Just when you thought Google was the Big Kahuna, a report comes out to challenge your assumptions. Like this one from BIGresearch which yields some new insights into which search engines have the most influence on buying decisions. Hint: It's not Google.

The study looked at the influence of Internet advertising on purchase decisions and the findings may surprise you. Yahoo was ranked overall the #1 search engine choice for influencing purchase decisions and Google #4. I'm not terribly surprised that Yahoo! leads the pack here. Even though you can't (and shouldn't) sterotype searchers, I nonetheless tend to imagine the prototypical Google searcher as more savvy and research-oriented and the prototypical Yahoo! searcher as a ready buyer easily parted from his/her money. What does it say about the average Yahooer that one of the most popular search terms entered into Yahoo! is the word "google"? ;-) To the tune of 34,960,495 searches last month alone! This according to their Keyword Selector Tool. Can't they figure out how to type google.com in the Location bar?

You also have to consider too that Yahoo puts the ads more in-your-face, so to speak, than Google.

Nonetheless, the rankings do move around once you start segmenting. Sometimes Google comes out in front — like in the Electronics sector. Here are some key sectors ranked in order of search engine preference:

Electronics
1. Google
2. Yahoo!
3. MSN
4. AOL
5. Ask Jeeves

Apparel/Clothing
1. Yahoo!
2. AOL
3. MSN
4. Google
5. Ask Jeeves

Car/Truck
1. MSN
2. Yahoo!
3. Google
4. Ask Jeeves
5. AOL

Grocery
1. AOL
2. Yahoo!
3. Ask Jeeves
4. MSN
5. Google

Hmm.... This might cause one to reassess his/her assumptions and priorities (and BUDGET) around paid search!

BIG hat tip to Shimon Sandler!

January 23 was a momentous day in history. What was said and by whom will have significant, long-term beneficial impact on online advertising. It happened in Atlanta, although not all participants could make it on time due to bad weather at the airport.

Representatives from search engines (Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Become, Shop.com), retailers (Sierra Trading Post, Red Envelope, Bare Necessities, CompUSA, Cutter & Buck, Coldwater, REI), agencies (Rimm-Kaufman Group, Performics, Mercent, Mars) and the NRF (NRF’s ARTS, the Association for Retail Technology Standards) all met to discuss establishing an industry standard for describing products for online SKU-based advertising and the comparison engines.

During the two-hour meeting, retailers and engines alike shared their frustration at the lack of a common platform for describing products and receiving back advertising reports.

The most important outcome of the meeting was the decision to move forward towards an industry standard for describing products online using the expertise and process of the NRF’s ARTS.

The group next plans to meet in Menlo Park on February 27 to begin work on a specification.

This standardization effort is newsworthy for several reasons. Such a standard would:

• allow retailers, both large and small, to advertise online more easily
• help the engines by increasing their advertising base
• help consumers by allowing retailers to communicate a richer set of product information to the engines which would then
• facilitate improved product searching and comparing

The meeting was also interesting in that a diverse set of organizations with widely different interests all agreed that the current situation was far from good and that an industry standard would help greatly.

The online retail community needs to know that this is happening. And they need to get involved in the standard building process.

eMarketer has just released a new research report, Search Engine Marketing: Search Users and Usage. The report gets inside the heads of searchers to better understand why people click on paid ads.

David Hallerman, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the report, states:

"The good news is that the growth of paid search ad spending is flattening out. Yes, you heard me right. That's good news. In an industry once-burned by bubble-and-burst expansion, Internet advertising is best served when its most effective vehicles show steady, and less hyped growth."

"As the paid search market matures, involved companies will look for additional ways to build their bottom line through search. This will include greater spending on tools such as search engine optimization, which boosts organic search rankings, and broadening the paid search base with superior implementation of local search, contextual advertising, and vertical search."

Does displaying Google AdSense ads on your web pages cheapen your site? Not in my opinion. Some of the most reputable sites prominently display Google adverts on their pages. For example, see example pages on NYTimes.com (the "Advertiser Links" section near the bottom of the page is AdSense) and Oreilly.com. The only danger with AdSense ads on your pages is that you are driving traffic out of your site. So, if you are trying to sell a high ticket item you might want to leave the ads out until you have an order — or at least an email address.

For those who don't have etail transaction concerns, then Adsense makes a lot of sense (pun intended) for any kind of site that wants to monetize their rich content without having to charge a subscription for access. It is entirely possible to support a content site on AdSense revenue alone, a welcome change after years of popups and intrusive banner ads. For example, we own several content sites (e.g. WritersNet and InnSite) that collectively earn 5-figures from Google (actually from its AdWords advertisers, but the check comes from Google) each month. It's "money for jam," as Kiwis would say!

I see that one of my favourite blogs, Signal vs. Noise is piloting text ads in their RSS feed. So far this is going over like a lead balloon, judging from the 120 comments posted after their announcement. Very few of the comments were positive — indeed a number were taken aback that 37 signals would have the audacity to pollute their RSS feed with advertising. But hey! that's capitalism for you. Anything that can be advertised on will be. I remember reading in the book The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson how, in the future, rich-media (animated) ads will even appear on the chopsticks you are eating with. I can actually see that happening some day. (sigh...) If you are wondering what my opinion is on RSS advertising — personally, I hate it. Rolling out this "enhancement" to RSS now could very well hobble RSS's ability to go viral and to replace email marketing as the preferred permission-based spam-free newsletter content delivery module. I hope that website owners will exercise due constraint in interjecting advertising messages into their RSS feeds.

RSS advertising is starting to take hold in large part to a partnership between Overture and Feedburner, with Overture supplying the ads and Feedburner providing the distribution channel. John Batelle appears to be quite positive about this evolution of RSS, but I remain skeptical.

UPDATE: Signal vs. Noise has pulled the ads from their RSS feed.

A survey of Internet users done by the Ponemon Institute and reported on by USA Today found that online advertising is despised, yet people still respond to them.

Here's a synopsis of the Ponemon Institute's findings:

• Close to 80% of those surveyed always find pop-up ads annoying.
• More than 60% always find e-mail spam always annoying (about on par with telemarketing).
• Almost 60% report that Internet banner ads and text ads are always annoying.
• 31% of respondents report that they have responded to a product or promotional offer made from an Internet advertisement.
• 7% state that they actually have made a purchase or engaged a particular service based on a banner ad.
• 65% of respondents still aren't willing to pay for Internet services to block unwanted ads and unsolicited messages.
• The majority of respondents are not willing to give up free services to avoid ads.
• 52% of respondents report that they would be more likely to respond to a banner ad if it were more relevant to their particular interests.
• 66% would deem banner advertisements less annoying if they were more relevant to a consumer's particular interests or needs.
• 45% of respondents reported that they would disclose additional personal information if that meant that they would receive more targeted Internet advertisements.
• 55% of respondents believe that a technology that would allow Internet marketers to achieve better targeting without collecting personal information would make them more likely to visit a particular Web site.
• 31% would have greater confidence in an advertiser if its Web site posted a "good privacy practices" seal from a third-party such as TRUSTe or BBB.Online.
• 44% of respondents believe that unwanted online ads should be "banned by law."

Google has recently changed their AdSense policy on the number of add blocks you can display per page if you are part of Google's AdSense program. That's the program whereby websites can get paid for displaying Google ads on their web pages. Now you can display up to three ad units per page, according to Google.

Non-profits rejoice! The Google Grants program is taking applications again. If you're unfamiliar with Google Grants, it's an allowance of free Google AdWords advertising for worthy non-profits. Here's a short description of the program from Google:

"The Google Grants program is designed to help nonprofit organizations like yours further their goals and objectives through targeted, online advertising on Google.com. Past Google Grant recipients have used their grants to publicize services and awareness, recruit staff and volunteers, promote special events, sell merchandise related to their organization or cause, and much more."

DoubleClick's Smart Marketing Report in a recent interview of Jamie Crouthamel, president and CEO of Performics, were treated to some words of wisdom on how to launch and optimize a paid search advertising program.

Here's some of the takeaways I got out of the interview:

• Build out your keyword portfolio. Incorporate product names, product numbers, relevant adjectives (colors, sizes, etc.), and occasions for which products could be sought. A number of linguistic exercises for the agency and client exist that can help with this process. A SEM program can encompass a keyword portfolio of as large as 50,000 keywords with varying ROIs. Although "belt" might not convert well as a keyword, it has many related terms that may convert much better, such as "leather belt," "men's leather belt," "brown belt," and "men's brown leather belt."
• Collect an adequate amount of data before you begin optimizing. Don't alter a keyword until that keyword has received at least 100 clicks.
• Constantly improve your keyword portfolio by adding new search terms and improving/removing keywords that don't produce a good ROI.
• Experiment with reducing bid prices to improve ROI.
• Optimize your search ad copy to make it as compelling and relevant as possible.
• Make the landing page as relevant to the user's keyword as possible.
• If your products are seasonal, bid on the keywords during the season when your target audience is in need of them rather than year-round.

Google's contextual advertising technology that they picked up with the Applied Semantics acquisition isn't flawless. It's not always in the best light that your brand gets displayed within sites subscribing to the Google AdSense program. Take for instance the case where a web page featuring a story about a hacked up body in a suitcase displays a Google AdWords ad for luggage, as described in this Fast Company article. Or the also embarrassing but less gruesome example I came across on Robin Good's website recently, as shown below:

Bottom-feeding email marketing solution, anyone? ;-)