Data-Driven Online Marketing | RKG

Bing and Social Signals

Jake — Mon, 14 May 2012 21:04:00 +0000

George Michie was recently interviewed by Internet Retailer about Bing’s forthcoming inclusion of social signals on the SERP. Bing is preparing to include results from Facebook on the right rail of their search results page, a move that might help lure heavy Facebook users to Bing rather than Google.

RKG’s Take on Multichannel Attribution in the Press Again

Jake — Wed, 02 May 2012 13:46:49 +0000

In an article this week, MediaPost’s Laurie Sullivan referenced George Michie’s recent Search Insider Summit panel about Multichannel Attribution:

Attribution becomes increasingly complex as more media becomes part of the mix. George Michie, CEO at Rimm-Kaufman Group, outlined the barriers to understanding attribution and provided an example of attributing each touch to a winning point in Game Seven of the NBA finals. He asked during last week’s MediaPost Search Insider Summit whether credit goes to the player in-bounding the ball to another player, or to the player who shot the ball through the hoop.

Michie also asked how marketers deal with a change in trusted metrics relied on for years as online advertising matures and changes. Year-over-year performance numbers could start to decline dramatically, and remain down for nearly a year with the change of an attribution model that now takes more than one media channel into consideration.

The Declining Value of Last Click Attribution Models

Jake — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:55:49 +0000

RKG attribution management research was discussed in an eMarketer article about last click attribution models not providing marketers with an accurate picture of their campaigns. Overall weakness of a last touch attribution model is a topic that RKG has been discussing for awhile. As such, we built our attribution management solution to be flexible and provide fractional credit across multiple marketing channels.

Search Engine Land Covers the RKG Digital Marketing Report for Q1, 2012

Jake — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:05:22 +0000

Data from RKG’s Digital Marketing Report for Q1, 2012 was used in a Search Engine Land piece that described the overall growth of paid search spend in Q1, 2012.

4/16/2012 Update:
MediaPost’s Laurie Sullivan wrote a great piece that wraps up a number of agency’s quarterly reports. Numbers and analysis from RKG’s digital marketing report are referenced throughout the piece. One key takeaway that Sullivan stresses is the growing importance of Google’s Product Listing Ads:

As for SEM, the decline of Google cost per clicks continues to be the major topic for most. But Mark Ballard, senior research analyst at RKG, sees Google’s Product Listing Ads format as another important metric.

Clicks on Google PLAs rose more than five times in the quarter compared with Q1 2011, accounting for 11% on Google, according to the RKG’s report. PLA cost per clicks came in 18% below standard text ads in Q1. Overall, CPCs on Google fell 9% compared with Q1 2011, Ballard said.

RKG a Finalist for 2 Charlottesville Business Innovation Council Awards

Jake — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:35:16 +0000

In a recent Charlottesville Daily Progress article RKG is said to be a finalist for 2 Charlottesville Business Innovation Council awards, specifically the Spotlight Award and the Community Award. The Spotlight Award is given to a company that brought positive attention to the Charlottesville area, and the Community Award is given to the firm that has improved the quality of life in Central Virginia.

RKG Report: Google Search Lead Strengthens Even as CPCs Continue Decline

Jake — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:27:14 +0000

Google paid search spend grew 35% in Q1 2012 as it once again benefited from strong click-through rate growth driven by newer ad formats and a cumulative string of design changes that have favored their paid listings.

This is according to the RKG Digital Marketing Report for Q1, 2012. The Rimm-Kaufman Group (RKG), a digital marketing agency and industry thought leader, publishes their report each quarter to help marketers benchmark their performance and understand the latest trends in online marketing.

RKG found that while Google controls 76% of organic search visits, it supplies 84% of paid search clicks and commands 85% of paid search ad spend. In the quickly growing mobile space, Google, with its Android operating system and status as the default search provider for Apple’s iOS, enjoys an even larger 91% share of ad clicks.

With mobile ad clicks offering 30-40% less value to advertisers across smartphones and tablets combined, a year over year doubling of mobile’s share of traffic to 13% has put downward pressure on Google’s average cost-per-click.

Also bringing down CPCs, Google continues to shift more traffic to its Product Listing Ads format, which employs richer information about products including images and prices. In the first quarter, PLAs accounted for 11% of Google clicks, a 256% increase year over year, but PLAs are costing advertisers 10-20% less per click than an equivalent text ad.

Overall, Google CPCs were down 9% in Q1, which would mark a continued deceleration from the 8% decline Google officially reported for Q4 2011.

The latest RKG report also spotlights the performance of Bing and Yahoo in paid search and offers additional insights into data covering: search engine optimization (SEO), social media advertising, comparison shopping engines, multi-channel attribution and more.

Among the most notable results, RKG found:

Total paid search spend grew at a 30% year over year rate in Q1 2012, a slight decline from Q4 growth of 31%. Ad clicks grew at a 36% rate, a slight increase from Q4.
Bing and Yahoo paid search spend grew 7% overall, but ad clicks declined 4%. Volume from non-brand terms looked particularly weak, but traffic quality, in terms of revenue per click for advertisers, has risen sharply.
Google’s share of organic search traffic increased to 76%, while Bing and Yahoo had shares of 10.4% and 10.8% respectively.
Facebook provided 5.2% of referral visits in Q1, while Twitter stood at 0.4%. The buzz-heavy Pinterest sent even more traffic than Twitter on average, with a referral share of 0.5%. In terms of all site visits though, the three social sites combined for less than 1% of tracked visits.
Mobile comprised 12% of organic search visits in Q1 and 13% of paid search clicks. Google holds a 91% share of mobile paid search clicks.
Tablet share of PPC nearly quadrupled from year to year as the iPad alone accounts for nearly 7% of all clicks. The Kindle Fire now holds 4% of tablet click share to the iPad’s 88%.
Advertisers on comparison shopping engines shifted traffic away from paid listings such as NexTag, which saw its share of CSE clicks decline from 14% in Q4 to 9% in Q1. Google’s free Product Search listings generated nearly half of all CSE clicks in Q1, while Amazon Product Ads was the top paid CSE, taking 36% of all CSE spend.

While marketers and financial analysts await the official earnings releases from Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, they can get an early read on all of the details on paid search, SEO, comparison shopping engines and social from RKG’s data-driven marketing team in the full RKG Q1 2012 report.

About RKG
RKG is a full-service digital marketing agency that combines superior marketing talent with leading edge technology to create the industry’s most effective data-driven online marketing solutions. Founded in 2003, RKG specializes in working with clients in retail, travel, financial and B2B organizations ranging in size from small startups to Fortune 500 companies. RKG is a privately held company headquartered in Charlottesville, VA with offices in Bend, OR and Boston, MA.

RKG Weighs in on Google’s Semantic Search

Jake — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 18:34:41 +0000

RKG’s CEO, George Michie, was interviewed by Internet Retailer about Google’s push towards semantic search and the impact this could have on advertisers.

RKG Gives Tips on Boosting Sales for the Spring Gift-Giving Season

Jake — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 20:57:31 +0000

RKG’s VP of Marketing, Ryan Gibson, was interviewed by the Shop.org Blog about digital marketing strategies that online retailers can implement for a successful spring gift giving season. In addition to Ryan’s tips, a variety of RKGers weighed in with key techniques that retailers can roll out to their CSEs, PPC, and Display campaigns.

Yahoo Cites RKG’s Digital Marketing Report

Jake — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 18:16:51 +0000

Once again, RKG’s Digital Marketing Report for Q4 2011 was referenced in industry press. In a recent article about the overall strength of search marketing and the Search Alliance, Yahoo noted that RKG’s digital marketing report found that ROAS on Yahoo & Bing Search was up 9.8% y/y.

Nutrisystem testimonial

Jake — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:00:28 +0000

“RKG is a trusted strategic partner, offering top notch client services and support. They’ve helped us to restructure and expand our search campaign, which combined with their proprietary technology has resulted in improved performance. Their trained Analysts are skillful and attentive, and the reporting and analytics provided has proven to be a valuable asset. We appreciate the attention to detail, flexibility, and anticipatory management style exhibited by the team.”