Innovation will pave the way for a cookie-free world

It’s Girl Scout Cookie season and we’ve had our share of Thin Mints and Dulche de Leches. But another type of cookie – the third-party cookie – is in the news of late, and the battle brewing around it is bringing renewed attention to the issue of Internet privacy and how much tracking is too much.

What’s prompted the latest uproar is Mozilla’s recent announcement that Firefox 22 will join Apple’s Safari in blocking third-party cookies by default. When that happens, almost 30 percent of the browser market will prevent ad publishers from putting cookies on Web-user computers. It’s a critical mass that has some in the industry gnashing their teeth. (more…)

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ADOTAS has put forth an Op-Ed that takes a look at the at trends in the digital advertising space. It drew on several sources, including eMarketer and Forrester, and considered, among other things, spend – current and future, media mix, and influencers. Of the several conclusions drawn, three that pertain directly to paid search are:

1. Budgets continue to shift to digital advertising channels
2. Paid will remain number 1 for, well, forever it seems
3. Value is driving budget distribution.

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An article recently published in Forbes highlights the findings from a Economist Intelligence Unit report called “Outside looking in: The CMO struggles to get in sync with the C-suite”. The upshot is there is little agreement between CMOs and their fellow C-suiters about the former’s role and performance metrics. The problem, of course, is that disparate visions lead to confusion, not success.

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If you’re wondering how consumers intend to behave this holiday shopping season, Google and Ipsos OXT have released a report that should take some of the mystery out of it for you.

For your convenience we’ve embedded the report below, or you can download the pdf here.

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There is no doubt that data is driving digital marketing today and that the term “Bid Data” is the latest in a long line of “Big” cliches.  But an interesting thing has happened on the way to the utopia of data-driven decision making; most of us aren’t sure exactly what to do with what we have.  Two articles published less than a month apart by eMarketer illustrate the paradox.

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So what’s next for Google?

After a decade of driving billions and billions of dollars from paid search, Google continues to look for new worlds to conquer, new digital advertising channels to turn into money-making machines.  According to an article in Forbes, the best is yet to come for the giant of search. Contributor Elise Ackerman points to three reasons she believes “Google’s glory days may still lie ahead.” (more…)

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Great minds – individually and collectively – think alike. To prove the point one need look no farther than two very important posts published this week in two different publications. Both articles, Christmas in July: Considerations for Holiday Planning, penned by OptiMine’s own Rob Cooley, and The Dog Days Of Summer, by Vic Drabicky, offer ideas for how to make use of this “down” time between July the 4th and Holiday 2012.

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A study commissioned by the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) and conducted by Forrester Research shows that “advanced techniques for attributing value to digital media channels, based on specific campaign goals and detailed data analysis are replacing simplistic first and last click measures.”

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If you’re not bid testing as part of your regular paid-search maintenance, you’re giving your competitors the upper hand.

Bid testing has a reputation for being a risky activity where one can spend a whole lot of money and, in the end, learn little of value. High-risk bid testing certainly exists and many digital advertisers have been burned by the practice in the past, but, when done correctly, bid testing will deliver relevant and actionable insights without breaking paid-search bank.

OptiMine’s Jason Mulvey recently authored a white paper that compares the three primary methods of bid testing, their risks and rewards.  Position-based, current bid-based and value-based are three very different approaches to what is a necessary part of paid-search maintenance.

Reading “Bid Testing Best Practices” will give you what you need to assess your own bid testing program and help you understand how it impacts the performance of your paid-search campaigns.

@OptiMineInc

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How lucky are marketers today, what with all that wonderful data generated by, especially, their digital marketing efforts? It’s a veritable feast of numbers: impressions, CPC, CPL, CTR, etc., etc. So, what’s not to love about it? According to some companies, plenty.

eMarketer is out with a new study that shows that the biggest challenge facing companies, in terms of “Bid Data”, is “the time and manpower required to collect and analyze it.” The full chart of answers is below and it is almost a graphical representation of the throwing up of ones hands in a surrender to the issue at hand.

Now, we all understand the importance of data and we can all understand the frustration that comes when there is too much data to consider, but consider it we must. The key to success is how one goes about the task. For my purposes, I like to start at the most granular level possible – the DNA level, if you will – and build my understanding from there.

If you’re trying to make sense of, not to mention decisions based on, your entire digital marketing data set without first understanding the individual channels, you are setting yourself up for suboptimal performance. Put another way, it’s easier to take on the forest after you understand the individual trees.

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