Is it time your digital agency started reporting to search marketing? Seriously. Think about it. Trust me, few people have.
Toss about a few of the major Internet names in your head over the past decade. Yahoo (content), ebay (commerce), craigslist (classified), Amazon (commerce), facebook (social), youtube (video content), Google (search). Even for Apple, flash has been panned.
Shouldn’t that tell us something? Commerce is about conversion. Content is about engagement. Both require analysis. And for the most part, the depth of those points of analysis is plumbed by search.
Why then does your search manager report to your digital brand manager? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
The rise of digital was a visual (blinking) experience. Click now. Click now. Click now. Like a neon motel sign. While compelling in labeling the content matter, it did nothing to convey the more often than not seedier side of the contents in general.
Click here. Click here. Click here.
While argument of reach and scale can be posited in digital’s defence, the question must be asked, at what cost if the most compelling metric is either one of time or money, the two things most often in shortest supply? From an acquisition perspective, either of commerce or engagement, search, time and time again proves and provides better insight and efficiencies, well beyond “last click” metrics.
The argument of reach also pales in concert with size. By search standards, impressions (reach) are easily the worst standard of measurement. It’s like calling a classified ad tucked into the back pages of a newspaper an impression. And I would argue the same goes for buttons and banners that are not page dominant or homepage takeovers. An IAB standard banner is not a tv commercial or a full page glossy fashion mag image, it doesn’t take the viewer or their imagination hostage. It, in short, does not make an impression.
And if your digital brand manager is leading with impressions as a driving search metric, move them off the business. Immediately. And yet, from a digital perspective, impressions are thought to be the holy grail. Really? Shouldn’t engagement be the bare minimum requirement? Does the audience engage with your content? Whether content defined as a banner (click) or site content (click-through).
In closing, is it not a little telling that Google, a search company, leads the Internet pack from a stock market POV? Or Apple – sans Flash.
The merger of display and search with accountability to content analysis and metrics is on the near horizon and digital brand managers who continue to allow digital, unexamined and without accountability, to lead the charge, over search, have much to lose when it does.
Have a good one.
Shane Wagg
@searchtactix
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