and the products that they bring to the marketplace. I also know a lot of people at Google and they are all great. Google also brings a ton of competition to the marketplace and, it didn't hurt that my former employer was part of the IPO group.

However, they are in it to make money, just like everyone else. Have you seen their stock price recently and their marketcap? It is outrageous. You know what else you need to learn about Google? How about their corporate mantra? Read #4 and #6. #4 is titled Democracy on the web works and #6 is You can make money without doing evil. Interesting huh? Let's see how democracy on the web and making money without doing evil has been forgotten or at least thrown out temporarily when it comes to making money.

Democracy on the web
First, Google decides not to help the United States Government in understanding how existing filtering on the web protects children from porn and predators. It IS a primary part of a ruling on the COPA act. Now, they are the only ones from the Big 4 that stood up to the Government. Some people think that Google is standing up to the US to protect individual freedom and who knows, first this data and then they hand over PII information on individual's searches.

Last time I checked, the US Government, the best Democracy on the great blue spot in the Milky Way protects our individual rights and not Google. And, you know who basically asked for the check on the existing filtering technology - The Supreme Court. Now lets look at the other side of the spectrum - China.

China and Google - Perfect Together?

China - the last time I checked was Communist. You remember those people, right? They were pretty popular up until 1989 or so, when Reagan's pressures finally led to the crumbling of the Soviet Empire and only really left Cuba and China as strong Communist nations.

Fast forward to 2006 and everyone loves China now a days because you guessed it - a billion or so people buy a lot of goods; that is when their government allows them to make some money. You know what the Chinese still practice - good old government censorship. 

Freedom of speech in China, the kind like we enjoy in the USA, does NOT exits. Hell, you can't even get a good search result without some form of censorship.

Now, Google decides to help the Chinese Government continue to oppress their people by making it easier to censor search results. No, not the Google. we can make money without doing evil company. Yes that Google; well maybe not the Google that originally wrote those words, but the Google that is now making a ton of money. Read this article from CNN entitled Google to Censor Itself.

I don't know about you, but when the same company decides to stiff the Democratic US Government in the name of freedom and then turns around and helps a Communist China continue their oppression, one has to wonder who we are dealing with. Maybe Google should re-read their Corporate Values Statement again and decide if they really want to make some money the free speech, democratic way which up until now has helped their stock grow from about $90 to $433.

Think I'm the only one that feels this way - check out Bambi's article over at CBS MarketWatch (require free registration) titled Google Shows Its True Colors .  Again, makes you want to move your blog to Typepad.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

 

Is Your Klout Score The New GCred?

I've been Googling my name for a while...way back towards my Harrisdirect days.  I always thought it was important to see what's being written about me because when someone is trying to figure out your credibility they Google you.  Way back then it was called G-Cred and I wrote a post 4 years ago about it (you know that reminds me, maybe I should start pumping out some of my best posts from years back).

Earlier this year I read an article about Klout and signed up; my Klout wasn't very high so I didn't pay attention to it.  However, very recently I was asked by a reporter doing a story on politics and social media, what I thought about using Klout.  Well, my reply was, once I can figure out whether someones Klout is conservative, republican, tea party, liberal, democrat, etc it's not the most useful in a primary race. Sure it can be used for non-partisan campaigns, but in the midst of a Republican Presidential Primary, not so sure.  

So I logged in again and I L-O-V-E it.  I like the fact something is measuring a person's social media reach.  It's kind of similar to a QB's Passer Rating with the main difference being that you don't have to be a person with a doctor's degree in math to figure Klout out.  I can actually see the results of working my social media and I even got some perks - one of them was signing up for Zinio which was a cool magazine app for your iPhone, iPad, or web.  BTW - you can use this link to get a $10 credit towards your first magazine subscription on your Zinio app. 

Then, I checked out some of their API notes and yes you can do some analysis and find people in an area who have high Klout.  Still not sure about using it today for Presidential Politics, but I think it is an area to explore.

I'm also not too sure about Klout's business plan or revenue making model going forward, but right now I don't care too much.  I'm generally interested to see the changes to Klout and it is kind of fun to figure out ways to improve your own Klout.  Is it the new GCred?  Well right now I don't see anyone replacing Google for determining a person's credibility but I do think Klout is a fun way to see how good your social reach is (BTW the average Klout score is 20).

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

 

Reading The Google Political Tea Leaves as of 9/30

A lot of political amateurs put weight into Google's ability to predict outcomes in elections based on search trends.  Personally, I've always used Google's search traffic as a trailing indicator of strength and of course as a way to capitalize on the traffic for marketing. Whether it is straight paid search, YouTube, or display ads in Google's display network a sudden increase in traffic offers opportunities to either defend your positions or increase membership/donations.  So let's take a peek at the last 90 days in Google Search for a few of Republican presidential candidates plus one more.

So what do I see?

1. You can see the double spike for Michele and Rick Perry on August 13.  Obviously that was the Iowa Straw Poll win for Michele and then Perry's announcement.  Both of those were tremendous fundraising opportunities
2. Perry's traffic really takes a steep slide after the announcement but in the past 90 days he has the most amount of search traffic (you can see the strength by the color coded bars). I don't know what their online advertising activities are, but from what I've seen it's zero.
3. There were two Perry spikes around the early and mid September debates.  Those were around the debate attacks he was getting around his HPV executive order and other points brought up concerning his conservative track record.  Those were defensive, rapid response activities  (that links to an old post on how to use search for rapid response) that were missed or fundraising opportunities for other candidates (see this clickz article).
4. At the end of September there are two very interesting spikes.  The first one is around Herman Cain and this should represent fundraising opportunities for him but like Perry, I haven't seen any online advertising since the Iowa Straw Poll.  To put the Cain spike in perspective the height looks a lot like the height for Perry's announcement, Michele's Straw Poll Victory, or Michele's announcement back in June (not shown on this chart). Cain should be getting a lot of donations now and names of people interested in joining his campaign - however, like a lot of these sudden spikes, he needs to capitalize on the short term opportunities.  
5. The other spike is the Chris Christie spike, which until this week the search traffic was pretty vanilla.  I personally don't believe my Governor is running for President in 2012 but that spike at least represents huge interest or the pressure he is under.  If they had a PAC advertising around his name this would represent a great opportunity to fundraise or gather names of potential supporters.
6. Finally, Mitt Romney's search traffic is uninteresting and represents his enthusiasm gap

Google search traffic is a trailing indicator of events that have occurred or are occurring in real time.  It represents good marketing opportunities if you know how to capitalize it.  Oh one final Chris Christie note, if his search traffic spikes to the August 13 traffic spike, you can pretty much be guaranteed that he opted to run for President.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

 

I've Unsubscribed from Groupon

It's 7:30 AM and I've just downloaded my emails from last night like a lot of you.  And like I've done for the past 6 or more months I've deleted Groupon emails.  I hardly ever read them so this morning I decided enough is enough and I unsubscribed.  

Groupon right now is just spam - not the illegal kind but the completely useless kind of email and I'm tired of hitting delete.  Their personalization engine does not exist and why should I wait for it to get better?

Unfortunately in all these months I saw one targeted offer but I didn't pull the trigger on it.  It was for a family run sub shop called the Sub Pub in Chester NJ. Everyone in town goes there so you'd think that I would have jumped at it but after going there for as long as I've lived in Long Valley I couldn't bring myself to cash in the coupon. However, that's the only correctly targeted email I've seen.

Coupons for a manicure? No thanks.  Hot stone rock massage? Yah sounds good but no. Dance lessons?  I got married stepping on my wife's toes so why learn now.  Right now Groupon has no personalization.  That makes it Web 1.0 and just spam.  I love trying out new restaurants but the coupons I get for them are for days that don't work or for restaurants that are not close by.

In an era where personalization is becoming a reality and people are worried about what Google and Facebook knows about you and shares with advertisers, Groupon acts like a company from the dotcom bust.  Yes I get that Groupon should get better but I have the feeling that unless you live in a big city and don't have kids, Groupon right now is just spam.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

NFL Owners Trying to Fight The PR Game

You have to give the NFL owners a little credit.  They actually read some articles on public affairs but unfortunately it seems they only read about online public affairs from the 2006 election cycle.  And I dont think that old playbook is enough to help them fight the earned media the players are receiving.   NFL Owners versus the Players is a losing battle unless the Owners actually open up their wallets for what would amount to be a grain of sand out of their money.

PLAYERS

They have all of the earned media on their side.  For the most part, these are people that have improved their skills through hard work and dedication.  They give up their health in exchange for 10 years or so of fame and fortune.  Fans want to connect with them and be around them.  ESPN and your local sports reporters want them on their programs because they drive ratings.  Plus, don't underestimate player Facebook and Twitter pages.  Basically, the Players have earned media behind them and the longer the lockout goes the more sympathetic fans will be.

OWNERS

They have little earned media opportunity.  Roger Goodell is the face of the owners and do you really want to see him or get his autograph? Then go to the individual owners.  Sure there is Jerry Jones but at the end of the day who do you associate with?  Players or owners.  The owners need to counter the player's earned media with paid media.

Now the owners have been doing the bear minimum to date.  They've pushed out email (see below) as soon as the negotiations broke down.  They are running a small amount of search ads and directing it to a NFL Labor site.  The site has good up to date information, tries to counter player Tweets, and provides categories to browse for specific information.  However, they need to kick it up a notch....

WHAT THE OWNERS SHOULD BE SPENDING MONEY ON

No cheap stuff.  Go get $500K for 1-2 months worth of marketing and do things like:

1. Promoted tweets to drive to the owner information twitter account
2. Rich media video campaign to get out their messaging.  Target men 25 - 55 across big ad network buys
3. Google click to play video ads across Google's ad network
4. Buy search ads on NFL player's names with the largest twitter followers
5. Pre-roll videos in YouTube, AOL, and other top video sites; again target men
6. Blast out on sports blogs
7. Heck, even make ad buys on ESPN and other sports news sites
8. Make an assumption that fantasy baseball players are also interested in the NFL and run ads
9. Update the display and rich media ads at least once per week based on fast moving stories
10. Run ad awareness studies to see how the ads impact public perception

Those are just a few ideas for the owners.  Unless they kick up their paid media, they are really just wasting their time with their meager efforts to date.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

 

 

Email Marketing Don'ts - Why Barbara Streisand's Store Isn't For me

I think the amount of spam has been taking a disturbing uptick lately.  Why?  I think in the past few years there has been a programmed theory that email is dead or just for old folks and these days that everyone communicates via text messaging and Facebook.  I have to admit I was starting to go down that path but in the past year I've change my mind.  I think email is back and better than ever.  Why?  

People don't bookmark websites any more.  Information is pushed to people via Twitter, Facebook, Search, YouTube, RSS Feeds, and yes email.  Big websites seem clunky these days.  Light, fast, branding sites seem more appropriate and while building those big sites are often a boon for agencies, I think marketers should really ask themselves, do you need a big website?  

Now, back to email.  I think some companies have let their database marketing skills slip because FB and Google seemed sexier and that real predictive modeling and database marketing are not skills you get by reading Mashable.  That's why when I got this strange email from Live Nation I laughed out loud.

Yes somehow I got an email offering a free Barbara Streisand collectible from the Barbara Streisand's store.   I have never, ever even clicked on a link for Barbara Streisand and can honestly say (really write) I don't think I can name a single song.  Now, how would Live Nation get my email?

Oh, that's simple.  Bruce Springsteen merchandise which makes this email on Barbara Streisand even more bizarre.  The music genre couldn't be any more different, in fact the only things Bruce and Barbara have in common are the initials in their name and that they are both liberals.

Clearly the folks at Live Nation have no clue how to run an email marketing campaign. There can't be any flag in the music industry that puts these two audiences together.  I would have unsubscribed but I thought to myself that perhaps occasionally Live Nation will get how emails really work and send me an email I could use. Streisand?Really?

As email returns to popularity I hope real database marketing skills returns also.  

PardonMyFrench,

Eric 

 

Townhall.com - The Online Ads Graveyard

Today, I got an email from Townhall.com that showcased the video interviews they conducted at CPAC last week.  Ignore the fact that I've tried unsubscribing multiple times (more on that later) from their emails over the years, so I clicked on an interview with Michele Bachmann which directed me to a YouTube video that was listed as private (more on that soon). Towards the end of the interview, I hear that Ms. Bachmann occasionally blogs at a section of Townhall called tipsheet.

And that's when I got abused by online ads.  Giant belly fat ads.  Expanding ads.  Popups that followed me up and down the page.  So bad that I couldn't spend any time trying to read any articles.  I mean look at this...Does anyone there care about content on the site?  

So I went back to the site just a few minutes ago and the home page is just as bad especially with the home page takeovers and multiple ad placements.  Look for yourself

I buy a ton, if not the most, political ads on the Republican side.  Townhall should be a key component but it can't be anymore. These ads are a Chief Revenue Officer's or Sales Executive's ad revenue maximization plans gone bad.  Seriously, do they even realize that people need to read content in order to monetize it.

That also goes to the email sales mentality of not being able to unsubscribe (and I'm not the only one).  Throw in the YouTube private link which makes it impossible to find in YT search results (thinking the clicks are coming from emails only) and you get the idea of a desperate site looking to squeeze every dollar out of the site before it folds up.

You can't buy direct on this site anymore if you care about your brand.  I'm not even sure it is worth sneaking it in on an ad network buy because think of how bad the ad position would be.  I used to feel that way about Drudge and even with Drudge's auto refresh, it still gives great placements.  

Townhall?  Right now that's where good online ads go to die.  I hope someone at Townhall fixes their ad model because it used to be a good site.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S.  - Even though we don't work on Sarah Palin anymore, I'd recommend pulling those book ad creatives from the site or talking to the publisher about pulling the ads if you have any care in your brand.

 

 

 

 

FTC's Do Not Track Comments

I'm a little over due with this post, but I'm hoping you'll find it interesting anyway.  Last month, ClickZ a great (mostly internet) marketing news site posted a story requesting industry or consumer input on the FTC's Do Not Track proposal.  Not sure what that means? Simply the Federal Government is worried about your privacy on the internet and how you can be helped to avoid being personally identifiend on the internet if that's what you choose.  Still confused or perhaps you are my Mom reading this...so here goes...

Most of the time websites and technology companies that serves ads drop cookies on your machine. You can delete them if you know where to look.  Some of these cookies you ask for when you want a website to save your ID and password.  Most of the time the cookies are anonymous and help advertisers track results, sometimes companies move you into behavioral targets based on what you do online, and sometimes companies match data and get even more scary information on you.  Occasionally, you'll see or hear about a company like Facebook releasing personally identifiable information.  Well the Federal Government wants to help you.

ClickZ reporter Kate Kaye was nice enough to send me a note with a bunch of questions and here are my replies.  What do you think about my answers?

1. How should a universal choice mechanism be designed for consumers to control online behavioral advertising?  I don’t think consumers should be able to monitor what is tracking their online behavioral. I think there should be mechanisms for consumers to opt out of behavior targeted ads.  I’ll answer in more detail in some of the other questions
2.  can such a mechanism be designed to be clear, easy-to-find, usable, and understandable to consumers? How can such a mechanism be designed so that it is clear to consumers what they are choosing and what the limitations of the choice are? HTo me there are two clear and easy paths for advertising.  One is behavioral targeted ads and one is non-behavioral targeted ads.  I don’t think there should be ANY obstacles to non-behavioral targeted ads including the tracking of them.  Advertisers should be able to buy on paid search and display ads bought without the benefit of behavioral advertisers – this includes retargeting ads.  If you are on a website and reading content, the publisher should be able to make money and the advertisers should be able to track with cookies.  This is the same model of TV advertising. However, I think behavioral targeted and retargeting ads should have notification in the idea of a frame around the ad unit in yellow or green or some kind of icon on the bottom right hand that notifies consumers that this is a behavioral targeted ad.  A click thru on this icon should take users to a page where they can opt out of the behavioral targeted advertising including having the cookie purged from their machine.  Also, the consumer should be able to see what behavioral triggered this ad. The one area for compromise would be in same session clicks where ads are triggered based on recent clicks.  Perhaps that immediacy of those ads can be carved out as a loophole.
3. Should the concept of a universal choice mechanism be extended beyond online behavioral advertising and include, for example, behavioral advertising for mobile applications? This absolutely should be extended for mobile where the abuse I think could be far more dangerous if your phone number is grabbed.
4. What is the likely impact if large numbers of consumers elect to opt out? How would it affect online publishers and advertisers, and how would it affect consumers? I don’t think in my model much would be affected.  Sure some of these behavioral targeting companies will be put out of business but let’s be honest, what kind of data do they have on people?

And those were the questions I chose to answer.  What do you think?

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Session Based Searches and Other Wasteful Clicks

A few friends shared this Wall Street Journal article with me yesterday called The Price of Unwanted Clicks and I found it very enlightening and sometimes often laughable.  The biggest discussion was on session based search results and how some advertisers think these clicks are costing them lots of money.  You know what?  They could be, but I'm not sure the average advertiser even knows what's going on and in the case of doctors, lawyers and other expensive click services it can be very costly. First, let's go over what these session based clicks are, how you can minimize them, and why hiring an expert is a good idea.

Session based clicks are a result of ads being shown on potentially unrelated keyword searches when a user has multiple searches within a single session.  Basically it is a way for Google to serve ads to a unique user rather than just a unique search.  The ads are shown below the typical paid sponsored results.  The way these ads are shown are when you use Broad match for your keywords.

Broad match is basically Google's way of expanding the amount of searches your ads appear on by an algorithm.  That of course includes session based searches.  Buying the name "john mccain" on broad match means if you don't know what you are doing, your ads can be shown on "french fries".   Broad can expand your buy to new search terms, cheaper clicks, and more sales, but of course can also generate unwanted useless clicks.

You can manage your broad searches with a number of techniques including negatives, account structure, search query data, and broad match modifiers.  See this is more complicated than what you thought, right?

Of course, Google wants to sell you more ads and wants to simplify the ad buying process for you.  However, paid search is anything but simple.  They want to make it so simple to expand their advertising base, but unless you are paying attention and stay up to date, you will most likely be dissatisfied with Google.  Remember, Google is in this to make money and constantly tries to improve the engineering behind search and marketing, so changes happen all the time.

You want my advice?  Hire an expert to manage your search campaigns.  If you are a business owner, why waste your time keeping up with the changes?  Let someone manage it who lives and breathes this stuff.  If you are paying like $8 per click, why mess around? It can cost you like the advertisers in the article.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

What Worked and Didn't Work in 2010

It's been a while since I posted and I got tired of looking at the same start screen.  So here's my review of what worked and didn't work in the 2010 midterms when it came to political online marketing.

WHAT WORKED

1. Google once again dominates this space.  A big or small campaign, Google is your one stop shop for political marketing.  If you can't afford to spend a large chunk of campaign cash here, you are still using a marketing playbook from the 1980s
2. YouTube - yes I get that is Google too but using pre-roll ads in YouTube is a winning strategy and the key to getting some of that traditional advertising bucks.  The cost per view was sub a penny and the CTRs were far higher than any banner ads. Plus promoted video is a key to making sure those unflattering related videos don't keep showing up in your search results.
3. Mobile Advertising  - Sure a lot of people didn't think that 2010 was a mobile year, but we proved on several campaigns that the targeting is far superior than desktop and if you time your message correctly you can have a huge impact.  How else can you market your message when a large group of people are attending a huge football game?
4. Facebook for Communication - I became a big believer in boosting Facebook fans for GOTV, messaging, and spreading the word on candidates.  Some folks believe it is a good predictor of elections, me?  Not so sure but I think the benefits of using them far outweigh any reason to ignore Facebook's predictive power.
5. Email Marketing - Yes I wrote that.  Last cycle I was starting to buy into the "email is dying hype" but that was wrong.  Email is anything but dead and in fact, thrived this cycle.  That includes a candidate's house file as well as renting external lists.  Email works.
6. Partisan Websites  - You know them....Drudge, RedState, HuffPo.  They work.  You can get petition signups, donations, and other actions - pretty cheaply.
7. Fox News TV - Nothing like the shot in the arm you get when a candidate is interviewed by Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck.  I don't watch Beck unless a candidate of mine is on but when it comes to donations, I get verrrry excited...

WHAT DIDNT WORK

1. Big Websites - I love building websites and especially love landing pages.  However, the way people get news and information today I'm seeing less and less use of the big websites that caters to everyone.  Lighter, faster moving, and highly focused pages are the way to go now.  Building deep, heavy sites seem to be going extinct.  Think Skittles (yes I wrote that)
2. Any Social Networking Site Not Named Facebook - Did you really use LinkedIn to effectively reach voters?  Come on.  There is no other advertising game in town. Twitter is good for pushing out or gathering information, but is currently useless for advertising.
3. Conversions out of Facebook - Yes I became a big fan of Facebook but getting measurable conversions out of FB besides what's available there is still difficult.  The only real conversions I've seen were the two times I clicked on ads to pre-order Springsteen's Live in Hyde Park and The Promise.
4. Low Search Volume -  You can't manufacturer search volume - if it is a small search volume candidate than that is the answer.  
5. Spending too much time worrying about big ROIs instead of plowing some of that money into expanding your reach.  The ideal ROI should be between 100% and 125%.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

State of Online Political Marketing Looks Great

A few interesting articles have been released in the past week or so that highlights that the state of online political marketing looks great.  Back when I started in political marketing almost 5 years ago, the rage was blogging, Meet-up, Google Bombs, and video broadcasts. While these are all fine and dandy, now I see the more sophisticated campaigns using mobile marketing, behavioral targeting, email marketing, video ads, search marketing, and lots of banner ads.  Also, 5 years ago the campaign manager was often someone we rarely spoke with and now campaign managers are very involved in online advertising.  Here are a few recent articles...

1. Two articles highlighting Michele Bachmann's innovative online marketing campaign, one in TwinCities.com (Pioneer Press) and the other in the Star Tribune.
2. Carly Fiorina's massive, sophisticated YouTube ad buy is featured in the Atlantic
3. Political marketers get feisty with the lack of advertising opportunities available in Twitter - first covered in ClickZ and then picked up by Fast Company.
4. Of course the "older" article from ClickZ on political marketing using mobile surges

You probably noticed that I didn't link to any search marketing or display ads but other than a few campaigns, I've noticed plenty of ads buys and complex paid search campaigns and even some smart Facebook campaigns.  Regarding the Twitter article, I guess what got me so feisty is that some of the largest Twitter accounts are political yet, there are no viable advertising solutions for us.

While 2008 was definitely when online advertising was placed on the map, people still focused on organic tools like Facebook pages, YouTube channels, MySpace (what a mistake), engaging bloggers, etc.  2010 will be the birth of mobile advertising (not the crappy tactic of sending vote to #12346) and 2012 will be when you do see the tipping point crash through that 10% spend ceiling.  Why?  All of these smart congressional campaigns will be 2 years wiser, the 2012 Presidential campaign will be fought on the web and not over the air (unless mobile), more of the population will be using electronic devices, paper newspapers should be in a walker, and the campaign managers will move from "what's my website strategy" to "what's my integrated advertising strategy."

I'm writing to tell you, online advertising looks great.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric 

 

Christine O'Donnell's New Marketing Plan

OK if you are even a casual observer of politics than you know by now that Christine O'Donnell's long shot bid to take out popular politician Mike Castle for the GOP nomination of Delaware's Senate seat, worked much to the chagrin of party insiders.  Now, I didn't have a dog in this fight but for a variety of reasons (some of them personal) I was cheering for her all along. I am still not working on this race and don't expect to, but if I was, here's the advice I'd be giving the campaign right now.  

GO 100% DIGITAL ADVERTISING UNTIL 2 WEEKS OUT

Here's why....

1. Right now according to what I've read in the press, she is going to have a tough time getting help from the NRSC and perhaps even the DE GOP.  Of course this could just be a echo from the Primary campaign that's she's unelectable, but in reality, the campaign won't get much support until she closes the gap in polling. 
2. It appeared that she didn't have much money and whatever she did have was spent getting her people out to vote.  These first two points rules out TV for now.
3. A quick peek over in Google's Ad Planner tool shows that there are 560K 18+ people online in Delaware.  In one month they generate 2B pageviews with Facebook, Yahoo, and YouTube as the top 3 visited sites.  These kinds of numbers are definitely in reach of an expensive, advertising campaign, yet one within the realm of possibility.
4. You can make TV ads very cost effectively.  It is the media that costs a lot of money, but if you can hire a good agency, you can stream those ads online VERY cost effectively.

SO WHAT DIGITAL TACTICS WOULD I RECOMMEND?

• Raise money NATIONALLY and build your brand locally in Delaware.  Yes you can do that quite easily and we do it all the time.
• Stream your TV ads online in Google's advertising network and also YouTube.  Not the free stuff, but PAID advertising.
• Overlay your vote goals with districts, zipcodes, etc and focus your money in the best areas. Even if you want to target all of Delaware, your can run a Google Surge for about $7K per day which is very inexpensive for your TV commercials.  Even if that's too rich, you can run something at a 50% share for $3500 per day.
• Stop with the minor league search campaigns that you are running right now.  When I searched today, I saw some real amateurishness ads running including one still mentioning Mike Castle and that's when an ad rotated in.  Those text ads are your life blood to raising money online in and out of the state.  And, if you aren't tracking back exactly to which ads/keywords are raising money, you need to switch vendors.
• You did great online with your grassroots efforts and bloggers, but guess what you needs all of those folks working in those credit card companies in Wilmington to get you elected and they aren't reading those blogs anymore and may not have time on Facebook.  Its time to venture out beyond Facebook and email chains and reach them online with your message.
• Mobile marketing is your best friend and guess what you can advertise there too.
• Once you raise enough money online you can then bankroll dollars for your TV media buy the last two weeks of the campaign.  Hopefully by then, you've closed the gap and other entities also start to spending money on TV which they definitely will. 

Only by running a truly insurgent campaign online can you win this race.  Only by raising money nationally and branding locally can you win.  By focusing online now while waiting for the right time to launch TV can you cost effectively run this race.  Good luck.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. I couldn't go into real detailed tactics but the above is a start.

Introducing a Google Mobile Surge

So, we launched a new great political advertising tactic called a Google Mobile Surge and surprisingly when compared to its older brother a Google Surge, the Mobile Surge over delivered on my expectations.  Now unlike my original post on a Google Surge, its a little too early to give away how to tips, but I thought it would great to give you a little background on how we came up with this political tactic....

1. A few months ago, my co-worker Ryan and I had a call with Apple to learn about their iAd platform and even though we have several clients that have enough budget to extend their advertising to mobile, Apple told us that unless we agreed to spend high 6 to 7 figures in a month they wouldn't give us even a presentation on the capabilities. (yes - Apple refused to hit the damn <send> button on an email.  Dear Apple, I love your devices but your sales force is seriously short sighted)
2. Apple  instead suggested their low end platform Quattro which they have decided to close; Ryan and I didn't bite on this offer.
3. In the meantime, I kept researching Google's capabilities in the mobile space and I worked on several projects for other clients; what I learned was that Google has $150K+ per day in App advertising and I've noticed that you can expect 10% of your search volume to be available on mobile phones.
4. Now, if you hadn't noticed, Google automatically opts your campaigns into All Devices; now this seems harmless enough because unless you make a WAP ad your ads will only show on high end devices which is a decent way to extend your reach (I monitor the results and if not meeting client goals I will opt out of mobile).
5. Next up came the Michele Bachmann Campaign which as a consultant I love working on.  They came to us with a strategy of promoting their new Jim The Election Guy video which hammered her opponent for taxing beer and reminded people at the glorious Minnesota State Fair.
   

6. Coming up with a desktop surge was easy.  Promoting the commercial to Minnesota fair ground people while they are waiting in line for the State Fair food was genius.  As I said in the article, imagine standing in line for your beer and you pull out your iPhone to have this ad delivered into the palm of your hand.  Pure evil genius...  
7. And we way over delivered on YouTube views for the ad and without giving away metrics, the CTRs were FANTASTIC and the CPCs were outrageously competitive for something that was worth far more than the CPM bids.
8. Yes I wrote CPMs bids - contrary to popular belief you can sometimes get cheap CPCs and great reach for a CPM bid.  
9. Finally, in politics, I think the volume right now is in the Apps and not in the mobile search; that's not to say you should ignore mobile search, just expect better reach on the App side for now

The campaign is happy.  We are thrilled and we are generating some buzz.  Remember, like its older brother, the Mobile Surge is not for the small budgeted advertiser..Oh and those iAds?  I'll wait for Apple's sales call when they figure out that they missed out on advertising dollars from all the small/medium advertisers - especially political ad dollars this season.

P.S. Full press release is on the more reading link below...

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Why Did Apple Buy Quattro

A month or two back fellow Connell Donatelli employee Ryan Waite and I had a conference call with Apple to discuss their iAd platform. For you non-wireless advertiser that's Apples platform for placing their new rich media ads on iPad and iPhone devices. Anyway we have a few clients that could spend money so we thought let's chat.

Apple told us that unless we were going to spend high 5 figures into 6 in one month we couldn't even see a deck on the platform and then Apple told us to go to their lower end Quattro platform. I won't go into much detail what we are doing but let's just say Google has a good platform.

So I'm a little surprised Apple is no longer accepting orders in the early fall. Either they are ready to allow smaller advertisers in or they are letting other platforms take the business. Clearly Apple bought them as a defensive move but it is curious that they haven't announced how to support the non-super huge advertiser.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Facebook, Twitter, and Buzz - Which Tools Work Now?

(First let me state, I get the irony of this post being sent out to my Twitter account)

I used to be a religious user of Twitter.  Going back into early 2007, I Tweeted.  I even took upon myself to Tweet out McCain's daily campaign news clips in addition to my own opinion and articles that I found interesting.  Facebook for me, wasn't something I was really into and it did take a while for me to embrace their advertising platform, not because I'm stubborn, but because it took Facebook a while to come into the advertising prime time. Also, I didn't have a ton of my real life friends and family on Facebook, but that has changed and so has my use of both of them.

Nowadays Twitter has become so popular in everyday life, to me it has almost become a joke.    Not that the the platform isn't useful but people use it as a punch line it sitcoms, news programs, etc that it just doesn't seem cool anymore.  Sure, it is still the best place to get fast breaking news in addition to political news, but as a way to have interactive conversations with people, it just doesn't do it for me anymore.  I won't be disconnecting Twitter any time soon, but as a primary vehicle for communicating, it just doesn't seem right anymore.  Yes, I still Tweet but not as often.  Yes I still read Twitter for political news, but if you are a small business trying to get your own story out, I think there are better vehicles for you.

One of those is Facebook.  I do check Facebook multiple times per day and I do make a lot of posts.  It's just more personable and interactive.  Plus, a lot of friends and family are on there so it doesn't feel so alone anymore.  Also, if you are a new business and you can't figure out how to communicate in Facebook, what makes you think that Twitter will work for you?  Hone your marketing skills in Facebook and then move out to other communication tools.  However, Facebook has privacy problems and they are definitely in advertising revenue generation mode, so if you are a little nervous about them, there are alternatives.

That takes me to Google Buzz.  I was into it at the start and drifted away.  Now, I'm starting to take a look at it again.  The integration with Gmail and Google Reader is just too much to ignore.  However, you know what's holding it back?  Integration into other tools - like Typepad which doesn't have a link to share this post in Buzz or good integration into my iPad.  However, I think Google has a much better advertising model and takes privacy a little more seriously than Facebook.

My thoughts?  I think long term Twitter goes away somehow.  Facebook has too many regular people on it for it to be ignored.  They of course have a downside risk of becoming Geo Cities like MySpace.  I think Google Buzz is worthy enough to start to be taken seriously, so I'm going to be spending more time on it..I think you should too.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Yes It Is Google Surge Season

Last week during my online advertising panel at the Personal Democracy Forum, we spent some time discussing when and how to use a Google Surge.  This followed up another panel at the AAPC annual conference when we also spent some time discussing a Google Surge.  Since it is Google Surge season (if you haven't started running one by now, you are too late), here's what we discussed....

1. I like using Google's Ad Planner for forecasting a daily spend.   If you have a Google account manager they can also provide forecasts, but personally I've found my own personal forecasts are closer to what we spend.
2. Generally speaking, a Google Surge is not for the cheap advertiser.  You will spend a LOT of money if you do it correctly.
3. Do not expect to generate any donations from it and if you think you want to, you are running the wrong online tactic.  This is a branding, messaging, and Get Out The Vote tactic.
4. We have successfully generated email and petition signups as long the message is a current hot topic or you have a great creative; otherwise, don't expect any decent CPAs and if you think you have a good, pertinent message, test your way into it because you can blow your money quickly,
5. Speaking (really writing) about creatives, I prefer TV commercials as my creatives.  Your offline agency has spent a lot of time and money testing the message and building the creative, so why reinvent the wheel?  Google makes it super easy for you to use it - either run a click to play video or a YouTube video ad or if you have the money, use a rich media vendor like Mixpo.
6. Finally, the geo-target is your most important factor, but also take a look at the settings available in Google so you can fine tune your marketing.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Checking Back in on Hayworth and McCain

So I spent some time this morning diving into the McCain - Hayworth primary race and of course visited both sites.  After visiting Hayworth's site I got sidetracked by a link to an article in my local newspaper   on the Daily Record.  What did I see on the right hand side?  This ad (most likely served via Google) from the Hayworth campaign bragging that they were within 5 points.  Hmmm, that seemed odd to me considering that Rasmussen released a new poll today showing McCain up by 12 and over the 50% mark.

Anyway I clicked on the ad and was taken to a donation landing page that mentions absolutely nothing about where that poll number came from.  In fact, the only talking point was about amnesty.  

Now I like attack ads - in fact, I take a lot personal pride in running them in Google.  Some of our most famous ones were for Romney, Biden, and of course Obama.  However, one thing we don't do is send clicks into a page that didn't back up what we were promoting.  Even our famous "What Does Joe Biden have to say on Obama" ad campaign went right to a video backing up the claim.  

What I don't like about this ad is that it doesn't link to the proof to back up the 5 points and when I cruised their site I could find nothing backing up the claim.  I did find the poll numbers in and older Rasmussen poll so if they are using Rasmussen, it's time to change out that ad because a new poll is out and the 5 points isn't correct.

 So, I continued to dig in and decided to look around in Google Trends.  And just like my last post, Hayworth occasionally makes some noise but Insight for Search (Arizona) and Google Trends (USA) shows that Hayworth still has a long way to go to generate buzz.  Plus, if you were to take the latest Rasmussen poll with the Google Search data, that momentum bragged about in the Hayworth ad might have been short lived.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Difference Between Campaigning and Governing - Obama Style

I read this article today over at Politico called President Obama's Political Arm Under Fire and all I kept thinking well that's the difference between Campaigner Barack Obama and President Barack Obama.  Now before all you Obama fanboys jump all over me, this isn't meant to be a political attack.

I've spent a ton of time studying what my opponents did during the Presidential campaign.  I can tell you what worked for them as well what worked for us.  I spent some time after the election at Harvard with a unique group of professionals, students, and professors analyzing what happened during the campaign; plus, you can read my notes from David Plouffe's book.  Anyway, besides turning out to be a fundraising dynamo, Obama ultimately left his mark in campaigning history with his grass roots online organizing which was spearheaded by his message of hope and change.

Anyway, back to the article.  It is a reasonably fair analysis of the problems Organizing for America has been having and will continue to have into the near future.  OFA is really the management of Candidate Obama's email list post his election.  This list was supposed to be key to helping President Obama push his agenda through to the millions and millions of supporters, except, as the article points out, OFA is nowhere near as effective for the President's agenda.  Hmm, I wonder what happened?

When people joined the campaign they were enthralled by Candidate Obama's   message and charisma. They also got swept up by their community and saw and felt the online organizing.  And, through the online networking they felt connected to Candidate Obama.  Now, OFA is just an email list disconnected from the Presidency and the website looks and feels like what it is, a political tool. 

Notice the giant box on the right for the special election in Mass?  Candidate Obama might support the Democrat in a race, but would be more subtle about why and certainly would not allow to be perceived as a typical liberal Democrat blindly supporting the Democrat in the race.  OFA, no problem (BTW  - if you are a Republican please help out Scott Brown).

 Heck, maybe it is the overt political messages that has turned people off.  Maybe people like me if they want to connect with President Obama signed up for emails from the White House, RSS feeds from their blog posts, as well as updates via Facebook.  As proof the traffic on barackobama.com has plummeted and is probably around 2007 levels or less according to Alexa.  

Really, if you joined OFA you joined to be a part of something.  That was Candidate Obama and if you want to connect with Candidate Obama, you can easily do that through the President's contact tools.  If you want political directions, there are tons of groups out there to organize you.  If you want to support President Obama's goals, you don't need OFA to help you, you can just get information directly from The White House.  OFA definitely isn't continuing that Hope and Change message; to me, it looks like the type of politics that Candidate Obama campaigned against.  Basically, it appears until Obama's reelection campaign, OFA won't be as useful as it once was.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Best of 2009: Econsultancy interviews | Blog

Eric Frenchman, Chief Internet Strategist at Connell Donatelli Patricio Robles talked to Eric about his experiences in managing the online campaign of US presidential candidate John McCain.

via econsultancy.com

PardonMyFrench - hey my interview for eConsultancy made their best of 2009 list. Great

Are You Still Not Using Google's Ad Planner?

I've been directing online advertising campaigns since the mid 90s for very large companies (AT&T, DLJ/Harrisdirect) as well as small companies and political campaigns (ex - John McCain for President). When I've worked for big companies I had access to media planning tools and I've used them all - Nielsen, @Plan, comScore; in fact, I met with some of the current comScore executive team before they became executives. Usually these services are great for planning, but when you actually made a specific media buy these analyses don't match what actually went into market.

These types of services cost a monthly fee that as a small business owner I find a little tough to swallow and it was a little tough to swallow for the political agency I do work for.  So, that's why I'm a huge believer in Google's Ad Planner tool; the new enhancements including actual ad placements make this invaluable to the small advertiser.  This is just another reason why working with Google helps small advertisers operate like big advertisers without all of the upfront costs:

1. Ad Planner allows you to build media plans and forecasts by demo and geographic targets for FREE
2. Ad Planner provides pretty, professional charts for your plans for FREE
3. Build your own banner ads gives you the chance to run flash ads for FREE.  Sure they are slightly better than average creatives, but did I mention they are FREE?
4. Paid search is the great money equalizer because you are rewarded for great relevancy; plus the geo targeting, time of day targeting, creative building, and budget management are all FREE
5. Google's Content network allows you to buy on a CPC or CPM basis across big and small sites all using demographic and content targeting

The actual media buys themselves of course costs money but you can have everything run via credit card which gives you maximum freedom to lower or increase spends or shut it off whenever you want.  Plus, if you spend a moderate amount per month (~$10K) you can get access to one of Google's account teams.

Yes improvements to the Ad Planner are just another reason why Google is your best friend for advertising, especially if you are a small business or small client.  The only complaint I have with the Ad Planner is the lack of ability to geo-target at anything other than Country, State, Metro, or City; plus the City targeting is annoying because they aren't grouped alphabetically by state, but alphabetically by Metro (try looking for specific cities in Virginia).  However, I'm happy with the tool I have because it does most of what I want for FREE and I know Google will continue to make improvements.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Rupert Murdoch's Google Battle - Not So Crazy

(A quick small post - longer than Twitter, shorter than my normal posts).

I read a few posts yesterday about News Corp threatening to deny Google's spiders access to their sites and this includes the Wall Street Journal.  Now, I had the pleasure of negotiating with WSJ when I was with AT&T and even though I got the better of them for AT&T"s Personal Network plan, it created a lasting impression with me.  I've also advertised with them many times including during the 2008 General Election. While advertising revenues are important to them, they are clearly focused on subscribers.  So I wasn't surprised when Murdoch threatens to block Google.   

Hitwise's Bill Tancer put out some great charts that shows what they think Google's traffic is to WSJ and it is a whopping 25%; plus they report that 44% of traffic from Google is new.

WSJ knows this too.  WSJ journal sees other print companies who give their content away from free struggle with sales revenue - while it is coming in from the web, it isn't fast enough to replace the crash on the print side.  

WSJ has always been about subscriptions first and advertising second.  They know what the true hit would be by blocking Google.  I bet they don't care about the new traffic number.  I bet people will still know about them and the branding from the traffic doesn't matter to them.  Their advertising rates are still super high, so the traffic hit while bothersome, probably doesn't make a dent in their overall revenue numbers.  Me, I don't think Murdoch is bluffing.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Vote Chris Christie in NJ - Your Only Hope To Get Rid of Corzine

Yes you should vote for Chris Christie on Tuesday.  It is our only hope to rid the state of the economy killing, private job shrinking, and government expanding Governor Jon Corzine.   Look I get that Christie hasn't explained how he is going to cut property taxes, restore rebates, and slow down the growth of government.  I get that I really do.  I also get that if you are a conservative he has pissed you off going back to the primary against Lonegan.  However....

1. The polls are tightening and Corzine can still win this
2. Chris Daggett is finished.   He is not surging in the polls.  Perhaps if he started earlier and used online effectively instead of listening to their traditional media agency (see the quote* below from Ali of the Daggett Campaign on why they didn't have any online strategy) he'd have a chance, but he listened to the wrong advisors.
3. Google Trends right now is pointing to a toss up but Corzine isn't far behind; Daggett is finished
4. Obama is extending his influence in the race even though he knows that Corzine has done a terrible job with this state in creating jobs and spurring the economy.

4 more years of Corzine is a horrible thought.  And for each of you saying to yourselves, well if we have Corzine again at least next time we can run a conservative candidate.  That's the wrong kind of thinking that led some of you conservatives to not vote for Senator McCain - and look how that has turned out.

If you are on the fence, vote Christie.  If you are a conservative, hold your nose and vote Christie.  If you want to make a protest vote for Daggett, now is the wrong election for a protest vote; the only thing that matters right now is to ditch Corzine and Christie is the only vote that can do it.  

Sorry true believers.  The way I look at this vote is to get rid of Corzine first and the only way to do that is to vote Chris Christie.

(Disclosure:  I have had ABSOLUTELY NO INVOLVEMENT with the Christie Campaign.  In fact, my 9 year old son still asks me why would I vote for him if he didn't hire me.  Answer: CHRISTIE IS THE ONLY CHANCE TO GET RID OF JON CORZINE)

*Here's the bizarre, campaign strategy killing decision by the Daggett campaign to NOT use online to network, advertise, and generate grass roots support as posted by Ali from the Daggett Campaign (BOLD is done by me). 

"From our research, we have discovered that NJ voters are primarily reachable via TV and other media -- not internet -- and that is why we have focused our efforts where we have. I can imagine you have strong opinions as to how we should be using our money, but actually the media company who has led every successful independent in this country is spearheading our efforts, so we are deferring to the experts."

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Chris Daggett's Online Marketing Won't Allow Him to Be Viable

(Disclosure: I received several emails after my last post.  I am not involved with Christie's campaign.  I've never spoken with them.  I do want Corzine to lose and I AM NOT advocating that Daggett should drop out).

Chris Daggett's campaign isn't viable unless he can get into the mid-30s as I wrote last week.   Yes I get that The Star Ledger just endorsed him for Governor and Google Trends' finally has a pulse.  

It doesn't matter.  He has no online marketing. The website isn't ready for prime time, it looks he had a cousin build it for him on a WordPress template.  There are no Google ads trying to direct people looking for information on him.  I've seen no display ads, his Facebook fans are about 10% of his competitors and his YouTube page has little subscribers, little views, and really looks like it is a page dedicated for Halloween.  There are no Facebook widgets to grab.

This isn't an insurgent campaign.  There is little evidence to suggest that.  If this campaign had a chance they would have been employing modern internet marketing techniques, however, I can't find a single piece of evidence that the Daggett campaign even noticed what happened in the 2008 election.  Yes Daggett is receiving matching funds and this allows him to be in the debates which he has dominated so far. However, did anyone stop to ask besides paying his staff and buying political signs what he plans to do with the rest of the money?

Clearly it isn't to invest in modern marketing techniques.  I've heard there was a live TV commercial floating around, but I haven't seen it live.  One has to ask why on earth would they run TV ads in this market?  How many GRPs could they actually buy?  Could it even make a dent in your viewing habits if it could even cut through the Corzine buy?  Does anyone want to bet me there will be a horrible waste of direct mail coming your way to a mailbox near you or annoying robo calls to your home phone?

If this was really an insurgent campaign someone there would have used online to network properly and market his plan.  Maybe if Daggett had started ANYTHING online months ago they would have actually been viable.  Unfortunately for them they didn't and they will end up being nothing more than the General Election's version of the Steve Lonegan campaign which also failed any semblance of a modern marketing plan.

At this point from my cheap seats in Long Valley, NJ Daggett isn't viable.  I get that some people are disappointed with the Christie campaign and hate Jon Corzine.  However, NJ needs to get rid of Corzine first and Daggett can't do it.  I get the idea of a protest vote.  I really do.  This isn't the year for a protest vote.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. Here's an interesting and short article from the Nation Review called Chris Daggett, Jon Corzine's Bodyguard.  

P.P.S Please read the comments for a response from the Daggett campaign. 

Revisiting Roblox

A few months ago I made this post called Is Roblox Safe? Not Sure So I Blocked It and I've received a lot of traffic from this post.  Some from parents looking for answers and some from Roblox supporters as you can see from the comments in the post.  Usually my answer to these comments is that I have little kids and I don't want them that involved with consumer generated content.  Also, don't forget that the trigger for my further investigation was that my firewall-antivirus software Bit Defender flagged the site as not child friendly.

Well last Friday I received an email from the CEO of Roblox David Baszucki.  He was kind enough to want to talk with me about my blog post.  I guess that means that either a) someone sent him the link or b) he or his marketing team was watching Roblox's google results.  We spoke within the hour of his email...

1. He wanted to talk about which software I was using to protect the laptop (Bit Defender) and they were going to consider adding it to the software they test.
2. He wanted to reassure me that even though the content is consumer generated they flag obviously offensive ones and remove or if something is marginal, but gets flagged as inappropriate they investigate immediately.  
3. He spoke with me about the ads I was seeing and told me that they carefully monitor what appears on the site
4. Finally he wanted to know why I thought they were associated with Lego because they are extremely cautious.

Anyway, I thought he was very professional and that they do try hard to monitor the site.  As I wrote earlier, then later in replies to the comments, and then when I spoke with David, I have little kids and I don't include Roblox on the list of sites they can visit.  I do think Roblox is a lot more professional then when I wrote that post, but for Jacob and Kaela it isn't for them.  When they get a little older - perhaps around 13 I will probably change my mind, but right now, no; I don't even let them on YouTube without me.  

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

*****A NOVEMBER 15, 2011 UPDATE*********

Dear Roblox Wiki clicks,

Thanks for the traffic.  It's been over 2 years since I made this post.  I've moved on and so has my son when it comes to gaming.

Feel free to make your comments to defend Roblox.  Please refrain from parental advice and cursing.  It devalues whatever positive commentary you might have.  I think the folks at Roblox would be very impressed with your love and defense of the site, but now my son chooses other games to play and has never asked me again about Roblox.  

I had considered disabling comments from this point on, but I decided against it because of your passion.  However, as I wrote above we moved on, so while your appropriate, tasteful comments might sway some other parents, it means nothing to me unless he chooses to play again.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

 

 

NJ Race is Really Between Christie and Daggett

(This is a post for my good friend and college roommate Jim W)

After watching and reading the reports about last week's NJ Governor Debate it is pretty clear this race is really between the two Chris' - Christie and Daggett.  Corzine's fate really rests with Daggett and Christie.  I haven't received and didn't want to dig around for more detailed polling information, but it seems pretty clear to me that around 40% of the voters will vote for the hated, job killing, economic disaster Corzine.   In stock buying terms, that's Corzine's support level.

Christie on the other hand, I have no idea what his support level is.  That's not to be shrill, but I don't have inside polling data to know who are his definite or "1" voters.  Also, for that matter, I don't know Corzine's but he consistently polls around 40%.

Daggett is interesting because he has qualified for state funds and I've seen him poll around 10%.  However, like Lonegan from the primaries his website is horrible, I've seen little social networking, I've seen little search marketing, pretty much not much invested online.  However, in the debates and in the press he is attracting attention and even garnering attention from some of my conservative friends.

The problem for Christie is Daggett.  Usually in NJ you'd get the protest vote,  but this time the protest looks reasonable to a large number of voters.  If Daggett starts polling higher those numbers will come out of Christie.  Check out this recent Google Trends chart to see how Daggett is starting to pick up interest. So that means:

1. Corzine wins with around 40% of the vote (WORST CASE) because Daggett surges into the 20s
2. Christie beats up Daggett and keeps him around 10% of the vote
3. Daggett in a miracle finish beats up Christie enough that he gets more than 40% of the vote

To me, this is the wrong year for a protest vote.  We can't afford 4 more years of Corzine.  Sorry Daggett fans, but unless he starts polling around 30% he isn't viable.  He needs more of a surge and while that is possible and he has some time, I don't think Daggett has the marketing or grassroots support to really make up the distance; too bad he didn't start sooner.   BTW - if you really are a Chris Daggett fan - more power to you, but to the NJ voters into a protest vote against Christie and Corzine, now is NOT the year.

Want to read more, read this post from FiveThirtyEight.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google's New View Through Conversions Tracking - About Time

I logged on to one of my political AdWords accounts last night and I saw a new column called View-through Conv. and I was definitely pleased.  Sure it is only for your Content Network campaigns but I'm glad they finally added it because this type of metric has been around for years and as I've written before Google's Content Network is a great platform for display advertising especially for the small business marketer. 

View-through or impression based conversion tracking has been available for a while.  Historically, around 50% of your conversions could be view-through for banner ads with about 80% of them coming through within the first 5 days.  I tested this for search years ago and found that 90% of the latencies come within 1 day so that's probably one of the reasons Google isn't providing this for search.  If you want to read more I've reprinted a short post below that I made almost 4 years ago.  Enjoy the walk down memory lane - I did....

Latency What Is It Good For?

I was asked a few days ago to explain latency or view through/impression sales in a beautiful office overlooking the Potomac River. And, if you don't know either, I'm honored to be the first to explain it to you. Now maybe we can explain a lot of those unknown sales you've been tracking on your sales reports!Have you ever been looking to buy something at your favorite e-commerce site while at work and just before you hit the next button, your pesky boss pops up from behind, so you close your browser. Sound familiar? Well it should. Industry studies (although an old one) show that 75% of all shopping carts get abandoned. Are we to assume that these items are never bought or are they sometimes bought later? Perhaps when the boss is at lunch? 

Let's say (really write) that you are an online marketing manager for a shoe company and you use an ad server to place your ads on your media buy. A potential buyer clicks on your banner, visits your site, and just before they complete the shopping cart, that boss shows up again, and they abandon the cart. However, they show up the next day without clicking on the same banner and complete the sale. Now what? Well, armed with a cookie courtesy of your ad server, a completed sale, and a click on a banner, your ad server should be able to determine which cookie completed the sale and which banner generated the sale. Therefore, you have a latent sale. Sometimes, those pesky consumers never click on your banner and then mysteriously arrive at your site and make a sale; this is called a view through or impression based sale.

Doesn't sound like a big deal to you? Well it should because I've seen average latent sales in the 55%-60% range and the % varies from site to site and from product to product; especially when the product has a long sales process or sign-up page. Several companies that I'm aware only started tracking latents recently and up until then had a large % of sales generated from unknown channels.

Think you know everything now. Well there's a lot more to it especially when it comes to interpreting the number and running campaigns using latent sales. However, that's for another week.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Let's say (really write) that you are an online marketing manager for a shoe company and you use an ad server to place your ads on your media buy. A potential buyer clicks on your banner, visits your site, and just before they complete the shopping cart, that boss shows up again, and they abandon the cart. However, they show up the next day without clicking on the same banner and complete the sale. Now what? Well, armed with a cookie courtesy of your ad server, a completed sale, and a click on a banner, your ad server should be able to determine which cookie completed the sale and which banner generated the sale. Therefore, you have a latent sale. Sometimes, those pesky consumers never click on your banner and then mysteriously arrive at your site and make a sale; this is called a view through or impression based sale.

Revisiting Facebook for Online Advertising

You long time readers know that I've had a love-hate relationship with using Facebook as an online advertising buy; that is specifically buying banner ad space and not for using it for connecting with customers-supporters which I always believed it was extremely useful.  Facebook with its low CPM rates and lack of targeting options coupled with boring ad units put it extremely low on my media recommendation list.  That is until recently. I've become very bullish on Facebook advertising and hope they make more targeting options changes.

On the right is a screen shot of a make believe ad buy (actually it was a real one but I

 can't who it is really for).  So, let's take a tour and describe  what I like about Facebook for advertising and what I think they should still change.

1) The geo-targeting works fine if you want to target by city, state, or country.  However, there aren't zip code, county, or MSA options plus I could really use a bulk upload.  I'd imagine Facebook will be changing this in the future.

2) Other demos like male/female, targeting on a user's birthday, education level and whether you are in a relationship and if you are interested in males or females provides some interesting targeting options especially if you are a dating site (for example) or need to target based on marital status.  Interesting targeting but really this is left over from their college only Facebook days.

3) Now the Keywords is where it gets very interesting.  You have to be a keyword wizard and you have to understand that these keywords are not the kind you would normally search on but really kind of like groups within Facebook of what people put on their page.  The main problem I have with this is that if you enter in more than one term Facebook looks at it as an OR instead of an AND.  For example if you wanted Republicans who like Obama you can't (see below for the exception),  You'll find 2.9 million Facebook people who have Barack Obama on their page but when you add in Republican you get about 3.17 million which is just adding in Republicans to Obama's total.  This is good targeting, but an AND function would be much better,

4) The workplace targeting is very interesting especially if you are going after a certain company.  This is unbelievably cool

5) Connection targeting really only works if you are the Facebook admin so you can target your own supporters or if you want to exclude them.  This is how the Barack Obama admin can target their large fan base and then use keywords to further segment them out.  That's how they could find Barack Obama Republicans.

6) The CPMs or CPCs are dirt cheap still - at this level I like using CPMs so I make sure my ad is shown.  The ad units are not their new sexy units which are usually reserved for their large customers (this should change too soon) and the media is not on a user's home page but on their subpages.  Again this is kind of a bummer if you don't have multiple thousands of dollars to spend, but still quite the non-premier options are quite good now.

I think Facebook is a good tool right now especially with their targeting options and dirt cheap CPMs.  I do hope they make some improvements to their keyword targets by making it an AND and not an OR plus provide the option for lower spenders to get on a home page or get better ad units.  At that point with those three changes, Facebook would explode for the small advertiser.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

comScore Shows Google's Nearly Impregnable Search Fortress

comScore released its August 2009 search numbers and while a lot of people, especially Microsoft fanboys, will be jumping for joy as Microsoft gained core search share by 0.4% to 9.3% and Google dropped by 0.1% to 64.6, I for one don't see the joy.  In fact, comScore's report show's Google's dominance is quite secure and for the moment quite safe.  

You see the numbers that everyone reports is a comScore metric called core searches which is basically searches off of the main search site like Google.com.  However, as any Google fanboy (like me) will tell you, Google is much more than searches off of Google.com.  It includes Gmail. Google Docs, Google Books, News, and of course a little known site called YouTube.  And, that's where things get very interesting.

Look a little lower in the report and you'll see something called Expanded search which lists out all search activity including video and search activity on the non-core sites.  It is this report which shows how dominant Google's search strategy is and why Microsoft has a long, long way to go to catch a giant.

1. Google isn't just 7x larger like the core report shows; all Google properties versus all Microsoft properties is TEN TIMES LARGER THAN MICROSOFT.  Why do you think Google gives you all of those products for free?
2. YouTube while losing some share in August is the second largest search property around.  YouTube is so large that it is 28% larger than Yahoo and twice as large as Bing.  Think about that for a second, if Bing is hugely successful they'd have to knock of Yahoo and YouTube before Google even blinks.
3. You can look at the rest of the sites on the list, but they are so small it really doesn't matter much but they are interesting.  For example, eBay and AOL losing share and Facebook is growing quickly probably driven by their huge growth. 

Yes Bing is an exciting product.  Yes Microsoft is spending $100 million in advertising to boost their search but right now all they have generated is a little buzz and some excitement.  I haven't noticed a blip in the amount of paid search advertising that I've run for clients and I've tried.  I also doubt Google has noticed a blip in their search activity.  In fact, I bet Google is more concerned with expanded search and in that case, Google is STILL growing.  Microsoft isn't even close right now.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

XM Radio Save Program Needs Help

I've been a big fan of XM Radio ever since my Acura came with satellite radio.  XM was a life saver when I would drive to and from Jersey City when I was a managing director at Harrisdirect.  I'd listen to ESPN, Comedy Channel, CNN, and all the different music stations.  Some times the comedy channel was the only thing that kept me going while I was sitting in traffic on the Pulaski Skyway.  When I started my home based business, I added a second radio in my office so I could listen to news, sports, and of course Springsteen once XM merged with Sirius.  

That worked great until about a month ago.  Instead of using some cash in the stock market or leave it in a bank to earn nothing per month, we built this great extension on the house which is now my office. Unfortunately I can no longer get a signal in my office because it is on the North Side of the house and the Southern part of the room is an interior wall.

So I logged on to my XM account but got nowhere with the help menus.  Next I called into listener care which could do nothing to solve my problem, so sadly the only thing I could do was cancel my service since luckily for me, it was a little before my annual renewal.  I had no issues with their customer care, they were professional and courtesy but they couldn't do anything with my signal problem.

However, I started to get bombarded with what I'm assuming is their save program.  Now I love save programs, especially integrated direct mail, internet campaigns.  I also think their approach for customers that left for other reasons would be quite reasonable, but don't they know I can't access their service?  Why don't they know I called in to their listener care and they tried to help me but couldn't.  Is it too much to ask to use data to segment out their list to people that left because they could no longer get a signal.  And, why don't they know I'M ACTUALLY STILL A CUSTOMER WITH MY PRIMARY CAR RADIO STILL ACTIVE?

Why send me this smoking great offer?  If you want me back why don't you send me emails with a different product, some kind of booster, or something that actually addresses the reason I left?  Why don't they recognize I was a multi-unit customer with my other radio still active?  Shouldn't that clue XM in that it really was a move of the equipment and not the price?  I don't think that is too much to ask using modern targeting techniques.

XM, I still love you.  Please turn off the email and direct mail campaigns and save those dollars for a real save.  If you have a non-price solution for me, I'd be happy to turn the radio back on.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google's Content Network Just Got Better

With the early morning announcement that DoubleClick's Ad Exchange Network is now available in Google's Content Network, you should be very excited.  Now there are even more sites involved and based on my experience with DoubleClick's network, I'd assume that there are some new high quality sites.

What this means for you is that if you were running a Google Surge, you should now go back and ask your Google Reps for an updated site list.  If you had been using Google for placement targeting against certain demographics you should now go update that list.

I'm thrilled.  This gives you more reasons to shift dollars to Google where you get good placements with great targeting and reporting, all with competitive prices via at worst a credit card where you get maximum flexibility.  This already makes a great product, even better.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Fight The Smears versus The Birthers

(Just a fair warning  - I AM NOT A BIRTHER)

The other day while working on an online advertising campaign for one of our clients I came across the following text ad from FightTheSmears.com.  It's obviously an ad trying to debunk the theories that President Obama is not a US citizen.  However, I found this ad interesting on a number of fronts...

1. It is September 2009 which is almost a full three years before President Obama's reelection.
2. I found another ad in Google's Content Targeting network which suggests either a tactic to massively expand out the campaign and/or garner dirt cheat impressions.  Notice I wrote impressions and not clicks.  Text ads in Google's Content Network woefully under-perform and I always recommend to not waste your time with them.
3. They are also running paid search ads to intercept people looking for this information, but what I find very fascinating is that the Google Search Trends on this topic is slowing down and appears to be limited to a few states in the South and West.
4. The actual text ad I grabbed was an in-text video overlay on top of a YouTube video about a California Small Business Owner ripping into her Congressmen at a Town Hall Meeting on Obama Care.  It takes a little more effort to put this ad inro your AdWords system so clearly this is something they wanted to do.

Is the Obama Administration really that concerned about the birther theories that they will run ads almost 3 years before a massive amount of people will care again?  If you ran the trends back to fall 2008 you'll see that the peak was really October 2008 which of course was right before the election.  However, they are spending time, energy, and money to really blast this message out via Google's Content Network and YouTube.  The in-text video overlay clearly shows that they are ok with a very loose targeting and even though it is really out of context (ObamaCare versus Obama's Birth Certificate) they are getting an impression view of the message.  

Then again there is always the flip side that could be happening.  That's is since the Trends are slowing and it appears that most of the significant traffic is from the South and West, wouldn't they be better off just leaving this alone?  Aren't they potentially fueling the fire by keeping this alive and being defensive?  Heck even risking that the impressions that are being served will leave the reverse message in the viewers mind since the ad isn't really in the right context?

BTW  -  just to drive you readers crazy, is it possible that Obama is ok with the wrong message? Perhaps they think that by keeping it out there that they are making the extreme right side of the Republican base seem a little crazier than normal.  Perhaps by responding in this matter they can keep the issue alive, driving a wedge between potential independent voters who may not want to be associated with birthers?

Unless Obama has data for my last theory, at this point I'd recommend shutting this campaign down.  It really makes them look defensive on an issue that has lost steam.  Then again, I wouldn't be surprised that they have polling data to support my last theory.  At any rate, it is clear that the Obama Administration will be a never ending campaign and unlike past administrations the next election will always be front and center.  That's certainly a change from the past.  

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Dear David Axelrod - I Checked Your Facts on Small Business and You're Wrong Again

So I've been spending some time reading the Health Reform Bill currently getting trashed in congress via Open Congress and I'm fired up again due to the marketing by the Obama Administration.  The latest is the propaganda they are spreading on making insurance affordable for small business.  When I read the bill, I see the ability to take advantage of credits, but it is NOT absolute as Axelrod and the rest of the administration would have you believe.  Here's an excerpt from the now infamous SPAM mailing by the Obama Administration with David Axelrod's signature on it...

"Reform will benefit small business - not burden it: It’s a myth that health insurance reform will hurt small businesses. To the contrary, reform will ease the burdens on small businesses, provide tax credits to help them pay for employee coverage and help level the playing field with big firms who pay much less to cover their employees on average."

And here's the propaganda found on the White House Reality Check site

 The plans have a tax credit for small businesses to help them provide health insurance for their workers, to reward them for doing the right thing by their employees. 

So logically the small business owner would think that they are definitely going to get a credit as a reward for doing the right thing.  Right?  No reasons NOT to support this right?  Well as usual the Obama administration plays around with words and sells way too much with something as sensitive as health care.  Here's what the bill actually says regarding the small business credit..

SEC. 45R. SMALL BUSINESS EMPLOYEE HEALTH COVERAGE CREDIT

‘(a) In General- For purposes of section 38, in the case of a qualified small employer, the small business employee health coverage credit determined under this section for the taxable year is an amount equal to the applicable percentage of the qualified employee health coverage expenses of such employer for such taxable year. ‘(b) Applicable Percentage-‘(1) IN GENERAL- For purposes of this section, the applicable percentage is 50 percent. ‘(2) PHASEOUT BASED ON AVERAGE COMPENSATION OF EMPLOYEES- In the case of an employer whose average annual employee compensation for the taxable year exceeds $20,000, the percentage specified in paragraph (1) shall be reduced by a number of percentage points which bears the same ratio to 50 as such excess bears to $20,000.‘(c) Limitations-‘(1) PHASEOUT BASED ON EMPLOYER SIZE- In the case of an employer who employs more than 10 qualified employees during the taxable year, the credit determined under subsection (a) shall be reduced by an amount which bears the same ratio to the amount of such credit (determined without regard to this paragraph and after the application of the other provisions of this section) as--(A) the excess of--‘(i) the number of qualified employees employed by the employer during the taxable year, over (ii) 10, bears to‘(B) 15.‘(2) CREDIT NOT ALLOWED WITH RESPECT TO CERTAIN HIGHLY COMPENSATED EMPLOYEES- No credit shall be allowed under subsection (a) with respect to qualified employee health coverage expenses paid or incurred with respect to any employee for any taxable year if the aggregate compensation paid by the employer to such employee during such taxable year exceeds $80,000.

Ok, now I can't quite figure out all of this jargon but here's what I do understand and why the Obama Administration is WRONG for promoting this in absolute terms because there are quite a number caveats on the credit:

1. You receive NO CREDIT for an employee that makes more than $80K per year.  That's not so good in a bunch of states like say New Jersey. This exception also means that the owners of these businesses are also counted as employees, so probably you are NOT going to SEE ANY CREDIT for your own health insurance.
2. The credit gets phased out by some percentage if your TOTAL company payroll is greater than $20K which means the only way to get the full 50% credit is if your entire payroll is less than $20K. Wow that's generous.
3. Finally the credit is also reduced by some percentage if you employ more than 10 but less than 15 employees.

Seriously people does this sound like the Obama Administration should be marketing the small business health credit in the manner in which it does?  Right off the bat all of your HIGHLY PAID EMPLOYEES INCLUDING THE OWNERS WHO MAKE $80K OR MORE ARE EXCLUDED.  Then if you have other employees, you've probably already busted the $20K payroll threshold so any credit you make on anyone making less than $80K will be reduced.

I think the Obama Administration should be ashamed of themselves for marketing the small business credit in this manner.  It is definitely not an ABSOLUTE credit and probably at the end of the day small businesses will be better off paying the fine and pushing employees to the public option rather than providing the benefits with these potential credits.

Am I wrong?  Let me know.

Eric

Obama, Pelosi and The Marketing of Your Health Care Reform

I get a morning briefing every day from RedState and one of the links today was about a paragraph in a White House blog post about reporting misinformation on health care reform.  Put aside the scary notion of not qualifying what misinformation means which was the point of the RedState post, I went a read the White House blog post and watched two videos.  Now before I come to some conclusions here are four points that worry me and what I find interesting about President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Health Care Reform.

1. Obama clearly stating I believe in 2003 that he is a proponent of a Single Payer Health Care Plan.
2. Candidate Obama denied he was for Single Payer Health Care Plan unless it was from scratch, which he knows is/was an impossibility
3. White House video of a questions and answers with President Obama on the public option with the public option not being a "must have"
4. HuffingtonPost article with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying that she does not have the votes to pass health care reform without a public option. (I linked to HuffPo article because HuffPo is friendly towards the left)

Ok so here's what has me worried.  President Obama is a proponent of a Single Payer option but he knows he can't get it.  The public option is the next best thing.  Passing health care reform without a public option won't happen according to Nancy Pelosi because the liberal votes on the Democratic side of the House won't agree to a proposal without it.   And, that's what's so fascinating and so scary about this situation.

• Nobody likes listening to Pelosi.  She is ground zero for partisan politics.
• The American Public historically gives low marks to the House. However,
• People still like President Obama, but
• Obama knows that he doesn't have the votes without a Public Option so he can use smooth words to say - it isn't a must-have for the Administration and he can also use smooth words that say - well if the private sector can't compete with the public version well, isn't that the free market at work?
• President Obama gives great news conferences but Pelosi is his attack person.  Basically a good cop-bad cop tactic on health care reform.

I don't believe a private sector company can compete with a massively funded public option.  Private sector companies have share holders and profit/loss statements while the public option has Congressmen who need to please roughly 51% of their voters and are devoid of profit and loss responsibilities; plus, the Government can keep funding them more and more with a single vote or change the rules to benefit the public option.

To me - this is as simple as FedEx & UPS versus the US Postal Service for home mail delivery (not packages and next day air).  If FedEx and UPS could actually deliver letters (ie mail) to your home, the US Postal Service would have been finished a long time ago.  However, we keep the USPS in business by allowing them to increase the cost of mail and by NOT allowing the private sector to deliver mail into your home. (BTW - here's the language about the USPS monopoly via the Wikipedia link above - FedEx and United Parcel Service (UPS) directly compete with USPS express mail and package delivery services, making nationwide deliveries of urgent letters and packages. Due to the postal monopoly, they are not allowed to deliver non-urgent letters and may not use U.S. Mail boxes at residential and commercial destinations)

Once the public option is in force, any rules can be set to force any real private sector companies out of business.   That's what worries me about the Health Exchanges.  This really is the march to Single Payer

President Obama is smooth and gives reasonable sounding, view graph deep answers that makes you sound like an idiot if you don't agree (hence the misinformation paragraph on their website - see below).  He knows he doesn't have the votes in the House, but he lets the House leadership do his dirty work while he appears to be pragmatic. Fascinating and scary at the same time.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

-------------White House Blog-------------

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care.  These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation.  Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to [email protected].

Florida's Archaic Election Laws

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday on a ruling by the Florida Election Commission that St. Petersburg Mayor Candidate Scott Wagman's ads on Google appear to violate state disclosure laws even though exceptions already exist for bumper stickers and buttons and the click thru URL did contain a disclosure.  My friend Kate Kaye also reported on this ruling as did techPresident's Nancy Scola  who supplied a local news video in the article.  After reading these articles plus some of the testy comments left on them, here's my take on what's going on since I've run quite a lot of political paid search, social networking, and banner advertising in the past few years :-)

• According to the video Scott Wagman relied heavily on the internet to get his message out.  That's good for him.
• Scott believed (guessing here) that Google ads and Facebook ads were kosher without the disclosure as per Federal guidelines that gave an exception to these small ads.
• Florida's Election Commission believes the ads violate their state disclosure rules.  They give exceptions for bumper stickers and buttons, yet didn't think about search ads EVEN THOUGH NATIONAL CAMPAIGNS RAN A TON OF ADS DURING THE PRIMARY AND GENERAL.
• When Hillary Clinton finally launched her paid search campaign they used some of the characters for the disclaimer which resulted in this terrible creative. Is this what the Florida Election Commission wants to have running?
• Look, don't try and tell me that Florida's Election Commission never noticed the national ads in the past few years so to not take some time to issue updated guidelines and then flag a local guy using them is well, pure BS.
• A lot of local elections have a lot of, how should I write this, personal issues and some times (not all), a competitor or competitor supporter files a complaint.  I don't know if that's the case here, but it seems strange that the campaign relying on online advertising gets flagged.

Generally speaking I'm a state's right kind of guy but this is a case of where the states are clueless.  To turn a blind eye to what's going on at the national level and rule on a campaign that desperately needs the internet is shameful.  BTW - it highlights that Google has a long way to go in policy education.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Corzine Sucks and So Do His Banner Ads

I really can't stand Jon Corzine.  I met him a few years ago in Nobu in NY when he was a Senator; I didn't like him then and I certainly don't like him today.  In fact as a US Senator he did less damage because the Democrats in this state voted in another liberal Senator to take his place so their vote results didn't deviate.  However, as this post pointed out, he has done a lot of damage to this state and deserves to get dumped.  That's why these display ads that run via Google upset me.

Let's take a look at these frames starting with Frames 1 through 3.

• From a flash technology standpoint these are are just slightly more technical than a GIF ad from 1997
• The blue is ugly as is the annoying caricature of Governor Corzine as he thinks deep thoughts on how to drown this state some more in taxes.
• Now to the text "He saw this national recession coming so he did something about it.  He created the first economic stimulus plan."  As the graph I posted in this previous post shows, our upward climb in job loss started October 2007 and continues to this day to NJ's highest unemployment in the past 20 years.  So when exactly did this "sage" see this and what plan did he put into action?
•  He didn't see anything coming.  He didn't put anything to motion. 

Frames 4 through 5

•  OK - same bad design format - nothing new or exciting
• However, more spins on this so called action plan about attracting and retaining business, creating jobs, etc".  NJ ranks dead last in business environment thanks to Corzine.
• While Obama's stimulus plan may create some jobs sometime late 2010, there just isnt enough "stimulus" right now to help Corzine by November 2009. 
• The ads end with the same boring, blue, white and ugly caricature. 

The ad is utterly useless.  It doesn't stand out and is almost as annoying as Lowermybills.com; those ad suck almost as much as Corzine sucks as Governor.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

The Corzine Dangers Lurking Online for Chris Christie Campaign

I've written a series of post regarding the year's NJ Gubernatorial race and up until recently the lack of online advertising that I've seen has been disappointing.  That is until the Jon Corzine campaign started to put the Obama online advertising playbook into action.  The Chris Christie campaign however, remains in the internet advertising fog of war with the occasional email message or Facebook post.  This of course has me very concerned because this state needs to make Corzine a one term and done Governor.  Here's what I'm seeing:.

• Facebook - Both candidates have low involvement. Corzine 09 page has 1665 supporters while his Governor page has 9588.  Christie has 4681 fans.  Christie's numbers are a nice jump since the last time I looked but Corzine has lost some (no surprise, but more on that later).  I do get messages from Christie, but few and far between.
• Email Marketing - The Corzine campaign is good for about 3 per week while the Christie campaign maybe sends one out once per week and that's very sad.
• YouTube - Check out the pages of both candidates.  Not much going on here for either of them.
• Paid Search - Corzine has launched a newbie style paid search campaign with only minimum changes to the text ads and clicks driven to the homepage (very search marketing 101).  However, Christie is doing ZERO marketing here which is scary.  The only support he is getting is from John McCain's Country First PAC (hmm I wonder who is directing that) and some enterprising 529 groups.  BTW - this image shows that Corzine is advertising on Christie's name.
• Display Advertising - Corzine is already running them and while they are decently constructed showing some planning for the ads, they once again show a lack of creative optimization and click through to the homepage.  Christie - ZILCH but support from similar folks from the paid search area.
• Website - Corzine's Quantcast profile shows a heavy slant towards wealthy women while Christie shows no real demo patters.  The site traffic screen shot shows that Corzine's campaign's web traffic growth has exploded (I wonder what online advertising does for you?).
• Polling Data shows that Christie is still ahead but Corzine has reversed his downward spiral and his poll growth increase surprising looks like his website growth.  Plus, most Jersey folks aren't paying attention now and are thinking about the shore which makes the numbers unreliable.

What does all mean?  Well Corzine will be the text book example of what happens if a candidate without Obama's charisma, grass roots support, imagery, and likability does by using Obama's marketing playbook.   Hopefully the Christie campaign has more modern marketing tools in their tool belt come Labor Day but it will be an uphill battle given Corzine early foray into online marketing.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Corzine - Using Obama's Marketing Plan without Obama's Personality

Well the NJ General Election for Governor has started and Corzine's campaign has wasted no time in borrowing Obama's Marketing playbook.  I've already received about 3 long emails from them plus links to videos on their YouTube video channel (I can't bring myself to link to anything to do with that campaign, so sorry). 

Their latest state of the campaign video is actually a compete joke when they talked about how brave Corzine was after his accident which was self inflicted when he refused to wear a seat belt while his driver was speeding on a highway on his way to an Imus interview.  As a reminder, here's Corzine's accident story so I find it appalling that his campaign would in any way shape or form describe him as being brave. 

Anyway, Corzine the Governor has 9200 Facebook friends while Corzine the Candidate has about 1900 friends.  So this got me thinking....

• Corzine's campaign studied Obama's campaign playbook and will try hard to duplicate it
• However, Corzine is well hated and is already trailing Christie in the early polls.  Corzine's approval rating is at 35% and his unfavorable rate is holding steady in the mid 50s.  I don't remember ever seeing Obama with those kind of ratings.
• Corzine can't give a speech and can't even pass himself off as a man of the people
• and finally, it is extremely hard to run a grass roots networking campaign when you don't have the charisma of Obama and can't generate passion among the voters when you are well hated by the electorate.

However, what Corzine does have going for him is a crap load of money and President Obama.  If you watch any of their boring, poorly shot videos or read any of their novel sized emails you'll see that

1. They will not run on his crappy job, economy, and spending record
2. They will push the linkage with Obama and Biden
3. They will pump up Obama's spending, stimulus plan and feature Corzine as a friend to the administration
4. Tie into anything to do with Obama - my guess is Corzine will only frequent the same restaurants as Obama and start smoking the same cigarettes. 
5. Paint Christie as a friend to the "vast right wing conservative conspiracy"  even so much as linking him to Sarah Palin even though there is little to no evidence of this

Corzine will do anything and spend anything to win.  He will have President Obama with him, so I do hope the Christie campaign starts quickly on their internet strategy, otherwise we are just handing over that territory to someone who does not deserve reelection.

BTW - Hat tip to my friend Mark.  The knuckleheads at camp Corzine prove my points with their "ineptitudeness" on natural search results.  Clearly they know how important natural search is from Obama's marketing playbook, they just don't have the experience to the plan into correct action.  Here's a screen shot of the natural search results for the keyword "jon corzine".  Clearly the Corzine campaign will be the case study of marketing like President Obama without Obama's skills as a campaigner or without the experts who ran his eMarketing campaign.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric.

Kate Kaye's Campaign '08 Book Fills In The Blanks for Me On What Happened

I'm nearly finished with Kate Kaye's book Campaign '08 A Turning Point for Digital Media and as one of the folks quoted within the book I found it very fascinating.  Why?  It fills in a lot of the blanks and lifts some of the fogs of war I was unable to see during the campaign season.  Plus it is a great resource to have at your finger tips if you'd like to get a quick view of the digital media tactics used during the 2008 season.

Kate grabbed a lot of quotes from people that were running or part of the digital strategies for each of the Presidential campaigns and she does a great job of putting them together in very relevant chapters.  She also pulled some quotes from my blog which was completely cool by me.  I actually got a kick out of some of the things I wrote over the past two years.

I learned quite a few things especially what the Obama campaign did with their digital campaign and it of course confirmed how ubiquitous I thought their marketing was.  The book also confirmed for me the lack of digital marketing that pretty much all of the other campaigns did during the season.

• Clinton Campaign - very little online advertising
• Ron Paul - a lot of out sourcing to their supporters who in turn did marvelous things with it
• Mitt Romney - a lot of advanced online advertising experimentation that I was jealous of, but in the end we won the Primary.

Once you read through the chapters you'll also confirm what I've been telling you for a while.  The McCain Campaign did a tremendous amount of digital work, more than every other Presidential Campaign before 2008 and during 2008 with the exception of the Obama campaign.  It is all there in Kate's book for you to read if you never believed what I wrote.  Sure we had money problems, President Bush, and a few other challenges but we accomplished a lot even though we fell short of our ultimate goal.

Kate covers a lot of topics including search marketing, social networking, mobile, online advertising, and other subjects.   Kate's book offers great perspective and insight on the tactics used; it is also a quick read and flows just like her informative ClickZ blogs. Between this book, Kate's ClickZ posts, my blog, and techPresident, you'll get an accurate picture of the digital tactics used during the race for the White House in 2008. 

BTW - Kate's book might inspire me to write my own book on my experiences working with the McCain campaign and Connell Donatelli.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric.

Using Search for Political or News Rapid Response

During the Presidential Campaign season I didn't realize I used search marketing for a very unique tactic - Political Rapid Response.  In fact, while moderating a panel on search marketing at AAPC a lot of folks came up to me after the panel and asked me to elaborate on using search for Rapid Response.  In this YouTube video, you can hear Peter Greenberger at 1:20 singing our accolades using search for Rapid Response. We used Rapid Response in quite a number of very high profile situations including:

• Sarah Palin Defense - Forget about the day she was announced as McCain's running mate which is a whole different story, the story I like to tell is when I was called over to McCain's Hotel in Minneapolis on Labor Day during the convention to fix some search problems.  In particular the truly disgusting blogging stories that tried to say that Governor Palin lied about giving birth to her last baby.  Besides running Rapid Response on that story, we also bought words around the most search on keywords including Palin Nude Photo, Palin is Hot, Palin Vogue Photo and Sarah Palin Photos.
• Joe The Plumber - You can see this post I made watching the search results on Joe The Plumber and you'll see we had a search campaign running within minutes of Senator McCain mentioning Joe The Plumber.  That night I watched that debate from McCain campaign HQ in Crystal City, but had no idea it was going to be mentioned and built that campaign from scratch on the fly.  Not only that, I put in thousands of economic and financial services terms in over night.
• ACORN Voter Fraud - While driving my daughter to a doctor's appointment I had Fox News on when they were talking about a breaking story that involved fraudulent voter registration records submitted by ACORN.  By the time I got home, I built a search campaign around ACORN and waited for the results to pop. It took a few days for the rest of MSM to pick the story up, but when it did, the campaign was already ready to go.
• Countering Joe Biden's Announcement

Rapid Response doesn't just have to be for political campaigns.  Issue Advocacy can certainly use it as well as private companies and even news organizations (ex - Fox Sports).  So how do you actually use search for Rapid Response?

HOW TO USE SEARCH FOR NEWS RAPID RESPONSE

1. Dedicated News Hounds - Of course political campaigns have a war room, but for a variety of reasons I wasn't tapped into it.  I kept Fox News, CNN, and CNBC running in the background of my office so I was very likely to catch breaking stories.  You also of course can use Google Trends multiple times per day. 
2. Google Trends Is Your Best Friend - Even if you get a story elsewhere, Google Trends is helpful because it quantifies how hot a story is and helps get you started with keyword development. 
3. Website Access - The person building the campaign must either have an in-depth knowledge of your website to know where to point the traffic to or access to someone who can build landing pages on the fly.
4. Autonomy - The person or group building the search campaign needs autonomy to build it on the fly.  Sure you might have some legal approvals, but the way to lose out on the traffic is to get bogged down in an approval process.  Don't lose your traffic with a slow approval process.
5. Budget - Some times we were given new budget other times we just used the extra spend available from a very high ROI on search.  This search activity comes and goes and you need money quickly to run a campaign.  Also, keep in mind that some times this search activity is brand new and you might have to suck up a high search bid as Google learns more about the activity,
6. Hire An Expert Like Me

PardonMyFrench,

Eric