Our friends from SEO-PR asked me to run a series of interviews to some of the search marketers who will participate to the forthcoming and highly expected SES London 2008 show (February 19-21). Of course I accepted, so I could republish the interviews here at our SEMPO Global blog!
The first SES London 2008 interview goes to Piers Stobb, Vice President Europe at comScore. You might remember I already interviewed him at a previous London conference, but with a video – this time it has been a simple email interview that I report in full here below.
How is it like to be a VP at comScore? Can you tell us about your role at comScore?
comScore is a great place to work for a researcher. We have vast amounts of data, spanning many different online activities, from URL tracking to online transactions, applications running to online advertising exposure.
I head up our custom research group here in London and my job is put all this data to work, helping online marketers and strategists make key business decisions.
A preview of the panel you’ll speak to at SES London - what’s the sate-of-the-art of the evolution of search behavior analysis? Can you track also a little bit its latest rampant evolution in the online advertising industry?
Online consumer behavior is continuously evolving - it always amazes me how quickly new behavioral patterns come about. Two or three years ago no-one had heard of Facebook or even YouTube and now Facebook is used by almost 100m people worldwide and almost 250m people use Youtube.
One key trend we are noticing is search behavior is that search consumers are becoming much more specific. Instead of scrolling through multiple search results pages, they are more likely to edit the search query to refine what they are searching for. This manifests itself in increased searches per searcher, but reduced search results pages per search. The first results page is becoming even more critical
What are the latest studies and findings for search marketers to consider in search behavior and behavioral advertising?
We have done some very interesting research around the path to purchase. For instance, Google commissioned us to research how travel consumers research and then book travel products online.
We were able to identify the first instance of a travel related search conducted by our panel members and then track these individuals’ activity- not only search, but also visitation to other travel sites, all the way through to online booking.
We found the research process is surprisingly long - in the Q1 period last year, we found the average online travel transaction took 29 days to research, with 45% of transactions occurring more than four weeks from the first search.
Search advertisers are increasingly tempted to focus on the last click, which is often brand related (64% in this case). However, the length and complexity of the research process highlights the importance of engaging with the consumer earlier on, whether through display advertising or through more generic search advertising, to ensure the advertiser brand is in the consideration set at the end.
What’s the search market size in the UK? And how does it compare with the rest of Europe?
From an online population perspective, we estimate there were 33m people online in the UK in December (15+, Home and Work) which was the second largest online population in Europe - we estimate a slightly higher figure (34m) in Germany, with slightly fewer in France (29m).
However, search is slightly more penetrated in the UK, so the search volume generated in the UK and in Germany is pretty similar - we estimate about 3.8b searches in each country in December.
In terms of online advertising, the IAB in the UK documents the fact that the UK appears to lead the world in proportion of total ad spend that is online - the latest figures I have seen were from H1 2007, where I believe the estimate was 15%
Gossip question (but also question to industry expert) - do you have any opinion on the Yahoo rejection of Microsoft's bid to acquire it?
It’s certainly an interesting development, and although there has been much speculation, I’m not aware of Yahoo! articulating an alternative plan. I’ve heard rumors of talks with News Corp but have no idea if these are anything more than just rumors! It’s clear that Yahoo! does posses some very valuable and attractive assets - things like Flickr and del.icio.us, even Yahoo! Answers which is becoming an increasingly valuable and popular repository of information. I’m a big believer in integrated search and display online campaigns so the combination of assets is powerful (and also why Google is acquiring Doubleclick).
Although Yahoo! could disengage from search and have Google power their search services (and probably make more money than they are currently), I don’t think this will happen, as they would lose the underlying behavioral data and hence the powerful possibilities of search and display targeting.
Given this, and Microsoft’s deep pockets, I have a feeling bid will eventually go through. Although it will undoubtedly take some time!
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Thank you Piers for taking some time to share your search and behavioral knowledge with our blog readers, you definitively are turning into a regular guest at sempoglobalsearchblog.com!
For those interested in catching up in person with Piers Stobbs at SES London 2008, he will be speaking at the Searcher Behavior Research Update panel on the second day of the London Search Engine Strategies Conference.
And for those interested in catching up with me at SES London, please come to the Blog & Feed Search SEO panel, where I will be speaking earlier on the same day. Also, you’ll find me browsing the conference venue with my digital camera, cornering search marketers to get more video interviews for our blog!
Stay tuned for the next pre-SES London interview on SEMPO Global Search Blog!
