By Duncan Parry

Last year I wrote about the UK Information Commissioner Office’s efforts to enact the EU ePrivacy Directive, and the “year’s grace” granted to brands to help them comply.

May 26^th, 2012 is Cookie Day – the day the grace period ends. Whilst the ICO isn’t going to start breaking down doors and issuing fines the day after the grace period ends, brands need to make sure they have taken steps to comply – and continue to do so.

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By John Barham

EU bailouts. Stagnating political action. UK unemployment at a 17 year high. 2012 is not looking good for those recently out of university who want to grab themselves a rung on the job ladder. However there is a growing industry in the UK that is screaming out for educated, talented individuals who are looking to start their careers. Digital marketing is huge, yet I can’t imagine it appearing on the radar of many non-marketing graduates. There is an industry right under your nose every time you use the internet to search or visit social sites. PPC (Pay per Click) is just one of the many disciplines that sits under the umbrella of digital marketing and, like the other channels, it continues to grow in the UK and other markets.

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By Duncan Parry, Search Engine Watch, 27th January 2012

After a year’s delay, Microsoft adCenter will start to power the PPC results on Yahoo UK in Q2 of 2012. Discussion of its potential for success aside, here are some useful links and an action plan for preparing UK campaigns.

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By Duncan Parry, Search Engine Watch, January 6th 2012

Predictions are popping up everywhere as the New Year begins. Instead of producing another list of things that are likely to happen, here are the five things I’d like to see happen in 2012 but in reality probably won’t.

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The road to Barcelona sadly came to an end for The Raging Bulls 5 a side footy team last week, although they bowed out with their heads held high.  Since September our budding starlets have been competing in the Yahoo! Premier League agency tournament battling against other Search departments.  With the winners rewarded with a trip to Barcelona for two nights fun and tickets to watch Messi and Co. at the Nou Camp the tournament has been enjoyable with some hard fought battles, memorable goals and silky skills along the way.    

After squeezing into the semi-finals on the last day of the season with a last minute goal The Raging Bulls were unfortunately beaten 7-2 by tournament favourites OMD.  Despite going down to a heavy defeat to end their hopes of partying on Las Ramblas The Raging Bulls have had an entertaining first season with some memorable moments along the way… 

Highlights of the season:

• An unstoppable Ollie Bishop scoring 5 against MPG, knocking down their keeper and defender in the process of one goal.
• Dan McIntosh scoring the winning goal with almost the last kick off the game against Unique to send us through to the semi-finals.
• Mark Joseph and Gareth Owen combining for goal of the tournament against OMD (well that’s what we’re claiming anyway!)

 Well done to all those that took part.

Top L-R: Gareth Owen, Warren Dell, Mark Joseph, Robert Wilde, Ollie Bishop

Bottom L-R: Daniel McIntosh, James Robins, Jorge Anastasiu

Ex- Head of Account Management UK and Ireland at Yahoo moves to Australia to head up Steak

LONDON 21 October 2010 – Steak, the digital marketing services agency, announces the appointment of Nick Gill as Managing Director of Steak Australia. Based in Melbourne, Gill will head up the full service digital agency team offering SEM, SEO and integrated digital media for their client base including Red Group Retail (Borders, Angus & Robertson, Whitcoulls), Big W, Best Western, Betfair and Thrifty. Nick will replace Martin Carlill who has worked for Steak Group (UK and Australia) for just over five years.

Nick joins from Yahoo! UK & Ireland, where he was Head of Account Management, responsible for a team of over 60, providing integrated display, search, mobile and video marketing solutions to Yahoo!’s largest advertisers, generating revenue in excess of £50 million a year.  Previously, Nick was appointed by Yahoo! Search Marketing in 2006 to lead the sales and account management team for the launch of Yahoo!’s global search advertising platform.

Born in Melbourne, Nick moved to the UK in 2001 and began his online career at QXL.com, after which, he joined Kelkoo, Europe’s leading online price comparison site, in 2003.  Kelkoo was acquired by Yahoo! For €540 million, by which time Nick had been promoted to head of Sales leading a team responsible for the management of some of the UK’s largest businesses including retailing  juggernauts Curry’s, Comet and John Lewis.

Oliver Bishop, co-founder and CEO of Steak comments, “I would like to thank Martin wholeheartedly for his dedication in running the Steak office, building our proposition in Melbourne, and his work with us in the UK.  We sincerely wish him all the best in his next venture.  We would also like to welcome Nick to Steak, he has the wealth of knowledge and experience in the digital sector which will take Steak Australia to the next stage.  We are excited that he’s joined us.”

Nick Gill, Managing Director of Steak Australia adds, “I have been fortunate to work in the UK at time when the industry was experiencing extraordinary growth and creativity, I’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to return to Australia, and I’m delighted I can do this through the Steak brand; and I look forward to developing the business further.”

Recent account wins for Steak in London includes comparethemarket.com and DSGi the specialist retailing group for Currys, Dixons.co.uk and PC World.

Steak’s Raging Bulls have made a winning start to the inaugural Yahoo! Premier League season.  The 5 a side competition sees 12 agencies battling it out over 2 groups  for the right to be crowned the first ever Ad League Champions and our very own Rooneys and Ronaldos have picked up two wins from the opening two games. 

 After a convincing 9-2 victory over Unique in the season opener things were a lot tougher against I-Spy with Steak leaving it late to score three times and seal a 6-3 victory in a hotly contested game with passions running high.  The team’s 100% record will be on the line against the tournament hosts Yahoo! in a fortnight as they look to build on their fine start.

By Duncan Parry, Search Engine Watch, July 30, 2010

The Yahoo-Bing search alliance is gathering momentum. Watching this coverage from the U.K., where Google has close to 90 percent market share, I can’t help asking: will the deal succeed for both parties — and what does success look like?

Focusing on the Numbers

For Yahoo, the obvious win is cost saving — no longer employing staff or maintaining systems to process billions of searches a year and monetize them. We’ve already seen several waves of layoffs from Yahoo, including search staff.

For Bing, revenue is the win. More searches to monetize means more paid search revenue (although Yahoo will receive payments from Microsoft). Alongside this, they will no doubt hope to attract new advertisers from Yahoo’s bank of accounts, raising competition between advertisers, and therefore bid prices — further adding to their bottom line.

This is the virtuous circle any paid search division wants to fuel — more advertisers, increased keyword coverage resulting in an increased average number of advertisers per keyword, increased bid completion, and a higher average revenue per click.

This is the circle that both Overture and Espotting worked hard to fuel at the start of last decade when paid search was in its pre-AdWords infancy. Working at Espotting, I experienced how keyword coverage and bid competition were major concerns — and when the company lost Yahoo Europe as a distribution partner, I saw the circle slowing, coverage shrinking, and CPCs falling. Bids that once reached a high point of £15 (“serviced offices”) fell beyond the £3 mark as volume, quality and CPCs fell.

Which brings us to the risks…

The Risks for Yahoo

The risks for Yahoo are around revenue, market share, and brand differentiation. If the average revenue per click Yahoo receives under the deal is significantly lower than from Panama, they will suffer financially. However, the operating expenses they save may outweigh this loss. Overall, they will be in a better position.

Aside from CPCs, the long-term risk for Yahoo stretches beyond search into their wider business.

Yahoo has stated they intend to continue differentiating themselves via their search interface. Fine in theory, but there’s real risk here.

Doing this without a large search team of the ability to reach inside the machine is difficult. If consumers learn over time that Yahoo is effectively Bing, and decide there’s no reason for them to stick with Yahoo, will they go directly to Bing?

Inertia often rules our behavior as consumers, but with Bing running advertising campaigns and offering cash-back schemes to attract consumers, the lack of a unique search experience on Yahoo may be enough to push some consumers to go straight to source and get cash back on their purchases into the bargain. The word “frenemy” springs to mind.

Any lack of search market share could impact their wider business. Content is undoubtedly part of Yahoo’s core strategy — even more some with their acquisition of Associated Content — and one of the main ways visitors get to this content is via search.

So any decline in the flow of traffic from Yahoo search into their own properties will hurt their revenues from display advertising — and undermine the data gathering that is at the core of the behavioral advertising, ad exchanges, and other initiatives that in turn are crucial to Yahoo’s non-search advertising revenues.

Yahoo search traffic isn’t their only source of traffic and data. They receive traffic from the other engines and other areas of their properties, and they gather data from display ads across many other sites as part of their wider network (just like Microsoft does across its network).

Yahoo will have to innovate to ensure they can offer search retargeting for their display clients. Right now, Microsoft and especially Google are innovating in this area.

So for Yahoo, the risk is a decline of overall market share — and revenues beyond search alone.

The Risks for Bing

The obvious risk: the numbers don’t add up, and the revenues from the Yahoo deal are less than the costs of the partnership to Bing, even if they have increased their market share. This could vary significantly by country; in some, Bing-powered Yahoo may prove profitable; in others, average CPCs may make the deal less attractive versus costs.

The other risk is less obvious and more damaging for Bing’s ambitions. What if Yahoo’s users don’t like Bing search results?

If Yahoo’s audience perceives a decline in the quality of results, they may shift to Google — hurting both Yahoo and Bing in the process. However, Microsoft is investing a lot of money, time, and — crucially — talent into their search division, so this seems, on the surface, unlikely.

So, Will it Succeed?

I believe it will be a success — in terms of revenue, and in terms of market share (Google won’t be seriously challenged anytime soon, though).

The real story will be what Yahoo does next, and how the frenemy relationship works out while they compete in the display and mobile spaces — and Google builds their display armory around AdWords and DoubleClick.