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eMarketer's Predictions for 2009
2008-12-16 22:22:00
Here is what eMarketer's predictions are for 2009. I think they are too optimistic. I would be surprised if the overall online advertising growth rates exceed 6%. I think estimates on video ads, display ads are both optimistic. The optimistic me thinks search is the only online advertising channel that will show double digit growth. Here is the eMarketer article: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id= 1006813 eMarketer's Predictions for 2009 DECEMBER 16, 2008 What lies ahead in the new year? David Hallerman, Senior Analyst Online Ad Spending: Still Solid Choice Video ad spending will run counter to overall economic developments, rising by 45% in 2009 to reach $850 million. Two key factors support this trend. First, the sharp escalation of professional video content on the Web—mainly from TV networks—is creating a viable base for brand marketers. Second, even though most advertisers are increasingly cautious with their budgets, they still need to reach online a...

How big was CyberMonday this year
2008-12-05 21:16:00
We have done a continuous - literally hour by hour search pattern analysisbetween 0:00 hours, 27th November - midnight of 2nd December. There ishardly any analysis on search trends during this period because of TGholiday. Given the importance of CyberMonday (this year being VERY SPECIALfor most retailers given the economy - quite literally was a historic BlackFriday and CyberMonday )- we thought of analysing the key patterns in searchtraffic, purchases - value - time - number, keyword click price movements,click to purchase conversion rates. The analysis was done on 3 clients from totally different categories ofretail - large Speciality Food etailer, large Consumer Electronics retailer,large Gifts retailer. There were some very interesting findings. Key Search Trends by category: Electronics - On 27th-30th Nov, search traffic spiked between 6am-8am EST and 12-2pm ESTand also 9pm-11pm EST (especially on 30th).  (Reasoning: Maybe, people weretrying to find the best deals for...
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How much will Online Retail Sector grow this holiday season
2008-11-24 18:26:00
How much will the online retail grow this holiday season.This is the biggest question doing rounds at this time.My optimistic guess: 8%More realistically, 2-3%We at NetElixir will be doing a comprehensive analysis of the holiday months. Watch out for our Report to be published in January 09.- Udayan
More About: Holiday , Retail , Season , Online , Grow

The sole bright spot in a gloom and doom economy
2008-11-21 02:04:00
The IAB published Q3,2008 Internet Advertising Revenue numbers today. There has been an 11% growth over the same quarter last year. The third quarterly revenues this year have touched $5.9 B. Indeed, online advertising continues to shine in a gloomy economy.Three observations -1. In the difficult economy that is likely to extend beyond 2009, online advertising should see heavy gains2. A lot of advertisers who stayed away from internet advertising more because they could not fathom the importance or did not have adequate knowledge or just did not care would now be forced to include internet advertising in their advertising mix3. The ONLY advertising option for a small business(quite literally) for these difficult times would be internet advertising- Udayan Bose
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Grab the Online Shopper
2008-11-19 00:40:00
We released a white paper today on Smart SEM Tactics for a slow holiday season. The white paper was based on our analysis of the 2006 and 2007 Holiday months (November and December) for 7 large US Retailers. The white paper contains actionable tips for the smart search marketer.The white paper is our way of sharing that knowledge with the retailer community and hopefully helping some of the E-tailers have a more successful holiday season.You can download your copy here:http://netelixir.com/HolidayWhitePap er.htmlThanks,Udayan
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Interactive Marketing Imperative
2008-10-24 22:52:00
I attended the webinar by Shar von Boskirk of Forrester Group, Interactive Marketing Imperative, today. It was attended by more than 50 professionals.Through the presentation, Shar shared information on how Social Media and Search Marketing continue to attract marketers, why interactive advertising would not be impacted by a global recession, why a focus on branding is going to be important, how a combination of display and search advertising deliver disproportionate performance improvements and shared Forrester's projections of Online advertising revenues growing to $61 Billion by 2012(in US) - a whopping 18% of total advertising revenues.There were obvious questions and concerns raised by some attendees over the slow economy and how it would effect online ad spends. I firmly believe that the global slowdown would actually lead to a growth in online advertising. More money would flow into search advertising as its a proven model. More importantly, search advertising has greate...

Online Holiday Forecasts from eMarketer
2008-10-22 19:54:00
Here is what eMarketer estimates would be the November and December Online Sales for Retailers. Its understandably a conservative estimate. My honest opinion - Retailers should be happy if they are able to realize the mentioned sales numbers. I would put the growth % in single digit - between $30.5 and $31 B? EMarketer Report: The weak economy is placing downward pressure on e-commerce sales this season. That pressure accentuates the already declining sales growth, which is a sign of the inevitable maturation of the online shopping channel.
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NetElixir launches the first edition of SEM Case Series for E-Retailers
2008-10-21 22:56:00
Through this 10 edition case series, we hope to share some of our PPC management tactics that we used over the past 4 years to optimize more than 200 unique retailer campaigns.The first edition of the series was released  this month. Here is the link: http://www.netelixir.com/PPCWP1.html?ne_p pc_id=31I would love to hear your feedback and suggestions that may help us in making the cases more relevant and useful for you.The next edition gets released on 15th January 2009.Thanks,Udayan Bose
More About: Series , Case , Edition , Retailers

Difficult to Believe?
2008-09-05 22:20:00
This post has reference to the NAILED IT section of DMNEws dated 25th August 2008. Its an interview with Paul Siska, CEO of First Consumer Debt Management. He raves about the results delivered by a search firm EveryMundo.Here are the results Paul claims EveryMundo delivered for their PPC Campaigns-Average Cost Per Lead Acquisition went from $284.16 to $24.99, a reduction of 11.37x.Their Conversion rate went up from 1.32% to 2.97%., an increase of 2.25x.Now cost per conversion can go down because of ONLY two reasons - CPC going down or conversion rate going up. That's it. Period.If the conversion rate went up by 2.25x, CPC would have definitely have gone down by - 11.37/2.25=5.05xIts difficult to believe a 5x drop in CPC within 1 year (lets for a moment consider that CPC remained the same -- zero CPC inflation).This can happen only (and yes I emphasize, ONLY) if the account was NOT BEING MANAGED AT ALL (someone purposefully bidding on all the wrong keywords) OR competitors aband...

Just a little bit of attention
2008-08-14 23:19:00
Understandably PPC management is challenging. Its difficult to keep a tab on all the ad copies on a real time basis. However, agencies are supposed to be responsive and responsible enough to do this efficiently. It pained me to see this ad still running on 14th August at 5.20pm EST. This just gives a bad name to the SEM industry. Overstock Sale Alert www.LumberLiquidators.com      Quality Hasn't Been Cut; Just The Prices! Buy Now - Sale Ends 8/10
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4 years - nothing much has changed in SEM space
2008-03-21 00:30:00
I visited the SES Show after about 4 years, yesterday - in NYC. I was excited to be attending SES because this was the first show we attended after founding NetElixir - SES, San Jose 2004.So much has changed in the search world. The power equation has changed considerably between Google and others. Disappointingly, not much has changed on the SEM space. The usual suspects, iCrossing, iProspect, Did-It, Efficient Frontier, were all there. There were new agencies and SEM tools. All agencies started their pitch by stating that their proprietary technology was awesome because... Back in 2004, they started the same way... Its disappointing. But seriously, SEM companies are struggling to establish a differentiator. Everyone does the same stuff - only the presentation is different. So, is there no differentiator in SEM space? Yet, advertisers are stressed - they complain about their agency or their SEM technology.  They would do so only when there is a need gap. What is the nee...
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2nd Annual PPC Stress Study Results
2007-10-31 23:05:00
We released the 2nd Annual PPC Stress survey results today. We had 140 retailers participate in this year's survey. They ranged from giant e-tailers like WalMart to one person shops. Despite all concerns about rising click costs and click fraud, e-tailers are investing more and more on paid search advertising. Also, the sophistication level keeps increasing. We believe that use of long tail keywords is one "probable indicator" of level of sophistication (attempts to monetize the long tail). I am amazed - still - at the number of people a firm dedicates to its PPC campaigns and the time spent in management. Understandably more people are willing to outsource. Number of specialized agencies are still very few. PPC Management still is done by boutique firms who offer other services as well. My forecast remains optimistic - I don't see any signs of a PPC slowdown till 2011/2012. You can read the press release here : http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id= 1005557 You...
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LXR Solo Launch at Shop.org Annual Summit in Manadalay Bay, Las Vegas
2007-09-18 01:23:00
The day has finally arrived when LXR Solo would be unveiled to the world of e-tailers. Understandably its a very important moment for all of us at NetElixir. We have spent the past 2 years building the technology - testing the algorithms - simplifying the UI and building a tool that is relevant and useful to online retailers. There is an interesting history behind this tool. Let me share that with you. Circa 2004 - I tested the 3 most popular PPC tools in the market - GoToast (became Atlas One Point subsequently), Bid Rank and Search Ignite (end of 2004). There was a clear emphasis on "bid management". The bid rules were complex - even for someone like me who had a decent amount of hands on experience in the space. Also, after having struggled as a marketer to run an optimal PPC campaign I knew that bid management was a small part of the entire PPC management process.I wanted to develop a PPC tool that had three key strengths -  SIMPLE TO USE, POWERFUL PERFORMANCE...
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Google Adwords Overwhelms me!
2007-06-25 01:06:00
A small business owner (small~ less than 20 people, less than $30 mill annual revenue)in 2004 could run an adwords campaign by himself and make a decent bit of profit. Now - that is IMPOSSIBLE. We bagged an important online retail account last week. The client is one of the largest online jewelry stores in US. I asked their CEO why he considered outsourcing PPC advertising management (given the fact that the campaign was being managed in-house for the past 4 years and PPC remains the most important customer acquisition channel for the company). He put it in simple words - " Google adwords overwhelms us". I could not agree more. Google has been introducing changes in adwords at a rapid pace (rapid is probably an understatement, here). And, a lot of this has been prompted by Google's drive for "dis-intermediation". Google wanted to give all the tools a marketer might need to manage his campaigns in-house. But, they overlooked the fact that all these tools actu...
More About: Google Adwords , Adwords

Bracing Up for a profitable holiday season
2007-06-22 01:43:00
My friend and e-tail expert, Lauren Freedman wrote a nice article today for Practical eCommerce - Marketers should be preparing for the holidays now, http://www.practicalecommerce.com/article s/507/Merchants-Should-Be-Preparing-For-T he-Holiday s-Now/ As is the case with any article she writes the article is extremely practical and drives the point home - 2007 holiday season would be the biggest ever and a prudent marketer needs to start thinking about it right away to gain maximum mileage. After having managed more than 50 e-tailer SEM accounts and having interacted extensively with merchants of all size, I have been able to distill some "to do's" for an e-tailer.The points are self explanatory and might seem almost obvious. Nevertheless, merchants tend to ignore these repeatedly. 1. Begin with a "measurable business goal" 2. Break it down to sub-objectives - "be very clear about what you want to achieve" 3. Write down a plan for achieving these obj...
More About: Season , Seas , Profitable

Wall Street Journal and misleading Google advertising
2007-06-10 17:26:00
I did a search for "wall street journal" on Google to land here - Wall Street Journal www.wallstreetjournal.com      Wall Street Journal Free Delivery & 8 Weeks FreeI clicked on the link to land here -https://www.wallstreetjournal.com/Grypho n/jsp/retentionController.jsp?page=11223& amp;S=63JSBK&psid=searchI filled in the registration information and clicked submit, and hey.. what do i get -the offer is no longer valid!!!This is atrocious. The landing page should have been different (and accurate), or I should at least have been informed of this before I added my credit card information.This is what happens when companies run PPC campaigns with the help of agencies that "do not care" or are "simply negligent".Whatever, it is - this experience was a big "dissonance creator" for a WSJ fan like me.Marketing on the web is NOT EASY. There are multiple touch points that you as a marketer need to have control on. Just consid...
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Internet Retailer Show 2007
2007-06-09 04:22:00
Just got back after a super Intern et Retailer show in San Jose. Quick observations -1. Steve Rogers - the organizer - is undoubtedly the best I have seen - ever smiling, courteous, affable, super organizer. He has got the attendee list to over 3000, which is extremely creditable2. Online Retail is booming - this show was an eye-opener in every way - huge crowd - interesting sessions - average participant knowledge level higher than most other shows3. There was not much new that any exhibiting vendor had to offer - that is disappointing - I guess, companies are moving towards "efficiency boosts" in their solutions rather than selling creative stuff - clear sign of an evolving industry4. Retailers of all size need help on PPC management - our theme "NetElixir eliminates PPC stress" resonated with the attendees - as a result we got unprecedented number of e-tailers to visit our booth5. Google dictates "everything" in the internet space6. MSN would never EV...
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ACCM Boston and the Plight of Marketers
2007-05-30 06:56:00
I attended the ACCM Show at Boston last week. We had a booth there. It was a well organized show that attracted (my estimate) around 3000-4000 attendees. My "post-show thoughts"- 1. I bet 90% of marketers are just too overwhelmed or too confused by the number of options that are available today to promote their business 2. Our booth was in the Analytics Pavilion of the Exhibition area. The area drew a fair amount of traffic. I could literally sense an added degree of urgency in the marketers towards web advertising. An attendee who had attended all previous versions mentioned that she could "literally sense" a shift towards the web from the more traditional channels 3. (Pardon my arrogance but..) There was nothing really new and novel - however there were companies that had a more efficient approach to solving a pertinent customer problem. This is something to be expected as the industry evolves. We are entering a phase (or I would say - have entered) where ...
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SES, Munich - March 2007
2007-05-30 06:39:00
This post comes exactly two months after SES, Munich 07 - where I had my first real taste of the SEM business in Germany.My comments -1. Given the penetration levels of the internet, I had expected greater sophistication from the SEM Agencies. I would estimate that the agencies are still - on an average - a year to a year and half behind US2. Some very unique mathematical work is in progress in some top universities on multi-lingual search especially on areas like personalization, behavioral targeting, etc3. I was a speaker in a panel of international experts that discussed the future of search. We juggled around mostly standard topics like potential Google beaters, usability, mobile search, etc. I added an outside US and UK dimension to the discussion. Indeed, search would have arrived when there is a certain degree of searching homogeneity and usage across the globe. Thankfully, the time lag between the most advanced internet nation (Korea? USA? Japan?) and the others is not too l...
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Click Fraud Hype or cheap publicity
2007-02-02 20:24:00
I have written on this topic earlier. Its appalling to see companies hype up click fraud issues. Click Forensics recently reported that 14.2% of clicks were fraudulent in Q4,2006. This is a ridiculously high number. And honestly, its impossible to come up with any number based on limited data set and limited knowledge. As expected Google refuted their claims.http://www.marketingvox.com/archiv es/2007/02/02/google-click-fraud-study-in accurate/ I am firmly of the opinion that click fraud threat is being hyped up at times for petty/selfish gains. Click Fraud exists - there is no question about that - however the percentage incidence is much lower than 14%. Today Marketing Sherpa came up with an interesting study - Online marketers rated the tactics used by them in 2006 as best and worst. The "expected" best tactic - paid search advertising. (an overwhelming 49% of the respondents rated paid search as the best online marketing tactic used). Long live paid search.. down with ...
More About: Publicity , City , Hype

Is it going to be Good Bye Bid Management
2007-01-31 19:31:00
Since we started operating 3 years back we have been harping how "in-appropriate" it is to call PPC campaign management - "bid management". Bidding was and unfortunately still is considered by  many as the key  PPC campaign success determinant.  This was primarily because of the way all PPC engines with the exception of Google Adwords worked. You could see what your competitors were bidding for a keyword and change your bids accordingly. This resulted in atrocious activities like bid war (defies economic logic from the view point of both search engines as well as advertisers). Tools like GoToast were built on "defensive bases" to maximize returns in volatile bidding scenarios. Till 2004 (that's when Adwords beat Overture) PPC management was equivalent to bid management. Thankfully, much sanity has been established - first with Google adwords and now with Yahoo!SM following the way "away from bid management".  Things that ...
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Featured in Internet Retailer
2006-10-27 03:18:00
NetElixir received some press coverage today - http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews .asp?id=20323 Our PPC management solution works particularly well for online retail sector where "sales" can be measured. Based on a combination of multiple algorithms and human specialization, we are able to drive "seemingly unbeatable" results for our clients - consistently. - Udayan Bose
More About: Internet , Featured , Intern , Tail , Feat

Google arrives in AA
2006-09-18 17:30:00
NetElixir welcomes Googl e in Ann Arbor - http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articl e?AID=/20060918/BUSINESS05/609180343/1002 /BUSINESS - Udayan Bose
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The most efficient way of managing a PPC Campaign
2006-09-04 15:30:00
We have had some elaborate and passionate discussions on merits of selling our integrated PPC management platform to advertisers and agencies as a stand-alone system. The platform is a user friendly app from where an advertiser can set up, monitor, manage and optimize her PPC campaigns for multiple accounts (and in some time) multiple search engines. It simplifies the entire process of PPC advertising management substantially.. My main contention "against" selling it as a stand alone software has been - "Optimal PPC management is a clever combination of pure manual work (30%) plus solid technology (70%)". While technology takes care of areas like - speed of operation, scalability, bidding, keyword optimization, reports, specialized manual work is essential requirement for creative development, landing page creation and testing, performance analysis and extrapolation. Without the 30% - there is absolutely NO WAY that a PPC campaign can be optimized. PERIOD. The...
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Importance of Personalization
2006-06-09 18:42:00
Got back from Internet Retailer Conference & Expo 2006, yesterday. It was a super successful event for NetElixir. We had put over 700 person hours preparing for the event and it paid off - "big time". NetElixir team had worked round-the-clock for the last one month to pull out audit reports for the current Google and Yahoo! campaigns for over 200 search advertisers. About 70 advertisers collected their "free audit copies" from our Booth and were delighted that someone had taken time to audit "their" campaigns.It was personalization at  its best. The best part was, about 90% of the keywords considered for the audits was found to be "extremely relevant" by the advertisers. We had a unique booth theme too - "We were the Pirates ready to take the search advertising world by storm". (The Pirate Girl and the 10" Tall Pirate were huge hits). NetElixir's PPC Campaign Management solution was clearly a notch above that offered...
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Internet Retailer Conference
2006-06-04 06:49:00
The excitement is palpable. NetElixir has a booth at Intern et Retailer Conference & Expo - 5th-7th June 06. We hope to use this opportunity to mark our presence as a serious player in search arena. We have spent approximately 700 person-hours on the Conference perapartions. 23 team members were involved. Our proprietary technology platform was used to good effect. We would be handing out something (I am not supposed to reveal "what", now) to 200 online retailers - that's very relevant and "hopefully" something very useful for them. The total operation took about 18 days. I have mentioned in one of my earlier posts for this Blog, how I am in awe by the "lack of adequate transparency and information flow" between clients and agencies in the search space. Search advertising is still a "black box" for many(actually, most).We hope to be able to "cast more light" on how paid search advertising works ... should work. - Udayan Bose
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The Most Expensive Adwords Keywords
2006-05-16 21:38:00
Legal and Financial sectors dominate. Lasik Surgery was a surprise. http://www.cwire.org/highest-paying-searc h-terms/ We have had some interesting experience managing a mortgage account. It's been tough getting to the optimal listing position primarily because the CPC's required were phenomenally high. To compound the problem, there was the occasional incidence of click fraud - possibly by competitors (in this industry, just 10 extra clicks can blow $200!+). Also, to break the stranglehold of the top advertisers like Lending Tree was a challenge. It was almost as if they had booked one of the top 3 positions on Google for certain keywords. Since, Google Adwords does not disclose the CPC, its difficult to find out "what's the story behind the adwords panel" (diplomatically, camouflaged as Quality Score). - Udayan Bose
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From cattle exchange to internet age
2006-05-10 08:13:00
An outstanding report on the work being done to move the traditional ad industry forward: http://360techblog.com/2006/05/09/google- and-ebay-in-ad-industry-shoot-out/ An example how internet would act as a "disruptive technology" yet again. The only formula for success in the new world order is going to be collaboration + specialization + technology + SPEED(purposefully, in CAPS). - Udayan Bose
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The Importance of Being Specialists
2006-05-09 21:02:00
iProspect released a Study today that states that most search marketers perform an average of 5 more job functions in addition to their core function http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/ar ticle.php/3604566 This is a possible indicator of the maturity of this industry. As search advertising continues on its explosive growth path, it is imperative that specialists appear. The volume of information and knowledge to be gathered and utilized is emormous even in a niche function like paid search. NetElixir is arguably world's first PPC Search Advertising Special ist. We never did anything else except PPC - no web design - no SEO - no market research. Bein g a specialist is not easy. It needs discipline. We have had to turn down innumerable SEO projects that have come our way. They could have been easy cash generators for us...but we refrained - we did not want to dilute our motto - "Making Search Work" - making PPC advertising a predictable and profitable operations for m...
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