Telebrands’ AJ Khubani discusses Obama’s infomercial strategy on Fox News.

Do you think the use of an infomercial is a good move for a presidential candidate?

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If you manage $50,000 or more per month on paid search advertising, evidence suggests that as much as one-third of it is wasted due to sub-optimized search marketing campaigns. Does this mean you are a bad search marketer? The answer is, unquestionably, no. However, the following statistics are sobering and suggest you may want to look at how you manage and optimize your campaigns:

· Paid search advertising is getting increasingly competitive. It makes up nearly 45 percent of all global online advertising expenditures, and JPMorgan forecasts that spend to reach $30 billion in 2008.

· Keyword inflation continues to rise due to competition and the market. Industry studies show Google has surpassed 70-percent share in searches for the first time, and a likely deal between Yahoo/Google may increase Yahoo’s pay-per-click search rate by 22 percent.

· Optimized campaigns can achieve the same results at 69 percent of the cost. WebTrends clients—who previously used a combination of manual methods and bid management tools—experienced an average return on advertising spending improvement of 44 percent only 90 days after switching to WebTrends’ new automated SEM optimization solution. In the past, they essentially wasted 31 percent of their paid search spend.

What’s a retail search marketer to do? In order to continue generating positive returns, today’s search marketers must be smarter, faster and more efficient than their competitors. They must continue to experiment with new campaign variables (ad text, landing pages, geotargets and many others), build a long-tail keyword inventory and stay on top of messaging. Search engines themselves are offering more sophisticated user segmentation and targeting options, resulting in the typical paid search program now having almost limitless possibilities for testing different variables. Each new variable exponentially adds to the number of factors and mathematical performance data that must be tracked. For example:

· 10 keywords, 10 positions, 1 creative = 10^2 combinations

· 1000 keywords, 10 positions, 5 creatives = 5 x 10^4 combinations

· 1000 keywords, 10 positions, 10 creatives, 2 landing pages = 2 x 10^5 combinations

· 1000 keywords, 10 positions, 10 creatives, 2 landing pages, 3 networks = 6 x 10^5 combinations

The real problem, and underlying opportunity, with search engine marketing optimization is that today’s methods and solutions rely on a human to do most of the heavy lifting, from a/b testing, reporting consolidation and results analysis to the seemingly never-ending bid rules creation and adjustments. The expansive keyword portfolios and the sheer number of campaigns that large advertisers manage require a new way of doing things. Forward-thinking marketers will need to discover the optimal balance between what machines do best—handling the constant cycle of analysis, testing and updates across an organization’s paid search portfolios—and the insight and perspective into external industry events and business drivers that humans can bring. In the future, automated SEM optimization solutions will help strike this balance.

Alex Yoder is WebTrends’ president and CEO.

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Credit: R. Perris’ iPhone

It’s true: Power 90 is not just for humans! To ensure we infuse some comedic muscle into this year’s “Retailers Rock”-themed Awards Gala—to be held on the evening of Tuesday, September 23—Under the Gun Productions has once again been busy creating another sock monkey short. Created by USC Film School Alum Rick Petry and Richard Perris, this year’s entry will be a follow up to last year’s short, “Home Shopping Havoc” that was part of “A Night At the Opera.” In case you missed it, below is the YouTube video for “Havoc!” See you at the show!

Rick Petry is ERA’s interim president and CEO.

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The ERA Minute is a new feature where ERA members can film marketing tips that will be distributed throughout all of ERA’s channels and social networking outlets. If you’re interested in making the next ERA Minute, contact Tom Quash at tquash@retailing.org. In this ERA Minute, Avalanche Creative Services’ George Brianka explains why you should avoid playing it “safe” when creating a commercial.

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Whether you’re using the free Google Analytics tools or a premium solution like Omniture, there are many metrics and reports that can help you understand how customers use your site and how your campaigns are performing. Here is a quick list of five valuable things web analytics can do for you:

1. Referring sites and conversions. It’s crucial to know which web properties are sending you traffic, especially if you have an affiliate program, use pay-per-click advertising or comparison shopping engines, buy banner ads or text links on other sites or invest in organic search engine optimization campaigns. When you tie conversion rates and ROI to referring sources, you can make informed decisions on which campaigns to invest more time and money in, and which to axe.

2. Referring keywords and conversions. Like referring sites, you can track which keywords are driving traffic, and even segment your organic (free) search traffic from paid search. When you have high converting, organic keywords that don’t send much traffic, you may want to focus your SEO efforts on raising your rank. Or, if you’re spending a lot of money on a keyword that doesn’t convert, you should look to improve your landing page, spend less on your keyword or “kill” it completely.

3. Measure engagement with your content. Most analytics tools offer a feature that allows you to “see” where customers are clicking. Where do customers typically click from your home page? From each category page? From your Help section? Do they click on your featured products, or go straight to the search box? Bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who enter your site and leave within 5-10 seconds) is another indication of engagement. View your top entrance pages and observe each page’s bounce rate. Very high bounce rate pages should be looked at more carefully—are they delivering the offers and products that people expect from the keywords that referred the visits?

4. Measure split-test results. If you’re doing A/B or multivariate testing on your design, copy, offers or even color and size of your add-to-cart button, you can’t measure results without analytics!

5. Funnel analysis. Why do customers abandon the cart before completing a purchase? Could it be a glitch in your checkout process? Analyzing your funnel reports can catch problems that are killing your conversions.

Interested in learning more? A great resource for non-techie e-marketers is Web Analytics: An Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik. It covers what analytics is, which metrics are important (and which are not important at all), how to choose a tool, how to find a good analyst, and how to turn data into information that can help make better business decisions. Avinash reently joined Elastic Path Software for a webinar 3 Things to Die For: Web Analytics Unleashed. This free, e-commerce focused session is available on replay, and previous e-commerce webinars are available here.

Linda Bustos is an e-commerce consultant for Elastic Path Software and blogs daily here.

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Years ago, an exchange of cash was all it took for a customer to make a purchase from a merchant. How things have changed! Today, most businesses offer their products or services on the Internet—clearly, they can’t be restricted to cash-on-delivery practices anymore. E-commerce has emerged as a lucrative channel for merchants to boost sales and grow their bottom lines. Many consumers have Internet access both at work and at home, and browsing an online catalog can be faster than browsing the aisles of a physical store. What’s more, customers get the added convenience of shopping 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Merchants should understand the value of operating in multiple channels. For those who haven’t yet incorporated e-commerce into their business but want to, there is much to learn. They must educate themselves on how payment processing works in order to best accommodate their online shoppers and serve the needs of their business. Though paying for an online purchase takes just a few seconds, it involves a complex chain reaction of behind-the-scenes processes.

Merchants can increase revenues and reach more customers by offering an efficient, successful e-commerce solution. This article examines what must be in place in order to complete a transaction that is both secure and offers superior customer service.

What Makes an E-commerce Solution Possible?
In addition to the range of software and hardware that companies use to support the sale of products and services online, there are three vital components that make online shopping possible: the shopping cart, payment gateway and payment processor. Each is critical to ensuring successful implementation of e-commerce functionality.

• Shopping cart. The shopping cart acts quite literally as a virtual shopping basket. It holds the items customers select from a website until they are ready to proceed to the checkout stage, where their credit card information will be processed. The shopping cart:
o Keeps track of items until they are purchased;
o Automatically totals the amount of a customer’s order, including shipping and tax; and
o Allows shoppers to securely enter address and credit card information.

• Payment gateway. In order to accept credit cards through the Internet, a payment gateway is critical to transport the credit card information from the shopping cart to the payment processor once the consumer clicks the “Buy” button. In most cases, this transaction happens almost instantaneously. The payment gateway receives encrypted transactions from the merchant’s shopping cart. An encrypted transaction simply means that credit card numbers can’t be read by people who are not supposed to read those numbers. Authentication is then provided and the decrypted payment information is transmitted for authorization. The payment gateway:
o Fulfills the same function as a point-of-sale (card swipe) terminal at a physical retail location; and
o Takes information provided through a shopping cart and transmits it electronically and securely to a payment processor to be routed for authorization of payment.

• Payment processor. The payment processor transmits a customer’s credit card information via the Internet to the merchant bank for authorization. It also sends data back to the merchant’s bank to approve payment or the transfer of funds. Specifically, a payment processor:
o Acts as a link from the merchant to the acquiring bank or merchant bank;
o Receives information from the merchant through the payment gateway and packages the information for delivery to the acquirer, ensuring that all necessary transactional data is present and valid; and
o Later transmits information back from the acquirer for delivery to the merchant to settle the transaction.

With the shopping cart, payment gateway and payment processor in place, merchants have all they need to offer convenient e-commerce solutions that deliver superior security and service. With a little research and education, merchants can find the best providers to accommodate their business needs and those of their consumers. It just makes sense—with online shopping projected to account for $116 billion, or 5 percent of all retail sales this year—e-commerce provides merchants an opportunity to make more money and succeed in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Erin Kroll is the PR/VAR marketing coordinator for e-onlinedata.

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The wait for the next PCI standard revision is almost over. Like so many companies, we really want a sneak peek at the newer version. And like so many companies, we’re waiting until the PCI Standard Community meeting in September to see it. Is it going to encompass major changes that are going to cause retailers to choke? I don’t think so.

The PCI Security Standards Council has been consistent with its guidance and public statement—no major overhauls to the standard, no new requirements added, but better clarification of some areas, and increased consistency with the interpretation of the requirements by QSAs. If we look at some things the council has done in 2008, they’ve already given us a few sneak peeks.

The PCI council released two information supplements in April, one on 11.3 Penetration Testing and one on 6.6 Web Application Firewall and source code review. We shouldn’t be surprised to see more details in the new standard around these areas. Both of these supplements give more clarification and guidance.

The PCI council also created special interest groups (SIG) to focus on specific areas of the standard. One of these is the wireless SIG. This is a good idea, and I hope to see advancements on the wireless side of the standard. Requiring companies to check once a quarter for wireless devices can be improved significantly. Once a quarter? That’s saying the bad guys have a chance to get caught once every 90 days. I’d like those odds improved a bit in our favor. Advice on what to do if a rogue access point is found would also help.

Overall, I will say I’m a fan of the PCI standard. If you compare it with other compliance regulations, you have to like it. The PCI standard is 17 pages long, written in English. And it gives the message clearly and concisely. It’s a good way for a company to create a security best practice foundation in their organization. An alternative is to use ISO 27001 or other frameworks and read through hundreds of pages written in legalese, and you’re still not quite sure what to do next. Give me PCI any day. It builds a good, strong foundation. Does it guarantee strong security? No, of course not. If it got that inflexible, everyone would complain that they couldn’t implement it. You can’t blame a weaker security posture on a compliance regulation. That’s like saying you blame the car when you run out of gas, obviously ridiculous.

The PCI standard is also a global standard that spans many industries beyond retail. With this, the PCI standard still hasn’t required major changes. Those are clear signs of best practice guidelines. So, the wait is almost over, and I for one am hoping it’s a bit underwhelming and not so exciting.

Terri Quinn-Andry is responsible for compliance solution development at Cisco Systems, Inc.

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There was much ado made about the current Olympics, specifically about how NBC was planning to bring the Olympics into the information age and allow advertisers to get an incredible insight into how viewers were using new media like broadband mobile and web video. I included several articles in the ERA e-Weekly Newsletter written by experts and intelligent pundits who know the space, and can probably rattle off a business plan to justify all of this in less than five minutes.

Of course all of that is very valuable, and as a marketing professional, I can thoroughly understand the appeal of getting more accurate and far-reaching metrics on how my media dollar is translating to eyeballs. It still tells me nothing about sales, but at least I can go to the suits and say that the share for our media buy was X points and that means Y households saw our messaging.

Since I am also a media consumer (and, germane to this rant, a sailor), I assumed that to back up this vast sell of the metrics, there would be a corresponding increase in the quality and breadth of coverage. This was based on the assertion that NBC was becoming a new media company and, while coverage on its broadcast and cable properties would be as it always has been (swimming, gymnastics, sprinting, volleyball and soccer); the doors of the vast media portal would swing wide to reveal a wealth of other sports including judo, rowing, badminton, sailing (of course), and the other 25 odd disciplines out there. Maybe NBC would even have deigned to cut away to the U.S. women’s sweep of the Saber competition in fencing once Michael Phelps had broken the Olympic record in his opening heat, or perhaps found a few seconds to squeeze in a mention that the all powerful Ben Ainsley had finished 10th in the Finn class in sailing. Even the synchronized swimming aficionados would have the opportunity to watch their event in its entirety! That is, if they couldn’t find some paint that was drying (just kidding!).

This would be the most complete Olympics coverage ever undertaken by a media entity since the invention of radio; a shining beacon of media convergence, television, the Internet and mobile, marching in lock step into the New Media Future—a beacon throwing out a light illuminating the Brave New World of convergence, offering consumers unparalleled access to information and a depth of content that would make the mind swim and sate even the most glutinous Olympic appetite! A glowing moment in media history that shows the whole world that America not only embraces the world and enjoys competing in it, but THIS is how you cover the Olympics, damnit! Take that, BBC!

And yet, as is so often true, the execution fell far short of the promise. Looking at the TV listing, I was not surprised to see soccer, volleyball, swimming, beach volleyball…and on CNBC on the Saturday morning of the Olympics’ opening week, believe it or not, paid programming. Meanwhile, the sailing video I watched live at 3 in the morning was just the Chinese media feed (not terrible camera work by the way) without any commentary or added value from NBC. (more…)

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