Empowering Africa's Next Generation: The AI Leadership Blueprint
Best And Worst Of Paid Search Companionpiece
1. Best and Worst of Paid Search
in 2009: The Omniture Response
COMPANION PIECE
Forrester Research, lead by Shar VanBoskirk, addressed the issues surrounding
the best and worst of paid search in 2009 in a report of the same name. In the Paid search ads fail due to:
report, Forrester judged the success or failure of paid search campaigns based on
a system of judging they called the “Search Marketing Review” (hereafter “the Keywords:
Review”). The Review was Forrester’s objective means of reviewing 300 of the The searched key term is used
most relevant search terms spread out among major industry verticals to diagnose improperly or not at all
various “search program strengths, defects, and ways to improve effectiveness.”*
The report identified ways that paid search campaigns were falling short Conversion:
throughout specific industry verticals. Search ads don’t properly
motivate buyers or weed out
Since many of the industry-specific challenges could be applied to most any those who won’t buy
organization—no matter the industry—we put vertical aside in this companion
guide and offer our feedback about how solutions in the Omniture Online Landing page:
Marketing Suite can address the paid search challenges Forrester identified. Searchers are taken to pages
that don’t properly fit the
BUSINESS CHALLENGE searched term
According to the Review (which included five common search terms across six
different industries and then a qualitative evaluation of the first 10 Google AdWords
ads that appeared), more than half of search-based ads failed to be effective.
Why?
Forrester stated*that the ads failed in three main categories:
1. Keywords—they were inefficiently used or not used at all in the ad itself
2. Conversions—the ads failed to screen out irrelevant clickers or move them
to take action
3. Landing pages—visitors were taken to pages not relevant to their search, or
pages that offered “not enough content or too much detail*”
Omniture can help marketers streamline and optimize their paid search marketing
through the use of solutions found in the Omniture Online Marketing Suite. This
guide has aggregated reports, briefs and webinars that address how Omniture can
assist you with the challenges outlined above.
OMNITURE IMPROVES YOUR PAID SEARCH M ARKETING
Keywords
Forrester’s Review found that more than 25 percent of the ads they saw did not
include the keyword searched in either the title of the page or the page copy. Users
need to see that their searches are relevant and leading them to the right places.
Omniture offers a white paper that discusses how you can avoid this issue by
effectively reinforcing your marketing message from keyword to your landing page,
and additionally how to test better options for your pages.