Advertising is perceived by some as a manipulative form of communication. However, successful practitioners in the advertising field have commented that advertising can be amazingly unsuccessful if the product does not resonate with the customer, which the quote from Ogilvy illustrates.

In our framing shop example of setting up our sponsored-search account, we touched on a process by example without a real appreciation for the underlying complexity of the technology and human interaction inherent in sponsored search. What is the technology that makes the whole process work? What is the business model of sponsored search? Who are the major actors in sponsored search? What are the goals and motivations of these actors? For answers to these and other questions, we examine the sponsored-search model.

As Schmidt notes in the epigraph, major sponsored-search platforms are partly major auction houses. How does this auction affect our frame shop business?

In the course of developing the advertising for our frame shop, we have performed an analysis of our customers to target our efforts to those most likely to buy our products. We have performed market research, understanding how we will evaluate our advertising’s return on investment. We have also reviewed the concepts of branding, advertising, and marketing to provide direction to our overall endeavor. Finally, we have designed our ads to appeal to potential customers and selected the keyphrases that we want to trigger our ads.

For our frame shop’s keyword advertising campaigns, we are now set and running, with an understanding of our customers as reflected in keyphrases and advertising copy. We have an understanding of the branding, marketing, and advertising aspects of our campaigns and how these campaigns relate to our business. We know who our customers are and how they behave. So, we are set.

Our frame shop is not in business to advertise. It is interested in selling products and services to generate revenue. But it must advertise to stay in business. So, it is first a business and then an advertiser. This is an important shift in perspective, one that has continually haunted advertising agencies. A good ad, for example, may be different from the viewpoint of the creator (i.e., is this ad creative, funny, catchy, or different?) than the businessperson (i.e., does this ad sell products?).

Bernbach [1] was a pioneer in the modern advertising field, and as the quote in the epigraph states, advertising is about informing the customer with relevant information that addresses a need and is presented in an attention-getting manner. These are the factors critical for any advertising endeavor.

You must always consider the context within when a given phenomenon occurs to derive any meaning from it. As the Wiktionary quote states, the context is what clarifies the meaning of an event.

Let’s Place Ourselves in the Proper Context

You are the owner of a small- to medium-size business that sells some product or service. Pick any product or service that interests you. We will use a framing shop as an example throughout this book. Our framing shop is called Faster Frames.

Hopefully, our framing shop’s products and services are matched to the desires and needs of the consumer market that our business is targeting, and our products are within the means of our consumers to purchase. However, the consumer market is an ever-shifting target. Technology changes drastically, altering our market analysis. Consumers may consider a product fashionable today but consider it out of fashion tomorrow. They may need a service today, but they may not need it when the context changes tomorrow. Needs of consumers are continually evolving as the array of products change. Competitors enter the market and often make our services obsolete or put price pressures on our business. Rarely does a business have a market to itself for any extended period of time.

While implementing a sponsored-search effort for our framing business, we must address many aspects that consume our attention, including keyphrase selection, ad creation, market research, insight into the consumer as both a searcher and a customer, elements of branding for our product, advertising and marketing concepts, and bidding strategies.

When online consumers search for a frame shop, they input a query containing keywords into a search engine. It is these query terms, representing the desires and intentions of the searcher that form the basis of the sponsored-search effort.

Preface

As Asimov mentions in his Guide to Science, curiosity may be a basic human attribute. It is a drive that compels us to learn, discover, describe, and understand the world around us. It is this compelling drive that has driven me to write this book on sponsored search.

I’ve had the privilege of having many discussions with some top-notch, and often young, search engine marketing professionals from well-known online marketing firms, as well as professionals from lesser-known firms. I’m typically impressed (very impressed, actually) with their depth and breadth of knowledge about the mechanisms and tactics of sponsored search. Many times, they have provided interesting and perceptive insights on techniques for keyword selection, methods for composing ad copy, and other aspects of implementing keyword advertising campaigns.