There was a very interesting article that was in AdAge.com this week discussing how Search may not work for retailers – http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=140089. The research that Nielsens Co.’s Online division conducted found that paid search only accounted for ~10% of their traffic whilst direct traffic accounted for 61%, comparison shopping 1% and all other forms covered the remainder.
There was a very interesting article that was in AdAge.com this week discussing how Search may not work for retailers. The research that Nielsens Co.’s Online division conducted found that paid search only accounted for ~10% of their traffic whilst direct traffic accounted for 61%, comparison shopping 1% and all other forms covered the remainder.
The main crux of the article was that retailers should think twice about investing more advertisiing in search in the run up to Christmas as other channels like Display had a better chance of affecting consumer intent and driving revenues.
Whilst we see our online display channel continuing to grow across GS clients, we still see search out-performing all other communication channels in all sectors, including retail. As we saw with the latest Bellwether report, the survey has shown that search continues to drive greater returns for advertisers in the UK as budgets are continually being increased across paid search.
Nielsen’s quite rightly point out the top 50 search terms generally are brand terms but I fear they are only looking at one side of the story. A lot search practitioners will point out the typical consumer journey ends when the user clicks through and converts via a brand term but there are other areas that need careful consideration. The branding impact of search, the impact that generic and product terms have on a campaign and how revenues are being attributed. In the article there was no inferred connection between users who were exposed to a search ad, who then came back directly to the site, which in fact could have been the case but I didn’t see any data to argue that point.
The most accurate way to analyse this, and as the majority of the comments on AdAge pointed out, is to move away from the ‘last-click’ model which distorts the view of how a campaign is performing.
As part of our campaign innovations we have been working on attribution testing with our clients over the last 6 months and the results have been very interesting. With the information to hand we are now able to test and apply various weightings in spend to our client campaigns. We are now looking at the online mix from a more holistic point of view, and by optimising campaigns based around this model, ROI is continuing to grow even in a deflated marketplace.
The point is I think retailers should take the Nielsen’s data with a pinch of salt as the article is one-sided. Our view at Golley Slater is that all media complement each other if used in the right way . Retailers know that search works, as does display but there is a danger in under-weighting or over-weighting the contribution of each medium to the sale without understanding how they work together.
Mark Fagan
Digital Media Director
November 5th, 2009
