WPP owned 24/7 Real Media has been suspended by the IASH for failing to comply with an a audit of ad placement in July.  This news follows hot in the footsteps of recent evidence of ad misplacement by networks, the most high profile advertiser being Orange. 

Ad misplacement is a key issue when considering the use of blind networks as part of a display advertising programme.  Although these networks offer certain “guarantees” with their placements and you can select to appear on certain channels, by the very nature of the channel, you can never be 100% sure that misplacement isn’t occurring.  You have to rely on the regulatory bodies like the IASH conducting regular audits and clamping down hard on any offenders, which thankfully they appear to be starting to do.

The temptation is always there, due to the rock bottom CPMs, to utilise a network within your media plan but cost is not always the best way to plan display advertising.  After all, the primary aim of any display campaign should be to build brand awareness within your target customer base.  Blind media buys achieve neither of these objectives as you open yourself up to the risk of negative brand association with unsuitable sites, and you don’t know who is seeing your ads. 

Blind networks are becoming a thing of the past as companies expect more from their online advertising and this can only strengthen the position of intelligent media planning agencies.  My advice is to avoid them when planning other than in extreme circumstances.  Get you lower cost impressions and clicks from paid search and focus your display advertising on reaching the right people at the right time with the right message.

Slightly old news as it was announced 14 days ago but Ive been a little busy so am finally getting round to posting about it.

Yahoo! has purchased web analytics software solution Indextools for an undisclosed fee.  The tool which one commentator described as”one of the best kept secrets in the industry” has been bought as a direct response to Google Analytics, this is easily shown by the fact that the first thing Yahoo! have done, is make it free! (remind you of any other analytics package?).  Yahoo! has had its own tracking solution for a while but lets face it, it was pretty rubbish.  So this purchase and the immediate action of making it free of charge puts Yahoo! firmly in competition with Google in the combined search, analytics market it in my eyes, gives them an advantage.  I have used Indextools for a number of years and can honestly say it is 100x the package that Google analytics is.  This is a full on, analytics, campaign management, usability, all singing, all dancing tool, which when used correctly can do some pretty impressive things.  Realistically most people wont use all the best bits of Indextools but the savvy internet marketeer could actually get for free with Indextools, what would have cost them £500-£1000 a month in the past, bargain!

I am intrigued as to what Yahoo!’s plans are for Indextools as if they are to continue to offer it for free then are they going to remove some functionality to strip down the software functionality?  I hope not but it probably makes more business sense.  Maybe then offer the additional functionality at a cost, but does that go against what Yahoo! are trying to achieve?

In order to qualify for the package at no cost existing customers are required to sign a new Yahoo! agreement.  I haven’t seen this agreement yet but it will be an interesting read (if such documents can actually be interesting!) as one of the concerns around using Google analytics, and now Yahoo! owned Indextools is the data you are passing to the search engines about your campaigns.  Who owns this information and how can it be used is key in determining whether by selling out to Yahoo! Indextools is likely to lose all its clients.  It may seem a little big brotheresq but would you really want Yahoo! knowing the details of all your online activity?  not just search (and therefore Google) but also you display, affiliate and email campaigns?  because that is what Indextools is best at, compiling data into a logical dashboard enabling you to see all your data in one place.  If Yahoo! is then going to use this data to make competitive decisions then nobody is likely to want to use Indextools anymore.  I suppose we will just have to wait to see the contents of this agreement and its approach to data usage, but I just hope by buying one of the best, most usable tools on the market, Yahoo! hasn’t inadvertently killed it.

So Google have finally done it.  Sacrificed their morals on trademark protection in the name of more revenue by opening up all brand terms, whether registered trademarks or not, to anybody who chooses to bid on them.  This has been their system in the US and Canada for a while now and their arguement is that it provides a better user experience by offering the searcher companies which provide the same product or service as the one whose trademark they have searched for.  The changes will come into play on May 5th and from this point any advertiser will be free to bid for any brand terms they choose.  Fittingly this is a bank holiday in the UK and so the mayhem which will undoubtedly unfold will do so when the majority of industry representatives are away from work!  If you remember what happened when Google made changes to their minimum bid system (and it all went t*ts up!) it makes you wonder whether this date has been set intentionally by the big G.

So cue brands bidding on other brands, hiking the prices out of spite and affiliates of a field day.  But will this be the case?  No doubt initially companies will begin to bid on their competitors terms thus raising the price the brand owner has to pay.  But how will the quality score deal with this? Well you would like to think the competition will have to pay hefty minimum CPCs to even list in the first place given that their websites will have no relevancy at all to the keyword.  But will the big boys care about this?  They will probably be more concerned with stealing their competitors traffic and be willing to pay the price. 

Theoretically they wont be able to include the trademarked term in their creative but that doesn’t account for DKI which, no matter what Google suggest, isn’t going to change any time soon to combat this.  Therefore a clever search engine marketeer will get round this quite easily.

What do I think will happen?  Brand CPC’s increase, affiliates have a field day, the overall cost of PPC increases, and then when it all dies down it is back to business as usual and people forget the day brand protection was in place.  The trick is for companies to have a plan of action for May 5th, to know how they are going to deal with their affiliates, to develop and stance on competitors terms and closely monitor the first couple of weeks after this change comes into place.  Then to reassess and get on with the business of generating leads from paid search, after all we are all at the mercy of Google anyway, so why bother trying to fight it!

Brekaing news from nma.co.uk! 

Google has completed its acquisition of ad-serving company DoubleClick, following the green light from the EU.At a reported £1.6bn ($3.1bn), the cash deal is Google’s biggest acquisition to date.

Yahoo!’s board have unanimously voted to reject Microsoft’s astronomical bid of $44.6bn (£22.4bn) claiming the offer significantly underalued the company! Rich considering the offer was 61% up on their closing share price from the previous day.  Yahoo!’s explanation is that the bid undervalued the strength of the Yahoo! brand, user base and recenty investment in advertising technology.  My take is that they arent too keen on becoming a Microsoft company and having a consolidated position in the market as they already have a larger share of the lucrative search marketplace and a comparitive stance in other areas of online as well.  I wonder whether this will open the door for a bid from Google as had been rumoured last week or whether Yahoo! would rather continue the fight on their own against the big G.  This probably wont be the last we hear about alliances and a consolidating market but Im not sure any future deals will be on the same scale.

NMA article here

TradeDoubler Acquires The Search Works - The Uk’s Largest Search Engine Marketing Company - And Sister Company The Technology Works
• TradeDoubler has acquired all shares in The IMW Group, which includes The Search Works and those companies trading as The Technology Works• The newly combined entity will confirm TradeDoubler as one of the largest online marketing companies in Europe• The acquisition expands TradeDoubler’s performance-based product portfolio into the search market and provides opportunities for further geographic expansion
TradeDoubler AB (publ) today announced its acquisition on July 25th of all the issued shares in Interactive Marketing Works Ltd and its subsidiaries (‘The IMW Group’). The purchase price amounts to £56 million.
The IMW Group consists of two trading entities, ‘The Search Works’, a well established search engine marketing agency and ‘The Technology Works’, a technology provider for search engine marketing, whose products include ‘BidBuddy®’ - a search management technology.
The IMW Group is a profitable and well managed company which has built up a significant client base, including such brand names as Asda, Comet, EasyJet, First Choice, Interflora and The Carphone Warehouse. The Group has a strong reputation within the industry for professionalism and driving return on investment for its clients. The Group was founded in 1999 and currently employs 108 staff. Turnover for the rolling twelve months preceding June 2007 amounted to £69 million and gross profit for the same period was £7.8 million. The acquisition complements and expands TradeDoubler’s existing performance-based product portfolio which includes affiliate marketing, online advertising campaigns, pay-per-call and an online tracking and ad-serving technology. The newly combined offering has great synergies for both TradeDoubler’s and The IMW Group’s client bases. Search engine marketing and affiliate marketing are the largest direct response online marketing channels, with significant growth forecasted in both areas. The Search Works is active in the UK, while The Technology Works has additional presence in Europe and in Asia. TradeDoubler has an extensive presence throughout Europe which spans 18 countries.
“Product expansion and further internationalisation are key components in TradeDoubler’s growth strategy. The acquisition addresses both these areas by rolling out The Search Works and The Technology Works throughout Europe and by utilising The Technology Works’ Asian foothold to assess the roll out of TradeDoubler’s product offerings into Asian markets.” says William Cooper, CEO, TradeDoubler.
Nick Hynes, CEO, The IMW Group adds, “There is a natural affinity between TradeDoubler’s products and services and the search management technology that we offer. We also believe there is a strong cultural fit between our two organisations. Together we will be able to offer unprecedented online marketing services and tools to a range of clients across Europe and beyond.”
TradeDoubler also released its second quarter financial results today and reported strengthened gross profit margins and solid revenue and gross profit performance. Revenues for the period from April to June 2007 increased by 27.9%, compared to the same period in 2006, to reach SEK 512.6 million (approx €56m) and gross profit was up 25.4% to SEK 143 million (approx €15.5)
About TradeDoublerTradeDoubler is a Pan-European digital marketing company offering a range of performance-based marketing solutions. TradeDoubler’s products and services provide companies with the tools and expertise to drive results online whether they are looking to generate sales or drive brand awareness. Headquartered in Sweden, the company boasts a unique European reach with local offices in 16 countries across Europe and a presence in a further two countries. With a breadth of expertise across multiple industry sectors and a network of more than 118,000 website publishers TradeDoubler helps deliver online results for over 1,200 advertisers across Europe including a mix of local and international companies such as Apple Store, Dell, Telia Sonera, eBay and Kelkoo.