The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

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The Drum's Search Awards judges on the medium's resurgence, Google, and where budgets are headed in 2017

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

February 24, 2017 | 7 min read

Ahead of the Search Awards deadline (3 March), The Drum caught up with a few of this year's judges on some of the industry's key topics.

The Drum Search Awards

The Drum Search Awards

Paul Mead, founder and chairman at VCCP Media, Oscar Romero, head of biddable (International) at Starcom Mediavest Performics, Jonathan Beeston, board director and advisor at Croud and Daniel Gilbert, chief executive at Brainlabs Digital offer their views.

How has the search market been disrupted and who in your opinion are the main disruptors?

Beeston: Search has been disrupted by smartphones. That’s obvious, but specifically it means that search’s natural home – the web browser – is no longer the dominant way to access information on the web. Search is literally the first page many people start with on desktop, but the paradigm is totally different on mobile. It means that consumers have a wealth of specialised search tools in their hands: Twitter for current events, Amazon for products, TripAdvisor for places to go – bypassing traditional search engines altogether.

Romero: The route to purchase continues to diversify: search used to be a key starting point for most shopping journeys, however, there are now many other options clamouring for user attention; installed apps present quick routes, whilst home assistants or Amazon Dash buttons can also cut search out of the picture. One of the interesting growth areas this year will be chat bots and how their integration into messaging impact shopper journeys. It's really technology that is leading the disruption of the search marketplace, certainly led by Facebook and Amazon at the moment, but there are opportunities for new breakthroughs in the market as innovation continues to progress.

Do you think the industry is being successful in the move to cross screen internet as regards Google's AMP implementation over the course of 2016?

Romero: With the expected roll out of mobile first indexing, [Google's] AMP has functioned as a quick fix for sites to improve mobile ranking as well as user experience, where responsive design has been slow to roll out. Many businesses are benefiting from AMP, however, there are disadvantages such as less tracking code and less revenue from advertising units. The next step is to future-proof search and business websites for voice control, as voice search and interaction is only going to grow with products such as Amazon's Alexa and Google Home.

Mead: Google knew that without AMP it risked losing audience due to poor user experience on mobile. Although we've seen a huge increase in traffic via AMP it remains a major opportunity for brands as well as publishers especially with Google announcing a separate mobile index that will be its primary focus, relegating desktop to a secondary touch point.

And do you have any specific opinions as to the contrasting performance(s) of the paid-for and organic areas of the sector?

Gilbert: Every time I go to SEO conferences or speak to SEO friends (yes they are people too) - I get the impression that they are being cannibalised out of their traditional existence by paid. There is a major shift happening in the world of SEO - towards content for content's sake - not even necessarily to rank higher on Google.

Beeston: Organic search has been declared dead more times than Rasputin. But it still offers a wealth of value to brands and is still well worth the investment. Particularly as there’s such a crossover between SEO, PR and social media.

Romero: In the same way that paid search is changing as user behaviour shifts, organic search is also evolving. The oldest and most incorrect cliche is that SEO is dead. Far from it in fact, SEO is simply different now from what it was five years ago. As search engines adapt their algorithms to user behaviour and as consumers interact differently with sites, the impact has been that SEO skills have changed.

Marketers increasingly want to establish a connection between online media spend and its impact on offline sales; how successful has the search sector been at accommodating this over the last 12 months?

Gilbert: Terrible. I've seen a few attempts but they are always disjointed and poor from a data collection and significance perspective.

Mead: There are huge challenges today in measurement and advertisers are starting to understand the limitations of probabilistic models and the challenges posed by the weakness of cookies in a multi-device world. Having said that, demonstrating the connection between online media spend and its impact on offline sales is an area where we are making huge strides in terms of progress.

Do you see brands wanting to reduce their reliance on Google? If so, why and where are they putting spend instead?

Beeston: Nobody wants to be beholden to a single supplier, and Google is no exception. It’s always good business sense to diversify, though that’s easier said than done. Bing has a decent market share in the UK and is the default on emerging voice platforms like Amazon Alexa or Siri.

But advertisers really need to see Google, and search, as part of the spectrum of their activity. Reducing reliance on Google can be as much a task for a brand planner or TV buyer than it is for a search person.

Mead: I've had brands talking to us about reducing their reliance on Google - and also Facebook. Eight of the top ten apps in the US last year were owned by either Google or Facebook. That's incredible and we know these guys are becoming more rather than less dominant. Increasingly we will see platform focused strategies and even teams emerging that only think about the Google or Facebook ecosystem. In a post-cookie world being able to manage these platforms better than your competition will be increasingly important. We're in the business of connecting with audiences so we fish where the fish are. That's not to say there aren't options - of course there are but diversifying for the sake of it is not the right strategy.

Why are you excited to judge and what are you looking for from an award-winning entry?

Beeston: Search is all about results of course. But I really want to see imaginative use of data and creative. Search platforms are incredibly flexible and featured, so I’d like to read entries that capture the many possibilities that are available.

Mead: Search is having something of a second coming right now as brands start to realise its power beyond direct response performance so we need more opportunities like The Drum's Search Awards to spread the word. I'm looking for intelligent insights, the right balance of great planning and great execution, something genuinely innovative - and showing how search was connected within a wider strategy. Ultimately I want to wish I'd run that campaign myself.

The Drum Search Awards, in partnership with Bing, recognise and reward the very best in search across both SEO and PPC. The deadline for entry is 3 March 2017. For more information visit the website.

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