CheezeDMG Blog

It is undoubtedly very exciting news that Twitter this week has struck deals with Microsoft and Google, which will see people’s tweets added to their respective search engines’ results. In certain respects they are landmark deals, the reason being that it is not a particular search engine trying to take market share off the other, but two search engines clearly recognising the importance and influence social networking now has within the search marketing space.

This is not something that has happened over night, and many industry gurus will surely be quietly thinking ‘I told you so’ and perhaps even a sigh of relief after years of trying to convince advertisers to take social networking seriously. It’s no longer ahead of the curve, it’s mainstream now and the fact that the search giants are now actively looking to add Twitter tweets to their search results is evidence of that.

In recent years we have seen ideas such as desktop search and search content ads fall by the wayside as search companies try and increase revenues and improve user experience. I think this latest Twitter deal will be different as it offers an aspect to search results that are incredibly useful to users, for example opinions, real stories and useful snippets of information. This could help inform people to navigate the web better, purchase products/services that are right for them, and warn them off anything that perhaps sounds too good to be true.

On the flip side, the integration of tweets into the search results needs to be done properly otherwise there could be negative implications. Quality of search results could be diluted. ‘Bing’ especially, has spent a lot of time improving relevancy with some success, Microsoft I’m sure will not let these improvements be impacted. Also, brands need to be careful as more and more users will be exposed to user opinion which may not always look favourably upon them.

At CheezeDMG we are excited to be running several integrated social networking campaigns for clients which include campaigns on Twitter. Please contact Mike Groves on 01473 236893 who will be happy to discuss any of these campaigns in more detail.

Just 16 per cent of US internet users click on display ads, with eight per cent accounting for 85 per cent of all clicks, according to the most recent ‘Natural Born Clickers’ report by ComScore. Tim Cook, Group Account Director at Cheeze London explains why this does not necessarily signify a dieing medium…

It is important to recognise here that the drop in CTR does not equate to a drop in the value of display advertising, but a shift in how advertisers use display advertising, how it’s performance is measured and how consumers interact online.

Advances in the way display advertising can be tracked, as part of an integrated online campaign for example, means that display campaigns are increasing in value in terms of how it influences the results of other mediums such as search marketing. For example, it can now be tracked when a consumer goes onto a search engine and searches for a brand having seen a display ad. Thus whether the consumers clicks on the display ad or not has no real importance.

This drop in CTR also marks the change in the way consumers are using the Internet and how they spend their time online. The rise of social networks for example has massively increased inventory levels, and the targeting opportunity until recently has been pretty poor. Thus, the drop in CTR isn’t actually that much of a surprise. Also, consumers are spending more time online, and consuming more content rather than just looking to purchase products and services which could contribute also to this drop in CTR. Additionally, the rise of the Google Content Network for example, which has expanded the number of smaller, less commercially based websites that display banner feature on, will also have contribution to this drop in CTR.

Another factor is that with online taking over TV as the largest advertising medium, it is clear more and more brands are running ‘Branding’ campaigns where once again, the click isn’t always that important.

The important things for advertisers who are running display campaigns are to make sure that they are targeted, that media owners are displaying their ads properly and that they are tracking at impression level as part of an integrated campaign, so that the real value of their display ads can be determined. The click through rate nowadays is more nice to know information than a necessity for running effective online campaigns.