March 02, 2006 | Thursday
Danny Sullivan: “Blame Google!”
By Richard Gregory - COO in Events |Marketing |Online Sales |Quotations |Search Engines |Ask |Google |Yahoo |Microsoft |Search Expertise |Search Technology
So I’m just recovering from Day 3 at SES...and that’s not because of any big after show party (I’m getting too old for that), more from the intensity of some of yesterday’s seminars.
To summarize, there were two excellent sessions on integrating search into the brand mix and the role it can play in a brand strategy. Particular praise was heaped upon the Yahoo Buzz tool as a way of measuring increasing brand awareness of key search terms. The advertiser version for this is currently only available in the US, though. There was then lots of talk of “closing the loop” and research from Yahoo demonstrating how brands are being discovered through search, particularly in the retail sector.
Towards the end of the day, Danny Sullivan rounded up senior execs from AOL, Ask, MSN, Yahoo!, and Google for a panel on the future of search.
Unfortunately, Craig Silverstein wasn’t there to update us on Google’s 300 year plans for the development of artificial yeast as a “search pet”...a story for another time!
Apart form the odd inclusion as AOL as one of five search channels (they don’t have a search property! They’re just Google’s lapdog!) there was talk of selling search on different pricing models, potentially dependent on the channel as well as different SERP layouts dependent on the search query. For example somebody searching for a car might want to see images of the car in their results.
This led on to Danny’s traditional, and informal (difficult with a few hundred attendees), Evening Forum, where lots of questions were asked about the structure of the event. The biggest concern was that not all of the show’s presentations are available for download. Danny’s response?
Blame Google! Even though they present slides to a room with 400 people, they won’t circulate slides because they are confidential! Am I supposed to say they can’t speak?
Danny’s now decided that search engine marketers should be renamed as metric marketers in recognition of the level of data management involved in campaigns and the fact that most SEMs actually handle a lot of non-search campaigns due to the growth of contextual advertising.
The best thing about the majority of these sessions is the additional thoughts it actually inspires while you’re sat there watching the sea of PowerPoint slides. I’ll be presenting the key themes and thoughts to Latitude staff and clients when I’m back in the UK.
Anyways...off to Day 4.
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