INTRODUCTION: The recent report from the IAB/PWC shows that internet advertising spend will top £2.7 billion in 2007. If this isn’t exciting enough, then the 44% growth in the paid search sector must go a long way to show that search engine marketing is working, and working beautifully for advertisers.

The last 18 months has seen some great developments in the industry, helping marketers realise the web’s potential for targeting their wares to consumers through search in a myriad of ways.

Whether it’s Yahoo!’s new Panama platform, Google Analytics or Microsoft adCenter’s demographic targeting capabilities, it is these innovative tools that are helping advertisers create better, more meaningful connections with consumers.

We see the future of search as being all about the data – not just where are my customers searching and what are they searching for? But who are my customers? Where are they coming from? Where are they going? How can I target them better? But it’s not just us! Marketers are, quite rightly, looking for more insight and a better return on investment and the search engines are responding!

As this handbook proves, there are many people in the industry just as passionate about search who are willing to empower you with information to help you get the most out of your campaigns - and give you some tips about other areas you may not have thought about.

I’d like to thank them and the IAB for giving us the opportunity to be involved with this valuable resource.
Go Forth & ROI!

Mel Carson
Microsoft adCenter
Community Manager

‘The latest in search marketing’ handbook is the ideal starting point for any marketer looking to take their search activity to the next level.

Visit The latest in Search Marketing Download Page

You can download full publication in pdf format. FREE.

Advanced techniques you need to know
Internet Marketing Handbook Series

This handbook was produced by the IAB Search Marketing Council, a group of industry experts from all of the leading search engines, agencies and a select panel of advertisers.

Visit Internet Advertising Bureau Official Website

ABOUT THE IAB:

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) is the trade association for online advertising. With over 380 members, it's run for the leading media owners and agencies in the UK internet industry. Online is an exciting and fast-growing medium and our job at the IAB is to work with members to ensure marketers can identify the best role for online, helping them engage their customers and build their brands.

Through the dissemination of research and the organisation of regular events, we aim to put online on the agenda of every marketer in the UK, acting as an authoritative and objective source for all internet advertising issues whilst promoting industry-wide best practice.

Conclusions and summary
By Brian Clifton, Google

Having begun my career in the web industry back in 1997, one thing that struck me from reviewing this 2008 Handbook from the IAB, is how far search marketing has come in recent years.

For example, SEO was once perceived as a dark art and avoided by marketers out of misunderstanding and fear. Since the myths have been debunked, SEO has simply become technical marketing and the practice is now commonplace.

Pay-per-click advertising has also grown in usage and developed from what used to be a simple “highest bidder wins” auction model, into to a more sophisticated platform where the quality of landing pages are also taken into account. Web analytics, the tools that measure and benchmark all of this heightened search marketing activity, have progressed but conversely also simplified – making it easier for marketers to be involved with their implementation and resultant data analysis.

So what’s next for search marketing?

During 2007 one area of the web grew dramatically - social networks. Rather than the traditional “push approach” of businesses publishing information on their site to a potential audience, social networks relate to the audience discussing and publishing amongst themselves – also known as usergenerated content. Example sites include MySpace, Yahoo Groups and Friends Reunited. These are some of the most highly visited websites on the planet.

In addition to the social aspect of this medium, discussed “conversations” often include product reviews, retailer and supplier experiences, brand image, price comparison, after sales support service etc. Moving forward, it will become increasing important that any business conducting search marketing also considers social networks as part of the mix. However, engaging with such independent minded large groups and how to measure any impact, is the next challenge for search marketers. ...

GLOSSARY:

Affiliate marketing: an affiliate (a web site owner or publisher), displays an advertisement (such as a banner or link) on its site for a merchant (the brand or advertiser). If a consumer visiting the affiliate’s site clicks on this advertisement and goes onto perform a specified action (usually a purchase) on an advertisers site then the affiliate receives a commission.

Algorithm: the set of ‘rules’ a search engine may use to determine the relevance of a web page (and therefore ranking) in its natural search results. See also organic search results and search engine optimisation.

Blog: an online space regularly updated presenting the opinions or activities of one or a group of individuals or company and usually displaying in chronological order or subject/theme order.

Click-through: when a user interacts with an advertisement and clicks through to the advertiser’s website.

CTR (click-through rate): frequency of click-throughs as a percentage of impressions served. Used as a measure of advertising effectiveness. See also impression, click-through.

Cookie: a small text file on the user’s PC that identifies the user’s browser, and hence the user, so they are ‘recognised’ when they re-visit a site.

Conversion rate: measure of success of an online ad when compared to the clickthrough rate. What defines a ‘conversion’ depends on the marketing objective. For example, it can be defined as a sale or request to receive more information.

CPA (1-cost per action): a pricing model that only charges advertising on an action being conducted- for example a sale or a form being filled in.

CPA (2-cost per acquisition): cost to acquire a new customer.

CPC (cost per click): the amount paid by an advertiser to a search marketing provider for a click on their sponsored search listing. See also PPC.

Deep linking: advert linking beyond a home page to a page inside the site with content pertinent to the advert.
Domain name: the unique name of an internet site eg. www.asiaing.com.

Flash: web design software that creates animation and interactive elements which are quick to download.

Geotargeting: the process of only showing adverts to people on a website and in search engines based on their physical location. This could be done using advanced technology that knows where a computer is located or by using the content of website to determine what a person is looking for, e.g. someone searching for a restaurant in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.

Impression: the metric used to measure views of a web page and its elements- including the advertising embedded within it. Ad Impressions are how most online advertising is sold and the cost is quoted in terms of the cost per thousand impressions (CPM).

ISP (internet service providers): companies that connect people to the internet in exchange for a fee using methods such as broadband and DSL. Examples of ISP’s include Tiscali, BT and AOL.

IP address: the numerical internet address assigned to each computer on a network so that it can be distinguished from other computers. Expressed as four groups of numbers separated by dots.

Keyword marketing: the purchase of keywords (or ‘search terms’) by advertisers in search listings. See also PPC.

Meta-tags/descriptions: HTML tags that identify the content of a web page for the search engines.

Microsite: a sub-site reached via clicking on an ad. The user stays on the publisher’s website but has access to more information from the advertiser.

Natural search results: the ‘natural’ search results that appear in a separate section (usually the main body of the page) to the paid listings. The results listed here have not been paid for and are ranked by the search engine (using spiders or algorithms) according to relevancy to the term searched upon. See also spider, algorithm, SEO. Query string formation: in a search engine, a query string is the set of words entered into a search engine by an individual. For example, a search for “search engine marketing information”. Query string formation is simply the process of thinking of the correct query string to get the results required.

Paid search: see PPC.

Podcast: an audio broadcast that has been produced in a digital format so it can be downloaded for digital music players. Coined ‘pod’ cast because of the proliferation of the iPod digital music player.

PPC (pay per click) - a search marketing model that allows advertisers to bid for placement in the paid listings search results on terms that are relevant to their business. Advertisers pay the amount of their bid only when a consumer clicks on their listing. Also called sponsored search or paid search.

Reach: the number of unique web users potentially seeing a website one or more times in a given time period expressed as a percentage of the total active web population for that period.

RSS (really simple syndication): software that allows you to flag website content (often from blogs or news sites) and aggregate new entries to this content into an easy to read format that is delivered directly to a user’s PC. See also blogs.

Sales house: an organisation which sells advertising on behalf of other media owners. These sales houses typically retain a percentage of the revenue they sell in exchange for their services. These organisations may combine a number of websites together and sell them as different packages to advertisers.

Session: the time spent between a user starting an application, computer, website and logging off or quitting.

SEM (search engine marketing): the process which aims to get websites listed prominently in search-engine results through search-engine optimisation and paid search. See also PPC, Paid Search and SEO.

SEO (search engine optimisation): the process which aims to get websites listed prominently within search engine’s organic or nautral(algorithmic, spidered) search results. Involves making a site ‘search engine friendly’. See also organic listings Site analytics: the reporting and analysis of website activity- in particular user behaviour on the site. All websites have a weblog which can be used for this purpose but other third party software is available for a more sophisticated service.

Spider: a programme which crawls the web and fetches web pages in order for them to be indexed against keywords. Used by search engines to formulate search result pages. See also organic listings and algorithm

Sponsored search: see PPC (pay per click).

Traffic: number of visitors who come to a website- usually measured as unique users. See also unique users Unique users: number of different individuals who visit a site within a specific time period.

User generated content: online content created by website users rather than media owners or publishers- either through reviews, blogging, podcasting or posting comments, pictures or video clips. Sites that encourage user generated content include Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Wikipedia and Flickr.

URL (uniform resource locator): technical term that is used to refer to the web address of a particular webpage. For example, www.iabuk.net/search.

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