Sorry for the reference to apple picking, but here in the Northeast we are smack in the season, and nothing beats a ripe Honeycrisp apple.  The issue at hand is that as an industry we do not have a standard way to compare Search conversions to Display conversions.  There is much digital ink spilt over how Display and Search work in tandem.  There is even a recent study put together by comScore and Starcom showing the lift when Display and Search are ran together.  So, I pose the question will we ever, or even if we should, be putting our energy into finding one?

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I still remember, vaguely, when Fonzi jumped the shark on Happy Days, signaling what we know today as the decline of the show, but more importantly, I remember when Henry Winkler actually jumped a shark on Arrested Development.  Much like Happy Days, Twitter seems to be in a decline.  This statement is based on general observations and not on actual usage statistics because user statistics don’t show the real value that something can provide.  I know from personal usage (I have been registered on Twitter for over a year now) that I check it frequently and every once in a while I find something useful, but a majority of the time there isn’t anything that peaks my interest.  The following is some of my observations why I believe that Twitter has strapped on their water skis, hit the ramp, and are flying through the air in their best Fonzi impersonation.

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Now, I am not one to spread vicious rumors (though I do like to hear one every once in a while), but what is up with the search engines’ sporadic and unexplainable fluctuations in CPCs? MSN and Yahoo! seem to be bigger offenders of this than Google, but Google is not innocent of this yet. They just put a great PR spin on it calling it Real Time Quality Score. I am just going to state it — I feel that the search engines are doing these increases because they can.

A very specific example that I have of this is one of my clients saw a 100% increase in their CPC for their brand term in MSN over just one week. We probed MSN to see what the possible reasons could be for this huge increase in one week – their answer was “could be competition.” My first problem with this answer is the could part. Don’t they have a better understanding than could? My second issue with this answer is the competition part. I went online and checked who the competition was, and to my surprise, there was none. I hit the refresh button; again, no competition.

The above is just one example of the increase of CPCs in MSN without a solid explanation. I have seen through another one of my clients our branded CPC has increased from the $1.00 range well into the $3.00 range in a very short period of time, without any obvious changes in the SERP environment.

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The election this coming November will be very tight if you believe what the polls are telling us. Dead even right now, as a matter of fact. I would imagine that nominees will be trying to do everything in their power to get the advantage as we approach that ever fateful day election day.

Didit came out with a new study showing “nearly 7% of those surveyed reported that were likely to change their vote before the election.” Now, I don’t want to rehash the survey — enough bloggers out there will do that for me. But I want to discuss the titanic effect these last-minute changes of mind could have on the election and the opportunity for the campaigns on each side of the presidential ticket to use paid search to influence those votes.

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The day is September 4, 2008 and I eagerly check my Gmail account (the irony is here just wait) to see what the online world is going to deliver me. I am a little behind on my email, so it takes an hour or so for me get to the September 2nd Around the Net In Online Marketing newsletter from MediaPost, which is compiled by Ross Fadner. I want to state up front that I am in no way picking on Ross.

I start to scan the newsletter – nope, first article not of real personal interest here, and I keep going. I have to remember I had not checked the account in a few days, so if I want to get my Gmail account cleaned up and still have a productive day, I have to keep moving.

I get to the next article about Google adding YouTube to Google Apps, which is somewhat interesting. Now, I kid you not, the following is the list of articles following the Google Apps one:

• Google Adds YouTube To Google Apps
• Hulu vs. YouTube
• Google Bows New Web Browser
• Google Points Another Missile At Microsoft
• Mozilla Unworried By Partner Google’s Browser
• Google Bows Face Recognition Technology For Picasa
• Google Amasses 13,000 White Space Signatures

So, if you count all of the articles in Around the Net In Online Marketing that day, you get nine. Now, if you count all of the articles that pertain to Google, you get 8. Once the math is done, that means Google had a 89% share of articles, far better than their 70% share of searches that they are at currently.

I poke fun at this, but this shows that either A) Google had a very good day news-wise, B) Ross is paid by the Google machine, or C) or we are coming very complacent with our eagerness to explore other alternatives that are out there. I like to think the answer is B, because I would like to know that someone is making money off of Google, than it always being the other way around.

What I would like to see from our industry is the demand to report about companies outside of the box, to strive for other means to market in search, to reach for – dare I say – the Google Killer without it being a Google Killer. I wish for a universe where we all get along and the search space is shared by 4 or 5, or even 6 search engines with equal share. I hope for change…

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