In my ongoing coverage of SES San Jose I present another interview with Ted West, CEO of Looksmart. Ted is speaking at this years event – more information can be found here.
1. Can you tell me about your background and a little bit about LookSmart?
LookSmart is a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising technology company that leverages and licenses its AdCenter platform to operate high-quality search and contextual advertising networks. LookSmart does not own or operate a consumer search engine, such as Yahoo! and Google. We provide companies like Ask, and eZanga with customized ad serving solutions via the AdCenter platform. The AdCenter is a fully white labeled ad serving platform delivered to global publishers and ad networks with managed services that collectively create opportunities for text-advertising revenue. Through our extensive, monitored ad network, which includes syndicated publishers and search partners like CNET’s Search.com, Kontera, Adhere Interactive, InfoSpace (Dogpile, Webcrawler) and many others, LookSmart offers advertisers the ability to engage more audiences. The company has been managing large, complex ad networks for 12 years and averages monthly search and contextual queries of 22 billion as of May 31, 2008.
As for me, I have been in the Internet and online advertising business for more than 10 years and have spent 26 years as an entrepreneur. I founded and built Network 1.0, which sold to Softbank in 1996, and formed Softbank Interactive Marketing along with Ziff-Davis Publishing Company and Interactive Marketing Inc. I also built RealNames, which worked very closely with Microsoft and provided direct address-bar navigation. As CEO and president of LookSmart, I have been very focused on building upon and growing LookSmart’s current position in the Search Advertising Network space.
2. Why should SEM’s look at alternative search engines?
Successful SEMs buy search advertising media for their clients in order to achieve a positive return on investment. In some cases, the SEM buys millions of keywords for a single campaign and measure the effectiveness of the price paid for each keyword on a daily basis. The major search engines provide SEMs with a significant amount of “inventory,” but often the prices required to win the auction are high, which affects the economics of the campaign. Alternative search engines are a logical way to expand those buys at more reasonable prices, but because those search engines have limited traffic, therefore, the time required to buy, manage and monitor campaigns on those engines is a significant drain on SEM resources. Search advertising networks, which aggregate niche search players into a single “one order, one bill” system, overcome the resource management hurdles and allow search marketers to spread traffic risk for their advertisers across multiple channels – to help manage risk in a consolidating market. At LookSmart, we work hard to take the pain away from the process and to deliver superior results. We do this through technology with our widely-adopted API and ability to quickly load millions of keywords into our system and through close relationships with SEMs, to manage their campaigns on our network with best-in-class, human-driven service.
3. What strategies and best practices can a marketer employ to get the most benefit out of using a multitude of different search engines to advertise on?
One of the best strategies for marketers to adopt is to keep an open mind and to not let the perceived challenges of “going beyond Google” dissuade them from exploring available options in the marketplace. From our perspective, the most successful marketers leverage their own search advertising technologies, by integrating those technologies into the search networks. Therefore, search marketers should look for search advertising networks that can make the integration easy for them. Search marketers should depend upon the search network to “do the heavy lifting” associated with campaign management and optimization. At LookSmart, we have been very successful in delivering an open API to the search marketer, so they can easily and quickly leverage our scale and results using their own proprietary tools. In addition, we have a commitment to continuous improvement of the customer’s results on our network. Our commitment is backed by a dedicated team of optimization professionals, who build “custom distribution channels” for the advertiser, and work closely with the advertiser to manage and optimize the performance of their campaigns.
4. What is the latest “flash in the pan” meme in search marketing?
The industry has been buzzing about various pricing models, including CPA (cost-per-acquisition) and Cost Per View (CPV). The CPA model is based on the advertiser only paying when a desired action is made by the user, typically a purchase. As budgets are tightening, the idea of a CPA has been bounced around to maximize campaign costs because the publisher takes most of the risk out of the equation for the marketer. While LookSmart adheres to a CPC (cost-per-click) model, it does provide a personalized approach for advertisers that allows SEMs to maximize the ROI of their campaign while allowing publishers to be fairly compensated for hosting ads. For its part, LookSmart will suggest keyword expansions and optimized keyword CPCs to increase performance and tailor traffic to custom-fit each campaign to help customers reach strong ROI.
5. What is LookSmart doing differently from other alternative search engines?
It is important to underscore that LookSmart is not a consumer search engine, but rather a search advertising network. As a search advertising network, LookSmart delivers quality results in an extensive, monitored environment for advertisers. What makes us stand apart is our long-standing commitment to the quality of our network. LookSmart is one of the five founding members of the IAB click measurement panel and has a continuing dedication to safeguarding against click fraud. In fact, LookSmart was one of the first ad networks to make a major move to root out click fraud in 2004. That was a major step for our company, but one that was worth taking to ensure the quality of our network. We have remained committed since that time, and have grown because our customers have grown and taken us with them. Battling click fraud remains an ongoing effort for us, and we have improved continuously over the past four years. We have continually refined our testing practices including cutting traffic from our network that doesn’t perform for the advertiser, while at the same time adding new partners to the network to ensure its quality and forward growth.
6. What is one area or vertical LookSmart is concentrating on?
LookSmart focuses on a number of areas, from travel and telecommunications to sports and entertainment, but no matter the vertical, LookSmart is focused on growing our share of paid clicks in the Search Advertising Network market. Our dedication to quality, something we are always focusing on, will help us in this endeavor.
