Optimize & Prophesize – @jonathanmendez

  • Lead with Landing Pages: Create Your Campaigns by Starting at the End

    Why do keywords and ads inform landing page creative? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? This is a vestige of the old way of thinking about advertising. The ad was everything. The ad could persuade. The ad could influence. The ad could brand. Those days are a nice walk down memory lane. Still, most…

  • YouTube Video Ad Optimization: Send in the SEMs!

    Ok, I know YouTube hasn’t officially started running video ads but they are testing. So it’s time to start thinking about how to optimize them. Well, maybe not so fast. The video ad production, media buying, results analysis and optimization will likely be done by folks that have little experience purchasing media based on user…

  • Google’s Use of Conversion Rates for Quality Score

    Bill Slawski at SEO by the Sea provides a fascinating look at a recent Google patent application on ROI & Quality Score determination. In the application Google provides information and<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bragadocchio/340096133/”> a flow chart that makes clear the invention titled “Adjusting Ad Costs Using Document Performance or Document Collection Performance” factors quality score determination differently…

  • Dawn of the Video Search (& Ad) Age

    Quietly, as if it occurred while you were sleeping over the past few years search relevancy has improved. The combination of increased algorithmic accuracy plus an abundance of additional data and content have made this possible. Long gone are the days you could and would go from engine to engine and try your query in…

  • Optimizing Content: Give Users Control

    A week and a half ago I spoke at Outsell’s BrainGain conference to a group of leading executives from traditional publishers on how they can deliver relevance to their audience. It was a great group of folks and the Outsell team does their best to steer them in the right direction. However, I couldn’t help…

  • Blog Tag: I’m it!

    Seems there is a holiday game of blog tag going around that was started by Jeff Pulver. I was tagged by Avinash Kaushik. The idea is to present some personal things about the blogger so the readers can get to know a few things about who they are. So, five facts that you probably don’t…

  • Afterthoughts on SES Chicago

    SES Chicago had a very different vibe from the six other SES shows I’ve participated in. The show was packed with first time attendees and lots of in-house folks. I actually think this is a really good sign. SEO/M has reached a turning point. On one level it has matured. Early practitioners now have years…

  • How Simplicity, Recognition & “The Perception of Ease” Impact Landing Page Optimization

    If there’s one landing page battle I’ve had to fight consistently with clients during my time as a strategist and consultant it is the fight for simplicity. Why don’t people like simplicity on landing pages? Here’s just a few snippets of what I’ve heard over the years: “It makes us look unprofessional” “It doesn’t represent…

  • User Goals and Conversion from Search

    Understanding user goals forms the foundation of my methodology for landing page and search ad optimization. Goal discovery also forms the core of searcher behavior research. This is all due to the fact that delivering relevance can only be done by first understanding the goals of users. Through my experience, research and user observation I’ve…

  • Marketing Speak

    I’ve been doing plenty of talking the past couple of weeks and I’ve been repeating a number of ideas. Forsaking humility, I thought that sharing what’s on my mind might make an interesting post. In no particular order: Contextual Relevance: Deliver relevance in the context of the user focus Sub-segments: Segmentation…at a whole other level…

  • What Google’s Quality Score Is & What It Is Not

    Over the past few months at OTTO Digital we have done a series of search ad optimizations for Google advertisers using multivariate content delivery to optimize ad titles, descriptions and visible URLs based on landing page engagement and conversion rate. In addition to improving client ROI we’ve been provided a fascinating look at the effectiveness,…

  • Measuring and Optimizing Engagement: The Audible.com Case Study

    https://s3.amazonaws.com:443/slideshare/ssplayer.swf?id=9259&doc=adtech-ny-next-generation-strategies-for-ecommerce-the-audiblecom-case-study-9259-9996 You can measure engagement. More importantly, engagement can be optimized. Yesterday, at ad:tech New York I delivered the presentation above on work we just completed at OTTO Digital for Audible.com on the panel Next Generation Strategies for eCommerce, moderated by David Schatsky, President of JupiterKagan. The case study shows how we used multivariate and…

  • Why (Insert Your Brand or Product Here)?

    True story. I’m on the subway heading downtown in NYC. I notice an ad for Fiji Water. It was a picture of the bottle and this copy: Message In A Bottle FIJI water is from Fiji What caught my interest most of all was the question “WHY?” handwritten in black pen next to the bottom…

  • The Death of Best Practices

    Best practice by definition is the best possible way of doing something. Most marketers look at implementing best practices as executing standards to make improvement. Unfortunately, this one-way, one-size fits all standardization mentality is not an effective practice for digital marketers. It’s lazy marketing. Old school. Our world needs to be ruled by looking at…

  • Yahoo Crosses Over with Panama

    Last week’s pre-release of Yahoo Search Marketing’s highly anticipated and much needed “Project Panama” means that after a couple of years as a second thought, Yahoo will have to be taken seriously again as a search-marketing channel. Ideally, Panama will be more stable than Yahoo/Overture, which routinely plagues advertisers with data issues. The big win…

  • How Starbucks Segments and Targets its Brand

    The lead story in The New York Times Arts & Leisure section this Sunday was “The Starbucks Aesthetic” and it’s worth a read. It actually would have been better placed as the lead story in the Business section. What the story made clear is that Starbucks has successfully expanded its product offerings, revenues and brand…

  • Google’s Website Optimizer: Optimization for the Masses

    I’ve been receiving lots of calls the past 24 hours about Google’s “release” of their multivariate testing tool called Google Website Optimizer. Here are my thoughts: • Since you need to have Google Analytics to use the tool this immediately places the tool as a small to mid-market product. I’ve spoken about analytic platforms with…

  • Choice Kills Conversion

    Too often websites, landing pages and even ads decrease the odds of conversion by presenting considerations to users when they are already past the consideration stage and ready to buy. When confronted with choice user response will slow, users become unsure of themselves and many times they will fall off their task. As soon as…

  • R.E.M. Reshaping E-Metrics (or Revolutionizing E-Marketing)

    Marshall Sponder’s blog WebMetricsGuru had a post with comments from a recent Eric Peterson’s e-consultancy interview that caught my attention. The conversation is about the present difficulties for analytic vendors and display advertisers in the face of rich-internet applications (RIAs) and feeds as they continue to proliferate on the web. Sorry if I don’t shed…

  • Social Media Optimization & Branding

    Pathways to Experience Your brand value is in large part made up of the many different experiences your users have with it. The value increases as more new users have good experiences and your existing user’s expectations are met. Our job as marketers is to create the awareness and expectations that feed user desire to…

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