James Green: You mentioned some of the time savings you get across Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Can you expound on some of the things you do to make your platform specific to each of the engines? In search, most people follow the rule: “do it for Google and everyone else will benefit.” There is a lack of search marketers who do a lot to specialize in Yahoo or Bing. What do you do to cater your technology to not just be a Google rollover to Yahoo and MSN, but more specifically to be the top of the top on Yahoo and MSN?

Marc Poirier: Well, it’s not that easy because you are right. Most people will spend almost all of their energy and time inside Google, and then everything else is an afterthought. That is going to change over time with the changes we are seeing with Yahoo and Microsoft working collaboratively, so we’ll see where that goes. But, you know, you are absolutely right, that is how people work, but it is probably not the way it should be. That is why when we developed our support for these engines, we always strive to have full support for everything that is supported by the API; so it’s not a matter of having the lowest common denominator, but more a matter of having as complete a support of everything. For example, Microsoft AdCenter’s keyword structure is completely different from that of Yahoo and Google. So, that poses a challenge if you are trying to unify everything because they have the same structure campaigns, ad groups, keywords, match types, but this is where the problem is—match types. Inside Google AdWords, a keyword has a match type and it can only have one, but in Microsoft AdCenter, a keyword can have 1, 2, or 3 match types, and so this is an example of a problem. How do you support that? How do you allow an ease of deployment from one to all the other ones? These are challenges we face. We try to do our best at sort of helping people along with these issues, but you are absolutely right; this is something that is problematic. And another issue is Google AdWords and their API rules. They are very strict. It is difficult to do whatever we want. There are very strict guidelines about how you can leverage the API when there are other search engines involved. They are very restrictive in any form of sharing or anything that could basically benefit the others. So, anything that could benefit Yahoo or Microsoft AdCenter, they have basically put some roadblocks that prevent us (or any of our competitors for that matter) to facilitate deployment from one engine to another too much. So, that is another issue that prevents speeding up in that direction of having one command center to do everything—the rules are quite stringent. There are ways around it, of course, but that’s what I mean. It’s always a struggle to try to provide as much value as possible without breaking the rules or offending the rules of API providers.

James Green: I saw on your Twitter feed the other day that you referenced a post on SEMGeek.com, who was talking about how Google is potentially better off without companies like Acquisio and third-party softwares, while discussing the positives and negatives. What is your take on that? How are Google and Yahoo made better by having an agency or SaaS software like Acquisio?

Marc Poirier: Well, we’re driving a lot of adoption. Some of our clients do very little paid search because their job as an agency is not to just do one ad network or just one search engine. Their job as an agency is to do what’s best for their customer and if that means they need to traffic across a multitude of search engines and social networks and display ad networks, then that’s their problem and that’s their business. That is what they need to do.       So, a lot of our clients (and this applies less to Google than it does Yahoo or MSN), but a lot of our clients will only do Google campaigns or do very little Yahoo and MSN before they start with Acquisio. We provide them with tools that facilitate doing all these other things and not being such a cumbersome task. It becomes more of an asset for them. They are able to sell them and they are happy to sell Yahoo and Microsoft AdCenter, rather than trying to avoid selling that stuff, because it’s just as time-consuming as AdWords and it just generates little income for the agency.  Providing them one place where they can easily monitor everything and have a single login to all their accounts is a huge benefit.

How do we benefit AdWords?  I think we drive more adoption for AdWords, as well. I wouldn’t say, because Google is so giant, that we are moving the needle at Google, but I can tell you we are moving the needle at Yahoo and at AdCenter. We have a lot of attention from these guys; they provide us tremendous support and are great, they’re all great, in fact. Google is very helpful, but I know for a fact we are making a difference in some of these businesses.

James Green: What do you see as the next big problem to solve in search and how do you hope that Acquisio will be able to provide a solution?

Marc Poirier: We’ve been focusing on paid search since the beginning because it’s a big problem and it takes time and effort, but there is a lot more. Our clients do a lot more than that and not just our clients, but any marketer online. You’ve got to step out of these comfort boundaries and get out of PPC and get into other forms of performance marketing. They are basically performance marketing companies, that’s what these guys are. Their business is to generate leads, generate awareness, whatever it is; paid search is just one of the channels they can use. In my opinion, social media and display advertising are becoming more and more accessible in an AdWords-like environment, in an auction environment where you can buy your media on demand and you control the price you want to pay. I feel that over the next 2-3 years, we’re going to see a big change in how people perceive performance marketing and they are going to integrate other channels. There are a lot of companies who only do paid search to generate leads and generate business for their clients. SEO, a lot of our clients do SEO, of course (and providing some level of support for that is important), but I think providing support for other media and the tracking that goes with that is key. I think this is where the industry is moving and definitely we want to be ahead out of the curve just a little bit and help our clients embrace the other channels.

James Green: That’s all we have for you. Thanks for taking time out of your day to talk with us. We hope you and your family have a happy holiday season. Thanks, Marc.

Tags: acquisio, interview, paid search, search leaders, sem, tool

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 10:45 pm and is filed under interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.