Does Search Get Too Much Credit?
Thanks to Chris Kobran for sending this AdWeek story to me via del.icio.us:
“Search is getting more credit than it deserves—that’s because if you go upstream from those clicks, a lot of users have been to the advertiser Web site before because they’ve been exposed to other advertising,” said Young Bean-Song, vp, analytics at Atlas.
Search advertising has become a dominant force in the online ad industry, thanks largely to Google’s popularity and its ability to deliver quantifiable results. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, search accounted for 40 percent of all Web ad spending in 2006.”
I won’t disclose our method of giving credit in our revenue attribution tracking, but last-click is not the methodology we’re deploying. Search can get overweighted in an online media plan, but it is, by far, the most predictable and efficient from an expense-to-revenue point of view.
I also have to question the impartiality of a metrics guy at Atlas — the Aquantive ad server acquired by Microsoft in May. Sorry, but Atlas has more to gain by discrediting search.
