Search Engine Optimization and Display Ad Marketing

Study Notes

Carefully selecting key words used on Web pages, updating content frequently, and designing the site to be easily read by search engine programs can improve SEO.

Top five display ad companies in the United States: Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo, and AOL.
Display ads consist of:
- Banner ads
- Rich media ads (animated ads)
- Sponsorships
- Video ads
- Native advertising
Banner ads:
- Display a promotional message in a rectangular box on a desktop computer or mobile device
- Oldest, most familiar, lowest cost, and least effective
Rich media ads:
- Employ animation, sound, and interactivity using Flash, HTML5, Java, and JavaScript
- More effective than simple banner ads
Interstitial ads:
- Full-page messages placed between the current and destination pages of a user
Video ads:
- TV-like advertisements that appear as in-page video commercials or before, during, or after a variety of content
- Far more effective than other display formats
Sponsorships:
- Paid effort to tie an advertiser's name to particular information, an event, or a venue in a way that reinforces its brand in a positive yet not overtly commercial manner
Native advertising:
- Advertising that looks similar to editorial content
- Often found on social media, especially mobile social media, as part of a Facebook Newsfeed, Twitter Timeline, or Pinterest Promoted Pin

Help firms make the entire process of buying and selling online ads more efficient
Connect online marketers with publishers by displaying ads to consumers based on detailed customer information

Direct e-mail marketing:
- Messages sent directly to interested users
- Benefits include:
  - Inexpensive
  - In-house e-mail lists are more effective than purchased e-mail lists
  - Measuring and tracking responses
  - Personalization of messages and offers
Three main challenges:
- Spam
- Anti-spam software used to control spam that eliminates much e-mail from user inboxes
- Poorly targeted purchased e-mail lists

Commission fee paid by advertisers to other Web sites (affiliate web sites) for sending customers to their Web site
Visitors to an affiliate Web site typically click on ads and are taken to the advertiser's Web site
In return, the advertiser pays the affiliate a fee, either on a per-click basis or as a percentage of whatever the customer spends on the advertiser's site
Affiliate marketing generally involves pay-for-performance: the affiliate website gets paid only if users click on a link or purchase a product

Personalization, one-to-one marketing (interest-based advertising):
- Retargeting:
  - Involves showing the same or similar ads to individuals across multiple Web sites
  - Retargeting has become a popular tactic, used by 88% of marketers due to its effectiveness
Customization:
- Changing the product—not just the marketing message—according to user preferences
Customer co-production:
- Means the users actually think up the innovation and help create the new product
- Examples: Nike, M&M's customized product, New York Times, MSN, and Yahoo customized content
Customer service:
- Service can significantly help or hurt its marketing efforts
- Customer loyalty increases when online buyers know that customer service representatives are available online or by phone and are able to resolve any problem quickly

Customer data used to:
- Develop and sell additional products
- Identify and retain profitable customers
- Optimize service delivery, and so on
- Reduce marketing costs
- Retain high lifetime value customers
- Improve customer loyalty
Leading CRM vendors include Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, and SugarCRM, many of which offer cloud-based versions of their CRM products.