Comments

1. Chris Zaharias, January 9, 2009:

   Wow, you guys and SearchIgnite have Q4 ‘08 data that couldn’t be more opposite. They’re saying retail PPC spend grew 12% YoY in Q4, and you’re saying 75% of your retail clients spent less YoY. Any thoughts as to why RKG & SI data might be so different? Is it SEM mgmt styles, sample sizes, something else?

2. George Michie, January 9, 2009:

   Hi Chris,

   Search Ignite is really just a management tool used by their client retailers, so it’s hard to speak of a Search Ignite management style.

   The Search Ignite tool is a position based bid system, so it’s quite likely that retailers using the tool simply got caught up in the bidding wars and the spend increased without sales keeping pace.

   For our clients it’s very much more a function of their marketing decisions. Faced with the choice between spending inefficiently and maintaining efficiency at reduced cost and top line sales, most of our clients chose the latter.

   Could also relate to differences in the client base. Our clients pick us because they’re interested in advertising aggressively but within efficiency limits — that’s kind of our specialty. Search Ignites clients may be more interested in top line than bottom line, they may not be died-in-the-wool direct marketers like the majority of our folks.

   What did y’all see at Omniture?

3. Amanda Bird, January 13, 2009:

   Hi Chris, George,
   SearchIgnite is used by leading digital agencies and direct clients to manage some of the most sophisticated retail campaigns in the country including JCPenney, Office Depot, Borders and many others. We have an advanced bid management platform which includes predictive modeling, portfolio optimization and rules-based bidding.

   While our clients are very focused on their ROI from search, they are also predominantly multi-channel marketers who are making paid search budget decisions based on the relative ROI of search marketing in relation to other marketing channels. This could explain some of the difference in the budgeting decisions of our client sets.

4. Chris Zaharias, January 13, 2009:

   Thanks to both of you for the comments, but Amanda, I still feel like your firm’s read on search in Q4 needs a bit more explanation to it. I’m inclined to put more faith in RKG’s data since they go so deep in explaining what they saw as well as their methodology. That said, samples are samples, and perhaps it’s just chance that RKG and SearchIgnite data is so disparate. FWIW, though, I’d love to hear more about how SearchIgnite arrived at those #’s.

   George – Omniture’s not yet aggregated any of its customers’ SEM data for publication. I’d like to do that, though, and will let you know if we do.

5. George Michie, January 14, 2009:

   Hi Amanda,

   Thanks so much for your comment, I certainly meant no disrespect to the SearchIgnite tool! I have had the tour and while I’d make the case that “leading” agencies, by definition, can’t rely on someone else for the central piece of their service offering, we’ve actually recommended your tool to agencies who’ve asked to rent ours (which we don’t do).

   I think your analysis may be right on. The multichannel folks who are really brick and mortar first and foremost have store support in mind and other big ticket media expenses that play a role in how they manage ROI targets. Our Brick and Mortar chain retailers were also more likely to see YOY “growth” at the expense of observed online efficiency.

   Could it also be that SearchIgnite considers small agencies as “customers”, so that the growth of those agencies’ businesses from adding more clients shows up as YOY growth of SearchIgnite customers?

   Thanks again, Amanda. Chris if you’d share that would be great. May 2009 be better than expected for all of our clients!

6. Amanda Bird, January 14, 2009:

   Chris – SearchIgnite’s data methodology is the same that we have used for all of our past reports, in that we only show data on a same-client basis. Our latest report focused on our retail clients. This means that the Y/Y data reported represents all retail clients that were with SearchIgnite for the full Q4 2007 and the full Q4 2008.

   George – We break down the data by customer account regardless if they are direct clients or agencies therefore if an agency added a client within 2008 that client would not be reflected in the report.

   Thanks for the recommendations! We obviously take a different view in that we feel that most agencies cannot afford not to trust their technology needs to a leader in space that focuses on nothing but creating the best solutions for tracking, optimization, landing page and creative testing, cross-channel attribution, etc. For most agencies, this is simply not a core competency and they are better served focusing on the strategic aspects of campaign management not the underlying technology required to implement those strategies. Rimm-Kaufman’s technology platform obviously serves your clients very well and congrats on your success.

7. George Michie, January 14, 2009:

   Well said, Amanda. Building the technology from scratch in 2009 would be a heck of a steep hill to climb for a young agency. I think you have to be the best technologically and have complete control of the platform to be a leader, but you don’t have to lead to be good.

   Strangely, a call from Marin Software just came into my VM :-)

   In point of fact, we recommend that small agencies who don’t have the knowledge, skills and time to invest in building a top notch platform look at SearchIgnite, Marin Software and Omniture as solution providers.

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