At DFWSEM I had a chance to interview James Moore Chief Revenue Officer of Simpli.fi about the potential of using display ads that are triggered by the users search history.

Transcription
Eric McGehearty: My name is Eric McGehearty, here again and I’m really excited. James from Simpli.fi had a really exciting speech about re-marketing and display. Display has been one of those areas that we’ve used before, we’ve had some success with, we’ve had some failures, but after tonight’s talk I really feel like we’re going to have some big home-runs for some of our clients.

James, can you give me some insight about what you were talking about the keyword level targeting in display? How does that work?

James Moore: The reality is the display space, frankly, is starting to look more and more like search. The integration display and search is really at a fever pace rapidly coming together. Part of that has to do with the fact that publishers are releasing their inventory with real time bidding which is a role that the search people know all too well, bidding on keywords, the highest bidder to get a conversion.

Really what’s happening now is that they’re starting to release keyword data and search re-targeting in the simplest form simply means that when a company does a search on say Google and your text ad comes up. When they don’t click on that, you lost that opportunity for that customer, but not anymore because with search re-targeting, what’s happening is we’re able to build a profile of that user’s search behavior so that you can to me with your keyword list and have a second chance at targeting these individuals with display ads.

Eric: One of the things that you mentioned to me that was really powerful is the cost of difference and the potential to optimize that cost. On Google there’s a lot of different keywords at a very high cost. We have customers that spent an easy $15 on click. You’re telling me that in some senses there’s potential for me to get a customer who searched for that word, I can get a display ad to him for maybe a dollar a click. How does that work?

James: The example I gave in my speech tonight was mesothelioma. That’s a word that’s synonymous with very high CPC, cost per click. The reality is that when you’re bidding on that in a search engine you’re bidding on that keyword. Whenever I’m buying display ad space that may be one of hundreds of keywords I have attached to that user so I’m literally bidding for the price it costs to put that display ad on that publishers side at the time their eyeballs are there.

We’ve got data that basically says terms that could cost $20, $30, $40 a search are 90 cent, $1 terms in display and you’re able to take what was a costly segment and target them very specifically with these display ads at a very low cost.

Eric: In real world, these are a lot of things that big companies deal with but from a small business point of view just think about that roofer during a hailstorm. Roofers will pay a huge amount of money during a hailstorm to get those clicks. We can re-target those people at home improvement websites, or any website for that matter. They have been looking for a new roof suddenly we show them an ad that’s a very cheap cost for that roofing.

James: Actually it gets more exciting, right, because you’re able to take keywords that are important to that roofer that he can bid on at a low cost but at the same time because of the integration of display technology you can even layer that in with contextual. It diminishes the pool but basically you could say I want to bid on roof repair in Dallas, Texas during this time period but only when they have searched for that term and on a page reading about roofing which is amazing. The pool narrows but the click-through rates of conversion go relatively high.

Eric: James, I really appreciate it. We’re going to be bringing this technology to Globe Runner and to our clients so we really look forward to talking to you more about it. It’s very nice to meet you, James.

James: It’s nice to meet you, too.

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