7Search - A Light in the Distance

Recently, Avenue A/Razorfish released a white paper entitled Digital Outlook Report 08. It gives a detailed overview of Digital Marketing; the evolution of online marketing, driving factors and how organizations can respond to the new environment. Brian Krick, Director of Search, Philadelphia, and Lindsay Blankenship, Associate Director of Search, Atlanta, point out;

“The most significant development in paid search in 2007 was the disappearance of transparent bidding.” – from chapter titled, “The State of Search Marketing”

With Yahoo! abandoning the old ‘Overture model’ (a Transparent Bid Auction) for their new opaque bidding model, Yahoo!’s customers were dragged into the dark unknown abyss of a “blind market” (similar to Google’s AdWords). The result was increasing advertiser anxiety AND budget all at the mercy of the major search engines.

Krick felt it “marks the end of an era of relative transparency in paid search economics.” The little guy has no recourse but to open their pocketbook and let the bully take their lunch money.

Meanwhile, Google continues to squeeze more cash out of advertiser’s pocketbooks with their Quality Score and it’s ambiguous calculation. Brain and Lindsey added,

“Jordan Rohan, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, has speculated that a late 2007 adjustment to the Quality Score gave Google wide latitude to manipulate it to extract maximum revenue. According to Rohan, Quality Score now acts as a revenue dial, which Google can turn up or down at will.”

So, is all lost? Is there anyone out there with any mercy for the advertiser, and not the stockholders? Thankfully there is. 7Search.com still offers a Transparent Bid Auction and gives advertisers control over their campaign cost. Let’s look at some examples;

Keyword Suggestion Tool (publicly available) shows the top 5 bids on any keyword, the number of searches during the previous month, and the number of clicks the top bidder received the previous month.

SmartBid Tool (found inside advertiser accounts) goes a step further showing the top 5 bids and searches performed on 7search’s top distribution partners. This valuable information tells what bid is necessary to show across the entire 7search partner network for each keyword.

It’s no wonder the analysts have ranked 7Search.com as having the highest Return on Investment (ROI) of all search engines. So rest better at night knowing there is a bright light in distance. “Second star to the right, straight on till morning.” – Peter Pan