Q&A: Lowe Profero's Ross Jenkins on search, Google and wearable tech
Ahead of The Drum Search Awards, we catch up with judge Ross Jenkins, global managing director of performance media at Lowe Profero, to discuss his views on where the search sector is going and the potential impact wearable tech could have.
How did you get into search?
I got into search through my first agency role, working with the likes of Goto, Espotting and Overture (before it became Yahoo Search Marketing) and before Google cottoned on to the idea of biddable media!
Search has quickly become a crucial component to every marketer's brand strategy – but where do you feel it is still falling down generally?
The industry in general is struggling with a lack of talent, siloed and short-sighted views of media effectiveness, and data 'noise'. All these factors affect search in some way.
Are we near an end to seeing people truly attempts to game the search engine optimisation (SEO) system or will that never go away?
SEO will only go away if Google decides to devote all its real estate to paid links. Right now SEO builds brands. As for content farms, traffic arbitraging and the like, yes that is gradually dying out as search engines screen those environments and links from their results.
How will wearables or the internet of things impact the search sector?
Wearables will add another layer of real time data to the search/social graph, offering new opportunities for targeting and ad models.
What will you be looking for while judging The Drum Search Awards?
I’ll be looking out for creativity, and a genuine understudying of the brand and client's customers and business model. Oh and demonstrably, provably incremental business results.
More details on The Drum Search Awards can be found at the Awards website.
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Lowe Profero
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