For the past two years, Razorfish has supported charity: water’s digital marketing efforts by managing donated media, providing social strategy consulting and manning their paid search program, funded by Google Grants. charity: water is an NYC-based nonprofit “bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.” As one of the most digitally savvy nonprofits, garnering the loyal support of big name celebrities (Adrian Grenier, Justin Bieber, and Jenna Elfman, to name a few) and thousands of people like you and me, charity: water has helped more than 2 million people in just 5 years. Earlier this month, they kicked off their 5^th anniversary “September Campaign,” the goal of which is to raise $1.2 million for a drilling rig.

The nonprofit space has been an interesting foray for the Razorfish search team. Earlier this year, Google launched the Google For Nonprofits program, which provides a wider range of free or discounted services for grantees.

Last year’s challenge was cleaning up the account in order to increase traffic volume. The charity: water SEM account was managed internally until the partnership began. We worked countless hours on:

-          Reorganizing charity: water’s keyword portfolio into semantic ad groups

-          Refreshing ad copy

-          Updating landing pages

-          Expanding the portfolio to cover geographically-oriented searches

And this year, in addition to all of the wonderful work we do for current clients, the team is focusing on performance optimizations to increase valuable traffic volume. Limits of the Google Grants program force us to be innovative. According to Search Account Executive Hana Lee, “I think our  biggest challenge is the $1.00 bid limit. For some brand exact terms, we are not in first position and often don’t appear at all. That leaves us to heavily depend on CTR to increase our quality score.” Things we search marketers take for granted – for example, conversion tracking – are not available to fully help us gauge the success of our efforts.

In addition to overcoming the bid limit, we aim to:

-          Study where our audience resides so we can effectively utilize geo-targeting options

-          Expand our negative keyword coverage

-          Utilize a stronger call to action

-          Utilize insights from Google Analytics

What are your thoughts on nonprofits in the digital space, useful KPI’s and the role of private sector companies in ‘giving back’?

One of my favorite SNL skits is the NPR Delicious Dish episode with Alec Baldwin. I love food, eating, enjoying, staring, and smelling unique flavors to excite my palate. And, in fact, my post today will be centered on FOOD!

Currently at Razorfish, I work with a CPG client on the paid search side of the house. I get exposed to the “food industry” and all the latest trends or buzz surrounding food both offline and online.  Earlier this year, Google released the “Google Recipe Tool”, which foodies and non-foodies alike, jumped on-board. The feature lets users filter search results according to ingredients, cook time, calories and more. Users can search, for instance, for recipes containing certain ingredient, devised by a certain chef, and even narrow down to how long the item takes to prep and cook. Pictures, ingredients and one- to five-star user ratings are highlighted in the listed results, helping users quickly discover or bypass recipes.

However, with this sudden influx of searches on the Google Recipe Tool, the search engine decided to do something with this data. Google created the Consumer Food Index, a handy internal tool that was created to gauge recipe and food search queries, trends and seasonality. For me, that is called “winning” because the team and myself now have access to see what you, the consumer, is searching on, what kind of food you love, tips/tricks, and popular recipes. The beauty of this is that our team can make a stronger connection between a brand and consumer based on this data.  That is what I like to call, making online paid search magic.  For our team to create this “magic” and have access to this data, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• This data is not available to the public. Sorry Mom.
• The queries are a request made to your Google Reps.
• The Data Dump of the queries comes in a raw excel file. Thousands upon thousands of queries. *Google is hoping to find an easier way to extract the data, but in the meantime, your search team has the chance to get down and dirty with the data.

This tool is even more valuable to a paid search marketer, since Q4 is the largest volume of search on recipes, snack ideas and holiday meals.  The chart below highlights spikes in search around Q4.

Why is this even relevant to you…? As a search marketer, it is crucial to have more data available to identify valuable insights within the user’s behaviors throughout the search process.  Gaining as much insight as possible into the consumer behavior, activities happening offline and online, will ultimately lead to a more positive online experience for the user. In addition, it will also establish a stronger connection with the user to the brand.

Interested in the Google Consumer Food Index Tool? A POV will be available the week of July 11^th, 2011.

Authored by: Rebecca Keen, rebecca.keen@razorfish.com

In the US, online advertising spend has tripled over the past five years, due in part to increased targeting capabilities.  Agencies and client-side advertisers have access to a wide array of tools, which allow them to specifically target their chosen demographics in unprecedented ways.  But every advancement comes with its own hiccups and the question of ethics often surmounts.

What would you do if you knew a certain picture would increase your click-through rates twofold?

Or let’s say you are able to figure out the religion of your targets. Do you use it to your advantage?

Has user targeting become the new pop-up?

When advertisers target too specifically, use weird bearded men in financial ads, or introduce interesting interactivity (such as the “tickle the fat kid” ad) … well… it’s just plain creepy. With the media recently focusing its attention on the quality and legitimacy of search results, will we see more efforts to clean up the internet advertising world?  Or, will it just get more interesting?

And, when we say interesting, we mean…

Not sure if this has hit the media yet, but I just noticed that the map in Yelp is now powered by Bing. It appears it’s not 100% rolled out yet, as different cities give you different engines.

First, fighting words over Hotpot and Content Syndication, now, break ups and going separate ways… next, maybe Google will buy Yelp’s affection back and offer to buy Yelp again.

So, to be clear… companies that fell out of love with Google:

1)      Yelp

2)      Apple

3)      Most television networks

4)      JCPenny…

But hey, if no one hates you, you’re not doing it right, right? Right?

That, and I’m pretty sure Google’s little black book ain’t so little these days.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the second iteration of the fastest selling Apple product of all time has begun production. After selling 14.8 million iPads in 2010, the technology giant needs to fend off an increasing amount of competitors like Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, Motorola Xoom, and the HP Slate. IDC,  a Global Marketing Intelligence Firm, predicts 30 million iPads will be sold in 2011. According to WSJ, here is what “people familiar with the matter” had to say about a new version coming out:

“The new device will be thinner, lighter and will come with a faster processor, more memory and a more powerful graphics processor . . . It will have a front-facing camera for the first time for features like video-conferencing, but the resolution of the new iPad’s display will be similar to the first iPad.”

iOS 4.3 is expected to come out in this week with new features for both the iPhone and iPad. The developer pack eludes to wireless syncing, Photobooth, personal wi-fi hotspot and a front facing camera for the new iPad. Another exciting feature is photo streams that friends will be able to follow, much like Instagram and PicPlz. All of these features come together to offer high engagement with our mobile devices and opportunities for brands to connect with their customers. Advertisers will have no shortage of ways to engage customers but will need to pick the ones that will increase brand affinity and potentially lifetime value.

Shoppers are passionate about shopping – sure, shopping itself is a great source of joy for many people, but talking about shopping is just as enjoyable, especially around the holidays.

Last month, the release of Google’s Boutiques.com arrived with a great deal of buzz, and – most likely – a great drop in productivity for shopaholics. But while Boutiques.com is the newest site to combine fashion, search and social media, it is certainly not the first.

The following social shopping sites not only create a community for shoppers who are passionate about fashion, they offer unique marketing opportunities for retailers since some of them rank high in organic search results. With the holidays quickly approaching, these social shopping sites can be key for gaining brand visibility.

Kaboodle is a social shopping community that allows users to recommend and share products, and create lists, outfits and polls. Users can easily share items via Facebook, Twitter or email. For marketers, Kaboodle offers brand profiles and supports sponsored contests. A free “add to Kaboodle” button is available for retailers, who can place the button on their product pages to facilitate sharing. An added search benefit is that Kaboodle product pages often rank on the first page of the organic results for product and brand name searches (for example, Kaboodle ranks #6 in Google for “blue handbag Modcloth,” after Modcloth itself, but before any other sites).

Polyvore shares many features with Kaboodle, notably the ability to share and bookmark items from retail websites. What sets Polyvore apart, however, is the “virtual styling” tool that allows users to create “sets,” graphic collages that help to visualize how outfits will look when styled all together.  Users can interact with other users’ sets and click through to the products themselves directly from the sets. Retailers can leverage the site by sponsoring a giveaway on Polyvore, or even by installing Polyvore’s mini editor, which can be pre-loaded with their own items, on their own site. Unfortunately for search marketers, Polyvore sets rarely show up in organic search results for branded or product searches.

Shopstyle is essentially a fashion search engine with social functionality. While the products featured on Kaboodle and Polyvore are submitted by users, Shopstyle’s search results are made up of items from retail partners that have been accepted by the site’s editors.  A user cannot submit a product to the site; however, he or she can share it via Facebook, Twitter or email, as well as save it to a “look,” which is comparable to one of Polyvore’s sets. Users can “favorite” an item as well as interact with other users in themed groups. Marketers and retailers who are Shopstyle partners can leverage the site by sponsoring contests. Shopstyle performs very well in organic search engine results for unbranded keywords (for example, Shopstyle ranks #1 on Google for the term “blue handbag.”)

Overall, these social shopping websites have a lot to offer to consumers, retailers and search marketers. By leveraging their functionality, it is possible to build brand awareness among fans of online shopping, and to take up additional real estate in the organic results.

Several companies have launched product inventory search to help shoppers get into the holiday spirit this year. This technology helps bridge the gap between the online search and brick-and-mortar retail establishments. The goal is to allow people to search online for product availability at nearby retailers, then make a purchase in-store. This is mutually beneficial for retailers and consumers: consumers can quickly narrow down destinations and comparison-shop for their offline purchases and retailers have an opportunity to increase foot traffic into their stores, and potentially increase sales as well.

In mid-November, Retailigence launched, offering retailers mobile apps and websites with an API that links to their inventory systems. On November 15, Google announced improvements to its Product Search for in-stock availability at the local level (just do a search on Google Shopping and click the nearby stores link for availability at its partnered retailers in your area). Lastly, on November 23, Goodzer launched their local product search engine for New York and its boroughs, starting as a test market, and then expanding domestically and internationally afterwards.

These products are not all the same. Google and Retailigence operate by partnering with big retailers since they require product feeds, which can be cost and time prohibitive for smaller retailers. On the other hand, Goodzer captures retailers of all sizes with its technology that crawls retailers’ sites and matches products to store locations. As long as a retailer has a website, it can be incorporated into Goodzer.

The major trade-off appears to be accuracy vs. cost. The accurate technologies tend to require a high dollar and time investment, limiting its pool of retail partners. Technologies like Goodzer have a lower cost of entry, but tend to lack the precision needed to determine if a product is in a specific store at any given point in time.

So, which technology is better? Intuition says whatever will be the most accurate and user-friendly for shoppers will triumph, but it’s too early in the game to tell what will become a success. As the line between online and offline continue to blur, it will become increasingly important for online marketers and retailers to sync when connecting with their consumers.

A new deal site launched on Tuesday, named Offermatic, which seeks to capitalize on the group-buying craze. The site essentially provides deals from major retailers based on your credit or debit card histories. The user interface combines the best parts Mint and Groupon to automatically reward you for selling your own data or purchasing a coupon. This passive approach to savings takes the Groupon model a step further down every marketer’s purchasing funnel.

Advertisers have been buying user purchase histories for decades. Companies like Cardlytics already use zip code, store name, and store category information from bank statements to retarget your ads. But Offermatic places the power into the consumers’ hands. Transparency actually works in the company’s favor by allowing users to self-identify themselves. I’ve already saved 50% on my next movie ticket through Fandango and 10% off my next Trader Joe’s purchase of $50+. Offermatic also leverages social by rewarding you with points for sharing each deal via Twitter and Facebook. No longer does the customer have to actively seek out deals, Offermatic makes it as if the deals are looking for you!

Local deal sites Groupon and LivingSocial are the bells of the ball this year and are being courted by Google and Amazon, but they don’t have this kind of data to work with. Neither is selling yet, in the hopes the deal craze will continue to sweep the globe and distribute the savings to consumers through multiple touch points. Since November of 2008, Groupon has saved a total of $814,883,217 and sold 18,913,160 coupons, but could reach into the billions if they were to focus on larger retail chains. Groupon has 3,000 employees in 29 countries, half of which are sales people according to Business Insider. Those employees are buying deals from a lot of mom and pop shops when they could be talking more frequently to the Walmarts and Starbucks of the world.

Zuckerberg struck again on Sunday night, making his second career appearance on one of the top-rated news programs in America, 60 Minutes.  Aside from the onslaught of investigative questions from Lesley Stahl, Zuckerberg found time to introduce Facebook’s User Profile Redesign. The new profile format immediately informs visitors of a profile page who that person is, but this change means that users will be encouraged to provide even more data about themselves. Surprised, right?

This article from Josh Costine goes into depth about the Facebook display changes and how they improve the accuracy of Facebook’s growing data set. Marketers use this data set to target Facebook users who are most interested in the product they are advertising. Key to this ever-growing targeting pool is the newly designed Profile Info Summary. The “Summary” is the first thing that catches your eye on a profile page, as it is right beneath your name and above your most recent photos. It provides a quick rundown of your job, your school, your current location, your relationship status, the languages you speak, your hometown, and your birth date. Costine explains, “It’s therefore in Facebook’s interest for users to provide and keep current this information. Prompts for users to enter absent information and the increased visibility of these fields to a user and their friends should ensure this.” Costine goes on to provide further information regarding the User Profile Redesign. However, no aspect of the New Facebook Profile is more important to marketers than the Info Summary, as it will prompt users to reveal more about themselves.

On a side note, the 60 Minutes interview was very entertaining. You should watch it here if you missed it. Zuckerberg seems as composed and confident as ever. He preaches the growing importance of “social” in every decision that an individual makes, from buying groceries to watching television. He answers all questions as honestly as possible… for him. Which leaves the general public with only one question: Who wins in a fight? Andy Rooney or Mark Zuckerberg? Let the argument begin…

In March when Razorfish met with Baidu, in their Beijing headquarters, there were no signs of international growth plans.  In fact, they were reducing staff dedicated to serving foreign advertisers.  This week Bloomberg shared a quote from Baidu’s CEO Robin Li, saying that in ten years he envisions Baidu as a “household name in 50% of the world”.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_47/b4204060242597.htm

Just recently, Baidu enhanced their search results bringing them in line with changes Google made over a year ago.  Baidu is now just starting to incorporate maps and images in their search results.  While their development efforts haven’t caught up to the rich results from Bing and Google, they are moving forward.

Baidu dominates the search share in China by almost 73%.  There are lots of countries beyond the US and Europe where Baidu could give Google a run for the ad money.   Baidu’s challenge outside of China will be to overcome the perception that they do evil.

Aside from being a government supported monopoly, Baidu has to overcome some bad PR to improve this perception.  They have suffered two major PR setbacks in recent years that continue to plague them.  First they were reprimanded for selling ads to unlicensed medical providers and then there were allegations that they suppressed search results the for dairy company responsible for killing children with poisoned milk.

The Bloomberg article does a great job explaining Baidu’s rise from Silicon Valley funded start up to a government backed power house.  While it helps us understand how Baidu rose to the top in China, it doesn’t give any insight on when Baidu will start looking externally for growth.

Today, Baidu’s CEO is back in Silicon Valley speaking at the Web 2.0 conference.  Hopefully Li will reveal more on his international intentions.