AdCenter Blog

Come visit us at SES-Chicago at Booth #205

LookSmart will be exhibiting at Search Engine Strategies in Chicago on December 4th and 5th. As exhibitors, we are proud to be able to offer you 20% off the price of a Conference Passport or a 1 day pass. Register here and enter the priority code 20LOO.

If you do come out to SES-Chicago, please make sure to stop by booth #205 to say hello and grab some fun giveaways. We will have our team of dedicated search marketing professionals on hand to help you with any questions you may have about LookSmart’s Advertising Networks and/or Publisher Services. If you are interested in Advertising on LookSmart’s extensive network, we will be handing out coupons for $300 in free clicks. We believe in our network and know if you give us a try, you will too!

We hope to see you there!

Sincerely,

Kaley Dobson

Marketing Executive

What Makes the LookSmart Ad Network Unique? (Part 1 of 2)

In the next couple of blog posts, we're going to answer the question, "Why should I advertise with LookSmart?". At LookSmart, we make the assumption that you've got a lot of online advertising choices out there, and that you've probably tried some of the leading pay-per-click networks like Google or Yahoo!. Our goal is to show you how advertising with LookSmart can help you economically extend your budget and reach a wider audience than you can get otherwise.

There are a lot of good reasons to give the LookSmart Ad Network your consideration, but we thought first we should explain how our ad network gives you unique opportunities to reach your customers.  Then, next time we'll take a look at how LookSmart's client service and traffic management teams help you get the most out of every dollar you spend on our network.

What is a "PPC ad network"?

When we say LookSmart is a PPC (pay-per-click) ad network what we really mean is that LookSmart sells space to advertisers on many web sites, including sites it doesn't own. LookSmart competes for positions on these syndicated publisher sites using the CPC bids advertisers have made in the LookSmart AdCenter. LookSmart uses its yield-ranking algorithms to help advertisers get the best positions possible while maximizing publisher payouts.

LookSmart takes care of collecting money from advertisers and providing customer service. We also monitors our partners' web sites to make sure they adhere to our standards and editorial policies.

LookSmart plays an essential role in this ecosystem. By bringing together advertisers and putting them in a yield-ranked auction, LookSmart is able to provide publishers with the revenue they need to grow their sites and attract customers. LookSmart's ad serving technologies give advertisers the tools they need to connect with customers and bring them to their web sites. Combining technology with client services and traffic quality management, LookSmart keeps the network balanced and optimized, creating an ecosystem that grows with its success.

Types of advertising services offered on the LookSmart network

Ad networks take on many forms. LookSmart's ad network is composed of many different kinds of sites and services, including:

• web search sites - LookSmart provides advertising for sites who have their own specialty search engines or compile search results from other search sites (so-called "meta-search") to provide their visitors a unified view of web results from a variety of providers. For example, LookSmart's partnership with Bravenet Media gives advertisers access to customers in the webmaster and technology sectors. Another LookSmart partner, ABCSearch gives advertisers access to over 1,000 specialty search engines.
• inline text networks - Through a partnership with Kontera, LookSmart is able to offer advertisers inline text ads - keyword-targeted ads that appear when users hover or click on keywords linked inside of an article or blog page. This unique form of advertising gives advertisers extra opportunities to reach their audience through innovative placement technologies.
• direct navigation sites - Direct navigation sites provide links to web sites and popular search terms that users are looking for.  These sites are often accessed by users who are searching for products or services and are trying to guess web site names. Direct navigation sites can be useful for advertisers because they tend to focus on a niche subject which gives them a targeted audience.
• search toolbars - Many companies provide their own customized toolbars that replace your browser's built-in search box with more features. These toolbars are usually provided free of charge and are supported by advertising. One great example of this is the Copernic web search tool bar, used by over 30 million users.
• video overlays - Increasingly, streaming videos are becoming popular with all kinds of users.    Many video sharing sites are providing advertisers the opportunity to display ads that overlay a portion of the video or are displayed just before/after the clip plays. LookSmart is working with several video providers to tap into these new advertising opportunities.
• content sites - Through LookSmart's contextual advertising technology, any advertisement can be displayed on web sites with content related to an ad's text and keywords. LookSmart is working with Wikia and other content sites to enable advertisers to take advantage of these customer opportunities.

LookSmart's ad network is unique because it gives your text ads a wide variety of venues and placements, all of which are important vehicles for helping your message break through the vast online advertising market and reach a targeted audience. LookSmart's reach extends beyond traditional search giving you creative ways to extend your budget further and drive more visitors to your site.

In our next post...

Now that we've looked at what types of sites your ads can appear on the LookSmart Network, we're ready to look at how our services help you get the most out of every advertising dollar in your budget. Next time, we'll take a look at several aspects to LookSmart's services:

• Segmentation - what opportunities are there for reaching customers, and how do you pick the right keywords to drive more visitors to your site while maintaining costs?
• Traffic Management - how does LookSmart manage the relationships with its syndication partners to make sure your budget is spent wisely?
• Optimization - how do LookSmart's customer service and account management teams help you optimize your campaigns, ads, keywords, and bids to make sure that you reach your advertising goals?

Are you ready to stop reading about LookSmart and give it a try? Get started now by visiting the LookSmart AdCenter or contact us by e-mail or phone at 877-512-LOOK (5665) for a consultation.

Companies mentioned in this post:

• Bravenet Media
• ABCSearch
• Kontera
• Copernic
• Wikia

Allen Hammock
Product Marketing Manager
allen.hammock@looksmart.net

What is Expanded Broad Match?

Recently, Google made a change to its Broad Match algorithm that some are calling Expanded Broad Match.  It works like normal Broad Match but it allows ads to be shown on search results pages that match not only the current search term, but also a user's previous search terms.

Jennifer Laycock explains on a recent SearchEngineGuide.com blog post that "many AdWords advertisers have noticed some odd queries showing up in their AdWords campaign reports" due to the new Broad Matching rules.  In an example she shows that an ad for Play Kitchen shows up on a search results page where she typed in "toy truck".  She had searched for "play kitchen" in a previous search.

How LookSmart's Broad Match search compares

On the LookSmart Ad Network, Broad Matching follows the more familiar pattern of "we will match your ad if the user types in your keyword(s) anywhere in their search terms".  So, you could buy the keyword "toy truck" and it would appear if the user searched for "toy truck" or any set of words that contained toy truck like "toy Tonka truck".

LookSmart doesn't use any form of "memory" to link ads to previous search terms, so you don't need to set up any special exceptions or negative terms in order to avoid the expanded Broad Match that Google is testing with their advertisers.

What searches are my Broad Match terms matching?

It can be valuable to know exactly what search terms the user typed in when your Broad Match term caused your ad to be displayed and clicked.  That information can be sent back to your web site by the LookSmart Ad Server by using dynamic query substitution in your ads' Destination URLs.  Here's an example:

http://www.example.com/mypage.html?query={query: text_too_long}&keyword={keyword: text_too_long}&keyword_id={keyword_id}

In our "toy truck" example, the Ad Server will replace {query: text_too_long} with "toy Tonka truck", {keyword: text_too_long} with "toy truck" and {keyword_id} with a number like 123456 that represents the ad/keyword in your campaign.  (The "text_too_long" only gets inserted if the total length of your Destination URL exceeds 1,000 characters, which is very unlikely.)

In the LookSmart AdCenter, you can use the Search and Download tool to find the exact ad that matches your keyword_id to see all of the details of the click.  By looking at the search term the user actually typed in, you can see interesting things like:

• phrases users' searched for that you can add to your campaign as Smart Match terms
• words in users' queries that you can add as Negative Keywords to prevent matching (for example, you might add the Negative Word "broken" if you saw that a user typed in "broken toy truck" before they clicked on your ad)

The dynamic query and dynamic keyword substitutions give you insight into how people are searching and finding your ads.  They also help you understand more generally how Broad Matching works.

If you need help figuring out how to use Broad Match in your keyword campaigns, LookSmart can help. Please feel free to contact us by e-mail or call 877-512-LOOK (5665) for assistance.

Allen Hammock
Product Marketing Manager
allen.hammock@looksmart.net

Part 2 of 2: Use dynamic tracking to improve campaign results

Last week we took a look at dynamic tracking features in the LookSmart AdCenter that help you identify which search terms visitors are using to get to the ads that take them to your site.  By asking the Ad Server to insert the user's search term and other data into your Destination URL, you can get insights into what your visitors were searching for when they made the decision to visit your site.

I've modified my Destination URLs, now what?

If you follow the instructions in our previous post, you will have modified your Destination URLs to include some or all of these dynamic tracking features.  Now, what do you do next?

Each time someone clicks on your ad and visits your web site, your web server will make a note of which Destination URL they visited in your web logs.  If you have access to these web logs, you can extract the query terms (inserted into your Destination URL by using the {query: alternate text} parameter) out of the logs and into a spreadsheet.

If your Destination URL looked like this:

http://www.example.com/mysite.html?keyword={keyword: too_long}&query={query: too_long}

Then a line from your web log might look like this:

127.0.0.1 - myserver [10/Oct/2000:13:55:36 -0700] "GET /mysite.html?keyword=car+insurance&query=I+want+to+buy+car+insurance HTTP/1.1" 200 2326

Now, you know that your bid for the broad match keyword car insurance was clicked on by someone who actually searched using the terms I want to buy car insurance.  You could now go back into your campaign and add a smart match bid for the keyword I want to buy car insurance at a different price than you paid for just "car insurance".  You could even create a separate ad that was geared towards users who typed that phrase.

Finding Negative Keywords

Incidentally, your web logs will also show you search terms you definitely do not want to buy.  For example, if you were hoping to attract a visitor who might buy car insurance from you and you id on the word "cars", but the user searched for "cars animated movie", you could add "animated movie" as a Negative Keyword to your ad.

By adding Negative Keywords, the Ad Server will not show your ad when those words are found in the user's search text.  This allows you to buy a popular search term like "car" but not pay for clicks from visitors who are searching for an unrelated topic that includes the word cars.

Web logs, really?

So, digging around in your web site's web server logs probably doesn't sound like your idea of fun.  For those of you who have access to that data and like to do a bit of programming, this can be a lot easier than to do than you think.  But, for the rest of us, we need something called web analytics.

Web analytics services

Web analytics services take all of the pain and suffering out of sifting through web server logs to find user's search terms.  They will usually process your logs for you or simply provide you easy-to-read reports from a separate web site.  Web analytics services may also tell interpret your web logs to tell you things like which pages your visitors looked at, what countries they came from, even what kinds of web browsers they are using.

For our purposes, web analytics services help us find the long tail we've been looking for.  Your web analytics service can give you a report of all the search terms users were using when they clicked on your ad.  And, once you know those terms, you can customize your ads and/or your bidding strategy to account for the different ways people search.

The specifics of how to set up web analytics is way beyond the scope of what we can cover in a blog.  However, we've included some examples of how to use dynamic tracking with conversion tracking (a special kind of web analytics service that also tells you how much money you are making on your web site) in our LookSmart AdCenter Online Help Guide.  Look for the sections on click tracking and dynamic substitution parameters.

If you need help figuring out how to use the these dynamic tracking features, LookSmart can help. Please feel free to contact us by e-mail or call 877-512-LOOK (5665) for assistance.

Allen Hammock
Product Marketing Manager
allen.hammock@looksmart.net