Posts Tagged ‘sem’

5
Mar

Yahoo! Launches Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop

   Posted by: Horia Neagu    in Search Engine Marketing

The much anticipated launch of the Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop PPC tool has finally happened, as announced on the official Y! SM Blog. Similar to its counterparts, the Google AdWords Editor and the MSN AdCenter, this PPC management platform promises to deliver a complete set of marketing tools, designed to enhance your control over any SEM campaign.

Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop Loading Screen
Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop Loading Screen

A notable difference from more traditional Search Marketing applications is that the Yahoo! SM Desktop tool runs on Adobe Air, as opposed to Google’s AdWords Editor, which is a Mozilla XUL-powered application. Most of you may be familiar with the Adobe Air medium as being the backbone for most Twitter clients, but whether or not this platform will be an advantage in battling the Search giant Google remains to be seen.

I have downloaded the application only recently and there is still much testing to be done before I can offer a full-fledged review of the software, but stay tuned. Alternatively, if you want to beat me to it, feel free to download the tool for yourself at Yahoo! Search Marketing HQ and jot down your own thoughts.

Yahoo! promises us this tool will provide the standard features of a PPC management system:

  • Bulk editing that will allow easy management of multiple sets of keywords, ad groups, ads and match types;
  • Export options which will allow us to customize and save a campaign report in Excel;
  • A keyword tool to facilitate keyword research, long tail targeting and key phrase implementation;
  • Third-party campaign import options… this one I can’t wait to test. Yahoo! is notorious for holding you hostage for your campaign data and forcing you to export your Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns manually and strenuously (one ad group at a time, one keyword set at a time and so forth…), so one is left to wonder if this third-party import option will also have an export equivalent;
  • Account performance metrics allowing you to assess your campaign’s performance – obviously, a no-brainer.

So far, I must say I am not impressed with the feature list. I would have expected Yahoo! to step up the game with at least one key improvement to the familiar AdWords Editor interface. For instance, I have often wondered when Google was going to allow us to change a campaign’s bidding model (CPC vs CPM) within the AdWords Editor interface, without having to log into the web interface. Another problem with the AdWords Editor is that the ad writing specifications aren’t synchronized with the web interface… for instance, if I were to write an ad with a headline ending in an exclamation mark (”!“) or with the copy containing ASCII characters, the Editor would allow me to publish my changes to my AdWords campaign, which would, in term, get disallowed via the web interface. The point is you can discover some screw-ups within Google’s PPC tool and I’m quite surprised to see Yahoo! not jumping the chance to stick it to The Man with this new and improved Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop application.

I have yet to see this tool in some real action, but it has already made a negative impression on me, as it failed to download one of my UK campaigns, stating that:

Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop is currently not supported in your market.  Please check our website for information on future releases.

The application is not supported in the United Kingdom? I figured it must be due to my Romanian server connection, so I tried accessing it via a proxy… to the same effect. So until further research, I’m giving this tool a disappointed thumbs down.

Download the Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop application!

Read the official Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop “Getting Started” guide!

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27
Sep

RIA Analytics: Three Features I Expect

   Posted by: Horia Neagu    in Web Metrics

In a previous article discussing Adobe’s acquisition of Omniture, I pointed out some evident applications of a prospective Web Metrics platform dedicated to monitoring and analyzing the overall online performance of Adobe-specific software.

Although the business models of the two companies seem rather antithetical, they can also be regarded as complementary. Omniture sells technically sophisticated software-as-a-service to data analysts, while Adobe brings creativity to the table. Now, as Jason Burby of ClickZ recently predicted, outside of improved integration for designers building the sites, there are a few positives and a couple of negatives that could arise from the Adobe-Omniture pairing. But I would like to dismiss the obvious and embrace the utopia of a soon-to-be-released data tracking solution for Flash content, PDF files and vector images.

Within Adobe’s by-the-book PR feed (including a Press Release, the two companies’ financial data and official statements) there was a diagramdetailing the ideal merger of the two dissimilar business models:

The Adobe-Omniture Business Model

The Adobe-Omniture Business Model

Being an incurable dreamer, I took the liberty of deducing from this simple schematic that the dawn of a new age is upon us: the age of the SWF Analytics systems. Deepening this thought, I came up with a list of at least 5 features a potential RIA performance measurement platform should include to really make a difference in the Internet Marketing business:

1. PDF Drilldown. This setting would not only allow Marketers to track the number of downloads of a particular PDF file, but also provide details about the post-download usage of said file. More specifically, you would gain insight about who accessed your PDF, what their browser of choice was, where they came from geographically, as well as how far they got to reading the text, if they clicked on any links or acknowledged certain calls to action within the document, if they revisited the site after reading the PDF and so forth. This feature may not seem too appealing to traditional SEOs, but I am a Document Optimization afficionado, so for me the aforementioned information would prove invaluable.

2. Flash Game Event Tracking. This function of the RIA Analytics system would be another treat for Web 2.0 freaks. This report would enable you to track the behaviour of players accessing your Flash games. As with the PDF files, you would be able to learn what areas of the game are more popular, which call to action works and which doesn’t, whether or not your players click advertising links within your games, the players’ demographic profiles, what the bounce rate is for your games and last, but certainly not least, if your Advergaming campaign has achieved the desired results.

3. Video Segment Analysis. I know Tracy Chan, Product Manager at YouTube, keeps promoting their reporting tool as being the equivalent of Google Analytics for video content, but I feel that YouTube Insight still has a lot of shortcomings and that it is far from being an advanced video performance monitoring instrument. In this respect, I think the market is still very much open for the arrival of a real competitive metrics measurement system for Flash videos. With the Video Segment Analysis feature of the Adobe-Omniture RIA Analytics program, one would learn about the most viewed segments of a video, the frequency of buffering skip, the number of clicks obrained (if clickable captions were used),  behaviour patterns of users who leave comments to videos etc.

I know Adobe and Omniture have just settled into their marital home and that they have a long way to go before gracing us with any revolutionary Marketing product – if they ever will. Still, it is every Marketer’s right to dream, is it naught? Preserve the Union (of Adobe and Omniture, that is)!

Pie Chart

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16
Sep

Adobe Acquires Omniture: What Next?

   Posted by: Horia Neagu    in Internet & Technology

Ever since Adobe Systems published a Press Release announcing the acquisition of Web Analytics firm Omniture, the Internet has been buzzing over the news. Some argue that the venture is going to benefit the end-user, who will now experience the best of both worlds, while others fatalistically prophesize the end of Omniture. However, the predictions are largely positive and it is pretty evident that recession-struck Adobe will not have spent $1,8 bln – Adobe’ biggest acquisition since the $3,4 bln purchase of Macromedia in 2005 – on a well-established Web Metrics company just to raze it to the ground.

Adobe Systems (NASDAQ: ADBE) is a San Jose-based computer software giant, focusing on developing creativity and multimedia software products and, more recently, RIA frameworks. Adobe’s potential reach is inestimable, as more than 80% of online videos are being enabled by Adobe Flash technology, while their flagship product, Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard image editing program.

Omniture, Inc. (NASDAQ: OMTR) is a leading provider of Web Metrics software and online business optimization solutions, operating in over 20 countries worldwide, reaching over 5000 clients worldwide – among these we count eBay, AOL, Microsoft, Oracle, HP et al. – and hitting a market cap of $1,29 bln.

Paul Weiskopf, Adobe Senior Vice President

Paul Weiskopf, Adobe Senior Vice President

The main idea of the acquisition, as Adobe Senior Vice President Paul Weiskopf said, is to offer customers the tools necessary to optimize the Web content they create. Poetically emphasizing the venture, Weiskopf stated “We’re combining art with science. We’ve streamlined the process for creating and delivering content and now we’re offering the ability to put it in front of the right user at the right time to get the optimized business result.” But on a more down-to-earth note, Adobe may have finally found a way to go beyond the established model of traditional software sales and to profit from already installed clients. Adobe is a leading provider for various multimedia software solutions, like the video-enabling Flash system, the award-winning graphics editing program Photoshop and the Illustrator authoring tool. On the other side, Omniture is best known for its flagship Web Analytics platform, SiteCatalyst, but also for a host of products and services, including data behavioural targeting solutions (Test & Target) and PPC campaign optimization assistance (SearchCenter). Now imagine these two market giants collaborating to develop data mining and Web Metrics applications for multimedia content. This move would probably prompt Adobe onto the Analytics market and grant the company a monopoly over RIA metrics management, as both software development and data tracking would be done in-house.

For Web Developers and Designers, this power move could mean a giant step forward, as they would now be able to track the success of their multimedia and video creations.  But Adobe’s acquisition of Omniture is even tastier for Internet Marketers, as it could herald the evolution of Web Metrics management, through the emergence of a revolutionary Analytics system, that would, most probably, dwarf YouTube’s maturing reporting product, YouTube Insight. With Google’s continuing efforts to better their Flash indexing algorithm, the advent of an advanced SWF data tracking technology could not only expand the horizons for website development, but also reform the world of Web Marketing. Furthermore, taking into consideration Adobe’s large palette of products, one can not help but dream about tracking the success of a viral video campaign, statistically analyzing the popularity of online distributed ebooks, assess the achievements of Advergaming campaigns… the possibilities are endless.

Whether or not Adobe will be able to cash in on this titanic opportunity remains to be seen. From my point of view, the greatest challenge this new enterprise will have to face is Adobe’s traditional stiff corporate culture towards user experience and its salient paranoia regarding security and copyright issues.

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