The next big thing in search engine marketing is tracking clickthroughs to figure return on investment. Two companies announced products that do just that at the Search Engines Strategies 2003 conference in Boston.
One of them, iCrossing, a search agency in Scottsdale, AZ, is adding IC Live to its search optimization, search engine feed and keyword bid management services. IC Live tells marketers which engine a customer was searching on when they typed in a keyword, what keyword brought them to the marketer’s Web site, how the customer behaved on the site, whether or not they purchased a product and what that product was.
Internet marketing firm SendTraffic.com is rolling out a similar product. Valley Stream, NY-based SendTraffic.com buys keyword search listings in bulk to be able to offer their marketing clients cheaper rates on the listings. Their new product, TrafficROI, reports to the marketer what link the customer clicked to bring them to the site, whether or not they purchased something and how much they spent.
Both products allow the marketer to analyze how much it cost to acquire the customer. Marketers can also then better target keyword bids and listings to drive customers for specific products and campaigns.
A different type of service has been introduced by Conducive, a three-year-old New York company formed by some former DoubleClick employees. The service, AdMarketplace.net, lets marketers bid for keyword-based banner advertising that appears above the text-based listings on a search engine. The banner ads are targeted to the prospect’s search and are paid for on a per-click basis. "If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a graphic ad is worth a thousand text links," said Jim Waltz, president and COO. Conducive is aiming AdMarketplace at the small business market.
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