some words about online marketing and AdWords from a San Francisco perspective
A few weeks ago, my coworker was at the Fenway Park baseball stadium in Boston, and he noticed an advertisement for banner ad space in the stadium by CPM: Fenway 105370000 impressions & $5 CPM. This is an sign of an amazing transformation in the marketing world, which reflects how the traditional marketing space (banners in stadiums, billboards, TV) is suddenly being measured by cost per impression. In online marketing, the terms CPC (cost-per-click) and CPM (cost per 1000 impression) are commonplace, as these are the two most common ways to measure one’s online marketing costs. These two cost mechanisms provide a granular view on spend an make it easy for marketers who want to track their investment at the impression or keyword level.
Google AdWords is an online marketing platform that allows advertiser to set-up online marketing campaigns and allows them to pay by cost-per-click or cost-per-thousand impression. In the past three years I have seen the AdWords product develop into a much smarter and efficient platform for advertisers. When I started at Google, advertisers were focused on click-through rates and some of the savvier advertisers were optimizing their accounts for conversions and not click-through-rate. In the past few years we have seen incredible advancements in tracking and measuring in the the online marketing space. Now there are tools that analyze search funnels and look at the value of a click all through the search funnel of a user.
For instance, let’s say a Spanish student was interested in pursuing a new Digital Marketing Master at esden, and let’s assume esden had an online account with Google AdWords. Let’s say this student searches for business school -> marketing programs -> digital marketing programs -> then they click on your ad and takes a desired action on your site, or “converts.” Before, we were only able to look at the last search before conversion, so we attributed “digital marketing programs” to the conversion on your site. We know have the tracking mechanisms and technology to track those clicks all through the search funnel, and as a marketer, you are able to see how your users are reaching your ad by following their search queries as a funnel.
This type of granularity is what makes online marketing a very powerful and cost-effective space. During the recession in 2009, many marketing directors allocated more budget to online advertising, taking away budget from traditional TV, print and radio advertising that is much harder to track. We are now seeing a new trend that applies the same online marketing granularity to those traditional marketing spheres, such as the example of banner ad space in Fenway Park.
A strategic marketing professor once asked me if marketing is more of an a science or an art? I think that digital marketing is a great combination of both a science and an art. There are enough metrics that provide data to help you optimize any marketing initiative. However, it’s still and art to figure out how to integrate all your marketing initiatives.
Note: I am merely providing my own personal opinion and these opinions are not reflective of Google in anyway.
Post con firma anteriores
- Alvaro Notario, Director de Marketing de Vocento
- Pere Quinta, Web Marketing Manager de Camper
- Luis Verdejo, Community Manager de Heineken
- María Victoria Más, Coordinadora del Consejo Editorial de los Usuarios de LaVanguardia.es
- Verónica Milo, Directora de Marketing de Monster
- Isabel Ramis, Community Manager de Acciona
- Juan Aspas, Director de Marketing y Comunicación de Portae.com – Endesa Energía
- Javier Granados, Internet Specialist de Nissan Iberia
- Cristina Aced, Consultora en Comunicación 2.0
- David Varona, Community Manager de rtve.es
