The Kmiec Ramblings

Thank you Google for launching Google Insights.  To me insights is a more enhanced version of Google Trends. Google describes Insights as, “With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames.”

Here is what I love about this. Everyone wants to put money into search engine marketing. I’ve been in meetings where Sr. marketers have said, let’s move all of our money from X to SEM. I think it’s great that people are jumping into search, but I’ve continued to caution anyone who will listen, that they need to look before they jump. In my opinion, search volume is not an indicator, nor is it a predictor of sales.

Here is a great example of what I’m talking about. The following chart shows the change in total car sales of luxury car brands from March 2007 to March 2008.

Change in Sales Volume from 2007 to 2008

If we buy into the concept that search volume indicates interest, which indicates awareness, which of course drives the top of the so-called marketing funnel.  Well, if we fill the top of the funnel, then we’ll have more potential conversions.  So, even if our conversion rate stays flat, we’ll drive more sales because our opportunity pool is larger.  Make sense?

Ok, well here is a report from Google Insights that looks at the following:

1. Lexus, BMW, Mercedes, Cadillac, Infiniti, and Acura search volume
2. Period of Time: January 2007 - July 2008
3. United States only
4. Date segmented by “Automotive” category

Google Insights Search Volume for Luxury Cars

Yes, another year in the books.  I feel older and lord knows I look older.  This last year has been great.  New house, new job, new state, and a new car.  I’d say it’s been pretty jam packed.  I celebrated a day early with a Dairy Queen cake.  No matter how old I get, I still love a good ice cream cake.

Birthday Cake

According to a new study, researchers have concluded, “With records of 30 billion electronic conversations among 180 million people from around the world, researchers have concluded that any two people on average are distanced by just 6.6 degrees of separation, meaning that they could be linked by a string of seven or fewer acquaintances.”  The full article can be found here.

So what’s the impact?  Well, in today’s world of social networks, blogs, and the “power of the consumer” we need to be a little bit smarter about the things we say and to whom.  You never know if ther person you’re yelling at on a message board is related to the person you’ll be interviewing with tomorrow

Seriously.  Shouldn’t this be common sense?  Treat people how you’d like to be treated.  Simple, right?  Well, if you needed another reason to be mindful of what you say, how you say it, and who you say it to, you now have one.

Overview
Our good friends at Google have added in a new feature to YouTube video search: speech recognition. Previously their search algorithm/method was based 100% on the video’s title and the tags associated with the video. YouTube video search will now integrate the actual spoken words in the video into the search.

Here’s a great example. Let’s say you have a video titled: NASCAR Accident and the tags used are: cool, random, car, NASCAR, crash. Well if someone is looking for Dale Earnhardt Jr. videos, the “NASCAR Accident” would never show up. However, with the new speech recognition feature, YouTube would include the video because the announcer’s voice over in the video mentioned Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Adding to the cool factor and increasing the usability is the ability to jump right to a specific point in a video based on what was being said. Check out this image to see an example.

Speech Recognition

Right now Google is only testing this with political videos. It’s only a matter of time until all of the videos can leverage this new functionality.

The Example

1. Go to this page
2. Look on the lower left for the module/section called “what did the candidates say”
3. Enter in some search terms and enjoy

Possible Implications
For a while now, we’ve know that a good title, with great tags, and an eye-catching first frame help get videos found, noticed, and watched. With the ability to search and find videos using the spoken words in them, things will change quickly. More attention to the word selection in the copy will be needed. Using music as the audio could actually hurt us; because the spoken words from the song will be part of the search. Sound Sweetening and audio mixing will become very important and will need to be budgeted for. It’s possible that we can run the spoken audio at a low sound level so that YouTube picks up on it, but the user never really hears it.

AdAge published something useful.  I know, I know, well it happens from time to time  ”Researchers Find Thin Models Make Viewers Like Brands More, but Themselves Less.” Are we really shocked by this? I feel like it’s something we’ve known for years, but we don’t want to admit.  Personally, I think there is some value from showing thin models.

For example, according to the study, “Seeing thin models also made college-age women far more likely to turn down a snack pack of Oreo cookies offered as thanks for their participation in the study, or to opt for a reduced-fat version. Women who had just seen thin models were nearly four times more likely to say no to Oreos than women who hadn’t, and 42% more likely to opt for reduced-fat cookies if they did indulge. ”

Oreo

That’s a good thing.  I know I can use a few less Oreo’s.

According to AdAge GM is committing 25% of their 3 Billion measured spend to digital. This is exciting for several reasons. Some of which are covered in the AdAge article. Those things aside, I think there are several interesting things about this that need to be considered:

1. As the car companies go so does everyone else.
2. With such a massive shift the web will become overly saturated with display ads, making the need for compelling online ads much more important
3. The price of search terms will skyrocket because there will be more people vying for the terms. SEM is a supply and demand business at the heart. This means our landing pages need to be better and optimized to convert.
4. If our brands hold the course and don’t increase spending they’ll actually be spending the same, but getting less reach and frequency for those dollars.
5. But the million dollar point here is that we’ll need to become smarter, more efficient, and better integrated so that we can offset the increased costs for media by being more effective.

Good stuff and lot’s of fun ahead.

Could be one of the BEST political spots I’ve ever seen. Nice work by team McCain. Thanks to Bob Garfield for bringing this to my attention via AdAge.

My favorite quote from the users posts under the article was:

“Look, Obama is a nice guy who also seems to be very smart & well-spoken.

But him running for President is almost like a third year lawyer at a law firm asking to be made Managing Partner of the firm before being offered a partnership.”

Thanks to Carlos Abler at Colle+McVoy for sending this to me.  This pretty much sums up the problem with our country right now.

polldaddy lets you create polls and surveys.  The interface takes a little getting used to, but I think it’s a better tool than Survey Monkey and Zoomerang.  You can create a free account and even choose a free level of service.  The major difference between the free service and paid service are the number of answers you can capture.  I’ve only come across 1 drawback; the survey/poll builder interface does not work in Safari.  Check out this poll I made in 2 minutes.

Solid article from BusinessWeek about 10 principles to keep in mind when designing sites.  I agree with most of the article, specifically commandment #1

 
“Adobe’s (ADBE) popular Web animation technology powers everything from the much-vaunted Nike (NKE) Plus Web site for running diehards to many humdrum banner advertisements. But the technology can easily be abused—excessive, extemporaneous animations confuse usability and bog down users’ Web browsers.”

The one I don’t agree with is commandment #8.

“Web 2.0 is everywhere. MySpace (NWS) and similar sites only launched the trend of having users communicate and interact—sometimes obsessively—on browser-based sites. Designers are now filtering those same elements into diverse sites, from smart advertising to online office productivity.”

I just don’t buy it. It doesn’t have to be social. Some sites just don’t require those features.

Anyhow, all in all a great read.