Full-Funnel, "Portal" Search Remains Resilient

On balance the advertising takeaways for Google were positive over the neartomedium term despite participants39 acknowledgment of Amazon39s quotfullfunnelquot threat and uncertainty about how voice search could affect the ecosystem over the next few yearsHere are the topics that stood out to me mostSearch pushes for more paid clicks and quotportalquot status There is a trend to shifting search marketing efforts to paid search from search engine optimization SEO per Disney39s Carolyn Shelby She sees that at the industry level a lot of traffic is shifting to paid clicks from nonpaid clicks with a large reduction in the number of organic listings Shelby noted that Google39s focus on diversification of results drives larger companies to invest more in paid search because the number of their organic listings can be capped Data presented by Jumpshot shows a trend to more clicks on paid links rising paid clickthrough rates and fewer clicks on organic linksBack to the future Some search results echo AOL39s portal pages Search results whether paid or organic strive to be more complete multimedia and the engine39s product as opposed to links from the engine Per Condamp233 Nast39s John Shehata 50 percent of Google searches result in no clicks keeping traffic on Google propertiesMany search engines are becoming content publishers themselves and thus competitors to other publishers Jumpshot39s Steve Kraus said that more Google search engine results pages SERPs look like the AOL portal pages of the Web 10 era MindShare39s search and social group director Tarik Mugisuddin sees search becoming a fuller funnel using more audience targeting and more automationAmazon39s threat to ad spending may be broader and slower to develop than expected One take from attending last year was that the threats from Amazon to search ad spending on Google were overblown this theme continued with variations at this year39s conference Last year39s speakers generally said that brand performance budget increases looked set to go largely to organic and paid search on GoogleThis year key points on this issue included citing Forrester39s view that Facebook budgets might be more at risk from Amazon and the opinion of John Denny of CAVU Venture Partners that Amazon39s media strategy has been somewhat slow to develop One obstacle has been that Amazon has been paranoid about sharing data taking the attitude quotplay my way or go homequot per one QampampA session Rather than focusing simply on taking search ad spending share through its ecommerce platform Amazon is investing in other parts of its ad platform such as video which are more likely to threaten prime time TV and national broadcast budgets Denny remarkedFor online goods Amazon leads Google in activity all across the purchase path One catalyst to watch in terms of Amazon39s advertising growth is use of the platform to drive sales occurring off the platform Per CAVU Venture Partners using data from its portfolio companies 75 percent of sales attributed to Amazon display advertising occurred off Amazon and 85 percent of sales attributed to Amazon search advertising occurred off Amazon The breadth of Amazon39s ad platforms will facilitate it taking ad share across the full purchase funnelVisual search is more marketready than voice search Another theme consistent from last year was the trend to more competition in niche search use cases such as visual search Pinterest said its strategy is to optimize for shopping a complement of sorts to Amazon which optimizes more for buying Pinterest39s strategy here has three pillars visual discovery personalization by taste and making all products shoppableThere is undeniable interest in voice search which continues to gain share of overall search volume A general consensus though similar to last year is that marketers are preparing to use voice search in the future but are not doing so now Per a Convince and Convert study cited at the conference smart speakers take time away from a range of media print radio smartphones and TV However search engines have yet to monetize voice search per a comment from Volvo and it is difficult for advertisers to make a case for the ROI on voice search per MasterCardAmazon39s Echo Show with its screen could be a catalyst for advertising via voice searchGlobal marketers are preparing for voice search so as to be able to better compete in quotleapfrog marketsquot such as India where 50 percent of all searches are by voice already per Synup on a panel One panelist thought voice search could be meaningful by 2022 as the vendor ecosystem to support voice migratesData Jam tomorrow Although walled gardens like Amazon and Google promise measurable results the reality for digital marketing has been different overall amp160Increasing restrictions on the use of consumer data may aggravate the shortfall in the effective measurement of digital strategies Seventyone percent of marketers say it has become more difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of digital media investment in recent years according to Xaxis39s Jacob Grabczewski as noted in his presentationThere was a candid assessment in Disney39s talk that the SEO industry as a whole has yet to arrive at a Plan B if cookie restrictions eg Apple39s Intelligent Tracking Prevention and Chrome39s cookie blockers and data privacy regulations eg GDPR and California39s Consumer Privacy Act play out to full effect Per Disney39s Carolyn Shelby only larger companies will likely have the scale to fall back on using only firstparty dataIncreasing integration of machine learning ML and artificial intelligence AI into marketing will put a greater premium on data access given that data and talent amp8212 not algorithms amp8212 are the key differentiators in improving performance by means of ML and AI according to the Xaxis presentationFinally blockchain was mentioned once to note that it was on last year39s agenda The realist39s view of blockchain technology from last year39s conference was that the selfimposed limitations of creaky crypto infrastructure were in service of achieving insufficiently compelling consumer benefits Perhaps next year39s summit will be able to provide a more sanguine updateClick the social buttons to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Full-Funnel, "Portal" Search Remains Resilient

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James Dix

We Are the Outliers - By Jack Myers

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Full-Funnel, "Portal" Search Remains Resilient

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