'Net Features : kenshoo

Kenshoo and CityGrid Team Up for a Local Partnership

Allison Howen — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 19:15:00 GMT

A new partnership between two local marketing platforms aims to help brands better manage, monitor and optimize their local listings and ad campaigns.

Digital marketing provider Kenshoo has teamed up with local content network CityGrid in a move that will help marketers manage and optimize ads on the CityGrid ad network within the Kenshoo Local platform.

The partnership makes Kenshoo Local the first integrated local platform that is capable of directly managing CityGrid Places and reporting on CityGrid traffic alongside search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns. This means that marketers can leverage Kenshoo Local’s automated reporting suite to create and analyze CityGrid and SEM campaigns side-by-side. Moreover, the Kenshoo/CityGrid offering provides additional benefits for local marketers including ease of onboarding, bulk campaign management, enhanced reporting and optimization across all SEM and local listings in a single dashboard.

“SMBs and multi-location brands like major retailers want more phone calls and in-store traffic, and plugging Kenshoo Local into CityGrid’s hyper local and mobile traffic source enables our clients to achieve these goals and offers opportunities for more holistic optimization,” said Will Martin-Gill, general manager of Kenshoo Search. “This partnership plays to the key strengths of our companies: CityGrid’s leading local network and Kenshoo’s leading user experience for campaign creation, reporting, analysis and optimization.”

Get In Front of Google PLAs

Amberly Dressler — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 15:59:00 GMT

Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs) continue to generate nearly 1.5 times the click-through rate (CTR) of regular text ads and convert 23 percent better according to Kenshoo's 2012 Global Online Retail Holiday Shopping Report.

And according to Jefferies Equity Research, Kenshoo is the top PLA provider at 10 percent of total PLAs deployed, twice the number of the second-highest company. As such, Kenshoo announced updated functionality for Kenshoo Enterprise and Kenshoo Editor, including enhanced support for Google AdWords, Google Product Listings Ads, as well as the Yahoo! Bing Network.

Kenshoo Enterprise now features increased support for PLAs with enhanced reporting capabilities and Google Merchant Center integration.

“Kenshoo helped retailers get out in front of Google PLAs with the industry’s first custom PLA bid algorithms and, as Google Shopping moves to a paid model in markets across Europe and Asia, our clients can fully capture the opportunity,” said William Martin-Gill, general manager, Kenshoo Search. “With our agile release cycle, Kenshoo continues to keep clients ahead of the competition with more enhancements to improve performance from PLAs, search and digital marketing across the board.”

Additionally, Kenshoo clients can also leverage Kenshoo Editor to activate Kenshoo Enterprise’s new functionality. Kenshoo Editor is a cross-channel desktop editor that enables bulk campaign management in a “copy and paste” environment, reducing time spent on complex tasks.

“Kenshoo Editor is really convenient for making bulk changes across multiple channels and ensuring proper tracking,” said Casee Konick, paid search manager at Home Away, an online marketplace for vacation rentals.

Social Ads, Analytics Come to Shoutlet 6.0

Allison Howen — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 17:37:00 GMT

Shoutlet just unleashed a host of new enhancements for its platform, which make it easier than ever for users to build, launch and analyze social marketing campaigns.

Shoutlet 6.0 includes tools for social ads, analytics, contests and social listening. Additionally, the cloud-based social marketing platform has partnered with Kenshoo Social in order to provide marketers with better visibility into how their paid, owned and earned media drive conversions and social Web traffic.

Learn about how the new partnership and features help marketers design, execute and manage comprehensive social marketing campaigns below:

Social Ads – Social marketers can leverage this feature to create, publish and promote Facebook page posts. Additionally, the platform’s integration with Kenshoo Social provides access to analytics that can help users more accurately forecast and measure social campaigns.

Social Listening – This feature gives marketers the ability to visualize and track conversations that are happening across social sites, blogs and online news sites. Moreover, marketers can dive deeper into conversations by accessing Klout scores for influencer metrics.

Social Contests – Clients can schedule, launch and publish an unlimited number of contests and sweepstakes on the Web with this feature. Furthermore, Social Canvas allows marketers to customize every aspect of the contest's design. Marketers can also monitor views, votes, and entries to help them build a more valuable data set for customer social profiles.

Social Analytics – Shoutlet's Social Analytics easily integrate with leading Web analytics tools such as Google Analytics, IBM Digital Analytics, Omniture, and Webtrends.

"Brands, marketers and agencies are constantly looking for the newest tools and metrics to help drive not only engagement, but also revenue," said Jason Weaver, CEO of Shoutlet. "With Shoutlet 6.0 additions of Social Ads, Social Analytics, Social Contests, and Social Listening, we are giving brands everything they need to transform their complicated marketing projects into an easily managed process that captures opportunities and data to help execute intelligent, successful campaigns. Shoutlet's DIY approach is the answer for brands looking to achieve uncomplicated, yet sophisticated, social marketing."

Shout-Worthy Social On the Scene

Amberly Dressler — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 16:30:00 GMT

Brands, marketers and agencies are constantly looking for the newest tools and metrics to not only help drive engagement, but also revenue.

With those needs in mind, Shoutlet, a cloud-based social marketing platform, announced a major update to its platform, Shoutlet 6.0.

"With Shoutlet 6.0 additions of Social Ads, Social Analytics, Social Contests and Social Listening, we are giving brands everything they need to transform their complicated marketing projects into an easily managed process that captures opportunities and data to help execute intelligent, successful campaigns,” said Jason Weaver, CEO of Shoutlet. “Shoutlet's do-it-yourself approach is the answer for brands looking to achieve uncomplicated, yet sophisticated, social marketing."

Additionally, Shoutlet has also partnered with Kenshoo Social, a digital marketing technology company, to provide marketers with greater visibility into how paid, owned and earned media attribute to sales conversions and social Web traffic.

“The integration of Kenshoo Social and Shoutlet offers marketers the unique ability to monitor a consumer’s path to action following each interaction with the brand,” said Weaver, CEO of Shoutlet. “This detail enables advertisers and agencies to identify and attribute successful activity and maximize ROI of both paid and owned social media campaigns.”

For Kenshoo Social clients, who run multi-channel campaigns, this means they can now examine a more complete picture of their brands’ interaction with consumers and assess the value driven by owned and paid social media.

“Marketers who better understand this interplay can more effectively outperform competitors, avoid costly errors,” said Sivan Metzger, General Manager of Kenshoo Social.

Along with the new partnership, Kenshoo Social also released a beta of Kenshoo Social 2.0.

Search Marketing Revenue Up & Other Holiday Insights

Amberly Dressler — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 19:35:00 GMT

As shopping continues to migrate online, U.S. retailers saw their biggest fluctuations of the season to date on what most now consider to be the biggest days for online shopping: Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday.

That’s according to Kenshoo CMO Aaron Goldman whose digital marketing company recently unveiled performance data for U.S. retail search engine marketing programs during the holiday season to date.

Interestingly, online sales revenue driven by search marketing for the period beginning Nov. 1 and ending Nov. 26 increased 42 percent year-over-year (YoY) while these retailers spent 28 percent more YoY. Also important to note is that Thanksgiving Day saw the highest YoY increase in average order value (AOV), up 19 percent.

Other key findings include:

• Black Friday showed lower YoY revenue growth compared to other key days but still delivered a 24 percent increase.

• Cyber Monday saw the biggest increase in YoY impressions and clicks.

• For the November holiday season period to date, conversion rates showed double-digit growth YoY.

Kenshoo retailers, according to Goldman, were able to capitalize on increased demand during these key dates by leveraging Kenshoo’s advanced automation tools and flexible bid management policies to keep promotions in sync with inventory and control cost-per-click rates.

The rest of the YOY search marketing results for key dates during the holiday period can be found here.

Google's PLAs Get a Boost

Allison Howen — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 20:20:00 GMT

Google's Product Listing Ads (PLAs) are proving to be a valuable advertisement option for merchants; however, launching a PLA campaign through Kenshoo may prove to be even more valuable.

This is because the digital marketing solutions provider analyzed more than 270 million global impressions and clicks that were aggregated from merchants managing their Google PLAs through the Kenshoo platform, and found that most retailers increased sales revenue by 607 percent during the first month following the release of Kenshoo’s new PLA support. This success also led to an increase of spending on these advertisements by 348 percent.

In fact, although Kenshoo’s data found that Google PLAs typically outperform text search ads in many ways – including providing merchants with a 73 percent higher click-through rate, a 35 percent higher conversion rate, a 36 percent lower average cost-per-click rate and a 46 percent higher return on ad spend rate. The data also revealed that merchants who leverage Kenshoo’s PLA bid policies tend to boost their results even further – with an additional 4 percent increase on click-through rates, an additional 34 percent increase in conversion rates, an additional 31 percent decrease in average cost-per-click rates and an additional 89 percent increase in return on ad spend.

"Retailers using Kenshoo to manage PLAs saw impressive results leading to large increases in spend, and we expect these trends to continue in 2013 and beyond as marketers get more savvy using tools like Kenshoo to drive tangible results," said Will Martin-Gill, General Manager of Kenshoo Enterprise and Kenshoo Local. "Marketers should consider these metrics when determining their campaign goals, especially since site traffic and sales will only continue to increase as the holiday season nears and they seek to engage consumers and expand visibility for their products."

Kenshoo's PLA enhancements, which were released in September, include product-level tracking, reporting and management for Google Shopping as well as a custom PLA bid policy. The Kenshoo algorithm collects data based on historical performance and predicts PLA revenue per click to set bids. Additionally, new Kenshoo reports, such as the Fusion Report for Product Targets, provide users with insights into the performance of each PLA placement and its impact on conversions, while the path-to-conversion reports show the relationship between PLAs and other channels so that merchants can better optimize their campaigns and bidding decisions. The platform also provides a negative keyword suggestion report for PLA campaigns in order to help prevent irrelevant clicks, reduce costs and improve quality scores.

Men Are Cheap, Facebook Ad Metrics Prove

Amberly Dressler — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 17:30:00 GMT

After analyzing 65 billion ad impressions in a 12-month period, Kenshoo Social, in partnership with Resolution Media, found significant differences in the effectiveness of ads targeting men and women.

Despite women representing the majority of Facebook users, the study found it’s cheaper to advertise to men. Men are not only exposed to and click on more Facebook ads, but ads targeting men also cost less through the cost-per-thousand impressions ($0.16 male/$0.20 female) and cost-per-click ($0.51 male / $0.68 female) pricing models.

Additionally, the study, entitled Social Media Insights: Men are Cheap, found that ads targeting men achieved superior Exposure Rates, reaching a larger percentage of their unique audiences. Marketers can leverage this data in a variety of ways.

“Men and women are attracted to different ads, so marketers need to create custom ad copy and landing pages for their target audience,” said Todd Herrold, senior director, product marketing for Kenshoo Social. “Marketers should adjust their bidding strategies to ensure they don’t overspend trying to reach men who can be reached effectively at lower rates.”

Herrold also said that small, highly-targeted ad segments enable more relevant and cost-effective Facebook advertising; so Kenshoo Social recommends advertisers create very granular ad segments defined by gender but also age, demographics and interests.

“The most successful advertisers do this at scale to deliver the necessary campaign volume without sacrificing relevance or wasting impressions,” said Herrold. “We learned in ‘Metrics that Matter’ that an ad Frequency of six is optimal, and people tune out ads they’ve seen seven or more times.”

SEO Integration Comes to Kenshoo

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 19:00:00 GMT

Digital marketing software provider Kenshoo has launched a new version (4.7) of its Kenshoo Enterprise product. The platform now includes organic and paid search reporting, and new rules-based bidding policies for Chinese search portal Baidu.

Kenshoo Enterprise 4.6 integrates SEO metrics (through an integration with SEO technology providers including Rio SEO, BrightEdge and Covario) into SEM campaign performance reports. This will provide marketers a way to analyze organic and paid results in side-by-side comparisons, and take action to optimize search programs holistically.

Kenshoo also introduced new rules-based bidding policies for Baidu such as “Increase Profit” and “Control CPA”. The platform upgrade also now offers users mobile and tablet device targeting for Yahoo! Japan, additional adCenter keyword match type support for Bing/Yahoo, and quite a bitm more that is worth a closer look.

“Marketers are increasingly executing paid and organic search in an integrated fashion to improve overall results,” said William Martin-Gill, general manager, Kenshoo Enterprise. “With Kenshoo Enterprise 4.7, clients can determine the most cost-effective ways to manage individual keywords or portfolios through optimal paid and organic placement.”

Social Metrics to Watch: Exposure and Frequency

Allison Howen — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 12:27:00 GMT

Advertising on Facebook is currently a hot topic due to GM’s public pulling of its ads from the social network, which led many marketers to wonder if advertising on the social site is a smart move.

After a year-long study, Resolution Media and Kenshoo are providing marketers with insights on the effectiveness of Facebook ads. The companies analyzed global data spanning 65 billion Facebook ad impressions and 20 million Facebook ad clicks over a wide range of brands and categories – including entertainment, finance, retail and insurance.

“Social media has quickly become one of the preferred channels for brands, and when done right, can foster meaningful relationships between brands and consumers in ways that were never before possible,” says Alan Osetek, president of Resolution Media. “The purpose of this study was to define what ‘doing it right’ means in terms of measureable actions and outcomes, and giving marketers a model for demonstrating effectiveness.”

The study reveals that Sponsored Stories and Post Ads receive about double the click-through rate (CTR) of Social and Web Ads, which means that ads with social context resonate better with audience members likely due to a personal connection. Additionally, Post Ads are prone to draw more attention because they often feature special offers and are larger than normal ads.

The data also shows that higher CTR leads to lower average cost-per-click (CPC) rates, with Post Ads averaging a CPC of $0.24, Sponsored Stories averaging $0.46, Web Ads averaging $0.59 and Social Ads averaging the highest CPC at $0.78. But for advertisers that choose the cost-per-thousand (CPM) model, Sponsored Stories are the most expensive ad type – averaging a CPM of $0.31 compared to Web Ads that averaged the lowest CPM of $0.18.

However, some of the most interesting insights of the study regarded a new metric called “Exposure Rate,” which measures targeted engagement on Facebook. This metric determines the percentage of the target audience that a brand is reaching and exposing its message to. The study reveals that high exposure rates correlate to high CTR and conversion rates, with the ads that reached 76-100 percent of their intended audience also receiving an average CTR of .038 percent and conversion rate of 31.92 percent. In comparison, ads that only reached 0-25 percent of the intended audience resulted in an average CTR of 0.028 percent and a conversion rate of 11.81 percent.

But the study also notes that high exposure rates don’t guarantee success, because brands should balance this metric with frequency, which is the amount of times the average Facebook user has been exposed to a specific advertisement. The data from the study shows that there is a conversion rate drop-off of 32 percent when ads are shown to consumers more than six times. This means that the ad is being exposed to the user too frequently, which results in consumers ignoring it. Additionally, the CTR averaged 39 percent lower after the sixth impression.

According to the study, one way that marketers can optimize exposure rate and frequency is by maintaining a CPC above the maximum recommended bid. This is because the study’s data showed that the exposure rate was higher for ads with CPCs that were greater than the maximum recommended bid, driving the average exposure rate up by 11.5 percent. Additionally, the data showed that frequency dropped when the CPC was above the maximum recommended bid, by an average of 1.7 exposures.

“With new channels and ad formats come new tracking capabilities," says Sivan Metzger, general manager of Kenshoo Social. "And with new tracking capabilities come new data points. With new data points come new insights. And with new insights come new key performance indicators. This study is the first in a series from Kenshoo and Resolution Media to surface KPIs and help brands define a new measurement paradigm for improved social media investments.”

Kenshoo Launches Enterprise Certification Program

Linc Wonham — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 15:30:00 GMT

Digital marketing software provider Kenshoo has launched a certification program through its new partnership with the Online Marketing Institute (OMI).

The Kenshoo Enterprise certification program includes more than 20 on-demand instructional videos created by Kenshoo client service team members, as well as a comprehensive exam that tests each individual’s knowledge of the Kenshoo Enterprise solution.

This is the first time that a company-exclusive training and certification program has been offered through the OMI e-learning platform. Kenshoo offers its training and certification program exclusively to Kenshoo Enterprise clients, and those who pass the certification exam also become eligible for discounts and three free electives from the OMI’s extensive offering of digital marketing training.

“OMI provides the highest quality educational content on a wide range of best practices and top tools for digital marketers,” says Aaron Kahlow, founder and CEO of OMI. “Our partnership with Kenshoo represents the first of its kind for OMI, and we’re excited to help Kenshoo deliver an elite training curriculum to Kenshoo Enterprise clients.”

Kenshoo Portfolio Optimizer Transforms Bid Management

Linc Wonham — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 18:30:00 GMT

Digital marketing software provider Kenshoo has released version 3.0 of its model-based bid policies under the new name Kenshoo Portfolio Optimizer (KPO).

KPO compiles historical data and builds hundreds of thousands of statistical models to forecast the impact of each bid change on a search marketer’s entire keyword portfolio. In turn, KPO adjusts bids to maximize profit, revenue, conversion, traffic or other goals set by the advertiser.

“Many of the world’s most sophisticated advertisers have been running trials of KPO and seeing immediate results,” says Kenshoo CEO Yoav Izhar-Prato. “Our algorithm’s proprietary decision-making process has completely transformed the practice of bid management and lowered the barrier to entry for marketers. KPO makes budget planning more efficient and bottom-line results more attainable within enterprise, local and mobile search advertising.”

The solution helped All-Star Directories, one of the Web’s fastest-growing publishers of online and career-school directories, achieve an 87-percent increase in average daily profit on its Natural Healers site since implementing KPO.

“Kenshoo Portfolio Optimizer automates our bid management and enables much more dynamic optimization than we could perform on our own,” says Ryan Bruss, search engine marketing manager for All-Star Directories. “It immediately reduced our costs per click significantly, and with constant conversion rates, profits have been consistently higher. The new algorithm figured out where we could reduce bids, and it boosted profit 87 percent.”

Version 3.0 is powered by a self-learning algorithm that incorporates custom seasonality information to anticipate jumps in traffic and conversion rate around promotions or important holidays. The KPO process builds models for keywords with little or no performance data and re-evaluates keyword clusters every day to maximize impact on the portfolio goal.

Visit Kenshoo.com/KenshooPortfolioOptimizer for more information.

Facebook Ad Budgets Grow Faster than Paid Search

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 03:00:00 GMT

Digital marketing software provider Kenshoo has unveiled some interesting growth metrics based on analysis of more than 100 billion ads delivered on Facebook through its Kenshoo Social platform.

Kenshoo customers spent 109 percent more on Facebook in Q4 of 2011 than they did in the whole of Q3. While much of that can be attributed to the holiday, what is interesting about the increase is that it compared very favorably to search channels (Google, Bing, and Yahoo) that, in aggregate, saw a paid search ad budget growth of just 27 percent globally quarter-over-quarter.

“Brands using Kenshoo Social to manage Facebook ads saw impressive response rates leading to large increases in advertising spend that dwarfed paid search budget growth in the 4th quarter," says Aaron Goldman, chief marketing officer of Kenshoo. "We see these trends continuing in 2012 and beyond as the Facebook ad ecosystem expands and marketers get more savvy using tools like Kenshoo Social to drive tangible results.”

The Kenshoo analysis also revealed that ad impressions grew by 47 percent in Q4 vs. Q3 2011. Consumers are clicking more as Facebook ads are gaining acceptance too, with clicks growing by 105 percent in Q4 vs. Q3 2011.

Online Retail Search Spend - Holiday 2011

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:30:00 GMT

Digital marketing software provider Kenshoo released some interesting data from its annual Online Retail Holiday Shopping Report.

The findings, which focus on the week before Christmas, were based on more than 25 billion total search advertising impressions, nearly 300 million clicks and over 7 million online sales transactions. That's quite the data set, people.

According to Kenshoo, online retail revenue drive by search advertising increased 24 percent year-over-year, with online retail search ad spend increasing at 39 percent year-over-year.

"The pace of online shopping in the U.S. continued to surge all the way through Christmas this year,” said Aaron Goldman, chief marketing officer at Kenshoo. "By and large, retailers anticipated the demand and increased paid search budgets while consumers responded in kind with their clicks and their cash.”

Holiday Marketing Update from Kenshoo

Allison Howen — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:00:00 GMT

The early holiday numbers are in, which has led digital marketing software provider Kenshoo to unveil its 2011 Online Retail Holiday Shopping Report.

Key findings from the report include:

Holiday revenue that is driven by search advertising increased 22 percent year over year (YoY), while average order size grew 5 percent.
Search advertising budgets increased by 29 percent YoY throughout the season, and average cost per click increased 9 percent, but overall return on advertising spending (ROAS) was $5.22.
Search advertising conversion rates on Thanksgiving increased 28 percent YoY and sales revenue grew 40 percent.
Search advertising impressions decreased 9 percent YoY during the 5 days from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday; however, total clicks increased 16 percent.
Overall search advertising click-through rates for the holiday season increased 11 percent YoY.

Some tips for online advertisers during the remainder of the holiday season include the following:

Focus on quality as keyword costs increase.
Capitalize on timely opportunities by scheduling budgets and bids.
Connect data sources to understand how paid search influences – and is influenced by – other media.
Hold some holiday budget back for post-Christmas spending, which allows advertisers to take advantage of less competition and consumers' focus on returns and gift card spending.

Kenshoo Releases Local SEM Solution

Linc Wonham — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:00:00 GMT

Kenshoo has announced the public release of Kenshoo Local 2.0 on the consolidated Kenshoo Universal Platform.

Kenshoo Local is designed for companies that serve high volumes of small to medium-sized businesses, including agencies, traditional media publishers, directories and online resellers. Kenshoo Local also aims to help regional, national and global advertisers with many different locations, dealers or franchises.

Among the upgrades included in Kenshoo Local 2.0 are new onboarding and campaign creation tools, support for Facebook, Baidu, and Yandex, multiple conversion event optimization, dimension and category tagging, customizable online reporting dashboards and flexible scheduled email reports.

Visit KenshooLocal.com for more information about Kenshoo Local 2.0.