February 16, 2006

Every year advertisers are willing to pay millions of dollars for 30-second spots on the Super Bowl, hoping to leave a good first impression with TV viewers all over the world.

In many ways, the Super Bowl has become a case study in how Internet search and television can work together.

Once its all over, "Monday-morning quarterbacks" in the advertising industry fully review and comment on the effectiveness of those spots.

A tradition that is relatively new in reviewing the impact of Super Bowl ads is measuring the impact of overall consumer interest by studying search behavior in the days that follow the annual and now very famous Sunday event.

We know that users go to their computers immediately following Super Sunday. Yet there are many advertisers that have yet to discover the connection between search and the Super Bowl.

On the surface, the concept of extending the connection between idiot box and search box seems simple. Search offers a natural enhancement to the time-honored tradition of engaging emotion and experience with television.

Why do many advertisers seem to be missing out while others embrace integration? Let's take a look at this year's activities to see if we can unravel the mystery.

According the online intelligence service Hitwise, share of domestic searches for the term "super bowl ads" increased by 1416 percent in the four weeks prior to the Super Bowl in 2006 over the same period in 2005. Furthermore, "super bowl ads" was the most common search phrase containing the words "super bowl" in the month leading up to the big event.

Viewers look forward to the Super Bowl advertisements. They start researching up to a month in advance, and in this behavior rests another great opportunity many have yet to explore. Capitalizing on search behavior after the fact is one thing, but why not stretch out that five million dollar per minute spend with a fraction of that budget on building anticipation with a connected search and content experience?

Hitwise reported that Super Sunday visits to the video destination IFILM, increased by 49 percent versus the previous day, and placements of Super Bowl ads on Yahoo Video Search provided a big contribution to the increase. Yahoo Video Search accounted for nearly 30 percent of visits to IFILM on the big day.

Yahoo has good reason to watch search activity around the Super Bowl. With ad revenues soaring in other media, Yahoo and other search providers want a piece of the big cash in. With video search accounting for a big chunk of follow up traffic, Yahoo representatives were quick to celebrate the few who took advantage Super Bowl traffic and those who didn't.

While Yahoo reported that search activity prior to the Super Bowl increased about 800 percent prior to the Sunday event, a few big brands spent time preparing for Super Bowl search action.

According to a Yahoo spokesperson, Cadillac, Honda and Dove all bid on the search term "Super Bowl" and took advantage of the search traffic. Searches on Yahoo for Cadillac Escalade jumped over 75 percent after the Super Bowl. Cadillac was able to engage those users by making sure its official site for the new Escalade was listed at the top of the sponsored search results.

The number of advertisers that have ramped up post Super Bowl integrated search efforts still pales in comparison those that missed the boat. Reprise Media's annual Super Bowl scorecard (a report that evaluates the impact of search and television advertising activity) pointed out that many advertisers didn't even include site addresses in TV spots.

It wasn't long ago that we noticed Coke's missed opportunity with the C2 launch in failing to purchase the "C2" term in sponsored results.

For this year's Super Bowl, Yahoo representatives noted three key missed search integrated opportunities with Pepsi, ABC and Warner Brothers.

In the time frame immediately following the Super Bowl, searches for Pepsi increased 60 percent on Yahoo along with thousands of searches for the "Brown and Bubbly" site represented in Super Bowl ads.

Searches for ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" increased roughly 400 percent in the same time frame. Warner Bros. "V for Vendetta" spot initiated a 400 percent increase in search share that was unanswered in sponsored results

Brand marketers have always struggled with purchasing their brand names in sponsored listings. In this process of evaluating a paid search presence, it is worth noting that many of these sites maintained high rankings in natural results.

For example, a Yahoo search for "Brown and Bubbly" returned the Pepsi site as the number one search result, while sponsored listings were populated by anything with the word "bubble" or "brown" in it.

Without getting into the debate about the importance of sponsored search over natural listings, the issue of buying terms to match campaigns is not as simple as deciding to buy the word. Weighing sponsored costs, competing with unrelated advertisers and listing control with a natural search presence should be part of the consideration process.

The integrated experience shouldn't be limited to our annual chest pounding, beer guzzling event. Case in point: GM's recent 30 second spot which included a call to "Google Pontiac." Why hope that consumers reach out to a search site when you can tell them exactly where to go? Of course, calling out Google instead of another search site sounds a bit more like a co-op ad placement, but you get the idea.

Search and television have an unusual relationship, but one cannot deny the benefits of an integrated cross media experience. We have come a long way by investing in site content that is consistent with traditional media, but the search connection seems lost a bit too often.

Source: iMedia Connection

Increase your site traffic with a paid inclusion program

Read Serge Thibodeau's daily blogs on search engines at Serge Thibodeau Live. We strongly suggest you bookmark our web site by clicking here.

Get your business or company listed in the Global Business Listing directory and increase your business. It takes less then 24 hours to get a premium listing in the most powerful business search engine there is. Click here to find out all about it.

Rank for $ales strongly recommends the use of WordTracker to effectively identify all your right industry keywords. Accurate identification of the right keywords and key phrases used in your industry is the first basic step in any serious search engine optimization program. Click here to start your keyword and key phrase research.

You can link to the Rank for Sales web site as much as you like. Read our section on how your company can participate in our reciprocal link exchange program and increase your rankings in all the major search engines such as Google, AltaVista, Yahoo and all the others.

Home | SEO Tips | SEO Myths | FAQ | SEO News | Articles | Sitemap | Contact

---

Copyright © Rank for Sales.    Terms of use    Privacy agreement    Legal disclaimer

       Ce site est disponible en Français