Our target is £1000 per team  and with that in mind the teams have all been training hard and organising endless charity events in the office and socially to help raise the money and give the charity some recognition into the good work that they do. We have  raised £2204.22 so far by organising small office events such as pancake flipping and pin the tail on the St David’s Day sheep. The fundraising culminated in a charity action yesterday, during which staff from the London and Warrington offices were able to bid on items such as cakes and an iPod Touch (all donated by Latitude staff) and services such as tea or coffee making for a whole day. The final amount we raise will be matched by the charity committee of Latitude’s parent company Callcredit Information Group.

The European Search Awards celebrate the best talent in search marketing from Europe. Latitude is excited to have been selected as an award finalist and recognised for the quality of its work with brands such as Asda Money and Holiday Autos.

“Being nominated for the best use of search in such a variety of categories is a testament to not only the hard work our teams put into delivering campaigns but also our desire to invest in understanding the needs of our clients across a range of sectors”, commented Latitude Managing Director Richard Gregory. “We look forward to the awards dinner in Barcelona in June and mixing with the best talent in Europe.”

You can download the slides from the day through the links below.

Adrian Hands – TripAdvisor – Accessing the Global Online Traveller

James Lowery – Keep Unique

Interested? Why not come down next time for a croissant and  a glass full of digital marketing knowledge. If you’d like to keep updated regarding our future events in Dubai, email ‘yes’ to mena@latitudegroup.com.

What has changed?

•  Higher quality inventory availability. As real time bidding has grown up over the last couple of years, so has the availability of inventory perceived as high quality or premium.

• Optimisation. Traditionally, many brand advertisers have defined fairly narrow fixed site lists on which to run their campaigns. While this provides the brand with the safety of knowing precisely where the campaign will run, it often restricts performance of the campaign. With RTB, campaigns can be set up to test on a wide variety of brand-safe sites, and then optimised to deliver on the best performing sites. Data elements for example search terms for search re-targeting, data recency, day parting, geotargeting, ad position, and other metrics can have significant impact on the performance of branding campaign.

• Insight. Brand-safe controls can now be set at the SSP and DSP level, by white-listing and blacklisting, and also by using third party ad verification vendors.

• ROI Focus. Increasingly brand advertisers are closely monitoring ROI and driving for continuous improvement on this metric. The ability to optimize campaigns to specific goals is one of the core strengths of real time bidding.

• Complete transparency. Many brand marketers, like their counterparts on the performance side, are data junkies. Knowing the CPM, CTR, CPC, CPA, and other metrics for each keyword, site, exchange, or other targeted parameter is important not only to optimise current campaigns, but also to develop insights that will influence future marketing efforts. In the world of RTB, marketers are more likely to find vendors who provide this type of transparency.

In summary, programmatic buying is more efficient, more effective and more transparent than the traditional digital media buying model. We should slowly start to see brand advertisers jumping on the band wagon to buy on an RTB basis.

Larry Page thinks big and he thinks differently.  Back in 1996 when he and Sergey Brin were working together on a project at Stanford University, he recognised that the research they were carrying out to categorise information in libraries could be applied to the web, and that the graph of citations that connected information in books was analogous to the graph of links that connected pages of websites. This realisation developed into PageRank, PageRank developed into Google, and Google became the dominant power in the online space.

Fast-forward a decade from those tentative first steps and the same lateral thinking was displayed again as Page and his team began to recognise that there was a second layer of connectivity on the web; people.  ‘Networked people’ displayed many of the same traits as networked pages, and PageRank once again provided the ability to make sense of a highly complex map of relationships and provide the ability to personalise the experience that people had and make the web more relevant.

Pretty much every change we’ve seen coming out of Mountain View since Larry Page took over as CEO in April 2011 has been about building a social graph to supplement the link graph so that Google could provide answers to questions that weren’t just the generally most relevant answer, but were also the individually most relevant answer.

Page’s challenge to Googlers to make social products climaxed with the launch of Google+ and a combined privacy policy across products. This gave the search engine the ability to accurately profile users throughout their online life and connect the dots between different elements of their behaviour.

A different approach

The Page era at Google requires a different approach to SEO. Historically, SEO was confrontation and now it is all about collaboration.  The focus has moved away from the algorithm and back to the user. As Google collects more information about each user, they’ll be capable of taking their network relationships and individual interests and overlaying this information onto the baseline provided by the algorithm. Search results are no longer for everyone; they are for each one.

Google’s guidelines for webmasters have always been to create content for users.  Their algorithm has now caught up with this ideal.  If you want to be successful in natural search in 2013 and beyond, it’s no longer enough to build links, you need to build relationships with your audience through engaging, rich experiences that people will want to share naturally. Organisations with a clear understanding and appreciation of their audience, the ability to create an experience that appeals to their expectations and an SEO strategy that creates content focused on the social graph will increasingly find that they are successful in natural search.

This is a good thing.

If you’re a hardcore fan of social media, then you’ll already have planned to make Tuesday 16^th April 2013 a digital day to remember. The world’s most popular location-based social networking event is finally here, and with several businesses offering a special for 4sq Day, this is the perfect opportunity for companies – and customers – to spread the word about any Foursquare Specials happening in their local area.

Launched back in 2009 by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai, Foursquare’s initial aim was to help bring people together by providing a platform where they could access and share a list of their friends’ most popular hangouts. Four years and over 3.5 billion check-ins later, the company has incorporated numerous helpful features in its latest update, Foursquare 6.0. From retail to leisure, Foursquare provides a list of trending events as well as top attractions approved by local check-ins – and with over 30 million people making up the Foursquare community, this mobile platform offers both a personal and professional benefit to people all over the world.

Benefits of checking-in with Foursquare

In addition to providing a number of deals throughout the world, Foursquare’s main advantage is its beneficial use of social networking. Over a billion companies currently use the Merchant Platform, making it an essential business resource for those reliant on technology in our modern day world –  the London Olympics 2012 was a perfect example, of visitors new to London looking for local hotspots in their area.

While many other sites bring users closer together online, Foursquare first links people online which results in them meeting up offline – at the same location.

To see just how powerful the omnipresent nature of Foursquare is, check out the Foursquare check-ins video – detailing a year’s worth of check-ins both in Tokyo and New York.

The ubiquity of social networking means anything is possible – and Foursquare has achieved this by bringing users together, literally. With more and more people working on the move, the smartphone generation allows us to use Foursquare to its full potential and create an environment where strangers can come together and help each other out – wherever, whenever.

Happy Foursquare day!

When Google decided to stop passing through keyword level referrer data from natural search back in 2011, it made us a little bit nervous.  Over time we’ve seen the amount of traffic where the keyword is [not provided] grow from an insignificant number to something much more substantial.  In fact, in January 2013, it represented 46% of traffic to our own website.

It’s about privacy

One thing that’s really important to remember is that Google didn’t stop passing keyword data through to websites simply to annoy the SEO community.  The change was all about protecting user privacy.  Google personalises your search results based on previous history.  Sometimes, your previous search queries are passed through to a website via the Google search URL.  While it’s handy for me as an SEO expert to know what an individual searched for before they searched for the term that referred them to my site, I don’t think many users would be terribly comfortable with this.

Can we do anything?

The digital marketing industry is nothing if not adaptable.  We’ve not been around for long enough to get set in our ways, and we’re used to rapid evolution and scale.  In many ways, the level of detail that we’ve had for the past few years has been an embarrassment of riches, as not so long ago I relied on using a hit counter and log file analysis to understand traffic to websites. Right now, there are two main options for search marketers who want to make actionable decisions based on data:

1. Extrapolate

We can estimate what we don’t know by working with what we do know.  If we know that 50% of traffic that we can break down to keyword level was referred by a specific keyword, we can conclude that 50% of the visits where keyword is [not provided] were also referred by the same term.  That’s not going to be 100% accurate, because it doesn’t take into account how traffic is distributed through a site.

We can extrapolate better though.  Custom filters in Google Analytics and on other platforms allow us to break down [not provided] traffic at a page level and then we can use the data for that page to refine our extrapolation.  This can provide a more accurate picture of visits to a site, and also help us to improve our future targeting.

Extrapolation ignores the elephant in the room though.  The share of [not provided] traffic is growing. Fast.  When you’re basing conclusions on having 75% of the data available as is the case now, you can be quite confident in your decisions.  What happens in the future when this approach means you need to base your strategy on having 25% of the data available, or 10%, or 1%?

1. Other sources

Google Webmaster Tools tell us how many clicks we get from natural search.  Or rather it doesn’t, it tells us what our click-through rate was and an estimate of the number of searches.  Then it calculates the number of clicks. At first glance, the GWT numbers look pretty good.  For most sites we looked at there’s less than a 10% variation in the overall traffic volume predicted by GWT compared to what we see in Analytics.  That’s not so bad, especially when you take into account that the data only includes the top 1000 keywords.  For really big sites, you see a bigger variation, but it’s still pretty good.

However, when we looked at the keyword level data it was less promising.   Even when you take into account seasonality in search volume, there are pretty big variations between what’s reported in GWT compared with what we see in Analytics – even when we extrapolate visitor numbers.  On average, we saw a difference of around 40%.  That’s too big to be acceptable right now.

What’s coming next?

While we may no longer have as much data as we once did, we still have plenty. We have enough to make decisions, and while the GWT data right now isn’t good enough to replace analytics in most cases, there will come a time when it will need to – simply because the margin of error that it represents is less than the alternative.

Search marketers are privileged to work in a discipline where very rich analysis is possible.  In our industry things change pretty quickly.  They always have, and they always will.  Right now, things are changing to make our jobs harder and a harsh environment forces rapid evolution.  The data will become better.  In the same way as it was possible to refine the view of the Hubble telescope through the use of better lenses, we’re building adaptive technology that will allow us to build a much clearer picture based on the blur of available data.

This is a good thing.

It comes as now surprise then that the latest developments around real-time bidding (RTB) aren’t merely focused on search or display advertising – RTB is now branching out to video too. In essence, RTB allows advertisers to stop wasting media spend on  video impressions that aren’t gaining any conversions.  Instead, RTB technologies facilitate brands to be precise in choosing inventory (in this case, video) and place premium bids that will reap the best exposure to target the most relevant audiences offering the most value. RTB also delivers full transparency, enabling advertisers to see a full path of where their video impressions were served and to comply with brand safety levels, so ads are not displayed on sites without the advertiser’s consent. Moreover, RTB helps maximise retargeting efforts, meaning advertisers can recapture valuable, interested users who are deemed to have a higher probability in converting and present them with highly relevant video ads.

However, to successfully partake in video RTB, advertisers will need to provide more effort and work into developing video creatives and making sure the video files are encoded to meet video ad specs. Whilst traditional display ads charges at a CPM (cost-per-mille) basis based on impressions, video ads mainly adapt the CPV or CPCom pricing model where the advertiser only pays when a viewer watches X seconds of your video, or to its completion. Additionally, video ads generally have a higher eCPM when compared to standard display ads, which indicates that video ads are one of the most premium ad formats online.

Video advertising generally responds well with branding campaigns as opposed to direct response campaigns. This is owing to the fact that brand advertisers usually have abundance of TV advertising, and executing online video ads with possibly the same messaging as the TV content helps coincide their online and offline advertising activities, thereby creating a continual effect. At the moment, advertisers seem to prefer in-stream videos as their video ad format of choice over pre-roll. A study by Mediamind has revealed that the typical benchmark for in-stream video CTR is at 2.15%, which is higher than the click-throughs coming from standard display banners. Although CTRs are not always the best measure for effectiveness, it illustrates here that video ad content is more dynamic and rich and thus,  tends to generate a higher amount of traffic towards the advertisers’ website.

Forrester report also forecasted that at least 25.4% of all video ad impressions will be bought through RTB in 2013 and likewise, the US online video RTB spending will soar to approximately $667 million dollars by 2013. As video advertising spend is on the verge of an increase, this also means that the sellout rate for video is high too due to its popularity. RTB is paving its way as an established method of media buying, and with online video advertising emerging at a fast pace where video ads are outperforming standard display ads, it is fair to say that video RTB is set to boom for 2013.

The five second rule

The people who normally manage these accounts will either work in front of house, HR or marketing and will receive hundreds of emails daily, including stationary offers or getting the latest gadget for a fraction of the normal price. You therefore only have about a five second window before your email gets junked, managed into a folder or for the lucky few replied to. This five second window is your chance to sell yourself so make every second count!

Below are some simple tips you can use in order to get noticed:

• Personalise your email; this will prove you have done your research from the outset.
• Tailor your Cover Letter with a brief snapshot of your CV and demonstrate why the company you have chosen to email is the one for you.
• Ask questions, this will encourage a reply and start to open the door.

You’ve made it through the first round, but unfortunately the battle is not over yet, as you need to get through the CV test.  This test will be your chance to showcase your experience and also demonstrate why you are the right fit for the company. You may think that content is the most important thing about a CV, but if your resume is muddled or confusing, the content won’t matter. Make sure your CV is clear, concise and structured. Your resume should explain you on a page, so don’t be afraid to try different fonts or colours, especially if you are applying for a creative position. You should always start your CV with the thing that makes you different to all other applicants, as you want to grab your reader’s attention straight away. Only you will know what makes you stand out from the crowd; reasons might include specific career aims, industry awards or education. If you have made it through this stage, your CV will be logged for future positions, or sent through to hiring managers for specific roles.

“The above is very good but I’m applying for a digital role”, I hear you say. Look no further, as we’re listed our favourite tips for applying for a role in the digital sector in particular.

Top tips for applying for digital roles

• Don’t put abbreviations like PPC and SEO in brackets (Pay-Per-Click and Search Engine Optimisation). You are applying to work in a digital marketing role so you can safely assume we all know what they stand for!
• Many applicants say they are ‘Social Media savvy’ by stating they use Facebook and Twitter. Yes, so do 1.5 billion other people, but what makes you ‘special’? Do you have a blog that has a lot of followers? Are you big on Pinterest or Youtube? If you are, make sure to mention it!
• Get your capital letters right. Facebook and Google are huge brands, so give them the respect they deserve.
• Turn your email address into a hyperlink on your CV; this encourages potential hiring managers to get in touch with you.
• Clearly showcase your qualifications, such as Google Adwords and other professional exams you might have  taken. Don’t just add these onto the description of a previous role.

Once you received an interview invitation, you have a good chance at getting the role. It’s then down to research and your interview skills – don’t let those become your stumbling blocks!

For more information on roles available at Latitude, email careers@latitudegroup.com.

Looking to improve your CV? Winning a marketing award can boost your CV and get you noticed. The IQ Talent Awards reward the true marketing stars. Organised in partnership with Latitude’s parent company Callcredit Information Group and the IDM, the awards celebrate the individuals who regularly have those light bulb moments that transform insights into great ideas.

In our latest search report, we look at the impact of the upcoming changes on PPC results and strategies (while working hard on future-proofing the campaigns’ of our clients of course). While you’re at it, why not also take a minute to also read up on the latest developments in the world of Search Engine Optimisation. Finally, we’ve collated a Facebook wishlist of tools we’d like to see introduced from a marketing perspective – let us know your thoughts on it.

Download your FREE Think Works Digital Insights Search report.