Listen to Alex Cohen Interview

Marketing Manager at ClickEquations Alex Cohen Shares Search Strategy with Siftable

Alex Cohen: Yeah, but I think the bottom point I was trying to make is the search engines are creating tools that are convenient for the search engines. Click Equations is creating tools that work for your business. There are certain relationships that they’re not interested in exposing between data because it doesn’t serve their interest in expanding targeting and what you pay. Our goal is to make your paid search more profitable, which is part of their goal too, but they want to make their business more profitable, too.

James: And, in all fairness, it’s also your goal as well.

Alex Cohen: Yeah, exactly. It’s our goal as well.

James: I think that makes more sense, and that actually leads me to my next question. How would you feel that Google and Yahoo are made better by having an agency or a Saas software like Click Equations working with them? How do you see that relationship changing in the near future?

Alex Cohen: That’s what I’m writing about on Search Engine Watch right now. We, as the advertising community, need to demand from Google transparency and control. They’re taking our money and therefore, we have a say. They’ve spent all the money on the marketplace that we profit from, but they’re also profiting from our participation in that marketplace. We, as the advertising community, constantly need to be pushing the boundaries with Google and constantly need to be pressuring them to give us the level of transparency and control that we want. I think all the tools in our market, including Click Equations, help because they push Google to align themselves better with our business goals. If Google was offering all these things we were doing, there wouldn’t be a market for tools like ours, but they’re not because the way we serve the advertising market and community isn’t necessarily what serves Google’s purposes. That’s a good thing; it brings more diverse voices to be people and hopefully will increase our options and access to their market. What I think is a risk is Google is creating two universes: one where we all trust Google to manage our paid search, and one where we don’t. What I mean by that is, if you think of Google Product listing, which, for those who will be listening to and reading this who aren’t familiar, in Google Merchant Center you can upload a feed of products to show up in the Google Product search and show up in the general search results when somebody types in a related query—let’s say you sell blenders. In the Google Product listings, they’re taking that same feed and choosing when those image ads show up in a search for those related queries, but you can only get those image ads up for those searches if you are: one, a preferred provider—you have to have a relationship with Google, and two, those ads only display if you have an affiliate relationship with Google. They only show them on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis. The general advertising community cannot get access to those ads and we can’t bid on them. I think that’s dangerous, because essentially, we’re giving the keys of our kingdom to Google, and saying, “Here are our products, here’s what we’re willing to pay for them. You decide how best to market them.” They’re not letting anyone play in that marketplace forever.  Google is creating this wall, a wall where you give them control, and a wall where you don’t. We, as a community, to your earlier point, in the advertising community at large, need to call them out on this and demand that we get access to this level to this kind of ad format, that the conditions to be getting this level of ad format not be that we’re giving them all control and specific data about our business. That’s just not fair. They can make the rules how they want and we can say no, but the reality is they have 67% market share in the U.S. and 87% in the U.K. and that comes with a level of responsibility and accountability.

James: I think you’re absolutely right. It definitely requires us as a community that we do more and ask more of Google and Yahoo. From that standpoint, what is your sense of how Google views companies such as Click Equations?

Alex Cohen: With intense interest. I think they want to know what we’re up to and want to see how people are using the system, right, because that may help them understand how to they want to change platforms. They started to reach out to the community, in that they’re offering free API credits for API preferred partners, which means you have to meet a certain threshold criteria of tactics and control that you support in your system. On the flip side, though, their API support system is consistently difficult to get good feedback from. They aren’t really good about dedicating a level of support as they are on the advertiser side, which you just can’t help.

James: Do you think that they make it difficult in order to increase the barrier to entry, or because they just don’t like agency-side API access?

Alex Cohen: I don’t have any conspiracy theories; I don’t think that they’re trying to make it difficult. I think that they want more people on the Adwords platform because they want data. It’s of tremendous value for Google to have your data, which keywords are more profitable. They could figure out ways to increase competition, or maybe they’ll enter that market themselves. You’ve seen them do that with comparison ads with things like home loans or credit cards. Or they’ll use that data to create tools like Google Product listings that rely on conversion data. They couldn’t possibly offer that kind of tool unless they were able to predict a certain query were able to convert on a certain site, right? By having that data, they can offer these new sort of conversion-based tools that they couldn’t offer before. In this case, they’re creating a wall where they don’t offer that access to anyone in general or over the API in specific. I think that, one, there’s an actual business cost of sharing stuff in the API—it takes time, it takes resources, it takes money, it takes support—so it’s just a reality of what they can offer and what they can’t. I think it’s also an opportunity cost, which is it’s a benefit to them to have your data and use that data to create Google-centered managements offerings.

James: One last question: what’s next for Click Equations? Where do you see yourselves evolving in the next two to three years?

Alex Cohen: That’s a really good question. I don’t think you’ll talk to a vendor in our space who doesn’t believe that the world is becoming search-like. What I mean is increased level of transparency, increased level of control, increased level of bidding, more real-time decision making. There are a lot of channels that are starting to mimic search. Display is becoming like that, largely because of Google. I-ads, Twitter ads, whatever they happen to look like. There are many channels that are starting to mimic the search model. The same level of challenges—visibility, prioritization, simplification, automation—are going to exist in all of those channels. That level of data will offer opportunities for us to be able to do better marketing mix modeling, to be able to say which channels deserve credit and where we should spend our money to be most effective. Those are kind of macro trends that are cutting across this industry and cutting across vendors that anyone who’s playing in this space would be smart to pay attention to.

James: Great. I appreciate your time, Alex. These have all been good answers.

Alex Cohen: Thank you, James. I really appreciate it. I appreciate your time.

You can follow up with Alex @digitalalex on Twitter and read his articles on Search Engine Watch. It’s been great talking to you, Alex. I look forward to hearing great things from and about you.

Thank you. If I can help in any way, please let me know.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 at 10:14 pm and is filed under interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.