For Penn State Students: Keyword Advertising Couse Fall 09

Hey, looking for a worthwhile course in Fall 09? Want to take a course where you work in a multi-disciplinary team managing a $30,000 advertising online campaign for a non-profit organization? Plus, do some Website design and search engine optimization? Then, enroll in IST440W.

Although an IST course, the main project will be an online advertising campaign using Google AdWords, a keyword advertising platform. Google is providing $30,000 per each non-profit for the semester. So, this will be some real world experience with real money for a real client.

The times for the course: M W 06:30P - 07:45P. Location is the IST building. The course will be capped at 40 students, primarily IST and advertising students.

Ignore the course description in the category and the prerequisites. Will waive them for the right students.

New Course Description: Indispensable for locating information, Web search engines also facilitate e-commerce and other transactions, with many organizations using search engines for online marketing, branding, and advertising. This course examines the online marketing environment via a real world client using the Google AdWords platform. Students will participate in the Google Grants for Non-profits Program, which provides $30,000 for a three month online advertising campaign for a non-profit organization. Students will gain practical, real world online marketing experience while getting all the excitement of working in the unique marketing challenge of the non-profit domain.

Students (seniors or juniors only) interested in registering need to send me (Jim Jansen, jjansen@ist.psu.edu) their name, resume, and Penn State id number (need id to get them registered, controls are on the course).

Trademark Infringement in Sponsored Search

One of the blogs that I read frequently is by Eric Goldman. Rather than a Google-hater or Google-lover, he always has a very reasoned opinion based on the facts. Must be his lawyer nature! (note: don’t expect any sound bites; you’re going to do some reading!)

Anyway, this post on lawsuits against Google AdWords caught my attention. There are at least 7 lawsuits pending against AdWords for trademark infringement. The deal is that some companies bid on the brand name of other companies in sponsored search. Depending on your viewpoint this is call effective advertising, just advertisings, or trademark infringement (a.k.a., piggybacking, conquest buys, and adversarial advertising).

Okay, I am not totally up on the law concerning trademarks, although the use of a trademark term for shopping comparison seems reasonable to me. However, I *am* up on the user searching aspect of keyword advertising and Web searching.

The foundation of these suits seems to be that when a company bids on brand name of a competitor (or another company), when the ad appears it “causes confusing and is misleading” to the searcher. I find this a stretch, and generally I don’t see this position as valid as all.

This is why. First, many search engine now offer query suggestions. Type in a company name and often, you will get a competing company as a suggested query. Why? Because this is the way people search? They compare.

Second, the number of clicks on sponsored links is much smaller than the clicks on organic links (generally in the range of 15% - 85%). Given the branding relationship between organic and sponsored links, the number of ‘confused’ searchers is, by my guess, very small. However, I know of no research that has investigated this ‘confusion’.

Finally, there is the issue of terms within the entire query. For example, consider hotels. I usually, but not always, stay at a Marriott. What if I type in the query “Marriott Fort Lauderdale”? Would it be unreasonable for Websites concerning hotels in Fort Lauderdale to appear in the organic results? Would be reasonable for Websites concerning hotels in Fort Lauderdale to appear in the sponsored results? I believe so. The underlying need is a hotel in Fort Lauderdale.

I'm just not buying the consumer confusion argument for these cases.

Interview with Penn State Professor and 'Search Behaviorist' Jim Jansen

This was a fun interview with WordStream.

Got to talk about online advertising challenges, sponsored search, search engine brand effect, Twitter research, automated searching assistance, and the Google Online Marketing Challenge.

WordStream is a company offering services and solutions for optimizing and expanding pay-per-click and search engine optimization efforts involving large numbers of keywords.

Organizing a course for the Google Online Marketing Challenge

Am co-author for an article on planning and implementing a course to compete in the Google Online Marketing Challenge, Insights on the Google Online Marketing Challenge and Its Successful Classroom Implementation.

Really recommend it for professors who are considering (or want to enhance their efforts in) the Challenge.

The article provides some actionable items for implementation, a schedule, and learning resources. One of the most detailed articles on the Challenge that I’ve seen.

My co-authors are Theresa B. Flaherty (who spearheaded the article), Charles Hofacker, and Jamie Murphy, who, with Lee Hunter, got the Challenge going.

The citation for article is: Flaherty, T. B., Jansen, B. J., Hofacker, C., Murphy, J. (2009). Insights on the Google Online Marketing Challenge and Its Successful Classroom Implementation. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 5(2), 446-457.

Query Log Analysis: From Research to Best Practice

I attended the Query Log Analysis: From Research to Best Practice Workshop hosted by Paul Clough from the University of Sheffield. The two day workshop was aimed at stimulating "discussion on the analysis of log files" and providing "a forum in which to share experiences and best practice”.

I’m a big fan of the potential of log analysis, so I found the workshop really enjoyable, interesting, and the start of something beneficial.

Paul did a great job in making the workshop both fun and worthwhile.

I gave two presentations at the workshop, one on log analysis research, Moving from Description to Prediction, that I’ve been doing. The focus was including more predictive aspects in and findings from log analysis.

The second presentation was a primer on Web log analysis, What is Web Log Analysis?, where I really focused on the foundational elements, both theoretical and methodological.

Overall, the workshop was really good.

One of the workshop aims was to bring together researchers and practitioners. In this regard, the workshop was heavy on the ‘research’ and light on the ‘practice’. So, this would be an area to concentrate on in future workshops.

Keyword Advertising Economic and Workforce Development Project

I’ve been looking to make my research and teaching more immediately relevant to the local community, and this project concerning economic and workforce development in Pennsylvania is one of way of doing this.

Hopefully, we can make a direct impact on SMEs in our local community by leveraging knowledge students gain in the classroom.

We have some great advisors for the project, including IMPAQT, Pepperjam and BlitzLocal, three SEM firms.

A big thanks to the Pennsylvania Technical Assistance Program (PennTAP) for providing the funding.

If at first you don't succeed, let the search engine try

I’ve been trying to move my research focus in Web searching from descriptive to predictive models. Nothing wrong with descriptive models (we need to understand the world around us) but at some point there is enough descriptive understanding where, in the technology fields, we can develop models that predict or influence.

If at first you don't succeed, let the search engine try is a press release concerning some co-research that I did to develop a predictive model of query reformulation using n-grams. One of my students, Danielle Booth, was a major contributor to this work.

We automatically classified queries within individual sessions in one of 8 states, and then used n-grams to develop Markov chains representing these query reformulation patterns. This search engine log, which was from Dogpile, also recorded when users accessed the query reformulation assistance that most major search engines now offer.

Some finding are:
- the patterns are short (3 – 4 states)
- there is a norm to move to narrow the scope of the query
- there appears to be a cognitive space at the start of the session and when switch vertical where the user is open to system assistance

The research is reported in: Jansen, B.J., Booth, D.L., Spink, A. (2009) Patterns of query reformulation during Web searching. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 60(7), 1358-1371.

Thanks to Infospace for access to the logs!