Efficient Frontier Delivers Performance

Marketers demand performance from their advertising.  They expect the budgets they invest to deliver their return on investment goals.  They expect their staff to deliver performance efficiently. They need partners with technology and services that make it happen.

Efficient Frontier has a long history helping marketers deliver performance in the digital world.  Our platform gives marketers the control and insights required to manage campaigns effectively,  and our technology solves the complexity of performance optimization in the auction-based digital ad markets.

Our ability to deliver superior optimization across digital channels while providing advertisers with the control and insights to drive performance is what makes Efficient Frontier unique in the market.

Search Engine Marketing

Unlike rules-based approaches, which are inherently inaccurate and labor-intensive, Efficient Frontier’s technology provides the visibility, scalability and actionable choices required to effectively manage large and complex Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns. Advanced algorithms and predictive modeling allow a direct correlation between how much a marketer spends for their desired results. For more information aboutpaid search,contact us.

Display

Efficient Frontier helps marketers get their display marketing to perform, applying their proven approach to optimization and continuing to provide control and insights to our customers.  Efficient Frontier’s media partners, including Google and Yahoo, deliver over 95% reach and high quality inventory within the biddable display ad exchanges.  With both reach and quality in auction markets, advertisers can now capitalize on display as a performance channel.   And with Efficient Frontier’s real time bidding and access to a wide array of targeting data, advertisers can scale performance display well beyond retargeting. For more information aboutdisplay,contact us.

Search Engine Optimization

Efficient Frontier’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) service is a powerful complement to our paid search marketing offerings. By optimizing Web sites to achieve top natural search engine rankings for relevant keywords, SEO can increase a marketers reach within the search engine results pages, providing maximum exposure alongside the paid search ads.

When Trellian, the parent company of Keyword Discovery, launched their new Direct Search Network, I was a little skeptic at first as I did not truly understand the scope of it. However, as I started to read more into it, I realized that it’s not getting the attention it truly deserves in the PPC Industry. The bottom line is that even though this platform is completely different from traditional PPC, it does provide another outlet for PPC Marketers to test something new on a rather small dollar investment. Furthermore, from what I am hearing, Trellian is also going to be adding more and more “bells and whistles” in future releases, which will make it more user friendly. So, without further adieu, I will walk you through some of the basics of Direct Search.

Trellian Direct Search Quick Bits:

• The Trellian Direct Search Network opening bid price is on average 70% less than major search engines’ CPC (Cost Per Click).
• Research has shown that Direct Navigation converts 50% greater than traditional search engines.
• Trellian Direct Search Network has direct access to 200 million unique visitors per month, that can be redirected to your website.
• The network includes domains parked with the Above.com platform that are authorized to redirect to advertisers.
• Offers Traditional Bidding Auction
• Supports Negative Keywords to filter out irrelevant traffic.
• Their Billing system supports PayPal and Credit Cards.
• You can add keywords to your Trellian Direct Search account directly from a Keyword Discovery search result

Why Consider Using It?
According to Trellian, research shows that Direct Navigation converts 50% greater because users are presented with a website that is highly relevant to their search, without the need to click on any ads. Furthermore, independent studies done by Mozilla and UCLA confirmed that direct navigation is a major part of the web user experience. So with that said, the biggest difference that Direct Search provides is that the direct navigators behave differently to traditional search engine users. Direct navigators are intent driven searchers. Also, it’s important to note that Direct Search taps into a pocket of internet “searchers” not reached by the traditional search engines. Since Direct Search bypasses search engines completely it provides a new untapped source of a potential customer. Because traffic is re-directed the advertiser has NO organic or paid competition.

How does it work?
Direct Search Network has access to Internet searchers using the navigation bar (address bar) and redirects unique visitors directly to your website. Trellian Direct Search has direct access to 200 million unique visitors per month, that can be redirected to your specified website.

What’s the Bidding Auction Like?
There is no fancy bidding algorithm here. For example, if you’re max bid is $2.00 and a competitor is bidding for position #1 for $1.50, then you would be paying $1.51 per visitor. So in essence, you will only pay $0.01 (one cent) more than the highest bidder. This is a simply easy to use bid manager tool.

How do the Keywords Work?
Direct Search uses both a standard broad matching, and exact match for all keywords. And they do support Negative Keywords. For example if you place the word “Blog” as a Negative Keyword associated with the broad match term PPC, then the “PPC Blog” Broad Matched term will not show up (PPC -blog).

What does Google/Yahoo Bing Offer that Direct Search Does NOT?

• Currently does not Support domain extensions as a negative, say -.fr to exclude French domain names.
• Currently does not support GEO Targeting, however Trellian is telling us that they will have this enabled in a future release.
• Only supports Broad Match Keywords, however provides ability to add negatives keywords. …Since we also support exact is this necessary.
• There is no fancy algorithm, just a traditional bid auction.

In Conclusion:
Yes, Direct Search is quite different from Google and Yahoo/Bing. However, a viable compliment to your current PPC campaigns. Just because it’s different doesn’t mean it not worth trying. In fact, putting aside a few hundred bucks for testing on the platform is not a bad strategy considering the low CPCs and traffic “sample size”. From my experience with Direct Search, I have seeing tons of low cost traffic and the CPCs across multiple campaigns are anywhere from 0.02 to $0.20 Cost per visitor.

To learn more about Trellian’s Direct Search, here are some useful links:

• Direct Search Quick Start Guide
• Direct Search FAQs
• Sign Up for Trellian Direct Search

As a salute to Cyber Monday, here is a great list of 20 gifts for us “Green Geeks” out there provided by The E-Advisor Blog. According to E-Advisor “If you haven’t yet joined the green revolution, then you probably don’t know what exactly they’d want or need, or whether or not they already have it. So before you undertake exhaustive research in your quest to find the perfect gift, peruse these items and determine if they would capture your green geek’s fancy.” Here are just some of my favorites.

	The WeWood Watch - Made from 100% Wood. - Hypo-allergenic - Completely free of toxic chemicals - Miyota movement
	GreenGlass - Made from recycled glass. - We transform used beer and wine bottles into funky glasses. - Broken glass is crushed or melted to produce gorgeous beads for jewellery.
	The Big Green Cookbook Practical, Money-saving, eco-friendly cooking.

If someone asked me “what’s your opinion of LinkedIn DirectAds” my elevator speech would be “It’s not for everyone. It’s a little expensive. But man, it has some amazing targeting abilities that Google doesn’t even have. So it’s worth testing depending on the business” As a PPC Marketer I typically would not even consider using the LinkedIn’s DirectAds Network as part of a viable PPC strategy because it’s just not the right marketplace. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth testing depending on the client’s business. DirectAds have some powerful targeting options and that is what makes it a valuable tool. In this post, I will highlight on the benefits and differences with DirectAds as compared to traditional PPC services from the major search engines.

Key Benefits:
DirectAds allows for companies or individuals to promote themselves much more effectively to the world’s largest audience of influential and affluent professionals at all levels in their career. The advertiser has the unique ability to target their Ad down to the industry, job function, age and even level of seniority in order to reach their target market. Another good thing about DirectAds is that they also provide a LinkedIn Best Practices page which contains some similar basic PPC “Blocking and Tackling” tactics, which is a good idea considering everyone is used to the Adwords mainstream. In a nutshell, the audience targeting is the #1 feature which makes it worthy of some PPC Testing.

Key Negatives:
Well, since this is a networking site for professionals, LinkedIn has some strict guidelines that filter out the spammers out there. In fact, according to the Linkedin DirectAds Guidelines, it doesn’t allow much room for anything. For example, I have handpicked the following on their “Do Not Do List”

#1 Who cannot advertise:

• Prescription pharmaceuticals
• Dating sites
• Ringtones
• Online gambling
• Bulk marketing products
• Multi-level Marketing programs, scams, or pyramid schemes
• Inflammatory religious content
• Inflammatory political content

#2 Affiliate Advertising:
No affiliate advertising through LinkedIn DirectAds

#3 (This one is a little fuzzy to me) Data Collection:
Do not use an ad to facilitate collection of a member’s data, including:
Demographic or usage data

• Usernames or passwords from the member for use on LinkedIn or any other site
• Phishing or other scamming tactics to collect sensitive personal information or money

#4 Trademark Policy (Not Automated):
They tell the advertiser that they cannot include any text that may be deemed as infringing upon the trademarks of other parties unless express permission has been granted by the trademark owner. So in essence, LinkedIn does not have an automated system like Google which can automatically filter out Trademarks in the Ad. However, their solution to the problem is to have the Trademark owner send an email to their Customer Service Dept. They will however, remove the Ad if it is infringing on the Trademark.

In Conclusion:
DirectAds provides some nifty targeting options and basic PPC tactics. It’s worth a test for specific businesses, especially those in the B2B world. It does lack an affordable CPC or CPM and their bidding system is the old fashioned auction type. It’s not the “next big thing”, but perhaps their targeting options could open the door to more advanced targeting from other advertising platforms.

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FYI. Not all of us PPC Geeks look like this.

Based on the title of this post, you kinda get the picture that just because us PPC Geeks can figure out a Quality Score Algorithm doesn’t mean that we cannot switch gears and help increase the client pipeline. In fact, in my opinion, more sales teams should almost always utilize a PPC expert’s opinion and have them scope out a potential prospect before they start setting false expectations. We all know that the Sales Team is the KEY to keeping the business going that pays the bills. But having this extra level of filtration is a WIN-WIN not only for the PPC Marketer responsible for working on the account, but also the Sales Team so they do not waste their valuable time going after something that is more of a headache than a cash register.

I have seen more times than not, a disconnect between the expectations of a Sales call vs. a typical Kickoff call which leads to unhappiness from day one for everyone. No one wants to feel this aggravation and the last thing the agency needs is a “burned-out” PPC Marketer who has lost his/her passion for providing clients with top notch PPC services.

With that said, a solution to this problem is not really that difficult. It just requires a little pro-activeness, plus picking up the tab for a few rounds of beers at a swanky bar for the Sales Team wouldn’t hurt neither in order to get their buy-in to the logic that they need to have a PPC geek perform a Scope/Audit before getting the client to sign. Another tactic would be to provide them with a Questionnaire which can help filter out the good and the less desirable prospects that fit the agencies business model.

A typical Questionnaire for a Sales Team would have questions like:

I. Infrastructure Based:

• Do you currently use Web Analytics Software?
• Are you currently Tracking Conversions?
• Do you have a Back-end Order System?
• Do you take orders over the phone?
• Do you have a system Admin or IT Department?

II. Performance Based:

• What is your main Goal/Objective?
• What is your Cost Per Acquisition?
• Are there Seasonality trends that we should be aware of?

Furthermore, there are some other more “deeper” questions that could be answered by the prospect/lead and for example some of them would be like:

• Do you have any Affiliate or Reseller Programs running?
• Are you currently doing any offline advertising? (radio, tv, print…)
• Do you have an events based “seasonality” calendar available?
• Can you tell me what customer interaction points are currently being tracked on the website? (ie, newsletter signup, contact form, different forms, phone numbers, live chat, etc…)
• Are you monetizing these events listed above?
• Does your company own any registered Trademarks?
• Have you filed Trademark protection with Google, Yahoo and MSN/Bing?
• Have you has any Trademark issues/complaints in the past from other companies bidding or using your Trademark in a Text Ad
• Do you have any Legal requirements with other Vendors or Partners?
• Who do you consider your Top Competitors?
• Do you consider PPC Competitors as your true competitors?

In Conclusion
The bottom-line is that in order to get the right client to fit the agencies business model, all departments need to work together. Without Sales Teams we do not have clients to work on. Without PPC experts working on these clients and providing great results, the client’s don’t last, makes it harder for the sales team to continue to get clients and then the agency has a reputation management problem and no one wants that.

It was only a matter of time before Google’s Content/Display network would get a bigger piece of the Search Marketing Pie. For us, PPC Geeks who live in the weeds with this stuff everyday, we truly did not need a conference call from a leading Wall Street Analyst to tell us that there would be an increase in Revenues for the Display Network. We already sort of knew this based on the improvements Google has been making to their platform over the past months and years, as well as the natural shift in the search marketing industry as a whole. But, in an interesting article written by Seth Weintraub from CNNMoney.com/Fortune entitled “Google Display to account for 10% of Google’s revenue?”, it just fortifies what we have seen “behind the scenes”, but also opens the door to other ideas and business strategies.

According to Weintraub’s interview with Susquehanna’s Mariane Wolk, “Exiting recent meetings with Google’s display ad team, we have increased confidence in Google’s long-term growth from display ads. As it approaches 10% of gross revenue, we could see Google break out this high growth part of its business – a catalyst for the shares as it debunks the bear “single-product” thesis.” We recently met with several members of the Display and YouTube teams from Google and found the business is bigger and growing faster than we thought.”

So what does this mean to us PPC Marketers? It means we have to “fish where the fish are”, add the Display Network as vital part of the PPC Strategy and to monetize everything on the client’s website to maintain an accurate level of attribution. However, we also have to be mindful of the validity of these revenue numbers by Google, as there is still a ton of concern over ClickFraud.

Have you ever realized that it can sometimes be a difficult task to communicate and demonstrate to a client or C-level executive what your PPC strategy actually looks like? Have you ever felt they just do not fully understand the complexity no matter how many times you try and explain it? Well, after many years in both the “Agency” and “In-House” world, I have put together a few tips on how to effectively visualize your PPC Plan. These are just some very rough examples. Let’s discuss.

Visual Campaign Layout Structures
Depending on your strategy or level of experience, a typical PPC plan of attack should consist of many campaigns and adgroups, based on relevancy and the classic Quality score best practices. Moreover, this complexity can become a double edged sword when trying to explain it to the client, before you get their approval to “release the hounds”. One of the effective ways to visualize this plan, is to provide it in a more “10,000 foot view”. In this case, I have created it in an Excel Block Format where the client can easily identify the campaign structure, adgroups as well as keyword groupings.

Here is an rough example that I have designed:

Visual Text Ad Strategies
Again, depending on your strategy and level of experience, writing effective PPC Text Ads requires constant revisions and tweaking different messaging techniques. Many times a client cannot visualize what they want to say with the character limits associated with PPC Text Ads, so providing them with some sort of a guideline can help them visualize the space limitations and in some cases provide some new ideas. Moreover, using such as layout can also be effective when trying to explain Ad Testing strategies. In the example below, you will see some sample ads which identify different messaging tactics.

Here is a (very rough) outline of some Text Ad examples:

In Conclusion:
Coming up with an effective strategy is one thing. Trying to communicate it to the client is another. In an off topic, in revealing my age, I often think of the quote from Gi Joe when they say “Knowing is half the battle”. Well, in this case it is. Having good strategies in your head is only as good as it is convincing others to believe in it. Paid Search is complex enough for us SEM Geeks, so why make it difficult for the client to understand how we will spend their hard earned Ad dollars. Make it as simple and visual as possible.

Even though this is a very sad story to hear that one of our most beloved actors has been diagnosed with cancer, I was a little surprised by the move of AARP to use PPC to drive awareness to an exclusive interview with Douglas’ battle with Stage IV throat cancer. However, I was more surprised they appeared to ignore Google and chose Yahoo/Bing as their search engine of choice. The reason why this is significant, is the fact that Google would provide a wider audience and more awareness about the interview. But when looking at all areas of Search Marketing, I am happy to see that AARP and others talking about the Actor’s battle with cancer are using everything from Image Search Optimization, PPC, SEO and Social Networks

Trying to Understand the Strategy
Now, since this PPC Strategy does not have an “actual” conversion metric, I do so see some important metrics to test the performance. For example:

• Clicks/Pageviews
• Social Network participation
• Increased visibility for other areas of the AARP website
• Banner Ad Revenue

The Bottom-line:
This is a very smart move by AARP to use PPC to drive awareness to this story, especially with the timing of the new Wall Street Movie in theaters to capitalize on the additional buzz of the actor’s name. This just shows that PPC is not always being used as a vehicle to drive qualified traffic and measuring conversion results. In terms of the end result, the best outcome would be a Cancer Free Michael Douglas and another movie about Gordon Gekko.

In the Political World, online privacy has always been a hot topic, especially when it comes to Behavioral Targeting. Today, many companies provide this service, including Google with their own Remarketing Tool. In keeping with this trend of using Cookie Technology to follow everyone around web that will allow advertisers to push Branding and Messaging, I came across a very interesting online interview entitled “Q&A Getting People to Pay for Privacy” by Jennifer Valentino-DeVries on the Wall Street Journal’s Digits Blog. In this Q&A, the Digits interviews a new Startup company called Abine, which has developed a FREE 3rd Party Browser Plugin that can be added to a users IE or Firefox Browser which can basically put a HALT to any Behavioral Targeting. Why is this significant? Well, if this software catches on, then Google as well as other Behavioral targeting companies will have a problem on their hands.

How Does Google Describe there Remarketing Tool?
“Remarketing allows you to show ads to users who’ve previously visited your website as they browse the Web. When you use remarketing, you’ll tag pages of your site that correspond to certain categories you want to promote. For example, you could add a “TV” tag on all of the pages where you sell televisions. You can then create an AdWords campaign to show highly relevant messages (such as ads displaying a special offer on TVs) to people who’ve visted these pages as they browse sites across the Google Display Network.”

In Conclusion:
Generally speaking, maybe this will not be such as big deal, since the user has to install it themselves and does not appear to be a required plug-in. But, it does raise some concerns about the future effectiveness of Google’s Remarketing Tool. Personally, I think companies such as Abine are providing a very useful option to protect online privacy and I do not think it was their intention to solely hurt online advertisers in their efforts to sell their products or services. But if it does catch on, then it will affect Google’s stock price (a little…)

Here are some other Interesting Article about Privacy Startup Companies

• http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-06-01/business/21652306_1_privacy-settings-networking-service-social-networking
• http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/22/online-privacy-startup-reputationdefender-raises-15-million/
• http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703438604575315182025721578.html