Optimize & Prophesize

Category: Landing Page Optimization

  • Speaking and Clinic at SES New York

    Next week Search Engine Strategies rolls into my home turf and I’ll be involved in a couple of ways. On Tuesday March 24th in the Expo Hall I will running an audience based clinic. 3:00pm Expo Hall: CPA Optimization StationWith advertising dollars more accountable than ever optimizing your Cost Per Acquisition or Cost per Action…

  • Will New OPA Creative Sizes Help Redefine Display?

    I’ve been pretty adamant that new creative sizes were needed to help advertisers so when I woke up this morning to see the OPA has announced three new ad sizes I was thrilled. Clearly my excitement has not been matched by a lot a folks who see this as “shouting louder” and in fact if…

  • Search Becomes the Display Operating System

    I first wrote about the idea of search strategies working in display to deliver more relevant ads two years ago. In the ensuing two years as followers of this blog know I’ve become passionate about the opportunity to build creative technology that makes display ads more relevant. One advantage I have working on these solutions…

  • Why Is Recovery.gov Making Online Access to ARRA Difficult?

    Note: This post has bias to no political party — other than the optimizers of freedom. There has to be a reason that the good folks at recovery.gov want to make it difficult to view the full ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) bill. First, I had to fish around before finding the actual law that…

  • Advanced Landing Pages – SMX West

    For years, first with javascript testing and content targeting tools and now adding APIs and semantic technology, I have maintained that landing pages are the most advanced forms of digital marketing — the ultimate marriage of technology with creative. So it was great to finally get an “advanced” landing pages session on the schedule this…

  • Speaking & Pushing the Envelope at SMX West

    I’m going back to Cali. Next week I’ll be in SF/SV with my primary purpose speaking and attending SMX West in Santa Clara.  Day one I’ll be on the panel Up Close with You Tube. What’s an optimization guy doing on this panel? Well it is not because of my fascination and bullish outlook with…

  • New York Times Landing Pages: All the Irrelevance That Fits the Pixels

    I’ve often used my hometown paper, The New York Times, to exemplify the disconnect between digital publisher content strategy, the goals of visitors and the resultant impact on advertising. The root of this disconnect is the way search, social media and the landing experience fracture content hierarchies. Behavior has changed and so too must the…

  • Favorite Thing: Posts & Presos of 2008

    "I think think, I think think, I think think, once in a while" -Paul Westerberg If you missed my blog this year or just want a quick summary of my favorite posts and presentations see below  - in full fledged chronological order! Presentations: On-Site Targeting: Crawl, Walk, Run Strategy AdMonsters Keynote: Can Display Advertising Survive the Web?…

  • Speaking, Moderating and Hosting a Clinic at SES Chicago

    Chicago is my favorite SES because it's such a great town and the show always has a heavy conversion rate focus. This year I’ll be quite involved on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (December 9th-11th) at Search Engine Strategies Chicago so if you are going to be there and would like to connect please contact me.…

  • J. Crew Wins in Search with Michelle Obama

      In one of the smarter ad campaigns I’ve seen lately and a campaign only possible with the real-time relevancy of search and content targeting, J. Crew is running ads that create interest and intent around Michelle Obama, her style choices and J. Crew’s products. Here is the ad on a Michelle Obama query (click…

  • Landing Page Utopia: 7 Lessons from Google

    At Search Engine Strategies in San Jose last month I delivered a presentation for the session Landing Page Utopia off an idea I had previously blogged – that the Google homepage is the greatest landing page ever created. The presentation reviewed seven strategies Google employs and discussed how they benefited both Google and their audience.…

  • McCain Wins Landslide Over Obama in Search Engine Marketing Election

    During the pre-primary season I took a look at how the candidates were doing with SEM. The results were not pretty. Today, more than a year later, after both party conventions are over and the race is on I decided to revisit the SEM landscape of the Presidential election. Once again the results surprised me.…

  • Building Interest Paths that Create Flow

    As the intelligent and real-time web dynamically distribute content everywhere, understanding and creating interest paths will move to the forefront of marketing strategies. Pushed aside will be ideas of siloed marketing strategies to stages in the funnel. Right now we concentrate our online marketing strategy in two places for search, contextual & display. One day…

  • Menus as Landing Pages

    While at SES San Jose to speak about Landing Page Utopia I had stopped at In-N-Out Burger in Sunnyvale. Being an East Coast guy who does not frequent this establishment I was, as always, struck by the simplicity of their menu. Certainly their menu helps optimize both the ordering process for customers and the fulfillment…

  • The Psychology of Optimization

    I saw this presentation from Tara Hunt on Dave Kellogg’s blog. Dave is CEO of Mark Logic where they are doing some amazing things with XML and content management. In any case, this preso is exceptional. It touches on a number of optimization factors that I feel very strongly about and incorporate whenever possible, namely…

  • Landing Page Speed Hits Google Quality Score

    As I predicted last year, today Google officially incorporated another landing page factor into their quality score algo. The new quality score factor is page load time. It seems what Google is trying to do is prevent multiple redirects. For example, if you click the Sony Style ad on this SERP you will see it…

  • The Sleeping Giant: Ad Factors in Conversion Rates & ROI

    If you’ve done multivariate tests across AdWords to a single landing page in order to optimize the ad you know a little known truth about conversion rate optimization from media that not many realize. The ad creative (alone) can have an enormous factor of influence on conversion rates. I’ve also seen results from multivariate tests…

  • Using APIs to Mashup Ads & Landing Pages

    After a decade optimizing landing page after landing page and tons of websites there are two things that I can always count on to improve conversion rates. One is giving users more control to refine their intent in contextually relevant ways. The other is bringing the products or services closer to users in their experience.…

  • Expert Guide to Multivariate Testing Success

    I’ve been doing MVT for three years across landing pages and websites with over 40 clients like Citibank, Disney, Esurance, H&R Block, Inuit, Microsoft and T-Mobile. As the Founder & former Chief Strategy Officer of OTTO Digital, the services division of the market-leading MVT tool, Offermatica (now Omniture Test&Target) I’ve authored many case studies on…

  • Multivariate Test Results: Confidence, Stability & Determining a Winner

    Getting your MVT tests designed, developing your creative and implementing code are all just precursors to getting your test live. However, once your tests are live success will be determined by how well you did all those things. At this point you are just monitoring results – so relax and kick your feet up…if only…