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Posts Tagged ‘eric clemons’
Tues News: 3/31 Clemons vs. Sullivan
Michael Block | March 31st, 2009
Let’s get ready to rumble! Last week, we brought to light the debate between Wharton professor, Eric Clemons, and SearchEngineLand.com CEO, Danny Sullivan, over the future of search marketing. This week, TechCrunch provides a great wrap up of the debate where both men weigh in a final time. All in all, both Clemons and Sullivan make good points, however, I remain unconvinced about Clemons’ opinion that search marketing misdirects users. He claims that brands are forced to pay for their own listings, otherwise, competitors will be awarded the top spot. For example: if Pepsi wants to make sure that Coke, or another competitor, doesn’t get listed ahead of Pepsi in a search for “pepsi,” Clemons contends that Pepsi is extorted by Google to pay for the listing. This would go vice versa for Coke. However, if you run a search for “pepsi,” “coke” or most other major brands, you will either see no ads at all, no banner ads at all or, at the very least, no competitor ads in the banner above the top natural result. There are exceptions, however, whenever Google determines that users don’t want ads in their results–user click data is used to determine this–there are often fewer or no ads to be seen. Brands can also keep competitors from using their branded terms and this often has an adverse enough effect on click-through rate to force competitor ads out of the top spot. In general, Clemons’ point seems to be a straw man argument; i.e. Continue reading…
Tues News: 3/24
Michael Block | March 24th, 2009
I wanted to focus on the downturn in Internet advertising revenues overall, focusing specifically on different opinions explaining the trend of what seems to be, at best, a sign of the tough economic times and, at worst, a harbinger of the end of online marketing as we know it.
Tags: danny sullivan, economy, eric clemons, Google, search marketing, sem, Tues News, Twitter
Posted in Tues News | 2 Comments
