First, there were several inaccuracies and mis-quotes in the original AdAge article, and AdAge has been kind enough to issue a correction. You can read the corrected article at:

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=115594

AdAge also published subsequently an interview which clarified my speech: http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=115726

The corrections answer several of the above questions:

1) I never said that buying non-brand searh terms was a waste of time, or that it’s impossible to measure. Far from it. At Travelocity we spend half our marketing budget in online and search. My point was that search marketers should get more precise about calculating “assist” percentages, and more accurate in their ROI methods. As the comment from SearchQuant agrees above, I was simply saying that assist percentages only modified our ROI by a few percentage points– same as SearchQuant calculates.

2) We calculated that 4% of brand bookings should be attributed to earlier nonbrand clicks. Based on better “assist” measurement, we think non-brand terms drive about 24% of our search bookings, rather than the 20% indicated by last click measurement. Every SEM campaign will be different, so you have to calculate your own figures. I was very clear everyone should do their own research, depending on their own unique situation. AdAge misunderstood the 4% assist and jumped to the conclusion that 96% of bookings were from brand terms, but the math is closer to 76%.

2) The Nielsen NetRatings study I cited was for the TRAVEL category, not the whole internet. It indicated 47% of all searches came from 100 terms, the majority of which were brands.

3) On the comment by Mr.Greitzer in regards to natural SEO, I would simply say that thanks to click tracking, buyers who come back to a site thanks to SEO links would still be attributed to the original paid CPC click (within a long lookback window), so the problem is not in natural clicks being missed, but rather that last click tracking has problems with multiple paid clicks.

4) As to the comment by DanielR that my October 2006 speech at Shop.org was a change in tune, that’s an easy misunderstanding as well. In that speech, I cited the authors of a 360i published study which looked at a large number of large etailers (not including Travelocity) and noted that 12% of their brand profits should be attributed to earlier nonbrand clicks. I invited the audience to do their own studies on their own circumstances. Travelocity upgraded its web analytics to VisualSciences and we finally in 2007 were able to do our own study on clickstream for the first time, and that’s where the 4% figure emerged. Every company will be different.

Regardless of whether the assist is 4% or 12%, that’s a long way from the funnel/clickstream theory that the majority of generic term searchers come back via brand terms to buy. That was my key point, and it remained unchanged. There is some lift/assist, absolutely, just not a huge one.

5) As to the comments that focusing on landing page optimization and conversion is the key to making paid search work, I couldn’t agree more. I think we’re a strong site– or we wouldn’t sell over $10B of travel a year–but we absolutely can get better. And that will help our non-brand profits.

6) As to the comment above that offline marketing is completely unmeasurable, I respectfully disagree. Those who heard my speech know that I emphasized multivariate regression models across all channels. My point is that nearly ALL marketing is measurable over the long term, and that unified models will actually measure MORE ACCURATELY than click tracking in some sense, because they get at the inter-relationships between TV and Radio and search.

In sum, I think search marketing is a fantastic channel. My plea is for companies to get more precise about measuring it, to bid smarter. Because if they don’t, they can lose their shirts. And I suppose, I have a second plea: To read my comments in the proper context.

thanks,
Jeff Glueck

Job: Travelocity ‘SEO lead’ job via Indeed

2)I wholeheartedly agree with Andrew and others that the concept of the assist is critical to optimize any paid search campaign these days. That said, however, I don’t think it changes the game that much. We manage ~$350M in annual PPC spend for our clients, and our data indicates that factoring in assists only changes the ROI outcome by a few percent – so that alone isn’t a panacea.

3)One poster notes that there’s more that could be done to align ad copy and landing page with searcher intent. Improper marketing & merchanding is *the* major issue keeping people from succeeding with non-branded terms, and Mendez rightly notes that that’s where the focus should be. Firms like Offermatica and others offer great multivariate A/B testing platforms to facilitate testing of ad copy and LP’s, but I’ll bet that Travelocity (or their SEM) isn’t doing that work at the scale needed to succeed. I know that for our clients in the travel space, the ones that are kicking ass are the ones whose marketing departments
a) are incredibly analytical and require that all systems and partners are scalable
b) spend almost zero time on keyword management (outsourcing to us) so they *can* focus on marketing & merchandising = the real battle.

Equally, if you pump the majority of your marketing budget into brand-building (TV, display etc.) then it’s hardly surprising that the majority of bookings come through those branded terms.

Long-tail works differently for different brands, but it has to take into account what is going on across the line and not just looking at PPC in a vacuum.

If you’re dependent on your brand, how are you going grow your business? How are you going to attract new customers who haven’t yet decided where to buy their holiday?

If I was Mr Glueck, I’d want to know why these non-brand searches aren’t converting. If people want Las Vegas holidays, and I have them, but they don’t sell, eventually I’d have to look at my business and work out why.

1) Do a search on “Las Vegas.”

2) Click on the Travelocity ad

3) Look at the landing page

It’s real easy to blame the keywords and the users. I suggest Jeff asks himself “what have we done to improve our landing page performance?”