SES San Jose LIVE / Day 2: Legalese, Bizspeak, and Vulcan

Today, the business-speak started to get a little thick (scroll to the bottom to see my favorites). But there was still plenty to learn, and in some cases, to rant about.

 

Angel in a Pickup

First off, a shout out to Amy Dalton of Topix, who gave me a ride in her pickup so I could get to the Convention Center in time to catch my own boss's keynote speech. Bad Ken. Yay Amy!

How do I know the show is starting to wear me down? I'm starting to show up late for stuff. Ever try to open a velcro bag to take out your laptop in the middle of the panel?

I've already covered the keynote, so let's move on to the panels:

 

Copyright & Trademarks: What SEMs Should Know

 

It's always interesting to attend a session that has very little to do with your particular focus. For instance, now I know how to slap a service provider with a take-down notice. Thanks, lawyers!

Ask.com's Eve Chaurand-Fraser explained how to make a clear DCMA take-down request: the clearer and more detailed the request, the quicker the take-down will be. Simple as that. "You don't have to argue with us," Eve explained, "We're not a court. And please don't threaten us with the seven plagues if we don't reply."

 

Halitosis in the Wi-Fi lounge Can a person's breath be so bad you can't even sit across a table with them? Fortunately the gentleman--another green shirt!--closed up his laptop & left the wi-fi area before I passed out. Hope he doesn't work in sales!

 

Web Analytics & Measuring Success Overview

I stepped out of Copyright and Trademarks early to check this panel out for a bit, and the main message seemed to be to "Think beyond the performance of clickthroughs" and take a more holistic view and active role in your site's analytics.

That said, I was particularly impressed with Laura Thieme of Bizresearch, who gave some advice to the bounce-rate-obsessed ("Analyze bounce rates by keyword to determine which need to be adjusted") and dropped other pearls of wisdom.

She also explained that new tools were needed to track specifically what happens in social media properties. Same with media that shows up in Blended Search engines like Ask3D.

Early in her talk, she asked how many people in the room use Google Analytics--and a shocking number of hands shot up.

 

Search long and prosper During the Analytics Q&A, a gentleman thanked panelist Matthew Bailey of Site Logic Marketing for his Star Trek anecdotes that were apparently part of Matt's preso. The gentleman in the audience added that he in fact shook Scotty's hand years ago, and "it was a life-changing event." Matt grinned back and did that spread-hand Vulcan thing.

 

Images & Search Engines

This panel was PACKED. There were people sitting in the aisles for this one. Is there any better indication of the importance of Image Search?

I got to this one late, and the first words I heard when I walked in the door was "Squackers McAll." I hope they weren't referring to me.

It was a pleasure to hear panelist Liana Evans of Commerce360, not least of which because she loves Ask3D. When she showed screen shots of the three big engine's image search, she stated with "Ask…is…Ask is…just beautiful." She emoted during a comparison of the big Image Search engines. "Ask does a great job again!" She pointed to an Ask3D results screen. "You even have social media coming up in here!"

Chris Smith of Netconcepts gave some tips on how to optimize your images for search engines. Go to his site for whitepapers on this subject.

James Jeude, the Project Manager of Ask.com's Image search, gave some helpful tips on how to optimize your images for our image search in particular. A couple tips in particular came out of left field, but made perfect sense when you think about them:

- Make sure that your image is on an search-optimized web page--the better the web page, the easier it is to search on

- Put misspellings & synonyms--i.e. every possible way to name your image or product--in the meta tags

 

GUEST REPORT: Search Marketers On Click Fraud Hey, I can't make it to every panel--though after hearing Ask Sponsored Listings' Product Manager Todd Morrish's account, I wish I'd been to this one. Take it away, Todd! Juicy. As usual. This one never fails to entertain, enthrall, enrage. This year, Danny (Sullivan) & Chris (Sherman) opted to split what was one big panel -- with SEMs, agencies, 3rd party providers & SEs -- into two: "Search Marketers On Click Fraud" presided over by the first three of the above groups, & "Search Engines On Click Fraud", with the usual cadre of tech/product rep's from the Big 4 SEs, including our fave, Paul Vallez. After the usual PowerPoint dog-&-pony shows, the witty Jeffrey Kohrs (moderator) strutted straight to the back of the room w/ his Q&A microphone & sparked the tinder. Jeff had invited the panelists from the first click fraud panel to evesdrop on the SE version. Jeff asked Tom Cuthbert (President & CEO, Click Forensics), "Why are the SEs' #s on click fraud different from yours?" After some back & forth on which data SEs are or are not providing 3rd party measurement companies for the sake of accurate fraud tracking -- including a seemingly poignant jab by Shuman (Ghosemajumder, Business Product Manager, Trust & Safety for Google) that search marketers should ignore all data but their own -- this tack sort of dead-ended into an agree-to-disagree cul-de-sac. Well, Jessie Stricchiola (Founder, Alchemist Media Inc.) -- also on the "Search Marketers On click Fraud" panel -- wasn't in the mood for any more us-against-the-SEs barbs. Game on! Jessie's message: Why are the SEs accusing & needling & jabbing at us?? Aren't WE, the advertisers, the customers here? Shouldn't you, the SEs, be finding ways to SOLVE our problems rather than exacerbate them? Whose numbers are right? Can the SEs service their advertisers cordially & effectively? Or is it us against them?

 

Meet the Search Ad Networks

The big networks came out in force for this one. Doug Stotland of Microsoft adCenter gave us a list on the updates to Microsoft Ad Center, including making Content ads available to everybody.

Then came Paul Vallez's preso. He mentioned that Ask.com is often considered the fourth network, and drew a parallel to IAC head Barry Diller, who was known for creating a fourth network: Fox.

He then went on to introduce folks to the Ask Sponsored Listings network, which has a much lower CPC than competitors, and translates to a lower CPA How do we do it? URL stuffing, Performance Based Discounting, and our Ask Contextual listings program, which gives you access to the IAC family of companies.

Dan Boberg of Yahoo! Talked a little bit about their acquisition of Right Media. Julie Greenhouse of AOL announced the launch of AOL Contextual marketplace in q4 of 07."And Emily White gave an impressive example of how they serve audio/radio ads. "Say you're selling a nasal decongestant." She outlined. "You can go into ad words and say, "when the pollen count hits a certain level, push my audio ad."

 

Today's worst SEO business-speak: "Maximizing your success in the market is anything but easy." "Our client teams take a team-oriented approach."

Aaaand that's it for tonight. Two more days of this? Caffeine I.V., stat!

 

Ken Grobe
Product Content Manager
Ask.com