Internet Marketing Optimist

Just like economists and financial analysts, search engine marketers like models, the simpler the better. And just like economists, marketers are often times led astray by these very models. From the very start the focus was on getting the searcher to click on your listing, visit your website and convert. Any tracking began with the keyword used and, hopefully, ended with a conversion (sale, download, newsletter sign-up, etc.). This ability to measure results gave advertisers unprecedented insight into their customers’ behavior.

Unfortunately, search marketers, and the advertisers they served, were living in a bubble. Although a very special advertising medium, search is certainly not the only one. Some keywords used are so specific that a searcher had to be exposed to a brand, a product or a service before getting to a search engine. Marketers also began to notice that the search volume would at times increase after a display or a TV ad campaign was launched. Clearly, different advertising channels were influencing each other, in what is known as the cross-channel effect, but in what way and to what extent?