Editorial Articles

Jon Myers, Head of Account Management, UK & Ireland at Yahoo!, explains why it's vital that your search and display strategies complement one another

One area of digital marketing that remains distinctly unintegrated is the relationship between paid search marketing and display. For most reading this, the likelihood is that budgets, planning and accountability are completely separate for search and display. Search may be handled in-house while display is part of an agency's remit, or the two may be handled by entirely different, unconnected agencies.

That disconnect may not strike everyone as inappropriate. Search has a specific role to play at a specific place in the purchase funnel, and optimising a search campaign draws on different mind- and skill-sets from planning and managing a display campaign. The investment is planned completely differently. So much so, in fact, that it can often be hard to relate one to the other. And of course their respective accountability occupies different dimensions too. When all these factors are taken into consideration, it's understandable why, though they both sit under the 'digital' umbrella, search and display appear to bear no resemblance to one another.

Now let’s look at their role from the consumer’s perspective. It may seem plausible that search and display hold different functions, command separate budgets and are managed by different teams from the marketers' side. But when you consider the target consumer’s behaviour the irony becomes apparent. These different tools are usually targeting the same person with the same message. And keeping them separate loses sight of the fact that to the consumer they are both a seamless part of the online journey.

Search is the thread that makes up the tapestry of online life. Behind the little box that sits on almost every web page lies instant access to just about every scrap of the world’s knowledge, plus an ocean of reactions and opinion. Search is a constant feature in the user’s journey: but it is usually a tool that’s reactive to people’s experience along that journey. As they explore digital life, search helps them get to the next turn. Where they go, however, is driven by what they’ve just seen, and what they might see next: and that’s content.

Content, whether it’s online or offline feeds people’s search habits. At Yahoo! we often see searches for a brand, product, or terms associated with the creative that a brand is using in a display campaign spike at times when a homepage takeover or other major campaign is running. People see something they are interested in, and they use search to explore it further. Search can also be viewed as another response metric for display campaigns. Our research shows that there is a 521 per cent increase in searching for a brand name among users who have seen a display ad and, as we know, branded keywords typically offer a better ROI than generic terms.

From a commercial perspective, failing to link search activity to a display campaign isn't just a missed trick: the option to search puts control of the relationship between salesman and customer squarely into the hands of the customer. That elevates search into a critical tool in your display campaign plans. Since customers are more likely to search for your product online than to click on your ad, can you afford not to appear top of the search rankings? If you don’t a competitor will, and all your advertising investment will be doing is driving your own potential customers into the arms of those competitors.

But if you do, there’s more to it than avoiding being gazumped by a competitor. Being there as the consumer explores your product signals your investment in their custom rather than merely trying to trigger a sale with a quick ad. Appearing prominently in search results when you are prominent in the display space says to the consumer that you understand their journey, and are on the same road as them – a subtle nuance about search that begins to integrate it into the world of brand, not just sales. 

Jon Myers, Head of Account Management, UK & Ireland, Yahoo!