double POSITIVE Marketing Group, Inc.

You’ve probably heard people say — sometimes brag — that they don’t click paid search ads on search engines. They think that by not clicking on the “sponsored listings” in search results, they are somehow doing themselves some kind of favor by avoiding all paid search ads, while at the same time spiting the search engines and advertisers at the same time.

As the fictional character Ron Burgandy so famously said, “That’s just dumb!”

Granted, there are some times when I, too, will mentally block out paid search ads. But for the most part, I welcome search ads because they usually contain the RELEVANT information I am looking for, and the advertisers are competing directly with each other for the right to show me what they have to offer. I like the fact that an advertiser is willing to pay anywhere from a few cents to several dollars to market directly and specifically to me, compared to the wasteful ad spending that often occurs with radio, television and newspapers. If you’re like me, you pay FAR more attention to a search ad than you do a radio/television commercial or a newspaper ad (and thanks to satellite radio and TiVo, I barely hear/see most ads anyway these days).

Think of it this way — when I search for something like “honda accord” or “baltimore florist”  or “new york hotel”  — I am essentially raising my hand and saying to the advertisers, “Hello, I’m an interested consumer. I may be looking for you, and I know you are looking for (and willing to pay to reach) me. Tell me more about your product or service.” What serves me better — clicking on the paid search ad from the car manufacturer/local florist/major hotel chain, or the Wikipedia article for Honda/florists/hotels? And when I search for “honda accord,” why wouldn’t I want to see what the similarly priced and equiped Nissan Altima has to offer? That’s pretty relevant, isn’t it?

I often refer to eMarketer’s explanation of what differentiates paid search from other forms of advertising:

Paid search is unlike any other form of advertising, online or offline. That’s because it’s the recipient of the ads — not the advertiser or the publisher — who determines if and when an ad is monetized. An advertiser can have the highest bids, and top ranking, for major keywords; and the search engine can be the most popular among Internet users. But until the consumer clicks, no money exchanges hands.

That’s an amazing amount of power that you and I have as consumers, and people who choose to completley ignore relevant search ads are slighting themselves. Still, a staggering 69% of consumers are interested in products/services that would help them skip and/or block marketing online, but that certainly hasn’t stopped Google from building a $150 million company — just 10 and 20 cents at a time.

This is the official public blog call-out requesting contributions from the other non-blogging members (thus far) of the management team:

• Joey Liner – Co-founder and EVP of Sales
• John Delta – CFO

C’mon Joey and JD – let’s fire up some new posts!

SPF

Once you do, I’ll come back and edit this post to delete your name (and ultimately the entire post)

SPF

Art vs. Science

Our VP of Marketing, Chris Beauchamp, recently re-named to the title to the blog located at blogs.doublepositive.com to “The Art of Leads.”  Personally, I love it.  The word “Art” and the word “Science” are probably the two most repeated words at DoublePositive.  They seem to last forever.  They are evergreens.

Readers should probably expect a lot of DoublePositive blog posts to include the concept of Art and/or Science.

SPF