Paid Search Advertising Gets More Complicated In 2013

Matt Van Wagner wrote an article on search engine land that reported on the items discussed at the SMX East Conference last week. In summary (of the summary) Matt highlighted the following:

• "Sid Shah believes, and other panelists agreed, that mobile search clicks may account for as many as 20-25% of all search clicks in 2013"

• "Microsoft’s Craig MacDonald suggested that while mobile devices contribute incremental clicks and have their own specific use cases, tablets and desktop searches are “very, very similar” in spite of media reports to the contrary."

• "Kevin Lee and Chi-Chao Chang, on the other hand, argued that search behavior on tablets can be markedly different from desktops because of how, when and where people are using these devices."

• "AJ [Kohn] reported that for the first time ever, his analysis of comScore data shows a a year-over-year decrease in U.S. desktop searches across Google, Yahoo and Bing..."

• "Craig MacDonald told us to expect search engine targeting to keep evolving in 2013 from simple keyword, device, and location filters, to include more social and demographic data filters, too."

• "Tracking and attribution, unfortunately, may not get better in 2013, and may even get worse. As Sid Shah put it, not being able to track a conversion across devices is a huge blind spot."

So to put it mildly: search advertising is going to get more complicated (not less) in 2013. The increased pressure for targeting the individual without proper attribution techniques will continue to be the thorn in the side for the modern marketer.